Community strengthening brainstorm

[Kopaka]

This was touched upon in the GAA discussion topic, and since igge didn't start a topic I'll get it started.

With the popularity of EOL a lot of the active players are only using that and not the older community platforms such as Mopolauta, #across, moposite etc. This makes those people hard to reach when we do things like GAA or external contests. Which makes those things less successful, which is bad because those things make the game more interesting, they get older players out of the woodwork and keep newer players interested.

So this topic is for any ideas as to what can be done to bring those different parts of the scene more together, so that we can become more of a community again.

Think big, but also realise that we have limits. One of the big challenges might be that we can't expect any changes to EOL itself, and elma 2 could be years from now if ever.

[roope]

A few easy (though not permanent) solutions:

- Visibility for lauta/irc/etc in EOL site. I was actually surprised when I checked and there was none, except for the 'More info at mopolauta' link in Help. A simple section with a link to Mopolauta and IRC channel info (and instructions how to use IRC) to the front page would probably help a bit.

- Old players could just advice new players when they start playing in EOL, like "there's these places if you're interested". This is important especially when there's GAA voting going on. Just inform newbs that there's this cool award show and that they could also participate.

[Lousku]

Ye, I too was waiting for igge to start this. :D

EOL isn't visible on Google at all with the beisik search term "elasto mania" (at least not up to page 5 or something, I gave up clicking next. The wiki is somewhere around there though). Of course not with "elma" either. You have to know about EOL to find it directly from Google.

On the other hand, Moposite is still well established as THE community hub on both Google and the official Elasto Mania site. If some integration of these fragments of the scene is done, I think it might be best to do on Moposite. I dunno how Abula would feel about handing it over to someone else. If he would be open to that and a huge overhaul, it might be best to transfer EOL site to that domain and add all the good infos from the original site to the wiki (which also needs content and popularity (these come hand in hand imo)) or someplace.

That would be tons of work, but you could also just slap big fucking visible links between Moposite, lauta, EOL site and the wiki. EOL itself is difficult since there's no good way to show news or anything in game. I'm guessing most EOL players only play EOL and don't check any of the sites even remotely regularly, so they only find out about stuff if someone happens to mention it in chat while they're looking. This is just bad. :(

[Lousku]

Actually, putting EOL site on Moposite would be a shitty move (not to mention insanely much work). If Balazs approved of sach (having a link from the official page to EOL), he could just do it himself. Better and easier to just have a clear link from Moposite to EOL site and vice versa, and improve EOL's visibility on Google (if someone knows how :D).

Maybe lauta should be linked in the main navigation on EOL site (just "forum" or something)?

[Chris]

I think you could mirror news from moposite on EOL site, so people will click on WR table and will find moposite. Also as Lousku says forum button on EOL front page can help too.

[Hosp]

I think nothing needs to be done begause, imo everyone that plays eol knows about lauta, moposite etc, they just nat interested in writing or doing stuff other than the in-game stuff
and those that dont know about lauta, moposite etc are probably huge nabs or casual players

[Orcc]

Longtime wish: Merge EOL chat with some irc chan, thx

[roope]

^ Yeh, that would be great. Dunno how hard to make, but it would be very nice.

[Hosp]

i said that idea somewhere on this forum maybe last year but i think people agreed that it wasn't an good/orka/hard ide

[Zweq]

- Battles are the thing that keeps the game alive, and it's very hard to see them dying. Battle experience should be made as pleasant as possibel, playing and designing wise.
- GAA is just a distraction from things that actually matter.
- EOL is a mod, but we have never even called it that, for some reason. Put EOL in moddb or something if you want new players (I don't know if I do).
- Can the programmers of this community finally UNITE fak sake?

[Igge]

Sorry I didn't start one, I thought I edited my post to someone should start))

Anyway, I guess I can copy-paste most of what I wrote in the original topic for those that didn't read it.

It's sad to say, but I don't see moposite playing an active part of elma anymore. The very few pages of that once oh-so-influential site are now so badly kept and scarcely updated that they might as well be moved to elmaonline.com (and to some extent already have been). There's no denying the active elma community is nowadays revolving around EOL, and therefore I think integrating mopolauta with elmaonline would be the most logical move right now (sorry Kopaka). As people are already coming to elmaonline to just look up EOL-related content, we might as well keep the discussion there.

