Be ye warned, for this is a very long post.




Just got out of U13 private with one of the few last gentlemen players in Soldat, Atticus.
It was just us two for a seemingly short quarter of an hour, waiting in vain for more people to join and remembering the times when U13 private was almost constantly full.
We took refuge from the public U13 server, where heralds proclaimed the typical cries 'base camper' and 'OWNED' far too frequently to bear.


A train of thought got me to remembering something from my early on years in Soldat, back as early as the 1.1.5 era. Players who had been around before me and held no familiarisation to, them becoming mere 'has-beens' in the community, boldly stating that "Soldat is Dieing/dead". This was far from the truth.
For me, and for many others, Soldat held a plethora of interest. But there was no U13, no Soldat Gather, and so few people that even the IRC community did most of their socialising in just one or two rooms.


I myself, do not think that Soldat itself is just moving onto a 'new generation'. ie: the old getting bored, and the new stepping in. There is other evidence.

The beta team for example, has dwindled in numbers due to inactivity, and the remaining few have no further interest in the game itself. 1.3.1, a patch to remove a few bugs and to further improve the balance has been in the making for around 5 weeks now. We did the 1.3 balance with great energy, testing nearly every day together for a solid 6 weeks, but this past 5 weeks, we've honestly done next to nothing.

This was mostly my inspiration towards the 'public balance' idea, which although knowingly doomed to failure from a bored community, was my intention to provide a stop-gap in the beta testing. It gave us more time, into which much is suprisingly needed towards getting more beta testers to increase the ranks and actually get something done.


Then theres the public community, which has become uninterested in itself. Not long ago, players all used to frequent the DNAgames server (the previous hosters of this forum) and the U13 private. Discussions and arguements were thriving with, although bias, intelligence and perspective. Since then, a place of commune has dissapeared, and I think this holds some reason towards the dwindling of any culture had.


Additionally, such a community has become more immature, both in age and act. I remember feeling rather silly, years ago, talking about some game to people i've never met. But the community was mostly 18+, where people were old enough to have developed a reasonable amount of character (whether good or bad), which has since become 14-or-under. Now, I feel silly. Is this just my perspective, or is there a reason for this?



I'm not exactly shedding any tears over this gradual decline in 'communal interest', but I do miss it. It was a fun distraction every few evenings around a fun and distracting game. What are your thoughts on this, old and new comers alike?

Well, I would be a new comer. So the game is still very exciting to me, even if the community might seem bored and immature.

In my mind, since this is all I've ever known this game/game community to be, that is what I expect from this game. I have no desire to go back to something that once was, because I don't have anything that once was. Hell, I've only been here since Janurary, not even a full year, and only two versions of the game. In the future, if I stay around and stay active, then maybe the game/community will take a turn and become something new. Then I'm in your position; wishing for what I remember it all being like.

Maybe cycle through the beta team, bring in a fresh crop of people to spice it up a little bit. Have the existing team supervise everything, keep everyone/everything in check, and correct them when they are wrong.

I've clearly played MMOs for too long. When did a half page constitute a long post? Pah.


First off, heya Chakra... s'been a while. And for the record yes I'm back for the time being at least. I know I've got a bit of a history to come and go... but at least I don't make threads every time (as TFS put it).

I'm a vet... 1.02b represent.

You've been around for a long time too, Chak. Let's look at that, eh? The community really hasn't changed much. The players of the various roles have, certainly... but the roles are still there. Remember the days when Camping Carl would irritate the hell out of half the community and get the adoring laughs of the other half? Remember Soldat Striker, one of the older community members who had a certain sageness about him?

Remember when guys like TFS (and to a lesser extent myself) would make long rambling posts to prove a point, hoping that the younger people in the community would just skip over it and assume we were right purely on word count?

People still do that.

It's just not you or me or TFS or Striker or CC.

The ignorant f*cktards have always been there too... and they'll continue to be there. The people who can't get through a sentence without a "WTF!?" and the people who assume by posting the same dumb thing over and over again they'll eventually be right... will always be there.

But then again so will people with valid points... people who can put together arguments and have valid discussion. People to whom the morons previously mentioned are like lambs to the slaughter.

It's like that in every community.

And it's always entertaining.

I've been with the soldat community since the days of 1.1.3

I too find that the community grows a bit stale, but i keep coming back. I don't really play the game very much anymore, but I still fire it up occasionally. I wouldn't call myself a vet in the same right that you, Social Poison are a vet. But I think that after being around for over 2 and a half years I am a veteran in my own right.

the soldat community, peaked around the release of 1.2 in my opinion. 1.2.1 was the greatest version in terms of balance, but that wasn't enough to bring back some of the oldest members of the community. what ever happened to knight-of-the-mare by the way?

Hell even I don't remember or know a knight-of-the-mare. But maybe your right Social Poison, maybe nothings changed but i've just got 'old'. Still, things don't seem right. No one seems to have 'replaced' the likes of grand TFS, or even Camping Carl (to a degree), and all that remains a bunch of ....guys, who don't talk about or do anything. :|


And good point vash, we should 'cycle' the beta team at least once in a while, now most of all.

sure it's a stale community, but that mainly for the people who've been here years. im sure for the rest it's much different, like it was for us back in the day. yea it seems like those were the good old days, and they were. but these are the good old days for future vets, as long as soldat keeps running along.

the community still has potential though. there's funny people, helpful people, and newbies that arent noobies. sure im one of the people who just trolls around, but back in about 1.1.3-1.1.5, i was a kick-ass contributor ;) i've done my time...

ill be here for some time still, until i grow my ass up :)

EDIT: wwwwooooaaahhhh......knight of the mare.....jesus that brings back memories...have i been here that long?

