Let us reimagine GDU.

[Saltome 16]

Well, this has been evident to me ever since I joined.

While the site seems to have a positive reputation, for whatever reason. it is not running efficiently.

In fact, most of the custom posters don't have time to do anything productive.

 

I know how dedicated Mark is to this site, he even kept it despite having the opportunity to take it down and move on with his life, when the domain was expiring.

 

Unfortunately, Mark does not have the leadership to lead this website to it's full potential. And neither do I, so we will have to settle for the next best thing, democracy.

 

So I'll take this slowly, one step at a time.

 

Let's start at the beginning.

 

Do you think this website has unfulfilled potential?

[black mage 28]

Let's start at the beginning.

 

Do you think this website has unfulfilled potential?

I'll rant a bit. The answers for that question is yes.

Mark dedicated a lot of his time for this website. Building this and that, yet he's mostly alone in the development.

 

Let's take a look at games section as an example. It's clear, that the section has a lot of potential and opportunity for developers to get their games noticed by people. However, due the lack of management and quality checking for that section, it's full of low quality stuff and sunk the high quality one.

 

As for the feedback on the game section itself. Yes, we have many user, we have a lot of visitors daily. But most of them just hang out for a sec and leave. Thus people that post their game and their stuff got left out. The one that check and commenting on their stuff are only the regulars, which we can spell them one by one.

 

Without the need to mention everything else, it's clear that the site is already entering it's last stage. The site do have it's glory moment, but that's over years ago. Peoples already left due one and another things, and the one that's left is too busy to light the place.

 

Actually, there's a way to revive the site. That is to have things that's not provided by other site. A feature that's special for the resident of GDU. A game section? rpgmaker.net is already have it and they do maintaining entries seriously. Every entry must pass their quality check or rejected. A forum where you can ask things about rpg maker? rpgmakerweb.com is where people go as it's the official English site of rpgmaker, and they have a lot of resident that can help various problems that occurred. Also they have regular events to keep people from bored and leaving.

 

So I think that's the next question. How do we make the site become specials? Personal value aside.

 

As for myself, no matter where the direction for this website go, I'll be with this site until one of us gone forever. When it's time for this site to die, I'll be with it until it's last breath. I'm here to be a part of it, and I'll fulfill my role as one of it's resident, helping another and doing something good. ;)

[Kitsuki 17]

I agree 100% with what Mage says. It's a small community with the regulars and the occasional newcomer (who'll hopefully become regulars as well). Despite not having a larger population like the Chaos forums, it's super nice to hang and just chat with everyone or read posts.

 

The days where GDU was big seem to have come and gone, but I do believe with what Mage suggested, we can make the community bigger. Maybe not reach its full potential, since I think the opportunity for that has kind of passed, but you never know! I'm not sure how big RPG Maker still is, anyway. O.o

 

But yes, I think we definitely have room to improve and grow the community a bit. Maybe with a bit of promoting on other sites. (Although GDU does have facebook and other social networking already, right?) Without your saltiness scaring everyone off, Sal  ;)

[Saltome 16]

Okay, so far the points that will need our attention are:
That Mark is developing the website alone.
The lack of organization and quality control.
The low retainability of new members.

I think Mage is hitting pretty close to the mark.
Before we do anything, we need to take a step back, and think about what we are doing.
Why are we here?
Where are we going?
Generally, what is the purpose of this site?

To help developers develop?
To be a place where developers gather to hang out?
To help with publishing and advertisment?
Something else completely?

 

Life has it's ups and downs. Maybe now we can make another "up" happen.

A little flare can ignite fire anew.

So let it burn.

 

*grumble grumble* Nobody ever pulls their punches when I'm trying to join their group, why should I treat them any differently.

If you can't take the fire stay out of the kitchen. *squint*

[ShinkuAura 15]

This has caught my attention over the pass few days.

Now this site. I've seen how it's been in it's glorious days. However, if we're going become a notorious site we need something more this time around. GDU started out as RMXP a website for RPG MAKER things. Now we're called GDU which is supposedly a developer website. But how can we call this a worthwhile website when we're stuck in past with these outdated engines. We certainly haven't grown as much as we wanted too. Having projects in development is one thing. Having a game is another. What this website really needs is to help upcoming developers and their game projects. I feel that the forum should be community only, interacting with one another and having different things to talk about. The games section should have something more. I mean we're spammed with things that we're not really interested like scripts and sprites. Topics like these are a point of interest for people who like to debate or just talk. There's a lot of things on this site that really need to go. Things like Tutorials or Resources need to merge into something like much smaller.

Moderator's only function is to be online all day and check if the forums are clean. I think moderators should have more power then we're used to think. Maybe if The games section had features like a rating or something to organize games like uncompleted and completed. it would be much easier to navigate. There's a lot of ideas i can come up with and to be honest this site is really dear to me. The community isn't very interactive because there's a lot of things that don't interest us.

[Marked 197]

I'll sit back and let you guys talk. 

 

I'm happy with what GDU achieved, the people who've contributed to our site. Our previous staff team was full of developers, around 8 strong, but they slowly left and now there's just a few us. Around the end of 2012 and early 2013 we faced extinction, but we fought our way back. 

