Site Complaints and Future of HM

[JacksonCougAr]

Hmm, I disagree JacksonCougar. Take for example the GTA subforum on HaloMods. It would never be able to grow well as a subforum of HaloMods, because GTA fans don't care about Halo modding. As a seperate site, GTA fans would be more inclined to sign up there.

The same goes for off-topic boards: People with no interest in Halo Modding are not going to come here and sign up to talk about their favorite movies. However, they would sign up for a general discussion board site. Growth is actually an argument in favor of doing this. There are disadvantages though, like I described in my previous post. Doing this might keep the community alive, but it would be in a different form. One thing is certain: If we don't do anything, the halomods community will slowly shrink and eventually be gone.

No, you would get a growth in offtopic garbage, and a decline on what is left of the modding communities. Imagine a ballroom with many people in it, most are there to just have fun and dance, but you have a few professional dancers who are showing off and performing in front of the rest, in a grand show of their skill. Now remove the rest of the dancers, they are fine with it because they were just there to socialize and have fun, but the dancers who were dancing for the audience will be left alone with nobody else in the room. With an empty ballroom they will grow bored and eventually find a new ballroom to perform in.

[Aumaan Anubis]

You split the cafe away and you kill the modding boards, its pretty simple. I would strongly suggest against such a rash move. Splitting the non-Halo modding boards makes sense in a way, but at the same time not really. It's better to keep everything in one forum; splitting between subdomains just segregates the community and is not going to result in growth, but instead a death of modding.

Agreed.

The same goes for off-topic boards: People with no interest in Halo Modding are not going to come here and sign up to talk about their favorite movies. However, they would sign up for a general discussion board site.

'General' is the keyword, and probably why it wouldn't work. I see no reason why anyone would sign up for a generic forum, where they would discuss movies, music, and the like.
People will sign up for GTA because it's specific. People sign up for the forum because they want to mod GTA. They have motivation.
I see no real practical motivation to sign up for a generic forum.

Growth is actually an argument in favor of doing this.

The definite death of the modding. The potential gain in members in the Cafe.
Should you separate them, you'll be killing the 'halomods' part in HaloMods.

One thing is certain: If we don't do anything, the halomods community will slowly shrink and eventually be gone.

To be precise, this place is shrinking, and has been shrinking. The board change brought an increase of activity for... I'd say maybe a few weeks, at the most. There is no long term solution to the problem, without drastically converting the entire sit of HaloMods into something else, like GtaMods. And with that solution, you may have an increase in activity, but you'll have lost a bulk of the community that matters.

If the cafe was split, you'd have a lot of people simply stop posting in other boards. I read other boards, and I post occasionally. If the two entities were separate, I would simply stop going to the other boards out of inconvenience.

Yet again, I agree.

[SourceGuy]

well yes, I can see that some users would stop posting in the halomods section and some would stop posting in the cafe out of inconvenience. But if that is the only reason - convenience - is it such a big deal anyways? Like Aumaan said, we need some big changes to fix this and maybe take just accept some of those disadvantages that he and others are describing. It may seem like a big deal, but I think like with all changes, eventually people will get used to it and welcome the pro's of the new situation.

[grimdoomer]

I think that its a big mistake. Your isolating communitys that all have a common interest. Halo. Some people mod multiple games, and as Tural said, people also browes the other sections and cafe. By isolating each section, your isolating each community. It is a pain in the ass to have links to 3-4 different forums that all have the same general purpose. And because some sections such as the Halo 2 Xbox Modding section are a ghost town, people will stop going to it all together. I for one browes the Halo 2 Xbox, Halo 2 Vista, Halo 3, and Halo Wars section the most, and occasionaly will look in the Halo 1/Halo CE sections.

[JacksonCougAr]

The point of the cafe is to be a place to discuss things that are not relevant to modding, and even though the cafe may have the most activity in a posts per day sense, it should never be split away. As soon as you split it you're putting the message out there that offtopic discussion is the aim of the site or forum, not modding. You're putting the focus on the offtopic, not the modding aspect which will destroy Halomods as a modding site. This compounded by the isolation of the modding community, the members who actually do mod the halo games, would lead to all activity on the cafe boards (debatable), and the death of the other less populated/posted-in boards.

