PopularityQuest: A Community Underdog Story

Yo, let's uhh...let's discuss us.

What's the deal with PlatinumQuest huh? You ever wonder why the Platinum Team just decided to do a name change outta nowhere? There's probably an answer somewhere in this forum, but Im too lazy to search for it, Im already press for time writing this and keeping the Mardle thread active.

Let's confront this head-on, and like most of our discussions, come to a common consensus and potentially change for the better! Some people worry themselves sick over coming across as annoying because they keep tabs on everything. As far as I know, that shit isn't really against the rule. Unless the new moderation team decide they wanna go full gestapo, somebody's gotta be the one to bring the noise, you can only do so much by bitching in your own little off-shoots.

There's an obvious answer to the name change, it signifies a transition away from Marble Blast Platinum, the old team sunk enough time onto this major update to warrant a name change, atleast that's the working theory, I vaguely remember reading something about this before.

But before it brings the million new members question, was this name change really worth it? A few people in the community seem to regret it, and for once, its not just Jean! Maybe there was some merit to Taxxon's worry about MBP becoming forgotten, the fact that I said that is probably enough to make most of you cringe, maybe to a point where you're now convincing yourselves that PlatinumQuest is a good name out of spite.

Putting someone who won't stop saying dumb shit in main aside, my stance on this subject is pretty clear , I don't think this chase to dark pattern a few motherfuckers into installing PlatinumQuest will yield much, or atleast enough to satisfy us, I'll elaborate on what I mean by the end.

We might be the most active marble community (Im wagering this forum gets more threads compared to the former OpenMBU server, its death was ironically a result of generalisation in place of respecting the niche), but I doubt a recognisable name would make that much of a difference. At best, we might get maybe a good like...two or three new members, and at worse we'll just be a running back the time we made our Discord server public via the community tab...which is the same as the best case.
Did you guys change those technical channels yet by the way? That's the whole reason we went public, for a feature that's no longer exclusive to public servers. What are you guys still debating on how you should archive the old channels? Just make it hidden or some shit, cut and dry, this should've been a one-and-done thing.

There were some other strategies regarding longevity, and believe me, none of them involved running a twitter grift, you can see how far that went. One of them involves putting online as the focus by making it the first choice in the game, which is a pretty good suggestion if you thought adding Gem Hunt levels in the main campaign would convince players to go online. This suggestion was courtasy of Yoshicraft224 by the way.

What else could we do for longevity? How about attaching ourselves to Vanilagy's Marble Blast Webport?
Fine, let's tackle that strategy. Let's start by deducting any mobile users, which Im willing to bet is a significant chunk of the Webport users, this leaves us with the PC audience:

• They already have the game right in front of them, how many are willing to check out PlatinumQuest if there was a button to redirect them to the website?
• From those who were redirected, how many of them are going to actually download the game?
• From there, how many of them are going to make a Marble Blast account?

If we wanna argue for playing multiplayer, you can easily set up a session with RandomityGuy's Haxe Port, helps that you don't need an account to access that component.
To put it bluntly, we're not guaranteed growth if we attach ourselves to the popular entity, that's when we start arguing about trickle down economics. There's a reason the websites are popular compared to us, it's convenience, that's the reason Vani's Webport has a higher rate of players compared to us.
Does this mean we shouldn't bother and just give up? Not really, we can always test the waters. Narrow down where users often stay and slap a "download PQ instantly" button over there, it all really depends on what the website statistics tell us, or if Vani/Randomity/ThirdBreakthroughDeveloper is willing to go through whatever plans you guys hatch.

So what's my problem here? Notice how I highlight how all this only warrants minimal to no change? That's my issue with this subject, the long-term.

When is it going to be enough? Sure we could have a name change, change the game and website around, attach ourselves onto someone else's game, or even create malware to install PQ on everyone's system. Inevitably, the well is going to dry out, and we'll be circling back to this discussion like we're a buncha desperate virgins worried about being the last of our bloodline.

I don't want us to give up, we should exhaust all our options until we can barely muster the strength to continue, I just want us stay grounded and realistic through it all, even if it doesn't end up working out the way we wanted it to, because that's when you start blaming everything around you instead of the really obvious elephant in the room.

I can provide the website analytics data to support your questions:
The time period chosen for the analytics is of 6 months, within this, we can see some interesting trends. 
Firstly, taking a look at the traffic that my MBU port gets, the most popular entry:
 
It's interesting that a majority of the players are windows users, which goes contrary to our beliefs. 
However if we take a look at my second most popular port, that is, MBG (yes MBP falls behind in this by about 4k visitors):
 
It should be of no surprise that mobile players act make up a little more than half of the playerbase in this one, similar trend is also seen in the MBP port. Although I feel bad for those MBG players who never got to know about the version of the game that actually has custom levels and multillayer. 

Lastly, let's come back to marbleblast.com, here's the funnels for users visiting the main page and then visiting the downloads page for either MBG or PQ. 
 
It's quite interesting that PQ has slightly higher numbers, so what is happening? Where is the growth the in the playerbase if the data says they receive similar number of users? Are the potential PQ players just, unable to install or run PQ in some way? If so, why haven't they complained about it yet (yes I did fix an issue which wouldn't let PQ run if you didn't have vcredist installed, now the launcher does it for you). 
​​

Marble Blast PlatinumQuest

Anyway, why should we tell people this is what they should do with themselves? What's the importance of getting more players here?

I think we should rename PQ to Marble Blast Platinum 2.0 on July 6th, 2027

DoxtonPink wrote:

If we wanna argue for playing multiplayer, you can easily set up a session with RandomityGuy's Haxe Port, helps that you don't need an account to access that component.

