Firstly, I want to remove the current separation between “legendary” and “young” teams. “Legendary” being Woad, Tsumani, Punk, and “young” being LFS, AD, ADS, Kalos, etc. There is only one thing that separates the “legendary” from the “young” teams: There weren’t any legendary teams around when the current legendary teams were still young! There weren’t bigger, more experienced teams around that constantly reminded them of how small, unorganised, amateuristic they were. No, the design era was just beginning and everyone welcomed the design teams with open arms. So, instead I will call Woad, Tsunami, Punk the “old” teams and LFS, AD, ADS, Kalos the “new” ones. It is a more neutral way of saying which teams I mean.
There are many arguments against the current design community. Why was the AoK community so much better? Many arguments are pointed against the new design teams that “separate the design community”:
- The new teams don’t work together on group projects the way the old teams did.
- The projects that are released as group projects are still mainly one man’s work.
- You don’t need a design team just to work together on a group project.
- The new teams didn’t release as many good or original projects as the old teams did.
- The new teams are only busy fighting eachother for the best reputation.
- The new teams are no group of friends, but just a stamp they put on their scenarios.
- A new team’s stamp on scenarios does no longer guarantee quality the way it did back then.
- The new teams are only pulling apart the (HG) design community, especially with the “one team” rule.
- The new teams are no learning environment as they claim to be.
- Finally, designing was at it’s climax in the AoK era and has been dying since.
I will explain one by one why I think these arguments are false.
The designing community isn’t dying, it only has a little virus called “nostalgia”, mainly carried by the older designers and design teams. Maybe they’re just getting too old for the gaming scene and the new 3D games, or maybe they’re jealous of everything we’ve achieved here at AoMH. I would really like it if an older member could reply and explain me why he thinks designing is detoriating, or indirectly why he thinks his friends think that way. If we want to keep the designing community alive, we have to get rid of this nostalgia. Enjoy messing around in the editor, enjoy releasing a project, enjoy recieving comments, enjoy joining a design team and enjoy writing articles, enjoy designing, designing, designing, designing lives.
Oh, they do. LOTR, I-39, and from experience I can tell that a lot of cooperation goes on behind the courtains. People are playtesting together, or they just mess around in a map sent from one member to the other. The fact that there are simply
A group project is a group project. Whether person A does 90% and the others 1% each, or whether it’s 10% each, doesn’t matter in my opinion. But I don’t expect this to silence the callers, so I’ll just refer you to the examples in the previous paragraph.
Yes, that’s true, but that isn’t an argument against design teams. Because design teams do help to get very close friends (again I’m not saying that you can’t without! But being in a team
Well, the difference in amount of projects really isn’t that big. Designing a good scenario takes much more time nowadays, anyway.
I think they are mainly pointing at the appearing rivalry between LFS and AD. I can guarantee you that this is mainly a conflict between the leaders, including the arrogant me, which can be set aside. As an example of cooperation, I can give Centurion from Ambition Designs working on group projects in LFS. If I haven’t managed to convince you with this, then I’d like to point at Woad’s “closing the gates” message, in which Kor mentions the rivalry between the old teams. Yes, they were fighting for members when they were young! So were AD and LFS - just a bit - but they’re grown ups now. And I must say that the even younger teams like Kalos (I’m sorry, I can’t remember all the names) seem to be getting along very nicely!
Not true. We’re groups of friends. Who’re they to judge?
I honestly wouldn’t like my design team’s stamp being put on projects that aren’t very good. I would then kindly advise to take it away. So, they still guarantee quality. Check the projects released by teams to see what I mean with quality.
Firstly, there isn’t such a one team rule. I don’t know about the newest teams, but there was such a rule when AD and LFS were young, I think. However, currently whether you want to be in two teams mainly depends on how active you want to be, because keeping up with one such active team already takes a lot of time, and on how patriottic you are. Many persons just find their own identity in a team a bit and don’t even want to join another one. Anyhow, I can give the example of Centurion again who’s in AD and partly in LFS. Or some members of ADS who are in AD as well. And let’s not forget LFSs merge with the AoM Modders/Mappers clan – some people didn’t like the merge, but at least it shows that we’re unifying rather than separating the community. Design teams are just groups of friends, not secret societies or paid jobs, and you get different experiences from different design teams.
Secondly, most communication between the design teams still goes through HG.
Thirdly, who are HG to claim that they should be the only community.
Finally, this is much more an argument against the new teams as against the old ones, who had much more strict “one team” rules (excluding Woad).
They are. Firstly, there are the group projects mentioend above that are very educative. Secondly, in a closed community with private forums you post your project announcement much earlier than on HG, thus taking suggestions and ideas much sooner than on HG. Same counts for very experimental ideas. This is very educative, and it also helps improve the quality of the projects released.
This is basically an insult to us, the AoM designers that are working on such cool projects. Basically the old guys think that it all went dead after AoK, or maybe when Cheesy quit AoM. Do the elders not like our creations? Firstly, look at the HG downloads section. So many marvellous scenarios, mods, whole campaigns have been created recently, that I dare saying we are currently at the climax of designing, at least of AoM designing. Most top-10 projects have been released recently. Holy christ look at the Vandhaal, look at Grande4, look at Oscar! All their projects are better than the last projects created by the old guys yet still they find they're superior.