Expanding membership?

[Uncle Yuan]

Let's be brutally honest, Freedom Reborn is doomed to fade away.  We have a great community, some really strong core members and we have stayed together a lot longer than anyone would reasonably expect (based entirely on those first two factors).  But Freedom Force is a long dead game by industry standards and there is simply no force to bring new folks our way.  And real life being what it is our existing members will continue to drift away for all sorts of reasons.  Most of them even reasonable.

And yet even without Freedom Force we have a lot to offer the world.  Believe me, I haven't played FF in years, never got strongly into mods and have never had a hand in creating any sort of content, but I'm still here nearly every day.  I get a great line on comics and industry news, thoughtful and non-hysterical discussion of the genre movies I enjoy, updates on good computer and video games, and news about one of my favorite MMOs.  Not to mention a virtual friendship with a lot of really good folks.

So how can we increase our ranks?  And do we want to increase our ranks?  We all know folks in RL who share our interests and would enjoy this space.  Sure some of them might not turn out to be great additions to our group, and any "membership drive" would bring in a random element.  But I do believe we have a strong "culture" and a mature and plain spoken community that would act as fairly effective filters to discourage the undesirables.

And I'll be honest, this is partially selfish.  I really, really missed FR this year and am so glad to see it rise from the ashes.  I want it to continue to I can keep hanging out here.

So, is this a worthwhile goal?  And what could we do?

[Tomato]

Honestly, I've never seen this as JUST a Freedom Force board... truth be told, I don't think I've even played the games more than once or twice. I like the community here, and I like that it's a relatively simple game system to work with, all things considered.

That said, I don't think expanding our sphere of influence would hurt either... not advertising or anything, but maybe broadening out a bit in terms of game mods (non-FF superhero games like MUA and Web of Shadows have been modded successfully) or even just expanding some of the existing boards (like artists alley) to bring in fresh blood that way.

[PreRaphaelite]

I would have to agree with big, red and round – I've never really seen it as just a Freedom Force board. Except for the the odd FXing (ah, that was a while back now, wasn't it? Good times. Old times) I barely played the game. The main reasons for me to keep bouncing back here are the odd people I know (odd in all meanings of the word), games information (seeing as how everyone seems to have their ear to the ground), artwork perusing, and the occasional posting games/forum-wide banter.

Still, I can imagine how the place might seem a bit one-trick-ponyish to outsiders, especially considering the expansive FF section (which, sadly enough, is no longer an area in which I lurk – although has been continuously active for practically a decade, which is impressive to say the least). So expanding the focus of the forums might be a good place to start. I'm sure the last thing people want is for the community to shrink to a point where digital inbreeding becomes the norm, and we end up prowling online street corners for contact with the outside world. Wait... no... I think I've started to wander from the point now.

... Perhaps we could sell cakes?

[bearded]

i am primarily a ff guy. not even ffvttr, i'm a purist! i would be interested in modding other games, and seeing other mods, primarily super hero. has anybody modded other games, with releases and screenshots they could post here?
i have modded aow a lot, but that game is even older than this one.

[Amazo Version 2.2]

i'm primarily a  guy, i dont own  . i was brought in to the community by cyber burn, and have stuck around cause there are just a whole lot of good and interesting peoplefloating around. i havne't bought a comic book in a long time, but i enjoy foolowing the comics threads, as well as the movie/tv threads too. i think if evryone were able to bring at least one person on board, for whatever part of the forum that suits them, then i think that the numbers couodl rise up in no time.

[BentonGrey]

There's a great deal I have to say on this question, but I'll start with the question of growth itself.  Is FR doomed to fade away?  Well, nothing lasts forever, so yes, I'm sure there will come a day when there is no Freedom Reborn.  However, that doesn't mean that it has to die any time soon.  I think that, as UY already pointed out, FR has lasted longer than anyone would have ever imagined, and that is largely due to the fact that this is a fantastic collection of people.  This is, without a doubt, the greatest online community I've ever come across.  Y'all are right in acknowledging that this fact, in and of itself, is a great thing, and worthy of bringing in new blood.  This is true, and, as far as I'm concerned, everyone is welcome as long as they can act like adults.

