Is CFC forums' overall activity dying?

[hobbsyoyo]

Overall I'd say it's slowly dying. The point of no return isn't when it hits zero posters; it's when things get so quiet it isn't worth coming back, starting a chain reaction of posters ceasing to post. I don't know what the tipping point is, exactly, but we're not far from it.

I think the chain reaction of people leaving kicks off when the pool of posters has shrunken to an extent that individual personalities tend to dominate. Who would want to participate in a forum where there are 10 people posting and one of them is me just space-spamming the everloving crap out of every thread? Once you reach that point, everyone bails.

I think that fewer civ players move on to the next civ game than happens with game series which try to keep more elements from the previous title (eg Europa Universalis).
I haven't played any civ game after civIII (played I & II before).

I do not understand how people can think, 'well I don't like the last 3 Civilizations, so the series must be failing' despite the overwhelming and ongoing sales success of the franchise.

 

[Kyriakos]

I think the chain reaction of people leaving kicks off when the pool of posters has shrunken to an extent that individual personalities tend to dominate. Who would want to participate in a forum where there are 10 people posting and one of them is me just space-spamming the everloving crap out of every thread? Once you reach that point, everyone bails.

I do not understand how people can think, 'well I don't like the last 3 Civilizations, so the series must be failing' despite the overwhelming and ongoing sales success of the franchise.

I am just noting that movement seems to be less from previous versions to new versions. That doesn't mean much regarding sales, since the new players can more than just make up for that.

 

[Hamid.H]

the problem with the civ series is the developers tend to "re-invent the wheel" to some degree from version to version instead of building upon what was already successful.

i personally prefer civ 4. it has its flaws but i think the overall game design is superior to the newer versions.

 

[Lohrenswald]

the problem with the civ series is the developers tend to "re-invent the wheel" to some degree from version to version instead of building upon what was already successful.

i personally prefer civ 4. it has its flaws but i think the overall game design is superior to the newer versions.

I think it's actually a major reason for the continued success over like 30 years

 

[Catharsis]

Who would want to participate in a forum where there are 10 people posting and one of them is me just space-spamming the everloving crap out of every thread?

I am sure everyone here would participate in a forum of ten Hobbses screaming "I LOVE SPACE" at each other. Just the Like totals alone would make it worthwhile.

 

[Narz]

Despite reduced activity its pretty amazing to think this "place" has been around 20 years and remained as active as it's been with all the new options for discussions and attention (Facebook, reddit, Instagram, Twitter, even YouTube didn't exist back then)

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I am changing my answer to "not fast enough."

I note that the link to the website cash value estimator that Commodore posted has disappeared.

Wonder why.

 

[emzie]

Reddit does it better. While there's charm in a community of familiar names, the more anonymous the format, the more likely I am to actually opine.

 

[Oerdin]

Sadly, social media seems to be killing off forums or at least the younger users tend to prefer it to forums. Even the official game forums tend to get the few younger users but they are often highly censored (companies don’t like people bad talking their new product as that harms sales) so independent fan forums really do serve a useful purpose.

 

[Phrossack]

Reddit has a lot of advantages. It's livelier, with lots of various subforums, lots of threads, lots of users, and lots of posts. There are dark sides to it like brigading, karma farming, and so on, but at least there's discussion. The anonymity leads to a lack of a close knit atmosphere, but then because of the way things are laid out in threads, there are fewer ways for problem posters to poison the well.

 

[Kyriakos]

Karma farming only makes sense if you plan to post in massive subreddits, and those have very austere rules or are about very basic things (such as pic-posting).

I have something like 2,5K karma, which is nothing (being on reddit for two years), and this is because I mostly post in smaller subreddits. You won't get thousands of likes in the Kafka or Borges subreddit, I can tell you that

I have even deleted posts of mine which were karma farming, since ultimately they were of no value. If you are on the right subreddit you can post a pic and get more than my entire karma in a few hours.

 

[Reconciliator]

Reddit provides a much more satisfactory feedback loop. Sitting on over 100k link and comment karma was gratifying and filled the void this place left.

 

[Kyriakos]

Reddit provides a much more satisfactory feedback loop. Sitting on over 100k link and comment karma was gratifying and filled the void this place left.

100K is nothing out of the usual either, though. Some people have millions of karma
Not that I think karma itself helps with anything on Reddit. Some subreddits require one to have "high karma" so as to post (or at least start a thread), but by that they mean just a thousand or similar, so this isn't anything difficult to get.

 

[Reconciliator]

Oh of course. Many accounts manage literally millions within weeks of being created.

 

[tjs282]

I do not understand how people can think, 'well I don't like the last 3 Civilizations, so the series must be failing' despite the overwhelming and ongoing sales success of the franchise.

I'm gonna weigh in to also agree that while new Civ-games are still selling well, they're not necessarily bringing new players to CFC(OT) as much as they used to.

I haven't been here as long as some of you (only ~11 years!), but it was noticeable that shortly after both Civ5 and CivBE came out (2010 and 2014, respectively), we also got several new posters popping up in the Civ3 forum (and I assume similar numbers showed up in the Civ4 forum as well); these people having bought the new game(s), then gone back to also buy one or more of the earlier iterations, whether on CD, or via a download-portal like GamersGate.

But now that Civs 3 + 4 are also available through Steam and GOG (since 2017 or so, IIRC?), I'm guessing that while similar numbers are probably still buying the earlier versions (when Civ3 is often on sale for as little as 1.25 LocalCurrencyUnits, why wouldn't anyone buy it?), these 'potential' CFC-ers might now be staying in the Steam and GOG subforums for those games, instead of coming here.

(Even though CFC is generally a much better source of advice/discussion, from what I've seen of the GOG Civ3 forum [I don't use Steam]: if I did start participating there, even at my level of Civ3 'expertise', I would swiftly become Like Unto A Living GOD SO WORSHIP ME, MORTALS!!!)

Hmmm... What am I doing still here? Have a nice life, y'all...