ORG, TWC, and the Official Forum - what would the ORG specialize in?

[Maltz]

Here is my first post as a senior member! (p.s. If you are older than 34 please feel free to slam me.)

As I skipped E:TW and N:TW due to school and career reasons, when I returned to patronize the ORG, I find that while there are still many enthusiastic and intelligent moderators and contributors, the once glorious anonymous flock that repeatedly bumped the hit count of significant posts to 4 or 5 digits have largely migrated to... our sworn enemy TWC!... I mean the very friendly and nice site TWC. (In my distant memory, ORG was a huge franchise while TWC was a small business.)

When I browse the TWC, I cannot help but notice also the great work of the people in charge. I am not saying they are better people - just more people. I also noticed an especially large modding community. However, as population increase, you can see ungrateful and uncivilized forum users... yes we will then blame their parents, blah blah. But contributors who like to increase their readership will think twice about where to go.

But of course there is the official forum on Steam. It definitely has the largest user base, but I can't call them fans. I only go there to complain about bugs and hope that CA people can see them more easily. But quality works gets instantly drowned out by "how do I play this game" type of questions.

I am no business person at all, but my instinct tells me that we ORG have to "brand" ourselves, so users have something in mind when they think of ORG. I am not saying we should go out and "compete" with TWC or others. We are not running for profit, right? So there is no point in that. But we just want something to... hm, define ourselves. For example, users would go to the official site to complain about bugs, to the TWC to look at mods, and to the ORG to...? A good starting point is frogbeastegg's great guide for STW2. Personally, when I get Shogun Total War 2, I would go to google and type "Shogun Total War 2 tips", "Shogun Total War 2 forum", and choose which forum to learn from and to patronize. If I want tips, I wish to see high-quality strategic articles and maybe video links for tactics. If I want to ask questions, I want to pick a place where there are friendly and knowledgable members who respond and discuss with maturity. (As a result GameFAQs is usually the last place I want to be.)

I wonder what do the managers have in mind? :) Just throwing out some ideas for now.

[rickinator9]

TWC seems much more serious. We play a lot of forum games like Mafia. I don't see that anywhere in the other forums.

[Beskar]

TWC seems much more serious. We play a lot of forum games like Mafia. I don't see that anywhere in the other forums.

TWC plays Mafia games as well.

[johnhughthom]

TWC plays Mafia games as well.

It's on life support though...

[Rhyfelwyr]

.org has mafia and more intellectual discussion. I think the average age of TWC posters in their political etc discussions is a fair bit lower.

[frogbeastegg]

If I want tips, I wish to see high-quality strategic articles and maybe video links for tactics. If I want to ask questions, I want to pick a place where there are friendly and knowledgable members who respond and discuss with maturity. (As a result GameFAQs is usually the last place I want to be.)

This is about right. We aim to be a friendly, mature community with as much helpful content as possible. Guides, research, strategy discussion threads, videos, and anything else which can be managed. We'd like any new player to be able to register and ask for help, and be certain of getting a pleasant reply. I believe that we have the infrastructure to support that, with our guides and research forums, media gallery, and image hosting capabilities. We will consider any suggestions people have as well, and will implement any which are practical. The question is always how we can support and encourage patrons who are likewise interested in this content, particularly those who are generous enough to spend time creating it.

We also want people to be able to discuss the games without the aggressive atmosphere which is frequently found on the internet. People should be able to say they like or dislike aspects of the game without fearing a horde of angry people telling them that they are, well let's politely say "stupid" and leave it at that. People do not need to post lengthy analysis of why they do or don't like the games - and nor do we want them to feel like they must! - but at the same time it's nice to be able to do that without getting people posting "TLDR lol" and nothing else. It's nice to post something and feel like readers will consider it, even if they totally disagree with the idea. Discussion is frustrating when you feel you are being dismissed after the first three words fail to agree with the reader's own ideas.

Away from our TW content, we like to keep that same atmosphere. Whatever people are interested in doing here, we'd like them to be able to do it without having someone screaming gamefaqs style abuse in their face. Again, we're open to any suggestions people have on what we can add or improve, or do to support patrons' own efforts.

I suppose you could consider us the friendly local pub to TWC's big night club and .com's on-site bar. Still alcohol, different clientele and decor.

[edyzmedieval]

Very well said Froggy.

I do miss the hustle and bustle of 2005/2006 Org a lot, but the quality of the posts is still high.

[caravel]

It's quantity vs quality... TWC's user base probably has a lower average age? The TW games, in my opinion only, since RTW have been squarely aimed at children and the "casual gamer" rather than the mature players who helped popularise the series and who populated this forum back in the day. The .org is obviously tailored towards an older audience and built up it's own unique user base over the years of the maturer player. In real terms this has resulted in a decline over the last few years.

My opinion is that the .org needs to continue to focus on the maturer player as TWC is already there for the kids...

[Maltz]

Indeed I absolutely salute the "Confusian Academy" (strategy articles) area of the ORG.

By the way, I have seen some methods in other forums to promote user participation.

(1) "Recommended" threads

The moderators have the authority to mark a thread as special (with a special icon). The forum can then display only the recommended threads. Alternatively, there can be a sticky list of all recommended post, organized by different categories.

This makes it easy to find good articles and discussions. The recommended threads can be further ranked by a few number of tiers (but personally I think it makes things unecessarily complicated). This is considered the highest status of a thread. All users have a "recommended thread" counter (if they are they original author) and a link to all their recommended thread in their personal profile for others to refer to. This also makes it easy for the moderators to reward the important contributors objectively.

(2) "Highlighted" threads

The moderators have the authority to give a thread's subject a different color or bold font. This makes the post easier to be noticed. But it does not carry the same weight as the recommended thread, as it might not be as important. But may be a good read for the moment (like an important news release from CA).

(3) Rating system

The power and responsibility goes to the users - the users can freely rate others' posts. The forum makes it possible to rank posts by their scores. I believe the users here are mature enough not to register 100 accounts to give their own posts good reviews.

Just some ideas...

[frogbeastegg]

Thread rating is already present. I think all account levels should have access. If you look at the top of a thread, there should be a button called "Rate thread" next to "View first unread" and "Thread tools". If it's not visible for normal users I'll ask a techie to check our settings. We've also got a "Thanks" system which allows users to mark posts they found particularly useful, and that should help to highlight them without going too bling-bling.

We'll need to see if suitable vbulletin mods are available for the other two suggestions. When we know what tech options are available, we can better look at whether we want to trial them on the site. It can be surprisingly hard to find suitable mods. There's a couple of very basic usability features I want which are impossible to get unless you use very old forum software.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I am on my phone, but I plan on coming by later tonight to write up a big thing of my thoughts regarding the future of the org.

In the meantime I will just give another lazy one liner. If Cute Wolf is in anyway representative of the demographics for Total War nowadays, then it is becoming increasingly obvious why we are in the spot we are in.

I mean, christ, was I stupid here, but even I didn't just shrug off asking someone to kill themselves.

[Kagemusha]

I am on my phone, but I plan on coming by later tonight to write up a big thing of my thoughts regarding the future of the org.

In the meantime I will just give another lazy one liner. If Cute Wolf is in anyway representative of the demographics for Total War nowadays, then it is becoming increasingly obvious why we are in the spot we are in.

I mean, christ, was I stupid here, but even I didn't just shrug off asking someone to kill themselves.

Dont be an arse! And i know this will give me my first ever warning point during my time here.

[Vladimir]

Dont be an arse! And i know this will give me my first ever warning point during my time here.

Then you're doing it wrong!

Sorry, late.