Ideas for the future of Soldat

[Kenix]

I firstly wrote this only for Betatesters/developers but I decided to make it public now so everyone could discuss it.

-- PLEASE READ THE WHOLE POST IF YOU ARE INTERESTED INTO THE FUTURE OF SOLDAT --

Dear Developers,

This is something I have been carrying around in my head for quite some time now, I even had a short conversation with zakath about it already. Since the on-going decrease of Soldat's playerbase, especially in the competitive scene, I have been asking myself how we could stop it. Excuse me, if I start off with this thread with a little bit of criticism at the beginning, but I feel some kind of neccessity to do so.

Right now I have got the feeling that there's some kind of dissonance between the competitive scene, the public scene and the developers. There's too much black and white from both the competitive scene and the developers. Since I'd consider myself quite an experienced person out of the competitive scene, not talking Soldat-wise but in terms of knowing the scene quite good, I can safely say that many people feel unheard when it comes to their ideas and maybe their criticism, as long as it is constructive, by sides of the developers. I do believe that the opinion of the competitive scene is to be valued highly, maybe a bit higher than it is nowadays, because these people are the ones that keep the most interesting part of Soldat alive, these people are the ones that value and notice the work of you devs and partly us betatesters the most. This is not meant to be an offense or anything, but take the helping hand some of them offer you, even if it is in a sometimes trashy forum as SCTFL's.

Yet I do also believe into the importance of taking care for the public scene of Soldat. While public players can't really give any input on the actual game itself they're still the ones who are "responsible" for the future of Soldat, as only public will bring new players. These new players will be the ones who will appreciate the work of us in the future. This is what a big part of the competitive scene lacks to understand. And that is what you developers fortunately do understand and what you are trying to take care for. Now it is just a question of combining both scenes and make something good for both. That is where I'd like to leave the realm of nice words and get a bit more specific on the actual content of my ideas.


What needs to be done at first? Improve the communication between the developers and the competitive scene at first. Maybe some of you could write their opinion on a thread like this in a more sensible way  than skoskav did by saying that you developers do not care for it. Explain your opinions in a factual way of speaking.
As next I would offer to post your dev logs in the SCTFL forum as well if noone of you wants to do that. This would make people from the competitive scene pay more attention to both your work and this forum. So much for the communication between the developers and the competitive scene.

Another thing that is very very very very very important for the whole game, but especially for the competitive scene, is a new anti-cheat. You should really really focus on this. It will give people new hope, motivation and much more. Trust me, I can assure you that this is probably one of the most important points of your development right now, at least in the eyes of the community.


But what could be done for the communication of the competitive and the public scene? Well, at first our goal should be to get more public players, to advertise Soldat. As the game is pretty old as it is right now, we'd have some trouble to advertise it. But what if a new Soldat, a Soldat 2.0 would pop up? A Soldat with enhanced graphics, smoother game experience, less eats and all that stuff. Maybe even a Soldat that could be brought to Steam Greenlight? I am pretty sure that you devs could tell me more about what a game needs to be revived, especially from the technical side, nevertheless I try to share my ideas here. But even if it's not a part of Steam or similiar gaming clouds, it still could be advertised as the new Soldat (like: "Do you remember the fun times you had with Soldat, back than 5 or 6 years ago? Guess what, it's still alive, it's still being developed and just recently a completely new version with a lot of changes has been released! Try it out and experience even better times!"). If that would happen it could bring us a lot of new players. Games as Minecraft, Ace of Spaces and Realm of the mad god have shown that there is still interest in games with rather trashy graphics. But a new look is a must for Soldat, as it looks way too old, even for fans of trashy games. Restructuring the menu would help as well.


