Discussion about Steam - moved from 'Teeworlds Clanzone'

Alu, if you didn't use Internet-speak/curse words (ie shitpost, batshit, etc.) it would be received better. All your other posts were nice and clean. What happened to this one?

Anyhow, I thought that was a decent post besides that, though I largely disagree and you missed the reasons for your points.

I don't think your explanation on the Steam's eco-system helped your point (and does Steam really handle matchmaking for the games? That doesn't seem right). If you made a point along the lines of "if DDNet goes live, then vanilla players and DDNet players won't be able to use voice chat to each other" and whatnot, then it would've made a better defensive case. It was ambiguous whether you were making that point there and not sure if true.

As for "responsibilities and cons that follow," the DDNet devs are willing and take them on, therefore are going for the green light. I held the thought that DDNet green light could have been pushed back until TW 0.7 or 1.0 comes out. If the vanilla client is unworthy then (which I'm assuming it will, that's why I'm pushing for DDNet client), then DDNet can go all out. Of course, there is also a problem of when it's going to come out (and we all know how this goes--another reason why I'm pushing DDNet).

On the flip side, it is clear that "responsibilities and cons that follow" won't be tackled by the vanilla devs. I don't think I need/want to say much further here.

On last note, because Teeworlds vanilla is the original does not mean that it's either the best or necessary to keep. It can be completely thrown away if branches evolved enough and surpassed the original in every way. For the past couple of years, it seems that the devs view Teeworlds as a mini-side-project that they can work on at their own pace and the community's outcry has been mounting as far as you can see, perhaps 90% of them repeating the same ideas for years which you can clearly see in the history of this forum. However, I'm not saying that DDNet is the perfect branch that everyone should flock to, because it has some issues of its own, but far fewer than the vanilla client. DDNet has the most active updates out of all the clients, yet being able to say "it has some issues" is not very pretty for the TW community.

We might as well rename Teeworlds as DDNet. It's just semantics, similar to renaming it from Teewars.

PS Let me make it clear that I want to be wrong about this. I wish (or we all wish) that the vanilla devs will make this Eminem-style comeback and develop this game to the quality it deserves.

First: I am using DDNet-Client and i like DDNet, it is my most played gametype.

I think, that everyone misses the most important point about Teeworlds and DDNet on Steam.

Everyone talks about the clients and the features provided by them, Pathos even said that it is just a matter of semantics and naming. This is not the case. Teeworlds tries to be as friendly as possible for beginners. Having "standard map" and "standard gametype" checked in the filter is one part of it. DDNet tries to be as open as possible but also promotes its own gametype. Let me explain, what i think, is the real problem here:

Nearly everyone of us started Teeworlds not knowing how the game works and as you can see in the Steam forums and on the recently highly populated vanilla servers, the new players are hitting the same wall of first confusion. The standard gametypes of Teeworlds are easy, DM and TDM can be understood by just joining the server and seeing the points go up by just hitting other players, even though you have never played a game even remotely like this. CTF needs a bit more time, but can be understood nearly as fast if played with others that get the concept. Why am I talking about gametypes, while everyone else is talking about client features? Because the DDNet client promotes the DDNet mod - that is vastly different from the "only vanilla approach" of the Teeworlds client. I remember that my first contact with DDRace and DDNet was a different experience than the contact with DM, TDM and CTF. Don't get me wrong, as i said, DDNet is the mod I play the most, but at the beginning I hated it. The servers tagged with "NOVICE" are much harder than any DDRace beginner server in the past - this is what i think is the pitfall. People already started to complain about Teeworlds in the Steam Reviews, because "there are too many good players, I can't even hit anyone and die constantly", with DDNet hitting Steam, this is not going to get better. Vanilla Teeworlds explains itself, DDNet is not. On this basis one could also say: "But Teeworlds also does not explain things like Demo-Recording and the map editor" and you are totally right. I think it would have been better to wait for 0.7 and release it on Steam, because this version actually features a main menu listing the map editor and better user interface for demos.

The next thing is about the "standard map" filter. The official Teeworlds maps have consistency. Everything that looks like it is an unhookable, is an unhookable. DDNet maps often have to explain themselves in the starting room. If you have to explain the most basic parts of your gameplay for every map, there might be something wrong (I know that this is an historical thing, born from the fact that Teeworlds had no tileset with 1x1 tiles apart from the unhookables, but it is nevertheless confusing for first time players).

I don't think that DDNet should not be on Steam, it has the right to be and many good standalone games started on Steam as a Half-Life mod. But in order to be widely accepted by the new players, it has to explain itself better. Give the new players a playground to test the mod and help them. And no, the NOVICE servers are not a good start here.
I hope that this is considered by deen and the DDNet staff, as a bad experience with DDNet could ultimately draw players away from everything Teeworlds related. At the moment the new players join DM, TDM and CTF - understand it - play it - think it is good and stay there for some time. Or they think there is something to be desired, but then hey are able to change the filter and experience mods, made by people that had the same feeling. In the future, if nothing is changed for beginners, they may download DDNet, join a DDNet server, be overwhelmed and leave (fact: this is what i did the first time - and i did not go anywhere near a DDNet server for many months after this). These players did not experience Teeworlds core gameplay first, they have no idea why they should stay and give it another chance. And because DDNet looks like Teeworlds, it may hurt Teeworlds, too.

Conclusion:
Teeworlds on Steam needs to hit 0.7 as fast as possible, removing the last questions every new player is asking over and over.
DDNet on Steam has to be at least as friendly for beginners as Teeworlds 0.6 vanilla - otherwise I see an awesome mod ultimately killing the game as a whole, just because it wasn't inclusive enough.