there's a couple reasons why activity has died down.

1. the community website has become incredibly slow (we don't know why). this can make updating/creating posts hard, which is partially why the site has very little activity.
2. lots of people that were active a few years ago are now in college. some have even outgrown TEF.
3. drama has caused several people to leave.

i don't think it has anything to do with people being angry at the remake, even if there's probably some animosity about players getting special skins. i'm hoping that once the remake is finished/and or close to being finished, activity will pick up again.

Also wanna add that we have tried contacting the devs about the slowness of the site, but it fell on deaf ears :/

also wanna point out that i find it difficult to interact with new players because they typically have a much different playstyle than me. i noticed that a lot of new players require permission for any kind of negative interaction, so it feels like i'm walking on eggshells in order to avoid hurt feelings since i have a lot of characters that aren't always nice. asking permission for everything doesn't really feel natural and it's not something i personally want to do. ;c

I agree with a lot everyone has said here.

I too miss when things happened and you could just ‘play’.

.

I'm a bit late but

- The website is slow, and the devs have no desire to fix it.

- If the devs have a desire to fix it, they haven't made it known. M&A are notoriously bad at communication, whether that means they completely neglect to communicate, or are outright hostile when communicating with the community, it's not a good or attractive look for a game, especially a small indie game built on a small close knit community.

- The culture of the game has changed, from an outside perspective, and even from an inside perspective for less popular players, it looks and feels cold and imposing. Many of the characters on TEF are now related, there are more characters being created related to others (children and extended family) and less with blank slate ties. It may sound defeatist, but it's difficult from a perspective outside those family groups to try and integrate with them, this isn't purposeful of course, I doubt anyone who plays characters in any of the big family groups actually wants to ostracize anyone or make anyone feel unwelcome, but it really does give off the vibe of a bunch of people in a cool little club that may not welcome outsiders, either from an ooc or ic perspective.

- Clashing playstyles, a heavy reliance on social media for roleplay in the form of discord, a lack of roleplay on biographies, a lack of roleplay in-forest, too much constraint in the form of needing to ask before starting certain unpleasant interactions, it can be extremely difficult, especially with how slow the site is, to bounce between the forest, the map to find out who you're interacting with, the biography to figure out what you're interacting with (A deer? A dinosaur? A wolf? A big cat? A bird? A rodent or reptile?), to discord to ask if an interaction is okay, too many steps between noticing someone and being able to interact with someone encourages people to stay within their comfort zone, people they know and already speak to.

- Culture, again, there's nothing inherently wrong with this, but TEF has become much more 'serious' in recent years, people used to have characters that were less...I believe intense? Might be a good word, these days characters tend to have pages of backstory, they tend to be much less outgoing, more focus on pride and nobility or being cool or having the most badass backstory. It's hard to explain exactly, but there's definitely a difference between how it used to be: Characters who may or may not have a life outside the forest at all, and who had a lot of open room to grow depending on the actions of others, to characters that are more set in stone and have less connection to the forest in the first place, if a character spends their time being high royalty in a far off world with characters also from that world, and who have a personality deeply set in stone and difficult to change, especially if that personality is intensely introverted, it can be difficult to form new connections with them.

- Distrust of the Dev team, I won't get too deeply into it but I know there's a lot of animosity towards M&A growing among certain users, whether it be due to lack of communication, using money donated to the forest for things completely unrelated to it, not liking being spoken down to, or even just the fact that despite raising so much money we aren't really getting anything hugely new in the remake (remember, the assets aren't new, they're the same assets, just being ported to a new engine), and what new things we are getting (certain sets being released) are behind a paywall, sometimes a hefty one, which can feel like it goes against the spirit of the forest, or can even feel hurtful to people who have been donating for years (and much of the community has been) without so much as a 'thanks for your hard work!'

- Poor running on the current game. Even on high end machines, the forest runs terribly poorly, most people only get a tiny handful of FPS, and that can be frustrating for active play.

