Post by Magdalena on Feb 7, 2017 2:59:16 GMT
Sans the cocktails and party, I'm afraid. Bamboozled!
I have, since my sudden and unforetold appearance on this site, been accruing different ideas and suggestions to dump upon our already overworked team, which we all love and adore and appreciate for their magnificent work (THANK YOU NIK! ♥). These are, of course, just the ideas and ramblings of a single madwoman, feel free to discuss, disagree or develop further at your leisure. I only ask that you keep it civil; sometimes differences of opinions can spark confrontation and we don't need that among our happy little Alpha family. :3 In no way am I pushing for these changes to be immediate, these are just some ideas I'm tossing out into the void!
I'll try to keep the list organized. My fever is spiking again, which usually invites more rambling than usual, so bear with me if I stray and don't be afraid to ask about clarification or more details on something! For what it's worth, I use Chrome exclusively.
Strap in, folks!
Quality of Life (QoL) Suggestions
These are pretty minor, more for ease of use around the site than anything that would directly affect gameplay overall.
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Community and Gameplay
I hope that wasn't too much to digest! I may pop in and edit and add or remove some things, but I'll timestamp my edits if I make any. Again, these are just the opinions of one person, just throwing out ideas, use 'em if you like, ignore 'em if you don't!
Anyone and everyone is welcome to discuss, or elaborate, so on and so forth. We're here to help this place grow, after all!
I have, since my sudden and unforetold appearance on this site, been accruing different ideas and suggestions to dump upon our already overworked team, which we all love and adore and appreciate for their magnificent work (THANK YOU NIK! ♥). These are, of course, just the ideas and ramblings of a single madwoman, feel free to discuss, disagree or develop further at your leisure. I only ask that you keep it civil; sometimes differences of opinions can spark confrontation and we don't need that among our happy little Alpha family. :3 In no way am I pushing for these changes to be immediate, these are just some ideas I'm tossing out into the void!
I'll try to keep the list organized. My fever is spiking again, which usually invites more rambling than usual, so bear with me if I stray and don't be afraid to ask about clarification or more details on something! For what it's worth, I use Chrome exclusively.
Strap in, folks!
Quality of Life (QoL) Suggestions
These are pretty minor, more for ease of use around the site than anything that would directly affect gameplay overall.
- Organizing Beasts: Ability to organize and/or rearrange beasts on the profile page. I suggest the ability to drag and drop, perhaps requiring an Edit function, which would need to be 'saved' or perhaps a button that would automatically sort the beasts on the page by certain criteria, maybe newest vs. oldest, or rarity.
- Organizing Items & Scrolling: The ability to organize items within the inventory window, either by rarity or component type (ores, foods, scrolls, etc.) would make crafting easier. Perhaps making different tabs for the inventory, so that items are more easily accessed for adding to the crafting windows. For instance, the first tab would display the whole inventory, shown as normal (as it is now, where all items are together), then the next tab would be Ores, then Foods, etc. Within each tab, items could be displayed by rarity.
- Trading Page Adjustments: It would be great to be able to see all the available items in your inventory on the trade page. Currently, it shows the items, but there's no indication how many you have available to trade, and if you add items to the trade menus, it will exceed the available amounts in your Offers/Requests.
- Trading Advertisements: Maybe adjust the displays overall, and make a small subforum visible on the Trades page, where people can display adds for what they're selling or trading? This spot could be a ticker, or a dedicated spot, and could be purchased with premium currency as a way to generate additional income. I realize we also have a subforum here on the forums, but since they are currently separate entities, this could help the flow of trades with information being readily posted directly on the Trades page.
- Notification Variations: This place definitely has personality, and I think some extra spice and snark could be added to some of the notifications around the site to add additional flavor. For instance, if you're mixing the wrong components, a light jab at the summoner for messing up, or a couple different error messages for being too slow to grab an item (also for when successful) just to mix it up a bit, so it's not the same message over and over again.
- Recipes on the Craft/Inventory Page: I know we have a Wiki where the recipes are listed, but for more convenience, having the recipes accessible on the crafting page would be nice. I am going on the assumption that a site-side Beastiary will eventually be implemented, and I imagine that will be connected to the Wiki page. Making it so that recipes are also accessible from the inventory is just an additional step in smoothing overall gameplay.
- Adjustments to the New Chat Feature: Some little things like the ability to toggle the volume on or off for notifications, and also being able to adjust the overall size of the chat window.
