Forged Alliance Forever

Re: FAF Promotions Councillor Applications

2020-05-12T06:36:26+02:00

Statistics: Posted by nine2 — 12 May 2020, 06:36

Re: FAF Promotions Councillor Applications

2020-05-12T05:04:35+02:00

The FAF Council has decided to hand the position off to Anihilnine after reading his application and going through the interview process. We wish him good luck in his endeavors and are eager to see how he can leave his mark on the project!

Statistics: Posted by FtXCommando — 12 May 2020, 05:04

Re: FAF Promotions Councillor Applications

2020-05-05T14:31:32+02:00

I would appreciate if you considered my application. I think the discussions in this thread have destroyed most of my competitions points but no one yet engaged with my proposal. Silent agreement I would say.

I do believe that bennis returning to streaming with the authority of a promotion officer will improve community building and newbie retention more than updating the wiki or removing nomads from the news feed.

Statistics: Posted by Bennis- — 05 May 2020, 14:31

Re: FAF Promotions Councillor Applications

2020-05-05T00:35:30+02:00

I can’t lock threads in gen discussions, but the application period is over. I’ll be moving onto the 2nd stage of the selection process and we should have a new Promotions Councillor within 10 days or so.

Statistics: Posted by FtXCommando — 05 May 2020, 00:35

Re: FAF Promotions Councillor Applications

2020-05-05T00:06:31+02:00

i will vote for anyone who would stop this

Statistics: Posted by Farmsletje — 05 May 2020, 00:06

Re: FAF Promotions Councillor Applications

2020-05-04T13:10:29+02:00

About tournaments?

No one asked this but I just wanted to mention that I will not be able to be involved in any tournaments. I am in the wrong timezone (Australia) and dont really have those sorts of skills. I will be a very busy person organizing other things (news, advertising, etc). However I'm all about promoting someone elses tournament. I'm all about trying to find a person willing to run a tournament.

@Rowey

About the wiki?

I think if anyone wanted to fix up the wiki it would be worthy goal. I have seen the forum/zulip posts from Rowey and Laticlave about their wiki ideas and I think it would be terrific. However I can't help but feel that it would be a matter of time before the new wiki fell to the wayside and became outdated again. Eventually another dutifull person would step up and fix it - I guess it's the wiki circle of life. It might be more sustainable if we just update the current wiki rather than rewriting it - that would require less effort therefore the contributors might keep it up to date for longer. However I think it's important when working on volunteer projects for people to work on what they are attracted to. If someone wants to invest the time into a wiki upgrade, then I'm all for it.

However, upgrading the wiki is not something that I see as critically important. I would not be working goal towards this myself as I will focus on other issues - getting new players and keep them. Lets make a professional ad campaign and get some numbers - what is our advertising cost per new player? How many new players would we have with $1000?

Why don't I see the wiki as being important to retention? I believe the wiki is something you get into you are a bit hooked. I bet we need to catch people earlier than that.

About constructing a team?

I would love to work with anyone who wants to join this project. As I mentioned already I can't do this all by myself and I need support from many types of people (content, graphics, video, dev). My current opening plan is to start talking to everyone to see if they would like to contribute. Then I would love to make some changes to the in-client news system so that I can actually get messages to the player base with messages like this: "FAF is trying to grow and needs someone with mad VIDEO skills. If that's you, click for more information". It would be amazing if we could get some momentum with a few people working on it.

If I am unable to rally a team - I'll just have to do it myself and limit my ambitions. I can dev, write, photoshop, edit video. However I won't be able to sustain that by myself forever.

About changing the news page?

This is one of my favourite ideas but it would require development help, since I'm not a java dev. The short version is I would turn the news section into a hub with icons and short text descriptions and links to articles. Then I would put in tonnes of articles, for example about upcoming balance patches, new maps, etc. There would be an article about this forum post for example - we need a Promocilor. I could do the content mostly because as mentioned I read the forum etc a lot and really I am just making up links with a headline. It would be easy enough just to write up a small section about any trending forum topic. If its trending then its news. The current news system has a few issues
1. small content
2. layout is not enticing, we should copy layout from trashy clickbait websites
3. list format hides articles quickly
4. players skip over news - i change the tab to Play before the news tab is loaded
5. ideally, news should be shared between FAF website and client

It's all about curating content. The truth is that FAF is interesting with lots of cool bits and pieces - you just have to go through a LOT of stuff to find them. Just like how the "M&M Top Picks" features cool maps without you having to look through the entire vault. Lets do that with all of the FAF content.

