it's time to shut it down

I think it's time the forums came to an end.

Yes, I know this sounds ridiculous. The lot of you are rolling your eyes and saying "Ugh them again?". But just hear me out.

There's has been a major degrade in these forums in the past year or so. Obvious complaints are that Cave Story's ever-growing popularity has attracted a younger audience, and therefore causes piles of problems and and overall diminish in intelligent discussion. All of our other discussion has been exhausted since, what, 2009? Most of the talk here just happens in the Satellite Lounge. Anything else is just stupid questions with the same sassy responses and failed mod ideas. Most of it just ends in disaster.

Not to mention, the baby new Skype group has more and more members (not including me) added to it each day. People have created their own off-shoot communities. Most activity just happens there, on Skype, or the IRC. I've created some great friends from the community, and a good majority of them have since abandoned the forums altogether. I can only predict that soon you guys will realize the forum isn't befitting of your own personal chatroom, and will move on to other things.

It's been 10 years since Cave Story was released, and it's time for us all to move on. We've had a pretty solid run. Hate me all you want for this thread, but you have to admit it's somewhat true. Some of us are too old for this stuff, and the ones who are still too young should just go elsewhere for baby's first forum. This place is too far gone to deal with any more of that stuff.

I truly do love you guys, I mean that with the utmost sincerity. My past threads have been mostly a concern of your well being, believe it or not. But I know this one will be tougher to swallow, and will bring up negative feelings and rebuttals. But after all, the truth hurts. So, fire away.

April fool's you little shits

 

But after all, the truth hurts. So, fire away.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

 

I really don't have any problem with this but it's not like I use the forums anyway.
If it goes w/e, if it doesn't w/e

 

True, Cave Story may be getting old, but there are still plenty of reasons to keep this place alive. Pixel and NICALiS are still plenty fine, giving us new games to be excited about. News hasn't been terribly frequent, sure, but I honestly think that it'll start getting more interesting in the future.

Besides that, I think that you may be forgetting about the modding section. That section is perhaps the most active on the forum now (or at least rivaling the Sat. Lounge), and it'd be a real shame to see that go too. The mods attract plenty of new members and keep things interesting for many of us. I understand that you don't exactly frequent any of the modding forums, but I thought that I'd at least let you know.

I hope that you understand that this forum doesn't always have to be about Cave Story. I'm sorry if this post is lacking a little (I'm feeling a little mixed right now because of it), but I just don't really agree entirely.

 

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

oh i love you the most of course lol.

Sorry, I'm not leaving, you dolt. I'm just making a suggestion

 

I agree. There isn't really any point in these forums anymore, and I have seen almost no meaningful content (that I wouldn't have been able to see somewhere else, like deviantArt for the nice drawings) in months.

Noxid isn't gonna ever let go though, this place is like his infant, you can't touch this

 

I...haven't really been around long enough to really understand the scope of the length this forum has existed for, or to have any frame of reference for any decline that has happened over time, so everything and anything I say is anecdotal and based on things I've read, and my overall experience I've had here thus far.

That out of the way, I do see why you'd think the forums should come to an end. The forum's been dragging on for years now, carrying out a very slow and prolonged decay over 10 years. I'm not sure exactly when the forums peaked, but judging from the overall state of it today, it'll likely never peak again for as long as it exists. CaveStory is, simply put, old news, and anyone interested in it will likely never come here; they'll be referred to the tribute site by a friend to download the english translated version, and not even bother to check out the forums. Members have been trickling in lately (myself included, although I've sorta lurked on these forums for awhile before registering), but that's the most we're gonna get.

I can't really think of any way to breathe any fresh air into the forums at this point. The forum is being held together by twigs and duct-tape by a community of CaveStory-lovers who really, really don't want it to die. And it's admirable. But all the love this little community can muster isn't enough to re-invigorate the forums to, or even close to, its former glory. Where the average amount of posts during a day wasn't "5". In order to keep it alive, we'd need a mass influx in new members, and that just isn't gonna happen. Even big-name lets players playing the game isn't enough - GameGrumps played it, and there was probably an extremely tiny population boost by people who poked their heads in and then left soon after.

But despite the obvious decline...does it actually need to die? Are the server costs reaching a point to where it'd be better to just cut the losses and shut the forums down entirely? Or is it more of a symbolic thing? Shutting it down to symbolize the true end of what was once something great? Because if it's the latter, it seems a bit uneccesary, even for this decaying corpse of a forum. People clearly want it to stay, or atleast, some people have expressed interest in the forum staying alive. And as long as people occasionally, at seemingly random intervals, join the forum and begin contributing very, very quickly, then there's really no need to shut it down.

All old forums suffer this fate. Why force it? It'll die a very slow death as the community slowly leaves, one by one, new members joining not joining fast enough to replace the old. But that's really how it should die. It shouldn't be shut off prematurely. It should have the oppurtunity to die naturally, atleast. When there's only 1 post a day? Yeah, I could see you shutting it off. But we're active enough now. And we will be the foreseeable future. As small as this community is, it still exists. And while it will eventually stop existing (Probably not in the far off future, I'd wager), it exists now. No sense in ending the 10 year struggle of keeping the forums of a small indie game with a very niche community afloat now, while there's still atleast 50-100 *a few members hanging around semi-regularly. I'd say give it another...2 years. Give or take.

 

I have mixed feelings right now.

Maybe if I settle on one side, I'll post a better reply. Whatever you all decide on, I understand. But I will say that I've always considered this place my main site. I'd feel a little homeless if it closed. But I don't know.

Sometimes I feel like I was born a generation too late.

