What can be done to reverse the decline?

[Dukasaur]

I have also highlighted a few buttons that do nothing?

None of the buttons you've highlighted do nothing. If you want to know what they do, feel free to ask.

Also have highlighted the 'Waiting' bar? Why is it the entire lengh of the page. Seems excessive.

4
If you run in Panel mode, you can put the action bar among the right-side panels and it gets easier to take. Granted, it looks a bit excessive in non-Panel mode. Just switch to Panel mode and you can customize the screen layout very nicely.

Toggle dead literally does nothing. On this point, fortunately new users start with panel mode deactivated so dont get bombarded with the clutz of an interface immediately.

The waiting bar expands/contracts to fill the screen size. A simple method, if a bit clumsy at times, of working on multiple platforms.

Toggle dead does exactly what it says it does. It toggles dead players in or out of your stats tables. If you're in a 12-player game, but 7 of the 12 are dead, you don't want to waste your time studying the stats of the dead players. You are only interested in the stats of those players still alive. It's a huge time-saver.

[WingCmdr Ginkapo]

Extremely useful when it isnt tied to the stats table!

As I said, its literally useless.

[Dukasaur]

Extremely useful when it isnt tied to the stats table!

As I said, its literally useless.

Trolling for the sake of trolling? I just explained to you what the usefulness is.

[WingCmdr Ginkapo]

Extremely useful when it isnt tied to the stats table!

As I said, its literally useless.

Trolling for the sake of trolling? I just explained to you what the usefulness is.

To activate its usefulness you have to click 5 buttons prior. No wait, I stand by my original point, thats isnt useful.

Stop defending the site just because. For that button to be useful it has to appear with the stats table. It does nothing without the stats table. So without the stats table, it is LITERALLY USELESS.

That would be called, poor interface design.

[Dukasaur]

Extremely useful when it isnt tied to the stats table!

As I said, its literally useless.

Trolling for the sake of trolling? I just explained to you what the usefulness is.

To activate its usefulness you have to click 5 buttons prior. No wait, I stand by my original point, thats isnt useful.

Stop defending the site just because. For that button to be useful it has to appear with the stats table. It does nothing without the stats table. So without the stats table, it is LITERALLY USELESS.

That would be called, poor interface design.

You said "Toggle dead literally does nothing." I told you it does exactly what it's intended to do. If you choose not to use that function, that is certainly your right, but it's useful to those that choose to use it, and it's clearly false to say it does nothing.

show

[Ronaldinho]

All those little graphic boxes ... These need removing or subtly redesigned to not stick out like a cheap flyer in your car wiper from the local market.

Do you know why you get cheap flyers in your car wiper? Because they work! If they didn't work, they wouldn't be used. The flyers get people's attention and get them to go to the store on Sale Days or whatever. The boxes get people into the events they are advertising. If you think you know a better way to get people into the events, by all means say so, but if you think subtlety works, you're wrong. In advertising, the more garish the better. People bitch about stupid commercials all the time, but objective research proves that the stupider a commercial, the more likely it is to keep your attention. Same thing with garish banners.

I'm sorry but I completely disagree, but not on the fact that it may or may not work. They look tacky & riduculous, it gives off an air of sloppy website upkeep & a slap-dash feel. To be honest your tone has kind of made me feel like no matter what I suggest you'll jump down my throat to defend the site in its current state. If you want people to go to the events there are much nicer ways of doing it without the cheesy banners, that's my point. I work in design & I'm given you my first impression coming back to the site - It now looks cheap because of poor graphics.

I have also highlighted a few buttons that do nothing?

None of the buttons you've highlighted do nothing. If you want to know what they do, feel free to ask.

Again I don't know why you have to be so blunt but w/e. They're useless for people new to the site. Minimise the clutter, let them have those as addons for when they're more experienced.

Also have highlighted the 'Waiting' bar? Why is it the entire lengh of the page. Seems excessive.

If you run in Panel mode, you can put the action bar among the right-side panels and it gets easier to take. Granted, it looks a bit excessive in non-Panel mode. Just switch to Panel mode and you can customize the screen layout very nicely.

Panel mode is ridiculous. Nothing more than a gimic. If the screen was just designed nicely from the get go people wouldn't be put off by the clutter.

[Shannon Apple]

"In advertising, the more garish the better."

As a graphic designer, I am going to disagree. Garish = cheap. Cheap = bad quality. Bad Quality = you get what you pay for.

