Answered Do we have too many features?

[roydan]

It may be just me being used to a more bear bones version of XenForo, but with the trophies, ranks, highlights, credits, referrals, featured threads, pokes, and many username colors, I think OO has too steep of a learning curve for a newbie that is not already familiar with most of the members here.

Did we over gamify OO?

 

[Zwielicht]

Believe it or not, a lot of these features were already built into vanilla Xenforo. Trophies, featured threads, user title ranks, and the different username colours for usergroups are all just enabled by default.

Highlights, credits, stars, and referrals are all add-ons. These features are present in many other communities in their own way, but they might be new to everyone else here as, like you said, we're all used to a very barebones version of Xenforo.

I don't feel we've over gamified it yet, but I do feel we do need to make these features feel more like they're part of the forum rather than just add-ons, if you know what I mean. Like the stars, as an example. That was one that was a popular request on the other forum for years after the migration, and we're all pretty used to the idea of that. The star system here is based on a badges add-on that I adjusted to be a star system that works with trophies instead of just post count.

It does mean getting something like Sapphire Status isn't as simple as getting 100 posts and having a slightly aged account, but it does mean it discourages others from just gaming the system or inflating the post count for the sake of purchasing membership to sell. At the same time, I can acknowledge that the complication can be off-putting.

Even still, the star system feels a lot more like it's part of the forum than, let's say the credits system, which currently doesn't have much of a function here yet.

At the most, I do think we, or rather I should not add new add-ons right now because we do need to keep testing the ones we already have. I will admit that I am little excited being able to test so many of the ideas I couldn't implement for years, so I am adding things in a little fast.

I think in their present form, they're a little over-complicated, but we are also adjusting and testing things each day to balance it all out. Not all of features you see here today will be here even a month from now. A lot of this is just live testing because we're very limited on resources and funds at the moment, but it does mean everyone can give feedback on what they see.

Right now, we are trying to simplify the user post box to display less information, as right now, it looks quite cluttered and overwhelming.

If there's anything in particular you feel needs to be worked on even removed, definitely start a forum suggestions thread about it, I'm always open to making adjustments here, especially if it means taking the thought out of using different systems (again, credits is a good example of that).

 

[roydan]

I didn't mean to discourage every new idea, and I didn't mean to criticize every feature I listed. I personally really into some of them (did anyone say trophies?).
But when I try to put myself in the shoes of a newbie that just signed up and doesn't know anyone here, I think that we might be more intimidating or overwhelming than we aimed for.

Downer, out.

 

[IMGuy]

I somehow wonder there are lots of colors in the decks. And it seems hard to understand badges. But yeah I will find a way to understand.

 

[Zwielicht]

I didn't mean to discourage every new idea, and I didn't mean to criticize every feature I listed. I personally really into some of them (did anyone say trophies?).
But when I try to put myself in the shoes of a newbie that just signed up and doesn't know anyone here, I think that we might be more intimidating or overwhelming than we aimed for.

I know you didn't mean it that way.

We don't want this forum to end up like Runescape 3, where it's too complicated for new people to join it.

I think this is a really good discussion you opened up. Not just people from certain other forums, but we do need to make sure the site is not only easy to use for people who haven't signed up yet, but also inviting as well. The latter is actually why you don't see any "Black hat" statements anywhere here (I removed it from the welcome message today as well), and this came as a part of something @Rem said the other day about that term being too open to interpretation; lots of people get turned off when they see that, even if they technically are involved in that kind of way or working.

We're working right now on improving the features around the site, so we'll post an update on that once we're done. You might've even noticed that profile tooltips no longer have a dozen different stats on them and that we removed the redundant star count stat (you can just see the number of stars on profiles).

I somehow wonder there are lots of colors in the decks. And it seems hard to understand badges. But yeah I will find a way to understand.

I think we could do with streamlining the username colours here and even the current usergroups. I considered just giving Founding Members & OG Members the same username colour, as an example. I even considered combining those two usergroups into one just to keep things a little simpler.

