Forum activity

[Bloom]

It's not that the community is elitist on purpose, the very nature of Elements kind of forces elitism on the community as the game takes a decent bit of time to adjust to, learn and grasp all of the different concepts. The veterans have a vast knowledge of the game and the math that it entails, where as someone who stumbles upon the game just sees it as a cool card game. I do agree that if the game were properly funded, updated on a regular basis and had a team working on it, it could reach new heights.

That likely won't happen so I believe the real issue lies in the fact that new players probably don't feel enough pull to the game to want to spend tons of time farming 6 of every rare. I think daily quests might really help keep the new players who just discover the game interested.

[juan_de_diablo]

To be honest, I started playing this game years ago. Never joined the forum and eventually got bored with and forgot about the game. It was only 2ish months ago that a friend, Taargus, reminded me of this game. Upon returning, several changes had been made to the game: no more top50, arena, oracle, and lots of new cards for new possibilities. The difference this time is that I am getting sucked into the forums, which has helped maintain my interest. Plus, the pvp system was suuuuper glitchy back in the day which was really frustrating. I guess my point is that the game is so much better now than it used to be, and I'm surprised and sadden to hear the community is declining

[ddevans96]

Every game takes time to adjust to. Elitism is mostly a community view. Elitism is how the average player treat players who are irrefutably worse than they are and where the transition from the community's view of noob to pro is. In some games, this transition doesn't exist, which creates huge elitism. In others, such as Elements, this transition is very broad.

You have a competent deck (and ai3 grinder) in a very short time, but it's a long way before you have a complete gold/platinum/false god grinder, which has become the milestone in Elements. In between there, you have a very broad amount of people who aren't noobs, but aren't quite at the top either. This is our future.

When there's very few new players, and hardly any players progressing and going through the motions - and I sadly believe this can happen to us, but not soon. Not for years, possibly more - then we have elitism. And which our relatively small playerbase, that would be a huge problem.

As for daily quests, that would be a huge step. It would encourage more deck variety in PvE, and even PvP if implemented right. So would an achievement system - it gives people a defined view of accomplishment that is not currently obvious to those who are new to Elements.

[memimemi]

IMHO, a lot of interest in the forums could be drummed up, by simply telling people how useful they are.  Maybe a short 1/2-paragraph blurb, under the mainpage's link to the forum, could help new players overcome any shyness/paranoia about signing up?

After all, this is one of the more supportive and civilized web forums out there - if people knew how awesome it is, without having to first sign up (anathema to many casual flash gamers), there may be more activity.

On a side note, it was mentioned in another thread (sorry, too lazy to find it right now - it's early, here!) that it might be a good idea to gather a few veteran players, as volunteers, to guide newbies through deckbuilding, synergy, and basic E:tG concepts.  How about a new PvP (PvP0?), where veterans hang out, giving tutorials to new players?  This would also provide excellent opportunities for the forum vets (so many people with thousands of posts! :envy) to show that they're gamers, like any newb, rather than an elitist circle of injoking, newb-hating d-bags (which, for the record, people here most certainly are not), and to tell players directly about the benefits of forum membership - heck, most of the fun of the game comes from various forum-based PvP events, of which new players know nothing.

Please forgive the disjointed thoughts - morning coffee isn't working properly yet.

[regen2k9]

I don't know Zanz personally and I've never spoken to him but does anyone who knows him know if he would consider something like giving the admins (or one or two of them) development access?  It would spur along improvement at a much faster rate.  I know, Elements is only Zanz's hobby, not a passion, but to this extent, it would help if the development load were shared

[Annele]

IMHO, a lot of interest in the forums could be drummed up, by simply telling people how useful they are.  Maybe a short 1/2-paragraph blurb, under the mainpage's link to the forum, could help new players overcome any shyness/paranoia about signing up?

After all, this is one of the more supportive and civilized web forums out there - if people knew how awesome it is, without having to first sign up (anathema to many casual flash gamers), there may be more activity.

