Rebuilding the Community

[Neobaron]

And the game at the same time.

I just got finished running on Turbo, and it is rather pathetic that only 7 people signed up. This is clearly proof that the community is dying, not to mention the lack of posting by some of the more frequent posters like Ashy or Nohc.

The only ones here are casual players, and more than half of Reg (from my point of view) is on vacation.

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I think we need to open up the door to recruiting and advertizing guys... otherwise we might as well just close the doors and move on.

When I got here we were pushing 200+ players, and in 2 or so years since i've been here, its dwindled to less than 30 actually playing the game, with a few other people haunting the forums.

Our most dedicated player, Wolf Bite, cant even play anymore because of his admin status, and with his constant threat to the better players gone, there is no longer reason to play for the top spot since you know youre going to get beat down by Ereptor or Josh or someone else who doesnt even need to try to do so.

Blades is always there, but there is nothing to stop that, and BA isnt around because i'm the only one left who can keep an account active for more than 1 run (curse you holby).

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So the point is, we need to get whoever is left and try to brainstorm an effective way to recruit that hasnt been worn out by other Promis.

[Peace Alliance]

Summer always causes a dropout of players. It's just worse then normal because of the lack of attention the game has been getting. Hopefully with the new staff arrangement we can fix some of those issues.

i would really love to hear idea's about brainstorming. It's been tried before in the past, and often seems not to work out.

[Neobaron]

As long as ive been here any attempts at advertizing on other Promis, etc has been shot down...

Has that been reversed?

[The Lady Shael]

A lot of our active players came from fairly large Redwall discussion sites/forums, and I've advertised many times at Terrouge, the RFF, the Long Patrol Forums, and DAB, and I think we've gained some members from that, but.....we just don't know it? >.<
You'd think the game would appeal to them the same way it did to us four years ago, but it doesn't. The game definitely needs some revising, because while it may not seem confusing to us, it's probably overwhelming to any newcomers. (I remember being overwhelmed by the first version of RWL)
Also revising is needed because many vets have this game down to the very formulas that bind it together. -.-

I'm not saying that advertising won't help though. We should still keep trying, and maybe at different communities. Terrouge and the RFF have seen us and joined us before, and I don't think they're coming back.

[Ruddertail]

http://www.fireemblemworld.com/feempires/promisance.php?action=login

They have a collasal number of players. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what the best way to reach them is, because they dedicate most of their site to a video game, and only one forum for Promi. Thus, I don't know for sure that the most of their general members would be interested, or that the most of their promi players will see their advertisements forum.

Still, it's worth a try, and if you want I'll try to pull a few strings to get an advertisement put up in the promi section as well as the ads section. They run 300 - 400 active players, so it's a great place to draw from. Unfortunately, most of the are newbies, but, hey, everybody was a newbie once apon a time... You also might try doing a RWL representative clan, or something...

[Neobaron]

Thank you Shael, I was not aware the original origins of this community when i first arrived.

So it would appear that the potential for confusion may play a part, why dont we just put ont he main page a completed, easy to use help manual or a direct link to the help forum where Wlf Bite has his decree/dicta/manual, and a for-sure offer of help from some of our experienced members who would be willing to give help to noobs for the sake of making things reverse in terms of players and activity/interest.

I dont know much, but I would be willing to show a few people the ropes if it meant a chance to get at least 100 or so active players.

I think the theme is fun, and perhaps an introduction story of sorts linked from the main page might give some interest to the more story-based or RPG lovers. RWL as a stand-alone theme is great, but before i came here, i really didnt know wat was going on, and I wouldnt have found ti unless Holby brought me over here from RB3D.

Posting a teaser of sorts on other forums might work too... we could get some screenies from art and do a music gig, but I may be thinking too much into it.

The bottom line here is we have a number of very creative people around here, such as Aqualis and Holby, who have the potential to be so much more useful than mere part-time players if we could get them interested again.

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The BIGGEST thing I see is that we are all getting older and starting to move on in RL.

I know I dont have as much time, Holby found a woman, Volkov went to college, others just stopped caring once the numbers began to dwindle due to this age thing.

So to start, i suppose, we should reinvest into RWL fan groups and discussion boards to advertize and get our base-line number of players back up before we branch out into hardcore advertizing.

If I saw something shiny I would expect to at least come into a community that was active, so ignore my afore-mentioned ideas for the time being and make the first step to get numbers back up.

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There are coherent thoughts in this post, just try to strong them together. Im "brainstorming"  :-)

[windhound]

-_-  ninja neo, sends me an im then signs off a min later

yes
the whole point of the current game system was to give oldbies a challenge. but we're a little short on thoes right now.  the way it looks now to newcomers is..  over-complex.  if people are going to take time to play a game of this sort, most of the time they dont want to think too hard about it
it needs a revamp.  for that we need an active programmer

first and formost we need members.  where they come from is another matter, as we've pretty much gotten whatever members we could from rwl-related sites.   

