Rebuilding the Forums (The "Official" Thread)

[TrainerX]

Introduction

    I think it's about time we try to get the forums active again. The site has been nearly dead for far too long now(Thanks to those who stuck around and kept the forums from dying completely). This needs to change. Why? If the forums die, the game will likely go down with it. If you've been paying attention over the past few years, you should have seen how the activity of the forums affected the development of the game. For those who haven't been here long enough, I'll explain it a little. It's pretty simple, it shouldn't take much explaining.

     If the forums are active, then the development team has higher morale. There's much more feedback, there are more people that can assist with the development, and they have more awesome people to talk to in their free time. If the forums are inactive, however, this is reversed. The team has a lower morale, because there is less feedback, less development, and it seems like everyone has lost interest at times. This is one of the reasons why the development is taking longer than planned. You may not realize this, but making something that is intended for other people to enjoy when no one seems to be interested anymore is hard.

     The dev team is still working, which is commendable, but you can't blame them for not working with as much fervor as they previously did. Besides that, some members of the team have had to leave for personal reasons. People have had to leave from the beginning, but there were always people who joined that could replace them. Now, though, nobody is joining the forums anymore. So there is no one to replace the members that left the team.

     The solution to this problem is obvious then. Very few new members are joining, and this is because the forums aren't active. So, to get new members to join, and get old members to return, we need to get the forums active.

The Purpose of This Thread

     The purpose of this thread is to get people involved with the figurative "reconstruction" of the forums. Just a few people isn't going to be enough to achieve our goal, we're going to need a lot of people if this is going to work. This thread will also be the place where people can post ideas, discuss, and ask questions about things pertaining to the reconstruction of the forums.

How Can I Help?

     Since we are just starting, our methods of making the forums active will be simple at first. I'll list a few things that can be done right away:

• Start new threads.
• Contact old members and invite them back to the forums.
• Post! If you can contribute to a thread in any way, do so.
• Advertise! Let other people know about PU. (If advertising on other forums, please don't advertise obnoxiously, and make sure the rules allow you to advertise this website. Some forums do not allow advertising or have certain restrictions in place.)

     The more threads, members, and posts there are, the more active the forums will be, and new members will want to join. Start threads about anything you think could spark conversation. Don't worry too much about your thread dying and cluttering up the forums. At this point, I don't think anyone really cares if the thread ends up with only three posts and gets locked. This doesn't mean you should go around making a ton of really useless threads. If there is a game you like to play, make a thread about it! Try to give a detailed explanation of the game and what it is, link to the main page, and try to get some conversations going. Maybe later on, you'll be able to get a clan of PU members running.

     If you know some of our older members that have left, or have their e-mail address or know some other means of contacting them, invite them back to the forums. Let them know that we're trying to get the forums active again.

     This one is pretty obvious. If you don't post, then we're can't make any progress. If you feel like you can't contribute to a conversation, see if you can get someone to explain the topic to you, or ask questions. You don't always have to know everything there is to know about a certain topic to join the conversation.

     If you have more ideas, please post them! If there's anything you think would help, let everyone else know!


     I know there are a lot of people out there that have said that they want to help with the game, but can't because they're not good at pixel art, or can't program, or they're not good at mapping, etc. If you're one of these people that wants to help the PU team, this is a way you can help. By getting the forums active again, you will be helping the team out more than you realize.




That's all I've got for now, I apologize if it's not very well written. I'm not the best at putting my thoughts into words. If you spot any errors, or have suggestions for things that could be added, don't hesitate to let me know! And, of course, if you have suggestions for things we can do to get the forums active again, or have anything to say relative to the rebuilding of the forums, please post! I will continue working on this if I think of anything that could be added.

Note: This thread is a work in progress, and will likely be that way for a while. Feel free to post anyway, the main stuff has been included.

[Triloog]

Would it perhaps also help to make some sort of advertisement for Pokémon Universe on other forums and facebookpages, Pokemon related or not?

I've tried to get some of my facebook friends to help and join this forum.
Even though I'm afraid most of my friends will not be able to contribute to this forum, perhaps it will work for others.

Edit: perhaps it's a nice idea to make a topic about why people joined Pokemon Universe in the first place?
Nostalgia sometimes helps people to starts doing certains things again.

[Roloc]

IT would also help if everyone liked our facebook page. We reveal some map concepts on there from time to time that you may not see on the forums.

[TrainerX]

Would it perhaps also help to make some sort of advertisement for Pokémon Universe on other forums and facebookpages, Pokemon related or not?

I've tried to get some of my facebook friends to help and join this forum.
Even though I'm afraid most of my friends will not be able to contribute to this forum, perhaps it will work for others.

Edit: perhaps it's a nice idea to make a topic about why people joined Pokemon Universe in the first place?
Nostalgia sometimes helps people to starts doing certains things again.

Yes, advertisements would be helpful. Just make sure that you're not being obnoxious or breaking any rules if you advertise on other forums. Some forums have rules against advertising, even in signatures.

Even if your friends won't be able to contribute to the forum, try to get them to join anyway. Many of the conversations here in the past involved things completely unrelated to Pokemon. I remember a few people who actually didn't play Pokemon that joined because a friend invited them, and stuck around because they liked the community. Actually, if I remember correctly, Mr. Dark doesn't like or play Pokemon. Urmel is a Pokemon fan, and got Mr. Dark to help with the project. I think that's how PU got started.

IT would also help if everyone liked our facebook page. We reveal some map concepts on there from time to time that you may not see on the forums.