This is a huge advantage of the Haxe port. I have talked to several people who say that they would happily play on Haxe since it's right in the web browser and doesn't require an account, but who think that PQ would be way too much of a hassle to deal with. Yes, you do get way more content and excitement in PQ, but most people don't seem to care about that unless they're really into the game, and if they are, then they're probably already here. In my experience, people who just want to play casually want to do so as easily and conveniently as possible.

The only way I think this could be expanded is if somehow PQ and the Haxe port had an integrated multiplayer experience where people could play together from either version, but I know that's not going to happen.

DoxtonPink wrote:

When is it going to be enough? Sure we could have a name change, change the game and website around, attach ourselves onto someone else's game, or even create malware to install PQ on everyone's system. Inevitably, the well is going to dry out, and we'll be circling back to this discussion like we're a buncha desperate virgins worried about being the last of our bloodline.

Well in my view there's something strangely beautiful about this. This is how we worry about the future, but it always seems to work out fine. I was worried about the future of this game  all the way back in 2015  (although I can't blame my past self for that when rereading the news post I was responding to), and we're doing better than I ever could have imagined at that time. I don't think "the well will ever dry out," as you put it—rather, we will continue to thrive as a community. I know you're not on Discord, and I don't blame you for that, but the fact that our server is so small and yet has 14 "boosts", along with the level of activity in there and the amount of active development and content creation, says a lot about how much people still care. You don't need a big community to have an active and sustained community.

That being said, I do think it's always nice to have new members. Of your ideas, I think the best one is to have the "play online" function of PQ be the default option in the game. Like have "Play" and then "Play Offline" in the main menu. I know this has been discussed in the past, but never implemented.

Weather wrote:

Anyway, why should we tell people this is what they should do with themselves? What's the importance of getting more players here?

I think this community is a really nice size, but people are always going to leave, so I guess we just have to make sure we don't die out completely. But like I said, I don't think that will happen. Fifty years from now, people will still be making noob mods.

Yoshicraft224 wrote:

I think we should rename PQ to Marble Blast Platinum 2.0 on July 6th, 2027

Why so specific? What's the point of renaming PQ on its tenth anniversary, why not sooner?

Of course you're gonna lose to web apps? Mobile traffic is so much bigger than desktop traffic and people are way more likely to play something if they can just open it in their browser. Being able to one click play MBG or MBU with multiplayer via RandomityGuy's haxe port is crazy! It's the kind of magic I wished I could do back in the day. It's the kind of magic I wish I could do now! (I do not have the sheer time required) It's honestly a miracle so many of you figured out how to install PQ in the first place given how poorly optimized the process is. I generally liked how this filtered out 99% of people and left only the ones who were actually interested in playing the game, but that crowd was never very large and despite the occasional popularity spike from a streamer, we never really hit more than 100 monthly active online players. Installing a custom launcher sucks, making an account sucks, it's all just too hard for anyone but the most dedicated. We copied the design language from MBP 1.14's leaderboards system because it was the best reference we had. It might have seemed good in 2014 but in 2026 it's obvious it's extremely confusing (why are there two different versions of the same level select but one needs a login and oh god you're telling me I don't get to keep any of the scores I just put 15 hours into earning over the last week because I didn't think to push the Online button instead of the Play button???). Also multiplayer being locked behind that confusing layout as well... it was not a good design. Compare to MBWeb and MBHaxe where your scores get saved automatically and you can just join multiplayer lobbies. The UX is so much better it's not even a competition.

> You ever wonder why the Platinum Team just decided to do a name change outta nowhere?
It was originally another mod entirely. The MBP1.50 team chose to integrate it back in and renamed the whole thing because ... uh i forget. Lemme see what the skype logs say:

<redacted>: Marble Blast Platinum 2.00. Or as HiGuy and Jeff call it, MBP + PQ = Orgasm

Uhhhhhhh 2015 hits different. I'm really not sure why given that this is all I can find about the name specifically. We were 17 and not exactly marketing geniuses

Honest opinion, calling the game PQ was a mistake. PlatinumQuest the name sucks. Rename it to Marble Blast Community Edition. "PQ" only has historical value to the ~500 people who were going to keep playing the game anyway. For everyone else it means nothing and the name has confused everyone I've tried to describe it to. "Hello yes here is the largest hobby project I will ever make. I spent my entire childhood working on ... well the name sucks but it's basically this other game?" No amount of explaining that Aayrl was really into EverQuest back in 2008 (he still is???) and well there was this whole thing with gold and platinum... will be comparable to just "yeah it's marble blast (it's a marble game) community edition (its gonna have a lot of wack crap)". Changing the name probably won't fix the marketing problem by itself, but wow will it be easier to tell new people about it without needing a lore dump.

Also as for "the well is going to dry up" that's what I thought back in ... 2013? 2015? 2018? 2020? Seemed like new players would show up about as fast as old players aged out. Being a small community was nice because you could know everyone (it also sucked when you had to ban someone that everyone knew). Dunno, I just don't think this is a problem. Too many die-hard fans to prop it up long enough for new ones to be created.

I have talked about some things that have always come across as strategically stupid to me.

1. The name PlatinumQuest. This has pretty clearly been a mistake looking back at it, new players who join have no idea that it's even a marble blast game. Calling it Marble Blast Community Edition would be better, or we could even be more explicit and call it something like Marble Blast Complete Edition. Obviously, PQ would still exist, but it would be treated as any other game (MBG/MBP/MBU) that is part of the Complete Edition, rather than the weird state it is in now where PQ is both its own game as well as the community mod. I am 100% in favour of a name change.

2. People sending newcomers over to Hailey's server. This doesn't happen as much anymore, but boy did it annoy me to see people in our server immediately send new people away despite expressing interest in Marble Blast. Most of our own members didn't even consider the possibility of just telling people to try the PQ version, but would rather send them over to Hailey's server without even attempting to get them to stay.