I've never liked the suggestion myself, but this board more than likely has a mass-email feature built in.  atleast the old ipb did.  use it, atleast once.  send a message to all the previous members. 
heck, this might have already been done..  I think I used my aol email for this board, an not only do I not check it, but I think aol has rwl marked as spam.  *shrug*

oh.  and if we're going to start advertising on other sites, we might want to lift the strict ban on advertising here.. 

meh.

[Neobaron]

Well, not necessarily.

We allow advertizing here, but it goes on the SPAM board.

We dont /disallow/ it, we just put it somewhere where it is going to be overlooked.

Sneaky censorship methods, not strict anti-advertising policy.  8-)

[Gen. Volkov]

A note: I didn't so much go to college, as actually start focusing on college being something important in my life. My return to RWL was actually during my freshman year of college, in part because I had nothing else to do besides homework and didn't want to do that. But that's rather irrelevant to discussion at hand.

[wolf bite]

Thanks guys for caring. A few points and facts.

The forum does have the power to mass mail all members. Retto and I spent a lot of time with me trying to get permission to use it after new versions came out. But Retto is no longer here. This is a Staff decision. We will talk about doing a one-time mailing, but unless things are up and running and we have something to announce, it is useless.

I finally finished my revised help manual last month with a more beginner friendly outline. It was given to Holby for final editing. At this point, I would be willing to look for a new editor. (I am such a bad speller.) The plan was to put the link to it on our main sign in page, then since many other sites use my journal, to advertise it, thus bring them to our page. This will also help the new players.

In the help section there is the new person big sibling post. Sadly I put a lot of work into matching people up and rarely did it work. I still think we need to keep and promote the program. Mostly new people did not want to admit they needed help or the teachers just used them to attack their enemies.

Thanks Neo for the compliments, but I basically retired before becoming an admin. I spent too much time planning strategies. Then things just got repetitive. I was great in my time because I invented many of the better strategies, but after I released them and people have improved on them, I see myself as just a good player.

I do agree that a new person has little hope against some of the well-seasoned people that play. In the days of 500 members, no one knew what they were doing. Anyone could move up the ranks and the top people changed often.

People are changing with their growth to lose interest and time to play a text game. That is why your staff opened up the Real Life section to give those people that don?t play anymore someplace to chat with their long time friends and bring new friends. Things can work both ways. An active game can make an active forum, a forum that is active can make an active game.

Many sites will not let us advertise since we at one time did not allow any of them to post on our site. But there was a reason for our rules, it is called abuse. We had sites bogging down our general discussion page with advertisements about their sites, and many of them were nasty to our site. (?play our game because this one sucks.?) This was back when we were top with probably the most players. Also Retto has a moral problem with advertising. We eventually allowed advertising in the Spa room to try to make everyone happy. There is a fine line between trying to be polite to your neighbors and keeping them from abusing. This too will need to be talked more about.


Wolf Bite
PS. Ereptor and Josh should not be stated in the same breath. Ereptor is an excellent honest player that pretends an evil alter ego, Josh get joy out of looking for loopholes and anarchy.

[White Fang]

Here's my opinion: before we advertise anywhere, the help should be fixed, all the error messages should be removed, and the nerfed races should be replaced to thier former glory. Right now, people tend to be fixated on a couple of different races, 'cause while the others may be balanced in stats, their leadership ability just stinks. Things like Acadamy, Falsify Documents, and Pressgang should be brought back/unnerfed.

Basically, if people come here and find a bunch of problems/inbalancing, a good majority of them are going to leave. The first impression is critical, and that should definately be our top priority, IMO.

Also, the big Redwall sites will probably still be a good place to advertise, since they're constantly losing old members and gaining new ones.

[Ruddertail]

I tend to agree with the above post. We need to get the game at least looking and working good. Maybe even simplify some stuff, I don't know. It seems to me that it's not that complicated, the only confusing thing I can think of is the attacking system.

[windhound]

yes
but you've been with promis for a while now
when I first signed up I was a little overwhelmed by everything that seems normal now.  and that was with the strait-promi code, no added in goodness.

noone really uses the different attack waves, although it is a neat idea.  I'm fairly sure I'm not the only one who just sends 100% of my force regaurdless

[White Fang]

Personally, I was a little confused by everything when I first started up, but that was mainly because the game guide really didn't cover everything thoroughly enough, IMO. I think if our explanations cover everything well enough, the little that's left over could be learned through trial-and-error. (After all, I know that's how I learned).

I don't know about anyone else, but I know in all the strategy games I've played, I gradually figured out what I was doing over a period of time (including games much more complex than this one).

[Vengerak]

Personally I think the fact that certain players among you have stuck around so long is a testament to the strength of this community. The ROC as a whole has been pretty much dead for a while now--this place, even as it is now, is like an ark.