The next step would be to also integrate IRC with EOL and elmaonline. We have a chat in EOL, so why not make it based on IRC and make it possible to post to the elma chat from IRC as well? Perhaps we'd start to see more "off-topic" content, but maybe it could be split up into different channels in the game too (but this is a thing for elma2 I guess, since mila has abandoned ship).

Anyway, I just think the problem is we're spread too thin for the small community we are. I think we need to make elmaonline.com into what moposite.com was 10 years ago; a place for every single kuski to gather and frolic in all that is elma.

So first of all, what can we do?

Integrating moposite with eol
How hard is it to move a phpbb3 forum from one domain to another, i.e. if we were to move this forum to mopolauta.elmaonline.com? I know some people might react strongly to this kind of "abandon ship" method, in that we're just leaving moposite altogether that was once home to many a kuski. Still, moposite really isn't that active anymore apart from the forum, whilst elmaonline is visited by many people daily. But first of all, is it even possible to just move an entire forum like that?

Integrating IRC with EOL
Could be done cleanly if we could edit EOL, but might also be possible to do an ugly solution for this. I was thinking you could have an IRC bot that scans the chatlog for messages and posts them in an IRC channel, and then you have another bot in the game that scans the IRC chat and posts in EOL (the second part being harder to do I guess). Maybe could be doable, maybe it's not necessary.

Reaching out to more players
Could be done by I guess paying(?) Google like Lousku is touching upon. Also by releasing it as a mod on various sites like Zweq mentions.


Second of all, of course, is what do we want?
Even if it can be done, is it something that should be done? I'm kinda with Zweq in that I wouldn't like to see a huge influx of new members. I think the amount of players in EOL we are these days is pretty much perfect for the community we have, and I find some relief in knowing that only people who actively search for the community will find it (means no torrents.ru etc).

I do however think we could be tighter as a community. Lauta will always be my home, and usually I will drift between idling in EOL for chatting, or idling on IRC. If we could combine those two I think that would be great, because either way I always feel like I'm missing out. I also would like to see the newbies on the forums, I kinda feel like there are so many more opinions on matters that just never get heard because they never reach the discussion (this thread being a perfect example).

I love the community we have these days, and I love every single member of it. That's why it kinda makes me sad to see that I'm missing so many things if I don't idle in IRC and EOL (especially EOL) 24/7. If there could be some one place where everyone could gather and just discuss everything about elasto mania, to me that would be the best.

[Kopaka]

Some quick bullets points from the discussion so far:

lauta, irc etc. visibility on eol site
This is good timing as I'm working on the frontend layout atm. so I will try to fit in some big blinking links or something :P Will give a shout when I have something for that up on the test site.

eol visibility on moposite & elastomania.com, eol news on moposite, more news about what's happening on eol site
I have already access to write news on moposite, so can easily copy news from eol there, but it's not like there's a lot. Could have a lot more news on eol site about what's going on in community, be in random contests, GAA, analysis of battle results or whatever. But would need someone to do that, if anyone's interested they can let me know.

eol chat on irc, vice versa
Can certainly make a bot that paste chat from eol in some irc channel, but not sure if it would spam site too much having it check every few seconds if there's something new, how long would be reasonable delay? The other way around I have on idea, but also not sure if we really want. Would be different in some elma 2 where we could have different channels in-game you can turn off if you want or some color coding so you know who's talking from outside game or whatever. Just afraid it would spam eol chat too much with stuff completely irrelevant to eol.

move lauta to eol, merge with moposite etc.
Moving the phpBB to eol domain I don't know if would make such a big different, would still be different site really like lauta is from moposite now. Just a link from main eol site navigation would accomplish pretty much the same.

reaching new players?
Would love to make it easier for those who do find eol, have helped many people who can't figure out how to upgrade to eol, so there's probably many more who never bothered to ask for help or couldn't find any to help them. Could simply put up the full version on the site, or go the legal way and try to get Balazs' endorsement, but I have no idea how that would turn out.

[gimp]

I think any way of attracting new players is a great idea. Just because you have more players doesn't mean that you can't maintain the relationships you already have and know in the community. Also I for one go on eol for a short amount of time almost every night. The length of time I play depends on whether or not there are any balles. And frankly, there aint shit. Maybe its just my time zone or something but it sucks, I'd say I've probably played like 3 balles this week with like 4 hours of game play. Many times when I go on there's practically nobody online. How could you say you don't want more players? Without ever pursuing them players will dwindle away quicker than they will come. It's happening so slowly that you may not notice until every couple years. But the game is dying, and it will just continue to die until all you have left are these couple hard core community members talking about how that's all they need, just the couple of them.

