Beasts of War – OnTableTop – Phase III: Time for speculations and conspiracies

[warzanKeymaster 31125xp 2]

DISCORD

This came up quite a bit in discussions, and it has been touted to change how we as a community use discord to emphasise that more should be placed on the platform.

I am a total swinger on this lol (I go from extreme to extreme – yes lets scrap discord to no I love it in there and don’t want to change a hair on its head lol)

I has been suggested to look at discord as a voice only system we as a community can use. (Again I’m hot and cold on this idea – as discord was a bit of a lifeline during covid, so I have warm feelings towards it)

Id be interested to hear all your thoughts specifically on discord and how it can have a positive place within the community

[warzanKeymaster 31125xp 3]

CONTENT

I’m leaving this to the team, and perhaps you guys could too at this stage. As they are the ones making it I want to give them more freedom to explore ideas and formats. They have all been at it for a long time, so lets give them some space to see what they come up with.

[warzanKeymaster 31125xp 4]

COMMUNITY

So this site is a platform it has dozens of things we as a community can use to make useful resources for folk like us. But we need to do a better job of communicating that and making it easier to use.

So we are revisiting all of the little functions that are available on here like rating and reviewing games, places to game and visit etc and having a look at what we have, does it work and how we take a more wholistic approach to how all of this stuff is communicated and utilised by the community.

[jamescutts 6929xp 3]

Wow, fantastic update @warzan, that’s going to take a bit of reading and time to digest but it certainly sounds like exciting times for you and the team!

Specifically on Discord I strongly think it should stay, though I’d love to see experiments adjusting it. For me its where I feel most connected to the fellow CoGs and especially to the OTT team, its a group chat platform and it does something the rest of the site doesn’t I can pop in and have adhoc discussion, start a watch party, post random silly gifs etc.

I think it unfairly gets stick from some principally forum users who see it as the thing that “killed” the forums, it isn’t, its a different tool doing a different job, its also suffering from being much quieter than usual, while there’s around 80ish online members (this means they are users who have join the discord but may not be in it, they may for example be on another server) only about 10-20 are regularly contributing and some days a low as single digits.

I think the main thing for me is its a universal platform, nearly every company and even youtuber now has one, im already on there, i just toggle to the ott server and can then discuss in this community. I actually swing the other way and think it should be more utilised it can grab the younger audience pull them in and snag them. Promote it on the weekender youtube vids in the description, get people into the community and then convert them into members by letting them see the great wide content by also promoting that in discord with it linking back into the website.

Its also great for community stuff the website just cant do, John’s impromptu gundam building streams are great, and i love a good watch party with Gerry.

I do get some of its issues though, it can be a bit clique, though in fairness so can the the forums and the site and it can be hard to jump into and start as a lot of chatter is in #cog-sancturary.

There are improvements and ideas i think could be made to it,

• remove some of the redundant things like boredom feeds
• kill off things like trash-talk lets ditch the politics and keep it hobby focused.
• review the channels, looking at what other discords do, theres a lot more focus on channels for specific games or genres for example
• add in feeds from the main website, have a updates/news channel that gets posts automatedly published when OTT has new articles so people can go check them out, make it read only to encourage this. In a similar vein, it would be awesome to have the same for project updates so i can see them and again go check them out on the site.

I’ll be honest, if discord was to go or significantly change e.g. to voice only I’d probably become far less involved, OTT would just be a website i check news on and occasionally comment on things. For me Discord is a vital bit of OTT, its open there all day waiting for a notification, the website isnt, i check it 2-3 times a day.

[warzanKeymaster 31125xp 2]

I think you make some really valid points. We may be looking at this element in completely the wrong way

 

[amachan 25677xp 3]

My response to the many posts from @warzan

Bringing back boot camps and making them virtual boot camps is a great idea. This is a global community with people all over the world and some of us also are limited in what we can physically do so making travel to Northern Ireland impractical or impossible for some. Virtual bootcamps can bring the community together from all across the globe. I think the Discord can also be a great platform for this.

