I experienced that, too, but I quickly presumed that was more of a maintenance routine again, as before, so, I, too, couldn't post new threads or posts until that was over. Guess we can do so again.

@Bopp

I can understand the active players are decreasing, but I feel that should be increasing, even if we have a few more new adventures, which are still overdue.

@Thats-Rough-Buddy

OK. I understand that. What I would like to see more frequently is more new additions to return the kind of activity the game still needs.

I have done a few posts on the Gremlin Chatter, but hardly anyone visits to discuss lately. Not that I'm saddened or anything like it. I just sometimes feel that should be visited a bit more. I could place another post there maybe sometime soon, and people would come by and chat sometime. Sure, its not that important, but visiting time to time should be encouraged.

Moreover, we have been, but still need to, keep doing our best to bring back the constant activity SK deserves. Yes, the devs of GH have been busy, but more communication from them should be a bit more frequent to strengthen our friendly bonds with them.

What the game needs right now is a more coherent plan to reinvigorate the game through frequent small additions of new content, besides promotions, new events, & new activities to regain its growth it once had.

What plans would anyone recommend to bring the game better vitality? Mine would be more new Expansion Missions.

OK, so I have hardly any idea of how busy they are right now. I mean, hardly lately, any plans about the game and the development pipeline have been discussed. I'm not one who's good at guessing any game development timeline estimates. I just have thoughts on what they could do to keep the game thriving with more original content. Trying to come up with new ways can be a bit tough, sometimes.

I also have no idea if more players are busy trying to up the game's advertising lately, but I was in thought that they were.

If anything, I would still hope, and I still am hoping, that the devs at GH have any new hints to what's really coming to SK, besides more new costumes.

Yeah, that's true, Bopp, but the necessary labor into making those ideas a reality are worth it... long as there's active working people on a team committed to it in a project, with enough focus, of course. Otherwise, doing it all by your lonesome is taxing on oneself, even with the necessary tools needed.

Take, for instance, having a world with an amount of levels in a platformer. One themed world would have a small amount of levels any player would complete before going into the next, but the level amount may differ, that is to say, 4 levels in one world, 6 in certain or some worlds. Nevertheless, the world still needs an end-world boss before finishing it.

That would be one choice, if needed, but, there's also another choice; have a mid-boss in a world for the player to face before going to the major boss. The mid-boss would have to go into the midpoint of a world, say, 1-2, and the mid-boss would need to be fought in the end of said level, but the key difference is, the mid-boss needs to have slightly less amounts of health/hits to defeat than the major boss, who has more than said mid-boss, and still have attack patterns still unique to the enemies', but more than the former. Have a mid-boss in, still have the major boss to overcome, and move on to the next, et cetera.

There's, of course the choice to make said existing mid-boss recurring, but, say, you don't want to make that choice, because it takes away the brevity in any platformer that has many bosses to defeat, even with people that have been getting used to that are still expecting that to occur. Having each world at least one unique mid-boss in, that's also a fine choice to take, but having more than one, in certain worlds/stages, that'd take a bit more work to do, but some find it worth it to up the variety and originality of boss designing. Not counting games that are mostly boss fights, so you know.

The thing about making mid-bosses, to me, is I'm not sure there's available guides to doing so thus far. I've not seen one yet. Sure, there's already guides to what people could do, even making games, but this small tidbit that kinda annoys me is that although we see more new platformers that have mid-bosses lately, what goes into making mid-bosses? Does it have to do with putting them into design documents, like before? Are there exemplary ones people could reference to give the steps needed to make them? I know there are already existing tools to make them, but does the artwork that goes into making them count as normal/major bosses do?

My perspective is that its not that hard to make mid-bosses in any game. The matter is getting comfortable with it to people that make games with the proper steps, guidance, and examples needed to give such motivations to make them.

Also, size constraints in game media, even though that's what, I believe, held people back in making more unique mid-bosses in games, I don't think its a problem now, long as compression processes are still used, that is.

If anyone's up to it, should they feel like it, have new guides up or available guides updated so people can get comfortable with it. If no one's up, maybe I might end up making one... not that I have a problem with it or anything like it.

Sorry if I veered a bit off from the topic.

I know that kind of feeling when waiting too long for anything highly anticipated that sometimes gets shoved to the wayside from no interest nor progress on it, let alone being honest about any game/DLC project's progress to any fan eager to see it finished for playability.

I mean, yeah, there are times where we need something more than what people propose, in terms of bringing SK's popularity back to the amount the game had in its early years, but, even today, we know people still care about the game and still play it no matter what.

What'd be good in letting something go that meant so much to people if it only ends up leaving voids in our hearts that way?

This kind of feeling heavily reflects on many people wanting to play whatever anticipated games they want to play since announcement, but wouldn't or won't get the chance to, delayed or otherwise.

Unrelatedly, in that manner, this reminded me of many people still wanting to see the highly-anticipated, but constantly delayed, treasure finding game, Treasurenauts. When I heard it would be going to the 3DS, at the time, it brought me excitement to see another brilliant 2D game for me, and anyone else who enjoyed many 2D games, past & present, brought up to be played. Originally, as recalled by memory, Renegade Kid, whose 2D games went to Atooi upon closing, had looked forward to launching it, but some hindrances kept that game from launching, aside from occasional progress reports on its state, and made it miss the 3DS game lineup and moved to Switch as consolation. Even still, today, nothing else has been said about Treasurenauts yet. I really still want to play it, even with my hopes for its launch still up, but I still worry about such games, like that aforementioned game, may end up getting the axe, so to speak.

Atooi, while being a fine company that gave good games, may need to bring in a few more people to accelerate whatever game projects in the works to completion real sooner than later.

My view on any game development, regular, indie, or otherwise, making a game for anyone to play is amazing, but doing so on big scales that take even one person too long to make alone, underestimating the games' scope, size, and content to make upon finishing design docs, even the DLC, even with announcements on any one game, not doing any progress reports on the game, and having a very understaffed company that makes games, could lead to whatever games that were highly-anticipated, no matter what department the games are built on, to losing great popularity, constant budget cutting to the company, in and out employee and management mistreatment, untimely life needing commitments that pulls people away from development or quitting there to focus more on said commitments, not that there's problems with said commitments, they're important, too, and losing great interest to the customers & workers that planned to work on game developing companies.

Too much waiting on anything will surely age us. We don't want that. Got to keep doing constant activity to get boredom out.

Sure wish such problems in that industry could be nonexistent. We'd have more great games & kept ongoing favorite MMOs that way.