And that is where I will come to my final point. It offers, in my eyes, a very good solution to the communication difficulties between the public and the competitive scene. I got to admit, it's kind of stolen from other games, nevertheless it's a good way to ensure more interest from the public towards the competitive scene. I imagine some sort of starting menu for the new Soldat. Let's say you start Soldat. If the nowadays structure of a horizontal navigation bar is being kept, we have the start box at one side and on the other side there's an new box: The News Box. I am not sure if someone of you has played CS:GO, but if you did you might have noticed such a news box as well. In this News Box there will be news about the competitive scene of Soldat, things like the current status of a league, maybe even hotlinks to streams/league sites and of course information, information and information about how to get a part of this scene. People that play the game on a public level would get in touch with the scene a lot easier, maybe some of them feel interested into the matches of the "pro" clans, etc. Of course this idea would require a bunch of motivated news writers.

What do we need else? A good and easy understandable tutorial on how to make the first few steps. Right now it's just downloading the game and then you join a server. Noone helps you, noone gives you hints on how to play the game. Maybe we could even show hints and tips where people get told a better way on how to approach certain things in the game as aiming or movement. I imagine those at the bottom of the game, changing everytime you close the game and reopen it at some point later on.
Maybe we could even encourage some pro's to do little tutorials for public players, which are interested in learning a more competitive and serious style of playing Soldat. In CS:GO there's the Pro Tips Series, hosted on youtube by Valve, showing pros who give tips for other players. I am sure we could also find such players in the Soldat competitive community, for example ginn and HasTe have done something into this direction.

My very last idea is some sort of matchmaking system in Soldat. Once again I stole it from CS:GO/LoL, but it's still a pretty brilliant idea. Of course I don't really know how difficult this is, but as I imagine it, there's a program that gathers all the players that are currently searching for a match and if it has 6 players it will just connect all these players to one server, so they could play 3on3/or any other game mode. Maybe zakath could host a few servers for this use? By this matchmaking system or "in-game gather" pub players would have a better chance to learn how to play 3v3 and I could imagine people that are already in touch with the competitive scene to attend these gathers quite frequently.


So much about my ideas. I am very well aware that this does not only consider a very high amount of technical knowledge and work, but also a lot of organization. Fortunately I am german and we germans love to organize and structure things so I would definitely offer the devs a helping hand for all the publicity work, for gathering people that are interested into writing news, into helping out and what else is neccessary. Given that Soldat 2.0 is launched at a point not too far in the future, building up a circle of information about the competitive scene might eventually bring more public players into the scene. I didn't give up this game yet and I still believe that it could be a big success. I do believe though that the points that I have mentioned here are key things to be improved/done (at least most of them).

It would be very cool if anyone that reads it could give his thought and ideas on this as well, as I have put a lot of work and thinking into this whole thing.

Let's make it happen! Together!

[Keron Cyst]

Sounds good, but wouldn't the level of change that you call for (in just graphics alone) require a reworking of the entire game code/engine? The graphics primarily stem from the way maps are made. Then that would truly be Soldat 2.0.

Additionally, my suggestion towards enhancing popularity is that all symmetrical HTF maps be scrapped, big DM maps (like Bigfalls) be adjusted (in terms of waypoints and spawn locations) for HTF, and everyone should play HTF. No one realizes that it's actually the greatest game mode ever, just with terrible maps. I do believe HTF could make Soldat really stick out, as all popular shooters just conglomerate towards CTF. Boooooring.

[ginn]

HTF is camp/flee based, CTF is attack/defense based.

Anyway, I think it's a bit too late for soldat to revive, there'd have to be a new game with somewhat same principles and maybe more fancy stuff. Possibly just releasing this version to then start on a soldat 2 might be the way to go. With eats being fixed a bit the game becomes playable, so it'll live for another year or so.
I really don't see how new kids would get into soldat, since it doesn't really have anything to compete with those shitty f2p games.

[biohazard]

Nice.

I dun for 3 years and mean to play again when i finidh my MA, but theres shit i wanna hard:
1- gather og the world unite, ya haz nutin to lose but ur chains
     This is the main shit that must be done, defrag the irc scene in one big multi-server-admins-gamemode-gather

2- irc interface like eC made one upon the time
     Mandatory. Also possibility to !add by pub server, like Leos pub. This stuff comes with lots of complexity shit that mus be think b4 hand, so call the germans.