I was aware that there was a Facebook page, but I thought it kind of died in 2012. Too bad I rarely ever use Facebook.

[Roloc]

Facebook is alive and kicking. Been doing great with it the past week.

[TrainerX]

I may actually start using Facebook just to keep an eye on PU's page. It will definitely help that people can see some progress and signs of activity.

[Tickles]

You know what, going to sticky this topic, just because. Also I am going to continue making my pokedex entries, but school is starting to take its toll (midterms are coming). Anyways, to everyone else, look forward to this weekend, as I will be doing the very first legendary pokemon entry, as well as going over the last bit of entries submitted. Feel free to keep submitting them as well, I'm just very busy.

And on the facebook page, everyone, please go there and like it, get friends to like it, get friends of friends to like it. We are going to continue to work hard for you guys.

[TrainerX]

You know what, going to sticky this topic, just because.

I feel special now :3

[TrainerX]

Alright, so now that my driver's ed class is over, I'll have more free time again. I've been thinking of ways to get the forums active again, and so far I haven't come up with much. Hopefully, now that my schedule isn't as busy, I'll be able to think of some better ideas.

Anyway, I believe I mentioned this before, but I never really went into detail. What do you guys think of having a PU community game night? This is pretty self-explanatory. Basically, we find a multiplayer game, preferably something free to play on PC (until we have more active members on the forums), let people know when we plan to have the game night a week or two ahead of time, and see what happens.

The game should probably be something with low system requirements for those who are using laptops or below-spec desktops. It should be free, and preferably something that everyone could get into and learn fairly easily. The game can still have depth of course, but it shouldn't be really hard for someone new to the game/genre to learn initially. So Team Fortress 2 would be good a good game, but League of Legends probably wouldn't be that great of a game for this. Maybe later we could have an LoL thing though, that could be cool.

So requirements for the game (initially, anyway), would be like this:

Easily accessible and free to play
Low system requirements
Small learning curve when starting out
Preferably for PC(since the majority of members probably own a PC)

So far, I'm thinking we should play Team Fortress 2 or No More Room in Hell if we actually do this. Both are free to play, and have fairly low system requirements. (For those who don't know, No More Room in Hell is a stand-alone game that uses the Source engine. It was originally a mod for some other source engine game, but I don't know for sure which one it was. It's a zombie apocalypse thing, with a great balance of realism and... arcadeyness? You get the point. Just Google it.) And of course, we should wait until people aren't as busy, as this is a busy time of year for a lot of people.

So, any thoughts or suggestions? We can go into more detail later if there's enough support for this.

[Yume Tsuki]

We also need to pinpoint the best time and day to do this. Soul had the same idea and suggested it in our guild quite some time ago, but we never executed it.

Things that you'll have to keep in mind are time zones. Not everyone lives in America. It's good to know when everyone is available. For example, the difference in time between Europe and America is about 6 hours and we even have someone from Australia on the forums.

Of course it's not possible to please everyone, but make sure a large part of the community who wants to can participate if you do so.

[Roloc]

we have about 4 people from australia, 2 from india, 1 from south africa, 5 from europe, and 2 from south america. Thats all the ones I know of. And even then most of those people arent active anymore.

Good luck, toast. Getting people together from all over like this is crazy hard. We had a hard time with our PU community tournament.

[Declan_23]

Hard, but not impossible. Alternatively, how about a multiplayer game that doesn't happen in real time? I realise this will be less exciting, but it still brings people together. For example, some of us used to play a free scrabble game that was around somewhere on the internet.

Alternatively, if we stuck with you idea, a Saturday could work quite well. 10PM GMT (My time) is 2PM in Alaska, and between 6:00 AM and 8:30AM on Sunday in Australia (Early start for you guys, sorry)

[TrainerX]

We also need to pinpoint the best time and day to do this. Soul had the same idea and suggested it in our guild quite some time ago, but we never executed it.

Things that you'll have to keep in mind are time zones. Not everyone lives in America. It's good to know when everyone is available. For example, the difference in time between Europe and America is about 6 hours and we even have someone from Australia on the forums.

Of course it's not possible to please everyone, but make sure a large part of the community who wants to can participate if you do so.

Yes, of course. I can see how that would be a problem, but we can probably find a time period at a point where a lot of people could do it. I was thinking we could do this after the school year is over, when more people have more free time. Also, I was thinking we could probably hold this game day/night over a period of more than just a couple of hours, assuming we have enough interest. This idea is for in the future, I'm hoping that after the school year is over we'll have more active members. It's not going to work very well if we only have like ten active members. It's best to plan things like this early on, although I probably brought it up much earlier than needed.

Hard, but not impossible. Alternatively, how about a multiplayer game that doesn't happen in real time? I realise this will be less exciting, but it still brings people together. For example, some of us used to play a free scrabble game that was around somewhere on the internet.

That could work too, and would probably be a better way to start this off. My idea would to work better with more members than with as few members as we have right now, but something turn-based or whatever could work well even with just a small amount of members.

we have about 4 people from australia, 2 from india, 1 from south africa, 5 from europe, and 2 from south america. Thats all the ones I know of. And even then most of those people arent active anymore.

Good luck, toast. Getting people together from all over like this is crazy hard. We had a hard time with our PU community tournament.

What about the North America? I can't be the only one left that's from the U.S.

I might post again later to expand on my ideas, but I'm too worn out right now.

[Roloc]

I left out North America because that's where most of our active members are from. 2-3 from Canada and the rest from the US.

[Humen]

woah whos from canada