Well I for one say NAY! Bring the youngsters, lets get some newbies up in this bitch to make stupid posts and troll and have random amazing WR talent and ambition. Right now the game is just getting boring, people are sticking around not for the game but just for the community. Have you forgotten why you are here?

And if you haven't noticed the serious lack of posts on this forum then you are in denial. I saw this "General" part of the forum go for like 5 days the other week without a single post, hell its been a week right now since anybody cared to post a new time or replay in the Replays and Times section, we are going for a record here for lack of activity. If that's what you want then alright, but tons of old players are pretty much gone now, I don't care to list all of them, but it seems like we need new players to replace them.

[Hosp]

I'm pretty positive that we will at least not get any young swedes to play this game, a game with low quality graphics and lack of blood/gore/tits does deter the new generation of GTA kids.
Have to aim at the old people that saw this game in their childhood etc, if can reach out to as many such people as possible then elma should be oke (if those people stay after some nostalgia feels though)
I guess ez find young players in countries like Russia and Poland etc where probably expensive with computer for heavy games.

[Lousku]

I'm all for new players but is activity actually going down like gimp says? Activity on lauta has been up and down during my 4 years here and it doesn't feel like there's a trend. Looking at activity of individual sublautas is new to me. :P

EOL is obviously most active during daytime in Europe, as it has always been. There have currently been 175 battles since monday.

[danitah]

I don't know how many unique users Moposite gets, but since Moposite is the first thing that comes up on Google it would help a lot to have a nice visible link directly to EOL site. "Elasto Mania Online" does come up as a related/suggested search term though, which is good. Also getting EOL to work as simply as possible would be a great help.

Hosp I think you are underestimating the youth. Maybe the majority of players want games like that, there is always bound to be a minority of people who want to play any kind of game. Look at chess for example, plenty of young players without chess having any of those things.

[Zweq]

!!!IDEA!!!go advertize campaign in argentina, they dont have expensive computers and are in gimp timezone!!!IDEA!!!

[niN]

!!!IDEA!!!go advertize campaign in argentina, they dont have expensive computers and are in gimp timezone!!!IDEA!!!

I'm on my way there in 9 Days. Should I bring some banners and what-not?

[Bludek]

I am actually ok with quantity of balles. When I am joined (mostly 22:00 - 2:00central europe before I go sleep) there's almost always balle. And when there isnt? Even better! That means I can make balle I think the problem is with those ppl who never made any balle. If everyone would make balle from time to time it would be oke. But that aint gonna happen. I do not care, tho. I am happy as it is. It sux to be in non-EU timezone for this game there's no ez solution to that,imo.. Just maek more balles evryone,i guess or dunno.

[niN]

we can make overseas donation box where designers put their unshared levs to be battled by a bot when it's offtime for europeans =)

sorry for off topic.

[Lousku]

we can make overseas donation box where designers put their unshared levs to be battled by a bot when it's offtime for europeans =)

Not bad idea imo. Donators could specify balle options etc and bot could add balle from donation box when e.g. x minutes passed since prev balle or someone says some command. Then again hard to imagine many mans wanting to donate levs for a time when they're not online.

sorry for off topic.

Not offtopic imo. Even EOL isn't really unified as a community since most people play within a limited part of 24h.

Now, if there's no interest in "sending battles to USA as foreign aid", at least the most popular levels should be brought to their attention. Great levs are balled at all times of the day and most of them dwindle quickly regardless of quality. Consequently players who aren't online never hear about them. I'll quote myself from Elma 2 topic because even after almost a year I still think it has great potential.

It could also be a menu of levels in the database with different sortings (most played, best rated...) and timespans (last day, week, month, year, all time).

Talking about some ingame menu. A proper replacement for ctrl-f4 and lev (and rec) lists/search on the site, so that good things are not forgotten and wasted so quickly.

But yeah, drifting from topic now.

[roope]

I'd love it if at least some new people found their way into EOL and the scene. It's so much fun watching them develop in playing skill and designing. It's true that old players are slowly drifting away from playing, and while some older players make comebacks, the migration is still negative. Maybe there's a simple solution: google some random gaming forum, post a topic about EOL there, and see if it gains any interest.