 

I have grown old (literally, I'm 24 now) developing the site for more than 9 years. My fatal error was learning too much web development stuff that I had an irresistible need to break things down and rewrite them myself, replacing something with something similar and therefore not really increasingly functionality but replacing it.

 

It's pleasing that you guys made this topic and it's actually getting some posts. If you can come with a plan for the site together, I will build it for you. I can build anything. I'm comfortable with leaving its future in the community's hands. :)  

[black mage 28]

The "Marked" has spoken.

 

Well, joke aside, it'd be nice if we have place that works like a workshop, where the currency is GDU points. This workshop serve as a place where people get things done. I never seen a feature like this on other website that I know, and I'm sure it'll attract a lot of customers, as most of the people that stumbled across this site is currently looking for some resources. Meanwhile, when the currency is GDU points, this will make people who want to buy things from the store engage with the others to get the sufficient GDU points, thus make the site more lively, or just full of people that want to have some GDU points, but I'm sure that it'll move towards the former. :)

 

The workshop system is where the client gave a proposal of what they want to have/made from the shop owner, and if the shop owner willing to create whatever the client propose, they could start discuss the price and other criteria. Credits should be given if requested. Keep in mind that even if the shop owner does receive GDU points, the points just a value that shows some appreciation, and have no other value except to be used in another transaction.

 

It'll be nice to have a pages where the layout can be customized to look like an actual shop. :grin:

 

I think the workshop system will gain much interaction between the community, as the point given can be used to bought things on another shop, and the people that want to buy something would need to start some topics and engage in some discussion in order to gain points.

 

As the suggester of this idea, I'm willing to open a Script shop for RGSS and RGSS3, and will expand to other engines in the future. It's not like I'm a best scripter out there, but I have the ability and do have some interest on it. ;)

 

So, that's my part of bargain. Anyone interested? Or there's any great breakthrough for our lovely site? :youcandoit:

[Kitsuki 17]

The "Marked" has spoken.

 

Well, joke aside, it'd be nice if we have place that works like a workshop, where the currency is GDU points. This workshop serve as a place where people get things done. I never seen a feature like this on other website that I know, and I'm sure it'll attract a lot of customers, as most of the people that stumbled across this site is currently looking for some resources. Meanwhile, when the currency is GDU points, this will make people who want to buy things from the store engage with the others to get the sufficient GDU points, thus make the site more lively, or just full of people that want to have some GDU points, but I'm sure that it'll move towards the former. :)

 

The workshop system is where the client gave a proposal of what they want to have/made from the shop owner, and if the shop owner willing to create whatever the client propose, they could start discuss the price and other criteria. Credits should be given if requested. Keep in mind that even if the shop owner does receive GDU points, the points just a value that shows some appreciation, and have no other value except to be used in another transaction.

 

It'll be nice to have a pages where the layout can be customized to look like an actual shop. :grin:

 

I think the workshop system will gain much interaction between the community, as the point given can be used to bought things on another shop, and the people that want to buy something would need to start some topics and engage in some discussion in order to gain points.

 

As the suggester of this idea, I'm willing to open a Script shop for RGSS and RGSS3, and will expand to other engines in the future. It's not like I'm a best scripter out there, but I have the ability and do have some interest on it. ;)

 

So, that's my part of bargain. Anyone interested? Or there's any great breakthrough for our lovely site? :youcandoit:

 

Damn, Mage, nice! I obviously have no idea how to appeal to an audience, seeing as after these few days I haven't come up with anything. :P But that's a pretty good idea... make those resource-hunters contribute to the community before they ask for things.

 

Although I'd like to see effort on peoples' part to contribute to others' games and such. Have their posts in the community be of substance rather than just thrown together posts that will get them enough points to get their resources, then they disappear forever. Or at least until they need another resource. But I'm sure that there will be monitoring on what kind of posts and how much effort goes into them, so that's not something I worry about.

 

Though I'm sure there will be those who enjoy the forum a lot and decide to come back regularly. Heck, I count as one of those resouce-grabbers who came back to GDU after a while. Glad I did too, it's a great place.

 

This probably comes off as useless, but I could offer RPG Maker XP maps, I guess... TTuTT not sure if people actually need those anymore, but hey. Might as well in case someone wanders along.

 

Maybe having "classes" would be nice? I saw some old posts where Kiriashi (bless him and his maps) was having a mapping class, I think. Gather up a group of enough people who have a decent amount of points and are interesting, and having certain tutorials or activities on a certain engine. I definitely would have wanted to be part of that (I would want to be part of anything on GDU, actually, so I'm a little biased), but with my luck the thread was years old already.

 

I definitely have no idea if that would be decent or not, but figure I'll throw some things out there. With luck something might actually be workable. ;)

[Saltome 16]

Let me try to create an updated summary:

Problems:

-Mark is developing the website alone.
-Lack of organization and quality control.
-Low retainability of new members.

-We offer no unique services. - I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Tried and tested is a simple and effective strategy.