The Project system as it is is great in terms of features and representation. The only thing really holding it back is the performance. It is often slow to load and uploading stuff to it has to be done in bits. An idea to maybe fix the upload issue is to allow pictures to be posted in our profile and then we can select them to show in our project. This might also be too complex for some people to deal with, but it is just an idea.

The forums for me are fine, I don’t use them a lot but when I do I have no problems with what it can do. I am not that experienced with the use of forums so someone like @sundancer might be more useful in giving tips on how to improve it.

Discord can be a great platform for people to hangout, but the way it is set-up needs to be cleaned up. I think this whole houses thing should go away and for the main chat rooms you’d only really need a couple. For example; General Chat, Hobby Chat, Share Your Work, 3D printing, Tech Chat and Other Hobbies would be more than enough to replace the channels in the categories Chat Rooms and Other Hobbies We Share. I do not know what function the Cult Radio or the Topic Suggestion categories server at this point. And for the Boredom Feeds, a simple hobby related video sharing channel could be useful.

The one thing I will say on content is that I would like to see more variety in the content. I know there is a limit on how much content you guys can make, but finding a better balance with various different bits of content would be an improvement.

Another idea I had on content is maybe allow some content creators to create content for the website as well. This could be a great way to add content and plenty of people in the community could be able if willing to every now and then do a video, write an article. But this would then also have to be regulated in some way and that would also cost manpower. It is just an idea.

And since Lloyd is going to be involved in the coding, I guess he won’t be building Rome any time soon….. 🤔😅

[amachan 25677xp 3]

A little addendum on the topic of content. Not all unboxings need to be a video. You can probably get more done by doing a written unboxings with clear pictures (Don’t let Gerry be in charge of those.). And then only do the videos for the major releases that attract more viewers to the website.

[zoidpinhead 12492xp 3]

Thanks @warzan for the updates – very informative and helpful.  We have a parallel strategic development planning process going – your management consultants would be proud!

A common theme is developing here – especially in regard to future directions for Discord, Forums or other features.  The issue seems to me to be related to OTT’s positioning as a (or even THE) wargaming hobby umbrella site – it tries to offer something to everyone.  In so doing each tool or feature is only ever a small part of the whole.  Thus our Discord is mostly used for general daily chat with a few hobby updates or news stories popping up along the way.  Is this the same as a content provider who drives all of their community engagement through a Discord channel (Trench Crusade for example)? No, but it isn’t the only thing that OTT does for its community – therefore it gets used by those who most want it rather than all of us.  The same goes for Forums.  Is there the traffic here that LAF (or TMP of old) get? No not really, because that is all that community have.  If they want to ask about it or show it off it has to go on a forum post.

Therefore – let’s use each tool for what it is best at.  Mostly we are doing this already anyway.

• Discord is great for live chat – perhaps with a bit more focus this could work well to support existing users and maybe bring in some new ones.  If there is a themed week then perhaps a Discord chat dedicated to it would help.  You could advertise the content – have live watch-alongs with a Discord chat, answer newbie questions, etc.
• Forums are great for longer form discussions (like this one!) and for discussions over time like the amazing annual Hobby Pledges (thanks @lawnor ).  WAYPN has also been very popular but most other forums would have split this into different themes or focuses to help spread the load, so a WAYPN for Fantasy, one for Sci-Fi, one for Historicals; or a GW one, a Warlord one, a MAWM one, etc.  There is a big hobby question raised most weeks on the XLBS for the team but the community engagement only happens in the posts for that video, not in the Forum where the format is better suited to an exchange.  So at the moment individual community remarks aren’t always replied to and it is difficult the have a longer or deeper developing discussion as a community.

Ultimately, tools are what they are.  It’s how we use them that counts.  The issue isn’t really a technical one (except for better resourcing Projects) but a content management one.  You guys have built a great site and a wonderful community has formed here.  Let’s take it forward 🙂

[limburger 21741xp 1]

It’s great to hear that the team and community (or at least those of us talking about it) have a lot of similar ideas.

My only real complaint about the forum features as they are now is having to uncheck the ‘notify by email’ check button when posting.
Everything else is doing what it needs to do. I suspect a lot is to be gained by performance improvements, which may simply mean using dedicated servers with dedicated forum software instead of the plugin.

