How do I get famous/many downloads on Steam Workshop?

Well, as I like to build ships, I want to share them with other People of course. Problem here is, that, although there are quite a few guys who seem to enjoy my stuff , I get rarely about 100-200 Downloads, while other ships like These: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=398597357&searchtext= ( Not meant offensive ) are a bit "uncreative".

So do you know any ways to get a lil´bit more famous?

(Dont missunderstand this as some Kind of rant, like: "aww Im much better than these ****, why am I not moar famous" ) (Sry for grammar mistakes )

 

people have taken over the workshop front page single-handedly before due to a workshop function. While i do not accuse them of doing it intentionally, i do think it is something that steam/KSH needs to fix.

you'll notice on his collection "the black fleet" that it asks if you would like to see these items in space engineers. When someone clicks "yes" it seems to add ratings or votes to every item in that collection, which is why there is such a higher percentage of good ratings for these ships than even the most famous and well made other ships out there. (most ships only get 15-20% of their suscriber at MOST to rate their ships. these ships typically get 50%)

unfortunately, ratings are more important than suscribers to steam, so these ships get bumped up on the workshop as a collection.

i've been hesitant to draw attention to the issue, for fear that more would discover the secret and exploit it. The function was added due to the exploration update, so KSH can figure out what ships people want in exploration mode. the problem is, many people who use this function in their collections violate the exploration requirements (they use mods). therefore, they are getting their stuff promoted even though it should not be.

 

Build nice stuff already, noob! whats up buddy? A tip id give you is dont give a damn about subs to your items, just as I do lol

 

^ What lord said. I've definitely seen this.

I've never broken 1k myself (best around 895, three over 500) I've noticed that multiple ships with very similar design styles do collectively better, and of course the "carrier effect" where large carrier designs seem to inexplicably skyrocket.

 

Wait Howitz, which Subs do you mean? you dont have any ships .

 

the "plan" should not be to get famous, or how many subs, but rather a hope that what you are putting out there is what someone is looking for, what may help another get some ideas, hopefully "connect" with like minded creators.

i wouldn't worry about it, if i get 1 sub its not that im happy about the sub, it is i am happy that i have connected with someone with same interests maybe.

subs do not mean anything because you can sub up, get the world, load it up, then unsub, mods are a little different i think, a perpetual sub is in order to continue using them afaik.

and a link in yer sig doesn't hurt if you would like more exposure, problem with steam is that you have to know exactly what you are searching for, general searches never give results i look for {even when using the right hand "options"}...but maybe its jest me.

 

Yeah, also I got the Feeling that Military ships are much better received. Guess Ill Forget it .

 

I think you are some Sort of conceptual artist

 

Dont give up building ships! The people uploading and sharing their ships is the essence of the workshop! The workshop is only useful and interesting if alwaus new ships make it to the front page!
If you want to get more attention on the workshop, I have a few Hints for you.

Most important is the presentation of your workshop item. Take a few screenshots. Use max graphic settings for these screenshots even if your fps drop. Use different field of view settings like 40 degrees or sometimes over 70 degrees for interior. Give your ships a unique paintjob that is recognisable. Write some interesting text about your ship, about its purpose, use a good name. If you are really good, make video to show some of your ships awesome features.

if you only have one ship ready, dont release it yet unless it's a super amazing crazy beautiful destroyer. If this is not the case wait until you have a few ships and release them all together. important is to post a link to your ships on the community creations topic in this forum and in the Steam community hub.

One last thing for you: Getting views and subs on the Internet works in strange ways.

 

Tyriosh of of my only finished ship, the paladin, early version, I just took a picture of it, no presentation or wathever, got over 800 subs, thats the one im talking about you ugly piece of grape

 

I often see items of much lower quality than yours scoring thousands of hits.
Usually this means that they are someone with some followers who cross-posted on a thread on some popular forum or youtube. This forum itself doesn't really net too much traffic.

