Simtropolis not as it used to be

[IL. 1,043]

Hi,

 

It's been some time since I came to Simtropolis, I only came every once in a while to check things out, and I noticed that Simtropolis have been slowly dying.

The chat which is my favorite place rarely have anyone.

I have some suggestions that can help revive Simtropolis to it's former glory, to make Simtropolis great again - pun inteded.

 

I'll break it into parts.

The STEX: Choosing from the categories which game you would like to download stuff for is very annoying, simpler approach would be best, for exemple when you enter STEX you will have 3 clickable images, each one will take you to the STEX of the approprate game, for exemple a clickable image for SimCity 2013 STEX, another one for Cities skylines, and another one for SimCity 4, and more if there is.

Currently when I choose to enter the STEX for SimCity 4 (or the other ones) the listing is using the webpage space very inefficiently, it looks messy and ugly, I liked Simtropolis as it was before, now the while website looks very messy and not inviting at all as it used to be, what happened? 

On a positive side, I like the extra options that we now have to have a quicker access to see our activity in the forum or in the STEX, also the sorting options, those are great and can be useful for many.

The Home Page: it looks messy, the featured city journals don't look as it used to be, and the frame of it is a little boring.

The STEX Featured and the Newly Added Files sections look not as good as it used to be, the featured stuff images should be bigger to fill all that wasted empty space and maybe take those sections to the top of the home page right above or right under the featured city journals section or maybe on the side. Somewhere less far away from the top of the page.

The "From  The Gallery" is not being used much and it's navigation is not inviting to use, as a proof for that you never find any like or comments on gallery images. It's a bit not user-friendly.

Simtropolis Challenges Winners Podium section should be higher in the home page.

Basically I think that you need to show the best stuff at the home page to impress and invite new comers and to make them stay, try to put best quality stuff and add more variations.

 

The Forums: The forums sections is fine and looks great, no problem there.

 

The City Journals: In just few words, it's ugly, it's a bit of a mess, it used to be better in the past, easier to navigate and easier to find stuff. 

The chat: No problem there, but I have an idea to make it alive again, along with Simtropolis, everyone are mostly using smartphones now, why not an app for Simtropolis chat? Or an app that let players watch the city journals, the forums and enter the chat (they don't need to download from the STEX or anything, but maybe seeing the STEX files and commenting on them would also be useful), it should be a light app for quick use, people don't chat from PC as often as before.

 

I imagine something like a cross between Instagram but with a chatroom for everyone to chat in, something like messengers' pop out chat window that is easy to use and won't force you to quit any other running apps or to stop playing your game to type a word or two in chat. I think it will be a big update and would bring some life back to Simtropolis.

 

Also maybe some advertising for Simtropolis on Facebook or other places? Or simply Youtube videos? I don't know.. I'm just not sure what you can do about this, esspecially the funding for that.

I also suggest to add a bit more ads to Simtropolis to bring more funding to your website to keep improving and doing the great work! Maybe a video ad from time to time, or an optional section of the website where members can watch ads or leave ads playing to help Simtropolis? Ads in a Simtropolis app that can be desabled by making a payment would make more sense.

Another way to bring more funding to Simtropolis is to have a shop section where you sell game keys for Cities Skylines, SimCity 4, and the other city building games, and even strategy games like Age of Empires or Age of Mythology and others... basically concentrating on building games.

 

These are just my opinions

All the best

[CorinaMarie 29,882]

Hiya,

Suggestions for improvements are always welcome. The actual arrangement for where things are placed on the pages is handled at the Administrator level so I'm sure we'll hear from  @Cyclone Boom once he's had a chance to review your ideas.

 

1 hour ago, IL. said:

The chat:

This is the part I know a wee little bit about. The chat is in flux atm. You can find more details in the About the chat? thread.

[DavidDHetzel 1,816]

Your tone in this message is offputting and borderline whiny, You're trying to be doom and gloom by saying the site is going die off yet we're in possibly a Renaissance of City building Games with Cities Skyline's and now SC3000 getting popular, plus SimCity 4 has even seen a revival of sorts lately. 

You did make some good points about STEX and repetitious STEX content though I''ll give you that.