The reason many of those car wiper flyers look cheap and garish is because they can't afford to pay for the design. They go to their printers and say they want 5000 flyers with x info. They provide the basic layout and the printers throw it up on the correct sized template, exactly how they provided it. They won't redesign it unless you pay extra for the artwork. I've seen so much of it and on occasion I've had a client pay for artwork and provide me with their example. "I want it to look like this," but to be honest, because they are paying for it, I do try to advise them by doing one up exactly how they want. One how I would design it, and a hybrid that incorporates elements from theirs. They usually go for the 3rd option. The reason I do that is to show them the process of getting to the third option and making it look attractive. The car wiper thing is only successful in such case where people WANT cheap, bargain basement items. It's what they are expecting based on that flyer. Sometimes, those flyers are properly designed though for events and such, I've seen many and thought "hmmm that's nice."

Nice design does not = subdued. Some of the most memorable advertisements to me are some of the best designed, or craftiest ideas.

If you are trying to attract someone to play a game on a site like this, you need to do better than bargain basement, car wiper advertising. It does not work, and the declining numbers prove it. This is a completely different market than the car wiper flyer would be targeting.

To get information across effectively, everything does not have to be in boxes.

[Ronaldinho]

"In advertising, the more garish the better."

As a graphic designer, I am going to disagree. Garish = cheap. Cheap = bad quality. Bad Quality = you get what you pay for.

The reason many of those car wiper flyers look cheap and garish is because they can't afford to pay for the design. They go to their printers and say they want 5000 flyers with x info. They provide the basic layout and the printers throw it up on the correct sized template, exactly how they provided it. They won't redesign it unless you pay extra for the artwork. I've seen so much of it and on occasion I've had a client pay for artwork and provide me with their example. "I want it to look like this," but to be honest, because they are paying for it, I do try to advise them by doing one up exactly how they want. One how I would design it, and a hybrid that incorporates elements from theirs. They usually go for the 3rd option. The reason I do that is to show them the process of getting to the third option and making it look attractive. The car wiper thing is only successful in such case where people WANT cheap, bargain basement items. It's what they are expecting based on that flyer. Sometimes, those flyers are properly designed though for events and such, I've seen many and thought "hmmm that's nice."

Nice design does not = subdued. Some of the most memorable advertisements to me are some of the best designed, or craftiest ideas.

If you are trying to attract someone to play a game on a site like this, you need to do better than bargain basement, car wiper advertising. It does not work, and the declining numbers prove it. This is a completely different market than the car wiper flyer would be targeting.

To get information across effectively, everything does not have to be in boxes.

I worked in Design & Print for the best part of 6 years. Couldn't agree more, thank you.

[owenshooter]

"In advertising, the more garish the better."

As a graphic designer, I am going to disagree. Garish = cheap. Cheap = bad quality. Bad Quality = you get what you pay for.

The reason many of those car wiper flyers look cheap and garish is because they can't afford to pay for the design. They go to their printers and say they want 5000 flyers with x info. They provide the basic layout and the printers throw it up on the correct sized template, exactly how they provided it. They won't redesign it unless you pay extra for the artwork. I've seen so much of it and on occasion I've had a client pay for artwork and provide me with their example. "I want it to look like this," but to be honest, because they are paying for it, I do try to advise them by doing one up exactly how they want. One how I would design it, and a hybrid that incorporates elements from theirs. They usually go for the 3rd option. The reason I do that is to show them the process of getting to the third option and making it look attractive. The car wiper thing is only successful in such case where people WANT cheap, bargain basement items. It's what they are expecting based on that flyer. Sometimes, those flyers are properly designed though for events and such, I've seen many and thought "hmmm that's nice."

Nice design does not = subdued. Some of the most memorable advertisements to me are some of the best designed, or craftiest ideas.

If you are trying to attract someone to play a game on a site like this, you need to do better than bargain basement, car wiper advertising. It does not work, and the declining numbers prove it. This is a completely different market than the car wiper flyer would be targeting.

To get information across effectively, everything does not have to be in boxes.

I worked in Design & Print for the best part of 6 years. Couldn't agree more, thank you.

yep...-Jésus noir

[WILLIAMS5232]

if an event was good enough. advertising wouldn't be necessary. i'd say work on the event instead of the advertisement.

first 3 months premium free would probably go along way towards keeping new members.

i think guide games suck. the folks who can't keep attention for more than a few moments won't stick around anyway. i'd take them away and just let the poor fellas learn the hard way like the rest of us did.

too many bells and whistles confuse new guys. need an advanced section and a basic section. this has been recommended in one way or another for quite some time, but instead we get stars and war tokens.

auto tournaments could be great. instead they are sporadic and boggle all the settings that keep away players that may like no spoils, but then have to play x amount of rounds with spoils. a real turnoff for me it is. i like fuedal, but i don't want to play it sunny. that's just dumb. i like poly games on certain maps, but i don't want to have to play classic quad when i only like it doubles. need to stick with the gameplan a bit. at least some of the time.

