The Future of Warfare HQ

[Dr Zaius]

Okay, we had a thread like this a long time ago and I thought it might be time to start it up again.

The Warfare HQ staff are always interested in your ideas and suggestions, even when the answer is "no." Let's hear what you have to say.

What areas would you like to see improved or added? What areas are useless or hard to use? Are we supporting the wargames you play?

Here are a few brief things that we have learned after several years experience running various wargames related webpages.

1. The discussion forum is the heart and soul of any wargame club. Believe it or not this is true. It's not the ladders, but the forum where members gather to find new opponents and seek out news or help. That's why I pay so much attention to this area of Warfare HQ.

2. The webpage can't get too complicated or "slick" in design. The problem with having a super neat webpage loaded with ASP or Javascript coding is that at least some of the staff have to be computer programmers. That puts way too many restrictions on who we can recruit to the staff. Warfare HQ doesn't have some of the very coolest features that the corporate webpages have, but it will stand the test of time.

3. As much as possible we try to listen to what you say. After all, this is a club. We can't always put your ideas to good use, but we do listen.

4. We're not trying to be all things to all people. If a wargame webpage grows too large it will become bloated and impossible for me to control. Too many staff members will be coming and going and the various sections will decline. We're not the largest, but we want to be the best in the areas we concentrate on. Remember, most games-related webpages on the internet deal with a single game. We support several, and that drastically changes the nature of the webpage.

5. The quality of Warfare HQ is a direct reflection of its members, not the staff. I firmly believe this. You guys give us tons of great ideas and contribute much of the site's quality content. Without your strategy articles, AARs, and active participation the club won't grow or improve.

Here is a short list of some of the things that are being talked about in the secret Warfare HQ bunker...er, staff forum. Notice, I didn't say they are coming, I said we are talking about them:

a. Revitalizing the Decisive Action section. Possibly combining it into a single Decisive Action, TacOps, BCT section. Sort of a modern wargames ladder/section. Then again maybe not.

b. Adding to or altering the Scenario archives.

c. Adding an area where members can vote on scenarios.

d. Adding an area where members can instantly alter their own ladder image, email, etc. This is a hard one...

e. Combat Leader ladder. This is 99% certain when the game is released early in 2003.

 

[ER_Chaser]

thanks for the good work

of all of the staff.

Don, I remember that a year ago, there was discussion about a scenario "rating achive"? Basically, it is a database about ratings(balance, fun, accuracy, etc..) of the scenarios played. It may be very helpful still.

Also, the current "latest result" session is kind of "constant length in time" (i.e., it deletes old results.). I sometimes thought it could be interesting if one track the results of all the games a certain ppl played and that may say something about this ppl. And it will best if we can equip such a "result database" with search/sort tool so that one can easily pick out what he wants to see. Maybe it is too complicated ... and besides, I do not know if others also think it is useful.

 

[Martin Schenkel]

Unfinished scenario archive

Perhaps creating a seperate scenario section where people can post unfinished scenarios, or scenarios that don't quite work right. Then, others can come along, finish up the scenario, tweak it to get it going, etc. I have a few unfinished scenarios that I lack willingness/time/patience to go through the process of finally getting it right or finishing it. There are also a few scenarios out there that I would love to tweak/rework but the authors have disappeared. If more were posted in an unfinished scenario archive, these scenarios (many great concepts) wouldn't become dead ends. Posting scenarios to this archive would of course entail giving up any copyright, although some form of 'original concept/grunt work' credit should be given.

 

[Siberian HEAT]

Martin, you have an interesting idea mainly for the fact for people like myself who would like to get into the scenario design side of things...but really have no idea where to start. By working with someone else on a project it might be a good way for person A to finish their design, and for person B to get experience. Kind of like a design apprenticeship.

And now, back to the

:banana:

 

[Twoblade]

This site is great.

I think the staff here are doing a good job at maintaining this place. I really like this place. I'm actually a staff member of another game site, so I can somewhat understand what it takes to run a site like this.

2. The webpage can't get too complicated or "slick" in design.

Absolutely true. A functional webpage is more important than one that is fancy and animated, and doesn't work for half the visitors who visit. I really like the design you guys have here. It's clear, easy to see what is on this site and navigate.

4. We're not trying to be all things to all people. If a wargame webpage grows too large it will become bloated and impossible for me to control. Too many staff members will be coming and going and the various sections will decline. We're not the largest, but we want to be the best in the areas we concentrate on. Remember, most games-related webpages on the internet deal with a single game. We support several, and that drastically changes the nature of the webpage.

