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Offline kevTopic starter

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State of the Forum https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=43506.msg1000375#msg1000375
« on: September 17, 2012, 03:55:14 pm »
Despite a much improved forum, the transition hurt membership in a big way.  Activity is a fraction of what it was beforehand.  There's anecdotal evidence of vets leaving, but that's really how it's always been.  A vet leaving is just part of the circle of life; that same day a noob registers who will eventually occupy a staff position.

There's been a lot of discussion recently about the decline in activity.  The problem is being discussed daily, potential actions zanz could take are being discussed daily, but there isn't really any discussion over what we as a community can do.  The fact is we can make suggestions until we're blue in the face, but it's up to zanz how much time goes into development.  That doesn't mean we're helpless and stuck in a smaller community than we'd like, though.  Let's use this thread for suggestions on what the community can do to increase forum membership.  If your contribution to this thread is a note that increasing membership is moot until zanz takes some action, a) please keep your "contributions" elsewhere, and b) you're wrong.  In the old forum's heyday players flocked to the community for a number of reasons, but one was definitely an Admin who generated buzz by exploring new ideas and feeding community enthusiasm.  As a community we can bring that back today.

As I see it there are two types of actions the community can take to increase membership:
1) Find ways to keep players around longer.
Everybody has a shelf life but by figuring out what makes people stick around and taking action we can keep players here longer.  I'll get the ball rolling:
- Redevelop and reintroduce the mentor program.
- Redevelop and reintroduce WoE.
- Poll players on their use of the various forums, chat, wiki, etc.

2) Find ways to attract new players.
- Bring back the Recruit a Friend Competition.
- Making Kong players aware of the etg forum.  This morning wolfunit told me players ask him daily why the etg forum disappeared, and he has to reroute them.  Staff typically advertises upcoming forum events (Trials, War, etc) on the Kong forums but there might be a better way to step things up and unite the members.
- Free advertising.  If anyone knows a good way to do this, jump right in there.
- Paid advertising.  Though I don't think there's money left from the forum's ad revenues, we might consider this for the future.

Offline ZephyrPhantom

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Re: State of the Forum https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=43506.msg1000384#msg1000384
« Reply #1 on: September 17, 2012, 04:31:21 pm »
I personally prefer option 2, as it's what has fueled the forum from its very beginning - if you look back in the old posts, almost all the events are motivated by SG and other clever players trying to create something original. I believe the implementation of more creative, original events might help draw attention to the forum and I'm interested in seeing posts here that suggest new/unique events that we could possibly bring back such as the Recruit a Friend competition.

Redeveloping Battle would interesting, IMHO - while I first played the game for a while, it seems to have kind of dropped out of the spotlight, yet it has a chat system and a bunch of RPG features that could probably be developed into a Roguelike or text-based game with much more depth.

Regarding advertising - would it possible for someone that isn't Zanz to add a new badge to ETG Kongregate? (which then puts it on the front page) While it's not direct forum attention, it does draw Kong players attention.

EDIT : Back by popular demand. ;)
« Last Edit: September 17, 2012, 05:26:43 pm by Zblader »

Offline regen2k9

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Re: State of the Forum https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=43506.msg1000399#msg1000399
« Reply #2 on: September 17, 2012, 05:22:19 pm »
Regarding free advertising, this site lists several sites that allow you to advertise for free.  We should consider doing so:
http://www.whydowork.com/forums/top-free-online-advertising-sites-t19705.html
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Offline plastiqe

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Re: State of the Forum https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=43506.msg1000403#msg1000403
« Reply #3 on: September 17, 2012, 05:28:42 pm »
War ended in July.  PvP Events occur much less often and a lot of them have upgrades nowadays.  Tourneys used to be at odd hours (the rotating schedule is better now).  I skipped BL because of Shards.  If there is not some form of pvp going on I don't have a reason to play Elements.

Yes we lost members during the forum move, but that just means we should make these new forums so much better that they'll come back.  Kong forums?  If we can't beat Kong we're done for.  : P
« Last Edit: September 17, 2012, 05:31:14 pm by plastiqe »

Offline Naesala

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Re: State of the Forum https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=43506.msg1000480#msg1000480
« Reply #4 on: September 17, 2012, 08:49:18 pm »
Unfortunately a game on kong can't have more than 4 badges. However, if Elements were to have the badge of the day or some reward to be posted there.
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Offline regen2k9

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Re: State of the Forum https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=43506.msg1000482#msg1000482
« Reply #5 on: September 17, 2012, 08:51:01 pm »
Unfortunately a game on kong can't have more than 4 badges. However, if Elements were to have the badge of the day or some reward to be posted there.
Can a badge be removed and replaced with a new one?  Or could we solicit donations for a Kong refeature?
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Offline Naesala

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Re: State of the Forum https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=43506.msg1000506#msg1000506
« Reply #6 on: September 17, 2012, 10:25:54 pm »
Unfortunately a game on kong can't have more than 4 badges. However, if Elements were to have the badge of the day or some reward to be posted there.
Can a badge be removed and replaced with a new one?  Or could we solicit donations for a Kong refeature?
No. Maybe, I don't know. We do have the advantage of being in one of the badge questlines, which should draw players as well.
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Offline Kamietsu

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Re: State of the Forum https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=43506.msg1000507#msg1000507
« Reply #7 on: September 17, 2012, 10:29:26 pm »
Unfortunately a game on kong can't have more than 4 badges. However, if Elements were to have the badge of the day or some reward to be posted there.
Can a badge be removed and replaced with a new one?  Or could we solicit donations for a Kong refeature?
No. Maybe, I don't know. We do have the advantage of being in one of the badge questlines, which should draw players as well.

