Johnny Rockets wrote:Clamping down on the farmers, elimination of flame wars, ban happy mods, and fucking idiot whiners who quit when they can't f*ck around with impunity.
So many reasons really. The core population still has a big enough pool to grow. The game play is as good if not better, so that keeps me around. The social aspect of it? Well you can find a large group of opinionated assholes anywhere on the net.
$25.00 is a great deal for the game play offered. The mistake is when you think it buys you a free ticket to be a douche on the forums.
Jr
I think the first point you made is spot on. Combine in that the lack of support of clans and i think those are the major reasons for the decline in paying members. When you look at it from a bang for your buck perspective clans need some relatively simple updates and have a lot of paying members. They also seem to be what keeps people here for extended periods of time as people develop friendships with a group of people. This is not to say that other features don't keep people here as well, just that clans seem to be one of the more common reasons.
I also think its important to note that the real issue to me seems that members sign up and quit. I know at one point i myself was one of those people. I made an account looking to play a few speed games of risk found out I couldn't do that and left. The design of the site is also not particularly friendly to new members and their ability to navigate through it and become part of the community. I'm not sure what the solution is, but something needs to be done to encourage people to stay past their first visit and become longstanding members of the site.
Lastly while most of you don't have an appreciation for this, lack really doesn't listen to the moderators. There are countless examples of this but the one that comes most to mind is the sites clickies. When he was designing them he asked for input and I wrote a post outlining why the sites clickies should not be disigned differently from the add-on ones. The basic points of the post were that
1. The site clickes would be way more complicated to use and learn
2. Players could not be as fast on site clickies (important for freestyle)
3. They were designed way to much to try to prevent mistakes instead of allowing a nice and fluent use of clicks/keys to perform a turn.
Now i'm not saying that he had to take my suggestions but he pretty clearly didn't take any of them into consideration. To my knowledge he didn't even respond to my post saying why he chose to go another way with his version of clickies. This is also the same reason for many other moderators getting fed up. JP for example tried for years to get updates for clans and eventually gave up due to lack not doing anything for clans.
I think the overall business model of CC is very interesting. When you really look at it CC is a great value for $25 but for the members that truly add to the community and make the site a more enjoyable experience dedicate a lot of time to being on this site. This caters to a small demographic just based on the fact that many don't have the time be here every day to take their turns. I think the site needs to realize that their success is based largely on their ability to convert someone signing up to a premium membership...something they at this time are not doing very well and keeping premium members here and entertained for a few years. Sure that sounds so simple and vague that many of you might make fun of me for stating the obvious but when we look at the updates over the years not a single one encourages people to stay past their first visit at a rate higher than before. They are missing half of the formula to their success entirely. We can debate all day if the updates have contributed to encouraging people to stay, in my opinion they have not but at least for this factor it is debatable. There have been a ton of suggestions over the years with the goal of keeping people who sign up here longer, maybe lack will finally implement one of them and god willing ask the community to help him decide how to accomplish this goal. There are some brilliant members who would jump at the ability to help, yet for some reason lack has yet to take advantage of this.
Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2012 12:59 am
<--- Johnny Rockets? 