Follow up on noob mods...

thread over, give kwill some points on hangman

Nov 25, 2011, 9:24pm, seizure22 wrote:thread over, give kwill some points on hangman

Meh, good point Seiz.

Yea, i see your point guys. It would be nice to see some more activity though around here. Thanks for your thoughts!

Nov 25, 2011, 9:24pm, seizure22 wrote:thread over, give kwill some points on hangman

Hey thanks, Seiz.

Now, I have an announcement to make:

NO 1 JOIND MY MOD AND I DONT HAVE ANY STAFFF. I TRIED TO DO ALL THE CODIN AND LEVELS AND TEXTRS AND SOUNDS BY MYSLF BUT I FAIL EPICLY. SO UNFORTNATLY MARBLE BLAST TURKEY IS DEAD. IM SO SAD.

Nov 25, 2011, 10:43pm, ktbold12345 wrote:
Nov 25, 2011, 9:24pm, seizure22 wrote:thread over, give kwill some points on hangman

Hey thanks, Seiz.

Now, I have an announcement to make:

NO 1 JOIND MY MOD AND I DONT HAVE ANY STAFFF. I TRIED TO DO ALL THE CODIN AND LEVELS AND TEXTRS AND SOUNDS BY MYSLF BUT I FAIL EPICLY. SO UNFORTNATLY MARBLE BLAST TURKEY IS DEAD. IM SO SAD.

Awe its ok, dw, come on msn and I will give you a cookie

Nov 25, 2011, 9:11pm, marblefire wrote:I don't miss the n00b mods. I do miss the custom levels boom of 2007-8 (and to some extent 2009), when I joined the forums. Those were the golden days of this community for me.

Yeah this. It was all the mods that people started attempting that stopped the level making (since obviously making good levels isn't a part of mod design).

I acually hate to say this, but I kind of miss the noob mods for one reason: it had forum activity. Since there are really none, there have been a very low amount of custom levels or graphics. Plus since the MBDK is filling up, I am supprised to see that people are not taking advantage of the things in there.

Anyways, I want to hear your thoughts guys

Happy Turkey Day guys from the US!

Jeff

I think MBP killed it because everyone wanted to do a mod like MBP, thought they could do better, and we're seeing the results today.

Edit: when I first saw Kwill's post at the top, I thought it was brilliant. Made my day.

This is why I miss the Level of the Month competition. It actually motivated people to build good levels. I know it was discontinued because of a lack of entries and votes. But it really did increase forum activity a little. I vote that we bring it back and modify the rules a bit to have the fairest results (a set panel of judges who votes for each level for example)

I agree that the best years of this community were from 2007 to 2009. During this time, we were relishing in our independence from the GG forums, MBP had come out and people were making tons of custom levels for it. For whatever reason, people gradually stopped making levels and started trying to copy MBP's success by making their own mods. With the exception of MBAdvanced, MBReloaded, MBEmerald, and MBOpal, all of these noob mods failed miserably (and the ones I listed weren't even completed and didn't live up to their potential also). I'll just come out and say it...noob mods killed the custom level building community of the forums. So I am quite glad to see no new noob mods being started lately, and I don't want to see them start up again. I would rather have people make custom levels and revive LotM/Y.

Like it or not, the MB community is slowly dying. Fewer custom levels, members leaving, IA shutting down, and MBG not being sold anymore has hastened that. We hope PQ and PR will stop the death of the community temporarily at least, and bring in a golden age much like the one from 2007-2009.

Yes, I have changed my mind now, thanks guys.

Andy, i completely agree with ya.

Nov 26, 2011, 8:13am, ktbold12345 wrote:This is why I miss the Level of the Month competition. It actually motivated people to build good levels. I know it was discontinued because of a lack of entries and votes. But it really did increase forum activity a little. I vote that we bring it back and modify the rules a bit to have the fairest results (a set panel of judges who votes for each level for example)

I see it differently, and the entire year of 2010 was proof that LotM was not really what inspired levels to be made. I think there are a lot of factors that caused the drop in creation:

1) You're like me, and while you genuinely enjoy making levels, it's really hard work and so you don't end up making many
2) A lot of us are growing up past the point where we want to (or can) spend our time making levels
3) We've moved on to other games and/or MB is not the novelty it once was (I'm also in this group)

But making levels solely for LotM was rare, I think. It probably was a motivation, but I don't think it was the only motivation and certainly not the chief motivation as you can see from 2010. Besides, there was always a pronounced bias in favor of Phil, Andrew, Pablo, etc. So if two of them entered levels, your chances for 1st and 2nd were probably over. What we also forget is that LotM was equally a failure because nobody liked to sit down and construct a review.