- Too much importance placed on style. If you can't code a complex biography and you can't do high quality art, it can be difficult to find a foothold, this has been an issue for years but it's become worse rather than better, not only that but many of the overly complex biographies on this site aren't user friendly, they often don't work on anything but very specific browsers, they often have tabs hidden in symbols in odd places that make navigating a biography feel like playing a game of I-Spy, they're loaded with huge images, and lots of script that may make them not load properly at all on some devices, the fonts are often tiny and inaccessible, or the fonts are dark on dark or light on light, making it difficult for people with certain disabilities or even just people with smaller screens to consume those biographies and therefore being offputting.

- Because of the above things and more, TEF is bleeding users faster than it takes them in, this isn't helped at all by M&A's lack of advertisement, even unpaid advertisement such as a friendly, welcoming social media presence would go a long way towards giving TEF the boost it needs. Not only that but TEF is only accessible and downloadable from its own website, which wouldn't be too huge of a deal if they marketed themselves more, but unfortunately we've reached an age where gaming is relegated more to launchers than to their own downloads, getting TEF placed somewhere like Steam would likely help draw in new users in and of itself. It needs a facelift, TEF is stuck in the past.

- User unfriendly, you can't change your password without contacting the devs, you can't change your username without breaking your ability to post on the site, the game crashes if you minimize it (which should hopefully be fixed in the remake), connecting ingame is a chore, so much of a chore that TEF has had more than its fair share of urban legends and hopes regarding how to just properly get the game to connect (I.E: 'your pictos will spread if you stand at exactly x location!')

- Underground abuse. This is going to get...Finicky, but because TEF is so close knit, people often don't want to speak up when they're being bullied, or even when multiple people have been bullied, the site often doesn't feel safe because a lack of speaking up means that in the past, abusive people and behaviors have been allowed to run rampant without being stopped, part of why I started drifting away was because I was told no one cared that I wanted to kill myself when I was being beaten daily, and when I and a close friend or two tried to warn others about this person (with proof) we were told time and again that people 'didn't want to get involved with drama' or 'didn't want to hear bad things about this person' I am not the first person this has happened to.

- Anyone Reading: Please don't reply directly to this post! as I'd like to be able to edit it if I remember what else I was going to add.

I'm a little in camp "afraid to speak up" but your post got me excited Mahj, so I want to try. You really made me think!
Also this entire post is just, a really good question I've been wondering strongly about. I wanted to ask the community WHY do you play the game, why do we start it up, because I sometimes don't know! Nostalgia, nice background sound, sitting in a 3D space with my friends are I think my reasons, which aren't bad but not very interactive! In the past, there was a chance Something would happen and I could go spy or participate, but that's a lot less now, most people are paused so even if you go out to cause havoc, you're most likely not seen. The whole find picto on map -> find deer -> find player -> add on discord -> alert them to hey I'm here, takes so long with how slow the site is, it stiffles natural interaction. I'm super pro a quick "hey are you ok with this" for negative interaction, because the opposite that used to happen got tiring too: always having to be on alert, your character on the brink of death, and then arguments about who took enough damage or not.

But like, hammer on the nail there Mahj: We're not getting new players. The people who've been here for ages have either moved on or perhaps gotten a little bored, and started (like me) elaborate fantasy worlds outside of TEF with the people they've gotten close with and trust. There's a tiiiny amount of people who still join and stay, but I think it might not be outbalancing those who leave.

So how did most of us get here? This is a really obscure game when you think about it, finding it is a chore. Nowadays if I hear of a new game I search on steam, if it's not there I stop looking. I got here through deviantart, and I don't know if it's similar for others but I personally stopped using most art platforms. Sure, Toyhouse, I wonder if anyone has gotten here yet through there? But then there's a poorly working game, a silent community, it's a hard sell.

Can we as a community do something? Lure new people in somehow perhaps, or take more effort to reach out to eachother, or something else entirely. I want to be excited about being here again sooo badly, and I have the vague feeling it's similar for others, but we're also seemingly stuck on these little islands.

Such discussions happen on and off on tef...for a few years now. It's very remiscent of the two anxious people wanting to interact with eachother but too afraid to make the first move.