-Insufficient PR.

-Supporting outdated software. - I've held on to RMXP for a long time, I still use it. But it gets harder and harder to find help, support and information for it. And the demand for such decreases as well. I think it's time to rethink which engines to support. I also think that it's best we focus on one initially. This engine has to be modern, but also accessible. Unity is fine, but a lotta good it does me when I can't even run the piece of crap on my pc. Well, my pc IS a piece of crap, but that's another story. Seems to be a common trend, though.

-Work delegation. - Well, someone has to sit around all day long and make sure the forums are clean. But giving more people more responsibility will improve the site efficiency.

 

Decisions:

-"Our purpose is to do anything that helps people develop games." -Rather vast imo, but it's a specific direction.

 

Damn Mark, that was profound as hell. Didn't know you had it in you. x)

 

The next point I want to clear up is:

How do we serve our purpose?

We could just build up a vast library of resources, but really, that's hard to manage, and generally you want to use unique resources. And people will only come here for the resources, if they couldn't find anyone to help. Hence encouraging low quality developlent.

I think a better idea would be actually educating people in the art of creating resources.

Another option is simply helping people who already have those skills get in touch with the people who need those skills. This one should yield the best results.

[Saltome 16]

Tck tck tck. I know you're all eager to place your suggestions out there, but I think we need to make sure we agree on where our focus should lie. Otherwise, we aren't gonna do anything more than throw some random ideas out there, before the topic dies out. - Which is already happening.

"Power without direction is chaos.", and that is certainly what we are having here.

 

If nobody else is gonna speak out, I suppose I will continue my train of thought.

I think we should focus on actively seeking out skilled people on the internet, and provide them with the opportunity to get involved in various projects requiring their skill. This will help us create connections with said skilled people, And the reputation of helping people find work will attract more creators to our side.

 

This does beg the question, though, what kind of skilled people should we get involved with? Coders? Writers? Artists? Composers?

And which style of completing each task?

I suppose the propper answer would be all of the above...

 

Hmm, we started with having too many requests and not enough people to fulfill them.

A simple solution to a simple problem.

"If you can't do it yourself, find someone else to get it done."

[Saltome 16]

Hmm... allow me make one concrete suggestion.

I want a new moderation task to be added, to keep in touch with project teams, to make sure that the recruitment topics are kept updated.

Naturally, I'm ready to take on that responsibility personally, and immediately.

[black mage 28]

I want a new moderation task to be added, to keep in touch with project teams, to make sure that the recruitment topics are kept updated.

Naturally, I'm ready to take on that responsibility personally, and immediately.

I'm not sure how this will turns out. But I think it's alright to try it and see what will happened.

[Kitsuki 17]

I think we should focus on actively seeking out skilled people on the internet, and provide them with the opportunity to get involved in various projects requiring their skill. This will help us create connections with said skilled people, And the reputation of helping people find work will attract more creators to our side.

 

This does beg the question, though, what kind of skilled people should we get involved with? Coders? Writers? Artists? Composers?

And which style of completing each task?

I suppose the propper answer would be all of the above...

 

Hmm, we started with having too many requests and not enough people to fulfill them.

 

Find people with skills? That's a good place to start as any, but the question is how many of them have the time and patience to be doing stuff without anything in return. (True, I have artists and musicians, but their time is scarce as it is, and I'm dishing out quite a bit of money.) Coders and writers, imo, are the most important. Maybe pixel artists as well, because most of the requests I see here are "Write a script for me" or "I need a spriter/sprites".

 

But yeah, there are nice people out there who'd like to spend time doing stuff for people for free, but most of them need an incentive. We can't all thrive off the internet ;)

 

I want a new moderation task to be added, to keep in touch with project teams, to make sure that the recruitment topics are kept updated.

Naturally, I'm ready to take on that responsibility personally, and immediately.

 

We have a recruitment subforum? O.o

 

Joking aside (although I really didn't know that) that's a neat idea--at least developers will know that someone is keeping up-to-date with their project. A lot of people here don't get attention to their games. I know that in order to be added to the list of featured games, your game has to be played--are the staff keeping up with the playable games coming in?

 

They may or might not be, might be nice to know though. I recently played "Listen" here on GDU and thought it was a nice game, but for some reason or other it doesn't appear to have been added to Featured. Staff may have their reasons, but I think it's a pretty good game and at least deserves a couple more comments.

 

If you're going to take up that responsibility, go ahead, by all means. Good to see initiative and ideas. Be nice to new devs. ;)

[Saltome 16]

I'm not sure how this will turns out. But I think it's alright to try it and see what will happened.

Well, there is the risk of people precieving it as badgering them. But given the right approach, it will create an interaction between "the website" and it's users.

Strengthening the bonds within the group, which has it's own benefits, like increasing motivation, cooperation, loyalty.

Improving the efficiency and quality of the recruitment process.

Further more, I plan to help people actively seek out team members, as opposed to waiting on a random topic to yield results. And it's certainly hard enough to find people, without turning out that the position I'm searching for is already filled, or otherwise closed.