HiGuy wrote:

(it also sucked when you had to ban someone that everyone knew).

I meannnn you didn't have to. But I agree with everything else here. PlatinumQuest is a stupid and confusing name. I cab't decide whether I like Community Edition or Complete Edition better—probably Community Edition. Maybe we should have a poll.

HiGuy wrote:

Honest opinion, calling the game PQ was a mistake. PlatinumQuest the name sucks. Rename it to Marble Blast Community Edition. "PQ" only has historical value to the ~500 people who were going to keep playing the game anyway. For everyone else it means nothing ... will be comparable to just "yeah it's marble blast (it's a marble game) community edition (its gonna have a lot of wack crap)" ... wow will it be easier to tell new people about it without needing a lore dump.

Few things in the world feel more validating to me than this!!!!

Kalle29 wrote:

Obviously, PQ would still exist, but it would be treated as any other game (MBG/MBP/MBU) that is part of the Complete Edition, rather than the weird state it is in now where PQ is both its own game as well as the community mod.

The main reason why Marble Blast Platinum being the overarching title up until PQ's release didn't bother me all that much is because it was always an add-on to Marble Blast Gold (even legally speaking), and that the latter still felt like its own game. Once the MBU levels were ported, I felt this opinion be a little wavered but not hugely. PlatinumQuest being the title for everything I've always felt strangely about, especially since it... doesn't... mention... Marble Blast... at all.

I could go on for hours into why I think the current structure of the game I also think is super flawed, but probably better for another topic and it would be copious amounts of work anyway. TL;DR the four games are too cohesive with each other within (big) PQ and their identities have been somewhat lost/smothered by (individual mod) PQ.

HiGuy wrote:

why are there two different versions of the same level select but one needs a login

Fubar did it best. The "Play Offline" button was the less obvious option and it was just about perfect.

PlatinumQuest being the title for everything I've always felt strangely about, especially since it... doesn't... mention... Marble Blast... at all.

Newcomers ain't knowing PlatinumQuest being a Marble Blast game because it doesn't have the name Marble Blast in it

I agree with HiGuy, something like "Marble Blast: Community Edition" is probably the way to go. There's a lot of stuff in the game: the original MBG (and the OG Xbox exclusive levels); a full demake of MBU with multiplayer; two full-sized mods in MBP and PQ; additional multiplayer modes, custom levels, and Marbleland integration. There's even an MBXP resource pack, for heaven's sake. The game already evolved past being just MBP or PQ long ago. But the point is, the name "Marble Blast" has to return in some fashion.

I think right now though, fixing the website is even more important. If you visit the homepage today, there's two buttons you can press that are supposed to be download links for PQ. The first is the carousel slideshow thing: if you click it, it takes you to the general Downloads index (this page also contains a link to the actual PQ download page). Problem is this slideshow changes once every 6 seconds or so. The main download button should NEVER disappear like that. Second option is the navigation bar at the top of every page. If you click the button that says "Downloads", it will take you to the Downloads index I mentioned earlier. But this button is also a drop-down menu — if you hover it, it will show a curated list of things you can download. None of them are PQ. It goes without saying that both of the download links for PQ are this easy to miss is really, really bad. It doesn't help that the Downloads index is an inexplicably encyclopedia-style page that describes PQ and MBG at length. That page is horrific, it's supposed to be a directory for all the downloads available on the website, and yet 70% of the page is just a wiki entry on the history of Marble Blast and GarageGames.

How is anyone supposed to think this is a "Downloads" directory when this is one of the first things you see on the page?



The navigation bar needs an overhaul. The "News" tab is useless (it only displays info that's already accessible on the homepage). Clicking on the "Games" tab takes you to a broken page; hovering it shows links to the download pages for PQ & MBG (and many other things). Notice how the direct download links to PQ & MBG are here, instead of somewhere on the homepage, or anywhere within the navbar tab labeled "Downloads". In detail, the "Games" tab contains links to: PQ, MBG, MBU, Haxeport, Webport, and various MB-inspired games. I know that in this community we consider Haxeport and Webport to be fundamentally distinct from the original versions of MBG/MBU/MBP, but think about this for a moment — a new player is not going to know about this, or even care. What this menu is providing is links to three games, immediately followed by two more links for the exact same 3 games. I seriously doubt anybody is going to click on "Marble Blast Online" or "Marble Blast Web" when they are looking for something called "Marble Blast Gold".

The download links from "Games" should be put inside the "Downloads" tab. We should really cut down the "Games" tab to only list each individual game. Every game should have its own page on the website. That way, we can both strip the encyclopedic text from the Downloads index, and provide an informative list on how many ports there are of each game, what platforms they're available for, and where to play them. Maybe even descriptions and screenshots. For example, MBG's page should first and foremost have links to the OG game, Haxeport, Webport, for the convenience of anyone who hasn't spent the past 13 years familiarized with this website's layout. Like this (excuse the ugly default wiki formatting):



I don't know where it should be placed, but we need a page, or a navbar dropdown menu, that lists all these community-related websites together:  Marbleland ;  Marble Blast Online (Haxeport) ;  Webport ;  MBU Plus ; and the  Marble Blast Wiki . I think it's a huge mistake to neglect showing just how big our community is.

There's also a bunch of random folders with random shit inside polluting the main directory of the Downloads index that ought to be thrown together into one folder called "The Vault" (or something similar to that). Take a look for yourselves, if you can manage to scroll past the 1,176-word encyclopedia article in the middle of the page.

