CB is dying. (in General)

CB is dying out, people are becoming less interested in the game. I personally believe it is because of the new 20 minute BA spawn rate. Before, with the 10 minute spawn rate, people stick around and chat/make deals. Now with this, people burn BA and come back a few hours later. If the issue with the 10 minute rate is that people are leveling too fast... why not pull down bonuses or something? People are losing interest in the game.. some left because camping was over, some left because it got boring. Now I think a lot of people play the game to sell for USD and make money.. which in my opinion is not how it should be. Maybe if an admin could make a poll or something and see everybody's view on this topic. I think Jon should change back to the 10 minute BA spawn... I really believe that could spark some more interest.

i agree with sirbubblewrap b-c with wait time for ba longer i live b-4
heck 10 min for battle was worth waiting for but 20 and battles only covers so much time.... is cb dying i really hope not i find it quite fun and even recently got my gf son to join
but iI think this may mark a major downfall

okay came out worng was typeing slower than brain so...

i agree with sirbubblewrap with wait time for ba longer bieng a bad thing b-ci b-4 10 mins for battles was worth waiting for but 20 i find other stuff to do and buying battles only covers so much time.... is cb dying i really hope not i find it quite fun and even recently got my gf son to join
but I think this may mark a major downfall

Do you even know the reason behind the 20 minute BA spawn rate? It was so lower level players didn't have to play night and day to catch up to higher players. At 6 ba/10 min higher level players didn't have to get on as much. I liked the 20 min BA idea. It made a lot of sense and I think it works well.

This game is dying simply because it's dying. There's little advertising and with only a couple hundred regulars. New-comers see this game as a joke.

Other than the low number of players this game is great considering it's text based. So many positive ideas introduced here. Jonathan should consider finding a way to make a good 3D game with the componants he has in this game. It would sell!

SHODDAN, don't you see that new players are selling out for money? it's easy money as Ranger puts it. CB1 was fine... so there shouldn't be much of a problem. when I was a new player... I caught up fine.

It's not easy to catch up if every new player who joins quits, who is there left for other new players to fight to get higher up?

They have NUB.

This has already been discussed extensively in changelog. Let's just say, someone had shown data that number of active players has increased.

And from my own observation, even auction activity gets a lot of responses. Yes, it's true that somehow Jon increased to number of rare spawn, but look at the number of bids and the variation of players bidding them, it shows that more people has money and interest to buy in-game items to advance in their strategy, rather than selling CBD for USD.

Look at how many people are leaving. all the old players who've been playing for years

I understand your point, but I just want to say old players have gradually been leaving since CB2 started, not just recently.

yeah. I think it started when camping was taken out.

The same amount that would leave regardless, very few veterans (we may have a difference of opinion of who matters enough to be one) are leaving and most of them have reasons not concerning the change.
In fact, more veterans are persuaded to stay as CB is less of an interference on their life. If you have proof and actually any which coincided with your statement then I'd be happy to listen but at the moment this is just another pointless rant in the forums.

I'm still here, and Zog is about the same "age" as me, as we figured out earlier today. *smile*

It's all still here. I'm just on a kick recently that I want new players to experience the fun -- to have the same number of battles in a little bottle they can summon when they need the fix. Believe it or not, I think the NUB done right could actually get folks addicted MORE quickly. However, it has now become such a pet-project idea of mine that I fear I've lost credibility (no big deal, I think I've lost it several times over the years *smile*).

It might be hard to believe, but I still remember how CB made me _feel_ four years ago. I remember wanting to play play play -- and I didn't talk with folks much. I think there are a lot of people out there wanting to discover (come on, MUDs are still popular, don't tell me text is the problem!).

