The Real Reason the Community is Dying.

[Velen]

You want to know the real reason the community is dying? As someone who has fallen to being a constant observer of what goes on in the forums. I think I can come out with a few reasons.

It's not just that people make things some consider half-assed. It's not just people being download whores. It's not people making packs of recolors or [censored] like that. It's not just the fact that many people who started have gone on to other projects. It's not even people using other people's things to make things of their own, and it's certainly not because nobody is interested anymore.

Things are still being made, not all of them are great or as awesome as some things were when this community was at it's peak. The point is they are still being made, and people still are doing modded Brawl, if downloads being made on anything is any indication at all.

It's because this community is not as friendly as we like to make yourselves think, it's also because so many of our members never interact with other, more active members, never make posts, make themselves known beyond the vault, never allow the community to critique, foster and nurture their ability to create. It's also because too many out there think they could never do what we can do now, and compounding on that is that the atmosphere of the community has become one of jaded cynicism, no matter how much we blind ourselves to that truth.

The past hostilities between a certain project and the community poisoning things further not withstanding, this community is choking itself to death by the way many people operate and think around here. We often look down on people who do things we think are dumb, or because we think they didn't put enough effort into something, or because we hold newbies to this stuff to unreasonable higher standards than we did to ourselves and others when this community was just starting out a few years ago.

Nobody is going to be like myself, Pik, M2000, Beyond, SDo0m, TurboChaos, among many others in a day, a week, or maybe even a month. Getting better takes time, patience and commitment, but nobody is going to want to make any of those three things in a community where people are told to read tutorials or offers, more often than not, little meaningful help to other members. When people ask for help, they want to interact with someone who is knowledgable in what they are asking about, not a referral to some tutorial. Yeah, it means more questions for more experienced people, but it's also one of the reasons why so many never complete a mod of their own. Nobody does or says anything to galvanize the will of people wanting to get into the modding game.

Also as a whole, we've stopped fostering actual, productive creativity. As awesome as it is that we have Model Importing, look what it's mostly reduced us to: importing models from other games. The only one left who was doing vertexing mods, was a guy named Tyshy, and his stuff is of quality we used to be amazed by back when Vertexing Mods were reaching the middle of their climb to popularity. It's not even considered great by our standards now, but he's still making creative things regardless of what we think of what he creates or has created as whole.

Then there's the fact there are so few people who are proficient at Texturing and creating UV Maps for mods. It's another one of the reasons why so many new mods are little more than recolors, nothing more. Nobody has the knowledge. Nobody is taking things further. I may not be one to talk in this regard, having been inactive for so long, but that's far aside the point I'm making here.

Nobody is being engaging with other people. We're basically slapping words on a board without trying to have any meaningful interactions with our words and it's stifling. It's killing our community.

That needs to change. Badly, if there is to be any hope of this community being any more than a dying husk of what it used to be.

[windhunter7]

I can't import because I don't have 3DS Max or Maya; I'll eventually continue trying the FBX Converter, but, even though last time I got it to import to BrawlBox correctly, the textures were screwed up, and it crashed Brawl. First, though, I'm still bookmarking and organizing those bookmarks of every single hack on the Brawl Vault, so that I don't duplicate any already-made imports.(It really would be awesome if BrawlBox could import Blender exports)

As for vertexes, TyShy ain't the only one who's doing it; I'm currently working on my first vertex, to vertex all of Link to look like Peter Pan(With new textures to do that), and, other than some minor vertex issues that are only noticable if you're extremely zoomed into the model, I wouldn't say it's a half-bad vertex. Click here to see it; it's only in stage 1 of 3 of the vertex. It's not too good, because I can only manually transform vertices, without having an extrude or rotate button or anything like that, but it's good enough to not be crappy, that's for sure.

And as for textures, I'd say that even though most of my textures are recolors(Some, like my Project Super Smash 4 Luigi, for example, are textures, not just recolors), the recolors are rather high-end quality. You can see how high-end they are here.