 

[IL. 1,043]

1 hour ago, DavidDHetzel said:

Your tone in this message is offputting and borderline whiny, You're trying to be doom and gloom by saying the site is going die off yet we're in possibly a Renaissance of City building Games with Cities Skyline's and now SC3000 getting popular, plus SimCity 4 has even seen a revival of sorts lately. 

You did make some good points about STEX and repetitious STEX content though I''ll give you that.

Not at all I was not trying to be gloomy, I love simtropolis, but I'll take your advice and edit my post

[Mańkowsky 170]

One thing that irritates me personally. Not all STEX image thumbnails work properly when typed by a search engine. This also may affect some STEX users.

[Fantozzi 4,068]

Sadly foremost we had to bemoan the death of some dear members and the community had losses the site itself hardly can compensate. As the community has no much choice were to stick together and so there is no much competition for members the site could even do worse regarding functionallity and still we would hang around here. Mostly community is about people, isn't it? To meet and to share. Second on how comfortable the seats are. You go even to a ruined bar if the people are cool, don't you?

Seeing so much new stunning content on the STEX this year - there were definitely years worse, I can hardly believe we are dying.

And I believe - new members coming here for cities:skylines and seing their first interest in first place won't therefore ignore old sc4 members (the senior citizens?) - instead many of us making comrades - making community! - independend of were he/she is active - in the development threads (very middle) or in the off topic threads (very bottom) or is more with this game or that game. I strongly believe it is possible to be all three at the same time - a C:S fan and a SC4 fan and a SC3000 fan. And beeing so - it doesn't matter which section is on top. I don't think posting in the upper sections makes me upper class while posting in the bottom section (uh!) makes me ... depraved (only if I don't do this too often, of course).

But, well, okay, I agree - it might be hard to be a SC2013 fan these days . But who knows, what future brings? So C:S being first section - to me seems right. It's only to entrap young, virgin players and soon we will drag them down into the lower circles of hell - where SC4 is cooking and the air is full of sulfur and dependency lists.

So to me, as @CorinaMarie said, suggestions to improve the site - always welcome.

But all this talking about a dying community - I became a member in 2009. Since then they tell me I applied for a coffin sailing towards the edge of the world.

Maybe.

But now, for today, it's fun being here. Still sailing. And the community (the companionship?) still is great. Why not enjoying it today? Maybe because we are city builders we can't stop planning the future? And we always expect a crisis coming next? Oh - they're moving out of town, population is shrinking? Maybe we are to much focused on the topic and we transfer this fear from the game into the community? Maybe that's our burden?

 

 

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

Thanks for the feedback. Many of the shortcomings you've described are aspects we would indeed like to improve.

The homepage has long been in need of refining and @Dirktator has recently again reiterated he's planning to work on this, in addition to the general theming / design. I can also confirm in the not too distant future, the site will be upgrading to IPS 4.2.x which brings a whole host of powerful new features and refinements. Many of them are listed here.

Given SimCity 4 content represents over 92% of all files, I agree about making it more prominent on the STEX, and I've now repositioned the categories accordingly. It does make sense as C:S content has really only thrived in the Steam Workshop, since that's how it's directly connected with the game. For this reason, the fact 8 items have been shared in the past 6 months proves there isn't current demand for C:S content to be externally hosted on sites such as ours.

For one, it's true the City Journals (blogs) section does have significant shortfalls. The worst being that the index painstakingly loads all images from all entries on the page. As I've said previously, this is not acceptable or an efficient use of resources.

Search and accessibility are also other areas in much need of work.

With advertisements, there does need to be a careful balance. Too many and they'd be an annoyance, and also the influx of ad-blockers means they're not so effective nowadays as primary sources of revenue. Dirk tells me he's continuing to investigate other options to help with site funding. We've recently offered the STEX Collections as digital downloads (ISO images). Also back in June, Simtropolis became an affiliate with GOG which has opened other possibilities.