 

 

Find people with skills? That's a good place to start as any, but the question is how many of them have the time and patience to be doing stuff without anything in return. (True, I have artists and musicians, but their time is scarce as it is, and I'm dishing out quite a bit of money.) Coders and writers, imo, are the most important. Maybe pixel artists as well, because most of the requests I see here are "Write a script for me" or "I need a spriter/sprites".

 

But yeah, there are nice people out there who'd like to spend time doing stuff for people for free, but most of them need an incentive. We can't all thrive off the internet ;)

 

 

We have a recruitment subforum? O.o

 

Joking aside (although I really didn't know that) that's a neat idea--at least developers will know that someone is keeping up-to-date with their project. A lot of people here don't get attention to their games. I know that in order to be added to the list of featured games, your game has to be played--are the staff keeping up with the playable games coming in?

 

They may or might not be, might be nice to know though. I recently played "Listen" here on GDU and thought it was a nice game, but for some reason or other it doesn't appear to have been added to Featured. Staff may have their reasons, but I think it's a pretty good game and at least deserves a couple more comments.

 

If you're going to take up that responsibility, go ahead, by all means. Good to see initiative and ideas. Be nice to new devs. ;)

You are looking at it the wrong way. Instead of saying, "we have nothing to offer", you should ask, "what CAN we offer".

And the simplest answer to that is credit. In addition to the credit you get in the project you work on, we can keep another set of credits, as an additional incentive. It will also function as a failsafe, because you will get credited for your work, even if the original project gets abandoned somewhere along the way.

 

On a side note, we can also subsidize projects so they can pay freelancers, of course that's not a viable option unless we have a source of income ourselves.

 

In any case, I'm a strategist, not really good at getting things done. But sometimes you just gotta take your strategy upon your own shoulders, and carry it to fruition before anyone believes in it.

 

Only reason I'm actually discussing this is, because people believe in authority. If I have a way to prove that I'm officially doing this, people should be more accepting of a random person asking them to do stuff they don't understand or care about.

[Meteor Rain 0]

I think one of the problems is the slight inactivity of these forums. The concept of it is really nice, but generally game developers will be looking for big active communities and will be put off by smaller ones.

 

Just an insane suggestion:

 

How about some PR and ads to really advertise this website to a lot of people. But in order to try and keep a lot more of them and actually have them become active instead of leaving straight away; what if regulars came together, made a whole bunch of new unique accounts and make it seem like a really active place right before all the advertising, to give the incentive to the new people to do the same?

 

like

 

seriously

 

or is it too crazy?

 

A note unrelated to my first suggestion:

 

Would it be better to make the forums a lot more readable? Such as making the forum descriptions shorter and reduce the amount of subforums? There are like 8 subforums for the XP section right now, that's way too many. You could put the second tutorial section in a topic pinned to the original one for example. An additional one is very confusing. Nowadays people don't settle for anything else but the easiest and laziest way.

 

Would probably also be a good idea to purge and merge some forums here and there. A lot of them aren't too active and they're way too spread right now, keeping it in a smaller amount of forums would probably do better.

Edited July 19, 2015 by Meteor Rain

[Saltome 16]

I don't see the point in advertising the forum, we are already on top of the google search, if people don't come here now they never will.

Yeah we can use a bit of optimization, but first we need to decide IF we are gonna continue supporting the same outdated engines. No point in optimizing the forum then deciding we don't wanna support half the engines and having to rearrange it again.

[Kitsuki 17]

 

How about some PR and ads to really advertise this website to a lot of people. But in order to try and keep a lot more of them and actually have them become active instead of leaving straight away; what if regulars came together, made a whole bunch of new unique accounts and make it seem like a really active place right before all the advertising, to give the incentive to the new people to do the same?

 

hmm but what happens to these new unique accounts after people join? They just randomly become inactive? That'll probably set off a few people. O.o Although it was really easy for me to find this site, since a lot of the RPG Maker research I did brought it up... so I think people know it's here. (And for me, the small community was the appeal, but that's just me and I'm weird :P)

 

 

Would it be better to make the forums a lot more readable? Such as making the forum descriptions shorter and reduce the amount of subforums? There are like 8 subforums for the XP section right now, that's way too many. You could put the second tutorial section in a topic pinned to the original one for example. An additional one is very confusing. Nowadays people don't settle for anything else but the easiest and laziest way.

 

Would probably also be a good idea to purge and merge some forums here and there. A lot of them aren't too active and they're way too spread right now, keeping it in a smaller amount of forums would probably do better.

 

... the only subforum I ever went into for RMXP is support. I never knew there were so many omg.

Why are there two for RGSS scripts though? Seems to me they should be combined, at the very least. Unless there's something I don't know about it. :P

[Marked 197]

... the only subforum I ever went into for RMXP is support. I never knew there were so many omg.

Why are there two for RGSS scripts though? Seems to me they should be combined, at the very least. Unless there's something I don't know about it.  :P

You are :)

 

Three are redirects to content sections. I can't delete the scripts forum, because it has scripts that the scripts section does not. I managed to move all of the Ace and VX scripts coz there weren't so many. Same with tutorials. These forums were red hot during our peak years :) So there's lots of stuff in 'em. If the redirects weren't there, users may think that's all the scripts we have. So that's why. 

