Off Topic/Other Games Thread Suggestion

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21SkAt3r21
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Off Topic/Other Games Thread Suggestion

Post by 21SkAt3r21 »

Could you make a thread to discuss other games and consoles rather then ps2? I know this is a ps2 website but i feel like i dont know enough about anybody else (like what other consoles they have, what games they play, ect.). :)
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wawowe
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Re: Off Topic/Other Games Thread Suggestion

Post by wawowe »

It's not my call, but imo it's not a good idea. Cause if i start talking about things like "skies of arcadia" or "starfox64" I'll slip into a temporary lapse of sanity and forget that I ever even knew about any crazy acronym; "PS2"..
I'll come out of it sooner or later but in the mean time might fill the forum with a bunch of irrelevant... An irc based webchat might be a good idea though. where people can just idle or talk about anything at anytime on or off topic.
I agree with you though, if this place is gonna survive, it's members need to feel at home here so they have a reason to keep it going

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Re: Off Topic/Other Games Thread Suggestion

Post by lazyhoboguy »

We thought about adding some offtopic gaming sections or something before, but we decided against it because we wanted to keep the site focused on playstation 2. We still allow comparisons and mentioning of other consoles throughout the site as long as topics do not go too off track. It seems like having no offtopic section hasn't hurt the site at all. It's been up for a year and weve had steady activity throughout that time. The ultimate purpose of this website is to help the users plan ps2 online and ps2 lan tunneling (xlink kai) matches. IMO the site has been fulfilling that function well.

Like we didn't want offtopic sections because we feared they could overpower the site and all the activity might go there, causing the rest of the forum to be ignored. I think maybe if we just had one off topic gaming section it might not hurt too much though. I can discuss this with the other admin and see if maybe we could try that out.

For the chat idea, we have considered that as well, but I have seen a similar thing at other forums like ours. From what I have seen, the chat usually really hurts the game scheduling part of sites like this. Since most people are just tempted to jump in the chat to get a game going. So it would be really easy to skip posting on the forum about it. Then no one else that showed up on the site later would know a game was going on.

But yea, your suggestions are always welcome. If you have any other feel free to let us know.

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Re: Off Topic/Other Games Thread Suggestion

Post by hobojoe44 »

lazyhoboguy wrote: For the chat idea, we have considered that as well, but I have seen a similar thing at other forums like ours. From what I have seen, the chat usually really hurts the game scheduling part of sites like this. Since most people are just tempted to jump in the chat to get a game going. So it would be really easy to skip posting on the forum about it. Then no one else that showed up on the site later would know a game was going on.
The chat doesn't affect the gaming scheduling on http://www.encyde.se at all, It improved it as you don't need every one to go download some instant messaging program and add every one as friends. Also people play regularly on weekdays as well as our scheduled weekend game times, do to the ease of asking "who ever is up for a game of something?" in chat.
80% of active members are likely to log into chat right after they log in to the site.

You could just make a "playing now" section like we have over there so people can inform others of games currently being hosted by members if you're concerned about it.

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Re: Off Topic/Other Games Thread Suggestion

Post by wawowe »

For the chat idea, we have considered that as well, but I have seen a similar thing at other forums like ours. From what I have seen, the chat usually really hurts the game scheduling part of sites like this. Since most people are just tempted to jump in the chat to get a game going. So it would be really easy to skip posting on the forum about it. Then no one else that showed up on the site later would know a game was going on.
Also as far as keeping the forum updated when a game is happening, you could put a bot in the irc channel that auto posts a game topic for the game being played. For instance you have a list of game acronyms that the bot references so when people start a game in the chat all they have to do is type "!GAMEUP tmbo" and the bot generates a post and puts it up. as far as who is playing you can have another bot that sits in the ps2 lobby of xlink kai and watches people come in and out, then if they go to the tmbo lobby and stay for 15 minutes or more it records them as a participant, and it only records community members

People would still use the forum because the information going through the chat is constantly scrolling away, where as the info in the forum is static.

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Re: Off Topic/Other Games Thread Suggestion

Post by lazyhoboguy »

Well that sounds ok in theory, but people in general are lazy lol. That's what my experience from using forums on the internet has taught me haha. I know most people won't remember or feel like starting a thread too even if a bot helps. Plus if a bot just posts it, it wouldnt be specific enough. For example, if you are playing a game on it's online server you need to tell people which server you are in. You need to tell people what time it was that you started playing and what your time zone is. You could probably setup the bot to record all that info, but then then person would still be typing out a ton of stuff for the bot to post. That would probably just mean people wouldn't bother to do that as it would be nearly as much work as simply just posting a thread in the game scheduling section. Then no topics would go up.

Having the topics in the game scheduling forum is very helpful for new people because they can see what has been played and can try to plan games for the future. People sometimes come months later and see a game had interest and they revive the topic and we start playing it again. If we make the chat the main outlet for planning games that history is going to dissapear because people usually aren't going to feel like posting a topic if they are using the chat.

The chat doesn't seem that useful for Xlink kai games since each arena in xlink kai has its own chat, even if it is kind of crappy haha. For planning ps2 online games on their original servers it could be a bit more useful, but it seems like here the majority of our games are played through LAN tunneling.

I can see how the chat could be useful in some situations, but I see it as being more harmful then good at this point. I am still thinking about it though.

The level of activity for ps2 online gaming and ps2 lan tunneling has been made up of a small regular amount of people over the last few years. I really don't see it all of a sudden exploding suddenly since most people have moved on to newer consoles and see no point in using the ps2 anymore. The community here is probably never going to be enormous, but we manage to have regular ps2 online and ps2 lan tunneling matches being played. Pretty much all new users that join are told that instant messengers are helpful and usually when the people plan on playing regularly they add the other community members on them.

I think maybe having a central list where all of our instant messenger nicknames are listed could be helpful. I thought about doing that in the past, but if they are listed as a post spammers could find them by using search engines. The instant messenger nicknames listed in profiles cannot be seen by unregistered people. I think I can make a forum section that is members only, so we can list them there though.

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Re: Off Topic/Other Games Thread Suggestion

Post by 21SkAt3r21 »

Good points. I dont think chat would be a good idea. As you said, people would just jump on chat and say "lets go play TSFP!" and then nobody else would know. After thinking it over, I'm neutral on the whole Off-Topic thing. It is your decision. I realized that it wouldnt really be strictly a ps2 site anymore and am kind of against my original post now. 8-)
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