Project: Dead Externals Rise From The Dead

[DeletedUser32498]

Huhhhh....

(Tumbleweeds blowing around in desert)

*crickets chirping*

*Wildwest music playing*

(Nobody typing)

^
The above is going to become a reality if we don't fix a growing problem. A gaming company is only really as good as it's forums. If you went on any website such as World of Tanks. They have millions of users and thousands of users on their externals at any given moment.

I have noticed over the past few months that grepolis is in a rapid decline. People are leaving and simply calling it quits not usually just in-game but usually on the forums where they can't seem to socialize with anyone.

My following ideas will hope to not only to benefit the grepo community but make Inno big bucks if they do it properly.

I hope my ideas are not as far out of this planet as the members who have left...

1~ Give grepo users incentives in-game when they create a forum account.
For example: Giving 200 gold in-game upon the creation of a forum account,.

2~ Update the forums with new innovative features.
For example: Add different backgrounds regularily, introduce new types of smileys, change the style of buttons, introduce music that synchronizes with your favorite radio station, etc....

3~ Why have people stuck with the term externals? Why not combine the externals to the internal-alliance forum!
For example (this may just be something grepo can't do but hope they will be able to accomplish):

I have roughly photoshopped the above image. My idea is that whenever someone founds an alliance and builds an alliance forum there will always be this tab called Grepolis Forum that is initially displayed. My idea is that the website somehow updates this data immediately to display in the alliance forum. I'm not sure if this is possible but would be cool. Also if the leaders and founders over time do not want this grepo forum in place they have the option to have it removed but be always put back in place later similarily how any forum tab is created. As a grepo player I never immediately knew that a grepo forum existed. It took me a few months before it dawned on me that yeah there's an external. If it's there right away it will create curiosity. Also it will be more convenient for people rather than flipping back and forth.

But also why this third idea is a big one is that the mass mails that the company sends people links to grepo forum well.... people tend to ignore them. This way if the grepo forum is incorporated with the alliance forum there will be more participation in events. Users will be more happy and more friendships will be made. A user will stay if they are happy and especially if they invest in gold and spend lots of it too. I usually get over a hundred posts a day in my alliance forum. That is a lot of viewers and participants if they saw a grepo forum tab would liven up the grepo forum completely.

And I am always open to feedback about this and willing to improve and add more ideas about how to improve the 'externals'.

I will move this to the ideas section with more format and only If I can get at least 50 supporters (hopefully longtime users of these externals)

Supporters list (Alphabetical order):
~Awesomeness.
~C4R105
~daveinator007 (myself)
~Druvi
~mattycoolBCFC
~Nick1
~Prateek the Great
~Raf3kik
~Shadis
~ShreftyThred
~Swamp-Fox
​

 

[DeletedUser]

First, a 200 gold incentive would definitely cause us to gain forum members but not to keep them. Secondly, updates to the forum might help. A bit. It wouldn't really so much in the long run.

Good thought trying to suggest things though, plus rep. Keep at it, and I'll think of some things myself to add here.

 

[DeletedUser]

I support

 

[DeletedUser32498]

I support

Thanks mate.

 

[DeletedUser38224]

I support too.

 

[DeletedUser32498]

I support too.

Thank you. This means a lot not only to me but the fate of grepo's existance.

 

[DeletedUser16429]

I support too.
I think another good idea would be to have monthly competitions. It's been over a month since we had one.

Agreed, I support this.

But the 200 gold may be to much to ask for. And we need more competitions.

 

[DeletedUser]

Hey Guys ~

I will give my feedback on the above. Please correct me where I am wrong.

Huhhhh....

(Tumbleweeds blowing around in desert)

*crickets chirping*

*Wildwest music playing*

(Nobody typing)

^
The above is going to become a reality if we don't fix a growing problem. A gaming company is only really as good as it's forums. If you went on any website such as World of Tanks. They have millions of users and thousands of users on their externals at any given moment.

I agree with the tumbleweeds part. I'm not 100% sure how WoTs operates, but I am guessing there is more of a userbase there?

1~ Give grepo users incentives in-game when they create a forum account.
For example: Giving 200 gold in-game upon the creation of a forum account,.

There is only so much the moderation team can suggest before having to hand it over to the development team. Really, the only thing we can do in-game is sending mass mails to advertise the forum. We also cannot send mass mails solely for the purpose to advertise the forum such as; "Hey [Insert World], Please come join our community forum...bla bla bla." While we have been a lot more lenient on mass mailing competitions in-game, as I am sure some of you have noticed. The idea about incorporating gold prizes will be totally up to the development team.

2~ Update the forums with new innovative features.
For example: Add different backgrounds regularily, introduce new types of smileys, change the style of buttons, introduce music that synchronizes with your favorite radio station, etc....

All of which requires someone will a decent amount of photoshop knowledge. This could also cause a lot of trouble for Baudin, and Richard as they are the only ones to edit those types of things. The music idea, well, we don't allow animated images so I can say music would be a no, for sure.