Well Chakra I dont know what to say to a post like that. Im a newer player and it kinda offends me making me feel as if im stealing your game from you. Im sorry you feel that way but to me its a game GAMEOVER is my identity GAMEOVER is not who I am. I play soldat for fun and I play to win, I play it as a distraction from some of the unpleasent things in life. If ive ever gave you a sour taste in your mouth im sorry but youll have to understand where im coming from.

i haven't been around that long, about a year or so. still, i've seen a steep decline in the number of server out there. i remember when there were 100+ 1.2.1 servers. now i see a total less than that of both the 1.2.1 and 1.3 combined. it's tempting to blame 1.3 for the decline in servers and players. wandering into a WM server and getting the crap beat out of you by augs shooting m79 rounds and flying chainsaws dosen't exactly make for a good first impression. i suppose these cycles are normal, but i blame 1.3 and a lack of new maps. sure yo ucna download new maps, but no one joins unknow map server. i fully expected 1.3 to come with a pack of new maps.

Aye, not as new as GO but still a newbie in certain aspects of experience. (Started around april of '05) ~ Btw, im 15 as well

And recently, tbh, I think people are just more interested about playing the game rather then bothering to get more involved now'adays. Im interested in both, but then again im a more involving kind of guy. I may fit the personality of those "f*cktards" who always say "WTF" and all that. I try to stop, but thats just me. But really, IMO I just do NOT like this version. 1.2.1 was the version I grew up into, and of course thats what ill see as the real soldat.

You play 1.3 a bit and see so many disimprovements over improvements. The balance in 1.2 was excellent, considering what I hear about older versions and of course this version. I just got out of some matches today to be seriously ticked off about bullets not registering...all the bugs, they just turn you off from the game, knowing it was once better, and that you dont have much control over it all, I think people just give up - then again, my posts were denied in the balance section so why do I even bother. -_-

But, ill still try my hardest to contribute towards the good of soldat in an ofcourse intelligent manner. When I first started, the intro to soldat, i was like wtf? Then I played and it seemed kinda, well, [CENSORED]. Got into it more, and I was dreaming about soldat in my sleep and looking forward to hop onto it when I got home from school. Soldat has always been a favorite game of mine, and the fact no game is always the same is what keeps it from being too dull, like other complex games can get.

I mean, back in 1.2.1 I was always inspired by very good deaglers. Deagles to me were like the pro guns that people just dazzled me with, with their accuracy and gameplay. Yozizzo and Morik were just a few people that inspired me to use them as my prime weapon in 1.2.1 when I was new. (Yes, you two were my role models of sorts. :P) 1.3 came by, and just destroyed deagles to a point they're impossible from distances, which is my main tactic with them. People like Marbire dotn seem to have too much of a problem doing this, but im not Marbire, and you dont see too many deaglers of equivalent skill.

<3 Chakra

^^
I hope you know ive never been serious at all, you so put yourself into that with that topic. :P

I think it's because, regardless of new versions, soldat remains the same over time. I remember when 75% of all DM servers were arena only, before weapon mods. So every game would be the exact same match, only different people. Needless to say, it sucked. And now, 75% of all populated servers are rediculously overpowered ADHD-cats-being-shot-out-of-lawn-mowers pointless bloodfests.

And out of the couple years I have been playing soldat, never have I seen a consistently hosted server that has new maps on it. Not once. I think people should liven up soldat a little bit more and start putting custom made maps on their servers, and *gasp* rotate their mapslist on a regular basis. Then maybe there will at least be a little bit of uniqueness in what soldat servers have to offer. Just imagine if each and every server had their own mapslists, all original to their own server. Then I might be tempted to check out a bunch of servers, not just the ones that have people in them.

And for christ sake, if you're giong to make a weapon mod, don't make all the weapons 1-hit-kills. Its no wonder half the people who are joining soldat on 1.3 quit once they see all the whack-ass (WM) servers that are around.

I dunno. It's probably not the cause of the masses of newbies around, but I think the lack of unique game play eventually kills off all the oldies.

perhaps.. well, i'll agree some of the way.. soldat has become a bit CS alike.. it's lost much of it's former personality. i remember some of the first versions. back, when secondary weapons options were much more limited, and there was no such thing as realistic mode or normal mode. Really, you were just playing in soldat mode. i guess the times are changing. The more that's being added to this game, even if it's just small details, takes it away from it's original package. Not that i don't appreciate that people takes such an interest, but it seems to me that people has lost all respect for this.
It's kind'o like how it is today.. people keep on adding stuff to everything, and before you know of it, it's completely different, not just from what you used to have, but also from what you planned to develope.
I never was much of a computer person, so never really understood when people talked about changing .gfx and all.. i just play for the fun of it. so all i could do, was trying out as new versions came along, and people abusing the new options to making all sorts of things, that don't really matter, and that no one really need.

About youngsters joining the forums.. i used to think it was good that the young joined(young in the eyes of the average age in here), and even kids to. at first i was like: "good thing with a wider perspective", but it turned out that it was a imcreddiblely naiv thought, that the forums wouldn't actually turn into a giant playground. for some atleast.
Don't get me wrong.. i like the forums, i just think it sometimes turns into to much of a joke. Like soldat sometimes.

If the 'public balance' idea failed and beta testers are bored, maybe it means the weapon balance is good?

