Community

While I'm still covered in work at the moment, I expect to have time from next week to start looking for options to sustain and grow this forum.  I'm stickying this thread as a place for anyone who has suggestions to write in.

One suggestion that was floated by both Wolfpack and myself is to eliminate the "Seasons."  For one, they no longer have the significance they once did, since there are no prizes to award (everyone has custom avatars, and custom titles apparently can't be easily added anymore).  Furthermore,  they emphasize too much the idea that there is a time to be here and for games to sart.  This implies that someone arriving in the middle of the season is unable to join in the fun for upwards of 6 months.

Another thing that I think would help would be the reintroduction of short-run games.  The most famous in the past was 3CM (3 Card Magic, often called 3CB/3 Card Blind on other forums).   The advantage of games like this is that they're always running.  There are numerous variants (many can be seen on the mtgsalvation forums).  The difficulty, of course, is that these type of games tend to require a host with a lot of time on his or her hands, especially as the number of players increases.  It would be great if we could find other games that could also fill this kind of role.  In the past, I know we've even run games with very little Magic connection, like Magic Mao and even Connect 4.  Of course, staying closer to Magic is more likely to draw in an audience on this forum, but we can allow some flexibility.

Please post any other thoughts that you have!

Jul 21, 2010 -- 1:42AM, Qwyrxian wrote:

3CM: A player judged game can certainly work; still needs a GM to resolve disputes, but that is a much easier job.  Plus I imagine we'll be starting with fewer people.  One thing that we do that is pretty different from other places I've seen is the rotating banned list, as well as allowing players to choose the next round's format.

3CM would be a lovely idea to bring back. We'll have to did up the old thread to find the formats list as I seem to have misplaced the master text file I had though.

Jul 21, 2010 -- 1:42AM, Qwyrxian wrote:

Puzzles are great.  I've personally never enjoyed "guessing" games, but I think you're right that they're a good way to bring people back to the forum on a regular basis.

Achievements: I don't have (nor have I ever used) an XBOX 360, but I think I know what you mean based on online games with achievements.  I'm not quite sure how that would work in this instance...do you have any examples?

I also would like some examples of achievements as I am struggling to come up with many practical ones off the top of my head. In any event this can come later if we use it, although I am partial to the idea.

Jul 21, 2010 -- 1:42AM, Qwyrxian wrote:

---
Before I start any sort of advertising (like posting on other forums, or putting MPFG into my sig), I think it would be good to at least line up some people to host some initial games.  Right now, I can comfortably host up to 2 more 6-8 player games.  I think it's good to have a variety of play styles (limited, constructed, wacky, non-Magic, puzzles, etc.).  While I think we can easily do away with seasons (possibly replacing them with some other form of long-term scoring system), it would be good to have a "grand opening" of sorts. 

I think it's pretty clear we're getting rid of the season system, in fact it's gone now, no more need to worry about it, what we need from here (and are getting, thanks guys) are ideas of new scoring systems that can be jumped into at any time and don't run on set schedules. In any event we definately need to get some games going, some people to join said games, and some sort of fun machine where everyone that enters leaves feeling they've had fun.....okay maybe not the fun machine but the other comments still stand.

I'm thinking that we should make one big push to try to get more players.  To do that, we need games ready to be run.  In order to have time to prepare, we could set our "Grand Re-Opening" a while from now, say, September 1 (tentative date).   Can I get an idea of how many people here may be willing to host games/puzzles, and of what type? 

I myself, am willing to host 2 new 6-8 player games (2 player games in a tournament format, I mean, not multiplayer games).  I may possibly (but not certainly) be willing to organize 3CM, with the caveat that the main match checking will be done by the players--my role will be to organize info, keep running scores, collect decks, etc.