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So I was in chat (still am, actually) and me, Tiddles, Death Penalty, and a couple other people got to talking about this site and its activity. This is a great site, obviously. One person can mention how they love CoN and 5 other people will quickly jump in and say what they like. It has a lot of content (and good content!), it has great staff, and nonsensical posts are not allowed. In short, it's a one-of-a-kind site. So the question was, why do the forums have such little activity?

We came up with some stuff, such as a lot of drama-causing members having left, the forums and the chat being split, and one that occurs to me now is that a lot of older people who played the games CoN covers when they were kids are now in their 20s and 30s, or older. But, hey, this is a forum. We were wondering, what does the rest of the forum population think? Why has CoN slowed down? What can be done to make it more active again? Any ideas would be appreciated, because we all know we love CoN , and we want to share that love to the world. So, thoughts?

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Squenix games completed:

FFIII
FFIV
FFVI
FFVII
FFIX
FFX
FF Tactics: Advance 2
Chrono Trigger
Dragon Quest 8
Dragon Quest 11
Super Mario RPG

This is a great topic, Quad. You pretty much hit the nail on the head in your post, for me at least. My interests in video games have changed quite a bit since I first joined (and even since I was really active here). I love arcade games (and play some of them competitively), and I'm a really active speed runner of NES/SNES games. I still like the old FF games, but not nearly as much as I used to. I go to SDA to talk about speed running stuff, and Twin Galaxies or CAG to talk about competitive arcade gaming, so all of my video game related discussion has just migrated elsewhere. :/

Edit: Note that I still love the community here. I just feel like I ran out of things to talk about.

This post has been edited by Caesar on 1st October 2010 20:14

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Is PJ

Great topic.

Like Caesar I definitely still love this place, but I feel I've run out of things to say, and that my interests have changed a great deal. I'm a different person than I was when I joined. I seldom play video games of any sort these days, and more often than not my face is planted in a novel or journal article for school.

I think that its the fact that the games covered are not as popular as when the site was created. Not that there is anything wrong with them (I prefer this exact set of games to any of the releases since) but the problem is getting some of the graphic happy crowd of gamers now into the older games.

I have a 12 year old step son who goes on and on about the xbox 360 graphics and crap and he is a fan of the metal gear series on there. I explained to him about the original one on the NES and I actually went and bought it for him to play. After about 45 minutes he stopped and said it looks horrible and he would rather go back to his pretty game.

Its this concept/train of thought that keeps the younger generation of gamers from experiencing what, I suspect, most of the people here grew up on. And as such, the crowd of new visitors to this site would be limited to people looking for info on the games if they restart playing them (which is actually what brought me here myself).

Y'know I've been wondering the same thing. The obvious thing to do would be to make more guides for the recent FF games, like IX, X, XII and XIII. More people would use this site because more popular games would be covered.

@Aeris-Logan: Ouch, that must have dug deep. Seriously though, I don't think it's "kids today," I think it's just his age. I'm probably not old enough to be commenting, but I can say for sure at my high school, the people who will love a game solely because it is pretty are in a minority. Give it a few years, and he'll want substance over style in his free time.

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"When we think there's no hope left, we keep looking until we find some!" - Claire Farron

I think that we, as a group, should really try to work with this.

Certainly, part of the issue is that the games covered here are no longer new. But I don’t think that in itself should be such a massive limiter. Even though the site is built around an old game, that really is only the start of what the site is, I think. Really, CoN has been just as much not about FF as the past as it has been: the games just happen to be the connecting factor. In chat, for instance, FF is mentioned only rarely.

Speaking of, I think a lot of members aren't aware of chat. Several members almost exclusively appear in chat, and a lot of members don’t go on chat at all. I think that it’d be nice to try to bridge the gap here; to try to get new faces into chat and especially to get some of the members in chat to frequent the forums a bit more.

On that topic, Del S had a couple ideas for livening up the forums and making them a bit more casual that I hope he shares here.

As for new guides, as nice as it’d be, that involves quite a bit of work. In addition, I’m not really sure that that would bring in much extra traffic in the first place. I’ve definitely been thinking about that a lot myself, though, whether or not it would help bring in new blood. If done correctly, and by this I mean advertised in some way as well as accompanied with a set of new topics in the forums, it might be able to produce some sustained growth. I’m just not sure.

Like Caesar said, a lot of peoples' interests have sorta migrated. In light of what I said at the start of this post, I don’t see why the site can’t morph more in that direction: towards maintaining the community not just for the sake of the games, but for the sake of the community. By this I mean people like Caesar: people who love the community and love the site but feel like they’ve run out of things to talk about. What kind of things can we do to push to appeal to people who feel that way, to help keep them here?

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Currently Playing : Final Fantasy V
Most Recently Beat : Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Favorite Game : Final Fantasy X

The newest CoNcast is up! Have a listen!

I was also thinking that CoN has slowed down lately. The only area where big discussion threads seem to pick up is General Topics, and even there it has been slow, usually requiring some hot button topic to inspire double digit posts.

