Important: Please Read! Changes Are Coming!

[Jeff Wilder]

The basic reality is that some notable number of customers are not apt to react with such rational calm when disappointed. Even normally gracious people can react quite negatively when you let them down. That negativity can feed on itself and grow - this is how PR debacles are born.

While I won't go so far as to dispute this, universally, i will say that until I actually see it happen, I'm not going to believe it in these specific circumstances.

You brought up the VTT. The VTT was promised. It was advertised as part of Fourth Edition, available at launch. People reacted badly to it becoming vaporware because it was a promise that didn't happen, a promise that at least some people relied on when spending their money, not simply because it didn't happen.

So don't make a promise. Just be extraordinarily clear and above-board: "This is what we're hoping to do. This is our plan, but plans can change. We are not making promises." And if people still get pissed off because "promises were broken," I promise I'll come back to this thread and mea culpa.

But until this is tried, I for one am not going to accept "people will pillory us" as a valid reason for not sharing plans. There are plenty of valid reasons for not sharing plans -- and, in fact, "we don't want to share plans" is good enough -- but "we're afraid it'll be taken as a promise" isn't a good one.

 

[Morrus]

I must have been mistaken then. I thought the idea was to create a really nice Gamers Seeking Gamers functionality but making it available only to paid subscribers. If that's a free tool, that would be awesome. There is a lot of potential to making that free...it could bring in a lot more new visitors to ENworld.

Making Gamers Seeking Gamers available to only a few people wouldn't make sense. It works by having a large user base!

So then why exactly is a sig important enough to be taken away from the general public and made into a paid only feature if you're willing to give us all of this "awesome stuff for free"?

Allowing a non-subscriber the ability to send and receive private messages via an Inbox is ok, but sigs are important enough to pay for?

PMs are needed so mods can contact people without valid email addresses.

Is the only reason you really want to eliminate the sig is so people like me can't advertise a measly website?

Not only is not not the only reason, it isn't even one of the reasons.

Taking anything away seems like a form of bullying into subscribing.

I'm sorry you feel that way. I do not wish to "bully" you.

 

[Oryan77]

I'm sorry you feel that way. I do not wish to "bully" you.

Seeing as how you haven't really told us what all of these free new features are going to be, then I can't very well be excited about it, right? Especially knowing that features I already enjoy are being taken away. I find it amusing that you reply with such a snarky attitude as if I'm the one being unreasonable.

All I'm doing is sharing an opinion and critiquing.
Maybe I missed it within the 10 pages of the thread, but the only free feature I'm aware of so far is the Gamers Seeking Gamers interface. And so far, I get use out of sigs a thousand times over than I do with the Gamers Seeking Gamers feature. So excuse me if I'm not jumping for joy right now.

 

[TheYeti1775]

Making Gamers Seeking Gamers available to only a few people wouldn't make sense. It works by having a large user base!

Glad you feel that way. I would agree.

PMs are needed so mods can contact people without valid email addresses.

Um Morrus it is possible for VBul to allow Mods to PM to people unable to PM.
One of the forums I'm on that restricts PM's allows for this.
They can PM you, you can reply to it via using your email person function to contact them back. The site if very strict on who has access where and how much access.

Not only is not not the only reason, it isn't even one of the reasons.

IMHO It should be a reasoning for it. After all they are using your bandwidth to advertise their wares. Weather they are giving it out free or not.
I think folks are over valuing their sigs and other people's sigs.
Honestly there is nothing stopping you from creating a thread in the appropriate forum with the links.

I'm sorry you feel that way. I do not wish to "bully" you.

I would call it bullying. The better definition is exthortion as discussed before. LOL
No one is begrudging you for trying to make a buck. But when you start out with saying the subscriber model has worked well enough to become self-sustaining your going to get grief if you begin cutting 'services' to increase sales of another tier.

The real key to making yourself grow is again, what do you offer I can't not find any other place on the Web. Or what do you offer that is such a convience for me that I can't live without.
Find that piece and you earn more money. It's a simple enough equation.

 

[avin]

Just trying to add feedback:

I was a subscriber for a while, just to help the site. Never downloaded anything. Had to stop to cut down my credit card monthly bill.

My major interest on Enworld is reading topics and posting. I have other two monthly subscriptions, DDI and World of Warcraft.

DDI provides all functionality I need for my tabletop D&D games (I wish I had a Character Builder as good for GURPS...).

World of Warcraft provide me some moments of online gaming.

With that in mind, I don't think I would pay US$ 6.00 just for having my signature, because I'm not using any other function or downloading stuff.

Signatures aren't important for me, but I would consider weird to see a web forum charging for it.

I hope you still consider keeping sigs (for people who care) and mantaining a 3 or less dollars option for people who just want to collaborate with the community, as I do.

 

[The Shaman]

Charging a fee for signatures? Yeah, go ahead and shut my signature off - I'll just append the same text to the end of my posts instead.

 

[Tortoise]

My 2 coppers:

I could see limiting size and function of sigs for non-subscribers, however taking them away entirely seems like it would negatively impact the usefulness pointed out by several on this thread already. There have been a few times where someone's sig info helped me find something useful and/or interesting both within and outside of EN World.

How about allowing subscribers to turn off their viewing of sigs and adverts instead. That way it would be a subscribers choice if they felt the need to have pages loading quicker on some occasions and wanted to see what was out there on other occasions.

 

[Tortoise]

I just checked and subscribers can turn off ads and sigs, so just ignore my inane comments.

 

[Tortoise]

Ok, pardon my air-headedness today please ... I have a nasty head-cold and feel rather out of it, yuck.

Are private forums still available to subscribers or was that a limited time experiment?

That's the kind of thing I could see Paragon tier allowing. Someone pays the fee and can give out a password to their group members and only those folks can get to the forum.

 

[Morrus]

. I find it amusing that you reply with such a snarky attitude as if I'm the one being unreasonable.

I am neither trying to bully you, nor was I being snarky when I explained that I was not trying to bully you.

Here's what we're going to do, folks - we are going to leave out the personal comments and accusations. You are welcome to politely debate the issue, but if you start getting personal you'll be asked to leave the thread.