Boosting Forum Activity

[Tom]

Recently I've noticed that, while the website and character database on The Elder Stats continues to grow at a steady pace, the Forums have been dying out. The Forums were active at one point, but many people seem to have dropped off from posting here. That is why I am opening discussion to the community about how we could possibly encourage our members to post on the Forums. Obviously, many of our members are from other Oblivion-related websites/forums who only come here to create a profile for their character(s), and that is of course fine. However, I would really like to see some increased activity on the Forums in the coming months, and I am interested to hear what the community has to say or suggest.

So, what are your suggestions for more Forum activity, and what else do you have to say? Thanks for your time, and we appreciate your feedback.

[The Ninja]

I agree that the forums have been "dead" for a while now. It is just that lack origional commetns and/or discussions. I think that there is:

A) A lack of determination to keep this going.

B) An idea dry-spell.

C) Both

(Of course there is more...)

Anyway, I just think if one person started introducing new things to the mix, that might stir it up in here a litle bit. The problem is, I am not that guy at the moment.

I am guilty of "a" because I have been elsewhere doing RP's and such. And I am guilty of "b" because nothing new has happened lately, at least, not that you guys would care about. My personal life and so on.

But that is really all I can think of at the moment. Need new stuff! Maybe if another Elder Scrolls game was released, this would speed up QUITE a bit. Even the announcement of one would get traffic up and going again.

[Darabos]

I like the site, I check it maybe twice a week. I'd like to rate and comment on peoples builds more however I find myself not getting into it, maybe if you can figure out how to incorporate the forum directly into the "judging/rating" of peoples characters maybe that will pick things up. Not sure if that makes sense.

Anyway, also you have to remember the game has been out for, what, four years? Things tend to die out once a game gets old. People still play but you know all the "new car smell" is gone.

Have you thought about branching out and creating something for Fallout 3? Or maybe start getting ready to roll something out when Fallout New Vegas is released?

[Grayfox]

It would attract more people if you did something like this for Morrowind on this site. Many prefer MW over OB (showed by poll statistics).

Personally, I am a writer. I check the site, but no one posts, so I don't.

[josjie]

Oblivion's birthday (4 years already!) was yesterday and people moved on to other games so that's why it's a bit quiet here. Same for the UESP forums btw . TESV will hopefully boost the forum activity. In the meantime... well maybe you could make stat cards for other games as well. I would love to have stat cards for Fallout 3. Currently I prefer Fallout 3 over Oblivion so that's why I'm not a very active poster at the forums here and the Oblivion section on UESP.

I really like these forums though, especially the design of this website . It's just that I've played Oblivion for more than 1000 hours and now I'm a bit bored .

[Tom]

I can understand that. I was thinking of doing something for Fallout 3, but I haven't played the game yet so I would need to play through it a bit in order to get a good idea of what types of stats could be included in a Fallout 3 character profile. Maybe I could just start with allowing just basic stats to be submitted and a stat card can be made from them, then I can expand on the amount of stats available for Fallout 3 characters? It's just an idea, but I appreciate your suggestion. Once TESV comes out, I plan to create a separate partition of The Elder Stats for TESV characters, so that should boost activity. Until then, maybe a Fallout 3 stat section could bring more activity, even if it's only a stat card with a few stats on it.

[The Ninja]

TESV will hopefully boost the forum activity.

Speaking of which, when is that going to be released? Or when is content coming out for us to preview?

[Darabos]

As of now Bethesda says they have no plans to expand the series. If I remember what I read correctly I think it took almost 4-6 years to develop Oblivion. I say we are a long way off from Elder Scrolls V. They released that book recently, The Infernal City, which was awful. Maybe that might slow down a release.

[Kestral]

I can understand that. I was thinking of doing something for Fallout 3, but I haven't played the game yet so I would need to play through it a bit in order to get a good idea of what types of stats could be included in a Fallout 3 character profile. Maybe I could just start with allowing just basic stats to be submitted and a stat card can be made from them, then I can expand on the amount of stats available for Fallout 3 characters? It's just an idea, but I appreciate your suggestion. Once TESV comes out, I plan to create a separate partition of The Elder Stats for TESV characters, so that should boost activity. Until then, maybe a Fallout 3 stat section could bring more activity, even if it's only a stat card with a few stats on it.

I can imagine there being 'advisers' to help you. Just because you haven't played it doesn't mean you can't. It's like when someone enlists a web-developer to make them a respectable website, the developer may not be apart of this business or care about it but he still does it. But this case may be different since A) you're not getting paid and B) it's your website.

[The Ninja]

As of now Bethesda says they have no plans to expand the series. If I remember what I read correctly I think it took almost 4-6 years to develop Oblivion. I say we are a long way off from Elder Scrolls V. They released that book recently, The Infernal City, which was awful. Maybe that might slow down a release.

That is much too bad. They do need a little boost right now. The series, I mean. Their more recent games have been successful, but I need a better medieval RPG! If it is better than Oblivion in the SLIGHTEST, then I would like it.

But, I think an RP in this forum would be nice. Like we had on Mercury Forums. That was intense, and fun. But we never finished. At least I didn't.