I can only speak to the forums i'm a member on and this one has by far had the most significant decline. I spend 99% of my forum time here, but I will occasionally hit NA, Shmups and KLOV.
NA is as active as it was 7 years ago. Zero decline.
Shmups is slightly less active - maybe 25%.
KLOV is still very active. Maybe modest decline, 10% or so.
One of the biggest changes is the negotiating and requests in PM. When I joined up in 2010 - if you wanted to buy something, you pm'd, "I'll take it." The response was, "Here's where you send the money." That was it. Now it's, "More pics? Can we come down a little? Will you be double-boxing? Why don't I have a tracking number yet?"
Case in point. I've had a pile of MVS carts up on here recently, about 10 carts I feel are well-priced, and priced friendly. I've sold 2 of them on here. After 2 weeks I moved them to NA, skewed the prices up a little, and have sold 4 carts and multiple pms. It's sad when you can sell MVS carts more easily on NA than NG.
I bought lots of shit from you, only asked you
once to lower your price 'cause you could get a full kit for pretty much the same money you were selling a bare PCB. Even gave you more money than what was agreed 'cause I felt like I was doing something wrong asking you for a fair price. You aren't perfect, sometimes your prices are off, no biggie, at least you're nice enough to work things out but as you can see your comment obviously hit home.
SNKpro is a prime example of this shit, fucker wanted to swap cases on an AES cart and provide a 10 bucks discount, the fucking nerve, like you can get a nice snapcase for 10 bucks. I said no, guy let's me send him the money via paypal but then he decides to refund the money 2 days later, the fucking nerve with this POS and apparently it was my fault 'cause I wasn't happy about him switching cases and inserts on a game I already paid for, the guy didn't even give me a choice, he asked after the fact and then was upset 'cause I wouldn't accept a swap case, seriously where do these fucking people get off?
That's my problem with people here, some people think they're doing you favors. Top that with the fact that a douche like shroom would rather sell to this SNKpro POS rather than me, but then again that's just personal drama more than anything else.
This market was perfectly fine until the purge, that's what really killed it, this place has always been policed by members, ever since I can remember. When ZDTF came about we policed it even more, the market kept going well until the purge that is.
SO what to do from here on out? Open market, it's the only way, just be selective on your sales, old timers aren't going to buy that Samsho 2 cart, only noobs need such...so why not just be selective? Maybe we don't wanna sell that MOTW cart to newcomers but it would help if we can learn to sell to everyone accordingly.