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

[amachan 25677xp 2]

On the topic of the houses on Discord. I am in the Juvie house myself so I don’t know for sure how the other houses do. But from what I hear the house of water is the only house that has any regular chat going on, the house of Justin is just dead and the Juvie house is mostly showing weird phallic things we find on the internet to try and trigger Warren. That’s why I think a casual chatroom for just talking about random stuff and a dedicated hobby chatroom to discuss and talk things hobby related is the way forward.

[grantinvanman 2204xp 1]

I have never used Discord, but if it was one place, one chat room, I would probably join in.

Where I live there is zero gaming; all my projects are my own, and so the interactions online are as social as my hobby gets.

Incidentally, LAF has had a discussion regarding lower users and postings lately (maybe a few months ago), with not much conclusion drawn as to why;  so BoW isn’t the only place pondering engagement.

[pagan8thParticipant 10877xp 0]

Never really bothered with discord. Text is my favoured medium of communication.

You can edit what you say and there’s less waffle while people think of what to say. Not a fan of ‘hesitation’ where people use ‘umm’, ‘erm’, ‘basically’ and other such words while they think of what to say next.

And definitely change that ‘Notify me of follow-up replies via email’ so that the default is ‘Don’t notify‘. Tedious having to uncheck that box. If I want to follow up a conversation I go back to it when I get time.

[sundancer 43009xp 4]

And definitely change that ‘Notify me of follow-up replies via email’ so that the default is ‘Don’t notify‘. Tedious having to uncheck that box. If I want to follow up a conversation I go back to it when I get time.

Objection. I am quite the opposite. Best way would be a switch in the user profile that you can turn on and off for yourself. Like in Forums 😉

[avien 2032xp 2]

Best way would be a switch in the user profile that you can turn on and off for yourself. Like in Forums

Agreed. I also find the follow up email having the full text of the responses defeats the purpose of the follow up notification. Surely you want to drive the user back to the forum. I think a single “there are more responses” notification would be fine and then no more are triggered until I actually revisit the thread, but there’s not an insignificant amount of programming & state tracking involved in that I’d imagine

[amachan 25677xp 1]

I am with @sundancer on this. I like that it automatically selects the option to give me e-mail notifications. I am going to forget I posted anything otherwise….. But an option on your profile to select what the default should be for you is the best way to go.

I like the notification I get in the mail the way they are as well.

[amachan 25677xp 2]

@pagan8th Discord is mostly text based. Voice channels are optional and not something that is used much on the Beasts of War Discord. I have rarely seen anyone type “umm”.

[panzerkaput 33943xp 4]

A project system that works?

[jamescutts 6929xp 0]

I’m also with @sundancer on this. I like the automatic email notifications, otherwise I will forget the topic exists. I actually tend to read the email rather than the post on the forum, then go to it if I want to contribute.

Having had a more indepth read of your posts @warzan heres my thoughts, sorry it got long again 😀

FORUMS

I actually think the forums are perfectly functional as they stand, this topic seems to be working out fine (albeit getting mildly sidetracked) and the number of users and activity is very low, I cant really see how changing them would magically make them better or more popular. Based on my last observations I think there’s limited value in changing them. Putting my work Architect hat on, technically it would be a improvement to keep them separate from the main site, with a “dedicated” forum product on a subdomain like forums.ontabletop.com but again there’s limited real value in that at this time.

PROJECTS

I think i covered quite a few bits in my last post of general improvements, its the unique feature of OTT and needs much love. I’d echo others that the number one issue is contributing to it, nobody wants to write a update to then loose it because of a error. I think this should be the top focus,. As a quick improvement I would adapt the contribution to be a client side submission rather than posting the who page, this would allow it to keep the content if there was a error and the user then retry, this also would make it much “safer” for people to contribute. Realistically when you create a new entry I would have it autosaving constantly with the entry marked as private/draft, when you get to the end you then publish it.

I get there’s some limitations here with the existing technology stack, I’m more than happy to offer any advice to the team to help guide them.

CHANNELS

I love the Idea of pulling in user generated content, I try and use this feature but i think its just a bit lost for users visiting the site, unless you directly go out and look for them, I tend to find a dual post to the Channel and the Project system because that gets surfaced on the homepage.

I think my ideal would be as a person with a channel that its instead called something like “Community Content” and theres a hub of all this content surfaced, and with a feed through to somewhere possibly on the homepage (maybe by removing the duplicate “news sections”.

It would also be cool if these pulled through automatically, so that a youtube upload is published on your channel (should be possible via the youtube api) and things like Sundancer could also set up recurring polishings of the UHH, samilar for YBTT. I think for the live stream content it would be good to have these in the hub as posts ahead of time, with a “coming soon” sort of thing i discussed back on my chat about themed weeks.

DISCORD

I think I’ve made my view clear, I dont think it needs massive sweeping changes, it also needs like the forums to become more active again. I think there’s some useful thing that could be done to make it more welcoming, and create more on topic and themed rooms but I don’t think users who are mostly active on the forums are the best people to be asking, any discussion on it should equally involve the users who are active participants on it.

CONTENT

I love the Weekender and XLBS, i know the format has changed somewhat but I’m watching them every week, not always live but I do always watch them. I’m really enjoying the latest tweaks, I think bringing back the VLOG into these shows has returned a lot of the lost energy, I’d personally like to see more VLOG style content outside of these shows too, for me its the best stuff when you guys are super excited about something and sharing your thoughts and process.