On a side note, it was mentioned in another thread (sorry, too lazy to find it right now - it's early, here!) that it might be a good idea to gather a few veteran players, as volunteers, to guide newbies through deckbuilding, synergy, and basic E:tG concepts.  How about a new PvP (PvP0?), where veterans hang out, giving tutorials to new players?  This would also provide excellent opportunities for the forum vets (so many people with thousands of posts! :envy) to show that they're gamers, like any newb, rather than an elitist circle of injoking, newb-hating d-bags (which, for the record, people here most certainly are not), and to tell players directly about the benefits of forum membership - heck, most of the fun of the game comes from various forum-based PvP events, of which new players know nothing.

Please forgive the disjointed thoughts - morning coffee isn't working properly yet.

^ Sidenote best part of speech.

I agree.

[kev]

Everything I've seen has pointed to zanz being unwilling to add developers and dd was 100% right that zanz tossing hundreds of hours at his pet project isn't realistic.  So it's up to the community to figure out how to expand the community.  That's why I love threads like this one.    Here's an idea I re-pitched after the forum transition.  Admins either didn't like it or were unable to implement it.

After all, this is one of the more supportive and civilized web forums out there

Incidentally, it's easy to lose sight of how true that is.  It probably doesn't seem this way because it's easy to focus on the exceptions, but in a forum where the average age is definitely below 20 it's nothing short of miraculous how mature and helpful our forum goers are on the whole. 

[Shantu]

To solve the decline problem, I believe we need the following things:

- Ads for the game, catchy banners and such. Since Zanz obviously doesn't have the money or doesn't want to spend it on this, a sponsor or a community effort could pay for them. Just an idea.

- A link to the community portal ingame. This way everyone could find the official forums with ease, even on Kong.

- Constant updates to keep people interested. To quote Zanz..

Small, more frequent patches ftw.

They don't have to be big, just minor tweaks and occasionally a card or two.


As for SG, he was great because he kind of 'pushed the community forward'. He kept thinking up new stuff, like mastership, trials, war, WoE etc. and had the will to make them happen.

[majofa]

- Constant updates to keep people interested.

Everything I've seen has pointed to zanz being unwilling to add developers...

^This

People are starting to get bored with seeing the same cards/decks over and over again. When veterans start to fade away, and the influx of new players are sticking around as long (and in as great of numbers), the community starts to die.

To counter this, WE NEED GAMEPLAY THAT CHANGES more often than once every 8-11 months.

Why hasn't zanz ever had other people help? Has he ever given us an answer to that?

---

What should be done: (just one solution)

Select 2-6 veteran players from the community to serve as 'beta' testers. Setup up a beta website of the game (different from the one he uses now) that can only be accessed, through password, by the testers and zanz.

Make it so card ideas can be implemented, by one of the testers or by zanz himself, and tested. The testers select a bunch of cards from the Card Ideas & Art section and test them for playability/fun/balance, then submit a set of cards to zanz for approval.

zanz adds the cards.

- Rinse and Repeat -

Any structual games changes can still come through zanz, but the majority of the cards would come from the community (as they have more recently).

[RootRanger]

If I remember correctly, zanz wants the game to be mostly his own work as a showcase for his and only his developing skill.  Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I believe zanz is using Elements sort of as part of a resume to get a job at a large game design company. Yup, here we go.

vrt: A game like this would look great on a resume; would you want to pursue a career in game design?

zanz: I had a few companies contacting me, one worth mentioning would be Zynga (http://www.zynga.com/); someone from Zynga was very impressed with Elements and called me. But at the HR department some other guy wasn’t really impressed with my resume since most of my work experience is actually in chemical engineering (we will leave that detail of my existence as a mystery) and had nothing to do with game design. I never got an interview, but I am quite sure that if they did actually interviewed me I would be working for them now.

[majofa]

Zynga just wanted the game for the money they could get from it, yes?

[artimies7]

In my opinion, all we've got to do is get a webcomic or youtube artist totally hooked on Elements and they'll do the rest.

references FTW