Everyone's answer here on the why is super good, it's not a singular cause that does so but many.
And when one is actually many, fixing it becomes.... difficult, especially if everyone is not on the same page.

Tef is dying. It's been for years now, and why do we keep bringing it up?.Is it really dying one might ask? Yeah, yeah it is, slowly, painfully, agonisingly, like watching a train move at snail pace off a cliff.

There's a speck of closeteness the air as well when it comes to newer players. Oldies will always be favourited. I can't blame them. I can't judge nobody on that too, oldies are generally reliable when it comes to being active. A newbie will flourish or wilt. It's a risky gamble, yup. Family roleplays are great to bust a newbie into a family, or to involve them in. (Im even currently in a group that's like that and i feel so *** bad I'm as active as a brick) I've done so heavily in the past as well, even if they go mia, i won't ever put my emotions; characters > people.
And on the families again... fawns pop up left and right but I've not seen public inquiries over here anymore...I only remember mine where most users i took in, I never before interacted with.
When we keep just to the few same faces.
It stagnates and it stagnates untill drama do us part. And then we're back to community defragmentation.

For things to change, everyone would have to pull some weight. Im not really that optimistic to be all honest. But hey. Maybe the remake will bring a shed of light as well as new people.

I'd have a lot to say about this issue but I'm pretty sure 90% of the people would get offended so, I'm gonna cut it straight to the point. I personally believe two separate servers (IC and OOC) would clear a lot of problems regarding people being anxious of approaching others. Also, newbies often aren't aware of these two different worlds, and usually (or at least at the beginning) just want to play the game the way it was originally meant to be played. That being said, even tho it's pretty much impossible to have a hope of having separate servers in the near future (or maybe ever), actually being able to have them would make things a lot easier for everyone. Want an ic interaction? You would know where to go, without the fear of someone taking it ooc-ly, and vice versa. All in all, I think this whole ic vs ooc thing is what makes a lot of people (including myself) anxious, or at least adds to an already existing problem of most people here being generally shy when it comes to expanding their social circle.

I would like to politely disagree with this.

As someone with average art, and simple coding, who hasn't been well known on this site for a long time (I guess my stuff just became less Hip and Cool?), there is a difference in how me and the friends I try to bring into it have been treated in the past.

No one approaches our characters, and if we approach the characters of others, the best we can hope for is maybe a passing acknowledgement in-forest, and maybe a passing acknowledgement of 'x saw y' in an update, despite being easily contactable both on site and on the Discord server, and reaching out ourselves never gets anything more than 'Hi! Yes I see you there :)'

Maybe it has died down, maybe it hasn't, but it is still a present issue, one can't say it isn't a problem at all anymore, it likely doesn't seem that way to some people, and I mean that honestly and without a hint of sarcasm! I really genuinely think it doesn't seem that way to people who get interactions, who get chosen to play fawns, who get people talking to them on discord or on their biographies, who get comments on their work, but I promise you, and I'm not the only person who feels this way (I won't name names because these things were brought to me in private), that there is an issue, maybe not with elitism per-se, I don't think anyone here thinks they're better than anyone else or acts that way on purpose, but there is an issue with older, more well known players receiving more attention than new ones or even less well known ones.

If multiple people have stepped up to say they're having issues with this, I think it's a disservice to the community to flat out look at all of them and say 'No, that's not a problem, you're imagining things'.

And again! I don't think anyone is doing it on purpose, I don't want to seem mean or hostile about it, I just think it's not right to shoot down people who are struggling, desperately, with something as simple as 'I don't think that's true', because for a lot of people, it is true, and it does hurt, and it does make them stop playing.

As for why I started playing, I was actually talking about this with my partner a few days back!

TEF was...Nice to me. I didn't have anywhere online that I stayed, I had a few forums I ran under throw-away accounts to match my moderation role, but I didn't have a set in stone username, I didn't have friends online or off (Wasn't allowed to have 'em offline), when I found the game, it was pretty, and it was relaxing, and it took me away from a very lonely reality. When I found the site it was even better, there were people here! And they liked to write! And they made characters! And they talked to one another!

