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Card descriptions, referrals, and the Wiki
http://thefarwilds.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2382
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Author:  Ancestry [ Sat Jul 13, 2013 2:50 am ]
Post subject:  Card descriptions, referrals, and the Wiki

Card Descriptions

The layout of card descriptions currently does not appear to be uniform, and can be confusing. Cards currently list the card type (Building, Creature, Enchantment, or Spell), what the card affects, and an explanation of what the card does. In some cards this information is squished together as in Demonic Surge, which can be confusing (although this does not apply to all cards, such as Seedling). In order to use the description space more efficiently I suggest changing the colour of the card's name based on what type it is, and adding a line break before the explanation, like in this example. This would free up space in the description for cards with longer explanations and would remove redundant information.

Edit: This seems to only be applicable to Enchantment cards!


Referrals

Instead of offering players a percentage of the gold purchased by players they refer, I suggest offering players a flat amount of gold and/or cards. There is less incentive to refer other people when there is a delay in the getting the reward which makes the current system unideal. Also, I suspect most people are unwilling to invest money in a new game right away, so players that refer others might never get anything. Having a tiered system that gives better rewards for more referrals would probably encourage more people to refer.

Example tier:

    Each referral: 15 - 25 (?) gold

    5 referrals: 55 gold
    10 referrals: 65 gold
    15 referrals: 75 gold, 1 random Common card, 1 random Uncommon card
    20 referrals: 100 gold, 2 random Uncommon cards
    25 referrals: 125, 1 random Uncommon card, 1 random Rare card
    40 referrals: 175, 2 random Rare cards
    55 referrals: 225 gold, 1 random Rare card, 1 random Odd card
    70 referrals: 300 gold, 2 random Rare cards, 1 random Odd card
    85 referrals: 375 gold, 1 random Uncommon card, 2 random Rare cards, 2 random Odd cards
    100 referrals: 500 gold, 1 random Common card, 2 random Uncommon cards, 3 random Rare cards, 3 random Odd cards

    Each referral after 100: 30 gold

I'm still a new player and am fairly unfamiliar with the TFW card market, so these rewards may be unreasonable. The list is just to explain how the tiered rewards system could work. Of course with a system like this, rules would have to be set in place so that players could not gain rewards from referring their own additional accounts, or other accounts from the same IP to prevent cheating.

It's also important to note that the rewards must be balanced: they must entice people, but not be so high that people stop purchasing gold. Rewards should be tweaked as the market changes.


Wiki

Currently the Wiki is hard to navigate. Pages on the Wiki that are not linked on the Main Page must be searched, so the player has to go to the Wiki knowing exactly what they want to find. The Wiki should be set up in a way that presents players with information in an organized manner, and the Main Page should have a lot of links to different topics. I suggest a format like this, which is the Main Page I designed for another site I played on. I have a lot of experience with editing and writing for Wikis so I'm willing to do this work myself, but this is a big change in the layout of the Wiki.

I also highly suggest looking into add-ons for the Wiki that allow multiple uploads to be done at once. It's a pain in the butt to have to individually upload a bunch of images, and it takes away from time that could otherwise be spent writing or editing :P

Author:  Voices [ Sat Jul 13, 2013 4:14 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Card descriptions, referrals, and the Wiki

Ancestry,

As for the card descriptions, I think that anything that makes a card easier to read and understand should be encouraged. Line breaks are good. Perhaps also periods. Colour schemes are good and should also be encouraged. I don't think that this should be too hard to implement. Perhaps we should get a section on the forum devoted to suggestions of this kind.

I don't have much to say about referrals besides the fact that it feels a bit dated as a tool for marketing. But I really have no statistics whatsoever as evidence to show whether they work or not.

Regarding the Wiki... We were about to change it a long time ago but then jed decided not to work on the game anymore. At least that is as I remember it. Anyway, the Wiki has always been in dire need of an overhaul. If you have the skills and knowledge to get it going, I am sure that you could do it. I would be happy to help out, but I really don't know much about it (and whatever I knew, I've now forgotten).

Maybe talk to Altren directly to see if you need any special permissions or anything like that?

All the best!

Author:  Altren [ Sun Jul 14, 2013 6:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Card descriptions, referrals, and the Wiki

Next time please create different threads for different suggestions. Having all this would cause some ideas and related themes get lost. Also replying is much harder as well, since thought are getting mixed.

Cards descriptions: I agree about making it slightly cleaner and adding some separators here and there is good in most cases.
What about colour coding - this would make things worse, since most new players will be asking "why some cards have red names and other have green names?". Slightly better thing is card type icon (may be with colour coding), but for now I'd better keep plain and simple text.

Referrals: The problem here is that anyone can create as many accounts as he want, thus gaining gold from fake referrals.

Wiki: Anyone have permission to edit it. I look through all changes (or quick glance in case of well know players), so no reason to worry about invalid/bad information there. I'm ready to discuss and give you permission for wiki big change. Could you create separate thread with what you suggest?
About wiki add-on - do you know any specific one, so I'll tell our web developer to install it?

Author:  Ancestry [ Sun Jul 14, 2013 8:29 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Card descriptions, referrals, and the Wiki

I can do that next time. I didn't want to create separate threads because I didn't want to spam the forum, and since there isn't a rule post I didn't know I'd be allowed to make different threads.

A solution to the questions regarding colour schemes on cards would be to list what the colours mean on the "Card" page on the main site and the Wiki. I like the idea of adding the icons, though. Those icons are the same ones used to filter cards by Spell, Creature, etc. on the Army and Market pages, correct?

As for referrals: @Voices, word-of-mouth marketing is an important form of advertising because the company doesn't pay for it: people voluntarily praise the product or service because they get something out of it, or because they like it. Referrals encourage more people to talk about the product/service. If people get something tangible out of introducing new players to the game, they're more likely to keep introducing people. The bonus is that this costs nothing for TFW, and an increase in players means there's more people around to purchase gold.

@Altren, is it possible to create a system that checks the IP address of the new players to make sure they aren't the same as the player that has referred them? Another idea is that referral rewards only unlock once the new player has a certain amount of wins - people probably won't spend time getting each new account to 10 or so wins. Or instead of gold, acorns could be awarded along with cards. Acorns would allow people to expand their deck for a while through phantom cards, and since there's a restriction on trading right now, people wouldn't be able to trade the cards to their main account.

I'll make another thread some other time to address my concerns with the Wiki.

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