Today, I write you here a quite long message (thanks for taking a minute or two to read it) to ask you if you would be interested in planning something to re-launch the attractiveness of RSF (I do not use the sentence to save RSF, to not scare you). I propose you my blabla today with the agreement of Buhmann and Lesossies.
I was not so active during the past months, but every time I was coming back to play, I was noticing that the number of players who are active and amibitious are reduced. Of course, many ''old'' players are still there, but I see less and less young wolves ready to reach the summit and actively fighting for it.
One of the main consequence is that players are today playing in smaller groups (the time groups were split in 2 is far away) and often against the same players (it sounds like a small village now, everybody knows everything about everybody).
I see now less and less crazy chat boxes with long conversations in it. I see less newbies asking for help and advices (but also less deaf ones just killing the race..).
I see more older players playing like machine and somehow loosing a bit faith in it ..
What brought RSF to this situation ?
I have some ideas, but of course, you should add yours and help us to identify all the problems that can be fixed, all the bad things that could be turned into something better ...
- It's understandable to see some ''old'' players disappear for personal reasons (not everybody can spend 2hours a day on a game, even if it's our beloved RSF !), and maybe some problems that takes time to be fixed (old bugs, sprint system ... Buhmann can not be full time working on RSF unfortunately) are not helping it ...
- Is RSF too difficult for new players ? Might be. The game improved a lot compared to its beginning and it's now way more complex. It does not mean that it's harder to play good (5years ago or now, I think you still need many weeks before being quite competitive), but it looks way harder in the eyes of a new player imo (and how most of human brains work: if it looks difficult, is must be difficult; so you loose confidence and motivation even before trying...). So many things to take into account from the first race to be able to have a little influence on the race.
- Are we really getting new players ? Does not seem so. I guess that if we ask for what kind of players we want, we will answer that we want players that will stay for the long term and won't behave like parasite noobs ... Are we trying to attract that target of players ? Do we have the tools and the power to welcome them and keep them in the game from the early beginning ?
- There are probably other reasons I can not identify clearly and it's better I do not mention according to the fact that I was quite away from RSF during the past months.
But, what I am sure of, is that it seems sad to see the community getting reduced and not really attracting lots of new potential players !
Would you like to try to do some things to change this situation ?
How many of you would be ready to spend a bit of time (on their own, or working in groups if we are enough) to give us a chance to attract more people to play with for a better game ?
Because, I am sure there are plenty of things we could try to do to help RSF !
Here, I propose you a couple of them, but I am sure that you have more in mind and that others can be found after discussions and debates !
- Develop a real complete Guide for new players. We have today some ressources, on the game or on the forum to help new players. I propose to collect them, agglomerate them and expend them ! From the basic guide to start ( for example, I know it's somehow already existing in French on the forum, but not available from the game) to detailed tutorials for every point and singularity of the game, we could improve this help session a lot ! We need to make it easy to access and complete (that the new player won't need to find his info in 3 different parts on the game and in 6topics and 3languages in the forum ...)
I think we could use lots of screenshots, videos, schemes, comics, texts, interviews ... in these tutorial to make it more interactive and easy to follow.
I already can imagine one of you making a video of his race (maybe not 2hours long ! huu

Why not someone realizing interviews of old players to ask for tips and help new players to discover the traditionnal behaviors (how to ride in an escape, who do we expect to chase this escape...) ?
Of course, the most urgent would be to have something complete to help new players from the moment they connect the first time until they start to understand how it works.
Something I found interesting but that did not go good, the idea of a RSF dictionnary launched on the forum was not a bad one ... I think it's something easy we could do and fill in little by little. We could expand the definition of some tactical terms with illustrations in examples.
-And then, at the same time that we are improving our techniques to welcome and keep new motivated players, we should of course, attract them ! We need a bit of clever advertisement ! Maybe some of you are experts in it and have good ideas ? I am not, so forgive me

As I said earlier, I think we do not want 500noobs coming on the game in 3weeks and 95% leaving within the next month. So, we need to target the places we could get the appropriate players for RSF.
Posting a link on the most populated game forum for teenagers might not be the best option. Where to find people that might be interested to play like us ? Look around if you play other games, in all games you can find many serious and regular players, some of them might like cycling very much. Look at similar games, like RSF, that requires a bit of a brain (just a bit

Our game is about cycling, many people like this sport. People talk about it on the net, people even play it (pro cycling manager has even more bugs than RSF and it costs a shitload of money !) ... so I am sure we can attract cycling fan that might like playing a game about it !
We need to think where and how we could find new players, what arguments to use to get them here to try RSF and how to welcome them properly that they would not be left alone from the moment they register to the race !
- and I guess that many other things could be done ... share your ideas !!
To conclude, I would like to know your ideas, your reactions and what else is needed in your opinion.
Also, I would like that all the people interested in spending a bit of time on this say it and specify in which field they are ready to help.
Then we could eventually give a better repartition to the workload in groups

Don't hesitate to mention this topic in your chatbox in race that more people would have a look

I really think we need to do something to bring back RSF on the good slope and stop this dangerous decrease !
Olmania