Look, I'll just say it: Take a gander at what OpenMBU has done since it got hijacked. They made a beautiful website (marbleblastultra dot com) that has download links and a Discord invite front-and-center. It's the first thing you see when you open the website. Look at their Discord server: they renamed it to "Marble Blast" recently, because they supposedly want to focus on all the MB games, not just MBU. That server has just as many members as our Discord server. They're talking about making an OpenMBU Community Edition that has leaderboards, blackjack and hookers (it won't materialize, though). Can anyone see what's happening here??? Another community is actively trying to take our place, meanwhile our website is a literal quagmire where you can't even find the download links for PQ without putting some work into it... Even the Discord invite link was buried in a menu until just a few months ago.

I know this website is primarily dedicated to PQ & MBG, but MBU/MBO/MBM are all part of our community's history. The people that originally made OpenMBU were a part of this community too. It's a huge mistake that we aren't clearly highlighting our connection to MBU one little bit on the homepage, or anywhere else on the website. On our Discord server, MBU is relegated to its own category rather than being encouraged to participate with the rest of the server. Why? Can you imagine joining our server as a new member, going to the MBU general channel, and just seeing a month's worth of "HAPPY HITBOX ABUSE SATURDAY" gifs and literally nothing else? I don't know if we will ever have a notable amount of OpenMBU players in our server, but damn, we have to try to attract them... Just like we have to try and attract any Marble Blast players in general. The name "PlatinumQuest" has to go.

There's alot to respond to, Im glad the community is sharing their voice, but before I get to them, I wanna clarify my last statement because it's been misunderstood.

DoxtonPink wrote:

When is it going to be enough? Sure we could have a name change, change the game and website around, attach ourselves onto someone else's game, or even create malware to install PQ on everyone's system. Inevitably, the well is going to dry out, and we'll be circling back to this discussion like we're a buncha desperate virgins worried about being the last of our bloodline.
 

When Im talking about "the well drying out", I mean this in the context of bringing in new community members with these strategies, not the community itself:

We will get new members, but eventually that'll stop after all the dedicated ones come through, and then we'll go back to this routine of worrying about our longevity all over again.

Im expressing that, while we should consider any option we can get to bring in new players, we should also be level-headed if the strategy you begged to implement doesn't really give us the result we want, or if it even made a difference.

Im basically saying that we should accept that there isn't a golden bullet that'll guarantee our growth, it doesn't entirely depend on a singular change, it's a lot more complex. So rather than delude ourselves into thinking that "ok, THIS will make us grow this time" like we're chasing a jackpot in a slot machine, I'd prefer it if we look at the bigger picture and think about what we should change for longer than three seconds.
 

---

RandomityGuy wrote:

It's interesting that a majority of the players are windows users, which goes contrary to our beliefs. 
However if we take a look at my second most popular port, that is, MBG (yes MBP falls behind in this by about 4k visitors):
It should be of no surprise that mobile players act make up a little more than half of the playerbase in this one, similar trend is also seen in the MBP port.​​

Im honestly surprised there's still a sizable amount of PC players, I thought the gap between them and mobile users would be way bigger than what's shown here. That was always the case in our current environment, with mobile being cheaper and more prominent in our lives compared to computers.

RandomityGuy wrote:

Lastly, let's come back to marbleblast.com, here's the funnels for users visiting the main page and then visiting the downloads page for either MBG or PQ. 

It's quite interesting that PQ has slightly higher numbers, so what is happening? Where is the growth the in the playerbase if the data says they receive similar number of users? Are the potential PQ players just, unable to install or run PQ in some way? If so, why haven't they complained about it yet).

This was also a surprise, even if it's just by a few digits. You're really putting me on the spot here.

I think the explaination for this is pretty easy, aside from the amount of content you get with PQ, you don't really need an account to play the game, so there's no reason to create one. I don't think it's necessarily them being unable to install it, they would've complained by now if they knew they could flag an issue on the forums without an account.

Weather wrote:

Anyway, why should we tell people this is what they should do with themselves? What's the importance of getting more players here?

Huh??????? I don't think I suggested that anywhere in my discussion, I've brought up strategies that other members expressed and argued that, while we could implement them, we should also keep our expectations in check. Nowhere did I imply that we should "tell people this is what they should do with themselves" unless you took my dark pattern joke seriously.

I'd be indifferent if we did or didn't garner new players, I don't worry myself sick over our longevity. I accepted the idea that we'll stay niche regardless, it's just that some of our more vocal members seem to think otherwise.

These sort of questions are best directed at them, they worry too much about longevity and delude themselves into thinking we can replicate the past, "we could all get the players we want if we did what I say." Why do they think their strategy should work? why are they so confident in their strategy? Why is more players important to them?

HiGuy wrote:

> You ever wonder why the Platinum Team just decided to do a name change outta nowhere?
It was originally another mod entirely. The MBP1.50 team chose to integrate it back in and renamed the whole thing because ... uh i forget. Lemme see what the skype logs say:

<redacted>: Marble Blast Platinum 2.00. Or as HiGuy and Jeff call it, MBP + PQ = Orgasm

What. What do you mean it was supposed to be another mod? So if it stood on its own as another mod rather than an update, the rotation at the time would've been PQ, MBP, and Fubar? That's would've been a funny timeline to be in.

HiGuy wrote:

Honest opinion, calling the game PQ was a mistake. PlatinumQuest the name sucks. Rename it to Marble Blast Community Edition. "PQ" only has historical value to the ~500 people who were going to keep playing the game anyway. For everyone else it means nothing and the name has confused everyone I've tried to describe it to...Changing the name probably won't fix the marketing problem by itself, but wow will it be easier to tell new people about it without needing a lore dump.

I don't think it's much of a "marketing problem", the more appropriate term is "recognition," makes it sound less corporate too. Like you've detailed, it is hard to describe what PQ is without losing them in the process. This was something I was clingy on because I thought there was a rational reason to this name, but seeing how it's a result Aaryl meshing MBP with EverQuest, it feels like I was just told that the Queen of England isn't real.

