How to Expand Our Playerbase

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How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby James2 » Fri Mar 15, 2019 1:21 am

For the last few years, ToS FM's playerbase has been in decline. This is largely for demographic reasons (a substantial portion of our players were teenagers who have since gone to college). In a few months we'll transition to a new forum which will cause a lot of players to become less active. The problem will only get worse as the playerbase goes from college to the workforce, and in a few years the bulk of our players will start to form families, at which point ToS FM will die.

In order to reverse this trend, it is necessary to recruit new players. At present, there is only one viable source of new players available to us, ToS itself.

Even with the move to pay-to-play, there are still tens of thousands of people who play ToS. If we could grab even one percent of them we'd rival MU and MS. And it would be trivially easy for the devs to add "Want to play the legendary long form of Town of Salem? Check out the Forum Mafia section of our forums!" as one of those rotating tips that show before games. It would be highly visible and in a space not allocated for commercial advertising.

Now I know the response of course. BMG is a business and has no reason to advertise a non-profitable section of its forums. Well, let's give them a reason. There are a number of tacky things we could do in exchange for advertising. Here are a few examples:

Restrict Episodes to Coven owners
Restrict games with certain experimental roles in them to Coven users
Offer paid spectating

All of these things would be tolerable annoyances (for us) that would make advertising FM a better deal (for BMG) than telling people what jesters are. The FMods should immediately enter into discussions with the devs regarding an agreement of this sort. As an added benefit, if there were even a slight profit to be made from FM, it would drastically improve the odds of the devs not mass deleting FM during the forum switch.

With all that said, we should never implement scrolls, taunts, or any other system which would make the game even indirectly pay-to-win.
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby Kmenx » Fri Mar 15, 2019 5:35 am

James2 wrote:The problem will only get worse as the playerbase goes from college to the workforce, and in a few years the bulk of our players will start to form families, at which point ToS FM will die.

Bold of you to assume someone will marry me
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby TheWabbit » Fri Mar 15, 2019 8:06 am

It may sound good (at first) on paper, but it isn't.
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby Transcender » Fri Mar 15, 2019 9:56 am

Flake wrote:so what im getting from this is

almost all FM players (who don't have coven) are forced to get coven in order to play some FM games

thus far less incentive for the current FM player base to play such FM games

all so that some coven players can feel more special in having access to such FM games which they already would have had anyway without the restriction

the only real positives that come about from this is devs have an excuse to earn money (which doesn't help anyone but the devs) and there is an incentive for devs to advertise FM (which may attract some new players, but also deters the active player base in some respects)

in every other respect it's a pretty stupid idea; it's especially punishing to the current active FM player base

why did you edit 3 times
also I would have to use my alt to play some FM games and I want to stick with this account so I second this
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby ChubbyMooshroom9 » Fri Mar 15, 2019 11:09 am

dude just place ads on the page

don't make them intrusive and a good way to retain players is to actually make good players because a lot people just migrate to MU which is totally justifiable, only reason i havent is because they're hyper active and i can barely keep up
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby Kmenx » Fri Mar 15, 2019 11:47 am

ChubbyMooshroom9 wrote:dude just place ads on the page

don't make them intrusive and a good way to retain players is to actually make good players because a lot people just migrate to MU which is totally justifiable, only reason i havent is because they're hyper active and i can barely keep up

FM ad campaign let's go
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby Descender » Fri Mar 15, 2019 12:46 pm

Kmenx wrote:
ChubbyMooshroom9 wrote:dude just place ads on the page

don't make them intrusive and a good way to retain players is to actually make good players because a lot people just migrate to MU which is totally justifiable, only reason i havent is because they're hyper active and i can barely keep up

FM ad campaign let's go

buy some roblox ads because then we will get more people like Evan
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby James2 » Fri Mar 15, 2019 12:53 pm

A lot of you missed the point. None of these things would be good for FM in themselves. Rather, they'd be tolerable annoyances in exchange for a larger playerbase. And they could also be tweaked, e.g. by grandfathering existing FM players.

Of course if the devs would advertise FM in-game in exchange for us simply having ads in this section, that would be better.
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby Chemist1422 » Fri Mar 15, 2019 12:56 pm

James2 wrote:Of course if the devs would advertise FM in-game in exchange for us simply having ads in this section, that would be better.