3~ Why have people stuck with the term externals? Why not combine the externals to the internal-alliance forum!
For example (this may just be something grepo can't do but hope they will be able to accomplish):

I have roughly photoshopped the above image. My idea is that whenever someone founds an alliance and builds an alliance forum there will always be this tab called Grepolis Forum that is initially displayed. My idea is that the website somehow updates this data immediately to display in the alliance forum. I'm not sure if this is possible but would be cool. Also if the leaders and founders over time do not want this grepo forum in place they have the option to have it removed but be always put back in place later similarily how any forum tab is created. As a grepo player I never immediately knew that a grepo forum existed. It took me a few months before it dawned on me that yeah there's an external. If it's there right away it will create curiosity. Also it will be more convenient for people rather than flipping back and forth.

I really like this idea! Maybe someone can develop any idea for it? This will also be something the development team would have to oversee. I don't see it being implemented due to the fact that each market would have to have the links re-directed, etc. It's always worth a try though.

I read something about competitions, but I cannot find it now. *sigh*

...Okay, regarding competitions. Where do I start? We'll start here, competitions have long been a part of the Grepolis community. The competitions we ran when I first became a moderator do not work anymore. Why? I am not sure, maybe the change in users? While we do try to run forum-wide competitions, the new users will come online to post an entry and then bugger off. I'm not sure how to engage them in staying? What could we do to help engage the posters is what I'm getting at? Remember, the forum team is ALWAYS open to new suggestions. If you have an idea, PLEASE message Baudin Toolan, myself, or your world moderator. We would be happy to take in any and all idea for future competitions.

I did not mean to step on anyone's toes in this post. If I did, I apologize.​

 

[DeletedUser30490]

I support it
but say 200 gold to be given to players who atleast post 50-100 post's in the forum.This way they would have gotten to know about the forums and might be interested in staying even after getting the gold.

 

[Richard]

Thanks for this. A couple of interesting ideas, however, Im gonna have to pick them apart and answer them for you. Yes, the forums are quiet, and yes, I'd love for them not to be, however, the suggestions simply dont or wont work.

1~ Give grepo users incentives in-game when they create a forum account.
For example: Giving 200 gold in-game upon the creation of a forum account,.

This simply will not incentivize people to become a part of the forums. The reality of this idea is people will sign up, get their 200 gold, and not sign in again. Attaching a post count limit to the incentive won't add to the concept. People will make meaningless posts to up their post count, and then stop posting once they have their gold.

Moreover, the logistics and specifics of implementing a backend link between a players game account and their forum account make the concept unfeasible in its entirety.

Just to add some more weight to my point. We recently had a competition which added over 900 users to our forums. We received a net gain of about 100 once all was said and done. People won't stick around just because they might or even will get some gold.

2~ Update the forums with new innovative features.
For example: Add different backgrounds regularly, introduce new types of smileys, change the style of buttons, introduce music that synchronizes with your favorite radio station, etc....

This idea is inherently not going to vastly improve our userbase. I can promise you the majority of posters don't choose not to stick around because there aren't enough smileys, or there isn't any music. The theme and layout, more specifically the CSS required to change the layout of the forums is centrally controlled by Innogames.

3~ Why have people stuck with the term externals? Why not combine the externals to the internal-alliance forum!
For example (this may just be something grepo can't do but hope they will be able to accomplish):

I've already covered this, but I will touch on it again. This kind of integration is entirely unfeasible. The backend of the game quite simply doesn't have the capacity to incorporate this kind of change ingame.


I'll close by giving my two cents. Improving our forums needs to come from within our forums. Baudin, the Titans, FMs and I can only do so much. People have to want to stick around, we can't force them. We run competitions as often as is feasible, and a reasonable amount of the time, these competitions entirely fail. The external forums are the same in some respects as the ingame ones. People will only post if there is reasonable scope for discussion. The changes being suggested pretty much put a lot of pressure and focus on improving the transparency to the player, which I get, but frankly we used to have a good sized forum member base, and nothing has changed since then. People don't stick around because there is nothing worth sticking around for in their eyes. Sometimes it can be disillusionment from their opening post being ripped to shreds by existing members, other times it can simply be from finding their world forum holds no merit in terms of interesting topics. There are many reasons. Lack of gold, music or smileys aren't the reason, and adding these won't revive our forums.

 

[DeletedUser25660]

...Sometimes it can be disillusionment from their opening post being ripped to shreds by existing members...

Not sometimes, but many times . I frequent the ideas section, when a new member post an idea and they forgot to format or forgot to read the sticky.... boom!-'ripped to shreds'. Why not allow new members room for mistakes? Welcome them first!

If we want the externals to 'rise from the dead', let's ...start by being nice

 

[DeletedUser]

Dave, I support this idea.

I agree with druvi, instead of giving the gold when they join, maybe do it so if you post 50 times you get 25-50 gold, and you get it every 50 times. If a post is deleted then it doesn't count towards the post count. Something like this

 

[DeletedUser18366]

I think I'm more with Richard on this. While we do need to brighten these forums up, I don't think many of the ideas here will work properly. Introducing gold for posts and signing up will just encourage people to spam and make useless posts...