[xzodia]

SourceGuy you seem to have forgotten that this is HaloMods...and as such everything that can be done to keep halo modding alive, should be done. And splitting the forums is the exact opposite of that.

[-DeToX-]

I'm with xzodia..

[SpecOp44]

There's no question splitting would kill this website.

[WaeV]

I'm also against the splitting. Focusing on the good idea, however, a wiki would make it easier for new modders to move from which programs to use through how to PMI or whatever. It would also make HM unique again.

[Tural]

The same goes for off-topic boards: People with no interest in Halo Modding are not going to come here and sign up to talk about their favorite movies. However, they would sign up for a general discussion board site.

'General' is the keyword, and probably why it wouldn't work. I see no reason why anyone would sign up for a generic forum, where they would discuss movies, music, and the like.
People will sign up for GTA because it's specific. People sign up for the forum because they want to mod GTA. They have motivation.
I see no real practical motivation to sign up for a generic forum.

This. There is absolutely no reason to sign up to a "Hey, there's no point here, just talk about anything" site. Without purpose, there's no incentive. Leave the cafe boards. You can have a separate GTA board, or other specific boards, but the general discussion boards will simply not work outside of the main site. They need to be left, and moving them will not facilitate growth. You will not have people signing up for a general discussion board any faster than you have them signing up on the Halomods board, if anything, you're going to take away activity, because people who want to do both are having to go between two places to do it, and it's just unnecessary hassle for current members and new members alike. Why would someone joining the site want to go between several different boards to talk about different things, when he could just be in one place? That's going to discourage people more than encourage them. It simply will not work, and I urge you very strongly to not do it, and it appears a lot of people here are in that same boat. Leave the Cafe boards where they are, moving them is only a detriment, it will not cause growth, it will not boost activity, it will diminish both of these. If you never listen to another one of my, or our, suggestions, please just listen to this one. Do not move the cafe boards off of the main Halomods board. It will never do anything to help, it will drive people away. It will. It's not one of these things we can just agree to disagree on, moving the Cafe boards is simply a bad choice for the site and the community. If you move those boards away, you're going to kill a lot of activity on the site. It is a bad, bad design choice for the structure of the site and the purpose of the community. That would be the final nail in the Halomods coffin.

[Trulife8342]

Splitting is a very bad idea.

[kibito87]

Not that i'm complaining or wanting anyone to take this the wrong way but I also think there would be a better influx of people modding (mainly Halo2 i'm guessing) if a new application was made. I'm not talking just any "generic" modding app but a clean proper modding tool that could be used in place for all the other mini tools released and fixes the mistakes made with entity for example.

This is coming from more of a personal stand point and i'm stressing that. I'd be much more willing to work with Halo2 xbox if I knew the tool/tools I was using worked and didn't break my maps nearly half the times current public tools do. I know nobody wants to use a broken tool that gives you a shitty percentage of working. Like I said though, this isn't put out here to urge somebody to build/make a better program. I'm saying that it, in my personal opinion, would definitely help get some traffic here...atleast back in the halo2 xbox sections. Course, proper de-trashed plugins would also be a wonderous help...I know it's in the process*

Also, i'm glad people have given support of the wiki page idea. Thanks to grimdoomer for the original idea. I'd like to see that implementation. So I stress it again. Not be nagging or pushy.

I do have a very small hope that my words here are taken to heart...maybe even to provoke somebody to release a nice clean proper tool to mod Halo2 with. I don't expect anything but there is no harm done by stating it. Please, show me your thoughts on this. No flaming or getting nasty about it though, just civil conversation about it. Thanks.

[JacksonCougAr]

There are several projects under way in terms of new modding applications but none of them are really up to even the entity stage yet, we do not have the time or resources to devote full-time towards working on the code behind the applications. I personally have been working alongside of some other talented programmers to create a .DLL for use in creating your own modding applications. It is fairly well progressed but there are some important modules missing from it that prevent me from releasing it, or the apps created with it.

