How do you solve a problem like the Ace of Spades Fanbase?

[Ki11aWi11]

Izzy, what's the total number of members of this forum? The AoS forums has 33k members and 17k active members.

[HoboHob]

Izzy, what's the total number of members of this forum? The AoS forums has 33k members and 17k active members.

There are 6.5k members on this forum.

I can't tell active from inactive, since I don't feel like wading through 294 pages of users just to check how many posts they have.

[danhezee]

I think active on there forums means they have registered or posted in the last month

[rakiru]

Edit: Note: I'd have posted this as a comment, but I don't want to register on yet another site just for this one post.

As a result of keeping its involvement a secret for so long, Jagex has accidentally managed to split the Ace of Spades community somewhat.

Yes, "accidentally". That's why anyone who gave them or the new game even the slightest criticism was banned.

Jagex is now looking to right this wrong, and make sure the Ace of Spades community is always kept in the loop.

"Our goal now is to make sure we involve the community as much as possible in everything we do," he tells us. "For starters, we're launching a community built, community voted map to the game, for free; we've launched an extensive update based on balancing and gameplay suggestions made by the community, and we're looking to involve them heavily in future content updates, starting with our World War update in January, which will bring back some of the more slow-paced, tactical gameplay that was so prevalent in the prototype build, but something we acknowledge has been underrepresented in the full release."

Oh, how generous - including a community map in their game for free!

As much as I'd love for the old gameplay to come back, I'm incredibly doubtful that this new update will actually bring us that. Based on what's happened so far, this should be understandable.

"Jagex has been working on Ace of Spades for around eighteen months now, but I think the core concept behind the game has largely remained intact in the final release," answers Kinder. "The freedom to build or destroy anything you want is still fundamental to the experience, but we've added several new layers to the game that we think enhances the experience for a wider range of players."

Apart from the new classes and weapon loadouts, Jagex also introduced a number of new game types to Ace of Spades, including Zombies and Diamond Mine - both of which are proving most popular among players.

Destroy anything you want? Yep, most definitely. Building on the other hand? Nope, you cannot build whatever you want. You can destroy things faster than you can build them (unless you could prefabs, but that's not "anything you want"), so this is wrong.

The core concept has changed gradually over the course of the game, but it changed drastically when 1.0 came out. The gameplay suddenly became fast, and lives are cheap.

"Added several new layers"? Indeed you have, however they are unbalanced and generally bad. The weapons/classes are balanced using the method of "if everything is OP, nothing is OP", and the new gamemodes can't really be counted as additions when they simply replaced existing ones (ctf (initially), babel, etc).

"The biggest change - and for reasons I'll explain - is the absence of mods and player-created levels," says Kinder.

"Firstly, we are absolutely dedicated to bringing user-generated content to Ace of Spades. We have already communicated our intention to use Steam Workshop as a way to allow users to create and share their own content.The reason for the delay is that we need to create our own dedicated game editor so it's easy for newcomers to create awesome content, but complex enough that experienced players can be more detailed and complex with their creations."

This was one of the barriers for entry when it came to the original prototype -- there was no proprietary editing tool, which meant that players had to use a number of third-party tools instead, none of which work with the current build of the game.

"The engine has changed to the point where we really need to create something bespoke and user friendly, but as soon as we've done this we will be distributing it to the wider community," Kinder assures us.

This is bullshit. If community-hosted servers were possible, there would be at least one map building tool out there already. And what's the problem with only allowing advanced users (by not having over-simplified tools) the ability to create maps initially? Assuming the tools are similar to those existing for the old version, the people able to use them are those most likely to be able to create good maps.

Just because there was no proprietary tool, it doesn't mean it was bad. Hell, I've played several games wheere basically no-one uses the proprietary tools, instead using far better 3rd party ones.

The existing fanbase double-edged sword

As you can probably tell from the mess that Jagex is currently trying to clear up, the lead-up to Ace of Spades' release has been rather different for Jagex as a company. Never before has it had the opportunity to release a title that already has such a huge and dedicated fanbase.

"Having a big fan base is great - they already know the product, they love it, they want more of it. What more could you want?" notes Kinder.

