OFP: reports of death exaggerated

[macguba]

In an idle moment I was looking back through the forum statistics.    In March OFPEC had 182 new topics and a total of 1551 posts.    Which isn't very interesting until you notice that two years ago, in March 03, the figures were 199 and 1399 respectively.    In other words, about the same.  

And that's not just a blip.  In January the figures were 191 and 1390.     It is true that the six month moving averages do show - as you would expect - a very slow dropoff in activity but after a quiet autumn (what games came out in about September last year?) interest is picking up again.   The long term appeal of OFP is powerful and undiminished - we're still picking up new members at a rate of two a day.

To put these dates in context OFP appeared in summer 01 and this version of OFPEC (there were several previous incarnations) in summer 02.    The big drop in the size of community came in February 03 when the game was about 18 months old.

[Acecombat]

Interesting read , you got a statistics on mission release per year as well? Would be interesting to know if were indeed slowing down from MM(mission making) and moving more in to the AM (addon making) trend.

[dmakatra]

Hmmm... Interesting. But Macca, you should know better! What has OFP being not dead having to do with OFPEC?

 

I haven't asked a mission editing question in ages... I wonder who has replaced all my n00b topics?

:beat: *Gets Shot* :beat:

[macguba]

@Acecombat - you can sort missions in the MD by release date so you can get an idea.    It's not great data since the release rate depends on how active the reviewers were at the time, which has come and gone a bit over the years, but its better than nothing.  

For single player missions:-

first 100                  April 02 - 9 months (from game release)
second 100            Oct 02 - 7 months
third 100                Aug 03 - 10 months
fourth 100              Sep 04 - 13 months
last 90 odd             to present - 6 months

The review rate has picked up over the last few months, as we have caught up on the backlog.    The standard is also much higher now, which means it takes longer to make a mission.    This isn't particularly well reflected in the scores as scoring standards have drifted up in line with standards.   In other words the data is hard to interpret but one thing you can say is that mission making is alive and well.   This is supported by the level of activity on the beta testing board, which is the busiest it has ever been.


@Armsty
? not (OFP==OFPEC) : macguba action ["eat", hat1]

[Tyger]

? mac_eat_hat: Tyger action ["laugh",tyger]

We also have had some new reviewers and such, which has *helped* a bit.

[Morglor9]

@dmakatra: i've replaced all your noob topics. me and all the other new mission designers who are set to start releasing missions fueled by our new creative energy.

OFP mission making is still going strong. i haven't even released a mission, and have only been actually editing for about a year, but i am beginning to see people that ask what i consider "noob" questions (some are asked out of genuine interest, some out of being to lazy to read some tutorials). i must say that it is good to see that my favourite game is still almost as strong as when it was released.

[junkie-xL]

it needs to be taken into account that there have been longer stretches of OFPEC-downtime during the periods you mention

(I can think of two very long ones that were necessary to rebuild the immense server farm that must be hiding behind this page :-)

so the figures need to be handled with care. But you got me onto these forums again after quite a long absence ..

[macguba]

junkie-xL you're absolutely right the figures do need to handled with care: the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune affect them far too much for detailed conclusions to be drawn.   But I think the general point is clear.

And its good to have you back!  :thumbsup:

[Wolfsbane]

Time muddles the mind, but I'm pretty sure that this version of OFPEC was created in 2003. I can't get access to the complete stats, and I can't view all my Post History, it keeps crashing, but if I did, I'd be able to give you the exact date. Plus I'm not at home, so I can't access my logs for what was done and when.

The site was taken down for what must have been a good six months I believe? During this time, it was moved to a private server that resided with HuBBa, and it was then that we had a major peak in the Forum, because naturally, people had to re-register.

Myself and Noon observed the Forum stats quite closely, with Noon taking it to the point of perversion with a 2.4mg Excel file, showing in graph, the rise and decline of posting.

We thought it was getting dangerously low at one point, but as Macguba points out, it's steady to middling, and nothing really has changed. The game provides such a stable balance of realism, people just keep coming back!!

The biggest hiccup was when we lost our original domain and had to move to OFPEC.com. We'd always planned that move, and we had both domains running at the same time, unfortunately, things went hairy muff and before we could make a major post stating that the domain was changing permanently, overnight, it got switched off, as it were. We lost nearly everyone to that change. Took a lot of dedicated people a lot of posting to get people back to the new domain.

So OFPEC has in many ways, resembled the     , with a strong rise, a steady growth, then decline, and then rise, and so on, so forth. We've gone through several 'patches', and we've technically moved onto OFPEC2 with regards to this current system, because compared to the original ASP design, this is far superior and fluent, heck, I remember when we first took over the Missions Depot from.. Uhg.... Someone who's name I can't remember... Karl, that was it... We brought it on board, and every review was put on the site by handwritten HTML!!! Shocking compared to what we have now, through which we have to thank that Ninja of a man, Backoff, and many other guys.

OFPEC is bigger and better than ever before, and OFP is still as strong as every, beating down the opposition with its realism, definition and customisation.

Together, they are, the daddies.

ROARGHHH!!!

[dmakatra]

OFPEC was in .asp originally? :wow:

I think the remake was made like mid-2002, not 2003.

Date Registered:  September 25, 2002, 08:40:15 PM

And the new forum was rather new at that point, I think.

:beat: *Gets Shot* :beat:

[macguba]

The refit was longer ago than you think big man.     It really was mid 2002:  from about June to September.       The old forum was completely lost, which you may remember caused some debate at the time, so the start of this one was the refit date.

The figures have fallen off the bottom of the stats page now but registrations in July 02 were about 3.  One of them was probably you.    ;D

Edit:  nope, you were June 23, 2002, 01:06:58 PM.

[Wolfsbane]

Edit:  nope, you were June 23, 2002, 01:06:58 PM.

Time muddles the mind.

You're right, I still can't forget the abuse we recieved for the Forum going walkies. The amount of information lost was, quite frankly, obscene.
Still, we've made a good recovery, and the 'new' Forum is far superior in every way, shape and form!!

Keep up the good work guys.

*Wipes a tear from his peen head*