Reading all of these posts, and aside from my bleeding eyes, I'm come to think.
I haven't been here that long (I started in Jan), but in playing Soldat, I started just after 1.2 came out. Playing the game, and realising its originality and fun, but then with the arrival of new weapon balances, and new features, the new features good, but the weapon balaces weren't always that popular to begin with. When 1.2.1 rolled along, I noticed in the first few days, many of the people I'd been playing seemed dedicated to call the new version [CENSORED]ty and noobish, and then just... left. Then, after something like a month, everyone seemed happy and got on with having a fun and friendly game. After nine months, or something like that, 1.3 arrived, and with the newfound weapon editor and modding capabilities, something was bound to go down hill. That, unfortunatley, was the maturity of Soldat Forums' members. As alot of you may have noticed, the General Discussions, Lounge and Bashpit were soon littered with '1.3 suxxors' and '[CENSORED] SOLDAT' threads. Also, in the actual game, aside from certain WM servers littered all over the place that have over powered weapons and annoying moderators, there was and still is the 'Pure Pwnage' craze, in which fifty percent of all players try to imitate FPS Joe, by typing 'BOOM!' and "HEADSHOT' every twenty seconds.
To me, it seems that players are more worried about their number in ranked servers, status in clans, and generally making a name for themselves on our online world. No one I've seen now, aside from hardboiled Soldat players, from the likes of friendly 2004 fragfests where 'ns' and 'ty' are more common than minigun bullets, everyone seemingly has forgotten about the reason they're playing: FUN.

Social Poison, it was a pleasure having a round with you today.

I think I started a while ago too, I got introduced to the game from one of my friends (magniitude, if you remember) and I have played long since he lost interest. I stuck with this simplistically fun 2-d scorlling shooter because of 1.) the forums 2.) the ease and extensiveness with which you could customize this game to your own personal tastes. Maps, mods, 3rd party appliaction and such really showed that there were people out there who cared and took the time to contribute content and help improve the community.

Although those are still here, I AM seeing a lot more young members and newbies rising to high post counts quickly, countless spammers and trolls come and go (and in jaz's case, come again) and very VERY few who have actually stuck with this game to become well respected memebers of the community (the Geologist, and Vijchitidooda and a handful more If I can recall). It's interesting to talk to people who you are unfamiliar with but can still relate to, people from all over the world and have varying backgrounds yet can all discuss in a mostly civilized manner over some (to us) important matters. Adults can barely do that, and I'm pretty suprised to see this level of cooperation and feeling of familiarity among a bunch of kids who don't know [CENSORED] about each other besides a screen name. Go to any other forums, I doubt you'll see the level of maturity as you do see here, the high quality wit and humor, and the actual well thought out arguments that don't degenerate to flame wars.

Assuredly, there are exceptions to teh above, people who feel like they must disrupt the flow of the community to gain attention or whatever sick satisfaction they might receive from annoying the [CENSORED] out of us. But with the new furhrer (just one of many changes i've witnessed since being here) perhaps these things will change.

As it is right now, the soldat community isn't dying, per se. Evolving, for better or for worse. we'll just have to see where things go.

quote:Originally posted by peemonkeysure it's a stale community, but that mainly for the people who've been here years. im sure for the rest it's much different, like it was for us back in the day. yea it seems like those were the good old days, and they were. but these are the good old days for future vets, as long as soldat keeps running along.

the community still has potential though. there's funny people, helpful people, and newbies that arent noobies. sure im one of the people who just trolls around, but back in about 1.1.3-1.1.5, i was a kick-ass contributor ;) i've done my time...

ill be here for some time still, until i grow my ass up :)

EDIT: wwwwooooaaahhhh......knight of the mare.....jesus that brings back memories...have i been here that long?


I REMEMBER HIM TOO

maybe vehicles will make people play again? it always works........

It's Video Game Community Evolution. With new versions come newer players, and these newbies are always younger and younger. A perfect example for this would be the CS community.. I imagine it wasn't always filled with twats. We'll end up like that too, the only question is: When?

..and since everyone posted their Soldat-biography...

..I came along some time after 1.2 came out too, joined the forums soon after. I believe that was after the Peak: it's straight downhill from there. I remember reading posts of TFS, Social Poison and CC still wrote stories, BMF burned me down for my ignorance in a political dispute (he was right), but those people have gotten less and less active, only to post every once in a while. Witnessing the downfall as an ignorant, unkowing newbie... good old days for me.

After some time I've joined the IRC community too, and came to realise that there is a major Soldat community beyond the Soldat Forums, with great players, nice guys and annoying, immature pricks. Then the beta tests came, and I was surprised that I got to test too.. I was proud, and it was an honour to test 1.2.1, not to mention deviously fun.

Then the release came, and soon it was clear that we made a grave mistake with the weapon balance (in Clan war conditions that is. You got called a lamer as soon as you picked up an automatic, while everyone else was running around with DE-s later on), and the majority of players I knew awaited the new version as the saviour of Soldat.

Beta testing season was here again, and this time we did not hesitate in trying to make The One Weapon Balance to Rule Them All: naturaly and unfortunetly the bug-finding was put as a secondary objective, therefore masses of annoying bugs stayed in the release. However, once again I felt proud, and as Michal announced he was releasing the version, the beta testing crew sighed: we felt that we finally succeeded, and no more weapon related whining will follow.

..oh how naiv we were. Although in CW-s the balance is near-perfect, there's no whining whatsoever (atleast not from players who have credibility for their opinions), the public is generally unsatisfied: a lot of players stopped playing, gone back to 1.2.1, blame us that we killed Soldat, the list goes on and on, and if all of those would be true, then Lucifer is making a new circle in hell just for me.

And now we're here, and I'm saving my opinion about the current situation for a later time, so I can clear my thoughts, arrange my points, and make an even bigger post later on.

What you need to do, is be on quakenet more then you are, the only apealing form of soldat atm, is, am aranged game on a private server, gather, or a clanwar. And nothing else. But I got picky in my long soldat age :o

i see your point. i've been playing since 1.1.3 i think. although hardly an active community contributer i have at least hung around and kept an eye on whats going down.

and i can only agree. i wonder though if this is an attempt at insight into the evolution of the symbiotic nature between a game and its community, or a question of how many forum members does it take to change a lightbulb?