 

[DeletedUser]

I support, but we need to make this forums alive ourselves, PnPs, papers, threads about wars in worlds etc. that will make players want to comment and say: "My allince is better than yours"" and then make another say: "But you use to much gold" and then the original says: "It is called skill, not gold" and then the other again: "But you're 13 YO". A few posts later and some will gt addicted, if we get 1000 players to come here and post, we get more than 100 to stay, we just have to make this fun.

I support, but it is more about the players than the forum dinamycs

 

[DeletedUser32373]

Maybe make it so that if they get 3 bars of rep/ 100 posts then they get the gold? Kind of how good works when you invite new players.

But other than that I'm in

 

[DeletedUser19042]

So this has been the second time I've been skyped to check the threads on here.

And just as Richard I'll be giving my 2 cents.

I'd really support the ideas posted here just as everyone else if it would really help the community to become more active. Sadly, I'm afraid it won't. As an ex-longtime poster on this forum I can say that people do not leave because of some smileys. No, they just keep leaving because their friends left, or there's simply nothing to say. It's a domino effect, one leaves, and few will follow.

So you should be looking, perhaps, for ways on how you'll keep the current users here, and only on second place to gain new users.

Now, keeping the current users here:
That's a problem. As you mentioned, competitions could be a solution. But sadly, as a moderator who has run his part of competitions, I must say that they aren't as active as mods want them to be. When a mod initiates a competition, we hope to increase inactivity. But then again, we need people to play. And if people don't play...we can't give gold. If there's no gold...no one plays. So if you find a solution to that, you might solve the inactivity.

Then, concerning mass mails ingame. As lane said, they do their best to promote competitions in game. Sadly, as Richard said, these people have no interest in the forums, but they'll just gather their gold and leave again. So I'm afraid this won't help.

About your argument of music etc, I won't comment on that because I turn my PC's volume off anyways... so nothing to gain there. Plus, it would slow down the servers and will result in LOSS of users as they might not be able to load the pages (slower computer, connections..etc).


Personally I think this could help to get new users.

Promote the forum ingame, but with no reward attached. Doesn't matter if it's effective,it will cost nothing, and you might gain a few members per day.

Get more community initiated discussions running. And with that I do not mean feedback threads about new features (even though they are needed), but world specific discussions. (Though, I must say that I have no idea what subjects...)

Make less strict forum rules. Never thought I'd say it myself, but forums rules can be experienced as harsh. I currently am an active forum user on the tribalwars forums and their forums are WAY more active. The activity feed gets updated every minute. Post something now, and it's off the 'New' page within 5 minutes. The main reason for that is, I believe, that their forum rules are less strict. Naturally we shouldn't losen up the rules concerning mod bias, insulting etc...
But I mean, for example ban discussion. I agree that it shouldn't be done on here, but simply removing the post would be sufficient. Instead, we are giving official warnings which can be hard to understand by new users.

Then the profanity stuff, I agree that we shouldn't be insulting each other with profanity, but there's nothing wrong with saying that something is bullsh*t. (which I have seen several people been infracted for, might even get infracted myself right now )

These things demotivates current, and new users. New users are often not aware of all the rules. Come on, admit it, who reads the forums rules the first day you join in? Saying something in profanity, which cannot be interpreted as insulting, will result in an infraction/warning... And BAM. Motivation to stay is gone...

Anyway, for the second time, I'm going back to my cave, called life.

 

[DeletedUser32498]

I'm going to be makign a few updates this evening on my original post. I had a few dreams while i was sleeping that I think people would be interested in.

Btw Joris you keep coming back lol. Maybe I should make a tribal wars forum account. I donno tho but maybe we should try and recruit people from over there.

 

[DeletedUser33530]

To anyone who complains about our forum rules just be thankful we have Richard not Daedalus as our Cm

 

[DeletedUser32373]

To anyone who complains about our forum rules just be thankful we have Richard not Daedalus as our Cm

yes +rep

 

[DeletedUser29066]

I am very much in agreement with Jorisva. I think new users quickly get bored or discouraged, and veteran users drift away when the people they know best stop participating. I'm not sure I know the solution, but I think a slight softening of the rules might help a bit. I once got an infraction for not using English for posting what I thought was a fairly well known and non-offensive French phrase. I took it in stride and didn't complain, but someone new or less mature might have been angered enough to not bother posting anymore. Also, I think the use of - rep should be limited. There is no reason to - rep someone for a bad idea/suggestion. Just tell them you don't like it. The don't recall ever giving someone - rep, and the only circumstance I could ever imagine using it for would be if someone said something totally offensive or made a personal attack on someone I didn't feel deserved it.

A few more contests might attract increased interest, but there are only so many of those the mods can do. Two recent ones that come to mind were the cross word puzzle contest and the Battleship game. Maybe those could be recurring events, and winners get an award badge like the ones for Poster of the Month, Muse, etc.