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Can we return NGEmu to the way it was?

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#1 ·
I Registered at NGEmu a couple of weeks before I first started my civil engineering study. Some of you know that I've never liked it, since all my friends went to study other engineering branches. Though with time, I made my own community there, and started gathering friends around me. Now, I'm kinda satisfied with what I've gone so far. But every day I was thinking of how my life has gone so bad that I'm studying something I just can't stand, I log in to this place and meet no one but you guys who are reading this thread.

When I first entered here, I was very enthusiastic about it. And I liked every point of it. At that time most of the best guys were posting regularly, ppl like Kane, Killjoy, Quatro, Syed Fawad, Kellicros (Whose name was Evil Squall at that time) and also Boltzmann to name a few.
Now where are they?

Let's take the "Open discussions" as a good example. There's no way I can compare between how things were like at that time, and how they are now.
Now most topics (not all) are repetitve, boring and aimless.

In the past, some topics were screaming : "I'm crazy" . Now they scream : "I'm awfull, don't post" or "Run Run Run"
Good posts dissapeared. You rarely check threads and stop by a post. Then you read it again and again, before you finally admit that the poster rocks.

Help NGEmu. I have no other expression I can describe this. Help this place, which means alot to me. And I'm sure it means alot to many of you too.

How? How can I help? It's hard to say that, but let's stop bashing others once for a start. Think inside and you'd know how.

I hope you guys understand what I was talking about above. If you didn't then I can summarise all my words into one sentence. It's the thread topic ^_^
 
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#3 ·
I once thought so. Things were going better for awhile. Even Fawad and Samor returned, but then every thing went calm again.

I'm not saying that the new members are bad. I was a new member one day. But the classics have dissapeared, Toriyama for example is appearing rarely (Rarely is alot when it comes to Tori). Where's Takmadeus, Ready2RumbleX and Katsuya? Can you find alternatives for them here?
 
#5 ·
NGemu changes, it always has changed. When I first signed up, we had people like Nezzar, Liquid, Esturk, Xeven, Tak, Kane, Ryos, Shiori, fivefeet8, Lady, Gk1986, Snake785, Raziel, CpUMasteR etc.

The 'Batard' high days, where there was mis-adventure and fun all round (the plan), where the threads where witty, fun, and appealling. Then it kinda died off, tbh it's never really returned, you've had peaks though, the current 'generation' of NGemu users seem more interested in spamming stuff from other sites, or being complete self appointed retards (the I'm a scientific / religious nut phase). Not realising that this is never the best place to start a discussion, unless you where in a real Greek Forum (NGemu meets anyone?)

NGemu gets alot of through traffic, and when the right people stop and stick around then you get a great and very strong community, and I dare say we will have plenty more fun yet, infact this type of thread seems to pop up every few years, and there are often lulls, often influenced by world events, or the fact that the current community are growing up, and moving on, thus don't have time to pop in as much. When I first started here, I would sit on the fourms, post something and refresh regulary, because of the fun / excitement of getting a reply...(sad huh).

You can also take note that perhaps it's not the forums, you could be growing out of it, I dare say you came here for help on a topic / emulator, but these days, you proberbly know enough about emulation to not 'need' the forums, but use it as a form to keep in contact with people. I mainly stick around because I like to help out when I can, I have PCSX2 to contend with.

Another factor is to consider whats going on in the emulation 'scene', it's no long the haydays of ePSXe / PJ64, and next gen is a slow hard slog. But we do have PSP / NDS / etc to enjoy, and I dare say once we have enjured them, PS2 / GC emulation will be far more plausable on our rigs...
 
#7 ·
Maybe we are changing, not NGEmu. Sometimes we are free, but we don't post, because the people we started with aren't there. When I first registered there were a friendly gang, I liked to have time with, but they dissappeared by turn. Did I complain? No, I tried to adapt with others older and newer. But some of the old members don't post just because their close friends stopped checking by anymore.

You are right I came here for help in emaultion problem. But that doesn't mean I'm now experienced in emulation and I want to leave. Emulation is a cycle that never ends, so no one of us can say he is an expert. And btw the question I came for was never answered till now.
 
#9 ·
I know that I’m officially gone, but... it’s like not like I’m banned or anything :p

I’ve been a member for almost 2 years and a half. A lot less than the board’s old-timers (who now have been members for 4 years or more), yet not a negligible amount of time.

During this time, I’ve seen good phases and bad phases. There’re times when many fun topics pop up, and everyone participates and when the serious discussions are stimulating and engaging. On the other hand, there’re times when discussions get dull (or plagued by flamer wars) and no one posts really funny threads.

