486 Connections at this time of the day? Are you kidding me? That is nothing compared to a year ago.
Something needs to be done. As each and every day passes by that number is getting lower and lower. Really is. As this number is going down, I get the feeling more and more that development of this sim is starting to slide. I know you guys are putting the hours in, but I think the general community needs something to look forward to. You just need to look at the hype that was created over the Scirrocco, one single car, and the post has loads of replies.
In my opinion, you need to give them a nibble of the cake, so they hang around for the main slice. Otherwise you're just going to lose the members, and the business.
It goes up and down from time to time, and my guess is that number will decrease a lot in future. But as soon some new content is added, old players will return. I don't think it's the lack of cars, but rather that people don't feel motivated to log on and race a track they have rased hundreds / thousands of time.
When new things come more people will buy lisence, and old ones will return, meaning the number of online people would go much up again
The development and the number of racers have nothing to do with each other IMO. It wouldn't matter if there were 5000 people racing everyday, development would continue in just the same way and at the same pace.
The number of replies to that thread is, again, irrelevant IMO. 90% of all the posts in that thread are off topic/spam. Also, you get that with pretty much every single thread that Scawen starts on these forums. It amazes me every time. If Scawen so much as farts on this forum there's literally dozens and dozens of replies within the first hour. I have seriously looked if there was an option somewhere to be notified via text message on your cellphone whenever Scawen makes a thread because I just can not believe that all those people just happen to browse the forum at that time.
You're right in that interest in the game has dwindled. It's been pointed out a lot in the past weeks/months. It happens. Interest will pick up again when the Sirocco is added in a patch. An announcement from the devs that they're working on this or that won't increase the number of active racers, as an announcement doesn't actually change anything about the game in its current state. A new patch will.
Good god, do we really need so many of these, I am bored with LFS, it's boring, no people are playing it anymore, we're all doomed, blah blah blah threads?
Do we even know that the number of racers is declining? And what about the relative numbers of demoers vs. licenced racers? My impression (based on nothing, really :razz is that the peak number of racers is lower, but the distribution throughout the day is more even than it used to be a year ago, and that the proportion of demoers has gone down. I have no statistics to base it on, though..
No. That is just a made up "fact" not based on figures. Number of racers online is about the same as ever.
Anyway this thread won't break any new ground so I'll close it.
LFS development continues, always seeming slower than before because the standard is higher. But that's ok for us. Anyway, there's no patch coming out in a hurry... so people will just have to be patient, do something else for a while, whatever. Just make sure your account is set to receive the LFS newsletter and of course you'll get an email when a patch comes out.