 

I looked it up
only 400, dont lie u filthy peasant

 

The workshop is depressing... especially when yet another [Insert sci-fi replica ship here] gets thousands of downloads and so many gorgeous bits of work slip by. I've seen some amazing stuff not even get 20 subs before and it's only be co-incidence I found it.

The workshop is a combination of luck and timing more than anything. Certain days of the week seem to have more foot traffic than others, and the same with times of day (in certain time zones). Depending on the state of the game as well there can be more or less people on the go. Major patches and Steam sales bring back or add new blood whereas a few quiet weeks and it can really slow. There's been weeks where the front page has had only 5-10 properly rated projects on it, the rest are basically nothing. On the opposite though, I've released stuff on weeks where there's three pages of 5 star work and gotten lost in the crowd.

The other problem is the 'legacy' work. Even when I came along in June 2014, the main peak of players had past... there's work on page 1 of the all time greats with the kind of numbers it's impossible to get now, so they'll never (or only extremely slowly) get replaced, despite the fact many of them are now extremely dated. The sheer numbers are staggering. My Avalon, on Page 3 of the all time has a mere 232 votes. The TTE Battlecruiser at the top of Page 2 has an also kind of modest 565. Double mine, but not actually that many people. Go half way up page 1 to Bos' Desolace and the numbers are about the same. But at the top of the page you're looking at an unassailable 1400+!! With the number of players looking at ships these days, there's no way we're ever going to touch that.

Of course as Dark says, the collections are now dominating the top - a few often extremely simple survival ships in a collection can now rule the charts.

To be honest though, after the success of the Avalon, none of my ships made a blip in the radar. At first this made me rather sad, but as time went on I realised I was happier building for myself and for the small group of people who appreciate my work (and vice versa).

 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=369026471&searchtext=

This is the best rateted ship of all time O_o ( sry J.D , just exspected something more - big )

 

I definitely agree with Tristavius, I basically build for myself, and value the opinion of four or five other people- Trist, Dwarf lord, Dark lord, Tyriosh and Zeratul. Basically just the top phoenix people and dwarflord who is outstanding.

 

At work atm. So my response will be short.

Checklist:
-Quality Image
- Mod > Military Ship > Civilian Ship\Other
- Search Terms that people are looking for
- 99% workshop items are basically spam so don't expect to be easily found.
- Don't care to much about popularity when you know that some of the best like your stuff.

 

@Tyriosh
I dont think I have to defend myself nor my ships for being on the top rated page. Some people get quite narcissistic when they get a bit of attention on the internet. But I know that Tristavius is right with his statement: "the workshop is a combination of luck and timing." I had both. I read Keens "call for exploration fleets" (most people dont remember they wanted a several factions from the players. however keen is ignoring this request for now)
I gave all my ships a similar paint job, gave them names and released them with exploration tag on the workshop as a collection. The next thing was getting ratings for every guy out there hitting the "would you like to see this collection in Space Engineers". I continued building and releasing ships and even some of the ridiculous simple builds (like the communication satellite) made it to the top page because of this cumulative effect.

This ship you just pointed out. I can tell you why it is the "best rated of all time". Because I put it in a collection with other not too bad ships. Then ratings and subs start to get cumulative.
And thats what I told you to do above.

But this is just an explanation for getting attention on the workshop (which comes and goes by). If you want to build good ships, just build them.

 

Browsing the workshop utterly sucks. So if you don't get some "front page" magic it's likely it'll just fall by the wayside. There is also so much workshop content (much of which isn't terribly good) that the quality stuff gets drowned out unless you get a critical mass of likes

Post your ships here and link the workshop files. I just like poking around here looking at pictures of stuff people have done. Pretty bad when a forum is better for item browsing than the workshop.

To be perfectly honest, this game suffers from not needing many ships/having simspeed limitations, so I tend to only use my very specific and minimalistic designs in survival (ie I don't do interiors, except for maintenance crawlspaces). But I do like to download stuff and pop it into creative and fly it around, walk around the inside and then test my silly weapons against them.

Also, most workshop "warships" are pathetically under-armed by my standards. I've got large ship gunboats packing more firepower in a "barely bigger than a fighter package", than some people's cruisers. Sure they are ugly as sin, but frontal firepower generally beats sleek lines.

