Survey Discussion

[Artak]

What a fabulous idea this survey is. I've been wanting to know the big public opinions about OFPEC for a long time now and this survey seems to be spot on.

The early graphs (with 11 member's opinions) show some good results. Of course, it's way too early to say, but it seems these few people are generally pleased with OFPEC. Most interesting question to me "which of these games you play most on average" shows that even still 1/3 of us has OFP as our game of choice.

The question
Do you feel you gain any benefits from being a member of OFPEC, as opposed to browsing as a guest?
seems a bit daft since only registered members can take a part in the survey, so none of the users who have decided to browse the site as guests don't get to state their "No".


Good job OFPEC. 

[Planck]

Not so Artak, a member may decide to browse the forums without logging in, therefore they are by definition browsing as a 'guest'.

Could possibly have been worded better. but that was the way I read it.   


Planck

[bedges]

some thought was given to this question...

were we to ask non-members why they hadn't become members, the reason would most likely be that they could get what they needed from the site without registering. since guests can do everything but post in the forum, there's little reason for them to register unless they wish to ask a question or provide someone with an answer.

on the other hand, if we ask members what they feel they get out of their membership status, we're likely to get a broader range of answers than simply "i need it to post in the forum". so far this has indeed proven to be the case.

[wcrvieira]

The survey is such a good idea to feel the real community thoughts.
Nice addition OFPEC (as always)

[Mr.Peanut]

I was going to fill out the survey until I realised my data was uselessly partisan.  However, one question, the one about knowing who to contact, caught my eye because AFAIK there is no public staff list.

[hoz]

my data was uselessly partisan

Actually all the staff members filled out the survey before hand, no comments are partisan.   

So far we've received excellent feed back keep it coming.

[JasonO]

I agree with Peanut on the matter of 'Who to go to', as there isn't a list that i've noticed.

Staff of Mission/Editor depot would most likely be suitable on the front page of its sections, but overall staff should be listed somewhere on the forum if not intergrated into the website.

I appreciate you guys are listening to the community for what they want to see.

Good luck with your results and trying to find some things to improve on, as most of it looks positive so far 

[hoz]

Good luck with your results and trying to find some things to improve on, as most of it looks positive so far 

There are alot of comments which aren't positive. Those types of comments are welcomed for sure as we are learning allot from them. 

[dmakatra]

I tried to do it, but quickly realised I couldn't do half of them and I began my answer in all the text boxes with "Well, I'm not as active..."

Sooooo... I sorta skipped it. It's not like an old bum's opinion that only check the OFPEC Comments-section is going to matter anyway.

EDIT: Oh, and if I'd actually did it, it'd just be a lot of complaining of bringing back old times...

[bedges]

aaaw... well, let's just say that the sort of input we'd want to hear from vets like you would not be adequately covered by such a scant survey.

really, we're interested in all opinions, noob and veterans alike. the more people that have taken part, the more we've realised that there are more questions we should be asking, not just about OFPEC but about the Community in general, about gaming, about BIS... expect some more polls in the near future.

[LCD]

bah amsty u come here 1ce a month and think u gots da right 2 complain ? u shud revisit OFPEC... we have invented da water of youthness... look @ me... im da same as b4

come visit more often.... and c how u bcome unger

LCD OUT

*shots armsty

[Artak]

Talking about old times, the survey seems to have come to a stall on partisipants. I knew the community had gotten smaller, but g'daem, only 60 members who're active enough to take a part in all this time that the survay has been up. Back in the old days there were 60 active members online all at once and another 6000 active members waiting for the server to cool down and to accept their connection again.

So, look no further for the reason why there aren't all that many new missions submitted. 7 years of Flashpoint has been too much for many and ArmA just simply hasn't been able to gather up the growds like OFP did.
Old timers still around can't be arsed to build missions for OFP anymore and for ArmA they couldn't care less, or if they do, they make their mega missions that take at least 6 months to finish a piece. Many of the old mission builders have switched to making addons and you know how making addons can suck up all your time. The new people that ArmA brought and who actually like the game are just learning their way through the editor and are not yet capable to a work worth submitting.. and frankly there can't be all that many of them either.

How far off is my hypothesis?

* Artak walks away mumbling something about a OFP 8-year anniversary edition to get some new blood in the community...

[dmakatra]

I'd say that pretty much sums up the whole mess that this community is in.

Plus, the few community members that are actually still alive and kicking... Well, most of the hang around chewing bubblegum over at Flash85, not here. It's like a whole different world over there.

EDIT: Oooh looksies! I have a flashy avatar! Not that it matters, since everyone who is active here is either staff, former staff or veterans. Sad but true.

[bedges]

Sad but true...

mmmmnot quite. we still have a steady influx of new members, most of whom are concentrating on arma. i think there may be an element of their being overwhelmed at the breadth and depth of the community, and a little disappointed at finding mainly ofp resources on this site (we're working on it ) without realising that the two games are so very similar and a lot of resources work for both.

the expectations with which the veteran ofp community greeted arma were bound to turn into disappointment, and despite several patches and queen's gambit, that feeling has not yet been shaken off. however, as planck pointed out last night, it took many *many* patches before ofp became the game many are still going back to.

i remain optimistic - i only hope that arma gets the continuing development attention it deserves instead of being ignored in favour of this shiny 'new' arma2...

[Wolfrug]

Hmm!

Random idea. What if some people who happened to be somewhat clear on the difference and similiarity between OFP and ArmA scripting were to look at the current uploaded OFP scripts, and unless they're just unnecessary and deprecated due to new ArmA scripting commands etc, convert them to work in ArmA? 

Sure, a lot of them would remain in .sqs format, but I suppose some of the shorter ones could be converted to work in .sqf as well.

And as to the "community" over at the BIS forums...brrrh...gimme OFPEC any day of the year. Not that I don't hang out there as well, but that's mostly just to feed my addiction. Also, I've randomly checked out some of the other fan sites' "editing" sections, and holy crap... they'd benefit very seriously from instead just having a big ol' link to OFPEC saying "go here and ask instead". And finally: unlike OFP, the main focus on all scripting seems to be geared towards either MP or Addons. What with client-side addons being dime a dozen and MP scripting being a heckuva lot more complicated now with JIP and whatnot, a lot of the stuff we know from SP scripting isn't quite applicable anymore.

Maybe add some more sections adressing these things?

And shame on you youngster pessimists too!   When ArmA 2 comes around, it'll still use the same scripting engine and still have the same mission editor...OFPEC shall adapt. ^^

Wolfrug out.

[hoz]

Based on the number of hits some of the interview articles receive, the survey is running at about 10% participation.  The average number of hits OFPEC interviews get is somewhere in around 650 hits. I think thats not a bad number, of course we'd perfer more entries. If you were taking a tele survey, I think you'd be happy to get 10 people to pick up the phone out of a 100.

[Artak]

Nice discussion this is opening up.

Because the survey gets 10% of the hits from what an average interview gets, can we assume that

a) OFPEC has a huge amount of 'guest' users opposed to active registered members, because guests can't participate in the survay but can read the interviews?

b) users are not interested in taking a part in the survay for some reason, or at least not as much as interested in reading interviews?

c) the survay can only be taken once, but an interview can be viewed many times by the same person.. or was this 650 number about individual hits?


Is there a way in SMF to tell how many registered members have visited the forum in a certain time frame like a week or so?