Spoiler: TL,DR There are constant complaints about balance, bugs, low population, and much more that people believe are the biggest issues limiting Pox and bringing on its 'inevitable' end. Personally i believe that we need MORE community involvement and thusly a dedicated team/person to create content for the game. These will drum up excitement, motivate the playerbase, welcome new players, and grow a more spirit of community in the game. Alot of efforts like this have already been executed by Moles, d4rklord, Sep, DmR and many others. However, they were few and far between. That inconsistency doesn't keep the interest and they are so scattered its hard to keep track of them. A dedicated forum spot would help consolidate and encourage the community to participate. Support from DoG with rewards for contest and events would also keep the playerbase motivated and eager to stay active in the community. There are constant nerf cries and buff requests littering the forums. Alot of old players feeling dissatisfied and betrayed with the current state of the game and they often cite 'balance' as a huge part of their discontent. Well, 'balance' is subjective first a foremost. Being that the community is divided by Wrath and Protectorate, then factions and then even further by 'skill level' (or at least ranking), and there are even other smaller groups; it's nearly impossible to please everyone. We all have our version of 'balance'. If we ever get Wrath and Prot to feel on even footing, then we'll still have faction complaints. Once the faction's are agreed as equal we'll still have the lower ranked people complaining that the meta stuff is too powerful and limits deck diversity for competitive play (which may teeter into debate about rune acquisition and meta rune rarity). If by some miracle we manage to adjust these factors to make everyone generally happy we'll still have complaints about certain abilities being too strong, or range having too much advantage over melee, or spells being too strong, or summons, or relics,etc... For everything solved it opens up further scrutiny at things that were otherwise eclipsed or tolerated before. From my tenure as a Pox player I am well aware that this community will never be silenced and can rarely be satisfied. So to scapegoat balance as the reason the game is 'failing' seems a bit contrived to me. I mean, even after we happen upon the divine nature of everything being right with the world and Pox becoming completely 'balanced'. THEN WHAT? The game will still have bugs, it will still have a low population, there still will be limited 'motivators' in terms of tourney's, events, etc..; there will still be all the OTHER issues i see complained about so much in the forums. So balance won't instantly 'revive' Pox for all of those who believe its a dead horse at the moment. Truth is that even if Pox was 'balanced' it would still be 'boring'. Another complaint i hear is that the game isn't very interesting anymore and that under the Chaos of Corpse the game at least was 'fun'. Sure alot of stuff was 'broken' and grossly overpowered but the runes had tons of abilities and impact and it made playing them meaningful and entertaining. It made them even that more desirable aswell. Some would argue that Corpse Era made runes and merchandise far more easier to sell since people wanted that new OP rune so much. Others would say that it was the opposite because they felt their purchases didn't hold much value after the purchase, and they also felt they shouldn't have to continue to buy new runes to stay competitive. That was the other big thing during the Corpse Era, runes came out powerful and interesting but a couple of months later there was something shinier and new that was a must have for your BG. A few cycles later and that 'cool' powerful rune you bought back when is sitting in your shoebox. Some people enjoyed this model, although the loudest people at the time were those that hated it and believed it abused the community and wanted Pox to return to a more strategic game rather than a drag and drop draw win game. When DoG eventually got the game back off its 'death bed' they heard these cries and implemented what they thought would appease the these requests. Possibly they missed the mark, but they did listen and were trying to do what they thought the community wanted at the time. They say "be careful what you wish for". With limited man power they diligently worked through the abuse and doubt. They persevered and found encouragement from the few that pushed them on and hoped for a better tomorrow. It never seemed to be enough although we've made great strides in the right direction. Sok came to shoulder the burden and has done a great job perking things back up and showing authority in rune design and balance. There is transparency and discussion and feedback. Yet, still there is angst. Moles and Wraith have came aboard and are giving even more presence to the forums, more insight into the future and the thought process behind current implementations and design goals, and have brought even more concerns back to Senshu and Gedden and Sok from the community. Yet still. How does the game become more interesting? What else is needed? What event's will drum up activity and interest? From my perspective i think that from what started as Gedden and Senshu, now Sok, Moles, Wraith there is still a very small team. Im sure there are more than the few i know by name but even still the man power is low. I don't know their finances, budget, future goals, so i can't hope to direct their spending. However, i feel what is missing from Pox and what would help push it forward is more man power. Well, no duh. Sure more man power would help if it was something affordable and made sense. The fact that it is lacking serves to prove that it isn't affordable and doesn't make sense at the moment. I don't believe that the man power should be used for coding, community managers, art, design, etc. None of that. The thing i think we need in Pox is a social media/content manager. We need someone to make: * Rune of the day * Weekly rune discussion * Theme overview and BG building * Understanding the meta blog * Weekly rune combo * BG of the month * Scheduled tournaments hosted by the manager and co-hosted by respected (or at least entertaining) community members * Rune giveaways * Lore spotlight * Art spotlight * Rune creation spotlight/contest * Single Player/Tutorial walkthroughs * Player spotlights (d4arklord) * Q n A (Moles) Some of these things have already been done and even loosely supported. However, because they were always player ran they weren't very consistent. Lack of consistency loses interest. Some of them have also inevitably stopped. More importantly they are too scattered. There needs to be a HUB. A place on the forums that consolidates all these things and is promoted on the site and client. Sep, DmR, Moles, d4rklord,etc.... there are too many to name that have actually shouldered this effort in the past. Ideally a small team would be great for keeping this content fresh and consistent. Hiring someone on to do all this would probably be more cost efficient than getting a whole team. I think hiring someone would be the more legit way and more motivated way to ensure this is done right. However, alternatively you could select a team of passionate poxers who have proven to care for the game and have some experience in doing these things already and you could support them with opening that forum spot for them and giving them limited mod powers to post content and also backing their event's with product (shards, gold, credits, runes, etc) as appropriate rewards and incentive. You could pay these poxers in credits or runes aswell. Open line of communication, community involvement, consistent events and chance at rewards. It gives the community something to look forward to, something to expect each week. This is what we need in Pox in my opinion. More involvement, more events, more community. Balance, bugs, population, etc... all valid concerns but none will change overnight and there is alot of time and effort that needs to be invested to even begin to satisfy the majority. In the meantime while we are waiting for the 'pipeline' to deliver people are just whining and trolling on the forums and parading their discontent around. I doubt there is much to be done to stop that all together. However i believe with more content and a campaign launched to implement some of the things i suggested would atleast give the dedicated poxers something to participate in other than the poison plaguing the forums and would give a refreshing change to the forums. New players trying the game out that happen to stumble upon these forums wouldn't be immediately put off by all the vile negativity fllooding General Discussion. They'd be met, welcomed, and intrigued by the content (spotlights, lore, theme overview and bgs, contests, events, upcoming streamed match,etc). It gives them an opportunity to immediately find out about the game, what it has to offer, and assimilate into the community.