Part of it might be that people have redefining priorities, sure, I buy that. But I think it might also stem from the fact that this is ostensibly a video game forum where video games are rarely discussed. I've been gaming more recently, but I get the sense that most people here don't game as much as they used to and come here for FF nostalgia and general conversation. When I post about a hot new game in General Gaming Chat, there will be maybe 6 or 7 total posts, if that. Also, all the games covered here are over a decade old. At some point you run out of stuff to talk about.

Again, that's why most of my posts are in General Topics. This is a great community ostensibly built around Final Fantasy, which clearly drew us all to this place. But what kept us here is the depth of intelligent conversation. Maybe CoN needs to be remarketed as something more than just an FF fan site? I haven't got the slightest idea how to do that, I'm just throwing the idea out for consideration.

With respect to chat, I've tried chat a few times. Most of the time I was there the conversation was really slow. Maybe I was just coming in at wrong times or, I dunno, maybe it just wasn't my thing, but after a few attempts I just decided that the forums are more my thing. It would be nice to see more activity here from regular members.

Something else to consider, has the level of posting really slowed down? I seem to remember these same complaints being raised periodically, that people don't post enough, but that was always explained as a result of the tight moderation which creates the atmosphere we enjoy. Maybe it just ebbs and flows and we are just in an ebb right now. Josh?

I don't really have an answer. For me, it just comes down to being very busy. However, I would rather have a slower but more mature forum like this rather than a fast paced forums with people who are lame!

I love this forum! I try to come on whenever I can, but to be honest I am very busy. Sometimes in my rush of school, running, and getting hw done I forget about good ol' CoN. I try to contribute positively, but in some threads I just don't have an opinion and that's because I've played 2/3 of the FF games and only a few other non SE games. Plus, I am just not as knowledgeable as everyone here. I also have very little time for gaming now, unfortunately.

I have chatted a few times before, but that was a year or two ago. I liked it, but I just felt it wasn't for me.

This post has been edited by Harlequin on 2nd October 2010 13:48

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I say what I wanna say, I play how I wanna play.

Well, I agree with some of the stuff on here, such as Death Penalty's suggestion that we push more for a focus on community. And yes, I would definitely agree that this has become kind of a niche community.

People make time for something if it offers two things: something that interests them, and something that engages them. Things get old and therefore less interesting, and when those old things are handled/presented by a community the same way for years, there is less and less opportunity to really engage in that community because, as Death Penalty mentioned, you eventually feel like you've run out of things to talk about.

So yeah, I would say the reason we're all here is that we're still interested, but the reason we don't post all the time and stuff is that there's only an occasional conversation on the forum or piece of fanart that will engage us. Now, before I go further, I'd like to say this isn't necessarily a bad thing. As we've all become older, there are many important things for us to do other than sit around our PCs and post all day, and if you want to maintain a mature and intelligent atmosphere here, then of course a focus on quality over quantity is imperative. I've personally been pretty happy just 'checking in' every day or so to see if any interesting threads have 'blossomed' here, 'cause it matches how much I'm willing to engage on a daily basis.

Another thing that I'd like to say is that I really respect the site's creator for not 'selling out' to a whole mess of modern games. This is a site for a few treasures, and I think that makes it special and more focused. I feel like I have more in common with the people here because of that, and I feel like the site itself is now part of what I treasure about these games. Plus, and let me preface this by saying I don't think all modern games are crappy (or the people that play them), I like the old saying 'manure attracts only flies', in that even though covering more games might attract more people, maybe a significant number of those kinds of people aren't the kind of people we want to attract in the first place. Plus, we've been adding new games here and there for years, and I think there comes a point where we need to simply find a fresh solution.

Alright, well, now that I've completely ruined your day by further describing the problem and then crapping all over the only solution that's been proposed so far, you're probably wondering if I'm going to say anything truly helpful.

Well, I do have one suggestion, and I'll try to keep brainstorming other things. You know what would be fun is to have a type of thread in the game forums that would be locked with an image key. This image key would be a partially obscured screenshot from some point in the game. The way to unlock the thread would be to post a complete screenshot of that screen, which would unlock the thread, allowing you to post in the thread discussing that point in the game, or contribute your own partially obscured screenshot of that point in the game as an alternative image key for that thread. There could be such a thread for each major point in each of the games, and they could be ordered chronologically in order of appearance in the game.

This would result in a sort of mix between a book club and an easter egg hunt, where people could walk through the games together, share your progress with others, and have a wide variety of discussions that stay fresh with each new personally unlocked thread without people feeling the need for spoilers or rolling their eyes at a thread that's been done too many times. It might be cool to 'clear out' these threads periodically too, moving ancient posts to an archive so that people aren't always coming into a 20-page thread.

There are two challenges to this solution:

First, how would one validate the screenshots? Well, a good programmer would easily be able to keep track of which posted screenshots go with each partially obscured screenshot, so it would be fairly easy to create a script that would allow a moderator to flip through the images, with a key image displayed next to a posted screenshot, and buttons saying 'match' and 'no match', and it would refresh and bring up the next posted screenshot and its image key with each button click, so validation would only take a second or two per image for the moderators when they get around to it.

Second, it would be a lot of work to establish all the major points in all the games here. But this could become a community effort, and then the task itself would become something that would be interesting and engaging. Maybe we could establish a temporary 'construction forum' where people can post threads about a point in a game, assign it an ordinal number to keep track of when it appears in the game, and see if others agree that it should be included.

This post has been edited by finalalias on 2nd October 2010 19:42

This may or may not be what you are looking for, but I wanted to start my post by giving you a perspective on why I joined (which was.....wow, really? Almost 9 years ago now?!).

I stumbled across this site years before I even became a member, when I would type FF6-related information into the search engine. The forums allowed free access to guests, and there was a lot of cool information in it, as well as interesting discussions. Quite frankly, I could've gotten every answer I possibly needed from a gamefaq (and often did), but they aren't any more fun beyond "Do X to defeat boss Y and solve puzzle Z". So I skulked around on the site for about a year, post-stalking and looking at all the cool ideas being tossed back and forth until I finally became a member. CoN certainly looked different back then, and didn't have as many topics for discussion as it does today, but what truly stood out was the community. It was lively, engaging, and had nothing but high hopes ahead of it.

I fall into the category that Death Penalty has described as an almost exclusive CoN chatroom user. I post when I feel I have something meaningful to contribute, but spend most of my time talking in chat and reading posts rather than replying in them. To me, the "main" categories the forums discuss (FF1, FF4, FF5, FF6, FF7, etc) can only hold my interest for so long, and most of my posts eventually were in the general topics forum. Why is this? Because I can't talk for 8 years about how great a villain Kefka is, or which Final Fantasy has the best main character or what the saddest character death was (Answer: Erdrick's grave in Elfland in FF1). I just can't, and I'm pretty sure most of you can't either.

Even so, the caves is more than just the games it covers. The staff have made the greatest commitment to the forums that I have ever seen (without looking like self-righteous snobs) in keeping it friendly and free of those who would abuse it, blatantly advertise on it, or make it unfriendly to newcomers.

Which brings me to CoN chat. This has been the single greatest aspect of this site to date, and has kept me coming back to talk it up with the great people of CoN (I know I've taken several breaks....sorry). It's free, the people talk about so much more than just the games, and there's enough different personalities around to really talk about anything. I know that in no small way, each of you contribute to the community as a whole, but if you want to have even more of a fun time on this site and haven't gotten to it, you owe it to yourself to stop in some time and have a chat with some of the people who have made this site really great (and you get to see just how crazy R51 really is, in a good way!). It might not always be exploding with activity, but that gives you the perfect opportunity to introduce yourselves and start up a great conversation! It's like the 7th grade dance. Nobody was dancing because...well, nobody else was dancing. So get on up and put yourselves out there! You'll be surprised. I know I was when I first discovered it.

So how do we get more community activity, in both the forums and chat? I hope I'm not the only one in saying I *never* want to see this kind of post as a CoN birthday post again. . I want to see more of an attitude that CoN is only getting bigger, awesomer, and better. But it is up to the entire community to make it happen. And as someone else earlier pointed out, the games currently covered aren't getting any younger.

I believe a part of the answer, which is obvious to almost everybody and definitely apparent to Josh, is expanded game coverage. I really thought the Chrono Trigger coverage was a great step in the right direction since it showed CoN doesn't *have* to stick to the FF formula, and can draw a crowd with whatever games they set their sights on. Because while it is the coverage that may land someone here, it is the community that keeps them here. I would love for CoN's biggest problem to be worrying about bloating the forums with all of the coverage they have, both in and out of Final Fantasy, with old game coverage, and with new. Yes, we all play Final Fantasy in some variation, but I'm 100% sure all of us also play a lot of other games, and games that are much newer.

I'm willing to work for it. I'm not skilled with HTML but I've helped with game coverage in the past, and would love the opportunity to assist again with whatever I can. And while I may not be skilled in HTML, maybe some of you are (although like me you don't have to be!), and with each and every game coverage launched on this site, R51 and his staff have always called upon the community to assist in the workload and creating a positive experience for everyone to enjoy.

As I've said, maybe some people think expanding the coverage is a lot of work for information that can already be found elsewhere. But the forums thrive based on sharing common interest for the games on the site, and it is from there that a true community builds (and hopefully expands into CoN chat ). You guys are awesome, and the staff's dedication to forum friendliness is unsurpassed. With new game coverage, more like-minded people will come in and notice what a great community this really is.

This post has been edited by TheEvilEye on 3rd October 2010 01:21

This sort of sentiment is sort of confusing to me. Understandable, but a bit confusing because I frequent communities that are very active, and CoN is by far the slowest, yet one of my favorite communities. I never really minded it, but now that it's being discussed, I think the trait that most of the other faster/active communities I visit share is that activity is 'self refreshing' in a sense.

Very active places don't usually have a problem with its memberbase getting older and moving on, because there are usually a lot of new people coming in and posting and being active to replace them, like a great big turnover, and some of those people stay to become very valuable members.

With that said, this site gets a lot of activity and hits, but the forum is very, very slow relative to that. Why is that? I think there's not a lot of effort in inviting people over to invest and participate in the community. The forums and chat are just kinda 'there' with the hope that people will register. Sure, there's a case of 'if you build it they will come', but sometimes you have to make a venture attractive and noticeable for it to work. Actively invite people over to post and enjoy ourselves!

I can say I'm certainly not feeling I'm moving on or whatever; I'm 23 years old and I love video games, and all the games that this site covers, as much as I did before. And guess what, there are still scores of people that never played the classic games! What about them? I think we should reach out to those people.

Reach out and touch someone, guys.


EDIT: Also, in the current era of video games, there are a lot, and I mean a lot of video game fans who are displeased and disillusioned with the current state of RPGs/JRPGs, and they're turning to the older ones instead. Capitalize on that.

This post has been edited by Tryscal The Great on 3rd October 2010 04:14

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//www.rpgmaker.net/
We make games. Period.

TheEvilEye. You said it brother/sister. If we are to provide coverage of a newer FF game to bring in new blood, which should it be? Also advertising is a must. I blatantly advertise CoN on my Wiki userpage but I'm not a very prominent user. So If you're an old and respected user on any other site, perhaps you could advertise the site? This might turn into a terrible idea but, hey, nothing ventured nothing gained, right?

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Since I advertise CoN there I think it's only fair that I advertise The Wiki here.

Quote (Tryscal The Great @ 3rd October 2010 04:04)

In the current era of video games, there are a lot, and I mean a lot of video game fans who are displeased and disillusioned with the current state of RPGs/JRPGs, and they're turning to the older ones instead. Capitalize on that.

I agree with this statement. I recently joined a retro gamers club that was mostly started because of the fact that people are wanting to revert back to the games they actually enjoyed playing. Maybe Ill convince some of them to start reading here.

Unfortunately, it's hard to advertise one forum on another one. I've had trouble with that in the past (on this very site lolz). Most forums don't look kindly on other sites being advertised, and the ones that do probably have enough people that the kind of people that would be attracted are...unsatisfactory. Also, Josh and the other staff over the years have gotten a million people saying they wanted newer games, but they've held out, whether because they don't like those games or because they simply aren't interested in doing the work to get all the information for games they're not too keen on anyway. If he thought he could've gotten away with it, Josh might've just kept CoN as FF6 and FF4.

I hesitate to say, however, that it's inherently a bad thing that CoN is slower than the other, bigger forums. On this forum 95% of posts are intelligent, thought-out, and has been mentioned quite often on this forum, the community works well together. There have to be more people like us out there, though. More people who are willing to type like this (insted of liek thi$), who enjoy Final Fantasy (or at least know enough about it that they could contribute, I suppose), and who are looking for a good forum. I suppose I'm coming full circle, then, in asking: how do we advertise? Specifically, how do we advertise to people we actually want here?

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Squenix games completed:

FFIII
FFIV
FFVI
FFVII
FFIX
FFX
FF Tactics: Advance 2
Chrono Trigger
Dragon Quest 8
Dragon Quest 11
Super Mario RPG

Like Tryscal said, this is also my favorite forum, despite also being the slowest one that I frequent.

I joined the site on my birthday in 2003, after staying up all night probably playing some game or wasting time on the internet in my tiny little dorm single. I still remember the way my desk faced, lol. And that a few hours later, I stepped onto a plane back home...

The site certainly had quite a bit of action back then, around 2003-2005. I think it had more than it does now, though that may or may not be due to my being a bit too used to how freakishly fast the TV Tropes fora move.

I don't think this site is ever going to be boiling over with action, partly because, even if we do cover a very well-known series, we focus on the older games, and as long as they're not putting out more remakes, there really isn't all that much to talk about repeatedly. (Only a select few creative works get the honor of being "stuff that people can discuss endlessly; such works include the Bible and Neon Genesis Evangelion, and are typically rather controversial.) Plus, we're not one of the big FF sites that really caters to what is now the majority fanbase--animé-watching, fanfic-writing, character-shipping fans who likely focus more on the nwere games anyway. But still, the games we cover are great games, and gamers will slowly continue to trickle in as they discover the games--even if no remakes were ever made.

I do apologize for having not hung out here for a couple or few years, until not too long ago. I was mainly busy with lots of various things, such as school, job-hunting, and other personal projects.

Noting that the fora aren't very fast, though, sometimes I try to make a point of writing new threads about stuff here, rather than doing so in another forum or medium (such as LiveJournal). This applies ESPECIALLY if I want a productive, serious conversation about a topic--topic derails, for example, are against the (strictly-enforced) rules here, while they are standard fare for threads at TV Tropes. And yes, the rules here are among the stricter among internet fora, but I think that it really adds to the quality of discussion. There are a few times when I think that having a shitposting thread or forum may be nice, such as is the case at the similar site SerenesForest.net (which has highly detailed databases of information like we do, but for the Fire Emblem games, as well as an attached forum), or that we could just restrict avatars to non-GIF images within a certain size (which is actually how TVT does it), but overall I'm quite satisfied with how this place is run.

I think that this place basically has a core community, with some new members coming and going, and occasional joins or partings from said core community. What we should do is to focus on expanding this core community. I don't have ideas off the top of my head for doing so, other than simply "getting the word out".

Though I have to some extent already been doing that, by mentioning this place a number of times in the TV Tropes fora.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 4th October 2010 06:05

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

I've hesitated posting here, for two reasons.

#1, Is there a problem? Yeah, Youtube gets more comments, but have you read them? They're pretty much the lowest level of humanity. And other forums aren't too much better by comparison. Is the forum slow? By whose definition of slow? Any time I click on the site, I'm pretty much guaranteed to see a couple more posts.

#2, Why do we need to be faster/bigger/etc.? This doesn't really make sense to me. This site has 4,500 members, and just added a new person yesterday. Why do we have to have 5,000? 10,000? What if it were just 20? What is the point of having more and more, at a faster rate? This is a site basically devoted to a subset of an already cult-like industry. Sure, we could turn this into a Miley Cyrus fansite and have millions of viewers...

Okay, sorry, late, punchy, but my point is, I'm not using the tired saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." No, I don't believe that. Can the site be better? Can we do more? Sure, and definitely. But I just don't think it's too big of a deal, and I definitely don't think it's an issue of site traffic.

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Praise Be To Helix!

Well, the one thing I think we could do with the site, is to become THE most complete, most thorough, most well-researched website for information on FFI, FFIV, FFV, FFVI, FFVII, FFT, and Chrono Trigger. And it's probably the easiest thing to do, compared to substantially changing the fora.

Our main competition in this regard would be GameFAQs, the FF Compendium or whatever that site is called (which itself has lots of very detailed information on every game), and the FF Wiki on Wikia.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 4th October 2010 15:26)

Well, the one thing I think we could do with the site, is to become THE most complete, most thorough, most well-researched website for information on FFI, FFIV, FFV, FFVI, FFVII, FFT, and Chrono Trigger. And it's probably the easiest thing to do, compared to substantially changing the fora.

Our main competition in this regard would be GameFAQs, the FF Compendium or whatever that site is called (which itself has lots of very detailed information on every game), and the FF Wiki on Wikia.

Ha, I've used all three of those for information! I had no idea I was sleeping with the enemy, lol.

But it's interesting that you bring up FF Wiki, because maybe we could increase the content that users add. Let's say, a couple of users that love a particular game could work on that game's page (like me a FFVI).

Also this site made me think, what if we devised a system like that, so that users can rank their favorite games? Just a thought.

But it's going to take us chipping in. I'll do what I can.

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Praise Be To Helix!

Quote

Well, the one thing I think we could do with the site, is to become THE  most complete, most thorough, most well-researched website for information on FFI, FFIV, FFV, FFVI, FFVII, FFT, and Chrono Trigger. And it's probably the easiest thing to do, compared to substantially changing the fora.

Call Dijibriel.

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//www.rpgmaker.net/
We make games. Period.

I have been a dedicated poster since joining back in 2004, but I guess as interests change (I'm still a huge FF nut and play the series quite often) and my interests expand (Being in a relationship for 7 months last year ate up time and money) and my love for College Football and NFL keeps rising as it has been since 2006 (I have loved football for a long time, but interest in stats have skyrocketed since 2007 for me.

I guess its just me changing, but I'm a FF fan for life.

I don't mean to put down what's been said here because a lot of people who post more often than I do are talking about how they love CoN, but it sort of wasn't the point. As Glenn Magus Harvey said we do have sort of a core community here that discusses everything with one another, but what we need is a way to expand that community. We want to share CoN with the world, not just the ~25 active and ~100 semi-active members we have here. So, to reiterate: we love CoN, we know we love CoN, how do we make other people love CoN?

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Squenix games completed:

FFIII
FFIV
FFVI
FFVII
FFIX
FFX
FF Tactics: Advance 2
Chrono Trigger
Dragon Quest 8
Dragon Quest 11
Super Mario RPG

I'll admit that I joined this site back when I was on an FF binge a few years back, and I'm not as much of an FF series fan as I was back then. Or JRPGs in general, especially after I discovered the castletroid genre a year or two after joining this site.

That said, I have lately been feeling more like playing some JRPGs. Probably not FF, but getting to talk about the FF games never hurts, and helps keep them on my mind. And for that matter, it's possible that we'll get a bit of action on that front for the site--for example, I'm thinking that we users might want to put together a chart of all the character, spell, item, and location names for the many different versions of FFIV, and get that posted on CoN somewhere. That would be an extremely awesome addition in my opinion.

I think we should start thinking of the site as a wiki, to be honest. The important characteristic of wikis that I'm talking about here is that they welcome and encourage contributions from all sorts of users. Now I'm not saying that this site should adopt wiki software; if anything it might be a good thing that we have the staff as information gatekeepers. But I think we should all feel free to contribute content to the site--and I don't just mean fanfiction or fanart.

What do y'all mods think of this? And what do you think about us users putting together names charts for FFIV?

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 7th October 2010 15:50)

I'll admit that I joined this site back when I was on an FF binge a few years back, and I'm not as much of an FF series fan as I was back then. Or JRPGs in general, especially after I discovered the castletroid genre a year or two after joining this site.

I think that kind of stuff happens to all of us. When I joined, it was the other way around. I had just finished FFVI, and had not played the other ones. And now I've gotten deeply into the series. I think it's just natural for the site to have lulls. I don't think there's a problem with people forgetting about these games, because new people discover them every day.

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Praise Be To Helix!

Well, it took me over two weeks to get enough time to properly respond here, so I suppose maybe that's some sort of telltale sign about the state of the state, right there. But only if my input really carries more weight than anyone else's, which outside of the comments and suggestions forum, I don't feel it should. Anyway, cheers to those of you who have weighed in on the matter, it's appreciated. The community does mean a lot to the site, though we have always stated that the number one goal was to provide quality content - a goal with which we have always struggled, at least from time to time.

With regards to the notion of changing interests, well, that's going to happen, sadly. It happens to all of us; I myself haven't played a new Final Fantasy game since X (and I didn't play that until 2007!). All of us, of all ages, though it seems to grow more as members get older, have divided time and divided interests. So, if you find that you're posting more on other forums than here, well, I can't blame you for that. However, a lot of people have called out the quality of discussion at CoN, so here's a thought on that score: if you really feel that you have more things to talk about, why not try to cross-post them here as well as your other forum? Yeah, you may not get 200 responses, but you might be surprised what you have in common with others here that you'd never have known.

I also see the comment come up a bit that the forums have started to peter out due to our selection of game coverage. You folks might be right about that. However, I think that simply adding forums for those games doesn't necessarily do anything, and it's long been our hope that we could engender entertaining conversation without whoring ourselves out to every new game that comes around. How many threads have we had about FF13? Do you really suppose we would have had buckets more had we set up a forum just for that? Honestly, my hunch is no, but it could be different. There are so many variables at play that there's really no way to venture a guess; it's all just conjecture. I will say that I've seen a lot of Final Fantasy sites come and go, though, and I doubt there are many that really are growing their forum community by leaps and bounds these days. It's not just us in our malaise. That doesn't make me particularly happy, but misery won't turn down company.

The most important thing is to keep up the quality, as finalalias said directly and others have implied. Of course, there can be no quality without some quantity, and in order to have quantity at all we do need to create some more enthusiasm for posting. I know that we probably scare some folks a bit with our "draconian" moderation style, though it's really not that bad, and it's much looser than it was five or six years ago, back when we had maximum forum participation. However, the flip side to that is something I read just last night that you can now find in my signature: "To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." Believe me, we have the ability to create a lot of crap. And I think Mr. Kelly has a great point. At the times when we were busiest, we obviously had a lot more posts. I know, right? Logic strikes again. Not all of those posts were brilliant, and that certainly applies to my posts as well. However, with all those posts, we had more gems - it just makes sense. So, if you really want to see more good posts, post more. We're not actually ogres here! As long as your post doesn't explicitly violate the rules, you shouldn't be afraid to post it. It's the only way that conversation can happen.

Tryscal brings up an interesting point regarding the marketing of the site. I honestly don't like marketing the site very much, and I do like the "if you build it, they will come" mentality. I think a lot of that has direct correllation to the fact that my education is in Advertising and I just didn't like it very much. We don't care for members who sign up here just to talk about their own site, so why should we think doing the same thing on other folks' site isn't beneath us? I wish I had time to belong to a variety of other communities that might share interests with CoN, but I just don't personally. We've always relied on our members to spread the Gospel of CoN, because you guys are the ones out there everywhere else. It's another thing where I'll try to do what I can to keep building the community, but if you really respect the community, to not do the same yourself is lazy. Besides, people will believe it more if you're out there saying, "well, when I want to talk with really clever people, I go to CoN" as opposed to me saying the same thing. Why would you take at face value the founder of a site telling you how great it is? Do you believe Steve Jobs when he tells you how awesome every release of iTunes is? If you have ideas about how to do this, specifically, anyone out there, let's talk about it.

In terms of chat, that's kind of a different beast. It has ebbs and flows, though the ebbs are smaller than they used to be. I don't worry so much about that, and I don't really expect everyone to love the idea of real-time chat with a group. To each their own. I will say that chat can be a lot of fun if you're patient with it, and the reason it's slow is because people aren't patient with it. I can't start up conversation with everyone at all hours myself, though I am in there all day at work, by and large. I see tons of people come in, stay for five seconds, and then leave, never to return. People should be willing to stick around and idle for a while. Maybe read what happens when they're not looking. It might be entertaining, and it's quite often incredibly stupid, which is great if you ask me.

Before I wrap up, just a few more callouts to individual points:

Quote (GMH)

Well, the one thing I think we could do with the site, is to become THE most complete, most thorough, most well-researched website for information on FFI, FFIV, FFV, FFVI, FFVII, FFT, and Chrono Trigger. And it's probably the easiest thing to do, compared to substantially changing the fora.

Aside from the massive amount of time involved to do all those things...

Quote (BlitzSage)

Ha, I've used all three of those for information! I had no idea I was sleeping with the enemy, lol.

For what it's worth, I want to make it clear that there really are no "competitor" sites with which I have a problem. As evidenced by this thread, I feel like CoN still has a je ne sais quoi that other sites want to match but really can't. I'd like to think that we have a bit of an advantage due to our state of being run by actual web services professionals, but maybe I just think that to make myself feel better about my career. Maybe that advantage can help us continue to survive as others fail - who knows?

Quote (Tryscal)

Call Dijibriel.

Done long before this thread. While he's no longer staff as he once was, he's chipping in as much as he can based upon his significant knowledge.

Quote (Quad)

Glenn Magus Harvey said we do have sort of a core community here that discusses everything with one another, but what we need is a way to expand that community. We want to share CoN with the world, not just the ~25 active and ~100 semi-active members we have here.

Yep, I agree with this. An active community is not made solely by people responding to every post in a thread. There needs to be some breadth as well as depth. Our number of members might sound impressive on the surface (but probably not), but it's the activity that makes them more than a number.

Quote (GMH)

I think we should start thinking of the site as a wiki, to be honest. The important characteristic of wikis that I'm talking about here is that they welcome and encourage contributions from all sorts of users. Now I'm not saying that this site should adopt wiki software; if anything it might be a good thing that we have the staff as information gatekeepers. But I think we should all feel free to contribute content to the site--and I don't just mean fanfiction or fanart.

I beg for content. I constantly ask for help from the community in developing and improving content. It's not THAT hard for me to write code around it once I have it, but it's not coming in until I beat up individuals to help collate it. Ask anyone who has helped with the site, I try to hold people's hands for as long as it takes to get them involved. But I simply don't have time to ask every single user individually. If you want to offer up some work, go for it. If it doesn't fit with the overarching vision of the site, we'll politely decline; if it works, we'll take it. With regards to that specific suggestion, I haven't really considered it yet but will in the appropriate thread.

BlitzSage turned to the old maxim, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." But that's the thing - it's a little broken, to say the least, at least in terms of forum traffic. While starting to write this post last night (at 37k feet in an airplane, no less - airline wifi is pretty sweet) I got the urge to actually put some metrics to the thought that the forums have gotten much slower. A half hour of writing SQL later (and having Tiddles doublecheck it this morning), I had my answer, and it wasn't good. It's depressing enough that I'm not actually going to share it explicitly in this thread, though I might be willing to discuss it a bit more privately and I'll say here that the phrase "order of magnitude" isn't completely out of the ballpark for the conversation. For me, the bottom line is that we all have some work to do if we want the forums to remain active and trafficked. My role is to build the content that funnels people in to the conversation, even though for whatever reason, there just aren't as many resources available to us to outdo some of the other sites out there. Your role is to keep contributing either to the content or the discussion. It's the same as it ever was.

If you have ideas to share to increase community interaction, let me know! I really can't promise a timely response, but I can guarantee that I'll read it. You can PM me, email me, find me in chat, whatever. I feel good when people actually bother to care.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Quote (Rangers51 @ 16th October 2010 14:02)

BlitzSage turned to the old maxim, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." But that's the thing - it's a little broken, to say the least, at least in terms of forum traffic.

I feel good when people actually bother to care.

I did, and quite frankly, I'm disgusted at myself. If it ain't broke, don't fix it? No, that's not the way I think, I mean, I'm a progressive. My entire life motto is "if it's broke then fix it, and if it ain't broke, make it better." This site clearly has something that makes it endearing, and we have to find what that is and expand it, bring it to gamers everywhere.

Let's look at it from a business perspective. Think of CoN as a brand. We know that we have something special, otherwise this brand would've died off long ago. So, the point of our "business" should be to expand the name. It can be small, member-to-member advertising. That's important, but it's not enough. We need something bigger, like Youtube. I think that work can be done to expand CoN's Youtube page.We can find people who are talented and/or funny and have funny videos. We could also do walkthroughs on there.

Also, and these are all ideas that are probably too out-there, out-of-reach, or maybe I'm just out of my mind, but if great discussions are what we do, then why don't we do them: on Youtube? ... Okay, I'm not sure how, but if that's what our brand is, then let's market it, you know?

This post has been edited by BlitzSage on 16th October 2010 19:05

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Praise Be To Helix!

I would like to first start by saying that I am already confident that CoN has the best game coverage available anywhere online for the games it covers. I've nosed around some of the other big FF sites and nothing they have can really compete. And, to add, there are ways that we are still improving them to keep them even more securely ahead of anything else on the internet.

I would like to encourage people to share their other interests here. Like R51 said, you may not have a lot of responses. But you may have a few responses from a couple people that are also very interested: and who knows, that could be more worthwhile. MMB's novel, for instance, is really awesome. I know that something like that requires quite a bit more time to read, but I would suggest people to check it out. We've always been a more mature community: if there's an outside interest that you'd like to share it's most likely that there'll be someone else here who shares it, or at least can speak intellegently on the matter.

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Currently Playing : Final Fantasy V
Most Recently Beat : Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Favorite Game : Final Fantasy X

The newest CoNcast is up! Have a listen!

I think that we have the most comprehensive and comprehensively organized data on the games we cover. There may be a few omissions here and there, but the important thing about our site is not just the amount of info we have, but how well it's organized--including all the cross-references. We're not like a GameFAQs document with everything listed in a huge block of plain text.

I say we should build on this strength.

I think that something that Djibriel may be able to help us out with, as well as other people's guides (such as Terii Senshi's), is listing algorithms and other highly detailed and/or technical data. Serenes Forest does this for the Fire Emblem games. Granted, algorithm data might be more relevant (not to mention simpler) for the FE series than for the FF series, but that site--which similarly has detailed information about a bunch of games in a series--may be a useful example to draw ideas from.

I know that few sites have algorithm data on them, so I think this is a relatively unserved niche for our site to expand into.

Similarly, I suggested the version name comparison chart because I don't see such charts very often and as a gamer I often find myself having to look up alternate names for the same things when looking around guides on the internet.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Death Penalty @ 16th October 2010 19:55)

MMB's novel, for instance, is really awesome. I know that something like that requires quite a bit more time to read, but I would suggest people to check it out.

Wow, thanks for the plug Death Penalty.

I appreciate your support, and it would be nice if more people commented. For anyone who is interested, I posted chapters 3 and 4.

Besides "more game coverage" I'm not sure what else to recommend. At times, I do feel that the overmodding stifles conversation. Yet, it is also that same attitude that keeps the conversations so streamlined and intelligent. Not sure I can really suggest loosening the forum rules on that basis.

But I am sorry to hear that forum traffic has slowed down, Josh. It did seem noticeable but it's more disheartening that it's been statistically verified. These forums have my favorite for awhile now and it would be nice to increase activity, while maintaining the standards we have come to know and love. Let me know if I can help. I'm so busy in my own life right now that I can't volunteer to be a moderator or anything, but I'll at least try to make more discussion topics!

Quote (Smash Genesis @ 1st October 2010 22:56)

Y'know I've been wondering the same thing. The obvious thing to do would be to make more guides for the recent FF games, like IX, X, XII and XIII. More people would use this site because more popular games would be covered.

I have to agree with Smash Genesis here. There's a whole heap of Final Fantasies not covered here. A person may not join here because the Final Fantasy that they like is not here. Say they like FF X the most, they'll see the forums, read through the comments to see what the official members and mods are like, and then they'll see that the Final Fantasy that they like and enjoy the most isn't here and most of the interest is lost. It's kind of unfair that somebody's favourite Final Fantasy isn't being covered.

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Currently playing Chrono Trigger !!
Currently looking forward to Don't Know.

Quote (ZidaneTribal @ 19th October 2010 03:08)

Quote (Smash Genesis @ 1st October 2010 22:56)

Y'know I've been wondering the same thing. The obvious thing to do would be to make more guides for the recent FF games, like IX, X, XII and XIII. More people would use this site because more popular games would be covered.

I have to agree with Smash Genesis here. There's a whole heap of Final Fantasies not covered here. A person may not join here because the Final Fantasy that they like is not here. Say they like FF X the most, they'll see the forums, read through the comments to see what the official members and mods are like, and then they'll see that the Final Fantasy that they like and enjoy the most isn't here and most of the interest is lost. It's kind of unfair that somebody's favourite Final Fantasy isn't being covered.

If we're being honest, I have to agree. Of the four years I've been here, that's the one question I've seen people ask the most. There are dozens of different forum topics just about the question, "when are you gonna cover [insert game]?" I know it's a lot of work to add another game, but honestly, that's one of the main problems. I think the site should work to eventually cover all of the main series they can, at least. That would allow people to come here for any game they play, thus making this the place to come for walkthroughs, and then great conversation.

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Praise Be To Helix!