And it was the very first place I ever had a username I was known by, it gave ma a name for a long time, it was instrumental in shaping my identity, I was a jackass, I learned to be less of a jackass, it helped me unlearn a lot of the toxic behaviors I'd been taught in Meatspace, and it taught me that some people will always be the way they are.

I joined this game almost ten years ago, when I was a young child, and despite everything, the drama, the slow changes in culture, the frustration with the dev team, I don't think I'll ever really leave. TEF was my first home, many of the people here were like a family to me, fading further and further into the background as my works and characters became less interesting in the changing culture hurt, but in a lot of ways, I think cutting my ties with TEF entirely would hurt more, in a different, deeper way.

unrelated:



I do very heavily agree with these, M&A can barely handle one server, they can't handle two.

EDIT:

Well, at least they're saying they'll look at the site, I'm not pleased with their stating that we aren't a priority when we do so much funding of their work and so much of their advertisement for them, among other things, but at least maybe we'll be thrown a bone in the form of a website that has bare minimum functionality, like loading.

you'd be hard pressed to find anyone being approached nowadays, i deal with the same issue. most characters end up sitting alone for days at a time except for those that are in somewhat active families (and those tend to only get interaction from family members).
and yes, even when you go out of your way to approach someone, you might be met with a brick wall. and that's okay - i've felt that too. either try again or move onto someone else. most of us still active on tef aren't picky about interactions and are desperate for them (except for the issues that were pointed out about the different playstyles).
you might not get a whole lot on the first try, but building relationships on tef takes time. so you might only get a simple acknowledgment the first time, but that doesn't mean it will stay that way. some players/characters might be downright uninterested but in that case you'd want to move on anyway.
not all characters/players are compatible with one another.


i'm also not denying that it's harder to gain attention if you don't have art or a pretty bio — especially back in the day — but i don't like that people get accused of being elitist if they happen to have a somewhat popular or recognizable character and then get blamed for all of tef's problems.
i've found that most biographies have become pretty basic, some lack css entirely because there's not many people offering CSS commissions anymore. there's hardly any activity on tefc either, so you'd be lucky to get 10 comments on a new character or post. so i still disagree that 'elitism' is a glaring problem right now because hardly anyone is getting attention. and the few who still do work damn hard for it.

and again, players that show they are active and reliable are going to be the ones that get picked to play fawns. i've seen plenty of threads of players looking for fawn players and they only get about 2-4 offers, if even that.

i feel like those who were too timid to branch out back then/felt they didn't get enough interest should try to play now while tef is quiet and (mostly) drama-free. maybe build up/regain some confidence when it comes to approaching/being approached by others.

sorry, i didn't mean that you were implying the stuff i said about accusing people of elitism! i was just bringing it up as a general point because the elitism argument has been brought up a lot in the past and it always kind of bothered me that people actually thought others were being elitist for having a popular character, that's all! i completely agree that it's harder for people to garner interest when there's not as many 'pretty' things to catch people's attention.


i'm not at all doubting that there are people who try really hard to get interaction/recognition and get 0 results - the point i'm trying to make is that with the current state of the game, everyone is struggling. so that's why i feel that the argument of 'popular players with pretty things get more attention' being a problem right now isn't necessarily true because everyone's experiencing the same thing.


i've talked to people who've had to play fawns for the same people and they really do struggle to find other players to play these kids. so in most cases they aren't getting a ton of offers (1-4, 4 being very generous) and are forced to keep playing each other's kids.

and again, back in the day there was a lot of drama and trust issues that made people want to stick to their friend groups when it came to picking players, but now that things have quieted down it's more so an issue of what players we have to work with (which isn't much).

Closetness and elitism are different entirely, its not censorship of the other. But i fully wholly get why people would feel that way even after a whiff of the word snce the word is used to accuse shame and ' 'name' ' but ' 'not name' ' people to collectively accuse them of x y z that make up all that's wrong with tef.

After a while it's tiring and people get fed up, nobody can be blamed for the reaction they make if they see the stick they've been beaten with a countless times before...