"On the other hand, there's no telling how receptive that audience is going to be to change. You see that same problem occur with established franchise sequels. There's no doubting that we want to bring the game to an even wider audience, but at the same time we have an important responsibility to the existing community; we need to make sure that we don't lose sight of what made this game so popular in the first place."

I think it's safe to say that they failed on that front. Some of the main attractions were: the slow,tactical gameplay; the low system requirements; the simple graphics; the basic-ness of the game. None of these have been kept.

"The way we do that is by working with the players - the people that play and love the game - and being receptive to feedback from all areas of the community."

Kinder is hugely keen to stress that Jagex is in this for the long haul, and that making the game's existing fans happy is a big part its upcoming plans.

It's a shame this wasn't part of their plans initially, as the community had plenty of feedback prior to the release, which was met with the banhammer. There seemed to be a bit of a turnaround after release when there were far fewer sales than expected. Before that point, Sniped and the gang had been enthusiastically telling us that it's great, and we'll see that when it's released, but when it did came out, the forums (both official and steam) became flooded with complaints from customers who had either been lied to, or felt tricked/cheated.

And as for those Minecraft comparisons, how does Jagex feel about being constantly judged alongside one of the biggest indie games of all time?

"I don't have a problem being compared to a game which has made such a significant impact on the industry, but of course that kind of comparison inevitably brings its own challenges," says the Jagex exec. "For example, while the game is set within a block-based sandbox, the objectives and core gameplay mechanics are very different. Ultimately though, I think the game stands out on its own without the need to justify the similarities it shares with other titles."

Sadly, people are stupid enough to think that Minecraft was the first ever block-based game, and every other one is copying Minecraft in some way or another. As for standing out on its own, that's going to be hard, given how similar it seems to both TF2, with it's class-based, cartoony gameplay, and worms, with pretty much everything.

Kinder hopes that the openness of Ace of Spades -- with its constructive manipulation and huge freedom for players -- will set it apart from other first-person shooters in the long run.

"We've also tried to style the game in such a way that gives it its own unique look," he adds. We've tried to play to our engine's strengths, embracing its low-fi heritage but using more modern graphical techniques like ambient occlusion and whole-block texturing to make the game look great on a high end rig, but also be playable and visually distinct on a five year old machine."

Freedom for players? You've got to be kidding me. We're locked into your servers, playing your few maps on your gamemodes, without the ability to go elsewhere or do anything about it. If you mean "freedom for players" as in the ability to build/destroy things, again, the building aspect is pretty much non-existent.

"Unique look"? Eh, kinda, although to me if just seems like a cartoony (been done plenty of times before), blocky (also done lots of times before) generic shooter.

"play to our engine's strengths"? Have you hell - the engine is built on Python and OpenGL, both of which should make it easy to release on at least Windows, OS X and popular Linux distros such as Ubuntu. Also, how is using "modern graphical techniques" going to help with playing on "five year old machines"? The game runs crap on old machines, so either admit you're only targetting new machines, or that you've failed at meeting your target.

[DDR Soldat]

Has anyone here (who knows how to program, presumably) considered developing our OWN version 1.0? I mean, I know there's a version 0.76 which no one really plays as much as 0.75; what if we just kept developing the classic game as much as we could with mods, etc.?
Just a thought I had.

[Sonarpulse]

Um, there are two projects with this goal already, Iceball: http://buildandshoot.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=60 and a port of voxlap started by me: http://buildandshoot.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=370

[Handles]

Iceball is a really good project

[Reki]

What Jagex is really trying to say:

Ban everyone from the old fanbase and establish our own fanbase.

[HoboHob]

"How do you solve a problem like the Ace of Spades Fanbase?"
You don't. You ban it.

[Ultrablockstar]

Bull Crap nuff said

[Handles]

"How do you solve a problem like the Ace of Spades Fanbase?"
You don't. You ban it.

That^

[VladVP]

It's a blonde woman who wants to know which toys to buy her child, and from which company.
"P.S. If I made a mistake, please move this post to a proper thread. Thanks."

gg mater trole

[CommieBuffalo]

I remember in another forum we had a "Dumpster" section(called "The Black Hole") where useless threads that didn't warrant deletion were thrown and locked. We could create that section and thus move AnnaChan's posts to the correct section.