3- when i started off playing after few of idleness in 2006 i notice strange shit happenin. After sum time i understand shit was not right. Most hakin ppl start on overdose playing cuz its so gascinatin to be gud wo effort. But after sumtime shit stop being gud and ppl just leave in massive exodus to never cum back again. Thats not the case with old fellas or simple normal non cheaters players, thwy luv to improve shit over time and a new trick learned is always exciting, so they always come back even if life sux. So... anticheat is the first and foremost thing needed as pointed out.

These are the primary that must be focused, the gather association by the community bosses and AC by devs, me are not think they can improve estetic shit in time when no1 plays no more. But, iif they can make pro player happy, they woyld, since they are the main palyers.
for me i would like 2 features:
A) possibility to watch the player cursor both spec and demos, aand if possible the keys pressed to, so it would be much easier to teach how to muv and shot like a pro.
b) since i play with 80 sensy for barret ruger, 130 for autos, 180 m79 and 200 deagle, it sux to pick a wep droped and play with another sensy. So, i would like a possibility to edit the configs and set a specific sensy for wich one, as like those complex quake configs.

[Vucgy92]

Nah... Soldat will die anyway , it will have its fan-base for very long but it has no future , and its impossible that soldat will have so great chances. The only way of saving the spirit of soldat is making a never game based on it " soldat 2 " That will have all the things a newer game has More weapons better graphics , and bigger soldiers what is main point of soldat aint being that popular

[DarkCrusade]

@Vucgy92: Are you stupid? We have an active team of developers who put their heart into developing this gem of a game. How can Soldat die when it is subject to change? All the features which are on the way help increasing the timeliness while keeping the unique and original flair that no other game has. It is true that Soldat has grown less popular over the years, but how would it not? Soldat has been popular for longer than most other games last and will make it through more time than you can imagine. If you really like Soldat, why do you try to demotivate those who try to make it better? Don't call it being a realist if you have not even thoroughly thought about it.

[jrgp]

Nah... Soldat will die anyway , it will have its fan-base for very long but it has no future , and its impossible that soldat will have so great chances. The only way of saving the spirit of soldat is making a never game based on it " soldat 2 " That will have all the things a newer game has More weapons better graphics , and bigger soldiers what is main point of soldat aint being that popular

There's still an active community/fanbase surrounding Quake 1 and Wolf3d (and derived clones/mods) and other old/stagnant games. Even though soldat is closed source, the Soldat community will continue to thrive/linger for a very long time, especially since it's still under active development.

@Vucgy92: Are you stupid?

I'm more inclined to believe he's lusting for attention, being cynical, or some careless combination.

[Dusty]

active

Anyway, the current build of Soldat seems to be so fucked that I actually don't think the idea is bad at all, I've been thinking about it by myself too. OpenSoldat would have come a long way by now if it wasn't ditched.

Lack of truly devoted developers seems to be a huge problem though and it would probably be the same case with a completely new game.

[Vucgy92]

Wow wow don't get crazy ladies calm down , I'm just realistic It has a Developer team but it wont help stopping it from dying totally , I play Soldat for over 7years and I love it but I'm not crazy to see what's going on and a team of developer wont help , you guys are maybe some hysterical soldat lovers but I'm just telling the truth and your bitching around that i'm stupid and that I'm searching for attention doesnt need a reply I won't start a flame war here I will just say what I have so live with it or kill yourself cause I was "rude" .
 I would love that its like back when there were full servers cool game-modes but soldat is just getting old and its loosing players every day and it wont get any newer ones really. The developers are fixing bugs what really isn't ( From my point) a priority when the game is near totally dead , just look at this fu*king forum they are like 10 maybe max 20 active users and you telling me its okey and that I'm searing for Attention?
And I think the developers wont help stop soldat from falling , In my eyes waiting like half year for a update that brings some bug fixes is just Stupid and its Totally unrealistic expecting that it will change things to better. Now cry a bit more if you cant have a good response to my arguments.