Other contributors would still submit news items about releases/servers/nomads etc but I'd probably try and sex them up a bit, prioritise them the right way, give them a consistent style.

So one of my first questions would to devs would be - can we do web online articles such as wordpress - can we make a sexy css news hub - can we embed that into the java client?

About social media?

I'd turn social media into a tool to get new players and retain them. I don't see as much value in social broadcasts for our normal playerbase. I spoke about this earlier but I would find appealing little snippets, make animated gifs send them out on social, ask the playerbase to share them. Then I'd measure the effect of such activities to see if it is worth the time. My expectation is the greater return on investment would come from posts to reddit and twitter - but I'd measure that and prove it. Lets focus on what works.

@biass

About am I sure its a good idea to contact new players in 10 days?

No I'm not sure at all, and if I get elected I'll ask you for your thoughts on this. This is a draft plan and subject to massive change. The point is that I would develop a retention and adoption strategy - with feedback from ye ole good upstanding FAF citizens, formulate a plan, implement it, measure it, refine it. I'd like to get feedback from key FAF groups before putting anything in place. I don't have all the answers - I just talk to the people who know what they are actually talking about. If my idea sucks someone will tell me and we'll factor that in. So in a way the final strategy would be crowdsourced. Surely there are things that we can do to retain players. Lets go find out what that is.

Statistics: Posted by nine2 — 04 May 2020, 13:10

Re: FAF Promotions Councillor Applications

2020-05-03T13:29:15+02:00

Trying to get the wiki sorted is a waste of limited resources tbh, the last time coordinated effort was made the wiki still wasn't used. More importantly, I can't think of a gaming community with a base game this complex, with as many ongoing changes to the game, supporting apps and clients but also has such a small number of people involved. Definitely not one with a useful, used wiki. This means you are always pushing shit up hill to keep the wiki updated for the amount of benefit it provides. I can think of MORE complex games, with bigger communities, more regular patching and more important third party apps that still struggle to keep wikis complete and up to date.

Spoiler: show

I would encourage promo councillors to look elsewhere for newbie retention/education ideas. I really like the Anihilnine idea of proactively getting people into newbie friendly games and accessing friendly, competent mentors (trainers, clans, whatever - how dead is #newbie chat these days out of curiosity?). I've seen similar stuff work well in other games, and I've seen a some interesting presentations (not to mention had personal experience) on the importance of establishing good social connections and access to online friends/mentoring/being on a "team" in retaining new people. Playing other games with shit wikis hasn't been a problem for me, put it that way. I would also say compared to other gaming communities I'm in or have been in I think FAF is the furthest I've seen (and in a few ways getting further) from good practices and culture for newbie retention. Dunno if councillors can fix the second thing but nice to see some ideas for the first thing.

Statistics: Posted by Sir Prize — 03 May 2020, 13:29

Re: FAF Promotions Councillor Applications

2020-05-02T15:56:34+02:00

Anihilnine wrote:
Work with the trainers to see if they can actively approach new players. We could say something like “each new players should be contacted by PM within the first 10 days of playing”.

It's a good application, but are you really sure about this part?
I would like it if you elaborated on this area, because i'm not convinced this is a good idea.

Good luck with the rest of it mate.

Statistics: Posted by biass — 02 May 2020, 15:56

Re: FAF Promotions Councillor Applications

2020-05-02T15:40:49+02:00

Farmsletje wrote:
Anihilnine wrote:It could just be a 5 second clip of a nuke getting blocked by as plane.

a-about that

Lack of a promo councilor probably to blame for this "fact" :imfine:

Statistics: Posted by Morax — 02 May 2020, 15:40

Re: FAF Promotions Councillor Applications

2020-05-02T11:49:34+02:00

Anihilnine a few questions

How would you deal with the Outdated information and Syle of the Current FAF wiki compared to all the other game Wikis out their?

Will you be Constructiong a team to do all of this or are you going to be a one man band as most people Fizzle out will all the presure of not geting anything done after a few months.

