http://www.herogame.org

Hello all,

I'm around here for 30 days now, and I think this is a funny, marvelous world.
But I also found out that there are no 700 players here, there are some 40 active heroes, and probably less players. That those players are still around, after two years means something good, but that there are so few means something bad. Since I'm GOOD, I'd like to think of how to make things better.

I made a list (well, I wrote a program to make a list) of all heroes and their data and made a selection of the active heroes. Active means, having logged on in the last 28 day, and having a longer span between birth and last login than between the last login and now.

We have the "old school":
- Ummidicio / CyberMuncola
- Ultra Mortadella
- The Superb Super Kiko
- Sprciufo
- The Wolf
- SuperMungo
- Thunder Fox
- Taisedik
They are over 600 days old and around here almost everyday.
- Super Red Giant Squirrel
- The knight who says Ni!
- Baby Seal Niki
- Vash the Stampede
- Xadhoom
- Il Razziatore
All over 500 days, mighty heroes. Over 1 year old are:
- Legato Bluesummers
- Iper Trofico
- Mo' ten chiap pett
- Nekomajin The Legend
- Tonfish SuperMaxiEroe
- Flash Gordon
- Lord Mordicchio
- Iceman
- SuperEvilRat
Over half a year old:
- The Fabulous Deskul
- Due / Zargon
- Diamonds Ice
- ArChroi
Over 1/4 year:
- Torcia Umana
- Angus Fangus
- Big Egg / Elrond the Wise / The Mighty Super Hero /The Amazing Elastic Fighter
The newcomers:
- Ashkore
- b4rt3
- The Green Lady
- The Wolve
- Double Dragon

So that's maybe 1 new player / hero per month. Well, as long as we're having a good time together, that's ok, but I think it might be more fun with some more players, don't you? Well, maybe not.

Here are some suggestions for improvement:

1) When searching for heroes to challenge for a fight, or ask to join your team, it's handy if you can see if he/she is active. It's no use inviting someone to a fight who hasn't been around for a year. And it's a bore to browse through all the heores to find a fitting match that has logged on sometime recently. Off course I can invite someone with auto-accept on, but I'd rather fight against real heroes than zombies. So it would help if you could filter on "has logged on within the last 15 days".

2) There are a zillion place to post messages, but it sounds like shouting in a deserted place. It would be nice if the place was more sociable. If I shout something, it will echo for months, that's not very inviting to have some smalltalk. I'd like to have a chatbox that only shows messages that were entered while I went online, no history. "Hey, hero X is online, let's maybe chat a bit", and when we leave, we have had some contact, that would be nice. The chatbox could be visible in all public places, like newspaper, heroes, bar, bazaar and such. While you were in a private place (team, fight, mission) there the current post-and-remember mechanism would be fine: I wan't to leave messages for heroes in my team that will log on later during the day.

3) Language: I know this place was crafted in Italy, but it being so obvious might be less inviting to other players. I notice that approximately half the players have language setting English and half have Italian. There are 1.000.000.000 people who speak or understand Mandarin chinese, 500.000.000 who speak English, the same number who speak or understand Hindi/Urdu, 400.000.000 who speak Spanish, 300.000.000 who speak Arabic, etcetera. Italian is not in the top 10. No problem, of course, perfectly legitimate to have a site that allows Italian besides English. But if you really want to appeal to the millions of players out there, you can either drop the Italian language (which I would not recommend, I think the nulti-lingual user interface is a neat feature, and it's your language), or add some more languages, maybe not Chinese or Hindi right away, so I think Spanish would be a good candidate to make this place more inviting, 400.000.000 people!

Closing remark: I did not read the whole forum, lazy, sloppy, sorry. So maybe all this is all there already, like my suggestion for introducing Gender. I just like this place, and would like to see it grow and florish. Hope to beat you all in fight real soon!

Ciao,
The Green Lady
[By the way, I'm Dutch, but don't expect to see my language implemented in the near future ;) ]

orbilin wrote:

QUOTE:
Hello all,

Hello, nice to hear your suggestions!

Yes, indeed most of players here do not play since a long time. This is quite an "old" game, but it lacks of a very "long term strategy", that's why most people leave after a while.

orbilin wrote:

QUOTE:
So it would help if you could filter on "has logged on within the last 15 days".

Good idea. I'll see what to do.

orbilin wrote:

QUOTE:
2) There are a zillion place to post messages, but it sounds like shouting in a deserted place. It would be nice if the place was more sociable. If I shout something, it will echo for months, that's not very inviting to have some smalltalk. I'd like to have a chatbox that only shows messages that were entered while I went online, no history. "Hey, hero X is online, let's maybe chat a bit", and when we leave, we have had some contact, that would be nice. The chatbox could be visible in all public places, like newspaper, heroes, bar, bazaar and such. While you were in a private place (team, fight, mission) there the current post-and-remember mechanism would be fine: I wan't to leave messages for heroes in my team that will log on later during the day.

So you suggest to extend the visibility of the shoutbox in other "public" places, removing the message system. Yes, it can be done.

orbilin wrote:

QUOTE:
3) Language: [..]

Well, it's not a bad idea, but to do so we'd need a spanish user willing to translate the site. As far as I know there aren't active users that speaks spanish... using babelfish it is not a solution

We could just advertize and then wait that a spanish user will come...

Gender it has been already requested, obviously, but it is not so easy to implement, and we are all working part-time here

QUOTE:
So it would help if you could filter on "has logged on within the last 15 days".

Actually I find myself (ab)using "passed on" heroes who have autoaccept=on for fighting practice. They have become NPC's. I wonder if one should lose the autoaccept after 6 month or so. I think of this game as multiplayer, not singleplayer, NPC's are not really needed. But given the shortage of active players of a particular strength, maybe they should stay. What do others think?

QUOTE:
So you suggest to extend the visibility of the shoutbox in other "public" places, removing the message system. Yes, it can be done.

No, that's not what I mean. The shout box is an example of a message carrier that remembers them, for all to see for the next half year. What I need is a chatbox: when a hero logs on, the chatbox that is shown is empty, or maybe displaying "(The Green Lady enters.)". Everything that any hero also present enters in the chatbox (and login/logout events) becomes visible to all heroes online, in a matter of seconds, so the page must actively poll for new content. The chatbox is not bound to a particular place.

How you could do that technically I'm not sure, if your open source toolbox does not have it in yet. You might timestamp all messages, and timestamp the login and logouts, and show all messages with timestamp equal to or higher than login time. Clear messages from the database after 24 hours, no need to keep conversations running that long, it's supposed to be chitchat, maybe discuss an open mission, when deliberating to join, that kind of thing, or off topic, just socializing. That kind of thing tends to keep people interested in coming back, a "neighbourhood cafe/bar" feeling.

orbilin wrote:

QUOTE:
No, that's not what I mean. The shout box is an example of a message carrier that remembers them, for all to see for the next half year. What I need is a chatbox: when a hero logs on, the chatbox that is shown is empty, or maybe displaying "(The Green Lady enters.)". Everything that any hero also present enters in the chatbox (and login/logout events) becomes visible to all heroes online, in a matter of seconds, so the page must actively poll for new content. The chatbox is not bound to a particular place.

That's a little bit complicated. I'm not able to do it, I can only make small patch or adjustment here and there...