1 to change the light bulb and to post that the light bulb has been changed
14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently
7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs
1 to move it to the Lighting section
2 to argue then move it to the Electricals section
7 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs
5 to flame the spell checkers
3 to correct spelling/grammar flames
6 to argue over whether it's "lightbulb" or "light bulb" ... another 6 to condemn those 6 as stupid
2 industry professionals to inform the group that the proper term is "lamp"
15 know-it-alls who claim they were in the industry, and that "light bulb" is perfectly correct
19 to post that this forum is not about light bulbs and to please take this discussion to a lightbulb forum
11 to defend the posting to this forum saying that we all use light bulbs and therefore the posts are relevant to this forum
36 to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior, where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best for this technique and what brands are faulty
7 to post URL's where one can see examples of different light bulbs
4 to post that the URL's were posted incorrectly and then post the corrected URL's
3 to post about links they found from the URL's that are relevant to this group which makes light bulbs relevant to this group
13 to link all posts to date, quote them in their entirety including all headers and signatures, and add "Me too"
5 to post to the group that they will no longer post because they cannot handle the light bulb controversy
4 to say "didn't we go through this already a short time ago?"
13 to say "do a Google search on light bulbs before posting questions about light bulbs"
1 forum lurker to respond to the original post 6 months from now and start it all over again.

thankyou annoyances.org, but there is a point. being that in a forum/community there are stereotypical people who put their input in at each stage of an issue or thread, and that no single one type of member is responsible for the subsequent running round in circles, but they all help it round in their own way.

and its this sort of democracy that grinds people into the ground. ultimately leading to a disgruntled chak and newbies going 'wtf is the problem? this IS a forum you know...'. remember also that these 14 year olds as they grow up will discover new passtimes, niches and things to do. i believe karmazon (despite beiing older the point remains) may soon turn into some sort of internet ecowarrior (oxymoron intended) for instance.

i need to go away and reread what i and everyone else has written to figure out where i was going with this and get to a decent point....

Well i seriously have NOT been around here for as loong as several people here
(who the f*ck is Knight of the mare?), i just played the version before 1.3 (whatchacallitagain?) and are playin 1.3 itself... :P

I myself have no grudges against the current version, except against those that whines about it. V.V

Nothing last forever as they say, This is currentley the third forum ive been visiting that are going through this kind of stage, complains about increased imaturity and retardness, discussion about that the god ol' days where much better. whineing about that the current era sucks... AND SO FREAKING ON!

How about that we grab our necks and do something about it. We can't wait and do nothing but hope that itll become all ok again by itself, We are a part of the community, only we can make it better!

"Dont look into the past! there is no future in it!"

oh, I'd also like to point out that this sort of "the end is coming!" nay-saying happened when 1.10 came out, changing soldat drastically from the 1.05b era.

Chakra`, try SUS again. :E

We need another set of DNAGames servers. Not hosted by DNAGames, obviously, but a set of semi private servers using the latest maps from these forums, with a healthy weapon balance that will please the majority of people.
It's all well and good for me to say all this, but obviously a certain forums admin needs to get their finger out of their arse, and stop browsing 4chan 15 hours a day for this to happen.
This topic has been brought up frequently since the demise of the DNAGames servers, but action still needs to be taken, right?

Agree @ chakra

Comon guys, lets recognize when there is a problem.

I'm not going to get into all of the details of why I don't like 1.3 right now. What I will say is i think a huge part of the reason the game feels so "stale" right now is because of weapon mods.

In chakra's example, there werent enough people in U13. Well let me tell you why i think that is. For a game to remain fresh, we need new players. If a new player logs in to one of these Weapon Modded servers that are totally lame, they are going to be instantly turned off to the game. We have just lost that potential new player. Likewise, if some older player comes back, and sees all of the lame ass wm servers, and thinks "wow soldat is lame now"...we have just lost another player.

A community is a very fragile thing. Taking half of our servers and turning them into weapon modded servers was a very bad idea. Well, it might have been a good idea on paper, but I don't think we realized HOW MANY servers would waste their time on lame ass weapon mods.

With about half of the servers being WM, we have gutted our community. Now when people log in they are scattered to the four corners of the game.

I beg of anyone who is listening.....PLEASE GET RID OF WEAPON MOD SERVERS.

It will take a while, but we will get that old soldat feeling back.


I love soldat. I love the community. I truly think WM's are a big part of the problem.

The only community I care for really are the people in my clan, and maybe a few other clans. That's it really....... I'm slowly walking away from this game, but it will probably still take a long time.

I can see your point Chak, and I sincerely hope I have not fallen into the "staleness" that seems to be pervading the area as of late.

I've played for quite a while (sort of the transition between 1.04 and 1.05b) and this, if my memory serves me correctly, is this first time I've had this much trouble trying to find a decent server to play in.

Always before there were at least 10 servers in a decent ping range that weren't full or empty. Mostly these happened to be well-known servers to the longtime players/forumers, such as DNAgames, U13, or Himitsukichi. Nowadays, I'm spending upwards of 20 minutes just in locating a server that is playable, isn't horribly weapon modded, and hopefully isn't full of the plethora of available idiots.

I happen to agree that this is due in part to the weapon mod idea. Before, the extent of the damage that most people could do to the game was to either fill up a space in a game doing nothing, using a hack, or something of the like. Now they can defile the weapons to their hearts content, leaving me somewhat pissed off that I can't find anywhere to play. Obviously, we cannot lay the blame for this on Michal, and that is an important point. There was a huge amount of people yelling for weapon modification abilities, and he had to do something to satisfy the masses. Hopefully, this will serve to teach a lesson to those people, that they do not always know what is best for the game.

