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DarthPhysicist



Joined: Jun 14, 2015

Post   Posted: Dec 30, 2017 - 23:02 Reply with quote Back to top

MattDakka wrote:

BB2 is not a better implementation of the game but it has over our client the edge of the shiny graphics and a more appealing look, and it steals some coaches for sure.
So, I don't think that improving a bit the site and the client would attract many more users, honestly, but of course would not be a negative thing.

Yeah and improving the client even with resources is not without the risk of Cyanide storming in here and shutting it down. It is given a pass for what it is. Make it "better"/more appealing, and that math changes.

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JackassRampant



Joined: Feb 26, 2011

Post   Posted: Dec 30, 2017 - 23:27 Reply with quote Back to top

I sincerely believe that if Christer puts in a random player name generator and they try to shut him down, it won't be over the name generator.

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Gozer_the_Gozerian



Joined: May 30, 2015

Post   Posted: Dec 31, 2017 - 02:53 Reply with quote Back to top

FUMBBL isn't growing because entropy increases. It's all just part of the impending heat death of the universe, man.
Nextflux



Joined: Jan 22, 2008

Post   Posted: Dec 31, 2017 - 03:26 Reply with quote Back to top

Gozer_the_Gozerian wrote:
FUMBBL isn't growing because entropy increases. It's all just part of the impending heat death of the universe, man.

words of wisdom? Very Happy
But your wrong, man.

Any site that isnt growing, that you want to grow only need to adapt to the new times, maybe its fumbbl's time now?
Bloodbowl is a popular game, though fumbbl can't compete with cyanide on graphics, just on other things like organization, many tournaments, better spectator environment, better community, what not.
its clear that fummbl need to change in order to grow, it isnt sexy enough at the moment, make it sexy and people will come running.
DarthPhysicist



Joined: Jun 14, 2015

Post   Posted: Dec 31, 2017 - 05:10 Reply with quote Back to top

JackassRampant wrote:
I sincerely believe that if Christer puts in a random player name generator and they try to shut him down, it won't be over the name generator.

No but a random player name generator is not going to grow the site. Changes that do grow the site would start to get attention. A name generator is simply a quality of life issue. Kind of... meh.

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koadah



Joined: Mar 30, 2005

Post   Posted: Dec 31, 2017 - 09:48 Reply with quote Back to top

DarthPhysicist wrote:
JackassRampant wrote:
I sincerely believe that if Christer puts in a random player name generator and they try to shut him down, it won't be over the name generator.

No but a random player name generator is not going to grow the site. Changes that do grow the site would start to get attention. A name generator is simply a quality of life issue. Kind of... meh.


Single click team creation will increase the number of games played. No one knows by how much. Maybe not much initially, but over the longer term it will make using the site easier and keep people playing here.

If anything, I think a massive advertising campaign would be more likely to get up GW's nose. I don't think that Fumbbl is much of the treat to Cyanide. I would guess that a lot of Fumbblers own the Cyanide game. Whether they play it or not. Wink

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Rbthma



Joined: Jan 14, 2009

Post   Posted: Dec 31, 2017 - 18:14 Reply with quote Back to top

From what I see in the 145, single click team creation may help somewhat.

Each tournament, I tend to see a fair number of teams applied that are in [R] or [B] and the teams need to be in [L]eague of course. These tend to be new coaches to the site, and I'll send out a PM to them recommending to reapply with a League team. Almost always, they don't reapply and most of those that I check on at a later date seem to have not come back. I'm assuming they were wanting a match right away kind of thing?

These are all good ideas btw!
Roland



Joined: May 12, 2004

Post   Posted: Dec 31, 2017 - 23:33 Reply with quote Back to top

a better client with higher resolution would do a lot. Sure it's still not 3D, but that's not needed to play this game...
Nightbird



Joined: Aug 02, 2003

Post   Posted: Jan 01, 2018 - 00:32 Reply with quote Back to top

Roland wrote:
a better client with higher resolution would do a lot. Sure it's still not 3D, but that's not needed to play this game...
Scalable client window would add to this nicely.

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JellyBelly



Joined: Jul 08, 2009

Post   Posted: Jan 04, 2018 - 20:13 Reply with quote Back to top

DarthPhysicist wrote:
MattDakka wrote:

BB2 is not a better implementation of the game but it has over our client the edge of the shiny graphics and a more appealing look, and it steals some coaches for sure.
So, I don't think that improving a bit the site and the client would attract many more users, honestly, but of course would not be a negative thing.

Yeah and improving the client even with resources is not without the risk of Cyanide storming in here and shutting it down. It is given a pass for what it is. Make it "better"/more appealing, and that math changes.


I don't agree that we should not try to grow the userbase, out of fear of coming under more scrutiny from GW/Cyanide. Around three times as many games were being played on FUMBBL in 2007/2008. I recall one instance where GW lawyers sent Christer a cease & desist letter (regarding use of GW copyrighted material), but they were hardly all over us and didn't make any effort to shut the site down.

https://fumbbl.com/p/stats

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DarthPhysicist



Joined: Jun 14, 2015

Post   Posted: Jan 04, 2018 - 20:28 Reply with quote Back to top

JellyBelly wrote:
I don't agree that we should not try to grow the userbase, out of fear of coming under more scrutiny from GW/Cyanide.


