BMS Community size: just how big is our community anyways?
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@Red:
The increase of the BMS community has been clear and is a consequence of the release of first BMS 4.32 but more obviously BMS 4.33
that was in novembre 2015, 2 and a half year agoNowadays the community already started to decay.
As Shisabandit wrote, it’s quite natural. We get more Falcon players when a “big” version is released, and fewer players when the last big release happened 2 or 3 years ago. It’s been the natural cycle for as far as I can remember, i.e. the past 14 years.
I don’t worry anyway : there are enough Falcon players around to get fun, and that’s what really matters. -
Well lets group sim-games together, otherwise comparing one simulator against the whole mainstream gamingscene would be even more hilarious
And don’t let us be too picky about the term “Sim” because that would open a new (and endless) discussion
I’d settle for just comparing BMS users to BMS users and knowing some stats on the average number of downloads across all releases…then we could at least noodle as to if the community is growing or shrinking.
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It is “shrinking” because no new releases. Thats just how it works man. Does not mean that many people will come back to BMS when there is a new release so we will grow and then there will be a logarithmic falloff from peak time after release.
There are new players discovering BMS and I think whats really happening
is since 4.32 we have new players “discover bms” some stick with it some come and go but every release lots come back for a while and go and so on and so forth only and every new release by BMS increases overall active player base…
but also increases inactive player base as well.
All in all we have a lot of active players on discord everyday a few 24 hour servers going on …My main complaint about that is our community is very fragmented and would be nice to have something some events that everyone can get behind kind of like you know
Karate championships or something that tests pilots skills and team work skills.
Virtual campaigns on 24/7 on Falcon Online are the best example of this. Really good flying online there against others. -
I like the idea of a VFS, but I’m not really interested in joining one until I get my cockpit finished - and maybe that’s a bit of the problem. Committing to build a cockpit is a long-term, high $$$ task…I find a lot of exchange and dedication amongst cockpit builders, but seemingly fewer of them than “gamers”. For the obvious reasons.
Maybe there could be more BMS releases if some features - like alternate aircraft - fell out and it were simply to become a Viper sim? Or if the code was shifted to be more modular and allow third parties to work on alternate aircraft? Personally I’m not at odds with the pace of new releases of BMS…that just seems to me to be part of dealing with any volunteer project - you have to be patient and accept what you get. We get all the best with the BMS Viper, and yet even as old as it is there are still aspects of FAF that I find superior as far as the simulation goes. And in both cases all I care about is the F-16 because that’s the core point of the sim, and there are far more things that one can do with either one than are to be had on the surface. I’m content…
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I like the idea of a VFS, but I’m not really interested in joining one until I get my cockpit finished - and maybe that’s a bit of the problem. Committing to build a cockpit is a long-term, high $$$ task…I find a lot of exchange and dedication amongst cockpit builders, but seemingly fewer of them than “gamers”. For the obvious reasons.
For me, it is more a thing of anxiety of sorts to join a VFS. I don´t know if i can be as commited as other members, and am limited by time quite a bit. During the week i might just have two or three hours to play, one or two times a week, and have yet so much to learn to be at least a bit productive in a group. And i dont think that any VFS would commit their time to teach a newbie the basics, just to see him one time per week. I have so much going on that at the moment, that i have no clue if i would really be able to commit as much as i would like. But that might just be me…
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I think that’s most people, really. And that’s ok - one simply has to find a community that fits. Me, I’m pretty hardcore…but because of my put project and other considerations I’m also hardcore about not flying my BMS Viper under current circumstances. But that will change…retirement and ability to devote full attention are looming. Large.
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What exact number do you guys think BMS users are in the world?
I guess it’s…30,000 and 1,000 of them are active. -
I dont know but how about 4.34 update BMS collects user statistics hehe
Falcon4.0 has been on steam for about two years in that time around 20000 users… thats 10,000 sales a year
does not include people who already owned the game people buying it on GOG or downloading by some other nefarious means.
Im gonna say its way more than you think as far as player base installs.
Active users lets say for every person you see active in a forum there are 100 that are lurking or just dabblers.
I kind of pulled that last one out of my ass but I would say conservative figure would be something like 10,000 or more active
50,000 - 100,000 people with at least the game installed. Thats my stab at it. -
hmmm and my dad has a spaceship that long that we moved the moon to park close to earth. :lol:
Guys all those are just about to get a feel for no actual reason unless u want to get money from utube and u want to see if there will be enough guys to create for u an income.
The change of active users is fluent. Affected by many many many reasons.
From BMS it’s self, from us the community, from GOG steam etc, from forums, from squadrons from facebook (social media in general) and from other flight sims releases and updates, family work crisis.By maintaining the squadrons list for years what I found is that when I started almost half the squadrons of the initial list where off, closed or inactive and still some have very few members to actually call them squadrons.
This doesn’t mean that newcomers didn’t come and most probably closing a squadron the members shifted to other squadrons. New squadrons emerged… so active ones raised.
On the other hand there are members -believers that keep the faith and the sparkle and reignite the fire when the pool starts to get empty.
It’s a never ending flow that raises and lowers the participation.
Flacon is alive and kicking and after all Falcon never dies (this is proven, thus a fact) so there will always be the guys to continue the legacy. Guys passed through fire and hell and they came out nice and shining.
The fact that forum participation here get’s low or slow is because of the long time a release is done. as the time passes from the release the participation falls. This doesn’t mean they are not active, the opposite. They don’t bother with the “how the tool?” but are using the tool.
so who has a bigger spaceship? :rofl:
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Yeah man exactly BMS is alive and kicking lots of discord talk going on in the groups im in these forums still pretty active.
The sim has never been better and will 4.34 hits going to get bigger and better and stronger so no worries