Conquer Club

Dear Readers,
I want some answers, the gradual then rapid decline in the fortunes of CC speaks to a deep and dark underlying problem. After a few too many beverage inspired thoughts I've concluded that CC is felching itself, sucking the vitality out by punitive measures, failure to innovate, and a focus on over moderation rather than innovation. I've spent 15yrs on this site, and have watched the decline.
A few points
- cracking down on players who can play but have personal tics, flair and character.
- Deceptive and cheap tactics with auto-renew of membership
- Useless star system that contributes nothing to players except for spam
- No recognition of loyalty
- A stupid and slow support ticket system
- A deliberately stupid approach to playing on mobiles. Seriously how hard is it to make this playable on android and ios?

Pretty much why are the powers that be content to oversee and enable the decline rather than rail against the fading of the light. Why have team CC given up?

so silence before the lock eh?

I don't have an answer, but I can give you a date: Jan 12, 2016

The current owner made about 1500 posts from Aug 2013 to that date. He's made 5 posts in the 8 years since.
There were 252 maps released before that date, 3 after. (and two of those are still in beta)
When was the last improvement to the site?
When was the last mapmaking feature added?
When was the last newsletter?

It doesn't appear that the owner gives a f*ck about the site other than as passive income, so why should anyone else?

BoganGod wrote:so silence before the lock eh?

All the questions you have raised have been debated to death in another nearby thread.

There's really nothing to say about them that hasn't already been said.

Feel free to check the "declining" thread for full expositions on all these theories, and many more!

The only new thing you've added is this strange metaphor, which connects directly to your obsession with eliminative functions. Which I suppose may say something unpleasant about you, but I won't belabor it.

Dukasaur wrote:

BoganGod wrote:so silence before the lock eh?

All the questions you have raised have been debated to death in another nearby thread.

There's really nothing to say about them that hasn't already been said.

Feel free to check the "declining" thread for full expositions on all these theories, and many more!

The only new thing you've added is this strange metaphor, which connects directly to your obsession with eliminative functions. Which I suppose may say something unpleasant about you, but I won't belabor it.

So the debate has been settled and the conclusion oh nobel sage is what?

BoganGod wrote:So the debate has been settled and the conclusion oh nobel sage is what?

- cracking down on players who can play but have personal tics, flair and character.
An allegation that has often been made but doesn't stand up to scrutiny. For every person whom I have ever heard to complain that there's too much censorship on the site and we're driving away freethinkers, there's another person who has complained that there's not enough censorship on the site and we're driving away people who are looking for a clean, family-friendly environment. I've been a mod here a long, long time; I've heard a lot of complaints on both sides, and while I've never kept a formal accounting I'm pretty sure it's almost exactly 50/50. We're almost exactly in the middle-of-the-road between those who would like less moderation and those who would like more moderation. That tells me we're doing a good job of staying balanced.

- Deceptive and cheap tactics with auto-renew of membership
These did piss off a lot of people. However, in response to complaints the owner did clean up the wording to make it more obvious that these are annual subscriptions, and now that almost all gaming sites do it this way, there shouldn't be too many more who get caught off guard by it.

- Useless star system that contributes nothing to players except for spam
The star system isn't useless, although it hasn't been brought to its full potential. It's the general currency for creating autotournaments.

- No recognition of loyalty
True enough.

- A stupid and slow support ticket system
I can't speak to this. It doesn't seem stupid or slow to me, but I don't have enough experience with it to talk much. As far as I know KA answers all tickets within 24 hours except on weekends. How much faster do you think it should be?

- A deliberately stupid approach to playing on mobiles. Seriously how hard is it to make this playable on android and ios?
Not being a techie, I really don't know how hard it would be. All I can say is that three different people have tried to make a workable mobile app for CC, and all have failed. This seems to me like presumptive evidence that it's not as easy as it sounds. For one thing, CC maps are a lot larger than a phone screen. In order to zoom smoothly from a full map view to a meaningfully zoomed view to they would all have to be converted from their current PNG graphics to SVG graphics, and I think this would pretty much mean going back to the drawing board on all of them. Nobody has the time for that. Most of the original mapmakers are long gone. You'd pretty much have to recruit a whole new generation of artists.

I came back after many years. Even bought premium because let's face it, the $31 annual price is nothing for the amount of gaming you can play.

Some observations:
1) The app is totally useless. If CC wants to grow that should be a top priority.
2) Surprisingly, most of the BETA maps when I took time off are still BETA. No idea why it would need to be that way.
3) Most of the organization and functionality is exactly the same. Not that it doesn't work fine. I just thought things would change a bit.
4) People here are generally nicer than ever before. It's really great to be around such positive. friendly people.
5) As always, my dice (and only my dice) suck.
6) I don't know what felching means.

just want to register my thanks for this thread in reminding me of a word I used to use a lot and loved a decade or 2 ago.

timmy1 wrote:I came back after many years. Even bought premium because let's face it, the $31 annual price is nothing for the amount of gaming you can play.

Some observations:
6) I don't know what felching means.

Hooch wrote:

timmy1 wrote:I came back after many years. Even bought premium because let's face it, the $31 annual price is nothing for the amount of gaming you can play.

Some observations:
6) I don't know what felching means.

There will be an equal amount of people on this site willing to help you on that as there is who would not.