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(To the TLDR version) This has been done several times on diferent ways by diferent people. It's worthless when the green doesn't have the man power to bring discussed changes to the actual game so things can be tested out. All we can do is have some talk in the forums, and expect in a month or two the changes favour more or less what we want to play.
Seems like some good ideas. Most have been proposed before, but they are worth mentioning again. I doubt they'll gain much traction though without some sort of support from doggy. I'll try to write some Bane Shift about pox some time
I agree with you, DoG has to promote more rewards, tournaments ect. Yesterday we had that 4th of July tournament and I noticed an increase in the population of pox and it was constant throughout most the day, my guild was more active than usual and it was pretty fun playing a tournament that gives these rewards for everyone. Lots of people failed to see Curpz was just bleeding money out of this game and eventually the game actually would have died. Btw whatever happened to meta reports I actually liked looking at them.
To those saying that this has been proposed before, are yall referring to the need for more events, tourneys, etc... ? My main thing here more than anything i suppose is the need for a Content Manager or whatever title you'd like to give them. Also the New Forum Space dedicated to these things. Someone who is dedicated and responsible for creating Theme Analysis/Overview and BG design, who holds daily rune discussion and weekly tips, who hosts tournaments and events, etc... I feel we need a dedicated 'blogger' or a team that works on these types of things to drum up interest and give new players an easing into the game and all it has to offer. There are ALOT of people who have done things like different of the starred points i put up. Thing is alot of them are lost in the forums and most have stopped producing content. If nothing else comes from this i hope discussion for a 'Content' Tab on the Forums to post threads about : Theme Overview and BG Building : (Stitched, Kanen, Draksar, Vashal, etc) Lore Spotlight Art Spotlight Player Spotlight Rune of the Day Rune of the Week (Challenge players to put an obscure rune in their BG's that is rarely played and take a screenshot of them using it and give feedback) Rune Idea of the Week ( Pick a handful of your favorite rune ideas in a 7day period and place links up for the community to vote for their favorite then give prizes) There is ALOT of room for new content and just the consolidation of content we already have into a new Forum space that would foster a better community and motivate people to get involved. Ofcourse we need DoG support for this. I just believe that this is MORE of the problem than the other issues people constantly complain about.
" Once everything is balanced" A lot of people worry about things they will never have to actually deal with. You are one of these people.
I would give it some time before asking the community for things like this. The game must be atractive for people other than the actual scarce playerbase. How would you convice someone else to play Poxnora? Whatever you say, the game is the game and must be appealing to him, no matter how many community content there are on this forums.
Ultimately we are dealing with a really old game and a really old player base, it is inevitable that some boredom will set in. It doesn't matter if how much better return of the Jedi is than the upcoming star wars film, if we have seen return of the Jedi a thousand times we won't pay to see it at the cinema. Imo if pox is to survive it needs to concentrate not just on pleasing the oldies, but to fresh faces, and not just on returning to its glory days but providing something new. Simplistic, I realise, but some innovation would be welcome.
Regardless of how you currently feel about the game, who wouldn't support more community interaction? +1, m8. I'd love to see Pox flourish, and I think many of those ideas are steps in that direction.
i kinda feel thats what a community manager or team or something is for. it was good for the playerbase to make the game and the veteran players more personable. but i can agree that something more official and consistent would be good to have more leeway for newer players to get into the game.
1, What this game needs the most is a larger playerbase. 2, If they aren't advertising it, or haven't got more publicity is probably because they can't. 3, there is not enough money to hire more people that could implement desired changes. The game can't progress. 4, return to 1.
ATTENTION! The biggest problem was the release on steam whem the clint was bugged as hell. So that and other factors just made ppl downvote Poxnora on steam. The steam was the best chance to pox get alive, but 1 month after almost every steam player stoped playing which is pretty sad.