I do find I switch off with parts of these shows sometimes, I think thats fine as everyone has different interests. I think the worst culprit is when the shows 20min of G’Wulla released new stuff, now it might be theres a huge audience for this but if i was being picky i think those who want to know about G’Wulla stuff probably already do? I think the news segment works best when its coving a whole host of indie stuff as news in addition to indie of the week, the sort of sharing and discovery that excites you and is different, rather than just another GW news update.

As for general content on the site, I do come and check OTT daily for news, that’s a key function for me, again personally I’d like to see more indie stuff that GW stuff, i think OTT is a great highlighter and champion for the indies, and and love this to become more of a focus, id take finding out about things like Multi Award Winning Moonstone anyday over whats effectively reposting Warhammer Community content a dozen other sites have also posted.

I’m a little indifferent to the Kickstarter and 3D printing content, they are often overlapping and theres just so much of it. Personally i like the KS and 3D from really cool indies, like Midlam or Piano Miniatures, but im less keen on the “heres some random generic sci not space marine” sort of bits that feel very generic.

I would also champion that unboxings dont just need to be videos, I actually find at times written unboxings very useful, especially when its say a product that doesnt have sprue photos on the website, I’ll go hunting around for things like that in photos on blogs etc.

I actually wouldn’t mind seeing some 3D printed stuff done as reviews, which could perfectly overlap with things like table builds for the VLOGs. For example, how easy are buildings to print out on a fdm printer, and whats the results, or how do these resin bits come out. I think there would be some good cases there where you could offer something liking existing content, reviews and also tutorials all sort of in a “package” of linked content.

COMMUNITY

I love your revisiting this stuff, Its a great library and catalogue but its also very lost, I’m not sure the last time a game got a review by you or the community? I’m not sure how valuable the interactivity is on these, i think it just dilutes it down a there so many places for it but there is absolutely value in being on a news article or project and being able to click on a game to then discover more content, id actually love to see those game “hub” pages improved to better highlight the varous content, projects etc.

[jamescutts 6929xp 1]

I guess to clear up confusion, here is a screenshot of Discord.

• Far left, list of the “communities I’m in” currently I have OTT open
• Next to that is the list of Channels, these are roughly grouped, e.g. COG Houses and Chat Rooms
  • Water Boarding is the house of water voice/video chat, people can joing that at any time and it lists them as they join.
• Main but is the actual Chanel and its conent, in this case the default of CoG Sancturary, this is where more general and random chatter happens
• Theres also some more specialised rooms like 3D printing etc.

In summary the structure would not be dissimilar to forum users but it works differently, its much more rapid being a chat, so less like popping into and reading this topic. Some people like that some dont.

[osbad 4279xp 2]

+1 for more variety of content in the “paid-for” element of this site.  I continue to contribute my monthly £3.79 (an oddly specific amount!) for my OTT membership, but for a long time it has felt that because the only content is XLBS, it’s not really worth it.  Don’t get me wrong, I do like XLBS, but it’s so often just 3 or 4 guys blethering about how little time they got to do any hobby, and then being nice about a couple of community projects.  Yes, we do get some interesting serious-ish discussion on top from time to time, and I love the “VLOG” segments and the times when the guys do have some actual good hobby to report on, but…  its getting samey, and a bit tired and just needs MOAR AWESOMENESS!

Stuff from the past I did enjoy that has gone by the wayside for reasons and would love to see rekindled in some way, was when there was a lot more in-studio banter.  Maybe it was more “amateurish” and less scripted, but it was fun to watch and engaging.  Boot camps were awesome, painting nights were fun, the awards ceremony stuff was great.  Even the very old days sitting around getting pie-eyed and shooting the breeze were enjoyable.

As others have said, this isn’t about complaining, its an opportunity to wishlist.  And generally I’m not saying the current COGs stuff is bad, just its getting a bit repetitive and needs a rethink – which hopefully is what this weekend’s “pause” sounds like.

£3.79/month is buttons these days, and I get that guys are wanting to keep things cheap to buy into, and to give away as much free content as possible for purposes of inclusivitiy.  But… I’d be prepared to pay more for more awesome content that was exclusive to subscribers – much like say a Patreon does.  Doesn’t have to be huge, but throw us a bone!  Maybe merch (am I the only one who has wanted an OTT cap since forever?), maybe behind the scenes videos, blooper reels, whatever?  Some pizzaz of some sort would be joyous.

 

[horati0nosebl0wer 19650xp 2]

Well there’s a lot to think about here from the back and forth. It think that The Big Red Button around the Contact Us section of all that is Coming Soon gives me an idea of where else things might be changing.

[limburger 21741xp 0]

At the very least the “Notify me of follow-up replies via email” should be something we can set at the user profile level.
That way folk can set and forget it once and uncheck/check it on topics that they find interesting (or not as interesting).

One more thing : notifications for things followed
I wish I could clear/reset them all at once. A mass unfollow option would be nice to have as well, because at the moment I get so many notifications that I simply don’t look at them.  I do wonder if this has an effect on the system performance as well, because the system may be wasting resources on notifications that few actively use.

The notifications for ‘mention’ and ‘forum topic’ feel like they should auto-clean itself once you’ve read the forum topic.

The only one that I can sort of keep under control is the private message one, because it happens very rarely.

The concept is good, but it is far too easy to get too many of them on a weekly basis with no easy method of cleaning up.

[warhammergrimace 13766xp 1]

Is the outdoor set going to make a come back in phase 3??

[templar007 52378xp 2]

I’ll chime in on the subject of “Notify me of follow-up……” and too much email ect ect ect……..

 

I use a separate email account for my “BeastsofWar” notification stuff.

 

I never mix my hobby email into my standard other email or heaven forbid work email.

 

Hobby email is just for hobby……….LOAD THAT PUPPY UP!

 

But maybe that’s just me……  🤓👍

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