To offer but a few suggestions towards freshening the webpage and making it more useful:
TL;DR version: put more relevant info instead of vague or redundant stuff for new visitors, and draw more live info from game server. Make a contest or otherwise activate players to submit stuff.
Corrections to current content:
* Add at least one poll per two weeks, and hopefully make them relevant to the ongoing or recent activities or quests. Public opinion polls and similar.
* Rethink the forums. With forum traffic being so poor, condensing to but a few relevant threads might bring posts more attention. Auctions etc are really obsolete and should go.
* General information about races and classes, pantheons and geography is really nice, but it's nothing that cannot be ascertained via the in-game help documentation. The wiki information (various pages with verified info like races page, classes page etc) is much more handy as a player can compare the races or classes on the spot and see how they are related. Other muds also have similar displays and instead of vague info "gargoyles are good nightly hunters" they list ability modifiers and racials in one logical place. furthermore, this should be the first thing a new player bumps into and clearly visible.
* Lore archives (gazette for example), idea lists etc haven't been updated in years giving an impression of an inactive game. Either remove/archive or reactivate.
* Player stat archives should be once again brought to life via automation.
* Newbie guide should not be buried under 3 menu clicks but should be prominent along with race and class information.
* Design and publicity track info pages should go into separate category along with general information on tracks, imms, roles etc. It should not be prominent, and not under Resources. It is possible much of this info is obsolete.
* Populace sub-pages should be bought to front - this is where the interesting info can be located as it auto-updates and actually changes. However Immortals should go into separate menu (Administration) together with track and staff info and lists.
* Push conference logs into an archive section together with other lore archives.
* Submit xxx pages should be merged into a separate "Contribute" menu with "submit socials" and other similar pages.
* Requests and appeals should go under "Administration" menu together with other imm-related info.
* Quests is unreadable and obsolete. QPcat listed there is even older than the current one, which brings confusion due to 2 parallel qpcats.
Additions:
* Make a (quest) contest for art. There are plenty of gifted players and a promise of a reward might entice them to submit music, maps, pictures, artistic impressions of other player's or own characters, posters, banners, maybe even short video animations, anything relevant. Repeat contest yearly.
* Website is in a unique position to draw information from the game server live:
- display an archive (7-30 days) of complete chatlogs, sortable via channels. There is no reason a player with a lord should miss on other chat channels due to him playing a lowmort for example.
- current lordruns, (or with a bit of coding) track visited planes daily.
- current eha runs (again with a bit of coding)
- don't simply track morph successes/failures. Chart them - show when most players attempt morph, their observed success rates, etc
- death tolls and other info from COUNT, as well as anything from HELP COUNTS
I am certain other players will be happy to share their thoughts on what they'd love to see on the site.
Thanx for listening!
"It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion."
Thanks for taking the time to make the suggestions. With most of these, Xiphoid as head of Web team will have final say. Have made some comments of my own where I know there may be potential issues.
Corrections to current content:
* Add at least one poll per two weeks, and hopefully make them relevant to the ongoing or recent activities or quests. Public opinion polls and similar.
Only when there is something worthwhile to ask, not polls for the sake of polls. Need to ensure important polls aren't ignored due to over-proliferation of polls or pushed out of view by inane polls. See later comments for poll possibilities.
* Rethink the forums. With forum traffic being so poor, condensing to but a few relevant threads might bring posts more attention. Auctions etc are really obsolete and should go.
Possible removal of forums seems to be ideal candidate for poll rather than basing decision on one person's suggestion.Also unsure of logic of how reducing number of forums will increase traffic on other forums.
* General information about races and classes, pantheons and geography is really nice, but it's nothing that cannot be ascertained via the in-game help documentation. The wiki information (various pages with verified info like races page, classes page etc) is much more handy as a player can compare the races or classes on the spot and see how they are related. Other muds also have similar displays and instead of vague info "gargoyles are good nightly hunters" they list ability modifiers and racials in one logical place. furthermore, this should be the first thing a new player bumps into and clearly visible.
Current policy is not give out exact mechanics i.e.numbers/formulae used.
Racials may be doable.
This needs to be discussed by Imm team
* Lore archives (gazette for example), idea lists etc haven't been updated in years giving an impression of an inactive game. Either remove/archive or reactivate.
Xiphoid to decide if viable to update.
* Player stat archives should be once again brought to life via automation.
Xiphoid/Coders to advise if possible.
* Newbie guide should not be buried under 3 menu clicks but should be prominent along with race and class information.
May be possible, needs to be discussed with Xiphoid having final say. Also need to bear in mind there is a finite amount of space of main menu headings.
* Design and publicity track info pages should go into separate category along with general information on tracks, imms, roles etc. It should not be prominent, and not under Resources. It is possible much of this info is obsolete.
May be possible, needs to be discussed with Xiphoid having final say.
Obsolete information can be updated.
* Populace sub-pages should be bought to front - this is where the interesting info can be located as it auto-updates and actually changes. However Immortals should go into separate menu (Administration) together with track and staff info and lists.
Define brought to front? There is a limit to how many main title headings which will fit across top.
Again poll to see if this opinion is shared
* Push conference logs into an archive section together with other lore archives.
Sounds doable, needs to be discussed with Xiphoid having final say
* Submit xxx pages should be merged into a separate "Contribute" menu with "submit socials" and other similar pages.
Needs to be discussed with Xiphoid having final say.
* Requests and appeals should go under "Administration" menu together with other imm-related info.
No,not under Administration, needs to be something like Assistance. Again needs to be discussed with Xiphoid having final say
* Quests is unreadable and obsolete. QPcat listed there is even older than the current one, which brings confusion due to 2 parallel qpcats.
