Pessimism is in the air, can you smell it?

[_Pipeline]

Already said this on the Facebook group, but I'll dump it here too because why not.

--

I don't want the original foundations of this community to just disappear, but they've already accumulated too much dust and corrosion. I've always felt that we're too small to need more than one server, and the consistently low traffic these past two years pretty much proves it.

The forums are on permanent life support, the community oldfags are almost all completely gone, the steam group is serving no purpose whatsoever, nobody new has joined or had any interest whatsoever in this archaic community since 2012, and perhaps as little as 50 or 60 of the at one point hundreds of our active members will still say that they consider cC their primary online community of affiliation.

The mainserver's gone for good, and what with its almost complete lack of importance except to cater to brief, random, and largely symbolic get-togethers, I definitely wouldn't blame Captain for shutting it down. To make an allegory relatively few people would care to look into or understand, it's like we've suddenly collapsed all at once, like the Hittites and other ancient Near Eastern civilizations at the cataclysmic end of the bronze age; then, just as they did, we've already begun to splinter off and cluster into smaller cliques and groups from among our former members in a state of general aimlessness.

I don't see what we can possibly do anymore to improve this community's derelict and apathetic state when most of its original members have already moved on and left.

TF2 isn't the only, let alone primary common ground for cC anymore; for me, this was already becoming apparent as far back as early 2013. We agreed that we'd all have to just start being more inventive and branch out, and fading interest in TF2 as a whole has hardly been our biggest problem, nor does it have to be; but even if you take TF2 completely out of the picture, there really hasn't been any recovery in member activity, and with every passing day it feels like cC literally exists less and less. We've got a few Skype groups dedicated to things like Minecraft and small group game sessions, and there's also the Plug.dj group I run, but there's almost no activity whatsoever anywhere else.

Forums? Dead.

Chatbox? Dead.

Servers? Dead.

cC died almost two years ago. Or at least it would have if some of the most stubborn diehards among us had simply allowed it to. There's no cohesion or sense of uniformity at all. Once the last of the people here who organize events and spam people with invites to shit disappear, or become inactive, all of this community's formal outlets will fall silent for good and cC will just plain cease to exist.

Those of us who are still active should consider re-forming or assembling in one place and starting over from scratch. Forcing a decrepit, broken machine to continue running as-is can only get you so far, and it's not like literally anything else we've tried has yielded results.

[HybridPuppy]

There's not much I can add here other than "Yes, I agree."
I think it's sad cC is dying. There's a lot of good memories I have from that place, and a part of me wishes I could make more.
Yet, there's only so much we can do anymore. The community has been slowly dying, for a long, long time. I think even before 2012. But we were too stubborn.
I'd love to get together and start anew with you guys. I'll always have a place in my heart for cC, but I think it's time to let go.

[Burnerman]

I havent been around long enough too see the 'ye oldefage age', only long enough to see Cc die to death from everyone going of to play lel or dota, I don't see how exactly starting from scratch would work but i'd be on board for it if something comes up.

Haunwulf: Let's make this place a world of tanks community

[EveOfTheApocalypse]

havent been on the sever much since 2012 but its really sad to see this happen
had alot of fun memories in here
it was a good one ;-;

[_Pipeline]

havent been on the sever much since 2012 but its really sad to see this happen
had alot of fun memories in here
it was a good one ;-;

There at least seems to be a general consensus that cC has been breaking its all-time records for length and severity of inactivity over and over again. Patterns any idiot could observe would show that this indicates that the size and scope of the community as a whole are in decline.

It may be too harsh, pessimistic, and bitchy of me to say everything is done for, and that everyone who's still here should just leave. That has virtually always been the last thing I'd want to happen to a group like cC, which has dominated most of my attention, interests, efforts, and social zeal on the internet for the past 4 years.

One of the things I am saying is that, if cC does not start to actually grow and do something to catch the attention of more people, both new and old, then it won't be possible for it do literally anything but steadily shrink into obscurity over time, as it is now. Virtually all of the oldfag high admins who actually are in positions of authority over the group can no longer be bothered, for various reasons, to take time out of their lives to run or retain all but the vaguest connections to this community.

Everything's just too quiet and past its prime to continue as-is without a newer generation of interested players and members to keep it afloat. I know this place has literally always been notorious for going through prolonged periods of inactivity accompanied by complaints about said inactivity, but it's just impossible for me to keep pretending that in these past two years, such a level of quiet has not been sliding in the direction of permanence. In particular, this past summer was a milestone in such a process, being the first I've ever witnessed during which virtually all fronts of activity, including the TF2 servers, did not show any kind of uptick in traffic or use when compared to the summer of 2013 (itself a milestone for its time), and every other summer before that.