 

Btw guys I am reading the posts :)

 

[black mage 28]

I don't think the make unique account and things are gonna work well. So I'll pass on this. Also, multiple account could lead to some kind of stupid cyber crime and distrust between some members, which we aren't wished for. I might sound exaggerating, but last month there was a RPG Maker forum that closed down due some stupid cyber crime. Just an intermezzo.

 

@marked (can't use quote this time. I wonder why.)

Glad to hear that you're reading the posts. Maybe you should give responses to those post as well. Since we could throw many suggestion left and right without any direction, but it's still you who had the right to administrate. :)

 

EDIT, OOT :

The editor went weird on firefox, thus my post structure is going a bit weird previously. I'm using IE to edit this right now.

Edited July 20, 2015 by black mage

[Marked 197]

The "Marked" has spoken.

 

Well, joke aside, it'd be nice if we have place that works like a workshop, where the currency is GDU points. This workshop serve as a place where people get things done. I never seen a feature like this on other website that I know, and I'm sure it'll attract a lot of customers, as most of the people that stumbled across this site is currently looking for some resources. Meanwhile, when the currency is GDU points, this will make people who want to buy things from the store engage with the others to get the sufficient GDU points, thus make the site more lively, or just full of people that want to have some GDU points, but I'm sure that it'll move towards the former. :)

 

The workshop system is where the client gave a proposal of what they want to have/made from the shop owner, and if the shop owner willing to create whatever the client propose, they could start discuss the price and other criteria. Credits should be given if requested. Keep in mind that even if the shop owner does receive GDU points, the points just a value that shows some appreciation, and have no other value except to be used in another transaction.

 

It'll be nice to have a pages where the layout can be customized to look like an actual shop. :grin:

 

I think the workshop system will gain much interaction between the community, as the point given can be used to bought things on another shop, and the people that want to buy something would need to start some topics and engage in some discussion in order to gain points.

 

As the suggester of this idea, I'm willing to open a Script shop for RGSS and RGSS3, and will expand to other engines in the future. It's not like I'm a best scripter out there, but I have the ability and do have some interest on it. ;)

 

So, that's my part of bargain. Anyone interested? Or there's any great breakthrough for our lovely site? :youcandoit:

 

I've always wanted to do something like this. But I'm very cautious about attempting to create a marketplace with virtual currency. For a marketplace to succeed, there needs to be buyers and sellers. The points also need to be perceived as valuable. Therefore, keeping a balance is incredibly difficult. If I'm a scripter, I want to be able to trade a script for enough points to get a sprite made.The spriter is only going to do the sprite if the scripter has enough points to undertake hours and hours of work. So my biggest concern is balancing the points (that aren't traded between members because members will determine their own rates) and the amount of skilled people who will actually supply their skills. I think the basic concept is incredibly difficult to make successful. However, what if we simplified it a bit. Instead of creating resources only when asked, members can sell their pre-made resources to everyone. Imagine a script that every member can buy for 4 GDU points. If we can pull this off, this may springboard the original idea a marketplace that is balanced enough to be sustainable.  

 

 

Although I'd like to see effort on peoples' part to contribute to others' games and such. Have their posts in the community be of substance rather than just thrown together posts that will get them enough points to get their resources, then they disappear forever. Or at least until they need another resource. But I'm sure that there will be monitoring on what kind of posts and how much effort goes into them, so that's not something I worry about.

That will always happen. Espicially with my modiciation of the idea. We need to create a desirability to be a part of the community as well. Those with game pages who are invested in the site won't spam. 

 

 

Maybe having "classes" would be nice? I saw some old posts where Kiriashi (bless him and his maps) was having a mapping class, I think. Gather up a group of enough people who have a decent amount of points and are interesting, and having certain tutorials or activities on a certain engine. I definitely would have wanted to be part of that (I would want to be part of anything on GDU, actually, so I'm a little biased), but with my luck the thread was years old already.

I wouldn't mind bringing those back :) Those were fun. But nearly everyone quit because of a lack of participation. The tutors wanted an audience, even though what they had created were available to everyone and (silently) helping people. The teachers wanted to actively tutor people one-on-one. Which is cool. I wouldn't mind doing this somehow. 

 

 

We could just build up a vast library of resources, but really, that's hard to manage, and generally you want to use unique resources. And people will only come here for the resources, if they couldn't find anyone to help. Hence encouraging low quality developlent.

I think a better idea would be actually educating people in the art of creating resources.

Another option is simply helping people who already have those skills get in touch with the people who need those skills. This one should yield the best results.

The resources thing is quite simple. We have a ton of them. And it attracts ton of people. Even if they're not unique. We've currently hit the jackpot and are around the top of Google for "RPG Maker VX Ace Resources", generating traffic close to our peak years. The following is the last 30 days:

Those numbers should surprise you all, they're big numbers. But all of this traffic, which are people who are looking for Ace stuff and Ace websites, don't sign up and stick around. 

