Are The Challenge Threads Struggling?

[Swinburn]

As an avid challenge player since 2009, and taking part in all the continent ones this year, I've noticed that there doesn't appear to be the numbers there once was. I've noticed people having 3 or 4 updates on a single page, mass amounts of double posts, and not much interest taken into other people's games. I remember a time you could get up to 10 posts between two of your own. Now, seemingly, you're lucky to get one or two. So I asked myself, are the challenge threads struggling? In fact, are they even starting to die?

I decided to do some research and analysis into this. I took the 5 continent challenges, Dafuge/Gundos/Big Euro/Americas/Asia, and checked the post count for each thread (since the layout change made the pages longer) since 2008.



And what's an analysis on numbers without a good graph? Graphs are cool



As you can see by whichever means, the activity has gone down over the years. Dafuge has dropped significantly since 2009, and whilst the year is not done yet, we're still a long way behind 2011. Gundos has had a huge drop since 2009 with a small jump in 2011, but I think Gundos is one of the big strugglers of this year. Big Euro, whilst dropping in activity over the years is not far off surpassing last year's post count. Naturally, with the obscurity of the countries and teams, you'd not expect to see the same level of entries for America and Asia. However, for Asia's activity to drop that much over the years is the biggest shock of all.

So I'll take this to a discussion. Do you think the challenge threads are struggling? Do you think the thread inactivity is raising and that general conversation on other people's games has dropped since the very active 2009. If so, why do you think this is? Have people lost interest in the challenges? Is the interest in recording the games and discussing other's died? Or has something else caused it?

I'm eager to see if anyone shares this concern, or in fact disagrees.

[Taunton]

I for sure hope not since this is the first time I am doing a challenge (Gundo's), and have followed the other threads for years. Maybe people think it takes longer to get through seasons and because of that don't hav the time to update that much?

I don't know. One thing is I really think the challenges is making the game more fun and it is an interesting twist to the game play. Especially when you have played the series since the beginning. Maybe a lot of people have completed the challenges before, and have found other teams/ways to play?

[Lower Leagues Rule]

I don't really pay much attention to the other threads, given that it generally takes me most of the year to even get close to completing a challenge in the Big Euro thread. I would say in general I have really noticed the drop from 2009 to 2010 the most, I did have post counts on all the threads in our challenge. In 2011 it seemed to reach the bottom for us, and I would say the level of activity so far in the 2012 thread is closer to 2010 and I would not be surprised to see the 2012 thread end up with about 4000 posts. All I can say is that the main reason I don't think ours has dropped quite so much is because we have quite a strong core of players who have been around since 2008 or 2009, Rlipscombe, Iacovone, Ohanzee, PRDH and myself have been around all that time and between us we comment or respond to almost every post in the thread.

I have noticed the drop though, and was amazed when I saw how close the Big Euro was to Dafuge's this season. And the other two seem to have dropped almost into obscurity, but overall the number of people in this entire sub-forum has dropped off since 2009, the Careers forum has played a part in this as well though.

[BS_8]

I used to post on here a while back, around 2008/09, I think I posted about my career with American Samoa, it went on for about 34 years.

I didn't get into any FM's after that, I hated them, so stuck with 08. This made me disappear from these boards.

I love career stories and remember Dafuge and Gundo from back then.

I am back with FM12 though and love it, so hopefully my post count will be on the rise as I look to catch up with some threads!

[Biscotti]

I think between the down-time from last year and the careers forum CSE has taken a huge hit on numbers and we're seeing that in not o ly the challenges but also the sign-ups and experiments too.

[Tactic Master]

I think between the down-time from last year and the careers forum CSE has taken a huge hit on numbers and we're seeing that in not o ly the challenges but also the sign-ups and experiments too.

That is backed up by the fact that the CSE Awards probably aren't going ahead due to lack of interest.

[Jim-Bob24]

i've also noticed there seems to be less challenge's this year, but more sign-ups