I have no problem with expanding our focus to include modding other games either, but the trouble with that is most of those types of groups already have their own homes, just as FR has served for FF.  Still, I think modding is a fantastic pastime, and I play plenty of modded titles other than FF, so I'm happy for discussion and presentation of that type of content to have a place on FR.  On the other hand, I think most of y'all are forgetting another variable in the equation of this community's longevity, and that is the Freedom Force titles themselves. 

The truth is, these are fantastic games, infinitely flexible, and with almost limitless potential.  They are still, to this date, the greatest superhero games ever made.  The Freedom Force series has every opportunity to become one of those titles that people will play forever.  They may be ancient by modern entertainment standards, but their release on Steam has changed that somewhat.  As a matter of fact, the existence of services like Steam have changed the whole video game industry as a whole, at least a bit.  People are playing games from a very large range of release dates, and Steam makes these games more timeless than they would ever have the chance to be otherwise given the pace of technological change. 

My point is that the game itself is not dead, not yet.  What's more, we can help to keep it alive.  Y'all talk about trying to recruit people to the community, well, I've been trying to do that for years now.  I've had success, in several small ways.  From my work on the DCUG to my work on my TMNT mod, I have tried to promote my projects to the folks who might enjoy their subjects, and I've gotten a small but enthusiastic response everywhere I've gone.  I've made content, and I've shown it to folks who might be interested, and everything I do points back here.  Every time I release a mod or talk about a project, I'm always talking about FR, and I'm not done yet.  I've been working on my projects, waiting until I had a good selection finished, and then I'm going to make another big push to get the word out about this great game and this great community.  Are my efforts going to keep FR going?  No, not by themselves, but there are tons of people out there who played FF and never realized how flexible it was.  There's tons more that never played it, but who can get the chance to see their favorite characters realized with it, and will jump at the opportunity.  We can create our own niche, we just have to work at it a bit.  There are still a lot of folks out there who want the kinds of content and community that we've got to offer.  In the month since the release of my TMNT mod on ModDB, I've already had nearly 120 people download it, and that was mostly just in the first two weeks.  Most of those people aren't part of this community.  Hopefully some of them will find their ways here and chip in to the community in one way or another.

On the other hand, it always sort of bothers me when folks lament the quietness of the boards and decline of FR, and then admit that they never bother to venture into the content creation boards or take part in that side of the forum's life.  I understand that we've all got busy lives, and hey, not everyone enjoys the same things, but when mods are met with silence, skins and skopes receive no notice, that doesn't exactly help the community to thrive.  You want to help this community survive?  Play a mod, and tell its creator if you enjoyed it and why or why not.  Comment on a skin or a skope.  Or hey, maybe try to make something yourself.  EZScript means we can all tell whatever stories we want, so if there isn't anything out there that you're interested in (and let's face, that hardly seems likely), make something that DOES interest you, and chances are it will catch someone else's eye too.

[Figure Fan]

Now that City of Heroes is free to play, I can see it being a better place to meet new people and expand Freedom Reborn. The monthly subscription fee was a deal breaker that kept people from interacting in-game. It may not be entirely mod-friendly, but the character creation process is a lot of fun and there's a great deal of content with super groups and bases, not to mention the mission designer.

I would like to play FFvsTR more, but the game just isn't very challenging. It's fun to create characters and the content available for the game is absolutely incredible, but somehow it fizzles out for me. Maybe it's because there isn't a way to play the game with others. I don't know. Admittedly, I've never understood how to make mods or do any kind of scripting or AI work. I just did skins and FX. Perhaps those things would make the game more enjoyable. I know that I miss Alex's site when it was in its prime.