I don't think Soldat is quite ready to die yet. I see a possible outcome of this as the community as a whole diminishing greatly, but a core of loyal people staying around, and then the community slowly rebuilding around them. I know I'll be one of those people :D

i would play in the u13 servers, but alas i get better ping in EnEsCe's australias server, and find more friends there. i like this community cause age doesnt matter, to an extent, im only 16 but have been thought to be over 20, while others that are 20+ have seemed to be the same age as me, surely if you think something is lost your looking in the worng places, the honourable soldat ways are still present, but in hiding like they always have been. we all look for something different in soldat, its finding it that will make us content. im not goin anywhere, not until i find my soldat.

Quite right Sticky ...whhhhyyyy if I was admin here, i'd have this place turned upside down. SUS was quite an achievement despite being a failure too, S4R. Who could believe that I managed to get 10 dedicated hosts unknown to one another to band together and use the same name and password in their servers? ...shame no one used the servers eh ¬_¬


And yes Wormdundee, it seems the more freedom given to Soldat players the further apart from one another they seem to become, as well as the true fun had from Soldat itself. Part of the problem has always been, as well as the lack of any 'unification' in the community to support servers, the servers themselves as well. Theres so few regular places of commune when it comes to public gaming, and most hardcore gamers have withdrawn into Soldat Gather for their 'fix' I imagine. Though theres still some proof of public servers being a regular meeting place, such as the public U13, and Leo's realistic server.

As for the future? who knows.. could definitely do with some new and aspiring buckeroos.

I personally agree with all of you about the good server situation right now, its really kind of disgusting. I can remember the DNAgames server, u13, n00bfaces popular infiltration servers, BA and SaD server was awesome to play with big players, even some lesser servers like Blans were popular at the time. Personally, I can say I did not expect so many WM servers to stay until this long afte rthe release of 1.3, I was expecting these servers to start disappearing after a few weeks or months at the most, but almost all of them have stayed. Yesterday I was looking for a good DM server to play on, and I found none which gave me a decent ping or didnt have a WM with ak shooting knives. Theres still some good CTF servers around, but you will be lucky to find one that is not infested with noobs. Infiltration servers?, I found none located near me which gave me a decent ping. I think this is primarily due to stuff like ventrillo which is the suxxor. A few days ago I went into the fractured ventrillo server just to see who would be there, I quickly realized that around 15 relatively well known good players were in the server just talking to eachother about nothing. I continued to visit the server for the next couple days, and almost every time those people would be there talking to eachother -_-. These people should be playing soldat instead of talking to eachother on ventrillo. I would have quit this game due to this sucky community, but I keep coming back because of the competitive soldat scene which has kinda improved over the last month. Atleast theres more clans now then there were like 4 weeks ago. 8 compared to 6 -_-.(in north america)

It would be awesome to bring a DNAgames type server set back. Amen Sticky

is there a loctaion where australia, asia, europe, and america get about the same ping, so no nation is better off. you get really crap ping in australia

I hope this new version comes soon...if its not the horrid weapon balance and weapon over-use that drives me insane, it will definetly be all the bugs and issues in 1.3, which im hoping will have a bit of emphasis on, along with the balance.

I've read 90% of all the posts (a day only lasts 24hrs you know :P) and there are some major pessimistic statements in here.



SuS was a very good project , I don't see why it stopped. Now everyone is complaining about the community falling apart (people just don't meet eachother in the servers anymore) , while the SuS completely solved that problem. (I'm not telling SuS should come back , i'm just telling that ppl should organise things like this again.) Back in the time where i played in SuS servers i ALWAYS met fun people to chat and play with. For example with Valuemeal :P , he was shooting the crap out of me so i started to aim specially for him. i cought myself running trough the whole enemy team saying "That's not him , nope , no he isn't either , negative , nope , AH there he is!" and then fire at him. These times were stated as 'The good old days'.

Also , i think age doesn't matter. I'm 16 and i rarely have problems with other people , despite many saying that people below 18 are childish. My brother , another example , is 11 , one of 'The below 14's '. He didn't have a problem either , when someone started flaming at him he just shooted the crap out of him with deagles (1.2.1 ;) ) without loosing one word. If everyone would be like him there wouldn't be 'Good old days' since they were worse than the current situation.

One of the greatest problem is the ego-tripping in here , why does it matter how long you have played? It doesn't to me , anyone who hangs around here has an opinion worth hearing to , otherwise Sodlat would die in five minutes and the admins should close the Weapon balance forums (which i like very much) and the game improvements , the maps section , the mods section and so on. Most of these ego-trippers like to have a whole conversation about 1337 and CAPS and how cool they look... I myself am not intrested in this so said 'grown-up' stuff (as they call themselves) and just leave , probably like every other player that's not intrested. I'm not targeting anyone , in fact this example is bolded alot , but it does exist and i hope people recognise themselves here.

Lazyness , another thing that makes all people think that the community has gone bad. I run a Soldat fan-site and i listen to everyone , that includes those people with age 999 and no sex and those who live in zimbabwe that differs from location (from the USA to EU). If i wouldn't have done that the site would still only contain static HTML pages with maps that come from the people i know. Currently the site is fully open: all you need is a valid email address to start flooding the site , and hey , that happened only with one person. Considering that the site has 150 diffrent people a day and that most of them aren't playing the game for more than 3 months (see poll) that should prove that the new people in Soldat have huge badass mouths to scare the 'veterans' , and hey , they succeeded huh?. Same thing for a clan , i run a clan wince Octobre 2004 i guess and it has been inactive for periods of 6 months (with inactive i mean 0bits changed in those 6 months) because of my two best friends(the other admins) leaving for personal reasons. I was the only one left as admin with some players (Alexoner , S4R , YoZiZzO , Brad , MrT , KaotiK ...) , ofcourse , some of these players left but some of them didn't and that also proves that people should look further than the length of their nose (Dutch/flamish expresiion literally translated into English :D). It's really all about some simple facts.