[eddie2]

Dont know if it has been mentioned .

foe friend option updated. Just now players foe so they dont have to read forum posts.this is making it harder to get games. Seperate the 2 of them make it block chat or block game.

Me personally dont buy premium because how i was in clan world/FORUM. But this was a contradiction,because clan world with privs meant i still played the said players with no complaints of game play. But cannot join a public game because they didnt want to read posts.

another one would be a medal chase foe button many players foe because medal chasing. So add a option to foe from a certain setting for a certain amount of time. Meaning you are not blocked from all games with said player, and once they have you foed with the block pm from foes in place, forgetting to take you off once medal reached is a pain.

[waauw]

first 3 months premium free would probably go along way towards keeping new members.

I agree with you, but 3 months really is a lot. I think 1 month might be enough.

[nietzsche]

first 3 months premium free would probably go along way towards keeping new members.

I agree with you, but 3 months really is a lot. I think 1 month might be enough.

that would promote multi accounts.

[waauw]

first 3 months premium free would probably go along way towards keeping new members.

I agree with you, but 3 months really is a lot. I think 1 month might be enough.

that would promote multi accounts.

Fair point. Had not considered it that way.

[Shannon Apple]

One thing that could be done about the decline is to STOP being so damn precious about points. I do understand that no one wants to lose 80 points to a cook because that's ridiculous, but making sure that you'll lose 20 points max if you lose is over the top. That kind of point balancing does my head in. Just play the damn game and enjoy it for what it is.

[Ronaldinho]

@Dukasaur feel free to come back to me at some point ...

[Dukasaur]

@Dukasaur feel free to come back to me at some point ...

I don't believe there's much to be gained. You believe one thing, I believe another, and it's doubtful if either of us will change our views, so I was prepared to just leave it at that. You don't like the graphics here, I don't mind them, and we're probably not going to close that gap no matter how hard we try. But okay, if you want me to try, I will.

All those little graphic boxes ... These need removing or subtly redesigned to not stick out like a cheap flyer in your car wiper from the local market.

Do you know why you get cheap flyers in your car wiper? Because they work! If they didn't work, they wouldn't be used. The flyers get people's attention and get them to go to the store on Sale Days or whatever. The boxes get people into the events they are advertising. If you think you know a better way to get people into the events, by all means say so, but if you think subtlety works, you're wrong. In advertising, the more garish the better. People bitch about stupid commercials all the time, but objective research proves that the stupider a commercial, the more likely it is to keep your attention. Same thing with garish banners.

I'm sorry but I completely disagree, but not on the fact that it may or may not work. They look tacky & riduculous, it gives off an air of sloppy website upkeep & a slap-dash feel.

The part in red is a personal opinion that cannot be tested in any empirical sense. The part in blue is something that can be tested.

I'm not here to tell you whether your personal taste is right or wrong. That's an argument that can never end. Some people think Rembrandt is the epitome of art. Personally, I find Rembrandt crushingly dull. I've seen cowflops with brighter colours than a Rembrandt painting. Give me the happy brightness of a Bellini or a Titian over Rembrandt any day. But really, it makes no difference to anybody whether I like Titian or van Eyck, just as it makes no difference whether you do. It's a personal opinion, and there's nothing to be gained by arguing about it.

The part in blue is the only thing that we can have a productive argument about, and there I think I'm right. All the casinos and all the carnival midways in the world can't be wrong. Garish colours and bright lights are what get people off their ass and into the games.

On this site, I've run in the neighbourhood of 100 manual tournaments and 240 autotournaments, and been peripherally involved in countless others. I know how much difference various ways of promoting them make. I know from experience exactly how much difference those boxes at the top of Central Command make. But again, it doesn't really matter what you or I think about it. Neither one of us owns the site, which is why I was willing to drop and and not continue trying to change your mind about something you're probably not going to change your mind about no matter what I say.

To be honest your tone has kind of made me feel like no matter what I suggest you'll jump down my throat to defend the site in its current state.

Yeah, I love this site. I get emotional when people start slagging it, and I know I shouldn't. I'll try to tone it down a bit. But when you come here with that attitude of "It all looks like shit. Scrap the whole thing and start from scratch!" you should know that's a non-starter too.

If you want people to go to the events there are much nicer ways of doing it without the cheesy banners, that's my point. I work in design & I'm given you my first impression coming back to the site - It now looks cheap because of poor graphics.

Again, "cheap" is just a cheap shot, but more importantly, it's non-quantifiable, non-empirically-testable. Also, it's an "expert opinion" and research shows that the experts are rarely right:
[spoiler=digression]http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1998644,00.html

To read the factoids David Freedman rattles off in his book Wrong is terrifying. He begins by writing that about two-thirds of the findings published in the top medical journals are refuted within a few years. It gets worse. As much as 90% of physicians' medical knowledge has been found to be substantially or completely wrong. In fact, there is a 1 in 12 chance that a doctor's diagnosis will be so wrong that it causes the patient significant harm. And it's not just medicine. Economists have found that all studies published in economics journals are likely to be wrong. Professionally prepared tax returns are more likely to contain significant errors than self-prepared returns. Half of all newspaper articles contain at least one factual error.

[/spoiler]

I have also highlighted a few buttons that do nothing?

None of the buttons you've highlighted do nothing. If you want to know what they do, feel free to ask.

Again I don't know why you have to be so blunt but w/e. They're useless for people new to the site. Minimise the clutter, let them have those as addons for when they're more experienced.

Yeah, I wouldn't disagree with that.

If you run in Panel mode, you can put the action bar among the right-side panels and it gets easier to take. Granted, it looks a bit excessive in non-Panel mode. Just switch to Panel mode and you can customize the screen layout very nicely.

Panel mode is ridiculous. Nothing more than a gimic. If the screen was just designed nicely from the get go people wouldn't be put off by the clutter.

Far from being a gimmick, Panel mode is an essential step in CC's evolution. You were here long before me, so your experience was at a time when most people had to install an ad-on, BOB, in order to play the game. The trouble was, BOB required constant updating by volunteers to keep in synch with site updates, and with the dwindling pool of technically-minded volunteers it just wasn't happening. Panel mode took the most important BOB tools -- Map Inspect, Extended Stats, and Text Map -- and built them directly into the interface. More importantly, it gives you a huge amount of freedom for how you want the data presented. Previously you had a couple built-in choices like Side Stats or Bottom Stats, plus a few BOB-added choices like reducing map opacity, etc. Panel mode gives you all of that and more besides. Want Text Map on top and Stats on the bottom? Done. Rather have Chat on top and Log on the bottom? Done. It's not perfect, but it's a huge step forward from what we had before.

[zsp]

I'd be interested to see Ronaldinho take a few hours or a day or so and whip something up to show us a visual of how he'd like the site to look. Personally, I do see how certain parts are tacky. I'd even go so far as to comment on the random array of colors throughout the main pages of CC: Dark green, a lighter green, blue, red, gray, different shade of gray, another shade of gray, white, black, yellow....a bit more uniformity could visually go a long way.

But again, Ronaldinho, use your skills and show us what you'd like the Central Command page to look like.

[JBlombier]

I literally spend about 10 minutes of typing stuff and realized it was far more negative than I wanted it to be. So here I'll post again what I meant to say in perhaps a more constructive way. I doubt it, it'll be probably be moaning about that freakin' Panel mostly.

When add-ons became a thing long ago, I had to install Firefox. I lived at my mom's place at the time, so it was a shock for her. Eventhough I never understood the use of Greasemonkey, Clickable maps worked perfectly for freestyle games (you know, they played those back then) and Map Rank was kinda entertaining. I got tired of these add-ons before they were implemented on the site, though.

And then the Panel Interface came. It's not that I don't want to have all those statistics, but my brain just fails to keep it all together. There is too much information to keep track off, but that's okay, because I can switch it off. I've switched off everything, basically playing like I began in 2007. But... sometimes I need the interface, because snapshots can be particularly useful in Fog-games. So I enabled Screenshots for Panel Interface, but they didn't store those, because I wasn't using the Panel on a daily basis.

I thought every turn I took had a snapshot from the moment I turned Automated Snapshots on, but of course I misread. I see it now, so it's entirely my fault, I know. But I wonder why CC makes us use a horrendous panel entirely, when we just want one (or some) of the features?

- JBlombier

PS. When I log in, I see the same lay-out/interface as I did 8 years and I'm perfectly happy about that. I'd like to use some new features, but they are too damn confusing. Luckily, I have learnt to play without all the features

[Ronaldinho]

@Dukasaur

We'll probably both differ in our opinions, but at the end of the day we can both agree ConquerClub is not holding onto its current members or keeping enough of the sign-ups interested. The underlining point I am making is that I believe it would retain a lot more new players if there was a lot less clutter when you join. The addons are great, but I don't think when you first join you necessarily care about all those stats & other things. You have come to play a form of RISK, simple. In its current state (default options) its very daunting I feel.