How would you change what is allready their like the news page and the other tabs.

What would i be more likly to see from the Social Media of FAF from you.

Statistics: Posted by Rowey — 02 May 2020, 11:49

Re: FAF Promotions Councillor Applications

2020-05-02T11:18:24+02:00

Anihilnine wrote:
It could just be a 5 second clip of a nuke getting blocked by as plane.

a-about that

Statistics: Posted by Farmsletje — 02 May 2020, 11:18

Re: FAF Promotions Councillor Applications

2020-05-02T09:26:01+02:00

Hello FAF,

I am a hobbyist indie game dev with the dream of one day producing my own successful game. I have already invested about 2500 hours towards this goal, learning many new skills such as game development and design, and the production of tutorials, videos, trailers, green screening and audio. If you would like you can buy see my Early Access VR game on Steam. One of the next steps in my journey is to develop the skills to promote games. So, for me, investing a large amount of time and effort into FAF promotions would be investing in my own dream.

My focus as Promotions Councilor would be to increase new players and increase the retention of new players. Growing the player base will increase the lifetime and diversity of our community. My draft plan to achieve this is:

Primary Goal #1: Increase players

Formal paid advertising campaign – produce advertisement graphics and videos. Research our target demographic and the cheapest way of targeting them. This will probably end up being youtube or twitch ads.
Reddit campaign – Posting content to reddit is an effective way of increasing awareness. Posts will be animated gifs of cool FAF things with personal titles such as “Very happy with the way my new unit walk cycle turned out” or “Nearly wet my pants when that laser com teleported in”. Then I would call on our FAF redditors to go out there on reddit and comment on our posts to get some momentum.
Reach out to Square Enix to see if they wish to collaborate on a mutually beneficial project. Our community raises the value of their IP so helping us helps them. I would reach out to them not as “Anihilnine” but as the Promotions Councilor of the world’s biggest Forged Alliance community with 11,000,000 games played. I would love to see Square post about FAF on the FA Steam Page. I would love to see them email their player base about us. I have no idea what the chances of this happening are but I will put forward a formal proposal to them. If all we can get is a heads up before they launch a sale, I'll take it.
Introduce analytics to track the benefit of each marketing step
Get baseline statistics for current New Players & Retained Players, so that we can measure the effect of our efforts

Primary Goal #2: Increase Player Retention

My understanding is that we actually do get quite a lot of new players but that there may be ways to increase the number of players that we retain. I will develop a plan for increasing player retention, which might look like:

Sending new FAF players a starter kit including information suitable to a beginner, it would probably focus on them having fun so might explain how to PD creep. It would link to particularly exciting casts. The trick would be to make it fun straight away, not overload them with information, and gradually increase the knowledge. Maybe there would be some animated gifs in emails.
Work with the trainers to see if they can actively approach new players. We could say something like “each new players should be contacted by PM within the first 10 days of playing”.
Work with trainers to organize scheduled noob matches and explicitly invite new players to join.
Email players who stop playing regularly with enticing information. A survey to find out why players are leaving.
Plug social channels like FB / Twitter / Reddit with amusing content. It could just be a 5 second clip of a nuke getting blocked by as plane. Players who leave will be reminded of us.

I haven’t thought about the retention plan much yet but I think it’s important and we should have it in place before we launch the plan to increase players. Makes sense to wait until you can keep them.

Secondary Goal #1: Internal Promotion

For years now I have thought that we need to have a red-hot news feed curating the most interesting FAF content. It would be a mix of everything: trending forum posts, featured casts, featured casters, highlighted replays, new maps, new mods, nomads, interviews. As an avid reader of the forums I am always seeing new cool things but I always think they don’t get the attention they deserve. Like the mapping competitions are a really unique and interesting idea but I don’t think they get in front of people. Like the upcoming balance patches which are released for ages but don’t seem to get looked at except by a select few. We need a news hub that is in your face and full of quality content. I would like to talk to the devs about if we could do something like that.

Secondary Goal #2: Increasing Pro Player Participation

If we had a news platform we should be able to use it to showcase the top end pro players, which would encourage the Pros to play. I would love to see more Pro action, perhaps with scheduled or organized games, and would like to work with other Councilors to see what we can do to increase that.

How will we achieve any of this?

I would love to achieve all of these goals but I cannot do it alone. My hope is that others will share my vision that increasing players and retention will make FAF a better place, and help me on a journey to make that a reality.

We will need to produce a lot of copy, graphics and video content. I think I’ve spent about 7 years on FAF forums and it’s not hard to think of people to go to. FAF have so many talented, creative and dedicated people. I’m thinking about screenshots of the week by lilSidlil, those awesome creative works to promote the new maps, graphic designs by Blackster, videos by people like Medicraze, the ridiculous amount of effort put in by speed2 and ExoticRetard for the wiki, the new website by Blodir. The slick patch notes we have been putting out lately. The list goes on – new maps, new client, new units.

Some of these goals would require money, which I can contribute some of. I would also ask the community for assistance, certain cashed up players I know of, and perhaps there are FAF donations that might be tapped.

Some of the goals would require dev time. Hopefully we will be able to find someone who thinks this is worth the time.

When I look around, I see all of the parts we need to level up in growth. If we all got behind these goals - we can do it!

My Contributions to the FAF Community:

I made UI Party and a bunch of other UI mods. I fixed the minimap which used to be a black square. I am slightly addicted to the forum and I’ve read it a lot. I’m a forum mod which means I delete spam posts and report abuse. You don’t see it but I’ve put many people in touch with each other, introducing new contributors to the devs on slack/zulip. For example, this week I introduced a guy who wants to donate a relay server that might improve pings between continents.

About Me:

38 year old, Australian. Software developer for 18 years. Employed as software architect / team lead for multi million dollar software projects. FAF player.

Inspirational Close:

As Promotions Councilor I will try and rally members of the community to fulfill these goals. I’ve got some big ideas about stepping up the FAF game, but I need to plan it out more and I’ll need buy in from many other people. Its ambitious but I have the motivation. I don’t know if this will work, but I’d love to have a crack ... who’s with me?

Statistics: Posted by nine2 — 02 May 2020, 09:26

Re: FAF Promotions Councillor Applications

2020-04-22T13:55:47+02:00

-Your FAF username
BENISLADDER2KGOD

-Your contributions to the FAF Project
I am an acclaimed streamer, a community celebrity and the god of setons and soon also the god of ladder.
My presence as the above mentioned in the faf community has kept this zombie of a game alive for longer than its worth.

-A statement describing why you are applying, your goals for FAF in terms of promotions, and how you will accomplish those goals

I am applying because I think if I am in charge, faf will be better. my goal is to become a 2k ladder god, and while achieving that my plays will fill youtube videos (i.e.: Jagged Casts) and so on, which will make faf interesting again.

I will accomplish these goals by being voted into the Promotion Councillor position which will give me the visibility, motivation and credibility I require to succeed on the above mentioned journey.

Never have I been more sure that if I am voted into office, we will turn this GREAT game with its LOVELY community into the blossoming flower it deserves to be.

To all the good and caring members of our great community: Vote for bennis and lets make faf great again.

Statistics: Posted by Bennis- — 22 Apr 2020, 13:55

Re: FAF Promotions Councillor Applications

2020-04-17T21:04:17+02:00

I'm not exactly sure whether this falls in the promo tasklist or dev tasklist (or a mix of both) but i just want to say that an improvement of the whats new tab could improve player retention a lot by making players feel like they are part of the community since the whats new tab currently looks very bland and uninteresting. It would be nice if some progress would be made here,

Statistics: Posted by Farmsletje — 17 Apr 2020, 21:04

Re: FAF Promotions Councillor Applications

2020-04-17T19:31:24+02:00

-Your FAF username
Laticlave

-Your contributions to the FAF Project
I'm a faf & discord moderator

-A statement describing why you are applying, your goals for FAF in terms of promotions, and how you will accomplish those goals
I already made a thread here explaining my thoughts on the promotions councillor role (/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=19100). I would first focus on the faf wiki, trying to bring it to the level the usual game wikis are, eventually work on unified community tutorials with decent production values and focus on external promotion to encourage long-term playerbase growth. I'm also interested in organizing fan trailer contests, map & mods showcases and other events.
Should my application be accepted, I'd also step down from the moderator role.

Statistics: Posted by Laticlave — 17 Apr 2020, 19:31