You can either ignore or openly refuse to acknowledge that there's some sort of consistent and slowly worsening problem in cC's membership and activity levels, but you really can't deny anymore that, at the end of the day, a problem of this kind does, in fact, exist and is working its devices with every passing month.

Simply asking Captain to come out of obscurity and change a few things isn't going to help with this. If we're still interested in keeping this community alive in the long run, we have to figure out how to stop this pattern of decline and dereliction by our own collective efforts.

[katattackk]

i think a lot of it, i brought up. like yeah we need new shit and we need ways to revamp, but like this shit wont happen unless we make it happen. we cant bring in new until we can recruit some of the old/current to help and a lot of people dont want to help. i think i said it like three times last week to make an event for the server and ill approve it so people can see it and we can get a party going and no one wanted to do it so i got mad and did it despite knowing i had to be at work all weekend. and it took me expressing my frustration several times to even get people to volunteer for the simple task of spamming invites since i would be at work all night. im really frustrated with the lack of help from people since a lot of them seem to want to point out that its quiet and empty, and then not help when it comes down to picking it back up, even just for a weekend. im really mad that the huge remodel/refresh we were supposed to have got half-assed because i put a lot of time and thinking into it so that it wouldnt fail, and it got handed off and kind of improperly handled and now its not even a thing anymore. i wont hold this server up forever guys. its not fair. ive been really lucky to have a few people helping me out lately with generating ideas, but like me, theyre frustrated because it just ends up being too much work for so few people, and it ends up being completely unappreciated. like no i dont expect you guys to kiss my ass for making events all the time and trying but shit a thanks every once in a while would be pretty fuckin rad. i know its hard for people to like. suggest ideas, and help out because this is a hard problem to solve, but like id rather you guys speak up and give me bad ideas and suggestions and offer help for shit things, then sit silent and just keep saying its dead and gone.

[HybridPuppy]

i think a lot of it, i brought up. like yeah we need new shit and we need ways to revamp, but like this shit wont happen unless we make it happen. we cant bring in new until we can recruit some of the old/current to help and a lot of people dont want to help. i think i said it like three times last week to make an event for the server and ill approve it so people can see it and we can get a party going and no one wanted to do it so i got mad and did it despite knowing i had to be at work all weekend. and it took me expressing my frustration several times to even get people to volunteer for the simple task of spamming invites since i would be at work all night. im really frustrated with the lack of help from people since a lot of them seem to want to point out that its quiet and empty, and then not help when it comes down to picking it back up, even just for a weekend. im really mad that the huge remodel/refresh we were supposed to have got half-assed because i put a lot of time and thinking into it so that it wouldnt fail, and it got handed off and kind of improperly handled and now its not even a thing anymore. i wont hold this server up forever guys. its not fair. ive been really lucky to have a few people helping me out lately with generating ideas, but like me, theyre frustrated because it just ends up being too much work for so few people, and it ends up being completely unappreciated. like no i dont expect you guys to kiss my ass for making events all the time and trying but shit a thanks every once in a while would be pretty fuckin rad. i know its hard for people to like. suggest ideas, and help out because this is a hard problem to solve, but like id rather you guys speak up and give me bad ideas and suggestions and offer help for shit things, then sit silent and just keep saying its dead and gone.

I can understand your frustration. It reminds me of when the Mainserver was always at 0 while the Funserver was full, and even though there were oldies who liked to play on the Mainserver they wouldn't come over because it wasn't populated, but it would never get populated because there was only 1 or 2 guys there.
I do wish I could help, but unfortunately my computer has kind of broken down, and is unable to even play TF2. Besides that I no longer have many CCers on my FL, so I wouldn't really be inviting many people.
But that's not really the point. I'm sorry that you've tried so hard and gotten so little results, and well, thank you.

[Fireproof]

I only lurk once every couple of months, but I would be interested in a remake, not a rebuilding.

[Burnerman]

Im more intrested in purging these bots

even if they are the only ones here

[MrKerplunkers]

I only lurk once every couple of months, but I would be interested in a remake, not a rebuilding.

I'm kinda down with this. Maybe the hype behind a new forum would bring people here.

It's not because I don't feel like clearing all these spambots.

Nope.

That's not it.

[FlaminSarge]

I made a goddamn entire new gamemode and it doesn't involve grappling hooks, and nobody's on to play it or generate interest in it. No other community will have it if people help out with getting it here, but nobody's helping.

...
*rant*

[_Pipeline]

Maybe if we gave the forums a larger role in shit both TF2-related and not-TF2-related. Even though there isn't any real potential or currently existing niche a revived forum could fill that isn't already completely filled by Facebook and the massively balkanized collection of independently functioning Skype groups.

[FlaminSarge]

Facebook group needs to be made visible without login if it's going to serve as a center of communication.