I've been playing Pox since Shattered Peaks expansion and recently taken an extended break as I've been watching and waiting on the forums for a new shift. My friends I got into the game way back then have long abandoned the game for personal reasons aswell as lack of interest. The lull between expansions and new content has been long and taxing. Many have grown restless and given up over the numerous slips and strides Pox has made of the years and only the truly resilient and hopeful have stayed aboard as they peter out ever so slowly. I'm no doomsayer and I have always had faith Pox would return to glory even through changes seemed like it would spell the end for a game so loved. I'm only prefacing with this obvious history to set up the fact that I am no newcomer and I am inquiring and suggesting with the best interests at heart and from a fairly knowledgeable position. I understand that the team is fairly small and shorthanded and as the 'State of the Game' post informed, it has to carefully prioritize and split its resources for the company to stay afloat and continue to develop this aging game. However, there are small things that could have/can be done that would have a fairly large impact on the game I believe. As I continue to check in and after these past few years that have been the most stagnant I always find it confusing as to why these things aren't being attempted. One of the huge things is Marketing; and I'm sure this has been said numerous times and seems as if I don't understand the lack of funds and manpower to appropriately do this. I also know that any one reading up to this point that is hard up on critiquing the game state would suggest that marketing wouldn't help the game as it has too many flaws to retain new players. However, I intend to tackle those issues. When I first started playing Pox it was because I believe I was playing Urban Rivalz and I saw this purple beauty on a banner that I would later come to learn was Deep Elf Firedancer. Now, I can only assume that the cost for banners like these and adspace on sites has increased quite significantly in these years. I feel the format may have also changed as I only tend to see banners on 'hub' sites such as MMOBomb, or hut, or Gamespot, etc... plus so many people use adblock these days aswell. So the cost and practicality of this in its traditional sense seems a bit detrimental. However, word of mouth marketing aswell as collabs/partnerships seem largely feasible and possibly more successful. Things like this could be getting Scion Storm, Sky Williams, Dunkey, Sssniperwolf, Trump, RealStrategyGamer, TheTacticalGmr, etc... to play the game for a video or two. Im sure the charge for them doing a cover/playthrough video wouldn't be as much as getting an ad hosted on a few websites for visibility that will probably be ignored from adblock. Those views would probably turn into instant downloads and influx of new players. Also, as I mentioned, collabs with certain games offering a few tantalizing properties up to be used as units in that game. Id imagine threat of competition, niche fanbase, and games demanding too much or seeing no value in a collab because they are so immense would definitely be obstacles and reason to not entertain this venture. Again, these things Im mentioning are also things Im just curious as to why they never happened aswell as why they can't currently happen. I feel like a game such as Shadowverse could be a good collab with Grimlic, Menalaus, Euan, etc... as deck avatars or even cards for some of the factions. Having LE runes from those crossovers (outside of lore) for the game wouldn't hurt. There are probably other up and coming steam games that could be a beneficial cross promotion opportunity. Marketing only gets the people here though and that is a science and a prayer. Beyond that they have to STAY! This is something that has been constantly addressed, tweaked, evaluated, and currently being tackled to get the most retention and player satisfaction. This is also where the heart of this post lies. Alot of this ties into marketing as these tools not only develop community and foster retention but they also motivate word of mouth marketing. COMMUNITY, now we have a great community here. I've always enjoyed the wit and the familiarity that we have. I also enjoy that we aren't very PC and overcome by the new SJW wave. We can speak freely and people have thick skin, I thoroughly enjoy that. Its one of the aspects of League of Legends community that makes me cringe. Super PC, safe, and SJW friendly to garner the most population and make the most money. I understand the hustle, smart business move. Still annoying that the world panders to the sensitive so much these days. Anyway, I digress. I bring this up because I wonder if the reason we don't do certain things is because we don't want the population to boom so much. We don't want to grow large than expected and possibly be at risk of changes like these because of the new population. Maybe we don't want to lose ourselves in being a popular product and a large community. This intimate clubhouse setting is more to our affection? I can't read the future or even begin to guess the political moves that may be made or how the game may alter if it became wildly popular. Im not sure if it would lose its charm or not. Would that be a happy sacrifice for regular content updates and more staff to constantly address bugs and balance issues (or whatever other gripes there are)? I'm not sure, and its possible we could grow plenty and nothing lost at all. Just curiosity and speculation. I don't want to down the community here, that was my purpose with the last paragraph. I want to address what I mean appropriately by saying we need a BETTER community or MORE community. The social media is severely lacking. I have heard murmurs because with the age of the game that it doesn't make that much of an impact and I'd have to passionately disagree. I possibly could understand that it may seem it isn't worth the trouble as there definitely is significant effort involved and that is another one or more people on payroll. With limited funds and a small team it may not be feasible to tackle social media as well as it should be. However, social media is a real thing and 'specialists' are getting paid quite a bit to fulfill this role as the importance is evident. I personally believe its one of the largest pieces that launched League forward as much as it did. That comparison in my mind has also disturbed me a bit over the years as we have plenty of content creators in house. YouTube is dry with only 5 videos, Twitch is bare, FB and Twitter only updated 9 times in 5months. This is very sad and disturbing and I feel is a missed opportunity and somewhat adds to the unrest. I feel there are easy ways to alleviate this and it baffles me as to why it isn't being done, inspired, and supported. I recall a game when my friends were still playing. I was a nobody as far as I was concerned. The game still allowed freely stat'd runes. I had a odd built Deep Elf Monk and I was winning this game on ST (5font). My friends were talking to me in guild chat telling me that people were watching my match and they were asking what was I doing with my Monk cuz he was built so weird. As I proceeded to win and show off my monk my friends kept informing me on what people were saying and how they were impressed by it and were gonna try it out. It was humbling and exciting to know people were watching my match. I