Can be updated. Kariya to have final say.
Additions:
* Make a (quest) contest for art. There are plenty of gifted players and a promise of a reward might entice them to submit music, maps, pictures, artistic impressions of other player's or own characters, posters, banners, maybe even short video animations, anything relevant. Repeat contest yearly.
Has been previously tried and response was very limited. Kariya and Xiphoid to have input on deciding if worth redoing.
* Website is in a unique position to draw information from the game server live:
- display an archive (7-30 days) of complete chatlogs, sortable via channels. There is no reason a player with a lord should miss on other chat channels due to him playing a lowmort for example.
Not going to happen live. We have had a number of people who have logged in and think it is funny to spam channels with profanity.
Needs to be discussed within Imm team.
- current lordruns, (or with a bit of coding) track visited planes daily.
Xiphoid/Coders to advise if possible. If possible, poll to see if actually wanted.
- current eha runs (again with a bit of coding)
Xiphoid/Coders to advise if possible. If possible, poll to see if actually wanted.
- don't simply track morph successes/failures. Chart them - show when most players attempt morph, their observed success rates, etc
Xiphoid/Coders to advise if possible. If possible, poll to see if actually wanted.
- death tolls and other info from COUNT, as well as anything from HELP COUNTS
Xiphoid/Coders to advise if possible. If possible, poll to see if actually wanted.
Edited by Riviat on Apr 21 2012 23:50
Thank you for the quick and detailed answer. As I said, I'm sure that the players, if asked, would likely bring more ideas. Just to clarify those few of mine that seemed unclear:
* Polls - biweekly / monthly - idea was that there would be something going on every 2-4 weeks, even as a small impromptu battle-quest like the one organized just now for Lords. In downtimes, of course polls for the sake of polls are not needed.
* Forums - most of the forums have not been used in the last 2-4 years with the exception of Creative - which akin to the creative board in-game actually serves as an off-topic board, which we do lack - and General. Having unused forums is a bad thing, as they give off an impression of a dead community. Same goes for quest page which hasn't been updated since VoD - having such pages without regular updates is worse than not having them at all.
* General info - I did not ask for any "formulas" or other information not otherwise available in-game.
Having table:
Race STR DEX CON INT WIS TNL
Human 0 0 0 0 0 1000
Elf -1 +1 -1 +2 +1 1250
Along with hovering popups that would list details for each race when mouse is rolled over it - would not be a bad thing.
Similarly, Class -> Remort Class / Prestige Class table akin to what we have here would be instantly recognizable and would answer all questions about what the game has to offer a new player. It is this kind of info that I personally look at when browsing other MUD sites.
* Btw, speaking of this, please update remort races table, it's obsolete. I'm pretty sure the Firedrake evolution chain, as listed, is obsolete as well.
* Populace sub-pages brought to front - From what I see, there are static parts to the webpage, and there are dynamic ones. Static are, obviously, information pages, but the dynamic ones like morph information, UD slayers, current players logged - this is the information far more interesting to a regular player. Bringing this information to front, or simply making it easily accessible or prominent on the main page - (for example, have a collapsible side-bar that would "uncolapse" and show currently logged player and Lordruns) would make it far more accessible than is now. Idea is to keep interesting information close at hand, where it is easier to locate and use than digging through submenus.
* About the quest for content - I'm sorry this did not show much success previously, but preemptively refusing to retry isn't really an answer. Just up the rewards and I'm confident players would spend time contributing. If a player has 200 hours to spare running 30 Zwarte Piet quests and then heroing 30 lockers, I'm sure the same player would be willing to spend 20 hours producing a piece of art or something else worth note.
* Live chatlogs - I agree this may contain profanity, but in all honesty they are really rare. Keeping an archive of but 7 days further reduces possibility such nastiness would come live. Furthermore, making it accessible only to registered players would make it nearly-invisible to new players - people are not int he habit of opening web accounts without first trying the game. Please reconsider this, with proper care this would be a great tool to all players.
Thank you once again for listening!
"It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion."
Edited by WinterRose on Apr 22 2012 06:47
There is an ongoing discussion about the points raised and we're working out how we want to progress each of them further.
With this thread, the points raised on Lord mailer and the forthcoming player conference, we've got multiple discussions in progress, on top of our usual Immortal duties, so please bear with us while we work through them all and work out the various priorities.
We hope to start making improvements on the website soon.
I would like to hear comments from other players.
Do you agree with WinterRose? What do YOU want to see on the website?
Are you willing to help out? Speak up, let your voice be heard!
I assume that the website is intended primarily for recruitment and other official purposes, because the experienced players have a wiki going. With that in mind:
* People looking for a new MUD are seeking racial diversity and an interesting class progression. This kind of information should be at most two clicks away. The first page that a visitor without a log-in sees should prominently feature a "Creating a Character" button/link to a page which lists the races and classes.
* The information available on the race- and class-specific pages does not need to be complete. A copy of the "helps" should be mostly sufficient to give guests an idea of what the races are generally capable of and what the classes generally accomplish. With the wiki, there is no need for exact stats or slists, but racial abilities, such as hoof and armorstone, and class definers would be good.
* I love the biweekly polling idea. I also don't think it would be a problem if the polls were occasionally inane. They can't all be zingers!
* New polls should be announced, or perhaps teased, on board 7 to ensure mud-wide awareness. We are, after all, trying to get people to the site that aren't already going there, right?
* Player art would be awesome, but I don't like the idea of awarding in-game boons/gear because of the subjectivity inherent in the appreciation of art. However, a cosmetic-only prize, either forum-specific (like a special symbol by your name denoting "artist" that links to your submissions) or in-game (an insignia), may incentivize submissions without drawing jealousy or ire.
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