May I give you my opinion on the current state of CB? No, yes? I'll give it anyways :P

My opinion on the current state/fun factor of CB, and more importantly, it's community and also it's activeness, are largely biased by the fact that:

One-two months ago, I did not make myself active around here. In short, I'm relatively new to the ''Social'' part of Carmage Blender. These days, I have blown the dust away from the chat app and tried to incorporate myself to the CB machine, and, well, maybe because of where I come from, I find that the place is actually not dead at all. Not ''explosively crowded'', but not dead. 50% of the time I jump into chat, I am greeted. Granted, Godwolf is responsible for a large part of that percentage, but the GodBot put aside, I often have some sort of welcome. Which I cannot say about any other game.

Now, the points I want to bring forth, in no particular order, as they come to me:

First, one must make the difference between WoW and CB.

WoW has lots of 10 year olds insulting each other. Hordes of em. You may consider that ''alive''. I don't. I call it overpopulation. Verbal(written) chaos. Not cool. Faceless competition. You do not really know who you fight, apart that he or she is of a given race and class.

CB, now, has 10 people active in chat at once. Greeting each other, talking casually, almost always having fun without the need to shout OMG!!!111 YOU NOOB every second. You call that ''dead''. I don't. I call it ''calm''. Yes, some people will complain about the strict Pg rules and all, but the CB chat and forums are a place LIKE I NEVER HAVE SEEN BEFORE on the web. A place (Almost) without flames. And people all know each other. Some people even know things about other persons' lives. Yep, that's right, in CB, I feel we have a ''personality'', not only a character. And I am also fighting people, not only their teams. That makes CB great for me. Oh, and noobs get help, too, thanks to a handful of generous souls who give advice to them. That's way cool, guys.

Second: CB is not losing in player activity. In fact, it has risen slightly since the change, and anyway, had been stable for the past couple months before that. Vets are going, yes, but they are replaced. And the ones we still have are generally great to have around. The replacers also are quite cool most of the time.

The question I ask myself is: Am I ready to lose the individuality I have here? By sheltering a few more hundred people? Not sure. Would a surge in population change the general level of intelligence of CB? Yes, I think it would. Human beings are always stupider when around lots of their brethren. It would decline more and more towards the OMG YOU NOOB attitude. Without fail. Or at least that is what I believe. There are of course some good points to a pop boost, but I fail to see them, apart for more (deserved) funds going to the creator of the game.

Picture this: 50 people active in chat at the same time. Trying to have a conversation? Though luck, you'll have to retreat to your own room or be flooded.

My point in all this...Well, I can't really remember, to tell the truth.

But I'll say this:

-CB ain't dying due to less activity. Stats show it.

-The community ain't in need of more people. Quality>Quantity.

-I agree that the NUB makes multis spawn. But with the sizeable amount of people who multi, the community would take a huge hit if these players got banned. So, if anything is to be done to trim their numbers, which is good, THEN we gotta worry about the deadness of the game.

-I heard this in chat: OMG. Prices are dropping. Yes, they are. But this means nothing. No one is gonna sell a MH for 2$ when they make 500$ a fight.

-3d games have nothing on CB!

-Before dreaming of getting 5000 more people around, think of it a sec. I'm not sure it's that great. I'm not sure you can find many points in favor of a pop boost.

My ''rant'' is over, and to heck if it does not makes sense. I never write with my head, anyway.

various ideas have been put forth but there has been no change... for example instead of half the spawn rate and double the rewards... just double the BA cap this was put forth by ranger... my tatoo idea which disappeared into oblivion, introduction of elemental magic and many more...

personally, I'm bored with CB because things get too complicated. Too many gears/items in the game to try all of them. To combine gears/items with skills/spells to make good strategies need a lot of time and testing. I'm not saying that it is a bad thing to add more stuffs in the game. It's just that for a text based game to spend that amount of time is a bit too much IMO.

For a new player to join and continue playing, he/she has to read/learn a lot of things about the items/spells/skills etc. He/she will be bored before he/she could fully understand them. And then he/she still has to try out the strategies and probably too difficult to get the right strategies to get anywhere near the top level.

I think Jon need to slow down on putting new items into the game.

