Era-Go Forum Suggestions for Improvement
Always great to see the forums alive and well. I just wanted to express some suggestions and ideas for Era-Go to get it a boost in activity again. :)
Forum organization
There are currently 17(!) sub-forums under General Era Discussion, a heavily used forum, and it takes a bit of scrolling down time to see the topics. To reduce the sub-forum numbers, I'd suggest the following:
- Merge "Theater" into the main General Era Discussion forum, since this was supposed to be a temporally forum.
- Merge "Weapon Ideas" into the "Weapons!" forum, since it is all about weapons.
- Merge all sub-forums of the "Events!" forum into their parent forum.
- Hide sub-forums (Specifically "Era Guides" sub-forums) from being viewed while browsing the General Era Discussion forum.
The "Announcements" forum I think should have permissions changed for staff posting only, so forum members don't get confused.
Toonslab Support Link
I see a lot of threads related to being jailed or other account issues, which are usually redirected to Toonslab's support from someone. Since it appears the "Letter to the Staff" forum has been discontinued, a forum link to http://support.toonslab.com/ with information to guide players with issues through support may help ease the amount of topics relating to account problems. Maybe put it either under "Site Information" as its own forum link with description, or on the main navigation bar.
Spam bot control
I noticed occasionally a spam bot or two showing up, such as this thread (forum staff should be able to see this if/when it's deleted, proof of bot here), but I think the reason for that is because the forum registration page no longer has security questions like it used to (example: who is manager of iEra?). Not sure if that is intended or not, but adding them back in should stop the bots. reCAPTCHA is usually good at stopping most bots, but there are services that can recognize and solve reCAPTCHA images automatically, so having that second layer of defense with security questions can solve that issue.
In-game promoting of Era-Go
The easiest idea to this is making an NPC around Start Park that takes them to the forums. I noticed the Ace NPC in a building at Start that when grabbed, opens up the web browser and takes you here: https://www.era-go.com/forum/showthr...and-Guidelines
I thought that was pretty neat, and can be done again outside for some more exposure linking to the forums. To help maximize the opportunity and guide new visitors, I suggest taking advantage of the Notices Manager feature of vB (The Era-Go forum administrators will know this) and list any info a new visiting user may want to know.
Competitions
Just saw the new Competitions forum and thought I'd throw some ideas out there. I'd really like to see some competitive forum events, not on the forums themselves, but in-game. For example: A thread announcing a 2-vs-2 spar MPX Gun only tournament hosted with a prize of 5k gralats for the winners. Now anyone can participate in this forum competition, but they gotta sign up to Era-Go first to post their participation for the event. Rules and requirements can be determined by the host.
I've seen other players who host their own events do this with success, and I think this would be a nice project for the Moderation Team to host and Forum Managers to oversee on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to promote forum activity, as these competitions can be hosted on a host's house template. What I like about the idea is that it's completely flexible and requires little maintenance besides planning and collaboration, from races, to sparring, or anything else a host can think of. If enough effort is put into this, there can even be a information kiosk NPC in-game that displays upcoming forum competitions with directions on how to sign up. Ultimately this will create:
- More forum activity from players looking to sign up, and will likely feel more comfortable interacting in discussions.
- More engagement from the Moderation Team.
- Fun for players to compete in-game for various competitions.
Finally, I'd like to see varying amounts of gralats as the exclusive prize for these competitions, to keep them unique and separated from the regular admin hosted events. This will make a fun opportunity as another alternative to make money, and the gralats can easily be added from a high staff.
As always, a job well done from the community and forum team for keeping Era-Go alive for over three years, and I hope to see further improvement coming along here. :)