 

To be honest, I've been around a lot longer then I feel like it. (Not as long as the veterans, but still a long time) Though the community is sorta dying. There seems to be a lot of people that come to the forums to ask one question, and then leave forever. If we didn't have that so frequently in the past couple of months, the forums might still be intact.
However, I haven't seen much activity going on. (I don't check out the SPOT subcategory at all) I also haven't seen many recent threads that go on for at least 10 comments.
I don't think we need to shut down the forums, but we are dying. It's in that stalling phase, where we aren't out yet, but we are able to be shut down. I've met a couple people here who are awesome, but I haven't really gotten comfortable enough to be friends with everyone. (Which is odd. I guess I never went out of my way to meet people)

 

tbh there are points both ways. First off, hiino is right, I'd probably never leave of my own free will. I may talk a lot of shit about the forums but I couldn't bear to give it up to someone else. On the other hand, I don't really know why. All it seems I get out of it is a daily chore of cleaning out spambots and griping about how nobody is funny anymore. So maybe if it were just gone I'd finally be able to get out of it.
It's like that story about how if you put a frog in hot water it'll jump out, but put it in cold water and bring it to boil and it'll stay until it cooks itself.

 

This site is a good source of information for modders and destination for people who want to talk and share interests without being bogged down by huge skype message lists and the like; I agree that skype can do a lot of the things the forums can but we would be very severely cutting communications and participation with many forum members (some important) who cannot use skype. I don't know if there is a limit to group participants either. And I sure as hell don't want to turn the forums into IRC, dear god that would be shitty.
If we had a revamp or something and changed this from a cave story tribute site forums to a not cave story tribute site forums (NCSTSF) and instead made it more for social communication but include modding and programming areas as well, I think it would cut a lot of people who join solely for posting once about Cave Story questions that were answered years ago and would make conversation here a lot more bearable.
Of course, ultimately it's up to the staff. I'm just spitballing here.

Plus dasu you like refuse to add people on skype from what I remember, this is the only way I can actually talk to you :U

 

That out of the way, I do see why you'd think the forums should come to an end. The forum's been dragging on for years now, carrying out a very slow and prolonged decay over 10 years. I'm not sure exactly when the forums peaked, but judging from the overall state of it today, it'll likely never peak again for as long as it exists. CaveStory is, simply put, old news, and anyone interested in it will likely never come here; they'll be referred to the tribute site by a friend to download the english translated version, and not even bother to check out the forums. Members have been trickling in lately (myself included, although I've sorta lurked on these forums for awhile before registering), but that's the most we're gonna get.

.
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All old forums suffer this fate. Why force it? It'll die a very slow death as the community slowly leaves, one by one, new members joining not joining fast enough to replace the old. But that's really how it should die. It shouldn't be shut off prematurely. It should have the oppurtunity to die naturally, atleast. When there's only 1 post a day? Yeah, I could see you shutting it off. But we're active enough now. And we will be the foreseeable future. As small as this community is, it still exists. And while it will eventually stop existing (Probably not in the far off future, I'd wager), it exists now. No sense in ending the 10 year struggle of keeping the forums of a small indie game with a very niche community afloat now, while there's still atleast 50-100 *a few members hanging around semi-regularly. I'd say give it another...2 years. Give or take.

You just spoke facts.

But in all seriousness, I really agree with you. I joined about a year ago and I'm admittedly not an active poster or user, and its become obvious that the users who came on during the time when these forums were alive have either left or are incredibly inactive. But, I don't think the forums should be shut down, because like Tpcool said (too lazy to quote), Pixel and NICALIS (probably misspelled that) are still a working progress and will make more games in the future. Instead of being solely dedicated to Cave Story, it should be dedicated to a more broader topic; because Cave Story is done. No matter how many times it's recreated, it will never reclaim the shine it had when it was first released. But that's just my opinion.

 

I haven't really been on here long enough to really understand how these forums were before...
But I'll just say that it's kinda barely making it along as a Cave Story forum. It really has nothing to do with Cave Story anymore, besides the modding. It's just a random forum with certain people. But it should stay, for the sake of the modding section, and for those people to discuss with each other.

 

Although i was part of the group that created failing mods, and it kind of increasing over time, i'd feel pretty homeless like polaris without this place. But as Coffee said, we could just move on to something bigger or just more attractive to other groups. Meh, thats how i feel, but im also the younger population though, which is also increasing. I'd hate to see this place go, but its up to the admin and moderators.

 

Well if you all really feel this way I could just stick the forums in read-only mode. At the very least we will have something for the lurkers to read, and this way the forum wouldn't become overloaded with spam. And lets be honest, we are losing the war against spambots despite my best attempts. To keep this place running until none of us can keep up with it anymore would be unfair on everyone involved.

Of course the modding community is still quite active, and it would be unfair to pull the rug out from under them, so I'm thinking I might find a more dedicated solution for the modding community.

 

I say this place needs a renaming, a rebranding.

How about future miraigamer forums? Back to the way things were, but better?

 

I really really don't think we should close this down but yeah a new miraigamer might improve the site a lot.
Finding a completely new name for it might be neat too, sort of like starting fresh or something like that. Maybe I'm just a sentimental loser. Whatever.

 

I like that idea. Just try a redesign of sorts, and see if it sticks. It's worth a shot, no?

 

Yeah, in my own opinion, (which anyone may or may not care about) a re branding of the forums but keeping and recomposing the modding section.

 

I think... that's a good idea. Sure it's just a name. But it makes it sound like less of a Cave Story place and more of a place for people with similar interests to hand out.