Dome wrote:QUOTE (Dome @ May 5 2011, 11:27 AM) It's still enough for decent sized squad games most of the time imo.
I'm sure squad games will keep going for a very long time to come, but I want to see pick-up games survive as well. I think there are certainly times every day when numbers climb above 10 v 10, though usually not during the times I can play, but, well, the vast majority of the time it is indeed 10 v 10 or less. I've gotten so used to small games that I've started to think it's a big game whenever I see anything more than 5 v 5. "Wow, it's actually big enough to even count on the board! Amazing!"
And thing is, I see new players all the time. And they're not driven out of the community or anything: everyone is generally fairly helpful to them. It's this downward spiral where they see few people on, and decide not to stick around. I try to tell them that there are more players online at different hours, or during the week-ends, but, eh.
Yes, "something drastic" would be great, but I, for one, have no idea what this "something drastic" should really be. More aggressive advertising is the only thing that comes to my mind: that way, even if only a small fraction of new players stay, this number may still go up enough to somewhat slow the decline. I still wonder why we've never gotten around to putting up banner ads and the like. I seem to recall there was some discussion about it, but nothing came of it. I know I'd donate to a fund to pay for them, and I'm sure many others would as well, and there are some awesome artists in this community.
(And before anyone mentions it, no, I don't think there would be any legal problem with such advertising. IIRC, Microsoft's intellectual property policy does allow the use of in-game content for such purposes; since we wouldn't be advertising an actual product to sell or anything, or otherwise making money off of this in any way, I don't think any legal issues would come into play).