A slight problem with that is that it draws players to the game, but much less are drawn to the forum.
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Offline Acsabi44

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Re: State of the Forum https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=43506.msg1000508#msg1000508
« Reply #8 on: September 17, 2012, 10:30:54 pm »
Goofing around with the kong badges is not the solution for the problem, only a slight treatment for the symptomps. (aka. a moderate, one-time influx of players.)

I see several things that could be done:

1, The most trivial. Put a flashing neon sign advertising the forum in-game. I know this sounds lame, but there is not a direct actual link for the forum in the game save one - when you click "redeem codes", the game tells you that you can win codes from tourneys, and the word 'tournaments' links to the PVP tourneys section.
Believe me, most players will never find this.
As far as I know game coding, a "go to forum" button next to "open chat" would take about 5 minutes to code.

2, Emphasize the point that the fun lies in PVP events! (cause, really, the fun lies there.)
Advertise PVP play to the average forumer. Lower the entry-level for most PVP events. (both in terms of card collection aka. no rare PVP events, and in time investment aka. short, quick, few days-timespan events. Waiting for months for a cool event to start after being dropped out of the previous one sucks. This could be averted if 2 or 3 cool events would be available per week.

So many PVP events might sound very hard to coordinate, but I think that actually these small events should be easy to manage. They should feature a simple ruleset, with a limited but interesting cardpool. They would be easy for both the organizers and the participiants since they would only need a few hours of time investment for 2-3 days.
A simple example, off the top of my head: 3 groups of elements:   :aether :air :darkness :death:earth :entropy :fire :gravity:life :light :time :water
The participians are set into 3 groups upon signing up. 1st day, playergroup 1 can use the elements from group1, pg2 uses the elements in g2 and pg3 uses g3. The players fight each other and they rotate the element groups for the following day. This ruleset:
- is simple enough to understand
- yet features enough room for creative deckbuilding
- is unbiased, since every player gets to use every element group.
The evens is 3 days long, at the end, the player with the most points wins. Participiants only need to contribute for 3 days and TOs only need to supervise for 3 days. If you drop out? No worries, you can try again in a few days in a different event.

Okay, this post took some wrong direction. I wanted to speak about general things and instead I divulged into the details. Back on track:

I want to see quick, 2-3 days long PVP events since they help to keep the pace up. They provide interesting stuff to do every few days. They are an incentive to check out what's going on regularly - an interesting PVP event could start any day. On the other hand, they don't force the player into weeks- or months-long commitment.

Implementing this would requre:
- quite a few initial ideas (atleast enough for for a month in advance, I guess)
- a few extra staff. I think, with roughly 2 events per week (simple events, so they should be organised by 1 or max 2 TOs), plus the backup TOs, the whole show could be run by ~8 people. I would be more than willing to run this if it gets done.

Time constraints. "Giving only one day for the duels to happen is very short time, he lives in the USA and I live in Asia, OMFG OMFG!!!" I don't think that this is a problem. If we give a ~16 hour time window for the duels to happen, then this should allow for 35-40 active players to do their duels, which is roughly the amount of players these events should feature.
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Offline kevTopic starter

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Re: State of the Forum https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=43506.msg1000551#msg1000551
« Reply #9 on: September 17, 2012, 11:52:49 pm »
I want to see quick, 2-3 days long PVP events
That's a really intriguing idea I don't remember ever hearing before.

Offline plastiqe

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Re: State of the Forum https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=43506.msg1000561#msg1000561
« Reply #10 on: September 18, 2012, 12:06:19 am »
Interesting yes, but it sounds more like tournament ideas than pvp events.  Do we give out icons for the winners every couple days?  Something like simple rotating rules could be used for the leagues to keep things interesting.  Leagues usually start off strong but tend to taper off by the end. 

I would prefer pvp events to be about a month long, not a super big commitment but something challenging enough to be rewarding.  If I knew of a way to get people to draft faster, Draft III might actually fit in that time frame lol.

Offline mrpaper

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Re: State of the Forum https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=43506.msg1000567#msg1000567
« Reply #11 on: September 18, 2012, 12:19:00 am »
There really should have been a link to the forum in the game for a while already.  I remember when I started playing I was always asking people in pvp if they knew about forums and they almost all said no. 

As for what else can be done, well I won't get much friends by saying this, but having to posts 30 times to enter tournaments scares peoples off, and it was the easiest way to have em enter the events of elements.  I for one would have just move to another game at the time.  I know some tournaments we're a mess because noobs don't get all the rules and some people entered with multiple accounts.  That can still happen anyway but I don't hear from multiple accounts anymore.  As for noobs don't getting the rules, it still happens (a lot less ofc).  I would suggest having 3 really simple tourney and the more complicated one being the upgraded one which ain't much for noobs anyway.  I mean what is there to lose anyway? we have problems having 16 people since this rule has been introduced.

As for leagues, it once was the more wins you,  the better you are in the standings but people we're complaining that some we're playing like crazy and we're winning ofc.. well we have changed to elo and krach system so that we count how good you are instead of how devoted you are, which ain't that crazy, but doesn't encourage people to play as much as they can.  I had really reallly big problems reaching my 30 matches because many dropped/stop playing after the 30 match bar was made.  If you are crazy enough to play over a hundred games, I am happy that you are receiving gifts for keeping the games and forum alive!  30 Matches could still be a minimum to count in the prize list but please encourage gameplay, it is what we lack, not skill players!
Also, there is less action in the forums, but is there less games played?  If the answer is no, well the simple forum advertisement should do wonders.

I am also for more pvp events, but there needs to be people to run these things and I don't think we have 20 persons who want to run events.
« Last Edit: September 18, 2012, 12:21:33 am by mrpaper »

 

anything
blarg: