Post some suggestions here on how we can grow this forum and gain more members. The more activity - the better. You'll have more people to discuss, play, and trade items with.
An idea I have been contemplating for a while is some sort of item raffle. Each new member the recruit earns them a ticket which is entered in a raffle to win a legendary item? Just a thought. We could also do some sort of lottery system where you submit high-level items to a staff member, and one person who submits wins the pot.
I have been thinking about this, maybe we should attack social media? I could make a Facebook page and Twitter for the forum. Go on every now and then and post news about the game, links to big topics on the forums, etc. I think that's definitely the way to go. Also, we should try to build relations with the official Gearbox forums.
I just whipped this up quickly, I'll give it some bells and whistles when I get back to my room. https://www.facebook.com/Borderlands2Forum
We originally had a link to this forum on the official BL2 site but they took it down for some reason. I've been thinking of trying to get ahold of somebody from Gearbox to see if we can get that link back but I'm not sure who I would need to talk to.
not sure if this has been brought up or not but maybe different sections for different consoles... reason being there seems to be a lot of ps3 and pc that i have to dig through to find someone on xbox360..its just a suggestion
I suggested this for the trade section as well. It effectively works the way it stands now, but I feel it would be much more user friendly if there was a section devoted to each, if not for just the trade section. There's threads for finding players on any platform, so just find people on there and shoot them a message or add them on XBL/PSN/Steam. Generating traffic for a site is an interesting topic. One would hope that over time, people will hear about it by word of mouth. I think we could help the process by A. Shamelessly plugging the forum's name to players in-game ("someone on this forum suggested...") or something like that. Another topic is trying to have something unique to offer. What is better about this forum than the official Gearbox forums? The site needs something that the Gearbox forums doesn't have, so that people might be attracted to the direction of this board more than the other. I don't know what the answer to this is...just something to think about. Something else that just popped into my head: the name of the forums. Mind you, the name IS effective, this was #2 on my Google search when I typed in "borderlands 2 forum", so search engines definitely pick up on this. My only concern with the name of it is that it is so close to what the official forums are called (or might be thought by some to be the same thing), so maybe people will register at Gearbox not knowing there's a difference. Again, just something to think about. I think that getting it on Facebook will be hit or miss. In general, I tend to keep my online identity for gaming and such separate from my IRL identity. I roll with a decision that I shouldn't trust people I don't know in person with any of my personal details. Others may not care so much. I haven't played a ton of co-op yet because my gear still sucks, but I'll make sure to plug this place when I can
I honestly think at this point having separate sections is a must. To new users, the system we have now just looks messy, cluttered, and just hard to use. I think there should be three subforums for our General Discussion section, one for each platform. Perhaps we could adopt this system into our marketplace as well. Our Co-Op sticky threads in the General Discussion section are just an eyesore and nobody is going to dig through that thread to find people to play with anymore. We outgrew it. Besides, we have TEN stickies as it is last time I checked, that just looks ridiculous. Putting being a staff member aside, that's what I think needs to get done from a member's point of view. Right now, the Facebook page seems to be doing pretty well already. It doesn't necessarily have to connect people's personal lives to their gaming lives. They see our page giving good information about the game, and they may feel inclined to join. It's an experiment right now, we'll see where it takes us. I think if we keep listening to our members about what they want to see get done and use that to keep things rolling, we should have no problem. We're getting a large amount of traffic, we just need to build a bigger community and get people to stick around. Keep the suggestions coming, we're listening!
That's true, I'm sure many will choose this forum for that reason. Perhaps that's why Gearbox took the link down?
Perhaps we could create some sort of dueling league for players to battle each other? Just a thought.
They took it down before they started enforcing the no-dupe rule on their site. It is most likely from the lack of moderation for a while after launch.
I like the lottery/raffle system fearthekick mentioned. u could have one big one every month or 2 and have couple small ones every week. For the big raffle u can only get a raffle ticket if u posted 20 times during the month of the currently raffle.Then you could make a section for small raffle games you run once a week for an hour of quick 4 player raffles.Each player throws in a weapon, equipment, or skin. i figure each raffle take about 5 mins so u could roughly get in 20 small raffles in a hour. Example 10 weapon, 5 equipment, and 5 skin raffles once a week. In my opinion it would get the forum to grow and get more active.
FTK, are you guys still considering creating a Twitter account for this community? If so I wouldn't mind taking the reins. I used to run a Twitter account for a Max Payne community forum that I was a forum moderator at, but then the forum itself just shut down. It's been months since I've had anything to post on the Twitter feed. This was the Twitter feed if you guys were curious: https://twitter.com/MAXPAYNEFORUMS
Twitter and dueling. I like the twitter idea, mostly because I dislike other forms of social media. And twitter is very simple. I'm not sure what you'd post but I'm sure that would work itself out. I also like the dueling idea, although I guess it would have to be organized for each platform. Perhaps it could grow into a tiered battle royal. Honestly, for myself the accomplishment of winning that would be more than any piece of gear awarded. Perhaps a custom signiture could be created that the winner would be allowed to display proudly, at the bottom of their posts proclaiming their badassness; much like a professional wrestler's belt. And it would be passed to the next winner/challenger. Also, I'm kind of ok with the forum growing slowly, if that makes sense. I just have the feeling that allowing a moderated growth may inhibit a flux of deuschbag agro gamers that exist on other forums. That may never happen, but the potential is there.
Toni, That would be awesome if you could take a shot at running a twitter account. Let me know if you need anything.