This reply might seem offensive but it isn't , i'm just proving that people have become pessimistic in here , we should have more initiatives like SuS. And if the admins don't do anything for a long time they should add more admins , there are a hell lot of people out there with the capabilities of an admin/mod out there. If i had the possibility to start a huge project like SuS or get alot of people togheter like Soldat Gather i wouldn't be writing this post but instead i would be working on such a project to show you all how simple it is.


I hope you read 90% of it like i did hehe , just to give an idea of what i think. Anyway , i could go on stating 100's of more examples why it looks like 'Soldat is dieing' or 'The good ol' Days'-phenomenon etc. but i'll stop here to spare SoldatForum's bandwidth lol.

//EDIT: Scroll trough the latest page in the General Discussions forum and you'll see exactly what i mean. New people get flamed with the childish crap and they leave. If you can't see it i'm afraid you're blind.

Grtz , DePhille

This has to be the thread with the most long posts ever.

Eh...the community...the following is a collection of random thoughts.

The euro community seems to have an average age of 18 maybe 20s whereas the NA community seems to be hovering around 15 or younger. Putting it lightly...and generally speaking...NA community can be rather immature. So you euros have it good for the most part.

I'm sick of the excessive flaming, excessive lameness, excessive hack accusations, excessive amount of egotistic [CENSORED]s, and what not all over the place. It would be nice to have a community that was a little more friendly and welcoming to newer players. The community would probably grow better in that enviroment.

As for leagues...NA specifically(since it's so small, as poop mentioned...like 8 clans or so...)...it would be nice if the better clans could take newer players under their wing, teach them the ropes and get them into league play. Lately in the NA division it's been a little more competitve than usual as the same clans doesn't keep on winning.

Perhaps there should be a crack down on flaming to make the community a friendlier place. I say a 1 week ban no questions asked if you flame someone. That'll be your warning. Next time it's a perm ban. That should yield some better posts on these forums.

I kind of strayed away from the community ever since my prime soldat period...1.05b. I only really deal with current clan memebers, some people I've been in a clan with, those old bums of 1.05b, and a few others.

quote:Originally posted by peemonkeysure it's a stale community, but that mainly for the people who've been here years. im sure for the rest it's much different, like it was for us back in the day. yea it seems like those were the good old days, and they were.


I agree with this. I feel like I have had my time in soldat. Soldat gets stale when all I see are newer people that I don't know. However, I still have so much fun when I find a server with farmilar players. I believe that SUS was perhaps the best idea that has come from soldat. I think that our only problem was that U13 was getting the most action because of its Statistics capabilities. We also tried to hard to keep the SUS secret. If more people knew about it it would have been more popular. I believe it would be worth it to give a project like SUS another shot.

On another note... This topic has aroused the intrest of more "vets" than any other topic in like the last six months. :D

I've been around for about a year and a half.. all I've seen are a lot of oldbies leaving and a lot of newbies entering. (I don't mean it as an insult)

The current 'oldbies' were the ONLY olbies of there time, There arent any older players then they are that quit before them, (maybe a few)

I think Chakra and the rest of these guys are just confused about this new change.. seeing newbies turn into oldbies and taking their spot as the soldat elderly.. which can make a persons vision of what the community was and what it is now blurred.

quote:Originally posted by Psyl3ntShad0wStuff

On the head.

quote:Originally posted by Psyl3ntShad0wEh...the community...the following is a collection of random thoughts.

The euro community seems to have an average age of 18 maybe 20s whereas the NA community seems to be hovering around 15 or younger. Putting it lightly...and generally speaking...NA community can be rather immature. So you euros have it good for the most part.

I'm sick of the excessive flaming, excessive lameness, excessive hack accusations, excessive amount of egotistic [CENSORED]s, and what not all over the place. It would be nice to have a community that was a little more friendly and welcoming to newer players. The community would probably grow better in that enviroment.

As for leagues...NA specifically(since it's so small, as poop mentioned...like 8 clans or so...)...it would be nice if the better clans could take newer players under their wing, teach them the ropes and get them into league play. Lately in the NA division it's been a little more competitve than usual as the same clans doesn't keep on winning.

Perhaps there should be a crack down on flaming to make the community a friendlier place. I say a 1 week ban no questions asked if you flame someone. That'll be your warning. Next time it's a perm ban. That should yield some better posts on these forums.

I kind of strayed away from the community ever since my prime soldat period...1.05b. I only really deal with current clan memebers, some people I've been in a clan with, those old bums of 1.05b, and a few others.


You gotta remember though dude.. this game started in poland, and more euros appealed to it before americans.

Someone with alot of posts isn't necesarily a vet. There are players that really played since the very beginning but they didn't show up at the forums here.
I'll prolly be considered as the 'newbie' talking Unecesarry stuff between the 'vets' here but you don't have to be here for a long time to know how things work.
Mostly the best stuff comes from the 'newbies' , boring example : History. If the 'Newbies' wouldn't hate God and the church we would still play Soldat in real life and don't have a clue about what a PC is.

EDIT: Removed the swear and replaced it with a more poetic thing :D

Grtz , DePhille

Can someone define "vet" for me?