I think the real reason that this community is "dying" is that we aren't polite and respectful enough when we introduce the new members to the forum, and we don't chit-chat with people regularly. We could actually increase the community's activity by creating projects and asking for people to help out. That's why when I was on two project teams, there were about 15 or so members in each, only about 3-5 or so being on both teams.

[SonicBrawler]

This is very true. People rarely help each other. There arent very many tutorials being made. People get criticized for what they want to make for a hack or mod. The request threads are filling up with no one doing them. (Granted a lot of them are fan characters or have no detail or cant be done) This community is dying. That is true. I also feel like its a competition who can make a better hack compared to someone else.

[Afterthought]

I agree. As I tried to mention a while back, a lot of the people here are simply awful.

I can't create to save my life, but seeing some of the people that can kinda just act so funny is disheartening. It's a miracle I even frequent this forum with the attitudes I've seen displayed here. And I literally could not care if my account gets terminated or something just for adding my two cents, because I'm really not missing out on much.

I'd love to give examples but it's apparent that this attitude is abound in this forum. Take the time to look through, you'll see. A lot of people act like modding is a job, when it's really just a hobby and should be treated as such. No one is entitled to anything really, considering a lot of what's done here is done by choice.

[SonicBrawler]

And I literally could not care if my account gets terminated or something just for adding my two cents

this too. if your opinion is generally different compared to everyone else's or if you prove a point against someone, you generally get warned.

[nanobuds]

Then there's the fact there are so few people who are proficient at Texturing and creating UV Maps for mods. It's another one of the reasons why so many new mods are little more than recolors, nothing more. Nobody has the knowledge. Nobody is taking things further. I may not be one to talk in this regard, having been inactive for so long, but that's far aside the point I'm making here.

This is my biggest issue here. Very few people are willing to learn. They rarely ask for help. I get PMs all the time for help, and I try the best I can. However, it usually ends with them asking "Can you do it for me?"

Then they don't learn. Beginners need to start by asking questions and searching for help. I see too many entries when it says "Ignore this problem" or "I couldn't figure out how to do this," when the solution is so simple. And usually, these people go on and finish their models without even asking for help.

And then there are those who have been here for YEARS, and still don't create things to the best of their ability. That is what gets me going. They know it has issues, yet they don't take the time to figure out how to fix the issues. They just say "Oh well" and released an unfinished product. It's not their skill that's lacking, but their patience and work ethics.

I know that what I said in the WIP thread came out as harsh, and I apologize for that. But these kind of things make a huge impact on the community, with experienced modders releasing mods that I know they can do better with.

TL;DR,
No one is willing to learn. Not even experienced modders. And it makes me sad.

Also excuse any [censored]ty wording and grammar. I'm hungover and hella tired.  

[Afterthought]

this too. if your opinion is generally different compared to everyone else's or if you prove a point against someone, you generally get warned.

Exactly. I don't fear being "warned" or "moderated," it's not hurting my feelings. No one on the Internet is going to actually visit me and physically kick my ass for speaking my mind, so I don't fear anything.

Simply put, those with more experience (or so they believe) think that they can really put others down or harshly criticize others and it's unfortunate. The community's been dying for a while anyway, a lot of people who make decent stuff don't get involved with the forums, they just make stuff. Those are the best modders in my opinion.

[Nao-chan]

Nobody is going to be like myself ...in a day, a week, or maybe even a month.

The modesty... it burns!

By the way... this is a joke. Don't get made at me please.

[windhunter7]

This is my biggest issue here. Very few people are willing to learn. They rarely ask for help. I get PMs all the time for help, and I try the best I can. However, it usually ends with them asking "Can you do it for me?"

Then they don't learn. Beginners need to start by asking questions and searching for help. I see too many entries when it says "Ignore this problem" or "I couldn't figure out how to do this," when the solution is so simple. And usually, these people go on and finish their models without even asking for help.

And then there are those who have been here for YEARS, and still don't create things to the best of their ability. That is what gets me going. They know it has issues, yet they don't take the time to figure out how to fix the issues. They just say "Oh well" and released an unfinished product. It's not their skill that's lacking, but their patience and work ethics.