So why can't we just do that?
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby Descender » Fri Mar 15, 2019 12:59 pm

Chemist1422 wrote:
James2 wrote:Of course if the devs would advertise FM in-game in exchange for us simply having ads in this section, that would be better.

So why can't we just do that?

ah, I see you havent heard of the dev's religion known as unity. Basically, unity is first.
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby ElderSivart » Fri Mar 15, 2019 1:12 pm

Helicooler wrote:
Chemist1422 wrote:
James2 wrote:Of course if the devs would advertise FM in-game in exchange for us simply having ads in this section, that would be better.

So why can't we just do that?

ah, I see you havent heard of the dev's religion known as unity. Basically, unity is first.

I mean they are kinda on a time limit to finish the Unity client before it's literally impossible to play ToS Flash through any browser that receives updates.
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby tfiosforevah » Fri Mar 15, 2019 1:51 pm

Here's my story of why I left FM (and why I came back):
Spoiler: I loved TOS when i was 14, I played it everyday, almost too much to the extent that I'd be playing it more often than not. Then, I found the forums and fell in love with FM. Unfortunately, shortly after my first game started, my laptop's internet unfortunately blocked both TOS and the forums, except when I was at school. I really tried to make FM work, but playing only on weekdays during school hours proved to be hard because not a lot of people would be active, and then I'd be prodded in the evening hours or on the weekends. Summer was even worse, because then I'd have barely any access whatsoever. I tried playing on mobile, but even my phone's internet blocked the forums so I would have to sneak my tablet (my parents were pretty strict back then). After I had to replace out of multiple games, I gave up on the site completely. When I was 16, my phone finally stopped blocking the forums, and I rediscovered my love for FM, playing two games. Unfortunately, I got really busy and in the midst of that I forgot about this websites existence. I finally got to college, and I was sorting through my old email, and found old emails from the forums. Now that I have my own laptop, I don't have to worry about anything preventing me from logging onto the website, and I can actually join games on my own time whenever I'm available. I was saddened to see that most of the players back from my sentimental days of early 2015 had deserted the site or stopped playing the game, but I am glad that there are plenty of players that arrived since I was forced to leave. I'm glad I found the site again, and I really do want the site to continue. I was forced to leave because of troubles on my end, and I really don't want to leave again due to a dwindling player base, so I hope whatever happens in the future can lead to the FM base thriving as it used to.
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby James2 » Fri Mar 15, 2019 11:40 pm

Chemist1422 wrote:
James2 wrote:Of course if the devs would advertise FM in-game in exchange for us simply having ads in this section, that would be better.

So why can't we just do that?


If the devs would go for it that'd be great. The problem is that it would require them to spend time on the forum software, which they're unlikely to do at this time. Whereas the other options could be implemented without any dev effort (aside from adding an FM advertisement to the list of pre-game tips).
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby TheWabbit » Sat Mar 16, 2019 2:32 am

just allow episodes to have in-game incentives (skin or whatever, or probably just TP)
++ pre-game ad
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby Descender » Sat Mar 16, 2019 4:27 am

ElderSivart wrote:
Helicooler wrote:
Chemist1422 wrote:
James2 wrote:Of course if the devs would advertise FM in-game in exchange for us simply having ads in this section, that would be better.

So why can't we just do that?

ah, I see you havent heard of the dev's religion known as unity. Basically, unity is first.

I mean they are kinda on a time limit to finish the Unity client before it's literally impossible to play ToS Flash through any browser that receives updates.

my exact point. There is also the changes which have been waiting until the bigger ones are done and even if the devs feel like they will program in an ad for FM that could mean a loss of money because less people buying scroll packs and tp packs
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby Transcender » Sat Mar 16, 2019 5:09 am

CharaTheFallen wrote:
mouse212 wrote:also episodes will become trash if only coven users can play them.

episodes are already trash

T.R.A.S.H and Trash. are both trash, peeps still be posting on both of them

then again thats just their names so
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby chitownmvp01 » Thu May 16, 2019 12:44 am

James2 wrote:For the last few years, ToS FM's playerbase has been in decline. This is largely for demographic reasons (a substantial portion of our players were teenagers who have since gone to college). In a few months we'll transition to a new forum which will cause a lot of players to become less active. The problem will only get worse as the playerbase goes from college to the workforce, and in a few years the bulk of our players will start to form families, at which point ToS FM will die.