We're still looking over our options, though. We would also need to talk to both Founding & OG members about this move as well to make sure everyone is fine with it.

 

[t2van]

Until we have collectable cute animal stickers I think keep going.

Also animated snow background for Christmas, find the eggs for easter. Other crazy shit that falls outside of my white privilege card.

I would suggest making all new features flash and animated give it a classic late 90s internet vibe with wild colours and animated gifs doing stuff.

 

[Zwielicht]

Until we have collectable cute animal stickers I think keep going.

Also animated snow background for Christmas, find the eggs for easter. Other crazy shit that falls outside of my white privilege card.

I would suggest making all new features flash and animated give it a classic late 90s internet vibe with wild colours and animated gifs doing stuff.

Don't forget, we also need to find a way to add a "pets" or Tamagotchis feature. Log in once a day to feed it and get 10 creds.

 

[t2van]

Don't forget, we also need to find a way to add a "pets" or Tamagotchis feature. Log in once a day to feed it and get 10 creds.

Doesn't the pet bit come with the myspace type profiles? I was taking photos of my cats all night...


ALL FUN aside.

If it was me

1. Put the other logo back
2. Rename credits and the dollar icon to be something else "OO Karma" or something I think?
3. Let the forum sit as it is for a while, let everyone get used to it and just have a "mega I would like thread"
4. I agree with @roydan and the points made
5. Put the focus on growth and community there's probably enough IMers on here with enough skill that could spend 5-10min a day helping this place thrive and grow with members.

Set member goals as In lets get X users, Y daily active users. Then go back to Point 2 & 3.

 

[Zwielicht]

Doesn't the pet bit come with the myspace type profiles? I was taking photos of my cats all night...

Don't give me more ideas...

1. Put the other logo back

We had the new logo being worked since last month, but if enough people preferred the AI-generated logo, someone can start a thread in the suggestions section to request the old logo. If enough people voted for it, we could just switch it back as we still have it.

2. Rename credits and the dollar icon to be something else "OO Karma" or something I think?

The dollar icon was annoying, I agree. It made the forum look like some casino site.

We just removed it from the nav bar area and put it in the menu bar for your profile when you click your username in the upper right-hand corner. It's more out of sight, out of mind for now until we decide on whether or not we should keep it.

We can rename Credits to something else. However, I don't know if karma comes across as copying Reddit or even making people think it's a rep system. We can always ask others on what they want to call it, though.

3. Let the forum sit as it is for a while, let everyone get used to it and just have a "mega I would like thread"

We're going to at least fix up what we have right now. Even though the site was live back in November 2024, we only started setting it up late last month. Part of this is that we feel like we need to rush on fixing it up for reasons I'll talk about a later point (I'll just say it's very opportune timing), but I suppose it seems like everyone is happy with where it's at currently.

4. I agree with @roydan and the points made

@roydan made some very good points!

5. Put the focus on growth and community there's probably enough IMers on here with enough skill that could spend 5-10min a day helping this place thrive and grow with members.

I think if everyone feels this is ready for this to be pushed forward, we can start focusing on that. We have some people working on that right now, and I see the referral system encouraged others to send out invites.

I like the way you've thought about this, so thank you for sharing your thoughts.

 

[Impulse]

I think a big part of why all of the features looked unwieldly was that there were too many being displayed in profiles and other areas unnecessarily.

I went through and removed the displays of a lot of these to try and improve the appearance of them. For instance, I removed "stars" from profile cards and pages because... the stars are right there. You don't need to be told how many you have.

I also removed the feedback percentage and the referral stats as they seemed to be too much. Please let me know if you think any of these should be added back for clarity.

And as @Zwielicht said, we also moved the credits feature to the profile dropdown as that seemed to be a more logical place for it.

This was really good feedback though! I had been thinking that it was all looking like too much, and what you said prompted me to take some action and try to make things at least look cleaner without straight up removing any features.