*cough*

wasn't this something i tried to do a few months back?

granted in the wake of the sadly demised SuS. also this died due to apathy.

the server i host is the Clanplanet:open all hours, 12 slot that you may see in the public lobby. it has players in roughly 50% of the time. I am still happy to offer it to the community as a passworded forum server. i can make subusers to my account with clanplanet who would have access to my root folder to change settings and upload maps via the webinterface, or though ftp. so if certain people were wanting offical map test days or stuff its easy as pie to do, and set up some admins.

maybe with the server that cold fusion hosts, something can be done.

the offer still stands gentlemen. its up to you to take it.

quote:Originally posted by MikeShinoda.pheonixCan someone define "vet" for me?
http://www.answers.com/veteran

You know what the soldat community needs? A wiki. I wonder where we could get one of those...

*hint hint*

quote:You gotta remember though dude.. this game started in poland, and more euros appealed to it before americans.Haha. What the hell. How would it originating in Poland make a difference? It's on the Internet which is the World Wide Web.

Dur.

Thankyou Aquarius, now can someone definde a "soldat veteran" ?

Sticky, I'm not so sure if another DNAGames would work out. Maybe it would, but like Chakra said, the forums have changed a lot since the days of the DNAGames server. Nowadays, only about 1 in 10 threads strikes up an interest in me. There are few people that I set up on the pedestal now, as compared to the much greater number back then.

I've been disliking the community for a while now. Public games aren't fun anymore, either. From my point of view, it's been going downhill thus far, and I don't think that will change, sadly.

@Psylent - Consequences for flaming won't work. Consequences never really work in the first place. Consequences and rewards are only a method of giving someone motivation to do something. That's something I like to call "artificial motivation." You don't get satisfaction out of completing your task, but rather out of your reward, and that's completely wrong. It's teaching your mind the wrong way of doing things. If you have a true motivation of following the rules, of being friendly, of keeping the community uptight without the consequences or rewards influencing that motivation, then you will never have a problem of being that type of person. By providing consequences, we're trying to sculpt people's personalities; the way they do things. Anyway, enough rambling. A 1-week ban for flaming will never work. That is false motivation; false control. It will never change a person's true intentions, and they will always find ways around that obstacle.

"I want to follow the rules" and "I want to stay ban-free, so I'm going to follow the rules" is completely different.

Perhaps this is a bit ignorant, but I would rather have some false motivation rather than none at all. Consequences don't work? This is some what parallel to consequences for murder and various other crimes. They seem to do the trick. I'm pretty sure if we didn't have laws against murder and what not...there would be a higher crime rate. Sometimes it's best to FORCE people to follow the rules. This is just a hunch, but people do get sick of trying to get around the system after awhile.

In a more Soldat related sense...that's like saying having consequences for posting hacks on the forums doesn't really work. It works in the sense that we don't have hacks on the forums...less people have them...it's recognized by the community as a stupid thing to play with.

I'm pretty certain if we had strict punishments things would be different. Shoot, look at Singapore.

I like ruling with an iron fist ;Q

I think it would work. :P

Anyways, even though this game started in Poland, it has been advertised pretty well...it got publicity on PC Gamer and various websites. Yeah. World wide web.

If anything, the gap between the amount of European players and NA players shouldn't be as large as it is. Although I suppose if you factor in population and what not...maybe. Haha. Actually...that may be the case.

Gathers and CWs seem to be the place to be. Pubs are getting a bit overrun, although I admit I do go to U13 from time to time. But in my defense, it's because I see someone I know playing in there. It's only fun when you play with friends.

Random thought that came to mind...not very many girls are in our community. If you go to a forum that's occupied primarily by girls it's quite a different place. It's quite a loving enviroment. ...and if you must know why I know this, I looked at a forum for a famous asian male singer. He's quite good really.

Not many girls play Soldat. It's not even close to the girls that play GB(gunbound) and WoW(World of Warcraft) I have a few friends that play Gunbound and a couple that have tried to get to me start...same with WoW. Although WoW seems like it is primarily guys getting their girlfriends to play and the girlfriends getting addicted(I've seen this scenario several times). It's a shame not many girls are recruited to play Soldat. Maybe we'd get a more loving enviroment ;)

unfortunately, the hordes of 12 year old boys couldn't possibly appeal to the fairer sex. Yes, more women on the forums could work nicely, but i see things happening more like this:

girl: hi
generic soldat player: are you a girl
girl: yes
generic soldat player: how big are your breasts?
girl: -_-
girl has left the game

Yes, bad community is one of the most crippling hinderances for online games. Not only are communities incredibly difficult to change (if not impossible), but bad ones will deter players. Human beings are not computer programs that you can change around if you find something wrong with them. And thusly, they can make or break ANY game. We just have to hope that all the 'good' community members can tolerate all the idiots =/...

quote:Thankyou Aquarius, now can someone definde a "soldat veteran" ?
this seems to fit the bill for a soldat vet(from http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Veteran):

Veteran is a title created by gamers in the last few years. The meaning fluctuates, but it is generally agreed to denote one who, through a combination of lag spikes, laser mice and a precise stream of numbers input into the chat window, has managed to destroy all hope of his team reaching its objectives.

;p

I don't meet as many interesting people in my adventure as I did before. And I never meet people as good as I did before. None of the new players move on from M79 lately, so no one's getting any better. Would be nice to have some people who talked during the game again.

I guess I shouldn't have said that they wouldn't work, Psylent. To rephrase, I don't think it will change anyone's intentions, just restrict them. That said, I suppose it would work as far as the rest of us are concerned. Hell if I know. Might be worth trying.

U13, I remember when it used to be packed. Also, when did you guys make it not-passworded? I stopped regularly going into it when it was passworded.

You also need to take into mind, summer is over, classes and exams have come back, people are in school. No more spending all day on Soldat.

And, in my opinion, most people on this forum have always acted 14 and under. A combination of bad typing skills, random flaming and elitism (that dumb rating system and those stars never helped) this forum has never been a pleasent place to post on. Seriously, how hard is it to type coherently and be nice to everyone? I don't get it. Maybe some of you people are so insecure you need to take out your anger on an internet forum, I don't know.