[ginn]

I assume you mean q1 is alive because of speed runners? That is very different from having a semi-competitive game.

Soldat will "live" for some years, but it'll be pretty pathetically small in a year. Trying to fix the current soldat is kind of a waste, because it's completely broken and beyond repair... unless you rewrite half the game.
Telling people, especially developers, that the game is screwed is not attention seeking. The game is screwed and any work done on it is going to be wasted (except this next version), it'd be much better to work on soldat 2 instead. I think martta is working on a soldat clone, which could maybe become a soldat 2, though probably needing to change graphics and some game play mechanics.

[DarkCrusade]

All you guys say is that all the effort put into Soldat is wasted but do not give any constructive feedback. I can accept if you say "In my opinion Soldat will die, because bla bla bla..", but you leave the real-talk out and just rant about Soldat being too old and unpopular. There are a lot of people who care about Soldat and help making it better, including myself. Others are devoted programmers, artists or server hosters. As long as there is a single person caring about Soldat, it ain't dead, and all the trash you put forth is not underlining your point in any way. I don't know how you can be so negative about it, but there is one thing I do know for sure: Soldat needs none of your kind.

[Ymies]

i remain fairly confident in the devs being able to turn the boat around by just carrying on with what they are doing. while it might take its time, the rest of the community can do a crapload of stuff to help. there's advertising, there's just plain idealizing, hell we could just start being more cohesive as a community. as a matter of fact, i might even address a lot of the player base shrinkage to have happen merely due to the community, especially sctfl, being so hostile. i have been a gather admin for like 8 years now and the amount of flame we get to face on a daily basis can be just ridiculous.

i don't really think that soldat can die. afterall we got some many dedicated people working around the community, although scattered, waiting to be brought together

related to that i tend to toy around with a lot ideas in my head, and i'm sure that a lot of others do as well and by getting these people to work with each other we should eventually be able to come up with simpler solutions to a bunch of issues regarding the isolation of the public and the communication gap between the competitive community and the devs. last night i did some chattering with a few people and thought that what might help is a irc channel where these hard-working people of the community would be able to get to know each other better and tinker with stuff. a place where a handful of people from every corner of the community would be invited just discuss stuff and then hopefully inspire the decision makers into cooperation

what the community needs right now is to cease tearing itself apart. people might know me as a troll on the sctfl boards but i don't have a problem giving up something i don't need


a while back i held a couple polls regarding what the community would enhance
do what? http://www.sctfl.net/forums/index.php?topic=42319.0
and to what extent? http://www.sctfl.net/forums/index.php?topic=42253.0

by now i do realize the complications regarding just raw enhancement of the netcode, improvement of the graphics or having someone to maintain a reliable anti-cheat engine. that leaves us with plain advertising that anyone can do.

back on sctfl.net as a matter of fact, they were trying to set up a basic video displaying just the basic gameplay of soldat, something very simple without gimmicky editing tricks that could be spread around the internet and that would focus on the gameplay instead of any kind of cool tricks. i guess the idea was scrapped due to lack of organization.

stuff like this go very much hand in hand. we would need someone or somebody motivated and capable to organize something like this. be it a proper video or a collection of a coin to work on the future of the game. i would imagine that it wouldn't even need to be very extensive; if we had a proper demo of the game we could just link to various forums and sites on the internet i'm sure people would be a lot more motivated to spread the word around when they'd have something concrete to show and not just start describing the game in random locations

i'll write more later my head's gonna explode

[Dusty]

as a matter of fact, i might even address a lot of the player base shrinkage to have happen merely due to the community, especially sctfl, being so hostile.

Couldn't agree more, I've said this earlier somewhere but the community is so full of hatred it makes me feel bad. I haven't played many gathers in the past six months or so but whenever I have the chance I play a couple. Many of those gathers have been absolutely horrible, not because of the game being buggy but cause of the people benig so full of themselves. Sadly the amount of nice people is going downhill much faster than the amount of "fuck everyone else but me and my gang" type of people. I do think though that every gaming community has this same issue, however Soldat has it pretty bad.
Also DC telling people they're stupid and asking them to leave just cause you don't share their opinion is not exactly what this game needs. It's not trash talk, it's individual opinions.