 

Tck tck tck. I know you're all eager to place your suggestions out there, but I think we need to make sure we agree on where our focus should lie. Otherwise, we aren't gonna do anything more than throw some random ideas out there, before the topic dies out. - Which is already happening.

"Power without direction is chaos.", and that is certainly what we are having here.

 

If nobody else is gonna speak out, I suppose I will continue my train of thought.

I think we should focus on actively seeking out skilled people on the internet, and provide them with the opportunity to get involved in various projects requiring their skill. This will help us create connections with said skilled people, And the reputation of helping people find work will attract more creators to our side.

 

This does beg the question, though, what kind of skilled people should we get involved with? Coders? Writers? Artists? Composers?

And which style of completing each task?

I suppose the propper answer would be all of the above...

 

Hmm, we started with having too many requests and not enough people to fulfill them.

A simple solution to a simple problem.

"If you can't do it yourself, find someone else to get it done."

Uhuh... we certainly need to attract more developers, rather than only leeches :)

 

Hmm... allow me make one concrete suggestion.

I want a new moderation task to be added, to keep in touch with project teams, to make sure that the recruitment topics are kept updated.

Naturally, I'm ready to take on that responsibility personally, and immediately.

That sounds like a great idea. But you know I can't make you a staff member, right? I mean like I get you, but I'm not sure newbies won't be immediately intimidated by you :)

 

 

Well, there is the risk of people precieving it as badgering them. But given the right approach, it will create an interaction between "the website" and it's users.

Strengthening the bonds within the group, which has it's own benefits, like increasing motivation, cooperation, loyalty.

Improving the efficiency and quality of the recruitment process.

Further more, I plan to help people actively seek out team members, as opposed to waiting on a random topic to yield results. And it's certainly hard enough to find people, without turning out that the position I'm searching for is already filled, or otherwise closed.

Agreed. Subtle in practice, but fundamental. 

 

Would it be better to make the forums a lot more readable? Such as making the forum descriptions shorter and reduce the amount of subforums? There are like 8 subforums for the XP section right now, that's way too many. You could put the second tutorial section in a topic pinned to the original one for example. An additional one is very confusing. Nowadays people don't settle for anything else but the easiest and laziest way.

 

Would probably also be a good idea to purge and merge some forums here and there. A lot of them aren't too active and they're way too spread right now, keeping it in a smaller amount of forums would probably do better.

True... I should definitely do that. It is all a bit... expanded. Lots of people post things in the wrong place, to me the structure is veeeery simple. I guess people just get too lazy to find because they just see so many forums.

 

I don't see the point in advertising the forum, we are already on top of the google search, if people don't come here now they never will.

Yeah we can use a bit of optimization, but first we need to decide IF we are gonna continue supporting the same outdated engines. No point in optimizing the forum then deciding we don't wanna support half the engines and having to rearrange it again.

Agreed re advertising. I think it's not a matter of dropping an old engine like RMXP, but supporting new ones. Although this discussion has been going on for many, many years (the what engines conversation). I think we've done a decent job on growing Ace here, actually. We failed miserably with VX, but we've done ok introducing Ace. Which is fortunate, since XP is damn old and its now a minority in terms of usage. 

 

So we've already got Unity. What else should we add? I'm not sure this is our biggest issue, or something that'll change anything drastically. To isolate issues, we could say: 17,000 users are coming through here monthy, most of them are using Ace, why are they not staying? 

 

 

I don't think the make unique account and things are gonna work well. So I'll pass on this. Also, multiple account could lead to some kind of stupid cyber crime and distrust between some members, which we aren't wished for. I might sound exaggerating, but last month there was a RPG Maker forum that closed down due some stupid cyber crime. Just an intermezzo.

Ya.. I don't think we need to deceive people :) I also don't think it would work. It's not sustainable, newbies would catch on, and it would inevitably lead to spam posts. 

[Saltome 16]

Well, this has made one thing clear to me-- We should focus on Ace.

It is accessible, popular, and a big source of traffic for us.

I'd rather cut off xp and vx simply to avoid expending energy in maintaining things that aren't as beneficial. We don't really have the luxory of squandring our resources. Letting them to continue to rot is fine too... but generally you wanna remove a necrosed limb.

[black mage 28]

Sounds right to me. However, we still don't know which part of RMVXA we need to focus on. Since I'm pretty much sure that most of people that come here are searching for resources, I'll stick on providing some kind of resource shop. Whatever the system is, can be discussed later for our easiness. Any other suggestion on what to focus, anyone?

 

Oh, and I think it's alright to cut XP and VX from this site. But Mark, please archive the XP one with a great care. It's like a legacy for us (or at least, for me), and I want to keep them somewhere. :ehh:

Edited July 23, 2015 by black mage

[Saltome 16]

Well, tutorials is probably a good place to start, since we ourselves(well me personally) need to adapt our XP exp to Ace exp.

This will also allow us to educate the visiting newbies into the future generation of gdu.

[black mage 28]

Well, tutorials is probably a good place to start, since we ourselves(well me personally) need to adapt our XP exp to Ace exp.

