As you guys already know, the server's at a low right now. I'm not going to write here complaining to you about all of the things that are wrong with it. Instead, I'm writing this to suggest some ways to improve. One: We need to advertise the server more, or at the very least, advertise it better. Voting on the Starbound server list can only get us so far, even if we can make it to number 1. We're already at number 5 at the time of this being written. You can see pretty clearly how much that's done for us. I believe that it is making a difference, but a practically insignificant one. People go onto the server-list, see Galaxy Citizen at number 1, and choose it by default. So how do we fix this? Create some kind of incentive. Antares has always had a higher standard for writing quality than our competitors, but from what I've seen, we never SAY that. Antares should be pitched as quality, whereas GC is quantity. Two: If this server is going to be pitched as high quality, it needs to LOOK the part. I am, of course, speaking about the forums. We don't even have a general description for Christ's sake. It's insane that I didn't notice until now, but we really don't. The home page is just a single post talking about 1.0 Colonies. Looking past that, the forums are plain but functional. That said... Our competition's forums look better. Galaxy Citizen has a logo, for example, and a background image. It's easy to believe that a potential player would look at these forums, and then look at GC's forums, and make their decision simply based off of that alone. Three: On the topic of quality, the Discord is not helping. It's not what we need right now. For example, in our current situation, a new user goes onto the server. Finds it empty. They go to the Discord to ask what's up. What they get is a disclaimer that says, and I quote, "This text channel does not properly portray the server in any way. Do not take discussion here seriously." A new user's first impression is an empty server, and the second thing they see is a chatroom that hardly has anything to do with Antares, besides some users with birds as their icons. I won't say that a casual chatroom is a bad idea. There's nothing wrong with a chat like that. However, if the reason people are going there in the first place is for a serious RP environment, then we need to have some standards. I want to stress this part specifically. We need to have STANDARDS. More than what we've got now. It's just a lazy move on your part to slap a disclaimer on it rather than moderate it yourselves. Create an #off-topic channel or something. That's all I've got for now. Thanks for reading this, and I hope you guys will take the stuff I've said into consideration.
One: I can see your point, we're not exactly super well advertised, but I wouldn't want to over-advertise either. Kinda gives off the impression we're desperate or just really 'grabby', for lack of a better word. Feel free to spread the word from person to person yourselves, and perhaps staff will look into further advertising. Maybe we'll make another rap... Two: Not much to disagree with there, a fresh coat of paint couldn't hurt anyone. Three: I can agree with the disclaimer comment, but the rest is frankly wrong. The disclaimer was put there when chat was much worse than it is now and was never removed, more of an oversight than anything else. We also still actively watch the discord and moderate what we need to, it wasn't an excuse for us to sit back and watch you rip and tear each others guts. And really, what standards do you want to impose? Do you want us to force people to dress up in their Sunday best and type like they're talking to a priest? I want people to be themselves in discord, and imposing some kind of standard on them would only serve to make things more impersonal and irritating to the community members who are just trying to have some laughs with some pals. However, I can see where an off-topic channel might fit in, and we'll consider reorganizing the discord channels.
