Observations For Possible Improvements

[admin]

01/21/2023

I noticed, today, while exploring the forum that we had 222 forum user birthdays back on January 1st, 2023.

How many actual players are there, again? It's a rhetorical question.







And how many registered forum members do we currently have? 8,315. That's eight thousand, three hundred and fifteen. Again, I ask the rhetorical question of, how many players are there, again?



Exactly WHAT do all of these excess accounts bring or contribute to the play of the game or to the player community, itself?

I am not aware that they serve any actual, useful purpose. So, why not weed the forum user base, to separate the wheat (players) from the chaff (bot accounts or people who never visit the forum, anymore, or users who have never actually contributed any forum postings about the game)?

I can't fix every problem that exists, but I could certainly fix this one. Granted, it may not stay fixed, but the forum user base could always be weeded, again, in the future, if necessary.

[admin]

I think that the little Pegasus riders at the top in that horizontal row of links should be used in conjunction with each of those small icon images, thereby eliminating the others. The Pegasus rider seems to fit the theme of Alamaze better than the Centurian head and the others.

[admin]

01/2/2023


I did a little research, just now, and of the 8,315 registered forum users here, 8,047 of them have zero forum postings to their credit.

This means that only 268 of the registered forum users have any postings, at all, to their credit.

This strikes me as a very persuasive argument to get rid of those very same 8,047 forum user accounts that are not really a constructive segment. I don't want to get rid of the older forum postings, per se, but eliminating these 8,047 would lose any forum postings, anyway.

[admin]

01/28/2023

Another area for possible improvement in the Alamaze forum is a rather obvious one. Namely, current players of the game need to post more frequently, because having easily detectable visual traffic is important. It signals an active player community, and if recent silence is what newcomers have to look forward to, then odds are, they won't - or will only be a one-time forum visitor, or perhaps an infrequent forum visitor. The same holds true for former players who pop in, now and again. You have a much better chance of grabbing their eye and "luring them back in," if the forum, itself, shows signs of recent life, and frequent use rather than intermittent use. Feeding people silence, visually, does not tend to make a tempting menu.

[admin]

01/28/2023

*Alamaze needs its own Discord server.
See here: https://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/show...2#pid82992

*Alamaze needs to run one or more Reunion Games.
See here: https://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/show...2#pid82892

*Not everyone knows the Alamaze lingo. Lingo can be like a foreign language, and can present itself as an obstacle to new player recuitment.
See here: https://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/show...?tid=16850

*The Alamaze website is in need of updating.
see here: https://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/show...?tid=16868

*Restructuring of the Alamaze link structure needs to continue:
See here: https://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/show...?tid=16854

*The Game Queue for Alamaze needs to enjoy a higher degree of visibility, even and especially for newcomers or prospective new players who do not have an Alamaze player account created, already.
See here: https://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/show...?tid=16867

*A Learner's Section needs to be created. New players learning and more quickly assimilating the abundance of game-related information is imperative to growing the Alamaze player base faster.

* More emphasis needs to be placed upon what the company can do to promote Alamaze, versus what the player fan base of Alamaze can do to promote Alamaze. Both are crucial to maximizing the growth rate of the player base for Alamaze.
See here: https://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/show...?tid=16858

* Technical problems with the Alamaze site, and with the Alamaze forum, need fixing. There are problems with both that currently exist.

[admin]

01/31/2023

*I have created a forum section on Kingdoms, one dedicated to the amassing of collective wisdom on how to play each of the kingdoms, specifically, better and more productively.

That forum section is located here.

[Lord Garth]

Random Idea:

Some people are registered in the game under one name and registered in the forum under another. It isn't much of an issue at the moment because everyone knows, for instance, that PTRiley is Strongwill and Maximus is GrimFinger. But if we greatly expand the player base --- and that's the goal, right? ---- and everyone has two names, it may get confusing.

Perhaps a single sign up page that registers you for the game and the forum at the same time?

[admin]

Random Idea:

Some people are registered in the game under one name and registered in the forum under another.  It isn't much of an issue at the moment because everyone knows, for instance, that PTRiley is Strongwill and Maximus is GrimFinger.  But if we greatly expand the player base --- and that's the goal, right? ---- and everyone has two names, it may get confusing.

Perhaps a single sign up page that registers you for the game and the forum at the same time?

Oh, yes. Absolutely. A more integrated approach to entering the whole Alamaze ball of wax (which is presently more than one ball of wax) could definitely be useful.

The moniker Maximus Dominus has its origin in The Fall of Rome flavor that preceded Rick McDowell's turn back towards Alamaze. That was a flavor-based choice. Me? I'll never keep everybody straight. Sometimes, people prefer having more than one moniker, though, and for different reasons.

[unclemike]

In the Welcome email, which is sent to new players when they create their Alamaze account, it mentions to match their Alamaze persona to their forum account name. Some do, some don't. If we enforce this rule, some new players will leave because they want the freedom to decide for themselves.

[admin]

In the Welcome email, which is sent to new players when they create their Alamaze account, it mentions to match their Alamaze persona to their forum account name. Some do, some don't. If we enforce this rule, some new players will leave because they want the freedom to decide for themselves.

Understood - and honestly, on a purely personal level, I wouldn't blame them.

That aside, it seems to me that some players would likely be more inclined to use the same moniker for both, and less likely to resort to more than one moniker, or a different moniker for each, if the sign-up process for both creating a player account and registering as a new forum user were integrated. Kill two birds with one stone, and many new players would, I think, just stick with what they initially signed up with. Having two different sign up procedures for those two things invites the possibility of possibly choosing different monikers.