In order to reverse this trend, it is necessary to recruit new players. At present, there is only one viable source of new players available to us, ToS itself.

Even with the move to pay-to-play, there are still tens of thousands of people who play ToS. If we could grab even one percent of them we'd rival MU and MS. And it would be trivially easy for the devs to add "Want to play the legendary long form of Town of Salem? Check out the Forum Mafia section of our forums!" as one of those rotating tips that show before games. It would be highly visible and in a space not allocated for commercial advertising.

Now I know the response of course. BMG is a business and has no reason to advertise a non-profitable section of its forums. Well, let's give them a reason. There are a number of tacky things we could do in exchange for advertising. Here are a few examples:

Restrict Episodes to Coven owners
Restrict games with certain experimental roles in them to Coven users
Offer paid spectating

All of these things would be tolerable annoyances (for us) that would make advertising FM a better deal (for BMG) than telling people what jesters are. The FMods should immediately enter into discussions with the devs regarding an agreement of this sort. As an added benefit, if there were even a slight profit to be made from FM, it would drastically improve the odds of the devs not mass deleting FM during the forum switch.

With all that said, we should never implement scrolls, taunts, or any other system which would make the game even indirectly pay-to-win.



All 3 of your suggestions will do the opposite of expanding the playerbase. For example, a lot of players don't even play TOS and restricting episodes to Coven owners significantly reduces the playerbase for those games.

BMG could just be nice and advertise FM or maybe they can if FM raises money for BMG, which I doubt will be that effective. There really isn't a good solution.
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby ryanyb » Thu May 16, 2019 9:35 am

Bmg doesn’t care about fm and we don’t have the numbers to warrant them caring.
Anything that requires them to do a modicum of work won’t fly.

We don’t have a modbot, we don’t have auto-updating page, and we don’t have many players who engage with the greater fm community (playing on other sites, playing in the video mafia communities, etc)

We’re isolated, most fm players don’t even know that tos has fm because who would want to play fm on a site about tos given how bad tos’ rep is among actual mafia players.

If we want to recruit it should be among fm players, not the tos playerbase.
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby jucktropy » Thu May 16, 2019 9:40 am

a Coven game is coming...


Sooon..
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby Varanus » Thu May 16, 2019 1:29 pm

We could expand our playerbase by 1 by unblacklisting James
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby TheDebil » Thu May 16, 2019 2:38 pm

if you have friends force them to come here in exchange for your friends
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby tfiosforevah » Thu May 16, 2019 3:20 pm

TheDebil wrote:if you have friends force them to come here in exchange for your friends

tried that, doesn't work
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FM History: 8-7
Spoiler: FM6E- stalker- loss
TFM8- checker- loss
GFM- investigator- win
Episode XII- double citizen- win
SFM28- Jugin/Vet. Lancer (citizen)- loss
VFM42- citizen- loss
SFM53- despacito 2.5 (tracker)- win
VFM43- citizen- win
SFM55- vanilla townie (citizen)- win
FM17C- caporegime- loss
VFM44- citizen- loss
FM17D- pirate- win
VFM46- irn-bru (goon)- win
SFM56- goon- win
FM17E- citizen- loss
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby Kmenx » Sun May 19, 2019 9:30 am

TheDebil wrote:if you have friends force them to come here in exchange for your friends

You lost me at friends

Varanus wrote:We could expand our playerbase by 1 by unblacklisting James
Image

Yes
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby jucktropy » Mon May 20, 2019 3:43 am

Need An Advertiser mod,
I Mean BMG Will ban Ads So
threw PM's everybody or could make a banner of FM
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Re: How to Expand Our Playerbase

Postby Crimson97 » Wed May 22, 2019 12:21 am

Devs won't care about FM unless there's something in it for them.

Everybody go play TOS and make your last will and death note an ad for FM.
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