Although, I don't know about reverting back to MBP, your suggestion is more emcompassing. MBP would work better if more people were sentimental to it, but according to RandomityGuy's MBP statistics, it doesn't seem like that many people have it in their minds compared to Gold.

Im all in for Marble Blast Community Edition.

Kalle29 wrote:

2. People sending newcomers over to Hailey's server. This doesn't happen as much anymore, but boy did it annoy me to see people in our server immediately send new people away despite expressing interest in Marble Blast. Most of our own members didn't even consider the possibility of just telling people to try the PQ version, but would rather send them over to Hailey's server without even attempting to get them to stay.

Was that a common occurance? Maybe it was when the website was down, but I don't recall anyone redirecting new members to the OpenMBU server while PQ was still playable. You've become really vocal about this point ever since the server's been hijacked, as if we should've developed clairvoyance and foreseen this impending doom, if it came in the form of AI anime pin-ups and nostalgia baiting.

Enigma wrote:

Look, I'll just say it: Take a gander at what OpenMBU has done since it got hijacked. They made a beautiful website (marbleblastultra dot com) that has download links and a Discord invite front-and-center...Look at their Discord server: they renamed it to "Marble Blast" recently, because they supposedly want to focus on all the MB games, not just MBU. That server has just as many members as our Discord server. They're talking about making an OpenMBU Community Edition that has leaderboards, blackjack and hookers (it won't materialize, though). Can anyone see what's happening here??? Another community is actively trying to take our place, meanwhile our website is a literal quagmire where you can't even find the download links for PQ without putting some work into it... Even the Discord invite link was buried in a menu until just a few months ago.

I'll concede, their website does communicate their game better than ours. I haven't really heard much discussion about the website itself, Im surprised it wasn't brought up when the concern for longevity was a topic on the Discord server.

That's really their goal, they wanna replace us because...fuckin...idk the elderly know better than the youngins or something? I don't know what kinda zionist level entitlement they got going on there, thinking that Marble Blast was promised to them or some shit. Sure they got the flair, but no love for the game, even if they keep insisting that they "play multiplayer in their own time." If they can't keep their game afloat, what right do they have to try and take over the community? So they can talk about how they miss being teenagers? I'd be extremely disappointed in this community if we let those no life losers have their way.

Enigma wrote:

I know this website is primarily dedicated to PQ & MBG, but MBU/MBO/MBM are all part of our community's history. The people that originally made OpenMBU were a part of this community too. It's a huge mistake that we aren't clearly highlighting our connection to MBU one little bit on the homepage, or anywhere else on the website...I don't know if we will ever have a notable amount of OpenMBU players in our server, but damn, we have to try to attract them... Just like we have to try and attract any Marble Blast players in general.

MBU should've been a part of our history, but any remnant of its community has been completely erased. This was at a time when Matan had a scuffle with Hikaru/Farhan about the existence of Marble Blast Ultra PC Port (because it was jerryrigged together with the Marble Blast Online files) that caused this initial divide. As far as I know, that hypothetical MBU community used to have their own website with a blog and forum, but they've all been mysteriously blacklisted in the Internet Archives.

It sucks that even as we try to remediate that divide, they've been openly hostile about associating themselves with us, then have the gulls to whine when we return this hostility back at them. Zionist-level entitlement.

Any notable OpenMBU player shares a venn diagram with the Marble it Up community, as far as I know, there aren't any exclusively OpenMBU members that we're missing out on, unless you count Matt P, but Im pretty sure that guy's just straight up dead in activity.

I guess it's worth it to put my own two cents down on this, even if there's not much I can add in regards to the conversation, since most points have seemingly been made.

The game being named "PlatinumQuest" and not simply just remaining as "Marble Blast Platinum" or being renamed to something like "Marble Blast Community Edition" (something that I've seen pitched here and there) is a major mistake and I wouldn't be surprised if many people who, throughout the years, have wanted to check out what Marble Blast has (or we, as a community, have) been up to have only checked out *Marble Blast* Gold and that's it. If we're lucky, they might have played the webport too and have played a few custom levels (those with webport support). And I wouldn't be surprised if 99% of those people have never even thought of downloading "PlatinumQuest", thinking it's not a Marble Blast game but something different.

I've become a bit more vocal in the push for a rebrand ever since the OpenMBU server has been hijacked and since it has started to seemingly attempt a hijacking of the entire Marble Blast brand and of anyone who might want to check up on the Marble Blast Community and games. Having *THE* main game of the community, where most activity happens, around which most content (levels, mostly, but other stuff too) is made, around which most events take place, which has most developer support *NOT* have a single mention of "Marble Blast" in the name is criminal and it needs change as soon as humanly possible.

As for the website, I agree with the sentiment that it needs a restructuring, especially when it comes to where you download the games themselves. A few days ago I tried to download the new PQ Launcher, and I was a bit confused not seeing PQ in the "Downloads" dropdown menu. It took *me* maybe a solid minute or so to find out PQ was in a *different* dropdown menu, the "Games" menu. Why? I do not understand why these two different dropdown menus need to exist. Sure, "Downloads" has more shit than games, but... when is the last time someone has uploaded a custom level or custom pack in the "Custom Levels" section of the "Downloads" dropdown menu? That "Custom Levels" option also has two other options, "Marbleland" which could be advertised better than being hidden inside of a submenu of a dropdown menu, and "Custom Levels Archive" which is... Marbleland with less levels. Sure, it's cool to have as an archive, but it could be put somewhere else, no? The "Tools" option also exists, and I have no problem with that. I generally don't have a problem with separate dropdown menus for downloading content and games, but they need clear separation. All games go into the "Games" dropdown menu, all non-games go into the "Downloads" dropdown. Maybe we could even toy around with renaming the menus too? I don't know.