I know that what I said in the WIP thread came out as harsh, and I apologize for that. But these kind of things make a huge impact on the community, with experienced modders releasing mods that I know they can do better with.

TL;DR,
No one is willing to learn. Not even experienced modders. And it makes me sad.

Also excuse any [censored]ty wording and grammar. I'm hungover and hella tired.  

I agree; in fact, I'd say that your hacks are awesome compared to most, because you have effort and imagination put into them!

[Velen]

this too. if your opinion is generally different compared to everyone else's or if you prove a point against someone, you generally get warned.

That generally really only happens if you go to far or it devolves into flaming or the argument derails the topic for too long.

@HO: There's speaking your mind, then speaking it to degrees of stupidity. Sometimes it's best to just drop it.

@Nano:

-but like I also mentioned Nano, many of the people who ask you to do it for them probably don't have the confidence to do it themselves. They've never tried and don't want to end up disappointing themselves. It's a poor excuse, but it's the truth.

To draw a parallel here: I'm good at drawing, pretty darn good, yet when I show my work to most people, you know what is the one thing I hear most people tell me?

"I could never draw like that."

They cut themselves off at the knees and flounder because of it. I try to encourage them saying they could, but they insist they can't. It's the same thing here on the forums and for our modding community, and nobody gives anyone words of encouragement to, as I said, galvanize their will to create.

[Large Leader]

I concur that the lack of help is something that's hindering the community.

When I first started out, I was really lucky Tormod was there to answer most of the questions I had to ask. Hell, I think I still have some of his old PMs. After playing his Evolved Pokemon PSAs and FD Link PSA coupled with how much he had helped me, I started to look up to him.

I knew at the time that my animations would never be as smooth as his and would never be able to code as well as he did, but I still tried and had the desire to be as good as he was.

TL;DR,
No one is willing to learn. Not even experienced modders. And it makes me sad.

And I can agree with this. Along with something else Nano said: people rushing things. I'm sad to admit that pretty much everything I've done has been rushed (although thankfully, my current ones seem to not suck as much ass as the old ones did). Whether it's working on a PSA with other people or working on my own, I always rush it out (doesn't matter why, just matters that I do). I've promised myself that I'd go back and make them better but we all know that it's not gonna happen for a looooong while

There's a whole lot more I want to put, but I'll save it for later.

[Vyse]

this too. if your opinion is generally different compared to everyone else's or if you prove a point against someone, you generally get warned.

The majority of our warnings are for necroposting and spamming, so I don't know where you got this idea.

[Nao-chan]

I'm good at drawing, pretty darn good

There's that modesty again... It's starting to scorch me now.

[windhunter7]

-but like I also mentioned Nano, many of the people who ask you to do it for them probably don't have the confidence to do it themselves. They've never tried and don't want to end up disappointing themselves. It's a poor excuse, but it's the truth.

To draw a parallel here: I'm good at drawing, pretty darn good, yet when I show my work to most people, you know what is the one thing I hear most people tell me?

"I could never draw like that."

They cut themselves off at the knees and flounder because of it. I try to encourage them saying they could, but they insist they can't. It's the same thing here on the forums and for our modding community, and nobody gives anyone words of encouragement to, as I said, galvanize their will to create.

I know, right? The only reason I actually can do my textures/recolors is because of the tutorial that I made, and if other people followed it, they'd be just as good as me. Same goes for when people ask where basic file placement, like the FitMario00.pcs, goes, and they thank me drastically; I was once a noob at this, so they can get even better at knowing this than me, rather than exaggerating their "uselessness"

There's that modesty again... It's starting to scorch me now.

I'm decent at modesty...
Dat joke op

[Afterthought]

@HO: There's speaking your mind, then speaking it to degrees of stupidity. Sometimes it's best to just drop it.

I apologize if I come off as slow or if I misunderstand, but what exactly are you insinuating? Never once did I make a post going overboard about something I disagree with, considering, again, I don't frequent this forum for the reasons you stated, and I don't think my post is stupid in the slightest.

Bear in mind that it doesn't bother me if you find what I say ridiculous, but a more clear reason would be appreciated.