I'm not saying that people shouldn't try and attract new players; what I'm saying is that it is important how that is accomplished. Quality of life is easily defensible and wouldn't draw Cyanide's attention. I think where things get hazy is when the game experience itself gets "better", which I think to most people means better graphics. A scalable interface would be huge for me personally, and that kind of stuff doesn't change the game that Cyanide and GW have tacitly expressed they are "okay" with due to inaction to this point. The rub would be if the site fundamentally changed. If suddenly the game had even smooth 2D graphics with a slicker interface, I'm not so sure Cyanide and GW give that a pass.

Stuff like team name generators and stuff are all good; not trying to detract from that. But the question as to what grows the user base is pretty non-trivial if your asking what will grow it for certain. I don't see how that happens without a change to the game client. New people come to the site regularly (as pointed out, BB2 players wander in) yet the site continues to lose players (if you look at the games played stats). Let's face it; forum based communities are shrinking in general. It's not the social medium of choice anymore. It's kept alive by niche groups of like minded and dedicated hobbyists.

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Lorebass



Joined: Jun 25, 2010

Post   Posted: Jan 04, 2018 - 21:02
FUMBBL Staff
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Years back when cyanide first came out I got it and trounced some new players online. I know of at least 2 that I played that moved over here because of the friendly banter we had in our games. (and yes I crushed them all!!!! (with goblins!!))
koadah



Joined: Mar 30, 2005

Post   Posted: Jan 04, 2018 - 22:17 Reply with quote Back to top

Lorebass wrote:
Years back when cyanide first came out I got it and trounced some new players online. I know of at least 2 that I played that moved over here because of the friendly banter we had in our games. (and yes I crushed them all!!!! (with goblins!!))


Life can be hard for a new coach. That is partly why so many don't stick.

New Fumbbl coaches are more likely to try reading the rule book IMO.

That doesn't mean that getting your first game should be a obstacle course to weed out the lightweights.

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DarthPhysicist



Joined: Jun 14, 2015

Post   Posted: Jan 04, 2018 - 23:03 Reply with quote Back to top

koadah wrote:

That doesn't mean that getting your first game should be a obstacle course to weed out the lightweights.

+1

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almic85



Joined: May 25, 2009

Post   Posted: Jan 04, 2018 - 23:28 Reply with quote Back to top

JellyBelly wrote:


https://fumbbl.com/p/stats


I think this statistics page when correlated with major announcements in the B.B. gaming world gives you a pretty good idea of why FUMBBL is slowly diminishing.

Basically our success and decline relate to when other formats of the game were announced and released.

Q3-07 cyanide announce BB release and our numbers grow up to Q1-08 to our highest peak from 60,000-75,000.
Q2-08 cyanide release B.B. trailer and our numbers take their biggest hit ever before stabilising at 60,000 until Q2-2009.
Q2-09 Cyanide relates B.B. and FUMBBL loses half its user base to an unfinished game in 6 months.
Q2-10 cyanide release BBLE and FUMBBL drops to 21,000 within 6 months. We recover to 32,000
Q3-10 to Q2-13 we keep steady between 30,000-43,000 games played (there’s a peak in Q1-13 that doesn’t line up with Cyanide announcements).
Q3-13 cyanide announce BB2. FUMBBL user base drops to between 26,000-32,000 until...
Q3-15 cyanide release BB2 and we drop to 26,000 Games played for a month.
Q4-15 GW announce return of specialist games and Bloodbowl. We get a boost in numbers to 37,000 for a quarter before dropping back down to 25,000 in 6 months.
Q3-17 cyanide release BB2LE. FUMBBL drops to lowest ever 19,000 Games played. League overtakes black box for Games played.

From the above you can see that any new announcement for Bloodbowl gives us a temporary boost in Games played before people move onto the new format. We recoup some of this players to the shiny new game, but only ever get back a percentage of the players that leave.

I love FUMBBL but the truth is for most players if given the choice between shiny new graphics and our 2d client players will choose the shiny new graphics UNLESS there is a very good reason not to.

Our best cards to play to get new and retain existing players are:
1/ We are FREE. This only works if the player has not already invested in buying the cyanide product.

2/ We are a BETTER and more involved and active community. This needs to be pushed when players first sign up. We need to make sure new and returning players are getting directed to the new IRC channels and to the appropriate forum topics.

3/ we have significantly less disconnects and a process in place for this when it occurs. The disconnect procedure is not well advertised on the site and finding the disconnect procedures from scratch is near impossible unless you know the link or what subsection of a subsection of the help area you need to look in. (The support ticket function for reporting a dropped game should also be a selection as soon as you hit support, not hidden under “report a rules violation”).

I know the above paragraph is going to get a bit of heat from people on here, but really for an issue that is a MAJOR complaint for people coming from other online formats we should only make new players have to click once on a big red button to report a disconnect or rage quit. IT is currently SEVEN clicks if accessed from the help section just to get to the creat new support ticket form and FOUR clicks if you know the shortest possible way from the home screen.

4/ we have NAF approved tournaments. For TT players this is the real kicker to get them over the “it’s not face to face” hump. Ideally we should have one of these for each major playing area each year (America, Europe, Asia, Whole world) to minimise availability issues.

On top of the above items the only other controversial thin I would suggest is to kill blackbox and make coaches go back to manually scheduling games. Since the Box division started all it has really done is divide the “competitive” community from Ranked, encouraged the extreme use of MinMaxing, and increased the ratio of bash heavy teams to agility teams.

Cyanide is always going to beat us at an auto scheduled TV matched environment simply because of the size of our user base va their user base. Our user base just isn’t really big enough to warrant at least 2x 2hour games every 15 minutes, especially in off peak times. We need to focus on community interaction in order to promote growth and retention of players.

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