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Encourage forum activity.

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Acaeus Vinn

Acaeus Vinn

Posts: 19 Bronze Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
The forums can be an excellent means of learning about the game, finding help, or general fun. The forums can also reflect the game itself. As I type this, there's 5 active users on the forum.

To change this, I'd like to propose some simple changes and/or additions, and I'll keep them short.

1. more Forum profile customization - I think that adding more customization to a forum profile would be a fascinating change. The option to add additional details about us, our characters, etc. It seems bare bones right now.

2. Forum Avatar customization - the RS3/normal runescape players don't really need to worry about this one, but OSRS players could have an option to select from a selection of avatars at least.

3. Vanity Awards(?) - Perhaps introduce vanity items in-game for forum participants or something along those lines? Something that encourages utilization of the forums without breaking the game, know what I mean?

4. Better forum interface - Forum thread tracking, response alerts, etc, as it's difficult to track certain content .

The forums feel so empty, and I know for a fact the game isn't empty. I'd just like to see the forums reflect the games is all. John 4:20

10-Jul-2023 23:23:48

Tomato 56789
Apr Member 2022

Tomato 56789

Posts: 15,317 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
I support except for the in-game rewards. I would personally love that as well, but in-game rewards for foruming came up here on suggestions many times back before the forums died. The problem is that people will spam the hell out of forums just to get rewards. They'll just type "bump" on threads that are on the first page, type "support" or "no support" on threads without reading them, create nonsense threads with 1 actual post and 3 pages of reserved, etc. Right now on suggestions we have the luxury of (mostly) thought-out ideas that jagex mods actually see. In-game rewards would attract people filling this forum with words drawn from a hat.

Being said, sadly I can't see a forum resurrection happening. Social media is what killed the forums. This used to be where everyone went to talk about RS and engage with Jagex. That has since been replaced with Reddit and Twitter communities. I use neither but the Facebook RS community is even more active than here lol.

I will say I miss being 13 years old engaging in the absolute chaos that was the 2006 Rants forum.
Casual legacy trash of 19 years in RS, author of 6 books irl

11-Jul-2023 02:06:57

Aslon Dak

Aslon Dak

Posts: 10,543 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
I really like your first two ideas, Acaeus Vinn.

While I can appreciate what you were going for with #3, I agree with what Tomato 56789 posted above. If Jagex were to give in-game rewards for using the forums, there would be an increase in the number of idiots spamming every thread in sight with "bump" or "+1" or "lol" just to get the reward.

As for #4, I can give this one partial support. Thread tracking would certainly be useful. However, I personally have no interest in response alerts. If RandomNoob22 replies to some post I made, I'm really not all that interested in going to read the response. If I have posed a question and I would like an answer ASAP, that would be an exception. Otherwise, if it's just a discussion I will return to the thread if I am still interested, and if I have anything further to say on the topic. In any event, I would not choose to be pestered in-game by any such alerts. If they went to the message center, I would most likely ignore them.

I also completely agree the social media platforms - particularly Jagex's obsession with them - is what turned the RSOF into a ghost town. Aslon Dak: Still 'Scaping after 19 years!
You can buy XP. You can't buy experience.
"...From The 'Scape" is very nearly here.

15-Jul-2023 04:29:20

Aslon Dak

Aslon Dak

Posts: 10,543 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Original message details are unavailable.
Wish they would bring back titles under our profile pics as well I forgot y they turned them off but they were really cool
I agree. Titles were a nice little touch to our profiles.

IIRC, the forum titles got turned off some time ago as an unexpected side effect to one of the game's updates. There was a little bit of talk about possibly restoring our titles to our forum profiles, but nothing has come of it. :( Aslon Dak: Still 'Scaping after 19 years!
You can buy XP. You can't buy experience.
"...From The 'Scape" is very nearly here.

15-Jul-2023 04:38:28

SlR
Nov Member 2020

SlR

Posts: 4,378 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
I didn't know the forums existed for a very long time, if there were a way of 'advertising' it in-game I think that'd be helpful. Like how Solomons store can be accessed by that area south of the Grand Exchange, what if we could access the forums by Varrock Library?

It's a bit of a weak idea but it's an idea none-the-less.

Idea 2: Give treasure hunter cosmetics that can be displayed through the forums, for example: RGB glowing borders around our profile picture, limited edition profile pictures for those not wanting to use the photobooth in Falador. People like to show off their cosmetics.

Having a myspace / facebook type of page added to our profiles would probably go down well. I've seen people use threads on here to do 'blog posts' of what they've been up to in-world. It'd be cool if we could follow others. It'd likely mean +£ to hosting fees however. Bob says:
A bank PIN will keep your items secure.
Always check the second trade screen.
Never trade in the Wilderness!
Keep your computer keylogger-free and virus scanned.
Never give your password out to anyone.

15-Jul-2023 12:24:37 - Last edited on 15-Jul-2023 12:31:17 by SlR

WTFmybacon
Oct Member 2010

WTFmybacon

Posts: 4,202 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Original message details are unavailable.
Right now on suggestions we have the luxury of (mostly) thought-out ideas that jagex mods actually see.
To be completely honest, I don't think Jagex even looks at the suggestion sections.
At least, for the last few years, I've never seen any of the suggestions from other players actually being added to the game.
It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.

15-Jul-2023 21:16:11

Acaeus Vinn

Acaeus Vinn

Posts: 19 Bronze Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Aslon Dak said :
I really like your first two ideas, Acaeus Vinn.

While I can appreciate what you were going for with #3, I agree with what Tomato 56789 posted above. If Jagex were to give in-game rewards for using the forums, there would be an increase in the number of idiots spamming every thread in sight with "bump" or "+1" or "lol" just to get the reward.

I thought about this when I had the initial idea. Rules against spamming would play a good deterrent in most of those cases, but the reason I suggested vanity things to begin with is because, in this day and age, i honestly don't see anyone participating in anything unless there's some sort of gain involved. My hope is that as they engage in the forums, they'd come to enjoy the forum activity and do it moreso for the interactions than the vanity awards.

It's an unfortunate reality that this might not be the case, but it never hurts to hope i guess. John 4:20

15-Jul-2023 22:36:30

Jeremy C
Jun Member 2008

Jeremy C

Posts: 15,524 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
To an extent, I agree with the sentiment about encouraging players to participate in forum threads out of desire to post and not simply to unlock vanity items from post count. But I see the other side of the coin, too - it would certainly encourage players to come and interact with the forums. A percentage of which might enjoy their time here interacting with the community and make regular visits.

To what extent do we hold back out of fear that players would come and disregard the code of conduct? Incentivizing players to check out the forums is a potential way to increase awareness of the forums and encourage people to visit them more frequently. Naturally, with an influx of people, there will be an influx of rule-breaking (such as spamming), but there will also be an increase in quality posts contributing to the conversations. We have a moderation team that can address the spamming incidents and, ironically, those attempting to spam would be banned from the forums, forfeiting their opportunity to unlock anymore vanity items or titles.

Further, it would be nice if the forums were better advertised in game or if there was some kind of direct connection from one of the in-game interfaces. There could even be a floating button on the client upon which players simply need to click. I often wonder - How many players are there that may not even know the forums exist?

There are a number of little things that could be done to revitalize the forums. Jagex simply needs to see the potential value in the forums in order for that to happen.
Jeremy C

16-Jul-2023 03:26:15

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