That's my two cents for now. If I can think of anything else to put here, I'll edit my reply, but for now this is it.
TL;DR: Rename PlatinumQuest to something with "Marble Blast" in the name and restructure the site to make downloading games and other stuff less confusing for even experienced marblers, let alone for first-timers.

Kalle29 wrote: People sending newcomers over to Hailey's server. This doesn't happen as much anymore, but boy did it annoy me to see people in our server immediately send new people away despite expressing interest in Marble Blast.

This was mostly just from the time when marbleblast.com was down, and when that server was for Marble Blast before Matt P gave it to Hailey and she turned it into her own thing. OpenMBU was seeming like a decent way forward for a lot of the community... but then PlatinumQuest 2.10 came out with Randomity's new engine implementations, and it fixed 99% of the stuff people were looking to turn away from PQ about. The only thing left is proper marble collisions... and maybe a more stylish UI

For everyone talking about "Marble Blast Community Edition" or "Marble Blast Complete Edition", I think the best option is 100% just to go back to "Marble Blast Platinum". Though, if we want to go down the "Complete Edition" line, "Marble Blast Definitive Edition" or "Marble Blast Comprehensive Edition" would be a much better name.

Nockess wrote: Fubar did it best. The "Play Offline" button was the less obvious option and it was just about perfect.

Didn't even know Fubar did this, but I did make a long post in #suggestions a while ago about changes I'd like to see/make to the title screen and level select, or at least suggestions that I was floating out to the public. I had considered posting on the forums before, but I wasn't sure how to implement my images properly there before. I might have more luck now, though.

Lastly, with what people mentioned about Hailey's website, I'll also point out that Randomity has a similarly very well-designed webpage somewhere (I forget lol) that shows his browser MB ports off very well too. I've also brought up some grievances I've had with the layout of the top bar of the mb.com website, but I'd just be reiterating what everyone has already said here at that point.

Connie wrote:

I guess it's worth it to put my own two cents down on this, even if there's not much I can add in regards to the conversation, since most points have seemingly been made.

I don't care if the shit you were gonna say has already been retread, I wanna hear what you gotta say, I wanna hear what anyone's gotta say. I'd be fine with a "yeah ig I agree" if it means I get to see you guys here. Im glad that this discussion is actually getting more members to chuck in their opinion, double when the gears get moving again. I can only take credit for starting the discussion, you guys are the ones who are actually changing shit for the better.

Connie wrote:

I've become a bit more vocal in the push for a rebrand ever since the OpenMBU server has been hijacked and since it has started to seemingly attempt a hijacking of the entire Marble Blast brand and of anyone who might want to check up on the Marble Blast Community and games. Having *THE* main game of the community, where most activity happens, around which most content (levels, mostly, but other stuff too) is made, around which most events take place, which has most developer support *NOT* have a single mention of "Marble Blast" in the name is criminal and it needs change as soon as humanly possible.

Yeah, it sucks this barely was on our consciousness until someone else decided to threaten a complete takeover. What we need to keep in mind is the fact that they're not really putting up a fight, so it should be extremely easy to put five over these douchebags. They ran out of the "my dad works at microsoft" strategy.

Not to make this an "us versus them" fight, we've already established our own ways of moving the needle. Let's start with ourselves instead of looking over to what our "competitor" is doing. Unless they start going ballistic on us, let's ignore them just as they ignored us, no point in acknowledging those who peaked in high school.

Yoshicraft224 wrote:

For everyone talking about "Marble Blast Community Edition" or "Marble Blast Complete Edition", I think the best option is 100% just to go back to "Marble Blast Platinum". Though, if we want to go down the "Complete Edition" line, "Marble Blast Definitive Edition" or "Marble Blast Comprehensive Edition" would be a much better name.

 

Yo I'd kick your ass if you told me we should swap to "Comprehensive Edition", what is this a dictionary entry? No way you actually think that's a better name. I have no gripes against your other suggestions, "defintive" atleasts makes more sense than fucking "comprehensive."

But again, we're a democracy aren't we? Sure most of us (in this thread) agree that "Community Edition" should be the way to go, but eh, I feel like we should stall this a bit more via a poll or something. Do we start on a new name? Or just revert to Marble Blast Platinum? And lets do this now instead of waiting for an anniversary.

yeah lol, looking back at it it's not a smooth name at all. But "Complete Edition" definitely feels lacking. "Comprehensive" was just a better word, but not good for the title of something

I never thought about the name until now. I don't want to repeat what's already been said, but what about "Marble Blast Ultimate Edition" as a new name?

I thought PlatinumQuest the game and everything it added to MBG was cool when it came out but nowadays I don't care to look back and play it anymore. I find it forgettable compared to Gold, Ultra, and Platinum.

Reverting to "Marble Blast Platinum" is better than keeping "PlatinumQuest", but shouldn't Marble Blast Gold be treated as the main game?

Yoshicraft224 wrote:

I had considered posting on the forums before, but I wasn't sure how to implement my images properly there before. I might have more luck now, though.

You should do it! I'd love to read what you have to say and have it actually stick in my mind.

All4Vols98 wrote:

I never thought about the name until now. I don't want to repeat what's already been said, but what about "Marble Blast Ultimate Edition" as a new name?

This is a great idea, and my new favorite suggestion! I especially like it because it's easy to understand and is a common naming scheme with other products. Plus, it is consistent with the hierarchy of Gold Time —> Platinum Time —> Ultimate Time, and that makes me really happy. Just as long as we don't call it Marble Blast Awesome Edition... I think I might actually cry. Reverting to "Marble Blast Platinum" would be better than nothing, but like I said, I like this suggestion better.