This will also allow us to educate the visiting newbies into the future generation of gdu.

I'm not good at finding topics on what tutorials we should make. :p

By the way, most basic function is already on the help file and they're not that much different compared to xp.

[Marked 197]

Feel free to disagree with me, but simply by adding content isn't the answer. It's my increase traffic, which is already high from leechers. If you guys wanted to create tutorials, that is a very good thing of course. But I don't think it will do anything to the goals that we've established; growing the community, activity and contributors. 

 

What we're trying to do is not necessarily increase the number / quality of tutorials, but increase the number of people who will publish tutorials. 

 

I also don't think killing off the RMXP sections will be a positive step? Neutral maybe? 

 

If I were going to throw an idea out there, it would be something like extending the games section into a project management as well, so developers can use it as a platform for game dev collaboration. Another idea is for a simple way to interact, like they had on the website forrrst where people posted something very specific (such as a design) and people would offer comments. What made that site cool was how it was set up, it wasn't a forum and the content wasn't supposed to stay active for long, but the point was for people to share ideas and get feedback, quick and simple. 

[Saltome 16]

My logic is that while people are going through the tutorials they are going to need help, and they are going to get it right here, on the forum.

It will cause them to be more active, and hopefully stick around and return the favor.

Another point I want to make is-- if I can find what I need without talking to anyone, I'm not gonna talk to anyone. So having the solutions permanently available is gonna reduce the amount of people who look for help.

But if we put that idea on hold...

 

We need something that will give us immediate active memberships. That means a motive.

So, what can we do to motivate skilled people to come to us and help with requests?

Well a project management system will help... the developers, not the freelancers.

So, if I'm a freelancer what do I want? To keep track of my work, my work history, my associates, my ranking among the competition, and advertisment of my services to thousands upon thousands of potential employers.

[Ardaceus 21]

Why don't you ask new users like me or DustyZiroto some questions as to why we are here on this website, what attracted us here, stuff like that. Then you can get an idea of what attracts new members to the website so you'll know what to improve upon.

 

Then for what you should focus on, I still feel like one of the few people on this website that uses RPG Maker VX Ace, or is the preferred software for oneself. Though when I look at the first page of the new games... most of them are on the Ace platform, and those ones are not being worked on, and just sit there as inactive projects. Then you take a look at the current top grossing games on that front page, and you see that Prophet Sword, Oni's Era, 1on1 Medabot, my game Wonder's War, and Machine Made Rebirth are the most viewed games currently which are constantly updated. 2 of those are XP, 3 of those are VX/Ace.

 

Then I take a look at the completed games list, and it is full of games made on XP. Just a point to look at. But when I look at the tutorials and resources, I see more in Vx Ace than XP for everything. But it is the numbers of each that tell me what it up. They aren't big enough, when you only have 79 scripts available on the Ace format compared to a person or whole website that dedicates their computer time to making and showing scripts to use on that specific platform, there tends to be more popularity over there. Maybe just having unique scripts available only on this website would be beneficial to growth.

 

The reason as to why I'm saying to get popularity is because when you get more people coming to your website, you tend to get your scripters and tutors coming on here wanting to show their own products, which would make more traffic if word got out that this website has all these scripts available.

 

If I could have anything I want done with this website, it would be to get a more customizable game page. It would add for some more creativeness and life into game pages. Another thing I would like to see is online flash tools to make characters and sprites with, that would be super cool, and drag in a lot of traffic. One last thing that would be benificial is if this website was advertised on other websites, because I found this website by chance while looking for battler sprites. I was on RPG Maker VX Ace forums, but I don't feel much interaction there, or know of any ways to advertise your game proficiently. Then I went over to the RPG Maker forums, but my account there is glitched and won't work. I found this website many months later, and it was simply by chance. So yeah...

 

Something that might get the site back in full gear however is when the new RPG Maker comes out. Bet there will be more traffic on the website then... if you decide to do a section on that. Of course you will.

 

So I have nothing else to say, so Ardi out.

[Kitsuki 17]

Well, this has made one thing clear to me-- We should focus on Ace.

It is accessible, popular, and a big source of traffic for us.

I'd rather cut off xp and vx simply to avoid expending energy in maintaining things that aren't as beneficial. We don't really have the luxory of squandring our resources. Letting them to continue to rot is fine too... but generally you wanna remove a necrosed limb.

 

Whoa, whoa there D: I go through all these posts since I last read them and suddenly I see things about cutting off XP--now, VX I wouldn't mind, because it's the most useless update the RPG Maker series has gotten, imo. It's more like a patch to XP than a stand-alone release of its own.

 

VX I would gladly cut off. But you still see people coming in with XP games and XP requests, tutorials, resources. Why would you want to cut off something that has a decent amount of users, even compared to VX Ace? I just can't see it as a good step to take.

 

I wouldn't use the "necrosed limb" analogy for this, because in this case people who use XP will always exist, even if it's in fewer numbers. And XP users means potential members, regardless of the numbers. When your limb rots, it rots, it ain't coming back. But if people come to this site for XP help and don't find any, that'll be a real turn-off. I for one definitely wouldn't have stayed if XP support wasn't available.

