The point is not about them understanding but it's about make it easier to understand so that people wont get annoyed by the flaws and give up on forum before starting to get into it.
I am saying that the website can be redesigned and restructured to be more inviting to potential new members and to make it easier to new.
if you fail to see or understand that.. I guess it's because you do not work with front end development, communication, media or design.
about the activity of the forum I wish I could see a graph about the new users engagement in forum activity of the last 10 years.
Maybe it's my impression but 5-7 years ago it seemed quite more lively around here.
You can argue as much you can, but please, don't try to sell me or anyone else this crap of "everything is perfect as it is" just because you fail to see the flaws here.
I agree it took me a while to figure out everything in the forums but I honostly think that forums isn't the reason we can't hold onto players... but the game itself can be very challenging for new comers to the game to learn how to play. The physics and mechanics are really unlike any other game which makes this game so hard to learn. I have only been around since 2013 and I still haven't gained as much skill as some of the people that I started the game with. I guess it is really just the kind of person you are that decides whether or not you will try to go above your own understanding and learn something new. A lot of people like fps and simple things like that so no one try's on toribash, and the other fact of the matter is that toribash is a free game and isn't talked about much so that could make people not wanna stay mainly because no one wants to play competitiivley in a dead game.
Minecraft have been around for fucking ages too, still going pretty strong. and they too have been investing resources in redesigning their website and forum. Did a pretty darn good job too.
There are 75 millions active Minecraft player. Plus, their website were really, really terrible.
We occur to get less than 400 active forumers each day, and by forumer I mean most of the time 200-300 guests which went to the forum after a google research such as “toribash walk” or “toribash parkour” -> Mocucha’s tutorial.
The forum isn’t that bad actually. That’s true I had difficulties at the beginning but nothing incredible. I used to study website due to cryptanalysis studies, and I can tell you, this is not a 15yo forum.
You might not see the problem because you don't work with UI and UX and you are not a new user that have to go through the Calvary of learning how to use this forum.
if you fail to see or understand that.. I guess it's because you do not work with front end development, communication, media or design.
But my expertise and experience suggest that a redesign could be very likely an effective solution.
the problem here is that you guys do not understand what I am talking about because you do not work or study front end development.
Not that big, but still.
what is important is the percentage of them which get enough intrigued about the game and forum to become a member of it. The first impact is fundamental in this cases.
Maybe it's my impression but 5-7 years ago it seemed quite more lively around here.
You can argue as much you can, but please, don't try to sell me or anyone else this crap of "everything is perfect as it is" just because you fail to see the flaws here.
well.. I am done here. :d
They will get intrigued by the game, their first impact will be the game, their first talks will be ingame with other peeps. The first impact of the game is fundamental, not the forum. And in this point, yes the first impact is bad, reaally, really bad.
extra facts
No way... are you sure about that ? Oh wow this is incredible and unexpected from a 13+ yo game :o I’m so sad.
Just the tip of the shitberg
this
That's some very superficial thinking, you said yourself that a lot of people bump into toribash because they end up in the website through google searches every day.
Now the game is on steam but most of the new and potential users are and will be people that will look for "free games" in google, be redirected to some website like "best 10 free game out there" and then might be interested enough by the review to get more info about the game.
How will they do that?
Through the website.
What in the cases the website makes a shitty impression?
It wont take much time to go back a couple of pages and try the next in that "best 10 list".
Except the official website is not the forum, but the one which allows them to download the game and a few other options aside from accessing the forum.Oops.
One of the key things that play a huge role as I said previously, is the responsiveness (or flexibility) of the website when accessed on different devices.
In the case of access from a mobile phone the chance that the user will have a negative experience during the usage of the website is extremely high, beside that clearly present issue other key factors that play fundamental roles are the navigability (functionality) and last but not least the aesthetics of it, think that can improved without drastic changed.
I have accesed from Android, Ipod and Ipad this website plenty of times, had no problems to it. Elaborate on this one.
12 years and few weeks old actually.
Surely activity is supposed to go down when the game start to become outdated no need for a Lord of internet or a cyber-defender code-nerd for understand that.
Thankfully improvements have been done during the years to kinda keep the fire burning.
It's fortunate that toribash is a quite unique game for its interesting and one of a kind game-mechanics and that's what make it stand out. Yet there are a lot of competitors out there with way worse games that are way more popular that tb ever been just because they are good at "selling" them.
The forums (Or website, for that matter) arent the problem when it comes to atracting people. Is the lack of proper advertising that has the playerbase like this. I might be going a little off-topic, tho.
I am a bit confused by your analysis...
What's the point of taking time showing some of the good things of the website? to prove me something?
Just the tip of the shitberg
Sure it works when you press buttons around.
It doesnt takes that long to get used to it, you are just making up some excuses here, get a couple of people who dont know about TB, show them the forum, see how they do, THEN you can actually start thinking about "revamping the website"
By saying that everything is perfect you stand in in the way of progress, the opportunity of a improvement that the website could face... and now it would be great to improve things around before the release of toribash next.
If I might sound offensive to you when I say you might not understand what I am talking about it's because you kinda proved that through what you wrote... and I do not say it because I feel high and mighty, I am just trying to tell you that I might have noticed things that you do not pay much attention to anymore, things that might negatively affect consciously or subconsciously the decisions taken by the users.
If there are no problems with the forums and they are functional, then why change it? You just wanna change things for the sake of changing them, pretty much
Everything has room for improvement. you just have to localize the problems one by one and think about effective solutions.
As is said before, if there aint problems, then dont change it. Cant improve upon perfection. When people actually complain about a valid point, then we can actually start thinking about changing the forums.
Another thing that could be implemented is to allow to paste images directly in the reply textbox of the forum.
Nowdays most of the people find it way too tedious to have to rely on 3rd party image hosts websites or the attachment feature so they can display images on the forum, that gives more incentive to share things mostly via Discord, crippling even more the activity levels of the forum.
Pretty much only thing i would agree with. then, again, there are always attachments/thumbnails...so whatever.
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The problem is that this website most probably has been upgraded little by little by different people adding slowly new features... and lack of UCD, that's the cause of the bad structure of the website.
Its not like we need "new features" regardless, most additions are ingame, and there are sub-forums and shit for every kind of topic...as long as it abides by the rules, that is.
[B]THE SHOCKING TRUTH[/B]
I agree that some of the links could be in a bit bigger font size but I don't know if they should be bolded. I sometimes forget where stuff is at after leaving and coming back from toribash so simpler navigation would make things easier and more proficient.