Hate to agree with one of our resident 12 year olds, but when you're right, you're right

"Marble Blast Ultimate Edition" definitely works well. Though, if we're going to rebrand to something other than just "Marble Blast Platinum 2.0", I think the game's GUIs would need some significant overhauling. Because this current GUI style is really only representative of PlatinumQuest, and doesn't feel like it fits the "Marble Blast" name at all. It's alright, but going back to something more akin to what MBG and especially MBP had would be nice. Though maybe harder to upkeep without a dedicated artist for it...

Yoshicraft224 wrote:

"Marble Blast Ultimate Edition" definitely works well. Though, if we're going to rebrand to something other than just "Marble Blast Platinum 2.0", I think the game's GUIs would need some significant overhauling. Because this current GUI style is really only representative of PlatinumQuest, and doesn't feel like it fits the "Marble Blast" name at all.

Let's come at this bit by bit, right now, the name is the easiest thing to change here. A complete GUI overhaul is ambitious at this point, but it could be something we can tackle later. I don't know if you wanna do some new shit or just revert back to Platinum's style, regardless, it's something that we gotta fuck around with after we're done with the other changes.

I don't wanna throw myself in as an early candidate, who knows where I'd be by the time we get to it (hopefully in a better situation than now), but I'd be willing to give a hand with this GUI overhaul.

A-Game already made a bunch of MBP-style versions of PQ's interfaces for his MBP 1.50-style HUD mod. Which only really had to change a little, since MBP and PQ share most of their features anyway. But that's worth taking a look at. Just not sure where I'd find it.

DoxtonPink wrote:

HiGuy wrote:

> You ever wonder why the Platinum Team just decided to do a name change outta nowhere?
It was originally another mod entirely. The MBP1.50 team chose to integrate it back in and renamed the whole thing because ... uh i forget. Lemme see what the skype logs say:

<redacted>: Marble Blast Platinum 2.00. Or as HiGuy and Jeff call it, MBP + PQ = Orgasm

What. What do you mean it was supposed to be another mod? So if it stood on its own as another mod rather than an update, the rotation at the time would've been PQ, MBP, and Fubar? That's would've been a funny timeline to be in.

Yeah. I was surprised when PQ ended up absorbing MBP.

DoxtonPink wrote:

MBU should've been a part of our history, but any remnant of its community has been completely erased. This was at a time when Matan had a scuffle with Hikaru/Farhan about the existence of Marble Blast Ultra PC Port (because it was jerryrigged together with the Marble Blast Online files) that caused this initial divide. As far as I know, that hypothetical MBU community used to have their own website with a blog and forum, but they've all been mysteriously blacklisted in the Internet Archives.

It sucks that even as we try to remediate that divide, they've been openly hostile about associating themselves with us, then have the gulls to whine when we return this hostility back at them. Zionist-level entitlement.

Any notable OpenMBU player shares a venn diagram with the Marble it Up community, as far as I know, there aren't any exclusively OpenMBU members that we're missing out on, unless you count Matt P, but Im pretty sure that guy's just straight up dead in activity.

Yes, the Platinum Team chasing away the original MBU PC project was a huge mistake.

Anyway, my post's not just about OpenMBU players. PQ, Haxeport (MBU & MBP), and Webport all contain MBU content. There's still potential to bring in new MBU fans that play the game through any of those five openly-available versions. We see younger people discover Marble Blast all the time. The homepage should clearly display MBG and MBU (and hopefully links to other pages that list all the ways to play the games), in addition to PQ and MBP. We can't assume that fresh faces will immediately guess that PQ (under its current name, or a new name) contains MBG or MBU. This is the only reason I mentioned the OpenMBU community in the first place — if their community has lost sight of its original purpose, we should design our website to welcome and inform MBU players that our community loves MBU, we can provide myriad ways to play the game on a variety of platforms, and that this can be the new home of MBU going forward. It doesn't have to be a huge and obnoxious mention. A simple little display of clickable PQ, MBG, & MBU logos on the front page would be enough to direct people to pages about games they're interested in (such a display could even pique interest in why something potentially unfamiliar like PQ would be listed alongside MBG & MBU).

All4Vols98 wrote:

[...] what about "Marble Blast Ultimate Edition" as a new name?

I'm not gonna lie... that actually isn't a bad suggestion. It's a much more 'epic' name than Marble Blast Community Edition and it highlights the fact that PQ, as it stands, is the best (or "ultimate") way of experiencing Marble Blast (or at least that's how I see the name).

Yoshicraft224 wrote:

"Marble Blast Ultimate Edition" definitely works well. Though, if we're going to rebrand to something other than just "Marble Blast Platinum 2.0", I think the game's GUIs would need some significant overhauling. Because this current GUI style is really only representative of PlatinumQuest, and doesn't feel like it fits the "Marble Blast" name at all. It's alright, but going back to something more akin to what MBG and especially MBP had would be nice. Though maybe harder to upkeep without a dedicated artist for it...

I definitely wouldn't be against a GUI redesign, especially one which goes back to the feel and colorful nature of MBP, but yeah without an actual dedicated artist, I don't see this actually becoming a reality. But, who knows, maybe some random snazzy episodic character will randomly pop up and offer to actually design the UI for this "Marble Blast Ultimate Edition" rebrand, we'll see.

From RafaelVieira, now deleted message:

What about Marble Blast Diamond, Since the other one is MBPlatinum?

This may not be the case as 2 Marble Blast modifications already share the same name. 

Re: concerns about poor UI/UX of the site
I agree with all these and they are valid points, the main reason these have largely remained unchanged was because we used the same site plugins that were used on the version of the site prior to the outage in the beginning of 2024. Further improvements to these have been extremely cumbersome due to the severely limited options these plugins allowed for site customization and just having other priorities in general, it's already hard for me and Terry to maintain the site as it is while everything else is happening in life. Maybe with the advent of sufficiently capable AI, this could be turned around (of course I will review the output).

