Constructive commentary for Poly

[Zoetstofzoetje]

My feeling is that there is more intelligent discussion here. Wodan11, can you quantify this for us please? Give us a good R-square please

[GodSpawn]

Errr..... CFC is quite the Civ5 whiners/haters heaven.

You may say so, but right now there's a lot of discussion about the forthcoming patch with quite some optimisim! Here is all doom and gloom. Guess where I'd rather be? But maybe it's not so bad here now - I stopped coming here shortly after Civ 5 was released, maybe things changed.

[wodan11]

lol. (Zoet)

Nikolai, CFC's not a "haven" so much as a greater population period. Thus, the vocal minority is larger in number.

[Wade1]

I think this forum is less active because of two big reasons.

1. Do a Google search for something like "Civilization 5 V forum" and the first two different listed are Civilization Fanactics Center and 2K Forums.

2. There is now an "official" forum: 2K Forums.

Apolyton shows up on Google page 2 and not even as a main page forum for Civ5. It's in the form of news as "Civ 5 rating leaked!"
I went through the pages up to Google page 5 and no other Apolyton showed up.

So, yeah, without trying to seem rude, I say this forum is, currently, unofficially dead.

I've been recently browsing those two forums since recently buying Civilization 5. I've been away playing some other games.

[Quintillus]

I believe one of the reasons is that Apolyton haven't really been able to follow up on Civ V, compared to Civfanatics, so everybody went there instead

At least in terms of front-page coverage, I'd have to disagree. Most of the Civ5 coverage on CFC's main page has been about patches, which isn't really a thrilling topic. Whereas Apolyton has had a considerable number of articles about the actual game featured on the main page. Within the forums, your assertion may be true, but in terms of front-page attention-grabbing stuff, I don't think Apolyton's done bad (although Civ5 news volume does appear to be lowering a bit - perhaps it's just CTP2 + SMAX news picking up though?).

Can't say how the 2K games site compares, as I don't visit it myself.

the increasing fragmentation of the player community across forums certainly doesn't help anyone

Seriously. There needs to be firmer moderation and a willingness to permanently ban miscreants. I imagine a newcomer would make a sharp exit and go join up with the other, tamer, site. (Umh, there will be complaints but those complaining will almost certainly be those who most need to be on the receiving end of some vigorous moderation).

There is a very considerable quantity of quality material on this site, mostly buried in threads. It may help if the strategy advice was somehow more accessable. Perhaps lifting the best articles out of threads and keeping them all indexed in one place, a sort of "strategy central". But without the rest of the thread. (The other sites War Academy is a good idea, we need something better but I am not sure exactly what).

Edit. It might be an idea to move this thread to the Off Topic. The first thing one sees when one goes to the forum is a thread titled "Is this forum dying?". Not exactly the best impression for a newcomer.

Agree with these. One of the primary reasons I occasionally check Apolyton is due to some very useful (but well-buried) threads at Apolyton, that I never would have found without the Search feature. Making the best content accessible isn't easy, but is important.

The whole Apolyton-WePlayCiv split situation and the weirdness around it kept me away from Apolyton, though. There seemed to be an awful lot of unmoderated anger between members on the forums at Apolyton before and shortly after the split, which begs a newcomer to ask why they would possibly want to join. It seems to have died down (fortunately for all parties involved, imo), but effective moderation probably would have helped a lot with that. Along with the fact that there's only so many sites one can regularly visit, that's a major factor why I never visit WePlayCiv - the circumstances of its founding don't make it something I'd be enthusiastic about being a part of, whereas at least Apolyton seems to have had a decent history (other than that timeframe) and (now) a fairly peaceful present.

edit: Just went to the Apolyton Off-Topic, and , it's a zoo out there! And not in a good way! It wouldn't surprise me if half the threads on the front page there would have at least one violation reported at CFC (and probably many more than one in some threads), and while you can argue for somewhat lighter moderation, I'm doubting whether there's any moderation right now. Not that I'm sure I want to go back to find out if I'm wrong.

And yeah, this thread's title can't be helping matters any...

lol. (Zoet)

Nikolai, CFC's not a "haven" so much as a greater population period. Thus, the vocal minority is larger in number.

IDK, the general negativity of CFC's Civ5 forum is the other reason I check Apolyton occasionally - the Civ5 section seems to have a higher proportion of useful content and less of "Civ5 sucks" and "Steam sucks", which gets old after awhile even if you are inclined to agree on some points.

As for the technical side, I think that certainly was important. Old Apolyton was pretty far outdated, and the old front page was a horror (and in light of it, it's no surprise that many Apolyton members go straight to the forums and bypass the front page). And I'm sure financially, shutting down the old server is sensible. Apolyton seems fairly stable and modern now, so I'm not sure if technical stuff will be that important for it going forward, but it certainly needed to be done this year.

[Zoetstofzoetje]

I've changed the name of the thread to reflect the nature of the commentary, and other reasons.

[Nikolai]

Not a bad idea. Not bad at all.

[Steve Clark]

Let me share from personal experience, as I have been here since 1999. I was, unfortunately, very active during Civ3 and somewhat during Civ4, esp. the strategy section (same with Civ2). But soon after that, Apolyton drastically changed. It was never a good looking site (compared to the perfectly designed CFC) but there were good, smart people here (again, in contrast to the kids at CFC). One of the main reasons to go to CFC was the download database, which had sucked here. Then Apolyton died. When Civ5 was announced, there was nothing here at Apolyton. If I recall, it took about a month before any content since Dan et al dropped out. In the meantime, CFC was ready to go and still keeps up well. In the meantime, I check here about once a month at most and still see nothing of value compared to CFC (once you learn to filter out the trash). 2K is even messier since everything is clumped together. I have a lot of great memories of being here, talking Civ2 and arguing with yin about Civ3 pre-release but things do change and not always for the better. You take out most of the great people from Apolyton and there was nothing left but an empty shell of its former glory.

Edit: I read further about the WePlayCiv split. That was probably one of the reasons Poly died but I do not know the details. Also, I believe it has nothing to do with Civ5 not being as good as Civ4. Civ3 wasn't good (and imo, worse than Civ5) and yet Poly was active. Even CFC got a good, active strategy forum for Civ5.

[astrologix]

At the spanish forum, we don't really play Civ5. We were very excited before the release and the forum activity was good, but now we are disappointed by this new version and the amount of messages have dropped down significantly.

So, we continue to play Civ4-BtS. Particularly the APT piboss multiplayer championship. BTW, you should have a look at this kind of competition. Maybe you'll find it great.