No, please! No slowing down on new items/skills/spells/whatever! Your opinion is as good as mine but:

CB is a game, much like beer, that takes a while to get accustomed to, I agree. There is not much that can be done about that, and especially not dumbing it down.

What's important is making them noobs feel like they are constantly learning, until they get the game. No need to know all from the get go. Little by little is the way to go, IMO, and the way I went, too. They must be made to feel like they are progressing all the way to the day where they are in control.

*when they are

I still have things to learn about the English language ;)

consider this when was the last time a new item was added? or a skill or spell for the matter lol, it is so hard to think of a build? what attracted me to the game was partly the community but mostly the customisation...

"various ideas have been put forth but there has been no change"

not all ideas are improvements :)

Comparing CB's learning curve to drinking beer is the best thing I've read all day.

Thank you, Ashilizator. ^_^

@mimic.
That's just the point mimic. It *is* hard to think of a good build. Think, if you were there, of spid.

Todd was the penultimate fighter in CB1. He literally perfected his strategy for fighting everyone. I once commented to him that eventually he'd be setting his fighting style up simply so he could beat sutekh (sp?), to which he replied "no, I set it up to beat the majority, then refine it". My reponse was "Well, once you can beat everyone else, and only Red Dwarf is left, your going to have to fine-tune it against him". Which he agreed with.

It's hard to see the intricasy of CB fighting, simply because at 90% of all stages of the game, your strategy, whatever it is, will beat 80% of the people you fight. Sure, there will be 1 or 2 that you can't, but for the majority of the time it's not really challanging. It's once you get to the very top of the food chain, that your fighting style evolves. Where you *must* add some spell, abilty, whatnot, or you cannot beat player X.

Right now, yes. People likely stumble onto some pretty good setups. Just wait till they get better, and they have to fine-tune them to beat people, rather then just have an IWIN button against thier fightlist. It'll get much more interesting.

@SBW
I think part of the issue is not that people are leaving/CB is dying. I think, that some of the newer members just don't join chat. They play, they fight, but they don't chat. And chat is a HUGE part of CB. Enough to the point that if there was one thing i would do above all else in CB, Chat is it.
Camping helped that. People endlessly refreshing the store means that they are constantly in the chat, talking while camping. Same goes to Forging, which is not the most fun of pasttimes. Fighting.. meh. you can talk, you can fight.. but when your talking you kinda tune the fighting out cause its not as interesting.
While the BA refresh rate might make a small impact on the new player base/old player base, i think its not as large as you think.

Please. Do anything other than thinking of Spid.

:P

But, but.. He's such a prime example of what the top fighters have/do do when they get there. Suddenly you can't just hack/slash, you need to have a good strategy.

Besides, i like spid.. Single Minion Tank till 500k, is my kind of style.

well jon NS had this nice idea for items spawning if you remember however jon the number of items in the shop as i have said repeatedly is overwhelming :) i still think ranger's idea for BA seems better :)

Chat seems a lot slower I think its the lower BA amount. I think its helped the game itself though. If we leave stuff like it is now and let things settle in hopefully the old boat will float fine and dandy . If the game had gear "and junk"that were represented by pictures, it would keep a lot more new people ! Maybe a download could handle that part and keep server load down ?

Please don't say that its causing chat to be dead.

This has nothing to do with chat being dead or not. What does it matter if you have to come back every 7 hours or every 3 and a half? If you really just wanted to burn BA, you'd log in for 10 minutes every 3 and a half hours.

So don't say that this affects chat's life, if people just wanted to burn BA they'd do that, regardless of the BA rate.

Where are your numbers, SBW? Jon's numbers were showing some improvement, at his last update.

Wow! I go away for a little over a day, and now CB is dying? Relax everyone, its okay, I'm not leaving, I'm just on vacation :)

2 reasons I hardly play any more: monotony and RL.

if stagnant growth means death then humans wouldn't live much past their teens i fear.