At all times (at least as long as I’ve been a member), there were people creating threads to complain about the current situation.

I know that it’s not your case Cloud, but most of the people who you see complaining do nothing to change the situation. There’s a good example in this very thread, where a member makes a large number complaints (especially about the “current generation” of the boards), and yet most of his threads are merely self-congratulatory stuff. Change won’t come along on its own; we must make it happen.

I said that it’s not your case because I know that you’ve tried a lot of different stuff to revive the place. Unfortunately most of your ideas died from lack of interest (it happens, but don’t get depressed about it; they were good ideas after all).

There’s only one of your threads that I never even came close, which was the “Kaiser Sigma fantasy thread”. I really disliked the topic, but I merely kept away from it, instead of polluting the thread with complaints.

Other good ideas were also eventually forgotten, like Sasuke’s short fanfic threads. In this case I gave my own humble contribution, but it wasn’t enough to keep the thread alive.

Many good members are gone or half-gone these days, some because real life is calling, others because they got bored with the boards. But whatever they do, the boards won’t be like before. Everything changes, even though not all changes are for the better.

As for myself, I’m happy with my stay here. I’ve met a lot of interesting people, and even learned some new stuff (because some of the good debates made me do a more thorough research, or because some members gave me good pointers – hey, Galv ;) ). I’ve also met a fair share of jackasses, but these are everywhere (and they probably think that I’m an ******* :rolleyes: ), so it’s not a flaw of the boards, really.

Thanks to my opinions (which I always try to back up with reliable data from reputable sources), I’ve been flamed and attacked several times. But it wasn’t all in vain, I think - I’ve also gotten several PMs from members thanking me for my posts and their informative content. In the end I don’t think that my posts were a waste of time, since at least some people appreciated them. I’m happy enough with that – I’m not here to win a popularity contest or anything. (One of the guys who deserve a especial mention here is Proto, since there’s enough intellectual honesty between the two of us that we can safely disagree with each other and point out perceived mistakes without ever having to resort to insults, sarcasm or flames).

As I’ve explained in the “I’m leaving” thread, I’ll be taking an extended vacation from the boards, for several reasons. If I’ll come back or not only time will tell (although every time I tried to get away from the boards I came back after a while). The situation here is not suiting my tastes, and I don’t predict any improvements if I start posting about the things I like to discuss (especially with all the complainers who pop up in threads with nothing good to say).

BTW, I’ve only posted this because I’m in an exceptionally good mood this week. My serotonin levels must be quite high, though I’ve no idea why (maybe it’s some sort of bipolar disorder… I don’t know).

The lesson to be learned is: change is inevitable. Accept it and try to steer it in a direction that suits you (if you think that it’s worth the effort), but don’t try to stop it. And don’t yearn for the past, it won’t come back (one of few instances where I totally agree with Heraclitus ).

Good luck and farewell ;)
 
#10 · (Edited)
Hi cloudvii!

As Esturk said, things change, and you have to adapt to these circumstances.
As you can see, i rarely post but i have been visting ngemu since 2001, i have known great people just reading the posts, and i can tell you that there will be always great people to meet. :)
 
#11 ·
I (re)Registered at NGEmu in April 2001, after a restyle of the forums, and after the bleem boards went haywire.

When I first entered here, the community was still building up, and it became great. At that time most of the best guys were posting regularly, ppl like Shiori, GK1986, Esturk, Xeven, SxAmiga, Ryos, Betamax, just to name a few.
Now some of them are still here, but others...

Let's take the "Open discussions" as a good example. There's no way I can compare between how things were like at that time, and how they are now. It turned from a funny of-beat topic forum into an outright political and religious discussion war, and then vice-versa and that a few times.

In the past, some topics were screaming : "I'm crazy" . Then, it turned all scientific. Then, it turned ridiculous beyond belief. Not that I myself have always been the good example with regards to that.

NGEmu changes over time, cloud. Your ideal version of NGEmu is a completely different one from my ideal NGEmu, and in a few years members that joined recently will long for the days "back then".
 
#12 ·
Also reason why people leave and new appear, is that old people have only limited amount of (constructive) things to say. We cannot make new threads with new ideas infinitely. Remember how crazy things were? When there is a change of generation, these almost-same-sanity-level threads get recycled by new people and oldtimers think that things are retarded, (cuz they are old and "mature" :lol: ) but in the eyes of newbies, they are "new", meaning same level as our posts were in old days.