I think those two things go hand in hand, siblings are fun but... more people more offers, the more people have a chance to stick. So my hopes for tef 2 IF it's propperly marketed are high enough. But not if m n a do nothing after the matter. We need the bulk.
In this sucessful rp forum i'm at, we get new people in a constant influx, we rp with them indiscriminately.
Most...poof, gone, but those 2 out of 10 that stay over time really make for a big differance ^^ !

An interesting thing to say to a community of people who historically have been a massive part of paying for your vacations and servers.

Honestly, and this may receive some backlash, it's probably time to accept that M&A don't care about us, don't care about the community, and don't care about the game, they actively resent the very people who make up this community and give them money, and if we have to lose TEF in order to make it known that we're not okay with being used and abused, then we may just have to face the fact that it's time to stop paying to be spat at.

Want to know why TEF is dying?

This is why.

Both sides been and will be acting on emotion.
You can't expect good will from someone while you offer them none.
You won't see good will in someone you're prejudiced about.
People are different, you can't expect others to live the way that's convenient to you.
And blame them when they go out of your line.
Nobody lives for anyone's convenience and no, money won't buy you respect, care, understanding. You have to give, as well.
This isn't directed at anyone in particular, but to everyone.

Oakja,
If you want me to assume things without full screenshots of both your message and their response, then I'm naturally assuming your wording prompted that reaction.
You posed yourself as the middleman, you got a responsibility to be perfectly clear here.
Seeing how sensitive the subject is, don't brush it off.
Don't kick the community where it hurts without providing a full picture of what happened.

> we log in just to have our characters sit with someone and rp everything on discord. that's why no one moves.

the main problem is clear. isn't it?

i don't want to offend anyone, but the endless forest used to be a great social space, not just a screensaver,
and i can relate to a few people above, who said they're actually missing the old days.

roleplaying is a truly entertaining thing, when it's not separated from the game.
obviously, you can't make new acquaintances without actually meeting other characters.
and let's be honest, most of you simply don't want to.

why did you all change the subject, all of a sudden,
and started to blame the devs for things they're only indirectly related to?

They were attacked before, as well, going so far as to political quotes from M's personal twitter and I don't recall anyone minding it. It was either agreement or silence. Or memes.
Years later people contact them when there's something tech needing to be fixed. Human decency doesn't work that way.

As long as the game will have its userbase, this gap will have to be bridged. Someone will have to pick it up, this gone to shit relationship, from the way worse state than it's been before.
I just hope it ain't getting buried any further.

I don't think that's the spirit of Uit's request.



You've basically gone into a room with a closed door, asked Mom & Dad if you and your siblings can have candy, and come back and said "Mom & Dad say the candy isn't important." Now some of the kids are riled up and mad because Mom & Dad don't appear to care and have been cruel.

But the answer was paraphrased, and without knowing what was actually said on each side the "kids" may be mad for no reason.
We're just looking for context, not asking anyone to prove anything.

.

I don't have a lot to say myself as everyone else has pretty much shared my own thoughts and feelings, but:


^ as someone who loves to play antagonists and tries to stir up some fun for people given how opportunities have become lacking for character development and interaction, this really long process has always been off-putting for me }: I do make an effort to do it regardless because it feels like a necessity, but yeah, admittedly sometimes I don't bother to do any of it at all which means others (who may have enjoyed and appreciated the interaction) as well as myself miss out.
This website being slow is a KILLER because it means when I check the map to see if x-character's player is comfortable with the intended type of interaction, I can't be sure, so I will give up on looking so that I can play it safe (even trying to post on this thread is making me want to cry because I'm one of the unfortunate ones who has to change their usernames to do so hahahaha)

on that note of 'playing it safe' and avoiding offending players, I find it hard to 'live-play' (for lack of a better word, I'm super exhausted pls forgive) and allow my characters to just 'be' as they would be because I'm constantly having to break away from that immersion to check the (slow) website and do my research and probably contact players WHICH ISN'T A BAD THING people are allowed to have their preferences of course, it's just... very different from how things used to be, where generally you could play a character naturally without all these fears, and so much more used to happen in the game - positive and negative roleplay - and I think the fearfulness is a big reason for that? and as has already been established by many people here, there are many reasons for that fearfulness

