Dec 29 2008
Muckbeast: Getting a few opinions from you all.
Who Reads Muckbeast?
By “you all”, I mean the few folks reading here regularly. I know I lost a lot of readers during October and November when I wrote maybe 1 or 2 articles tops. Sorry about that. Muckbeast gets about 150 unique hits per day, and I have no idea if that is utterly horrible or decent considering how new it is and how specialized it is. Regardless, I really appreciate those of you who read and especially those of you who comment. I find your feedback (mostly as players) very, very valuable in my own game design.
Tell Me Some of Your Preferences
I will fire off a few questions in rapid fire format:
1) What do you think of the new site theme? I think it is a lot more readable, even though it now lacks a fancy graphic at the top. It is wider, and the content is in the middle rather than left justified.
2) CAPTCHA: I hate that I had to enable this for the comments, but we were getting tons of spam. I’m considering turning it off again soon to see what happens. How much of a pain is it when entering comments to have to use the captcha field thing.
3) The “READ MORE” prompt. This is a tough one. I have heard that RSS readers do not get the whole article if you have a “click here to keep reading” link. I use it on longer articles so the front page of the blog is a little more readable (so you can see more topics on the front). I also wonder if it is a good idea to encourage people to actually come to the site and click on internal pages in order to keep my host happy (maybe he gets more ad hits that way, I don’t know). I don’t get paid anything for the ads here, but I do get paid by Today.com to write posts so I try to be sensitive to their needs.
4) Rate of Topics: Is averaging 1 per day enough to make you enjoy reading the blog? Is more topics too much? So far, we don’t have much discussion, so it is hard to tell if more topics would generate more discussion or if it might make it harder to discuss a topic.
5) Suggestions for improvement?
Are You Out There?
If you read this blog, please take a moment to at least reply to this post with a quick “I’m here!” I would like to know who is reading so I have some idea who my audience is. If you want to include any additional information about yourself in the response, feel free.
Thanks for reading!
I’m here! I was checking the blog less regularly when the post frequency dropped off, but still dropped by once in a while. Now there’s more reason to check often :). I’m a long-time MUD guy, so it’s interesting to hear from people whose experience isn’t solely in the graphical arena.
Theme: I didn’t find the old one obtrusive, but this one is definitely cleaner. A positive change.
Captcha: Meh. I expect some form of spam-screening these days, and it’s a minor inconvenience at worst. Definitely better than filtering through spam comment posts.
Rate of Topics: I’m sure between holidays and the relatively recent increase in post frequency, comments are coming at a slower-than-expected rate. Averaging one post per day seems fair enough, though 3-4 per week would be fine too. If you’re posting every day, breaking up articles into parts (like the ‘Nerfs…’ series) works pretty well.
It might get awkward if there are active discussions in more than 2-3 topics. Unless I’m missing something, the Recent Comments list shows only the five most recent comments (which may all be related to the same article). It seems pretty easy for discussion to get lost that way. The few Today.com blogs that I’ve seen all use that format though, so this is more of an observation than a call for change.
1.) The site theme is very good, especially for widescreen notebooks. Left-aligned blogs are horrible to read at 1440×900, you are basically reading them with the left eye. I like your new design.
2.) By all means, keep Captcha. Though Hirvox is right, some words are really hard to read! The one I see right now is undecipherable at least for me. Tobold http://tobolds.blogspot.com/ uses a similar system that is more convenient.
3.) I use google reader and the iGoogle gadget to inform me of new blog entries, as I often do not browse from home. Actually, a lot of people do NOT use RSS readers. They visit the site directly OR surf to it over the link in their RSS readers. I personally do not know anyone of my friends who uses a RSS Feed other than that of Internet Explorer, and there people also use it much more as a link list than anything else.
4.) I prefer to read quality topics. There is nothing worse than uninspired blog entries. But you are right, writing a lot, even if it is crap, usually attracts more readers. But do not ask me for hints how to promote a blog, I found your blog over other also very interesting blogs.
5.) Just keep on talking about interesting stuff.
I just checked Tobold, and he has some 3000 Visitors and 2000 RSS readers per day. There is proabably some overlap, I am still surprised that there are so many people that use RSS Feeds/readers. I never got into it.
I read through Google Reader and it does cut off at the jump. But if you put enough to capture my attention or interest, I will click. You’re not the only one who does this, so while I would prefer to read it all in one spot, the teaser is usually enough to get me to decide if I want to actually read it.
I’m fine with the Captcha, as well. It’s decidedly better than spam.
On topics, you seem to have an interesting variety that often causes me to want to read it. I certainly don’t have much to -say- in response, so the lack of comments should definitely not be an indicator.
Lurkers ftw.
(I also would love to see some explains on why you created certain features. I love hearing the “Why I did…” or “what prompted me to…”, but I’m kind of nosey that way!)
1) Don’t care much. Both worked fine for me.
2) Not a problem here or anywhere else. If you get spam I say go for it.
3) I read it here, so I like the fact that you don’t spam the main page.
4) I would rather have fewer topics that we discuss for longer than having a topic a day. 2-3 topics a week but keep the discussion going.
5) I started reading here because I am a long time player of your game “Threshold RPG”. I have played WoW and a few other MMO’s as well so the more generel MMO topics catch my interest as well.
I would love several posts on one topic where you look at how different games have solved something, how you have tried to implement it, speculations on what work and so on. Topics could be: RP, How to attract players, Big/Small events, Making people feel special, Quests, Leveling systems, Deatheffects, Making repeditive stuff fun (all MMO’s are repeditive if you play enough but some of it you do because it’s fun and some is done because of some kind of reward).
1: You still have the ‘Recent Comments’ side-bar so I’m happy. The current layout is working fine.
2: Captcha is a less than a minor annoyance, and only an issue when I must comment. I don’t have any problem with it staying indefinitely.
3: The current layout is working fine.
4: I’m just fine with two of your Indignant-Journalist/Bartlesque “how is this so popular?!” articles, and possibly a review once a week. Your reviews can be much more insightful and unique then the average blog(which are on par with Youtube comments).
5: My only suggestion would be a single game review on a regular basis. And by review, I mean your insightful critique and analysis, communicated to video game lay-persons. I also played (and loved) ThresholdRPG and genuinely value your opinions. I’m with Peter, and I would enjoy seeing more articles on how you design quests, handle non-combat player classes in an MMO, or why games inspired from colleges in Denmark suck.
This is the only game related blog I read, keep it up.
I’m of the opinion that so long as the quality keeps up, such supernumaries such as page layout are completely up to you.
The captcha is a necessary evil, (By the way, visit www.ifyouactuallygohereimgonnalol.tk TO INCREASE YOUR PENIS SIZE!) and as others have said, I don’t think anyone will be too miffed about it.
BTW, where is the button that adds Muckbeast to the RSS Feed list? I just had to add it manually to my RSS reader. Yeah, I finally decided to use one.
I’m here. Thanks for stopping by my site as well.