Having comments on news articles link to a dedicated forum topic instead of being separate from the forum is the only real ‘must have’ feature.

I think there could be a better link between both forums and discord.
Other servers tend to have a read-only channel were news gets posted, which then links to their own website.
I think such a feature could help drive traffic to the website, provided it can handle the extra load …

An off-topic channel for talking about stuff that is not related to the hobby can be useful to redirect a lot of non-gaming related topics away from the main channels. We’re humans and when big/unexpected/bad things happen there’s a need to get it off your chest (sp?) instead of bottling it up as that’s going to cause bigger issues when things do explode out. Of course there’s the problem that such things tend to create a negative feedback loop.

The weekly ‘unofficial weekender’ has been the best thing ever in the forum, because it helps contain the off-topic ramblings while constantly getting us back into the hobby. Maybe find a way to make this a bit more consistent ? otoh … the fact that it’s just a community member that starts it (usually @sundancer, but the poor guy needs a rest too :D) gives it a different feel than anything more ‘official’.

Anyways … I’m confident the team has a roadmap that will get us to world domination within the next decade.  All signs point to things that will benefit the website and community even if they don’t match perfectly with our hopes and dreams.

The challenge is finding a way to grow a community that is dedicated to things that are almost exclusively off-line.
If it was easy then someone would have done so already.

We will get there … stay positive & frosty.

[grantinvanman 2204xp 0]

To be fair, I did an unofficial OTT weekender once. 😁

[torros 23816xp 4]

If we pay to get rid of the adverts on the site can we actually get rid of the adverts?

[torros 23816xp 3]

I agree what others have said about the discord in getting rid of the houses etc.A lot of the stuff on there just seems to be a hangover from the Covid times and probably no longer needed

[collins 16358xp 1]

Woah woah woah WOOAAHH… getting rid of the houses!?!? but how would house of water #besthouse be the #besthouse if it was unceremoniously be taken out the back of the sheds and put down with a shotgun to the back of the head. how would I message the squirrel overlord with ‘how the fuck do I fix this cock up?’ questions.

for reference, the above should be read with a spoonful of humour… but in all seriousness, discord hasn’t clicked with me and I only go on it to ask for immediate help with hobby or to promote a project I’ve just completed. I silence all notifications because I simply don’t have all the time in the world to go through stuff and engage with it, whereas WhatsApp I haven’t… I guess that says a lot about me as a person with habbits etc. personal choice and how I perceive the purpose of the two messaging services I suppose. That and being stuck in a certain time period of my life lol.

[avien 2032xp 0]

I am not a big user or fan of Discord. Honestly I just don’t have the time to keep up with the discussions there, and it feels weird to pop a response in to a conversation that’s usually just between two or three people and usually hours past the last comment. It always feels like you’re the stranger on the edge of a conversation. I generally only post when I have an issue I need help with or if I happen to see a question that hasn’t had a response during my rare browsing.

i find forums tend to feel more open to everyone contributing because they aren’t time sensitive. Maybe I’m just old.

 

of course I’m not the most active member on the forum either.  I would like to be but work & family life is so busy I honestly barely get time for actual hobby, never mind talking about hobby, or posting about hobby.

[jamescutts 6929xp 0]

AI understand why people might not be a fan of the house concept in discord but I treat them more as just a space with a bunch of people in with some slightly steer chatter, yes they are very clique, but I would sorly miss chatting in #house-of-water to those friends i made over lockdown. They might not be optional? but getting rid of them would just harm the mini communities that exist within them, were as people should ideally just be free not to join the or leave them as desired, perhaps allowing people to form new ones would allow more mini communities to also grow.

I do find it a little disheartening how whenever discord is brought up on the forums it tends to steer towards and this is paraphrasing, forums good discord bad. Given this discussion is in the forums  i think has some inevitable bias, and really i think misses the point, both are tools, let them be used by the community how they see fit, they should be complementary to each other as they offer different things to different people who have different wants and needs. People find both good and bad for various reasons, some people use only one, some people use both.

 

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