 

J.D what bothers me is that its much easier to get more popular with collections than with single creations

EDIT: @tank I have a thread here, look out for KUS shipyards

 

I dont think that Workshop popülarity has any standards. I saw many great ships that nobody noticed and some flying boxes which took all the credits

The weird thing is that mostly in this forum you can't even get any critics at all. Which is sad. For my part i try to put as much imges as possible Because of my heavy mod usage. But it seems that this prevents people from visiting my workshop.

This was the same when i was not using mods.

I Must confess that the workshop and this forum are among my main motivation sources for building ships.

 

you might not get many critics on these forums, but this is where the good stuff comes from. 99% of steam reviews are just "awesome" or "that's great". nothing that actually helps you improve or say why they like a ship.

Here, at least, people tend to be a bit more detailed.

As far as popularity goes, as others said it's timing. I watch the workshop to see when the time is best. if i see a replica going on the workshop, i will often wait until it dies down. same thing for when the modular stations took over the first four pages. i did not bother releasing anything big during that time as i knew it would not be noticed.

Youtube also helps. if you can make your own videos you'll do well. Sage and LSG make ships from time to time and they are always very popular because of their YT following. I worked out an agreement with one youtuber, and it helps both of us get views/subscriptions.

Other than that, presentation is good (which i think you do a good job of anyway, Tyriosh) and then collections.

However, (this is to everyone) please: if you aren't submitting for actual exploration mode (i.e. you are using mods in your ship, or they exceed KSH's triangle limit) PLEASE do us all a favor and don't add exploration tags or ask people if they want to see these items in SE on your collection

this is a favor not only to every member of the workshop by not spamming pages with your content, but it is also a favor to KSH, who is looking for exploration ships and doesn't need you submitting stuff they already told you they would not accept.

 

How about we all try to comment/critizise/whatever more ships in these forums? Just to increase the quality here

 

Now that I think about it, there is probably a booming black market where people pay some dudes to either view bot their workshop items or use exploits such as the one mentioned. I wouldn't be surprised if someone figured out a way to make money out of this.

 

i doubt people would go that far. maybe on youtube where you can get paid. but seeing as you get nothing for having a popular ship, paying someone to bot your items profits you in no way.

 

That depends. Take for example Arma modding contest. Alot of that competition was based on workshop votes and ratings. So botting such a thing would be very lucrative to win the grand prize. Similar thing could happen here if a creation contest is held for real money.

Never doubt, when there is money to be made. If there is a way, I guarentee someone has already begun doing it.

 

I recently made a ship that I thought was pretty sweet. I have 4 unique visitors (I think I was one) and 2 subscribers (again, I was one of them). I must be doing something wrong...

 

@Tyriosh
I was going to comment about how much thumbnails matter, but then I noticed your workshop thumbnails are a already a hell of lot better than the ones I used to produce. So that can't be the reason.

The only other advice I have would be adding a link to your collection or just your latest ship to your forum profile.
I like the ones Ravric, Lord Commisar and Tristavius have, for example. Not sure if will help that much, but I guess it doesn't hurt either.

Also, just try to get not obsessed with download numbers and rating that much. I sure got obsessed with that stuff, and it didn't do me any good in the long run. I think one reason why I stopped playing for almost half a year was because after my top 3 hit with the "Hyperion" I felt like "mission accomplished" and at the same time I was also frustrated because I know I couldn't repeat that success any time soon, if at all.

I was an idiot though. I now realize the important part was never the download numbers, the page rank or the number of followers - the pleasure of creating stuff is the only thing that really matters.
I for one will try to not run into the same trap again.

 

Do you guys think a thread, where people can post creations (not their own), together with an explanation, why they like it, to find the really good stuff, would help?

 

Also, thanks for reminding me that ist about the fun and not the downloads

 

That could work. Instead of "Show Off Your Creations" it would be "Show Off Someone Else's Creations"

Anyone who posts their own ships gets the Inquisition called on them.