[JacksonCougAr]

Too many

[SourceGuy]

It's clear what the general opinion on splitting off the off-topic boards is, so that's not going to happen.
How about trying to focus more on the 'other modding' boards that we have. Activity there hasn't been great. Perhaps we could get the HaloMods users to pick up a new challenge, such as modding Crysis or GTA, if they got the right stimulation. Any ideas to get that going? This could all go together with trying to stimulate Halo modding via for example that wiki.

[Geo]

Not that i'm complaining or wanting anyone to take this the wrong way but I also think there would be a better influx of people modding (mainly Halo2 i'm guessing) if a new application was made. I'm not talking just any "generic" modding app but a clean proper modding tool that could be used in place for all the other mini tools released and fixes the mistakes made with entity for example.

This is coming from more of a personal stand point and i'm stressing that. I'd be much more willing to work with Halo2 xbox if I knew the tool/tools I was using worked and didn't break my maps nearly half the times current public tools do. I know nobody wants to use a broken tool that gives you a *** percentage of working. Like I said though, this isn't put out here to urge somebody to build/make a better program. I'm saying that it, in my personal opinion, would definitely help get some traffic here...atleast back in the halo2 xbox sections. Course, proper de-trashed plugins would also be a wonderous help...I know it's in the process*

Also, i'm glad people have given support of the wiki page idea. Thanks to grimdoomer for the original idea. I'd like to see that implementation. So I stress it again. Not be nagging or pushy.

I do have a very small hope that my words here are taken to heart...maybe even to provoke somebody to release a nice clean proper tool to mod Halo2 with. I don't expect anything but there is no harm done by stating it. Please, show me your thoughts on this. No flaming or getting nasty about it though, just civil conversation about it. Thanks.

This. I stopped modding because it became too tedious. I know it was a lot harder back in the days before apps were made, but whatever. Entity pretty much made me leave modding. Too many errors and bricked maps.

[Tural]

Interestingly enough, my cessation of modding and interest also came around the time of Dark Matter and Entity.

[INSANEdrive]

In blunt In Blue BOLD
I learned of this place from word of mouth, when I joined a server...and saw a flying warthog. How are you doing that?... I asked
Halomods.com...it replied. I doubt that happens much anymore.

This is the main problem. We at the core...are Halomodders. In Halo 2 people used modding in nefarious ways. The people Screamed ENOUGH!...and in their infinite grace Bungle listened, and with their mighty hand they raised from the chaos and with a mighty Hammer of the 7, and they toiled with there ever glistening brow and in there ever triumphant efforts created...Halo 3.

The Bad modders screamed NO! Mercy MERCY!...but they were given none due to their transgressions.

The only problem was...that the good modders suffered as well, but it had to be this way for it was all or nothing.

...and so the dust settled only into silence.
But does it have to be this way?

This is the problem...we (and even I) are focused on the name "HALOmods". We have talked about this time and time again. To look at this from a Business standpoint we need to expand the reach of our modding prowess. The "Halo Modding" Well has currently all but dried up and is at a standstill (though I would love to be proven wrong in this standpoint)…and ONLY Bungie or perhaps a Future Halo Project can re-fill it. We could ask…have we? I mean… I imagine it would be pretty futile but desperate times. . .

Where is the Excitement? Remember when we were taking Single player levels and making them into multiplayer levels…Oh My that was AWESOME! THAT was Exciting…there were possibilities.
I think this forum should look into Modding Source or some other equally "modifiable to the fullest" engine…we Expand. We give reason for people to bother coming here instead of here
Not forget our roots… and if the time comes that a glimmer of Hope for modding Halo comes again…we will be there as a community, ready…willing… and waiting to feast upon the marrow.

[JK-47]

I wouldn't mind a source modding board.

[SourceGuy]

We already have a subsection for the Source engine, but activity in there is minimal. Same goes for the other 'new' subsections. How can we boost activity there?