Pumping Life Back Into Forums
It's really no secret that the majority of the members of forums signed up so that they can get the Supreme Chatter Monkey achievement. I feel like other than the era-go sign that you can hold up, the overall impact of forums, is severely unnoticed or ignored. Whatever changes we make here on forums is largely unrecognized, and ideas that change the game in a positive direction are accepted, but not outright commended. Other than the Supreme Chatter Monkey initiative, I've only seen the word forums on one of the billboards advertising you to sign up. I know a couple of you guys asked for forum rewards, incentives, which, should be given as a reward to forum users for the amount of helpful posts that they well, post. I know xStarx said this in a previous thread that if we had a post reward for forums, the overall quality of the forums is going to pretty much plummet as people are going to swarm for an incentive they like. Whereas, an incentive that is useless or undesirable on the other hand, is ignored.
If we are going to at least improve this forum, I have a couple of ideas we can use to boost overall forum quality.
The first is to make a digging spot.
Let me elaborate: As the number of people who play the game has dramatically increased compared to 2010, there hasn't been many changes to beaches other than the waterpark that is only open in the summer. Nowadays, if you want to dig, you can either do it at the waterpark, which is crowded with people, and at a pk zone where people gas you, shoot you, kill you, etc. My point is, it's hard to dig peacefully nowadays.
If we can just put aside some space and make a non pk digging zone, I am sure the overall response will be very supportive. However, given that no one really cares who implemented or came up with the idea, we stress that the forums created/ contributed to the development of such building by making sure that this area is only accessible by forum members who have gotten their accounts for at least 6 months (or however many) with such and such amount of posts. I would also say rep but no one reps these days so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I would say having an account of at least 6 months would filter out a variety of people who just desperately try and recover their Supreme Chatter Monkey account, and having an activity requirement on forums such as post amount would ensure qualitative posts/ contributions. We could also have a separate administrative team that would approve players who meet such requirement to be able to enter a digging zone. This, ultimately, would be the VIP zone of forums.
The second thing I can come up with at the top of my head is to make a "Poster/ Forumer/ Contributor (whatever) of the Month" and feature it on the era news. (Here, I will be incorporating the reward system many of you had in mind.) Make an exclusive item such as a nice looking trashpick (we could have a contest for it!) that can't be sold (or maybe it can idk). Have the Person of the Month take a picture holding said "nice looking trashpick" and upload it to era news. Done.
All I can say is, making forums look appealing to players who just purely play the game is an important goal to have if you want a better quality forums. Oh, and rewarding those who choose to spend time out of their day to answer questions, whether it be moderators or just regular users, or maybe to ask questions, is a wise idea.
Ciao! ~thyme