I hope my post was atleast somewhat undestandable... :heh:
 
#13 ·
Not to dwindle off topic, but:

Boltzmann said:
I know that it’s not your case Cloud, but most of the people who you see complaining do nothing to change the situation. There’s a good example in this very thread, where a member makes a large number complaints (especially about the “current generation” of the boards), and yet most of his threads are merely self-congratulatory stuff. Change won’t come along on its own; we must make it happen.
I assume, you're talking about me. In that regard, I will make the following comment. 'I have made 2 complaints with regards to the religous / science / weird news crap fest' we have had recently, and my thread starting the complaint, pushed towards a goal, (that goal being the sticky topic you now have for such subjects).

Given I barely interact with you in threads general forum activities, one would assume you have read through the back catalog of my posts, and note of the 3000 or so I have made have come in various phases, from n00b, semi-n00b, having a laugh, flamer (gah we all have evil days), help on the ePSXe forums when that was of major interest, misc, including the infamous babes thread etc, and yeah news about various emus, self congratulatory, or otherwise.

On that note, I still swear Tak needs to bring the maggots back to life, undead maggots sounds cool / evil :D
 
#14 ·
We came here when when emulation was starting to crawl out of the corners. PSX and N64 emulators were starting to come into their own, and emulators for older systems were beginning to mature. That era has passed. Truth be told, there are probably more exciting things happening in the emulation world now than ever before, but it isn't as exciting or high-profile any more. Ya know? It's mainstream now. Those of us who got into it when it was "new" and stuck with it are starting to grow up. That's just the way it is. It's not just NGEmu.

*sniff* sometimes I miss the old days, too.
 
#15 ·
Ahh, yes, the excitement when I played KOF97 for the first time on NeoRageX, or some long forgotten Mega Drive emu playing Sonic 3...memories for sure :D
 
#16 ·
True ngemu has changed,but i will stick around as it's been a fun time being here,remebers the days of the maggot army and playing mugen,the good times roll on and will still be had.Hope you continue to stick around cloud:).
 
#19 ·
Well... NGemu change because we all change, all getting older, have less time to read and write, and such, and such, also remamber that few years ago emulation (is's what whole NGemu project was aiming as it's priority right?) how to say that... was less complete, everyone were gatchering an exchanging infos about it, now emulators of most popular machines are more or less complete, and we have to wait for future projects or for more advanced compilations of PS2 XboX GameCube ect emus...

But as I mentioned in begining of my post everything change because of us, and I think you won't see NGEmu community same as few years ago.
 
#20 ·
to but in the short way.. everything is gonna change.. every single moment of ur Life!
All u experience is infact a very unique thing!
So keep good memory of the precious times( the good ones ^^)
The Internet of course ( and NGEMU such as a Online Community) is of course also Changing :)
Look forwarf to the good things they will keep coming :D
wbr Shin Gouki
 
#21 ·
yehh.. its definitely not the same as it used to be. kaned has a point.. ppl get older and have less time. im sure some of the old members still come and browse through the forum sometimes. i still do. i just dont post that much. and i barely come on.
 
#22 ·
Hey Cloud ^^
Ok, I've been there as much time as Boltzmann, but with a 6 months shift:
I registered 6 months before he did, I lowered my post rate a lot about the same 6 months before he started playing the Bann'ed.
Reason? (beside emulation)
Lack of interest. When you (you = random ppl) come here and start talking offtopic,
you make some good friends, and few VERY good friends. You talk to pretty much everyone as long as the topic is interesting, you even confess some of your feelings
to those who (may) care. You also read lots of various topics, you have fun, you survive some flame wars, etc...

Then after a while, you see that threads tend to repeat and repeat and repeat...
you see the same quizzes come back in a regular pattern, so you tend to just read them but feel too lazy to reply...
later again, you don't even bother viewing a thread that does'nt have a good name.
That's where lack of interest is at its peak :p
Though, when you're bored, you come back, check and reply some posts (like I'm doing now), or just create a thread yourself when there's something important
for you to say (or to ask, like I often do in the Hardware section).

The few friends you made who could keep you there just don't, as they already left,
and you have their IM adresses anyways.

In short, after few years, new-ness becomes the repeatitive-ness (I know I'm inventing words :p) that goes with your boredom.

BTW, you mentionned R2RX, but one of the reasons why he isn't often there is that he's short on internet time (56k power) :(

PS to Boltzmann: Dude! Will you ever connect your ICQ/MSN again? Or your social life has become se positive that you forgot your negative friends? :p
 
#23 · (Edited)
After being immersed in all those games, you never realized that change is envitable? :p

I don't want to sound like a broken record so I'll try not to reiterate what others have already said. I just want to share some stuff.