Anyway, Soldat is still fun to play, though it is more fun to play a good game with some kind, social people.

I've been feeling the same as Chakra for a while now. And it's kind of bothered me. And I've tried to pretend it didn't feel like Soldat was getting cold. But it just feels like....well....there's just no more heroes.

We're all just mashing buttons and spewing profanities.

I miss the 1.2 days....<_>

I got the same feeling too, but hopefully, things will change....

Soldat got ruined when the game got infilrated by PC Gamer readers.

its cause you are the hero now, your mine any way :P

Marine: hey , please don't connect bad typing and grammar to childish. If this was a forum where everyone would have English as their native language i would maybe accept the grammar fact. I'm from Belgium , we only get English when we are 14 (I'm not going to convert EU and US school years over here so i just tell the age) And beleive me , if i didn't knew English well when i was 14 i wouldn't be posting here.

By the way; I'm sorry to say this but some of the getting cold of the comunnity is caused by yourselves. People won't come to you , you have to go to people. ;)

Grtz , DePhille

I understand, but people who type like:


"hey lol i hav such a good idea u r shld listen 2 me"

That's just stupid. Especially when it's obvious their native language is English. I can understand, and have no problem with people who struggle with the English language, as long as they try to use proper punctuation and capitalization and try to spell out words the best they can. I can't deal with how some people think this message board is AIM or YIM or something.

Though, I've tend to notice the majority of people with bad typing skills have equally bad attitudes, so I believe they correlate somehow.

I believe they have an r = .85 correlation, yes.

quote:Originally posted by cHuTI don't meet as many interesting people in my adventure as I did before. And I never meet people as good as I did before. None of the new players move on from M79 lately, so no one's getting any better. Would be nice to have some people who talked during the game again.

i hear ya.. people do say things like ns, efc (low,up or what ever) and all things of "short-of's", but the game would certainly gain more personality if people started talking again. not that anyone would want a flood of chatters using ingame soldat instead of mIRC or MSN, but u know what i mean..

quote:Originally posted by DePhilleSomeone with alot of posts isn't necesarily a vet. There are players that really played since the very beginning but they didn't show up at the forums here.
I'll prolly be considered as the 'newbie' talking Unecesarry stuff between the 'vets' here but you don't have to be here for a long time to know how things work.
Mostly the best stuff comes from the 'newbies' , boring example : History. If the 'Newbies' wouldn't hate God and the church we would still play Soldat in real life and don't have a clue about what a PC is.

EDIT: Removed the swear and replaced it with a more poetic thing :D

Grtz , DePhille

quote:Originally posted by DePhilleSomeone with alot of posts isn't necesarily a vet. There are players that really played since the very beginning but they didn't show up at the forums here.

Agree. I've been following soldat since it was announced as a "liero sequel" back in whenever. Still remember social poison was an extensive liero modder :)

quote:
I'm sick of the excessive flaming, excessive lameness, excessive hack accusations, excessive amount of egotistic s, and what not all over the place. It would be nice to have a community that was a little more friendly and welcoming to newer players. The community would probably grow better in that enviroment.

I actually don't see too much of that. Or maybe I just ignore it subconciously. :P

However, the stuff I do see angers me. One of the things I hate is in Soldat Moments, when someone posts their story, people always say, "This has happened, nothing special" "O, I've done that before"
That's annoying...

If we are trying to keep people's interest, we need to have some radical changes once in a while...

Talking would be great, but you have to realize that it's a little challenging striking up an in-depth conversation with 2-4 second respawn times =/.. Realistic/Survival servers are another matter though. I definitely talk on those.

Lol, but I also never play on them. Especially R/S CTF... waiting 2 minutes to play for 30 seconds gets tedious.

I talk to people who present a challenge to me. That's how I know most of the people I do. We get into duels, or start hunting each other, and we have fun with it. We talk to each other. Complement each other. And the next time I see them in a server, I say "hi".

I think that's how Soldat should be...

The forums are no different. If someone posts intelligently and constructively, I offer them that much more respect when I next read something they post.

i also play that way chief, sadly there are a lot of people who think they're above such behaviour. Or are fed up of their perceived image of an atypical soldat player, and as such shall not waste their oh so precious time on him.

of such people, with their wonderous self image, i often step back to think 'well why are you playing this game then?'. what fun do they garner? what joy do they harvest? i for one do not see it. maybe i'm blind.

and the same can be said in this games forum. although the trend here is to not follow a threads' line of conversation and instead post whatever the hell you want. or start talking about something linked to the thread title, regardless of how many posts have been made, thus stealing all of the topics' momentum altogether.

these are sad times. if this were the 18th century, myself a doctor and the game a stricken sailor then i'd be calling for an amputation. we're well past leeches.

I tried that for a long time (the duel thing) and i must say it failed more than it worked.
I got flamed , vote-kicked (they thought i meant it offensively) and whined at more than i duelled. After a time you can really see whose up for a duel and who isn't capable of acting mature. I'm not putting myself above them , i just shut up then.

I remember some huge talks about who was the best in the server , at first i would start a conv about score not being important but that results in a votekick. I really like having discussions but that votekick really ruins it , it also bans you for a (short) time and you'll have to find another server.

I'm very sorry but that's how most (55 - 60%) of the servers are for me :( , except in U13's passworded server where i had the best Soldat experiences (after clanmatches and trainings with friends and clanmates ofcourse).
Those are my experiences and they may (and i hope) differ from yours. I'm still always open to have such 'a good old game' but that occurs less and less. I think i'm not the only one experiencing this and that is , what i think , the main reason of the quietness in a Soldat Server.

Grtz , DePhille