remember back then I could go in and watch a match and a good 3-5 people could be in there and we'd chat and critique the match. The more popular players there would be 15-20 people in there watching the match and carrying on! That was such a good feeling and experience. That really felt connected and a sense of community. Honestly that is one of the things that inspired me to make this post after so long things building up. I go into matches now and beyond the fact it was hard to even tell how and where to look for people chatting I came to find no one to chat with. I mean games are often scarce as it is, the players aren't as notable as in the past, the chat is kinda wonked at the moment since lobby was removed, and there is a collaborative set of issues that have caused this to occur. Its pretty disheartening. I've been in many games with no one to speak with, or if I do /who (or whatever the thing is to see who is watching) I'd find 2 players in there maybe but they wont speak. With alot of the chatter hindered in the game and events causing watched games to be pretty much a solo endeavor there is a serious lack of community. Moles and company use to stream live viewings of games. There were and have been a few others. I recall Devilsrath often being in there chatting...with some other guy whose names escapes me right now but I think started with a 'T'. Anyway all these people who attempted this were bringing a good service. However, with lack of support and life beating them in the face I'd have to assume they tend to drop off. I believe Gnomes is currently doing solo watch commentary every now and then. Sepulcher I think also use to do some. Like I said many have done a bit but there has been a severe lack of consistency and I can't really blame them. I'd feel that this free marketing should be cultivated and encouraged. Give away free runes, make runes in honor for them in game, if you can donate to their patreon. Anything the company can do to prop them up and keep them motivated while alleviating their personal struggles that could hiccup the service. Once money stabilized and room on the team opened up I'd hire them on and give them a decent salary representative of the work and effort. Wizards of the Coast did that with The Command Zone. Supporting those openly and incentivizing who is freely marketing the game is a great way to keep interest in the game and grow it aswell. I'd love for their to be some collaboration to even set up games! Like big names will do a best of 5 on a whim and sometimes its known and will get traffic but if it was actually scheduled and promoted internally as an event then it would get alot more viewership. I feel like once a week a big game or event like that would do wonders for the community. And how simple is that! lol You just host a game and promote it, nearly no effort required by DOG! If you wanted to do more and put in that effort you could do 'scheduled impromptu' game watch nights. A day or two ahead of time just broadcast that one of you will be watching games between X and X time. During that time you will announce what games you are watching and during those games you will be doing giveaways. Sure, some will mainly only come for the giveaways but even in that you are fostering community involvement and you are creating a habit that some may indulge even beyond the incentives as they may discover they enjoy watching games. I feel this is something that has been lost and these are great ways to try and bring it back. This is just one idea of regular community events that would help motivate word of mouth and also ease the exasperation of waiting on new content or bug gripes; while also possibly bringing those BOOM players (people who only play when xpacs drop) back to see what the fuss is about. To bring this back around, these events and games could be used to fill out the Pox FB and Twitter and could also be hosted on Twitch and uploaded to YouTube. INSTANT CONTENT!! Its takes effort to upload and manage these accounts but the Content is literally effortless and I think you'd be amazed at the turn around this could have for the community. We also use to have fairly frequent QnA's during the acquisition of Pox from SOE coming to DOG. Since then they have just abruptly stopped and were forgotten. Im not sure if it was intended to only be something to help alleviate tension during the transition and thus it served its purpose. However, I feel like those QnA's were very insightful and really helped the community by providing that visibility and it showed that the creators/team cared enough to take an hr or two out and sit and come together with us. I feel like it was a huge step forward and a really good tool/event that unfortunately fell off. Again, I feel because it wasn't supported, properly incentivized, or just seen as unimportant in the scope of priority. I don't presume to know everything and I'm sure there are numbers and social science and game state that I am unaware of that informs these decisions and priorities. I'm just evaluating from my point of view being ignorant of the exact numbers and the time, funds, and labor the team has to dedicate this stuff. I also am unaware as to the value of runes. Like, I don't know if giving them away to incentivize these types of things is in someway against policy or would ruin something. These are just the things I have to assume as I ask myself, "why aren't they doing this?". Like if someone is making content for you, give them a box of the new xpac free. Is that bad?? Does that mess something up? Not sarcasm I'm legitimately curious. Similarly with Drafts. To my understanding draft can't be done because of gambling, the system worked fine in my experience. So gambling I believe only has to do with people buying tickets, not the format itself. So why can't we just get draft sign up/entry cost gold instead of tickets? Gold is free currency so it shouldn't count as gambling. At this point I feel having it in the game is more important than profiting off of it. The infrastructure is there so it shouldn't cost anything to utilize it. If you are trying to monetize drafts I feel you can just sell Gold or sell Gold boosts. Again, this is just stuff that looks obvious and like it would work from my point of view. Im not sure what behind the scenes may hinder this or that I'm ignorant to that may actually make this the impossibility it seems to have become. I have tons of ideas that I feel would benefit the game along these lines but they definitely would take a dedicated person or team to bring them about. Honestly, at least in the long run, talent aswell. Grainy videos and drab commentary with half azzed forum posts could work as we have nothing consistent currently. However, someone with a skill for editing videos, good capture card and rig to give quality video, informed charismatic personality(ies), informative and well developed/edited content on forums and social media thumbnails linking to forums. All of these would be ideal although I understand there would need to be some investment and education to get to this point. Anyway, Personally I feel that Pox more than anything else lacks CONTENT, COMMUNITY, and (social media) MARKETING. Although, we've flirted with all of these before I feel that have never really been supported, nurtured, and incentivized to have a true staying power and impact that they could.
The community moved onto Discord while the chat is in the state of disrepair. You can find all the talks there.