There was a time when threads like these incurred the wrath of posters. Usually the newer ones since they see it as reminiscing and it rubs them off a bad way. Maybe it's tolerated now at the time of writing due to the events which have come to pass lately. I puzzled as to the sudden disappearance of some members, and by tracking the recent posts, I found out what happened lately. Threads like these probably come off as a slap to the face for some, but if there's smoke, there's probably a fire or something. If it raises good points, it's OK.

With regards to NGEmu being "fun" before. It really depends. As Boltz said before, the intellectual discussions were fun. It's really a frame of mind. However, I know what the "fun" people were hammering at then was about.

NGEmu was "big" in the sense that it was like a big family then. Everyone knew each other and cared. I dunno about the Maggot wars, but I do know the Batards, some even personally. Their kind of fun was maybe to some extent dead today since there isn't much interest in it, or will most likely turn to a spamfest of flamefest. It was a fine line, but back then, nobody crossed the line. It was cool for everybody. It was then that the infamously termed the plan was hatched, after of course having already hoodwinked the whole boards with it. I guess this was the hallmark of the forums then. It epitomized the concept of fun. Of course, there was somewhat an impression that post count was everything, but...

With the growth of the emulation scene and higher pagerank for NGEmu, there came an influx of n00bs. It changed the face of NGEmu forever. It became a spam/flamefest. The mods were busy with their own lives and everything kinda went downhill. Steps had to be taken to ensure a clampdown on the negative activities. The chaos and the resulting backlash and bruised egos probably started the first fallout. The NGEmu family broke in many places. All unspoken rules that kept the self-regulation were ground to dust. If aldo were to magically come back and post the "Is this better than sex" thread, I really doubt the outcome now would be as harmless as it did back then.

I could go on and chronicle the history of NGEmu, but, this example serves the point. Change has not always been kind to us all. With each scuffle, old wounds are driven deeper for the old. Different personalities cause massive massive conflicts. It all affects us at an even lower level. We get tired and frustrated. The generation gap between new and old worsens the tension. For the new, the stuff they bring in is no big deal, perfectly normal. For the old, it may be not exactly to their liking.

Yes, I'm pointing to the problem of old vs new tensions. But do understand that old and new do not mean "2001 members vs. 2003, 2004, 2005 etc..." It's a representation of how the current members adapt to the influx of new members AND new conditions.

And yes... that the emulation scene itself changes and all other conditions. but I DID say that I didn't want to repeat what others have said. This is just my observation on a q*ueer conflict I noticed, which often causes threads like these to pop up.

By the way... I have one complaint. Why is it that we can never have a good intellectual discussion that does not boil down religion or politics, or worse, insults and flames?

Why am I still around? (albeit erratically) *shrug* To haunt the Software/Hardware and Development forums for anyone who needs help I suppose. The forums has changed. I have changed too.

Edit: What the? Q*ueer is a banned word???
 
#24 ·
cloudvii said:
I once thought so. Things were going better for awhile. Even Fawad and Samor returned, but then every thing went calm again.

I'm not saying that the new members are bad. I was a new member one day. But the classics have dissapeared, Toriyama for example is appearing rarely (Rarely is alot when it comes to Tori). Where's Takmadeus, Ready2RumbleX and Katsuya? Can you find alternatives for them here?
Heh, I was quite active all the time Cloudvii (thx to Popuri for 1200 PM transfers) ;) The thing is just that there are rearly topics of my interest lately, IMO the community of Ngemu needs another deep impact, lets say like descent next-gen or handheld emulation, the spirit of tweaking and enjoying games (like it happend with PSX emulation) is almost gone imo.
 
#25 ·
Reading your reaplies, I find that you proved my point.
You never tried to return it the way it was. You are saying stuff like (Topics I like aren't there anymore) or (boring posts)

If every one started good topics. NGEmu can return the way it was. Yes we are older, now. But I for one won't stop liking this place. Can you hate your home? Can you get bored of it? Even if the palce is getting slower and boring, it's still [bold]NGEMU[/bold]

I know every one of you was very proud of being a member of that place. Whenever I enter a new forums or get to know some online collegues and they ask me about my experience, I tell them that I'm a member of NGEmu.

I might sound abit crazy now, but this place is something like a strong Tree. And I'm holding it much to not lose it.
 
#26 ·
You don't understand how a community such as NGEmu works - you can't change a culture artificially, it just won't work. These things have to naturally develop. NGEmu will change in the future, for better or for worse, and there's nothing that can be done about it.
 
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