I don't believe Soldat is going to become much more popular than it is now no matter what we did. The game is outdated and not really on par with modern, solid (indie) games. The upcoming version seems rather good and putting the most effort on a whole new game doesn't rule out smaller improvements for the older. Eventually we'd have a base for a game that has a lot more potential than Soldat has now or will ever have. You can keep comparing Soldat to other nearly dead games but you should not forget Quake has had a huge player base. The biggest problem of the whole Quake argument is undeniably the fact that instead of sticking to Q1 (like Soldat), Quake 2 was made and so on.

What is there to lose really? We keep trying to breath new life into the current Soldat and it will most likely just slow down the process of people leaving OR we could start all over while still having both a good release of the current game and a game that has an actual future ahead.

[ginn]

Difference now and 10 years ago is how games are being sold. When soldat was popular, most games were p2p or b2p, very few free games. Because of this soldat managed to become popular, because it's a good game (compared to other free games) and is free.
Nowadays there are so many f2p games, not only mmos but normal FPS (with leveling and buying weapons) games are free to play, this makes the market sooo much tougher. They're even dropping the "pay to win" thing now, trying to mostly make money from cosmetics and convenience things.
Why would anyone play a 480* 2d sidescroll shooter that is buggy and unoptimized as fuck? Their highschool friends will most certainly not be playing that game, probably either CoD or some f2p game.

[Ymies]

What is there to lose really? We keep trying to breath new life into the current Soldat and it will most likely just slow down the process of people leaving OR we could start all over while still having both a good release of the current game and a game that has an actual future ahead.

the thing is that the current dev team has basically put all their effort into fixing the smaller bugs and issues with the game for now. what keeps me going personally is the hope that they'll go much further when they run out of smaller things to do. and i still believe they will. sure the biggest and most basic problems with soldat are structural but how much will we ever lose if we let the engineers to work for what they can. i mean soldat may never change again, the community may never change again but then again, the people we have are already pretty much experienced enough with the game that they have chosen what they prefer when it comes to gaming personally and that way we will, ideally, always have a proper base to keep building this community on. things won't happen on their own, of course, but at the current pace of increasing self-awareness i'm pretty sure that we still got many many good years left

[duz]

"Games as Minecraft, Ace of Spaces and Realm of the mad god have shown that there is still interest in games with rather trashy graphics."

Soldat is worst than these games and I'm talking about the flow. There's not just bad graphics. There's resolution problems, stretched images, the feeling that you're moving a fat player when running the Soldat with a NASA computer (just kidding, but any new computer), old maps (early versions of MM)...

The game need to be rewrite and limit the gamemodes. 5000 players and 3 gamemodes = ok, 5000 players and 931313232248972308408 gamemodes = 300 different servers, 300 different communities etc. I'm here since the end of 2002 and I saw the decrease over the community interaction, championships etc after HTF and custom gamemodes. Yeah, I think that 3 or 4 (max. of the max.) it's the right. You could work good with casual players and a strong competitive scene.

Did you saw The Showdown Effect(http://theshowdowneffect.com)? A really nice game but without some movements that we have in Soldat and not too fast.

[DarkCrusade]

@duz: Like everyone else, you are exaggerating. 5000 players and 934238493284932 gamemodes? You have to be kidding me. How many gamemodes are there that are active? There is CTF, DM, HTF, INF, Climb and some others that are most popular. The rest gets ignored. Your point about bad graphics is invalid, because the graphics are mostly based on the maps which is the community's duty. I for my part help by remaking old maps. The dev team takes care of the rest.

[Vucgy92]

A good thing would be to make the maps look nicer. Just like this http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=42494.0;topicseen

[DarkCrusade]

You do realize that I put an emphasis on remaking maps to better the graphics?

[Vucgy92]

You do realize that I put an emphasis on remaking maps to better the graphics?

yes... and?