- Event Notifications: This pertains to such events as a new trade or follower, or a new message, and eventually sales and such. Currently, there is no notification that you've received a new trade, or if there is one, it's there and gone before I've noticed. The notification for a new chat message could linger a bit longer, but for the others, I think a displayed notification that sticks around until closed by the player would be useful. This way, we are notified if a trade is received, accepted or declined, or edited. This can also be used to notify of new News announcements, or changes to the site.
- Change Log: This would more or less just be a small notification, maybe a feed embedded on the Home Page, for when small updates or adjustments are made, just to keep us in the loop with something directly on the site (I'm not entirely sure of the traffic, but I see more people on the site than I do on the forums, so this might help keep everyone informed.)
- Site Avatars Gallery: A lot of sites have a gallery of their respective art available for avatars. Since Lavie works so hard and does a damn good job on all these pixels, and because our default avatars are weird for some of us, we could have it so there's a gallery of site art available for changing your avatar to. Ideally, and I imagine this will be implemented in the future, it would also include the option to upload a custom avatar, but this could help in the meantime, and overall, since the site art is great.
- Links: We have a link on the forum to the game site, but how about a link on the game site to the forum? I'm not sure what the future holds in store for the forums, if they will remain separate entities or if someday the forum will be merged to the game site, but in the mean time, this provides a smooth path between the two. A link to, or better yet, a dedicated page for the Staff information and general credits would also be a nice touch, but I'm thinking that will occur in later aesthetic refining stages.
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Community and Gameplay
- Monthly Themed Releases and Holidays: Pretty self explanatory, but I think it'd be nice to consider themed events. Obviously, Christmas was a thing, so there's the likelihood that future events will reflect holidays. I also think we could have specific cultural events or themed releases, for example, one month would focus on some mythology from Africa, then the next month on South and Central American cultures, stuff like that. The community could even be polled and vote on what countries or cultures they'd like to cover in the upcoming months, stuff like that. It provides variety and inclusion of the community, as well as cultural diversity. God(s) forbid, we may learn things! xD
- Subforum Suggestions: I don't know how prominent it will be here, for some petsites it's more of a focus than for others, but a subforum for roleplaying might be appreciated, especially once guilds and battles become integrated. I also vote for a forum dedicated to art, so people can network and show off their pieces. There should probably also be sets of Official forums, for the updates and broadcasts, as well as venues for official site-hosted competitions and such.
- Discord? Since we have our own on-site chat now, not sure how necessary this will be but a dedicated Discord channel for us could be fun, probably better implemented in the Beta phase when there will be more people. Discord is a communications platform, essentially a Skype geared more towards gamers, and better overall in my opinion. It provides text and voice chat, among other features, very user friendly. Again, may not be necessary, but could give us a platform to communicate in the event the servers are down, for instance.
- Beast Highlights and Features: I'm not entirely sure what I meant when I wrote this down and I can barely read it in my notes. xD It has something to do with competitions, and also lists some breakdowns of mythology, so I assume it means something along the lines of certain beast types being highlighted and featured, perhaps at the same time as the monthly themes and/or holidays mentioned above. There could also be competitions, so for instance the community could vote on a beast type and that beast would be featured on the home page for a day or week, and would provide cultural information as well as a breakdown of the beast's origin mythology. Maybe beasts of that type get a bonus that day for battling or something?
- Rules and Terms of Service: I mentioned aesthetic refinement earlier, regarding links, but I think an absolute must is to consider including a page dedicated to the Rules and Terms of Service, to (excuse the language) Cover Your Ass (CYA) from the legal perspective. In the very list, it sets the framework or behavior for the community, and if needed, provides the CYA protection and justification when violations occur. Below is a small sublist of rules I think need to be included, when the time comes.
- Cross-Site Trading: This usually comes up on petsites, and this pertains to trading goods from BSums with goods on Site B. If allowed, CYA regarding if players are scammed, 'trade at your own discretion' sort of thing, and also list really clearly what behavior is prohibited and bannable.
- Language Restrictions: Also tends to come up on petsites, where there is a gathering of many different peoples from many different places. This can also include profanity, and such things as bullying, flaming & hatespeech, etc. Regarding language in the diversity sense, it's good to specify if and where things are limited to English only, and where people may stray from that restriction, such as in Private messaging.
- I had something else here, and I can't remember it, so I'll have to come back around if and/or when I recall.
I hope that wasn't too much to digest! I may pop in and edit and add or remove some things, but I'll timestamp my edits if I make any. Again, these are just the opinions of one person, just throwing out ideas, use 'em if you like, ignore 'em if you don't!
Anyone and everyone is welcome to discuss, or elaborate, so on and so forth. We're here to help this place grow, after all!