Now...let´s talk blumpkins

And jabroni’s

Who owns this site and how much to buy it?

degaston wrote:I don't have an answer, but I can give you a date: Jan 12, 2016

The current owner made about 1500 posts from Aug 2013 to that date. He's made 5 posts in the 8 years since.
There were 252 maps released before that date, 3 after. (and two of those are still in beta)
When was the last improvement to the site?
When was the last mapmaking feature added?
When was the last newsletter?

It doesn't appear that the owner gives a f*ck about the site other than as passive income, so why should anyone else?

Stop paying.

Que?

treeskier wrote:

degaston wrote:I don't have an answer, but I can give you a date: Jan 12, 2016

The current owner made about 1500 posts from Aug 2013 to that date. He's made 5 posts in the 8 years since.
There were 252 maps released before that date, 3 after. (and two of those are still in beta)
When was the last improvement to the site?
When was the last mapmaking feature added?
When was the last newsletter?

It doesn't appear that the owner gives a f*ck about the site other than as passive income, so why should anyone else?

Stop paying.

If you wanna join the convo why don’t you use your regular account

Bogan is on the money with his list. Wham has given us the short end of the stick.

Kings ticketing system sucks, a lot
No loyalty, no development.
Just crappy arguments to justify why something that should be and can be done won't be done.
Customer treatment is very bad, very
No tech upgrades which are desperately needed if only for some player retention are ignored.

Frankly, my dear points to the solution.
Wham must do the right thing and sell CC to someone with vision.
There is still something to save.

Nucker wrote:Bogan is on the money with his list. Wham has given us the short end of the stick.

Kings ticketing system sucks, a lot
No loyalty, no development.
Just crappy arguments to justify why something that should be and can be done won't be done.
Customer treatment is very bad, very
No tech upgrades which are desperately needed if only for some player retention are ignored.

Frankly, my dear points to the solution.
Wham must do the right thing and sell CC to someone with vision.
There is still something to save.

Quite a few valid points here.

most of CC members: "There's a ton of functionality issues and we can't play on our phones. Plus, you have this suggestion forum but it doesn't seem to matter how simple or enthusiastically supported any suggestions are. They just get ignored. Any chance you might do something to improve the customer experience?"
CC: "Tell you what, how 'bout we just crack down on deadbeating in speed games."
most of CC members: "Um, that's great I guess. But that's really like item #38 on our list."
CC: ...

timmy1 wrote:2) Surprisingly, most of the BETA maps when I took time off are still BETA. No idea why it would need to be that way.

Well this one I do have an answer for.

The "beta" maps are not actually beta, they're just kept there so that people can get the beta map medal. There haven't been any new maps in a very long time, and it's probably because there are so many already. (They probably should have retired some of the older uglier basic maps and let people create new ones of those.) It's hard to come up with something new and interesting when it's probably already been done, just with different graphics. People lost their passion for it. And some people weren't very nice to potential map makers either on many occasions.

The problem is not mainly about “keeping Beta map” for the medal, but because the map team don’t have enough movement since years, lots of people came in the last few years and with new map but the CC support is bare to none, you can’t ask one person to oversee this area by himself.

viewforum.php?f=10

The other reason if CC and map team are more oriented to “scenario” which honestly doesn’t really attract people…no points involved but you really get boring quick with scenario…New map will undoubtedly bring members’ curiosity playing more, refreshing the map pool can’t hurt…

Mad, I asked that question a long time ago because I quit the site for a while and came back to see the same maps there. I was told that they needed to keep some maps in "Beta" because of the medal.

Sure, the underlying issue is that there are no new maps being made. And I can tell you, part of the reason was some of the snotty people who frequented that forum. They couldn't be nice and steer creators in the right direction. If people shoot your ideas down in a not nice way, you are less likely to come back with another idea. Some have a thicker skin and take harsh critique, others not so much. Critique is completely fine, so long as it's constructive. If one can't be constructive, then they shouldn't be giving critiques. Maybe it would be different now, there are less of those people around.

I'm a graphic designer professionally. I absolutely COULD create maps, but I had no motivation to do so because of how people behaved in that section.

Shannon Apple wrote:

timmy1 wrote:2) Surprisingly, most of the BETA maps when I took time off are still BETA. No idea why it would need to be that way.

Well this one I do have an answer for.

The "beta" maps are not actually beta, they're just kept there so that people can get the beta map medal. There haven't been any new maps in a very long time, and it's probably because there are so many already. (They probably should have retired some of the older uglier basic maps and let people create new ones of those.) It's hard to come up with something new and interesting when it's probably already been done, just with different graphics. People lost their passion for it. And some people weren't very nice to potential map makers either on many occasions.

Out of curiosity, do you happen to have a source for this claim? For example, a link to a topic where this was discussed? Because my queries in the Beta map forum have been met with a wall of silence for about half a year now, and the lack of movement really discourages the creation of new maps. If this really is a chicken and egg story, then it might be possible to find a group of people to breathe some new life into the foundry. But if the actual problem is that the owner needs to give the final ok, and the owner simply doesn't do anything, then such an attempted would be a tremendous amount of wasted effort.

Unfortunately, no. I've been a member of Team CC for something like 10 years, but took a couple breaks in between because of real life stuff. When I came back after the last hiatus, that's what I was told. I talk to other TeamCC people on chat apps. Made sense to me. Maybe if they read this they can confirm.

I'm honestly not sure what the final process is with new maps, but I'm sure that the owner has to upload.

That's unfortunate. Still, thank you for your reply. Any information is better then none.