tl;dr for me and I know many many many people, it's almost like you have to tread on eggshells most of the time



and just regarding all the sentiments expressed over m&a and their response, it's this part about it that I personally find a bit hurtful to hear? Because we are the community, and we as the community have done so much to try to support the game and m&a, and what is the game without the community that keeps it alive? 3: so I imagine it's probably a bit of a finger flip to a lot of those who do also feel stung.
[e] especially those who have spent literally hundreds to support it


I ended up writing more than I planned to so I hope I've made some sense because my brain wasn't ready to think about things yet

Kind of just chiming in on everything Sapphire’s said since she’s hit most of the points behind why I’ve grown far more inactive compared to how consistent I used to be around here a few years ago. LostintheEcho really hit a point I resonate with as well.

Having to get consent for anything and everything is a huuuge reason why I don’t play antagonists anymore even though they’re one of my favorite characters to play. I don’t know who’s okay with it (or me) anymore and having to knock on everyone’s proverbial door to get permission for some IC drama is a killjoy. Having to get a player’s attention is rough, too - althought I totally understand why so many people tab out of the game for hours on end. I am 200% guilty of that myself. The forest is so dead most times, there’s not much of a reason to even tab in most days. I imagine that’s a big part behind why there are so few newbies who manage to hang in there and establish themselves here. It can get pretty boring unless you’re willing to throw yourself at people through discord. And with so many anxious babes in this community, the lack of return can be super disappointing unless you already know what to expect and how the place works.

Drama’s an even bigger ordeal- at least for me! I’ve been smacked around by bullies and abusers in some amazingly dank ways, and in such quick succession over recent years, that I’m pretty afraid to do anything with my characters for fear that someone will shank me behind the scenes even while they’re sending me heart emojis in DMs. Hell, I’m afraid to defend myself after being labelled a manipulator and told I was invalidating the feelings of others when I approached people in the past hoping to resolve the problem.
I know most of the community has been together long enough that everyone knows everyone’s been an asshole at some point or another (i know i have been on more than one occasion, bless), and I think things have calmed down immensely since last year, but I’ve personally been hit in tender places and in ways that’ll probably always leave me far more skittish than I ever was before.
And on a separate, but related tangent, there’s been so many cases where I’d love to reach out to people or interact with others outside of my usual friend-group, but concern for another’s discomfort with me over past issues has had me shying away from those situations. Because they’re also involved in the scenarios in some way shape or form, or so heavily involved with the player(s)/character(s) that I’d like to reach out to, I end up avoiding the situation, player, or character in order to avoid upsetting the individual or diminishing their enjoyment.
It’s a tough thing to balance and to avoid personal stress, or stressing anyone else, it’s simplest to err on the safe side and just keep out of it altogether. Which sucks! I miss out on a lot and can’t offer anything to those I would’ve liked to. I think the same principle can be applied to a lot of TEF’s issues in that regard and has already been touched on by a few people. And that’s not to fault the people looking after their personal comfort, either!! People need to look after themselves and do what’s best by them and I support that. It’s just the trouble of finding that sweet spot where everyone can be as happy as possible

All that being said, I’m not really sure how to overcome these issues and others that’ve been mentioned in previous posts. I’d suggest a masterpost where people could assign themselves to being open to spontaneity, wanting consent, so on and so forth, but with the site’s slow loading times, idk if there’d even be a point.
Wormwood’s suggestion of settling on a community-used set of in-game actions isn’t a bad idea.

For what it’s worth, and maybe not the right place to mention, but with community drama being acknowledged and my own mention of it above, I just want to put out there that I don’t hold a grudge against anyone no matter our history and I’m always game for IC interaction with everyone, in-game or written!! I love plots and spontaneous interaction equally, both positive and negative. And if I don’t approach you or your characters, it’s not personal; I’m just a member of the shyguy crew tryin’ to keep out of hot water.