On the flip side, with all the mobile games out there that are available now, who really cares about RISK? Although it must be popular enough because HASBRO released an XBOX version earlier this year.

I'd be interested to see Ronaldinho take a few hours or a day or so and whip something up to show us a visual of how he'd like the site to look. Personally, I do see how certain parts are tacky. I'd even go so far as to comment on the random array of colors throughout the main pages of CC: Dark green, a lighter green, blue, red, gray, different shade of gray, another shade of gray, white, black, yellow....a bit more uniformity could visually go a long way.

But again, Ronaldinho, use your skills and show us what you'd like the Central Command page to look like.

I'll have a little play around tonight to see if I can muster up a concept of small changes that could be made without a complete re-design as I think that is unrealistic to think that would happen, at least any time soon.

[zsp]

I'll have a little play around tonight to see if I can muster up a concept of small changes that could be made without a complete re-design as I think that is unrealistic to think that would happen, at least any time soon.

Would you mind doing one of each?

One where you show us your idea of these small changes?

And one with a complete site revamp? Personally, I think it would be way cool to see some of the players create site design ideas to show the direction they'd like to see this site take!

[Ronaldinho]

I'll have a little play around tonight to see if I can muster up a concept of small changes that could be made without a complete re-design as I think that is unrealistic to think that would happen, at least any time soon.

Would you mind doing one of each?

One where you show us your idea of these small changes?

And one with a complete site revamp? Personally, I think it would be way cool to see some of the players create site design ideas to show the direction they'd like to see this site take!

I'll see how I get on. I work full-time so don't have a ton of spare time to plough into doing a site revamp concepts, plus if i'm completely honest it would be almost entirely a waste of time. I would imagine BigWham is against it, and isn't looking to design a site that looks to be on it's way down. But again, i'll see how I get on.

[zsp]

I'll see how I get on. I work full-time so don't have a ton of spare time to plough into doing a site revamp concepts, plus if i'm completely honest it would be almost entirely a waste of time. I would imagine BigWham is against it, and isn't looking to design a site that looks to be on it's way down. But again, i'll see how I get on.

Understandable. When you get the time, it would be cool to see is all.

In your opinion, do you think it's aesthetics or game play that has contributed more to the decline?

[Ronaldinho]

I'll see how I get on. I work full-time so don't have a ton of spare time to plough into doing a site revamp concepts, plus if i'm completely honest it would be almost entirely a waste of time. I would imagine BigWham is against it, and isn't looking to design a site that looks to be on it's way down. But again, i'll see how I get on.

Understandable. When you get the time, it would be cool to see is all.

In your opinion, do you think it's aesthetics or game play that has contributed more to the decline?

Imho, both but only to some degree.

Aesthetics on websites need to be changed from year to year to keep it fresh & interesting. This site hasn't changed since I joined in '06 except some minor changes which have detracted from the experience, I feel. One example I can think of right away is the Logo:





It used to be really simple. Instead of adjusting it for the better, changing either the website colours as Red on Green isn't great for people eyes they instead have added this weird glow that makes it even harder to read. This of course is all down to perception but little things like this all over the site add up. I could show other examples but they're all of the same nature, pretty much.


- On the gameplay front I think the best way to describe it is daunting & a little bit confusing... I would LOVE to see stats of maps that are played on this site as there just seems to be masses of them that are now obsolete. Although I think its amazing to have a huge choice of maps & settings it's all just getting a little to much, far away from the routes of what you'd expect from a RISK style website & I'd chalk a lot of the maps down as just clutter.

[WILLIAMS5232]

first 3 months premium free would probably go along way towards keeping new members.

I agree with you, but 3 months really is a lot. I think 1 month might be enough.

that would promote multi accounts.

alot of things promote multi accounts. if you couple being new with very limited options then you would no doubt shave quite a few multi accounts.
i'd rather have lots of new members over trying to block multi accounts. besides. the serious abusers get caught sooner or later.

- On the gameplay front I think the best way to describe it is daunting & a little bit confusing... I would LOVE to see stats of maps that are played on this site as there just seems to be masses of them that are now obsolete. Although I think its amazing to have a huge choice of maps & settings it's all just getting a little to much, far away from the routes of what you'd expect from a RISK style website & I'd chalk a lot of the maps down as just clutter.

http://www.conquerclub.com/public.php?mode=maps

it's been mentioned before about limiting maps. but never a response from the ones that matter. it's like were all just blabbering along for each others amusement with no real purpose.

would be great to have somewhere around the top 50-100 maps available all the time, then divide the remaining up and let them have each their own month of playtime. each year could have a vote to trade some maps back and forth to keep things fresh.