There were also Level Competitions (which produced some great, but forgotten levels), but they were usually only contested by a select few. Plus, they always held to an established theme, and if you didn't like what it was, you couldn't compete.

The system was great while it lasted, but I seriously doubt it would change anything if reinstated. I don't want to be pessimistic, but the community is clearly fading away. If PQ doesn't perk it up, I think we'll all start leaving one by one.

Interesting thought there marblefire, very interesting.

I can agree with just about all that, especially the last part. PQ better be pushing the engine limits

Nov 27, 2011, 11:27am, marblefire wrote:But making levels solely for LotM was rare, I think. It probably was a motivation, but I don't think it was the only motivation and certainly not the chief motivation as you can see from 2010. Besides, there was always a pronounced bias in favor of Phil, Andrew, Pablo, etc. So if two of them entered levels, your chances for 1st and 2nd were probably over. What we also forget is that LotM was equally a failure because nobody liked to sit down and construct a review.

One thing that people are forgetting is PQ. It's true what you said: LotM is not the only motivation, but it is a strong motivation.
I think the main reason that the quality and quantity of levels has been declining since is because all our veteran level builders (Pablo, Andrew, Oaky, PF, Matan, etc.) are busy building for PQ. Other excellent builders (Ian, Phil, Steven, etc.) are no longer with us. Also, some people are wasting their talents on noob mods. That leaves only a few level builders who are currently active (Pokko and Buzzmusic seem to be the best examples.)

EDIT: Something else I wanted to mention: I don't think there was a bias toward the veteran level builders; they had better levels, end of story. And what you said about people not wanting to write a review; that's what the panel of judges is for. They asked to be a judge because they want to write reviews.

Don't take this post as a flame post or anything. I'm not trying to be mean. I value your opinion, but I just want to clear up my side of the argument.

My thoughts about this:
I think noob mods aren't only ones that actually decrease activity in level making.(I dont say that fact is wrong) There are plenty of other things we do in free time. Lot of new games have came after MBG's release (Minecraft Portal TF2 and so on) that we play more often than MB because we get bored from it plus Scool and any other things that life give us.
The thing that i liked about MB the most is its way to edit it. I am creative person and i personaly like constructing and making my ideas into something awsome. Only problem is my lazyness.

Actualy its huge suprize for me that so small community still exists because of one extremely addicting game with its good concept that IAC punched in a face this year but we still keep pushing it forward.

I expect my said didn't made any sense lol.

no, it was a good post rds, thanks for commenting! I always like to hear what you have to say!

I liked to watch how noob mods went on, I dunno what you would count as a noob mod, but you could tell by my noob mod later in my post.
I don't now how they affected the activity, I think it varied, I'm not sure, but I did enjoy seeing how they worked out, and I don't see much of them anymore

I do think the forums is slowly fading, if you know what I mean, I wanted to use a different word from dying, because in my opinion I think it's a tad too extreme yet.

And a few years back, (before I had an account because I was underage) I came here and had a look around the forums, I downloaded all the custom levels I could find 'til my MBG crashed.

But that's a good thing... in some ways, because it shows how many levels people were creating at the time, and I wish people made more.
That's why I'm still working on custom levels for MBG, MBP, while still making levels for PR, which should be released shortly (not the PR levels the MBG and MBP levels).

When I first came onto the forums, as a noob, I was so excited and I literally couldn't stop making levels, I just enjoyed it too much, I would get up on weekday mornings, before I had to school, and just keep building.
So I started making a mod, which was a noob mod, and it was awful.
It died within the space of a few days.

R.I.P Unnamed awful mod.

I don't want to see the forums fading/dying, and I hope that PR and PQ keep the forums going for a good few more years.
Who knows, maybe some noob mod'll come along and turn into one of the best mods ever, that will liven the forums up a bit even more.

I also thought that MBTurkey might have livened the forums up a bit, but it's sad to see that it's died, I hope that you can continue it sometime if you get more staff Kwill