It's hard to believe that we used to all be running around here like crazy making avatars for monthly contests and creating whole forum-wide story arcs (Age of Hellscorp, etc.) with our characters. I don't get what made it so fun then. Have I just gotten old? Ugh. Anyway..

Another thing that comes to mind is that, when you think about it, we've done this game to death. Pretty much every major (and obscure) character has been skinned/meshed dozens of times over, and most of our veteran creators have really maxed out their skills. I feel like we could create a modern art museum with the content we've made over the last (nearly) 10 years. Artists like Afghan Ant, C6, Bobby69, TommyBoy, Renegade, Grenadier, Benton, Murs, Tomato, Podmark, TUE, Zapow, Ink, and so-so-so many more have really evolved with their work enough to have distinct periods and even changes of medium (Zapow and Court's comic and Ink's DC Comics work come to mind). We actually have a history.

The days of logging on to find new character-specific X-Men meshes are gone. That's magic that we won't get to experience again, unless a new game comes out and we have to start from scratch. It's as if this whole amazing thing just fell into place.

Comic books have been in my life since I was old enough to form memories. I rediscovered my love for superheroes in my mid-teens, which is when I got into Freedom Force and stumbled upon this forum. Nearly 10 years later..I'm a different person, with new interests and different views. I don't read comics anymore, but I love seeing the new movies based on them, and I'll always love the mythos. Maybe we should open up the forum to things that don't revolve around comic books so much. I'm very much into biology, neuroscience, art (including, but not limited to superheroes), crafting, cooking, philosophy, world religions, and the paranormal. Thanks, comic books, for helping me to maintain an open mind.

There's something more to this forum than Freedom Force. That's undeniable. Maybe we should adapt the forum (not entirely, just parts) to reflect how we've changed?

[Randomdays]

There's only so much you can do with FF/FFVTTR out of the box. The multiplayer as is never worked well and should have had a campaign/mission co-op mode so you could play with each other instead of against. As said, almost every character has been converted, though there's still a surprising few well known characters missing. Even then, there's only so much time you can spend in the danger room trying them out.To keep the games going, you need to take them in a new direction with new stories. New adventures and mods like Benton's, new maps like Dana's can open things up. Even with its age, as pointed out, the engine is still one of the most versatile out there and one of the easiest to mod.What the site needs more than just meshers and skinners is storytellers to spark interest, though I have a feeling they're going to be hard to find.

[ow_tiobe_sb]

I believe we are long overdue for expanding FR's sphere of influence to include dress, dietary, and hygiene codes, as well as proscribing certain impure thoughts and feelings and specific forms of contact between men and women who wish to remain FR community members.  I believe the best way to implement this expansion would be to divide up the roster of active FR members and assign groups of those individuals to particular Titans, who would serve as "case managers."  Case managers would schedule mandatory, weekly virtual chats with individuals on their case list, during which community members could describe their recent ethical-physical comportment in all its embarrassing detail.  Those who meet the FR community's standards would be permitted to remain members in good standing; those who do not meet those exacting standards would be given the option of banishment or redemption via a virtual act of penitence by posting their eBay login names and passwords and allowing any and all FR community members to place bids on Hummel collectibles auctions in their names.

To strengthen the stratification of the FR community hierarchy, Moderators could act as "case managers" for various Titans, and Administrators could act as "case managers" for Moderators.  Administrators, of course, would be intuitively attuned to the precepts of the Way of FR, and would serve as the natural choice for interpreters of the Way for the rest of the community (and, therefore, they would not require "case management" and could reliably serve as the top of the hierarchy for life).

I'm really excited about these and other reforms and look forward to swelling the ranks with new initiates. 

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and Whirled Braker

[JeyNyce]

Too many words, can't read them all 

This forum is about comics, games, movies and other stuff, but it all started with one thing in common, Freedom Force.  Do you guys want to change the name of the forums or something to bring more people in?  Go on facebook?, twitter? Wikipedia?