About lauta activity: like Lousku said, it's been a roller coaster for as long as I remember. There are active periods and there are quiet periods. I still wouldn't mind if some newer players started sharing their thoughts here more.

[Madness]

There are so many level generators, why not implement one into EOL so that anyone interested in playing a battle just writes "!new" and voila there's a battle going on.

[gimp]

There are so many level generators, why not implement one into EOL so that anyone interested in playing a battle just writes "!new" and voila there's a battle going on.

I'd be afraid this would hinder people creating there own levels and stifle creativity.

[Chris]

Regarding activity on EOL. I believe that people just need to start more battles. If everyone just waits for new battle there won't be any activity. You can create activity. It takes few minutes to design level and battle it. I started battles at almost any time of day and always someone played them.

[Hosp]

make levs in 10s ez then have balle, not any more problem than that, people just too lazy always expect hosp, chris, danielj, blaz, maw etc to make a balle for them

[Madness]

Yes, but then you can't win it.

[John]

To get more players to the scene create an ad campaign using a pre-written forum post with links, EDQvid, EOLvid, irc channels etc. Then guys can post it on different forums they hang out on.

[niN]

Wow so much was written in here. I will do my best not to step on anyones toes, bringing up what I liked etc. but I have a lot of fire for elma now, and I feel like there are a few of us who has.

I'd love it if at least some new people found their way into EOL and the scene. It's so much fun watching them develop in playing skill and designing....

Definately agree! I don't understand people who don't want new players in the scene. Very strange reactions imo.

I feel that we need to unite more. I said this yesterday in #GAA, and here it is again. All online elmabases like elmaonline, moposite, kopasite, nindex, recsourse etc. should not compete for GAAs and attention, but in a nice way guide newcomers through the online elma experience. How to do this is a big question. I think elmaonline needs to be the new moposite only because the cats behind moposite are too inactive. This seems doable to me. Kopaka is working on the new version of elmaonline.net which is great! when that is out it will have good stats with less bugs (I think?).

One thing I've been thinking about for a long time is how quiet the news section is in the eol site. A lot of people like it I guess, but to me it's torture! When there's a new website in the elma community, or a cup is starting, or wrs are sick, or a famous designer released a new levpack, or, or, or, or. you know... we should write that in the eol newspage! Otherwise that link that we need so much is broken. Maybe one solution is to give more people newswriting rights or something, I don't know. It's your descision kopaka but you can't do it yourself. So much is dropped and forgotten in the scene because it never got the chance to blossom!

I will end my post with a little long shot and an assumption; [skip gray if you want to skip right to the juicy business] A lot of old school, or semi-oldschool players have the attitude that you either go all elma, or you don't elma. There's no in-between. The quitting topic is in my opinion a proof of that. Although I've posted there many times myself, Ive come to realize that it shouldn't be all or nothing. It's like (some) people are addicted and trying to quit the bad stuff. I log on to EOL and talk to someone and he's like "uh, I still haven't quit elma... I'm such a loser...". But come on, man, it's not cigarretes. I know sitting in front of a computer screen all day isn't optimal for your posture (this is a whole other topic btw, and I will get to my point soon), but life's about finding a balance. And when I feel balanced I don't have that feeling pressuring me to quit, or hide it from my friends because I'm such a loser playing elma at 24 y.o. Now, I'm proud to be a part of the elma community. I'm damn proud and I hope there are kuskis out there who feel the same. There must be because we're thinking about ideas to up the popularity/awareness of elma. We should all be proud. There's a lot of prejudism in the world but I say fuck 'em all. If we sit and hide in our hoyl stations, ashamed of spending time on a 2D motobike game (read HOBBY) then that just makes us pathetic! Not because we play elma but because we are ashamed of it.

So I say - and this is where I get to a point that matters in this thread - we find a way to show the world how freakishly proud we are of what we've created in the elma scene. Because hehe, let's be honest and say: who would've thought that 2D could be so awesome in a world of modern technology? I hope insaneguy is reading this because when I say we should at least try to show people what really lies behind elma and what we've accomplished ingame, I mean that you were spot on with your idea for an elasto mania documentary film with interviews etc. If we can do this nicely and get people to see the community of elma for what it really is, instead of a bunch of nerds wasting their lives, then maybe people wouldn't reject the game without even having tried it big. If you read this insaneguy, pm me and we'll talk more.

I have a lot more thoughts, but I think these are good to get the ball rolling.

