Tin sent me a pm about Clans and Themes, I figured I would move the discussion from pm to the forums:
Hello danhezee, I would like to share some ideas with you.
First of all, Ace of Spades is losing players and that's because they don't see much goals to stick with. So have you ever wondered what made people stay on the old forums and what had the role of initiator there?
Spoiler:
The clans, yes. It was the section with most posts, topics and the place that kept whole community alive. Clans were the substruction of the whole community, the basis. They maintained whole community alive. Of course that they weren't the only cause, whole community was bigger. Recently buildandshoot got even more active, but it is still missing something and that's not only my opinion, many people share it with me so let's get to 2 basic points.
1.) Clan Support System
Currently, buildandshoot only has a thread based clan system. If you look at the old forums, some clans also had their sub-sections. I know what you will think now, it doesn't matter whether there are sub-sections or not. If you think, you are very wrong. Sub-sections were something that clans wanted to achieve, sub-sections were their goal, their motivation to move on, they were a very important factor in clan subsistence. Creation of 1 sub-sections take around 15 minutes to set-up usergroup, create sub-forum, add certain permissions to that sub-forum and add ranks for the usergroup. As clans are very important, I think that it is a sacrifice that buildandshoot staff should make. Sub-section moderators cannot really mess something up, good example are old forums. There weren't really any bigger incidents. What this would require is a little bit more moderation and a system which would determine whether clan deserves a sub-section or not and that is a matter that I would like to discuss with you. There are many good options from top of my head, but the most important thing is to gather a team of clan experienced people who can make objective resolutions. Substantiation of this wouldn't take much time, only thing you would need is a motivation an I am pretty sure that it shouldn't be a problem.
2.) Appearance of the Forums
This might seem stupid and banal, but it is something that we all care about. Many old community members don't have motivation to check these forums. Why is that so and what can you do about that? Nostalgia. It works very well among people. This is a matter which I have discussed about with many people. Again, this is also a thing that is worth taking time to do. Oh, I didn't mention what people would like to see.
Spoiler:
This matter is not that important, but nostalgia can and probably will increase peoples' motivation to go on forums. I don't know how complicated this would be, but it would be nice to have the old style back. If you want to check how many people would like for either one or both of these matters to happen, we can make a public poll. I hope that you will consider this.
Thank you for your time and have a nice day,
tin
I responded with the following:
First thanks for being concerned enough to write a lengthy pm.
I'll respond to the second point first. The background images and logo were created by a jagex employee. They own it 100%. We purposely avoid using any art or style assets they owned. Our current theme can change and we are open to new idea. One of the original reasons we made this theme was the difficulty in styling the forums, portal, and clubs. Those extra plugins can screw up a phpbb theme. We are going to phase out the portal and we have already phased out the clubs. Creating a phpbb theme strictly for forums should be a lot easier now.
Clubs was our attempt to keep the clans together and Faultcheck mentioned in the latest news letter, we are working on a new solution. The league management software is going to be our clan subsections. A clan will have an area to talk publicly with the rest of the community and a place to talk privately in a members only area. They will be able to schedule matches not just for leagues but for anything they like. clan vs forums, clan vs clan, official bns league match, a different league entirely, etc.
The clan sub-section from the past wont make an appearance here. In AoS's prime, like right before Jagex wiped everything, the website had 70K unique visitors a day. The concurrent player counts stayed above 3000 for most of the day. The sub-sections kept everyone together but for the amount of traffic the site got It wasn't optimal.
Feel free to take this discussion to the forums if you want. It would be nice to have a lot of people reading and responding to this topic
I have to agree, without clans I don't think the community would be the way it is today. I think that is we are to improve the quality of clans being made and the average lifespan of a clan then we should do something similar to subsections or at least a goal or way for all clans to easily get to getter and discuss with the community.
Yeah, that is something that buildandshoot is currently working on. The league system will also serve as a sub-section (as danhezee said). It is currently in development and it is versatile to changes. You guys can give your point of view and your ideas and/or suggestions, we would appreciate it.
The main problem with most clans and Ace of Spades 0.75 is that not many people want to play Ace of Spades 0.75 anymore (myself included). Quite frankly, it got boring after such a long time.
Actually many people want to switch whole game do 0.76 and I wouldn't mind that happening. There are just few things that should be fixed in it (the font, size of the font, shadows, etc.) and it's probably not a bad idea to switch. Also, events/leagues/tournaments are something that motivates people to play more often and that's why I will try to organize various events every week or two.
tin wrote:Actually many people want to switch whole game do 0.76 and I wouldn't mind that happening. There are just few things that should be fixed in it (the font, size of the font, shadows, etc.) and it's probably not a bad idea to switch. Also, events/leagues/tournaments are something that motivates people to play more often and that's why I will try to organize various events every week or two.
AoS 0.76 is the same exact gameplay without hackers (yet) and very minor improvements. Switching to 0.76 would, personally, not entice me to start playing again.
tin wrote:Actually many people want to switch whole game do 0.76 and I wouldn't mind that happening. There are just few things that should be fixed in it (the font, size of the font, shadows, etc.) and it's probably not a bad idea to switch. Also, events/leagues/tournaments are something that motivates people to play more often and that's why I will try to organize various events every week or two.
I think This would be a good idea. I play 0.76 basically all the time, so...
tin wrote:Actually many people want to switch whole game do 0.76 and I wouldn't mind that happening. There are just few things that should be fixed in it (the font, size of the font, shadows, etc.) and it's probably not a bad idea to switch. Also, events/leagues/tournaments are something that motivates people to play more often and that's why I will try to organize various events every week or two.
AoS 0.76 is the same exact gameplay without hackers (yet) and very minor improvements. Switching to 0.76 would, personally, not entice me to start playing again.
Well, Ace of Spades of this kind might not be the game for you then, Powerthrist edition will probably have more new additions.
This might seem stupid and banal, but it is something that we all care about. Many old community members don't have motivation to check these forums. Why is that so and what can you do about that? Nostalgia. It works very well among people. This is a matter which I have discussed about with many people. Again, this is also a thing that is worth taking time to do. Oh, I didn't mention what people would like to see.
Spoiler:
This matter is not that important, but nostalgia can and probably will increase peoples' motivation to go on forums. I don't know how complicated this would be, but it would be nice to have the old style back. If you want to check how many people would like for either one or both of these matters to happen, we can make a public poll. I hope that you will consider this.
I agree with this. The nostalgia has just overtaken me lately. If bringing back the old layout could bring more veterans, I'd like that. I miss the crap load of servers they made that would make me stay on for hours.
I also miss the old server layout. I still think of it better than the current one because one thing: the ping tab. It just made it easier for me to run the game at a very low ping.
USABxBOOYO wrote:AoS 0.76 is the same exact gameplay without hackers (yet) and very minor improvements. Switching to 0.76 would, personally, not entice me to start playing again.
I think making the rifle spread more reasonable and the SMG damage less bullshit is a very good improvement. On top of that, the font renderer no longer sucks ass, so it plays at a much better framerate.
tin wrote:Well, Ace of Spades of this kind might not be the game for you then, Powerthrist edition will probably have more new additions.
Powerthirst Edition is deprecated in favour of Iceball, which is notably more flexible and legal. I'm not sure if I want to release the *cough* "source" of PT yet.
Really looking forward to The league management software, it looks seriously awesome, and if it works the way you describe for clans that would be amazing.