[Uncle Yuan]

Honestly, I something of a direct recruitment campaign in mind, but wanted to see what other ideas folks could come up with.  I imagine that most of us have Facebook accounts, and probably have a few friends who would like it here.  If all of the folks who frequent FR would post the link to it on facebook I bet we would get a few new recruits.  Some of us more than others, as folks like Zapow or C6 are fairly active in the comics world and probably have a lot more geeky friends than I do.

I also wonder if there would be any way to plumb our members list to see if we could entice some of the folks who drifted away to come back.  That is not something that I could do, but I bet a moderator or Titan could gather up all the emails of registered users and send out a "hey, we're still here, come visit" email.  We may not even have to go that deep as I imagine that many of us are still friends in RL with folks who've drifted away.  (I've been trying to get Grendal_71 back here, for one.)

[cmdrkoenig67]

This thread makes me want to play  again from the start...I think I will, right now (at 2 AM in the morning...I must be crazy).

Dana 

[ow_tiobe_sb]

This thread makes me want to play  again from the start...I think I will, right now (at 2 AM in the morning...I must be crazy).

Dana 

At FR, we don't use the term "crazy."  We prefer the term "ready for action."

Dana, why don't you see if you can give some of our pamphlets to your other night owl friends, okay?

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and Whirled Braker

[BlueBard]

I don't play FF anymore... don't even really have the desire to do so anymore... but I still love the Community.

In my opinion...

The subforums for Comics, Artists, and Modders are all integral parts of what FR stands for.  Not to mention Games in general... which is different from games in General, mind you.

Without our artists, our Community would lose a little bit of its' soul.  Nor are Modders obsolete, as some of those skills may translate to other games (indirectly or otherwise).

Friendly (near affectionate) tolerance of some ... unique... idiosyncracies and a healthy sense of oddball geek humor are also a huge part of what makes FR home.  We are diverse, and we appreciate that diversity.

How else do we explain Tomato as a Titan?

[JeyNyce]

How else do we explain Tomato as a Titan?

Because you guys thought it would be funny to call him the Titan Tomato

[lugaru]

Well In the past I've suggested creating a very strong "backbone" of a unified mod that would attract everyone who gets the game on Steam on disccount and making this the home of it, because even if the mod was 5 gigs (it would not be) that would only scratch the surface of freedom force content. People would want more.

For some reason this has been a really controversial suggestion but honestly I dont see why a merging of the main "obligatory" mods with some extra FX, maps, tweaks and forum centric characters (our creations, our avatars, generic examples, etc). Then you can tell people "if you have this mod all you need to do is unzip creator X's mod and you will add his take on the X-Men, or his take on the Justice League, or his collection of random Anime Characters".

You know, have content creators put together content packages.

Right now I play a ton of Fallout New Vegas and most people use the Nevada Mod (an across the board improvement) and then invidivudal tweaks (more weapons, more quests, more armors, etc).

And duh, everything would be based on explicit participation, only assets created by people who say YES to this specific project and maybe a thing here or there from the "just credit me" people. I dont want any Italian Porn Star style meltdowns over what should be us sharing a game we love with the general audience.

Imagine that besides the "obligatory mods" you get alternate "better looking" versions of the ingame characters, alternate skins/herofiles (female diablo, evil version of Minute Man), Liberty Bay centered missions and characters, etc.

Not only would it rock for first time installers but for guys like me who say "ugh" every time they have to instal everything again from scratch. (except for skins/meshes that I keep on dvd).

[cripp12]

Man I would really like an all inclusive installation file so I don't have to keep going through my 10 part list.

[Tomato]

I've been struggling with my response here, mainly because I only just became a Titan and I don't want to negatively impact those who had that trust in me and voted me in. However, I still do want to express my opinion and not have to self-censor myself.

Strictly from a board perspective, I think the biggest thing tthat I feel could benefit with a bit of expansion is the artist board. Right now art is divided into three bloks... stuff to do with avatars, stuff that has nothing to do with avatars, and writing (which is an art style as much as anyything else). Included in the first two is everything from micros to photography to 3d work to doodles we made in class. It's all kind of lumped together, and I feel like it's so hard to sift through that most threads don't get any attention, which discourages people from posting their work... because really, for a board FULL of artists very little is posted. A few basic subforums would really help alleviate that.