 

Sounds right to me. However, we still don't know which part of RMVXA we need to focus on. Since I'm pretty much sure that most of people that come here are searching for resources, I'll stick on providing some kind of resource shop. Whatever the system is, can be discussed later for our easiness. Any other suggestion on what to focus, anyone?

 

Oh, and I think it's alright to cut XP and VX from this site. But Mark, please archive the XP one with a great care. It's like a legacy for us (or at least, for me), and I want to keep them somewhere. :ehh:

 

While I definitely still don't agree with cutting XP (cut VX all you'd like though ;D), I agree that we should focus on VX Ace if it's the one getting the most traffic. While others may bring in some users, VX Ace will be the one with most appeal uvu

 

Feel free to disagree with me, but simply by adding content isn't the answer. It's my increase traffic, which is already high from leechers. If you guys wanted to create tutorials, that is a very good thing of course. But I don't think it will do anything to the goals that we've established; growing the community, activity and contributors. 

 

What we're trying to do is not necessarily increase the number / quality of tutorials, but increase the number of people who will publish tutorials. 

 

I also don't think killing off the RMXP sections will be a positive step? Neutral maybe? 

 

If I were going to throw an idea out there, it would be something like extending the games section into a project management as well, so developers can use it as a platform for game dev collaboration. Another idea is for a simple way to interact, like they had on the website forrrst where people posted something very specific (such as a design) and people would offer comments. What made that site cool was how it was set up, it wasn't a forum and the content wasn't supposed to stay active for long, but the point was for people to share ideas and get feedback, quick and simple. 

 

Yeah, I could go far to say it's neutral, but definitely not positive.

 

And while we're on the subject of tutorials... scripts and such are program-specific, but a lot of tutorials for simple things (like the most recent here, the thunderstorm tutorial for XP) are established through events. And these tutorials can be used throughout the engines. They all have relatively similar event-systems, after all. 

 

How would you suggest building a feedback system, Marked? I see a lot of posts from people here like development blogs, which seems like a nice way to get feedback--posting a map or something and receiving feedback. But only few of those blogs get comments. Although I recently saw a map critique thread that had a lot of posts... why are some of these projects/works getting more feedback than others?

 

Is it just that members of the community don't have interest in one project more than another? Or something else? (Again I'm just asking a lot of questions because I have no idea how these things work and would like to know :D)

 

And what is it about sites like other sites that bring in views and members? On some others I see a large number of active members--scripters, eventers, people like Blizzard who create unique and advanced scripts/systems. And also people who can help out with problems immediately. And that's huge for me, to get the problem I want fixed done so as soon as possible.

 

I'm a member on other sites like Chaos Project as well (not as active) but I post there occasionally for help when I'm at my wit's end--and often their members will come and give input and feedback quickly. Whereas, in the past, some posts I put on GDU didn't get as quick as response or as useful feedback.

 

And Chaos' layout imo doesn't have as much appeal as GDU, which Mark puts a lot of time into making look so great.

 

I notice that the most useful help I've had here on this site comes from scripters like Black Mage, whom Germany and I remember easily because he gave us amazing responses to posts for help on our game before. His replies were quick, detailed, and he clearly knows his field. So I agree with the points Sal's been making above--we need more skilled people and developers, scripters and people who can contribute to the community.

 

I also just looked at the bottom of the forum page to see this:

 

8 members, 148 guests

 

I checked Chaos Project to compare, and they've had 44 guests and one member on in their last fifteen minutes. 

 

So we're obviously getting more traffic. But 148 guests and only eight members in the last 15 minutes? So Mark is right, there are definitely a lot of people checking out GDU. So why aren't they starying? O.o

 

We have the material and everything we need to gain viewers. So what's the next step?

 

 

 

Also Ardi has some points, but I can't be half-assed to quote everything and say what I think, so I'm just going to say that he has points.

 

One thing I will say to what he talked about is I found way more resources like scripts on Chaos. A whole database of them with things that I wanted and liked. That's what was tempting me to settle down there rather than at GDU, but I got attached to the community here and was like "eh whatever, I'm not going to go learn more names and personalities at this point".

[Saltome 16]

Well Mark, this is where you talk.

We need to attract freelancers,

I told you what they are looking for.

And that's where you come in.

You're the only person around who can do the coding for these features.

[Kitsuki 17]

I told you what they are looking for.

And that's where you come in.

You're the only person around who can do the coding for these features.

 

I am actually still very confused as to what we are looking for  :sweat: since there seem to be a lot of mixed opinions, and I haven't seen a general consensus for exactly what new features we're looking for. If I'm just half-blind, can someone write a condensed version of what exactly we want? That won't take 20+ minutes of scrolling and reading to figure out.

 

Let's make sure everyone agrees on a single set of not-too-complicated features before we get something done and suddenly decide that not everyone wants it, or it's not as good for the community as we thought. Mark can't spend 30+ minutes reading through the posts and then assuming that we need something that not everyone has agreed or supports. If we want something, we could at least make it easy on the person making them.  ;)