Well said. It's better to do a good job on what you can do, rather than take on too much only to end up getting spread out too thin.



Ability to rate scenarios would indeed be very useful. On the other site I'm a staff of, we've been encouraging players to rate the maps, the scenario designers definetly like to have their maps rated and reviewed.

Scenarios keep an old game alive, and so do mods. It would be nice to have more info on such things on site, but that also depends on staff time as well as willingness of the fanbase to contribute the articles.

 

[Gary Owen]

Originally posted by Maddog

a. Revitalizing the Decisive Action section. Possibly combining it into a single Decisive Action, TacOps, BCT section. Sort of a modern wargames ladder/section. Then again maybe not.

BCT will shortly be updated by the release of Armored Task Force and Battlefront.com will be releasing TacOps IV soon as well. If you are playing around with the idea of a combined modern wargames section, it might be a good idea to wait until after the new releases and then maybe add a modern wargames forum category. The amount of traffic might be a good indicator of the general interest level.

Just a thought from a newbie.

 

[Scipio]

Re: thanks for the good work

Originally posted by ER_Chaser
of all of the staff.

Don, I remember that a year ago, there was discussion about a scenario "rating achive"? Basically, it is a database about ratings(balance, fun, accuracy, etc..) of the scenarios played. It may be very helpful still.

Also, the current "latest result" session is kind of "constant length in time" (i.e., it deletes old results.). I sometimes thought it could be interesting if one track the results of all the games a certain ppl played and that may say something about this ppl. And it will best if we can equip such a "result database" with search/sort tool so that one can easily pick out what he wants to see. Maybe it is too complicated ... and besides, I do not know if others also think it is useful.

We administer the 'latest results' and all other ladder pages offline, so an online sort funcion can't be realized that easy. The time lock that removes old game reports could be removed, so members could search the latest results with the text search function of the browser. The sheduled sense of the lr page is in princip only to give the members the ability to check if their results were processed right.

 

[Dr Zaius]

Re: This site is great.

Originally posted by Twoblade
I think the staff here are doing a good job at maintaining this place. I really like this place. I'm actually a staff member of another game site, so I can somewhat understand what it takes to run a site like this.

Thanks. We appreciate the feedback.

Absolutely true. A functional webpage is more important than one that is fancy and animated, and doesn't work for half the visitors who visit. I really like the design you guys have here. It's clear, easy to see what is on this site and navigate.

Warfare HQ has evolved quite a bit from its early days. You should have seen some of the designs Scipio and I came up with when we were first planning the webpage layout. It has went through its ups and downs, but I think we're heading in the right direction now.

Scenarios keep an old game alive, and so do mods. It would be nice to have more info on such things on site, but that also depends on staff time as well as willingness of the fanbase to contribute the articles.

True. We depend on the members for a lot of our content. It's a team effort. :crosseye:

 

[Tex]

Add me to the list of people who want to see a rating/comments section for the scenarios in the archive. Personally I would like to see a database of short comments for the scenarios. Like where somebody could enter "Great scenario for PBEM but the PO is lacking for solo games." To me that would be more helpful than simply a 1-10 rating system.

 

[KG_Jag]

Two thoughts to share. First, its most important to do the baiscs well. All of us have scene other sites of belonged to clubs which forget their main purpose, and lost their direction over time. Sometimes not very much time. It is the members that flesh out the basics and provide a great deal of meaningful depth.

Second, a rating system would be great, and the work is performed mostly by the members. Rating systems I have found useful include the one they had at the scenario depot of thegamers (RIP) and the current set-up at the Combat Mission Scenario Depot, which can be found at http://www.dragonlair.net/combatmission/

 

[Siberian HEAT]

I think the main problem with much of what people want is the lack of pure programming abilities on the part of the staff (no offense intended). HQ just doesn't have the means to implement an automated ladder, especially since the loss of Joss.

The thing to do would be to try to borrow an automated ladder system/scenario archive and rating system from another site and retrofit it for ours. Obviously not a competitor...but surely there has to be members of this site who have friends at other gaming sites? By such affiliations you don't have to reinvent the wheel...you can get a tried and true system working here at HQ without all the effort. No sense in wasting man hours creating something that has already been done. Just like we didn't create the core of our forum, but with a few tweaks it is now a sweet sweet ride!

Failing all that...at the very least perhaps we could open up a new forum section and have each thread be dedicated to individual scenarios. Then, after people play they can post their results/thoughts there. It would be crude...but better than nothing. Later, those results could be cut and paste into a better system.

The preceding message was brought to you by the letter B. And kids, do you know what begins with the letter B? :banana: