Integrating Discussion In-game

[Alex]

Let's face it; most players don't use the forums. For them, interaction is strictly limited to in-game, maybe reading an alliance announcement here and there and maybe a few messages now and then.

 

We've incentivized creating forum accounts, and that works well, but most folks don't stick around here and actually post. I think integrating more discussion in-game would be great for player retention and involvement, but I fear it could potentially come at the cost of the forums (why would you want to check here if most of your discussion/interaction happens in-game?)

 

What I'd be proposing is something like a forum in-game, that would be relatively easy to throw together, but I would never be able to make it as nice or user friendly as the IP Boards we're using currently. However it could certainly be personalized more, and I think we'd get a lot more participation.

 

I'd just like to open this up to the community; what do you think? Would you prefer quantity over quality? Do you think in-game discussion forums would kill the forums? Do you think we need the forums? Vote in the poll so I can bounce this idea off the community (albeit this is only the community that uses the forums...   )

[Atzuya]

More discussions ingame would just likely needlessly clutter things up further imo. Right now it's really bother to keep up just with the alliance announcements, as there's no notifications for new replies and there's no "first unread" marker on the comments.

 

Also, some players prefer to discuss things in their own private forum, so that could explain why some is never active here but active ingame

[Ayayay]

Alliances can and have created their own forums. No real point in wasting your time on it in-game.

[Guest]

Gonna have to agree here. I think there have been a ton of suggestions regarding improving the alliance announcements and ingame messaging system. I wouldn't waste my time on an ingame forum. Instead take that time to go find all of those suggestions people have liked.

Edited November 3, 2015 by Cynic

[Alex]

Well, and I didn't necessarily think an in-game forum would be the way to do, but I thought a reddit style place where you could post links to alliance announcements that would show up in a "Orbis Newspaper" type deal would be neat.

[TellUrGrlThx]

Better idea. Add a hot threads of the week into the game with links to em. Put it somewhere they can't avoid it like maybe the right side of the game on like the players own view page or even make the home page into a better place to refresh and put it there? You can also include a link to the latest announcement or etc. Get creative with it.

Edited November 3, 2015 by TellUrGrlThx

[Peace and War]

I thought this meant moving the politics and war forums in game, which I'm all for. Its already, politicsandwar.com/forums so why not just move it into the game itself? Then all we need is politicsandwar.com

 

Alliances are gonna keep their own personal forums anyway, not like an alliance is going to want their business all over Orbis.

 

I say why not, makes it easier for new players to get exposed to the forums. Cause even more personalities would be great around here.

[Placentica]

I support adding in-game alliance discussion and expanding the alliance announcements.  I like all members to be able to post announcements, or at least that option.

 

For a lot of us, IRC is the prime use of communication, not alliance forums, and more in-game forums would be useful.

[Karrde]

Have a look at eRepublik's newspaper / comment module- always worked pretty well for what you're asking.

[Fox Fire]

I'm not sure how to answer these questions. We don't need any more forums, that's for sure. We have plenty. Even a nice place for individual players to RP their own nations. What more could be asked for?

I feel like the point of this poll is player retention. In that regard, I think the most important aspect of that is not getting people involved in the overall PaW community, but getting involved in an alliance community. Games like this are entirely about community and whether you think so or not, Sheepy, your game has done pretty damn good at attracting and keeping players. I think I can call myself "exhibit A" in that regard.

 

As far as built in in-game forums, I would be opposed to that. My opinion is bias, sure, but I think effort should be applied into creating your own alliance community. If you can't put forth the efforts to even make a forum for your alliance, then you probably can't put forth the effort to organize and protect your members either. 

[Removed the last bits of this because I'm too high]

 

Overall: Not my cup of tea, but I see no point in arguing.

[Dr Rush]

Keep the the forums separate & work on promoting the existing forums.

[Spite]

Have a look at eRepublik's newspaper / comment module- always worked pretty well for what you're asking.

This!

 

Make a newspaper module and allow people to up vote it. Have categories for articles globally and within your alliance. It will allow people to write newspapers which is surely part of the whole politics and war nation building idea, will encourage discussion ingame and make it more fun for us writer types!

[Bollocks]

I like the idea of greater integration of the forums with the in-game UI. I never made sense to me to have to create two accounts for both the game and the forums.

 

The less barriers there are to participation, the more participation you will get.  

[Sargun]

I feel like people might actually stay on these forums if there were any kind of actual quality control.  As it is now, the community here is atrocious and already has a very negative stigma attached to it.

 

In addition, people already use IRC, or Slack, or Skype, or alliance forums; adding another communication in-game is just asking for even more fracturing of where newer or less community-savvy players will be going.  Plus, it means that any alliance that wants to communicate anything sensitive can't use that, which means they now have another level of unregulated communication they have to deal with.

 

I think rather than trying to add a newer feature the existing boards should be cleaned up first.

[Valakias]

Isnt it better to increase forum visibility? Or replacing theseforums with something more visible in game? Both works for me. Surely having the forums in game would increase visibility by a lot.

[Luna]

I think the best integration would be having the game link to forums. Like if you go to the alliance page, have a link there to the alliance affairs. 

[Wayne]

As others have already said, go check eRepubliks in game comms.  It works well.

[Conner Temple]

I also believe that if this does work, there should be a drop bar which has links to every alliances personal forums. just as small idea

[Dark Specter]

Have any of you guys played the game tribal wars? If so then you might know what i am talking about and if not then i will tell you. Tribal wars is ga,e set in te dark ages and you are a leader of a village whoch you build and you build an army and attack pther villages and eventually you cam conquer them. Now tribal wars has an owf but not many people use it and the reason is because tribal wars has an in-game forums feature that you are suggesting sheepy. Now when you make a tribe or join one you will have access to their in-game forums and you can talk to your fellow tribe mates. This is great because it improves communication with your tribe and when your tribe gets on good terms with anoer tribe you can update your forums to have a section where your tribe and theirs can communicate. Its actually pretty neat but there is a problem with it.

 

The problem is almost every single player uses the in-game feature to communicate with their tribe and allies and therefore hardly anyone uses the games owf. There are some people who use the owf but only use it to see if anything new has been added to the game or if there were any changes or bug fixes. And once they are finsihed using the owf they relay the information to their tribe in-game and that is were their tribe remains to discuss the events on the owf regarding updates, changes, bug and exploit fixes and thus no one uses the owf because there isnt a reason to use it. Therefore the games owf is pretty much dead. Sheepy if you add an in-game forums feature then the same thing can pretty much happen here. What will be the point of using the owf when people can just use the in-game forum to communicate with their alliance mates. It will just kill the owf and then their will be no point in keeping the owf sense every one will just communicate with the forums in game.

[Spite]

In eRepublik there is an ingame forum which nobody ever uses. People use their own external forums, usually owned by the nations (ie alliances here) not by the game owners. In-game there is a newspaper module. This has sort of the same editing tools you have on these forums, and basically once you publish it anyone can see it. There's a link on your profile and when you publish articles, people can vote them if they like them. There's also a subscribe option, so newspapers you subscribe to appear in a subscriptions box when someone publishes a new article.

 

It is probably one of the best things about the game and you should steal it for this.

[Franz Von Dietrich]

Honestly, I believe people rather use their alliance forums, instead of the PnW forums.

[Solo Man]

Here's an idea and something I'd like to see: We have our messaging system in-game but could we have an option to do group discussion with that? The participants could be selected by the author and then they could all follow everybody's comments.

[Conner Temple]

Here's an idea and something I'd like to see: We have our messaging system in-game but could we have an option to do group discussion with that? The participants could be selected by the author and then they could all follow everybody's comments.

seems good. Like for AA treaty discussions and government members having a chat on their positions and troubles