I'm going to be too lazy to type everything I see wrong with the site and the lack of people so I'm just going to paste what I've said already.
I was just choosing favoritism for chat. But there are workarounds for the idea such as you can go into your settings and choose which chats you wish to be displayed always. (and I think by default all should be on) Also the reason I think it should be shown always (along with recent forum posts) is because then the users can see who is actively in chat or not without any fuss.
But I have another idea. So you know that when you hover over one of the tabs it maximizes and if you move your mouse cursor away is stays open correct? Well similar to how I said you could select which chats to show why not have it so you select which tab you wish to auto open when you REMOVE your mouse from the list of tabs. So say I want Community tab to open up when my mouse cursor is not actively over any of the others. It'll always be open. I mean there are a lot of ways to go about doing things and those were a few of my ideas.
Now on the subject of users in general yes I completely agree there needs to be more active users. I honestly was a bit shocked on the lack of user base when I came back the other day. (was gone a few months) Now how do you keep users? You add value that makes the users want to keep coming back.
Lets run down on a few of the abilities on the site. You have:
- Battling; in the forms of PvP and PvE
- Crafting (kind of flawed imo)
- Quests; the same ones over and over
- Coven related things
- Weapon/Armor customization*; although limited it's there.
- Leveling up/stats
- HoF (if you're into being the #1)
- Community related things.
*By customization I mean able to upgrade your weapon/armor to a more new and powerful one.
This isn't everything but just a few. Now what is the most primary thing about the site?
Turns. Without turns you can't do most of the things on the site. And once you run out there is nothing to do in terms of progressing your character.
How do you gain turns? You have to either wait an hour, complete some quests or purchase premium.
So here's a scenario, non-premium player just used up all his/her turns and completed all available quests. It's an hour until they get 10 more turns...hours up then they use their turns within a few mins(if that) and now must wait another hour to do anything.
Now after that person is done with their turns what can they do?
- Battling? No
- Crafting? Not unless they have $/souls
- Quests? All gone
- Coven related things? Coven war...no, leveling it up...no, talking? yes
- Weapon/armor related? Not unless they have $ or are already maxed
- leveling up stats? No
- Hof ranking up? On most stats No
- Community related things? Definitely!
So...from the above list when you have no turns left you can't do most of the main parts of the game. What's left? Social stuff. Where are all the social stuff atm? Hidden from normal view.
Now without the social stuff with easy access (since people are lazy or just forget it's even there) they will just leave once their turns are up. And chances are they just wont find the repetitiveness of the site to be fun and altogether stop coming back.
I have a few ideas on how to keep people here.
One: Revamp the hunting area, instead of a directional game, turn it more into an interactive game. This can be a simple HTML5 game that is linked to your profile where you can move around in a game world (maybe make it so you can run into other players?) and are able to fight other monsters/humans in real time. Also have it so that while you're in game you're able to access any chat you want (have general chat open by default) if not for them to talk but to have them see others in active discussions. This can do a few things for people they will feel more apart of the game, each turn will feel like it has value(for the system I have thought of at least). They will have instant access to the community while playing and if done have even multiplayer support (probably not). So all that just for hunting. I could go in depth but you get the idea.
Two: Add more ways to get turns. It's really that simple. I mean you'll want to find a balance on how many extra you can get or just the ways you can get them. Maybe have it so that with posts that you get $10 you also get 1 turn. There are drawbacks such as people spamming forums but that's when you add the max. Or make it so you can't get more than 1 turn every 5mins.
Three: And this has been said many times, more Quests that are different and more Achievements. So I wont go any further with that.
Forth: More interactions within the community that are rewarded. Really having it so people feel good about doing something makes people happy and want to come back.
Fifth: Look at certain parts of the site that have less activity, ask yourself why don't people come here? or use this certain feature? One place that I have in mind is the Marketplace. It's only used to do private trading between 2 people. There really is no other reason to use it. So how could we make that more useful? Well for starters add recipes to crafting, add new resources to the game, some common others more rare. Have it so they're acquired via certain actions on the site. Posting in forums/chat for x times, play in the hunting area and find a chest or off a dead human, found items off other players. Maybe there is an item you can only get if another player has it? By adding that and the ability to sell on the market you add times not easily accessible to everyone and will create a demand for the rarer items.
There's a bunch that can be changed/added to make people want to come back. And theses are just some of my thoughts.
We need at least the General chat and the number of players in it visible.