The other suggestion would be to make a board for "Other game mods." Freedom Force is always our focus obviously, but I know some of us mod for other games... Tommy and I both have done mods for XML/MUA for instance, and there was someone here who was posting WoS skins not THAT long ago.

I'm not saying we need to overhaul anything... there's a reason we've lasted this long. But I don't think some board tweeks would be too crazy.

[lugaru]

I do love the idea of the forum having some more content for comics fans and superhero video game and movie fans. I'll try to get a "one installer" project started again, but I'm the least qualified person to actually do the work, which is a problem. I do mod, but I mod for more "friendly" platforms like Fallout 3 (and New Vegas) where the tools do half the work for you.

Also I personally love creating threads on other forums (mostly comics forums) about Freedom Force or "top superhero games" which inclues fredom force. Often I'll post some images of skins by some of the "stars" and I'm guessing that turns some heads here, although it is hard to know since I dont follow the traffic report for this site.

[Midnite]

Hey people long time no see.    Was informed by Bat1987 that the forums are back up. Have a question regarding about membership for the forums. I have quite of few people who are interested in joining the forum. They're players from DCUO. So how long does it take to approve members? A few of them said, they've been waiting for approval by the admin/mods.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

I'd be definitely in favor of expanding it to be a generic superhero discussion board, covering all related media and perhaps having a main informational website in addition to just the forum.

In addition there was an original superhero game being worked on by some members.  Once that actually comes close to release, if it does, this website could regain some of its past glory by become the main mod center for that.

[Epimethee]

Have a question regarding about membership for the forums. I have quite of few people who are interested in joining the forum. They're players from DCUO. So how long does it take to approve members? A few of them said, they've been waiting for approval by the admin/mods.

Hello Midnite. If they have registered a while ago without receiving any confirmation yet, I suggest you PM one of the site admin. There might be a bug in the registration process (such as email not sent or intercepted by spam filters).

[ShawDAMAN]

 I've really enjoyed reading everyone's posts here.

For myself, I used to be subscribed to a magazine called 'maximum PC' which routinely reviewed PC games. I remember first reading their (glowing!) review of the then newly released "freedom force." The magazine came with a disc that had the demo on it, I installed it and played. I loved it. But somehow other things got in the way or I forgot or (more probably) I just didn't have time or money  and I never got the full game. I was vaguely aware several years later when the sequel was released but didn't get that either.

Then just a few months ago I was sitting at the PC wondering how to pass a bit of time and suddenly remembered that game.... called....freedom force? A few months and 2 complete plays through both campaigns and countless map/fx/skin/mesh downloads and modifications later I am pleasantly surprised by how many people actually are still interested in this game. "Thriving" may be just a bit much but it certainly outdoes most game forums of it's age and the amount (and quality) of user created modification available for this game is truly impressive and pretty unique.

The pity of course, as already noted, is the difficulty in actually playing with other people... and that (double-edged) saturation of mods and other content. A pity too they couldn't have made it a trilogy....  although the SP campaigns are superb, the ending lacked finality.  With the continued thriving of interest in classic comic book superheroes in the media today I imagine a game with similar modification potential and fun with the addition of updated graphics and effective and sustainable multiplayer elements could be exceptionally popular.

As a new member I can't speak with the same authority as some of you old timers on the health of this forum but I for one am grateful for the immense help I've already received from the community and the numerous works of art created for my favorite PC games. So thanks to everybody and here's to many more....er, days...weeks....years.... as long as I still have a kid in me that gets a laugh from Mentor's "MOONS OF REIKSHALL!!" or Minuteman's "STARS AND BARS!," or playing with my favorite Marvel heroes/villains in a virtual sandbox, I won't forget these little gems