Discovery advertisement campaign - step 1

[Error]

If anybody would happen to have the original transparent version of the v4.87 logo (and/or just the "Conquest" banner), that'd be quite useful for creating advertisement material.

Another thing that logo could (or, well, in my opinion: should) be used for is to make our Facebook links look a bit more "professional". This can easily be done with a bit of Open Graph code in the header, as I mentioned in an earlier thread. Unless we want user avatars and signatures to represent Discovery by default, of course.

The default image can easily be changed by adding this bit of OG code to the header template (with a few modifications, of course):

Code:

<meta property="og:image" content="Discovery v4.87 logo URL goes here" />

It is also possible to take it quite a bit further than just modifying the default link image, as I mentioned in my original post, but that's not as important as getting a logo up in my opinion.

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Use what we have, so:

1. add some nice keywords to our website, like "space shooter game", "freelancer space mod", "multiplayer adventure" and other words gamers use when searching for new stuff. Let Google do the rest.

2. make one SIMPLE page that keywords link to. That page must be:
- rich of appealing game photos showing pew, trade and RP aspects of the game, ALL IN ONE SIGHT
- maybe a video or two
- and short info how to install a game. Too much text to read can ruin everything.
- state clearly it's RP game, knowing English is mandatory

Our usual target is rather small and is limited to FL vanilla owners. But FL is easy to order/download and we gotta attract some ppl that never heard of FL.

More importantly, perhaps, as Pepe, Coin and a few other people mentioned, it would perhaps be very helpful indeed for us to improve our web presence a bit.

Creating a new pretty FL/Disco-inspired (but still simple and user-friendly) landing page for discoverygc.com (a bit like discoveryfl.com used to be) with important announcements, a bit of mod info, and a lot of pretty pictures/videos/other interesting things to make it all a bit more friendly and appealing to new players than the forums currently are is one of the best ideas I've seen in this thread so far.

Let me try to explain why I think this is important. I personally didn't realize it before it was brought up in this thread, but if someone who's never heard about Discovery happens to stumble upon discoverygc.com from a search engine result, or finds a link here (let's say it's from one of our hopefully upcoming advertising efforts), the first thing (s)he's going to see right now is a rather unfriendly wall of text about an advertising campaign.

Finding out anything about the mod - unless you happen to stumble across our Mod DB page - is rather difficult from the front page of discoverygc.com (i.e. the forums). There's nothing about the mod, no pictures, no videos, or much else to see on the front page. Or, to clarify that a bit: Not much to keep a potential new player interested for long before heading off to another web page.

I'd gladly help out if somebody thinks a landing page/something similar is an interesting idea. Or with (almost) anything else PR-related, for that matter. In other words; consider me interested if there's going to be an advertising/PR team sometime down the line. Sounds like fun.

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[Omi]

then maybe the factions that are low on players should sponsor new players to join them

Sure, if factions were handing out substantial benefits like that for joining, that'd be great. I know a few do, or did - I got a free Vache when I signed up for IDF a couple of years ago - but the fact is, the cost of even a basic VHF is a lot for a new player to foot the bill for. Armour upgrades should be sunk already, at least for snubs.

In any case, you won't see me handing free stuff out to people on a regular basis. Making money on Discovery, to me, is an absolute chore. Trading is mind-numbingly repetitive and boring, and mining only marginally less so. I can barely stomach making enough credits to keep my own characters ticking over, let alone sponsoring new GRN| recruits, for example.

The point is, new players come here having heard good things about the quality of roleplay, or whatever it is that brought them here (I advertised it as roleplay-centric, given that the gameplay is nothing to write home about) but there is no way to really start roleplaying right off the bat. Yes, in theory all you need is any ship at all and a keyboard, but it's hard to RP a military pilot/bloodthirsty pirate/whatever if you don't have the ooRP cash to kick the character into gear. To get that cash, you need to make a character completely unrelated to what you actually want to do, and spend hours upon hours clicking on things and pressing F3.

I'm only speaking from personal experience here, mind. All 5ish people I tried to introduce to Discovery fell out with it because of the somewhat grindy nature of funding new characters, even with me giving them a wad of cash to go buy a BWT or something with for the purposes of kickstarting their "funds character". That, and they found the community "elitist", but that's something too deep-rooted to have a go at fixing, eh?

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[Black Widow]

This thread is being posted to the Facebook Page to drum up support

[Avalanche]

This got me into Disco..

[Leo]

I would love to volunteer for a member of the advertisement team. I have extensive knowledge in forming animated banners as well as a lot of experience in Photoshop and photo editing in general (being that I have a dual Bachelors in Visual Arts/Computer Networking, references furnished upon request ).

Discovery has been a home away from home for me for almost six years and I would love to give back by bringing people to Discovery to experience the same amount of fun and creative freedom that I have encountered since playing here. Granted, I've been away for a long time because of events in my life that caused me to not be able to game anymore, but now I'm back and with a vengeance.

Consider me, please. I would love to advertise Discovery to other forums, sites, and people. If I'm not considered, I will still do these things, but being a member of the advertisement team would be considered a great honor to me. Also, I'm posting this thread and link to all possible areas that I can to bring older member back and check 4.87 out now that it's semi-online and active (even though there will be a rollback, at least they can check out the new content, ships, etc).

I'll let you know what I find out and who replies!

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You fear oblivion. Yet you forget. The universe remembers every atom of your being. Even dust hums your name in the dark.
The Banished Legion

[evanz]

i just grabbed this, if it helps

it would be ace in the devs/designers could supply the original, preferebly in a large png format

[Pepe]

I'm looking at video and stuff we think it's good... But, it's good for us only. We are FL fanatics used to poo-yellow systems, fog, rocks, weird vanilla ships design. New players might not be fans of shrimps, bugs and fish shaped ships. New ones are not hooked yet. We must look at FL with their eyes.

They would like to see bright Universe and more AEROdynamic space ships, like Arrow, new BW gunship, Civil Shuttle, King Fisher, many Zoner ships... If you don't trust me - trust Hollywood. Hollywood is never wrong, no matter if we like it or not.

I hope Maurice won't mind I'm using his snaps to make my self clear:

http://i.imgur.com/m892mQH.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/4hcF0Ao.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/roBopBN.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/NfK8nle.jpg

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[lIceColon]

How about we take some of the better arpy stories in the forums and turn it into machinima?

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No atmosphere? GTFO.
The propeller is the greatest invention of all time.

[Nutline]

First thing you'll wanna do is to make the server playable again, bombers for example are so nerfed in 4.87 that you can't hit anything smaller than a cruiser and alot more defective changes which constantly ruined the entire gameplay. Big missions payout in 4.86 ruined the server economy (glad you've waived them out in 4.87 but it's a little bit too late).

I have many friends (+8) who completely moved out of disco becouse of this constant degradation of the game feeling induced by these updates. I know, you don't expect that everyone to be happy but still ... there is a very big quantity of players who quitted disco (look at the graphs) and that's not becouse they don't have time to play anymore, but the changes along the years.

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[sindroms]

I must remind you that it IS the start of a new school year. You know. "I am going to do GOOD this year, no more games for me! Only studying!" Yeah, give it a few months, you will see a boost in activity soon.

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PSA: If you have been having stutter/FPS lag on Disco where it does not run as smoothly as other games, please look at the fix here: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2306502
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