Morning everyone
We decided to let this thread run individually as opposed to merging it with the general off site community discussion. As has been noted era does have a captive audience due to fast aggregation - something GAF was noted for. An amalgamation of reddit, 4chan and all other sources in one big pot. And as a result, some members of that captive audience may want to have a voice in a seperate thread than the latest meltdown highlight. And it's right that we give those honest voices a platform to have an input.
It's not lost on our own staff when certain newGaf policies, standards and ideas supplant those already in place at other places. So to address some of the more pertinent points made in here
1. Traffic and members are increasing, and post count at the start of November was still trending up significantly. Thread creation is not as active as posts per thread, which mirrors what we see - generally the new/?old? cohort of posters prefer a longer running thread with more tangential discussion than starting new posts. Whether this is a hangover from GAF or just laziness/cohort preference is still being identified;
2. When we are trending upwards there's a lot of investment when making a change so our policy at the moment is changes that are manageable and dynamic/fluid. While not ideally our first choice, we didn't lock ourselves out of rolling the old themes back if the community were vociferous about wanting them back. This takes a little more time, but is more graciously received as a choice rather than 'have this and like it'. So site improvements are coming, site enhancements and integrations are coming and we're going to use them to establish a 'pull' mechanism for member growth in terms of USP's;
3. Our next big update will be really exciting for 'communities'. Splitting it out was a precursor to the work we have on simmer at the moment. The harsh reality is that trying to just do what GAF did ten years ago won't be enough to distinguish it in the same way. As an enabler the fresh start we got to have was really a chance for us all to sit down and examine how we can recapture the magic GAF had in its early days in the modern environment of reddit, discord, 4chan, twitter etc. GAF had a reputation and a stigma. With the advent of resetEra, the stigma was definitely transplanted, and it's up to us here to rebuild the reputation. You can't just pick up years of heritage, archival and importance and try to bully your self importance onto people and press;
4. All the staff love this place, genuinely. And what we want is to foster that tight community feel. The ones you'd often see when teams were making mods for games and engaging on a direct basis with excitement and fervour. We ask people just enjoy games really and discuss them.
5. For those users on both sites, it costs nothing to float the same type of thread if you are interested. At the very least you'll get more points of view. Probably a broader set of perspectives if that makes sense. If I may politely ask one question in return to those who have weighed in - You gifted era a community (some bad, some great) - the question really should be 'what are the custodians doing to keep you?', because right now it seems it's just the user generated content that is keeping you captive. UGC that you are then heavily moderated on and for if it doesn't align with whatever 'issue of the day is'. In response, I will only iterate what i can - please do keep popping in and even post a bit, we believe over the coming months with the improvements we have scheduled we will demonstrate that what we're doing or attempting is genuinely in the interest of bringing people/players together. Not only to discuss the latest industry article but to bring back those in depth discussion on level design, character creation and RPG mechanics as examples.
. They updated ui looks similar to gaf now