[Lousku]

Some bot could post popular/new lauta topics/posts on #irc_eol. There must be people on EOL who have no idea about lauta. There must also be people who have heard something about lauta but are not interested enough, but if they see topic titles in chat regularly, something will pull their attention. I at least found lauta through belma chat and curiosity.

[Chris]

Maybe moposite should feature links to Elmaonline more prominently? Currently there is nothing about EOL on main page.

[roope]

I feel that we need to unite more. I said this yesterday in #GAA, and here it is again. All online elmabases like elmaonline, moposite, kopasite, nindex, recsourse etc. should not compete for GAAs and attention, but in a nice way guide newcomers through the online elma experience. How to do this is a big question. I think elmaonline needs to be the new moposite only because the cats behind moposite are too inactive. This seems doable to me. Kopaka is working on the new version of elmaonline.net which is great! when that is out it will have good stats with less bugs (I think?).

Yeah, I definitely agree. All these pages should be linked - maybe even some simple Links section could work. Right now there's pretty much no other way for new players to learn about different Elma sites than hearing about them from other players.

One thing I've been thinking about for a long time is how quiet the news section is in the eol site. A lot of people like it I guess, but to me it's torture! When there's a new website in the elma community, or a cup is starting, or wrs are sick, or a famous designer released a new levpack, or, or, or, or. you know... we should write that in the eol newspage! Otherwise that link that we need so much is broken. Maybe one solution is to give more people newswriting rights or something, I don't know. It's your descision kopaka but you can't do it yourself. So much is dropped and forgotten in the scene because it never got the chance to blossom!

I like the idea about some people with newswriting rights. It wouldn't hurt, but it definitely could bring good. I'd definitely be interested about hearing about new cool stuff. New moderators, someone breaking the winrow record, or a someone adding a new level pack could easily make the news. The levpack system needs a rework IMO though. At it's current form, it's just not interesting. I don't think there's anyone actually interested in playing EOLsite levpacks. While I kind of like the idea that anyone can add their own pack, it just doesn't work. To be frank, there's just too much crap.

I will end my post with a little long shot and an assumption --- A lot of old school, or semi-oldschool players have the attitude that you either go all elma, or you don't elma. There's no in-between. The quitting topic is in my opinion a proof of that. Although I've posted there many times myself, Ive come to realize that it shouldn't be all or nothing

These have always been my thoughts. To me, many the people posting in the quitting topic are very likely to come back. They love Elma so much (one could say to the degree of addiction) that they are somehow trying to finalize their decision to quit by posting in that topic. The ones who just disappear without saying anything are more likely to quit forever. I've found it's better to just go what feels best; if you feel like you shouldn't play Elma, don't play it. You don't need to somehow quit forever and announce it, just don't play until you feel like you feel like playing again. If you never do, that's fine.

[Hosp]

imo eol site packs fun to play but not best system since if fail with wrong lev when add a pack can't do anything about it except make new pack, osv

[Mats]

Pawq Happy Hoyla is a pack with one lev

[Domovoy]

I recently had this idea of elma hackathons and jokingly suggested them as Las Vegas Elma Meetings in EOL. I'm not sure, maybe it already exists in FEM, but if it's not, probably it is worth considering.

What is a hackathon: several groups of people gather in one place and work intensively on their new ideas for a limited amount of time (from one day to a week) with a goal of having presentable prototype by the end of the event. Hackathons are widely spread in big software companies and conferences.

How it can be ported to elma: making videos, making levelpacks, making tas style brainstorming, making multi-times and of course making new software. Just imagine what would happen if half Elma 2 developers get into one place and focus on making a release. Enough talented people in one place focused not on drinking but on making something new: boom, community propelled for one more year. I myself would totally participate in such event if it was hold twice a year on weekends somewhere in western europe.

Edit:
Oh, why Las Vegas: because ultracheap hotels and weather is so unpleasant that you don't want to leave hotel and so don't get distracted. But plane tickets are ultraexpensive.

[Abula]

If I had time I would create a much simpler Moposite to contain only the best contents (News, better kuski gallery, WRs, Records?, GAA, articles [could contain many of current Moposite pages], best replays, meetings) that's relevant these days and keep the rest in some archive. I'm also planning to write a "My Elma story" article which would satisfy me personally to leave some undone things behind. But before that I could probably add an EOL add to left column on Moposite layout. For example by replaicing the Elma Forever banner? Anyone has a nice EOL banner (150px width)?