As for more significant changes to the site layout, outside from built-in settings, there are ways to modify the appearance of applications within templates. To what extent however is constrained by limitations of the software. The thing is, everything in the IPS Suite is built around a core framework. This means adding or adjusting functionality, although very possible, is not usually a simple case of tweaking the code as we'd like. Our best bet would be to hire a custom developer, with knowledge of the finer details (mostly PHP based). Or better still, request IPS to implement improvements themselves. That way they'd endure future updates are made compatible, as is always the problem with any 3rd party development. Without a modification being officially endorsed, there's no guarantee something would work without continued development.

If you or anyone else are returning to the site after a long absence, you'll notice some big differences compared to what you may be familiar with. All this stems from midway through 2015 which saw the introduction of a complete rewrite to the IPS Suite from the ground up. Following this, there were many initial bugs and other shortfalls. Over time since then, these have slowly been addressed, and the speed and stability has noticeably improved. It's really been a work in progress, and IPS have repeatedly said their roadmap was to improve the base software first, then get onto focusing on major new features & functionality. Slowly but surely this stage has now been reached, and we believe this will shortly be advancing at a much faster pace.

On the whole, I would say that while improvements are necessary, I strongly believe Simtropolis is in no state of decline.

The site has changed notably over the past 14 years through all the various software changes. Sure the activity isn't as much as years gone by, but that doesn't mean the community has reached the end of the road. Far from it at that. If activity is anything to go by, the STEX and CJs have already seen a wide variety of content shared this year. Also the forums continue to thrive with active discussions.

Speaking as an admin here, I always put my efforts in the best interest of the community. Like all the staff here, this is a voluntary unpaid role. But as long as a difference can be made, that will always be our end goal.

[IL. 1,043]

4 hours ago, Fantozzi said:

Sadly foremost we had to bemoan the death of some dear members and the community had losses the site itself hardly can compensate.

I agree.

As the community has no much choice were to stick together and so there is no much competition for members the site could even do worse regarding functionallity and still we would hang around here. Mostly community is about people, isn't it? To meet and to share. Second on how comfortable the seats are. You go even to a ruined bar if the people are cool, don't you?

That's not the point, I'd still go to a ruined bar if the people are cool though.

4 hours ago, Fantozzi said:

And I believe - new members coming here for cities:skylines and seing their first interest in first place won't therefore ignore old sc4 members (the senior citizens?) - instead many of us making comrades - making community! - independend of were he/she is active - in the development threads (very middle) or in the off topic threads (very bottom) or is more with this game or that game. I strongly believe it is possible to be all three at the same time - a C:S fan and a SC4 fan and a SC3000 fan. And beeing so - it doesn't matter which section is on top. I don't think posting in the upper sections makes me upper class while posting in the bottom section (uh!) makes me ... depraved (only if I don't do this too often, of course).

That's a good approach to it, I didn't mean it in a sense of hiarchy, but more in a sense of how much content that section have, because the most bottom sections usually have less activity, at least that's what I think/thought. 

4 hours ago, Fantozzi said:

But, well, okay, I agree - it might be hard to be a SC2013 fan these days . But who knows, what future brings? So C:S being first section - to me seems right. It's only to entrap young, virgin players and soon we will drag them down into the lower circles of hell - where SC4 is cooking and the air is full of sulfur and dependency lists.

Lol, nice trap

4 hours ago, Fantozzi said:

But now, for today, it's fun being here. Still sailing. And the community (the companionship?) still is great. Why not enjoying it today? Maybe because we are city builders we can't stop planning the future? And we always expect a crisis coming next? Oh - they're moving out of town, population is shrinking? Maybe we are to much focused on the topic and we transfer this fear from the game into the community? Maybe that's our burden?

I didn't notice that about myself, but I guess you are right. 

 

 

[IL. 1,043]

4 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

Thanks for the feedback. Many of the shortcomings you've described are aspects we would indeed like to improve.

The homepage has long been in need of refining and @Dirktator has recently again reiterated he's planning to work on this, in addition to the general theming / design. I can also confirm in the not too distant future, the site will be upgrading to IPS 4.2.x which brings a whole host of powerful new features and refinements. Many of them are listed here.

Given SimCity 4 content represents over 92% of all files, I agree about making it more prominent on the STEX, and I've now repositioned the categories accordingly. It does make sense as C:S content has really only thrived in the Steam Workshop, since that's how it's directly connected with the game. For this reason, the fact 8 items have been shared in the past 6 months proves there isn't current demand for C:S content to be externally hosted on sites such as ours.

