I'd like to be upfront and honest - I've not been as motivated to work on this Project as I was in the beginning. Why? Well...
- Do you ever get the feeling when you upload something, someone is watching you to take your ideas? This is going to sound incredibly narcissistic, petty and/or whiny, but I think some of this has happened, despite the fact we got our material up first.
- The Western Allies by this point are at least 50-70% done. There are only a few missing Art assets...which cannot be replaced. And I'd rather not release a Public Alpha until those get fixed. Speaking of...
- The lack of staff. Asides BlackUmbrella and myself, there is no one else working on this. This project needs posts filled (and I have advertised posts previously - those same Posts are still up for grabs), and no one wants to fill them.
- The lack of interest. At first I took a healthy liberty of happily posting up articles and only posting screenshots when I thought I had something worthwhile to show (e.g: the "Allies on Parade" picture was really to show off the Allied Firefly and more importantly, the new design of the Amplifier Tank). The lack of views and comments on both pictures and articles has admittedly been very disheartening.
- In relation to the first point, I did start out RO to try and be different from the other Mods, hoping to win over support. That stance has since changed to "Follow the Leader" by accident rather than design. We're not happy with this development in the least.
So for the above reasons and more I didn't list (and no, I'm not naming people), motivation for getting things done is looking very, very shaky.So, it comes down to what do you think? Should I tell ModDB to archive the Mod? Maybe my watchers and viewers are just really, really quiet people? What should I produce more of in the future, more articles? Screenshots? A gameplay trailer? A new faction or two to freshen things up (there is potential to make it more than stock Allies/Soviets/Yuri here)?
If you have a comment or suggestion, write it below and I will get back to you ASAP.
The truth is, all modders need and want graphical assets. But unless you already know someone who can help you, are extremely lucky, or have a successful mod on your account, noone will come to help. Those who can, are busy doing their own stuff. If they will go out and help everybody, they won't do anything themselves (because, yes, everyone wants new graphics and sounds! and make those exclusive for them too!).
Most of the successful mods we see are done by the people who did stuff alone, or with a friend. They start slow, and if they get people to help, it's after they have already done a lot of the work themselves. This is how modding works - if you want something done, you have to get it done yourself. And saying "i'm not good at it" is not an excuse. Noone is good when they first start doing something.
If you won't, you have to stick to public resources to use and edit (which also leads to lot of mods using the same stuff all over again).
It also depends on what kind of mod are you doing. Minimods can take months to be done. Total and partial converions will take months only if you use public resources, otherwise they can take years. This also means little to no feedback for a long time...
In the end, you will do what you will. Just keep in mind that there were many other modders before you that came, hoped to get help, and left, because they couldn't do anything by themselves. I can only encourage you not to end like them. ;)