Re: name suggestions
I prefer "Marble Blast Community Edition" over anything else since that makes the most sense to me. It's a marble blast game, built by the community, for the community, and capturing everything the community prefers to have in their dedicated marble blast game. The other names sound a bit too much like those of noob mods which never make past ideation. Certainly the name of the game that the community recommends playing shouldn't look sound like that.
Also, changing the name back to MBP does not make sense as MBP has its own identity at this point and would certainly be jarring to see the "PC" version of MBP look so contrasting to what the webports offer.

Re: UI Overhaul
I agree with DP as in its completely ambitious to overhaul the UI Design, let alone maintain it when its done. Not to mention there will always be people who preferred the previous UI. However, the game would definitely benefit from a more streamlined flow (like Yoshi's proposal ).

Coming back to the UI change idea, the biggest changes lie in the level select, and reverting the UI back to something akin to MBP would mean getting rid of camera paths, which would be kind of a shame. And, if we were to change to something akin to MBU, I feel like we'd want to keep it functionally similar to PQ's UI anyway.

If the UI style is something we ever want to worry about, that is way, way, way down the road from where we are now. There are still some more basic functional things about the game that we're ironing out almost 20 years after MBP released. It wasn't until this month that rotating platforms had proper physics, the server's address wasn't constantly displayed to everyone, and the game even worked properly on Linux.

The more I think about it, the more I'm torn on Community Edition vs. Ultimate Edition, which I think are the two best options. I thought I'd lay out some pros and cons that come to mind for each, partially for myself.

Marble Blast Community Edition
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ + Clearly indicates that the game is still actively community-driven and has been for quite some time.
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ + Fits the idea that the game is the current hub of not only the "official" content but community content too.
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ + Ages well as the game and the community continue to evolve.
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ – I'm still trying to convince myself whether this sounds very official or not. Does it need to? Should the title not have some open-source/fan project tone to it?
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ – Might sound a little less exciting.

Marble Blast Ultimate Edition
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ + Suggests the most "complete" Marble Blast experience (or, rather, the "best" experience), as well as simply how much content is available.
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ + Whether there is any desire for the title to feel official or not, this sounds a little more official than "Community Edition".
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ + Marble Blast Platinum actually had an alternative "Ultimate Edition"  as well, which included some features (most notably, the Director's Cut levels) that weren't included in the standard release, so the historical precedence here is neat.
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ – Does this name sound a bit commercialized?
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ – MBUE isn't as good of an acronym as MBCE and could be mixed up with MBU.

Summing this up, these two feel like they communicate different things: the nature of the game and who maintains it versus the entire scale of it and what it offers. Glad we all seem to be in agreement that the title needs to feature "Marble Blast" and that "PlatinumQuest" should just be restricted to the individual mod.

I think we got good plans here, it'd be best if we compiled all this together into some kinda roadmap or to-do list if we don't already have that. That way, we can actually keep track of the shit we wanna do for the website, game, and community.

So our priority right now is simple, just a name change, we've already came to a common consensus, so it'd be easy to just...make that change immediately. The only issue there being changing the title...and also the logo? It'd be a light rebrand, but nothing totally different like a UI overhaul, we can get to that at a later point in our list.

Secondary is the streamlined UI, Yoshi already made a thread about this , it'd help if more people (especially regulars) gave their feedback on that, unless that's going on in the Discord.

Fixing the website is on there, but maintenance is a bitch. Doesn't really help that only two people know how to maintain it, even then, the resources the website offers is limited. While it'd help for visibility, this could be something that'll have to be chipped at unless circumstances change down the line.

Hey, speaking of Discord, let's revisit that discussion and finally be done with it?  There's a reason I took a dig at it in my main thread, it's such an easy thing to sort out compared to working with the game or even the website, Im shocked this discussion just...fizzled after it happened.

And uhh...I think that's it? I don't think I really missed anything, if I did...fuckin idk, its 4 AM and Im barely running on fumes, so you're gonna have to cut me some slack here.

Really stupid idea that I'm just throwing out there for lols:
OpenMBP

Would be funny, and accurate, but... still doesn't actually have "Marble Blast" in the title technically, since the acronym is the actual title.
I still think there's good reason to just go back to "Marble Blast Platinum" tbh. PlatinumQuest has always been Marble Blast Platinum 2.0, so it's not like this would even really change anything. As for the argument of it giving Marble Blast Platinum more weight in the collection of MB games that PQ is than any of the other ones... eh.

But what Nockess has brought up about acronyms really sticks out. I feel like any new name with a new acronym is just gonna make PQ feel like a noob mod, lol

Wow Nockess, I didn't even think about initials. MBG, MBP, and MBU are all distinct and consistent. This is a terrible idea, but it made me think of "Marble Blast Quest" as a possible name purely to be easy to abbreviate and recognize.

@DoxtonPink: It would be easy to "make that change immediately" if we actually came to a consensus. How about a poll? And regarding the logo, maybe we should have a topic like the one for Discord server icon submissions  but for the actual PQ icon. And just to put this out there, I hope we can update the icon for macOS 26 and newer to be consistent with other macOS icons. It hasn't been updated since like 2018.

@Yoshicraft224: I don't think we should be giving any game more weight than any other in the design or title of the game. People can pick which aesthetic they want to use with texture packs and audio packs and stuff. But while I do see the argument for keeping the game "Marble Blast Platinum 2.x", especially since version 2 followed version 1, I still think something different would be better, something more neutral that allows for growth in the future (in case stuff like Marble Blasted gets added into the game).