For one, it's true the City Journals (blogs) section does have significant shortfalls. The worst being that the index painstakingly loads all images from all entries on the page. As I've said previously, this is not acceptable or an efficient use of resources.

Search and accessibility are also other areas in much need of work.

With advertisements, there does need to be a careful balance. Too many and they'd be an annoyance, and also the influx of ad-blockers means they're not so effective nowadays as primary sources of revenue. Dirk tells me he's continuing to investigate other options to help with site funding. We've recently offered the STEX Collections as digital downloads (ISO images). Also back in June, Simtropolis became an affiliate with GOG which has opened other possibilities.

As for more significant changes to the site layout, outside from built-in settings, there are ways to modify the appearance of applications within templates. To what extent however is constrained by limitations of the software. The thing is, everything in the IPS Suite is built around a core framework. This means adding or adjusting functionality, although very possible, is not usually a simple case of tweaking the code as we'd like. Our best bet would be to hire a custom developer, with knowledge of the finer details (mostly PHP based). Or better still, request IPS to implement improvements themselves. That way they'd endure future updates are made compatible, as is always the problem with any 3rd party development. Without a modification being officially endorsed, there's no guarantee something would work without continued development.

If you or anyone else are returning to the site after a long absence, you'll notice some big differences compared to what you may be familiar with. All this stems from midway through 2015 which saw the introduction of a complete rewrite to the IPS Suite from the ground up. Following this, there were many initial bugs and other shortfalls. Over time since then, these have slowly been addressed, and the speed and stability has noticeably improved. It's really been a work in progress, and IPS have repeatedly said their roadmap was to improve the base software first, then get onto focusing on major new features & functionality. Slowly but surely this stage has now been reached, and we believe this will shortly be advancing at a much faster pace.

On the whole, I would say that while improvements are necessary, I strongly believe Simtropolis is in no state of decline.

The site has changed notably over the past 14 years through all the various software changes. Sure the activity isn't as much as years gone by, but that doesn't mean the community has reached the end of the road. Far from it at that. If activity is anything to go by, the STEX and CJs have already seen a wide variety of content shared this year. Also the forums continue to thrive with active discussions.

Speaking as an admin here, I always put my efforts in the best interest of the community. Like all the staff here, this is a voluntary unpaid role. But as long as a difference can be made, that will always be our end goal.

 

You really answered everything here, I'm very glad that you are still taking care of Simtropolis and that you are aware of these problems, thank you for the awesome reply! 

 

[Fantozzi 4,068]

8 hours ago, IL. said:

That's a good approach to it, I didn't mean it in a sense of hiarchy, but more in a sense of how much content that section have, because the most bottom sections usually have less activity, at least that's what I think/thought. 

Regarding the STEX I agree. Putting almost empty sections on top doesn't reflect the activity of the community.

And yes - thankfully @Cyclone Boom gave a more serious reply than me, I only pointed out that community is still fun while you made useful suggestions to improve the site. I almost missed your topic.

[kschmidt 6,214]

Simtropolis Mainpage I hate those Latest News and Showcase CJ Forum section its rather annoying with those big icons´, subject wich may be only read once; quit in the way of the club, cityjournal and popular now ! As other sections a single row would servive, not eating up all those megabyte´s of unnecesary data loaded everytime. Gallery I like for those who are less fortunate to make it to the mainpage have there  work displayed. Seperate pages for SimCity 4, Cites Skyline+s, Cities Xxl or any with cj and STEX section would make it more organized less data traffic; drawback maybe the mainpage be left with news and only mayor work, little litteratical ! Chat the old I more liked as iit didn´t required a total seperate being loaded all the time, discord is fine if you use it as a multiple social forum for different subjects, yet it takes most of the time a large share of procesor an d memory performance not available anymore for other things ! Funding by commercial companies would make Simtropolis more dependable, Donations I am welcome to do sometime or another, seeing something back in ratings or likes per dollar donated would be nice and maybe, some more insight into the financial running cost would be welcome !