As I already suggested in the Empires league thread. Empires Notifications I would like to make a steam group for any notifications about empires matches, leagues and anything important. This would be done over the steam group forums. Whoever would like to recieve any notifications would have to subscribe to the forums (thats the hardest part). After one subscribes to the forums there, he would recieve a notification in steam top right corner (green message) for any upcoming matches or anything else important to empires gameplay. This would also reach offline players, after they log back to steam. (much better than announcements) I would be simply creating new threads in the forums. Nobody else except me or whoever would be helping with this could be able to post into those forums (to avoid spam). After time if we would have a lot of subscribers, it might even pull many players back, which for example forgot about empires. If one subscribes, he will stay subscribed until he personally unsubscribes. After all, its gonna always be in their steam window, which is IMO quite a big deal in keeping empires in the mind of players. What I would need: I would need a link to the group and a little explanation posted to EVERY organized game, any PUG, any League, any Match... The more the better. In other way, I would need the community to accept this way (atleast some for the start). Mainly those who organize games. Maybe also some pinned thread. Something like this: If you would like to recieve notifications about upcoming Matches for Empires, please join this group and SUBSCRIBE to the group forums: Group: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/empnft How to: http://i.imgur.com/kCwY3mT.png Thoughts?
Also, is there any version of the empires logo which is the same as steam icon but bigger? Or any other empires logo, just big enough for steam group avatar. And I dont mean the logo which shows "empires" in text. Couldnt find anything better than just Brenodi/Northern faction flag.
Why not just use official empires group? Or one of the countless empires groups that don't get used for anything but promoting organization, like the vet group. It's a good idea, I'm just saying I got like 10 different empires groups already.
Well, Iam also saying I would maintain it. + I dont think those groups were pushing things over their forums and making people subscribe to the forums. + I dont have access to them. + If I was to do it, Iam not gonna use some forgotten group, but rather start new and the group would have this only purpose.
For example. Iam in this http://steamcommunity.com/groups/empvetpug# group. But I get 0 notifications. I completely forgot it even exists. I can see its still kinda updated. But for some reason its done over announcements. So I get nothing about its updates when Iam offline. (I dont remember getting any announcement from that group, was unlucky I guess) Also, there is no mention of such group anywhere in the threads of matches and such. How should someone new know about this? EDIT: The main thing is, that I would be pushing stuff over forums and the whole idea of the group is gonna be to subscribe to its forums. Because for some reason many here use steam announcements and I guess they dont realize its VERY VERY crap. Its almost pissing me off. lol EDIT2: In another way. The difference is, that instead of getting pretty much 0 updates, or missing most of them, you would get EVERY SINGLE ONE into your top right steam corner, which I assume everyone checks regularly.
well an alternate thing to do is subscribe to either of the official steam groups http://steamcommunity.com/groups/Empires/discussions http://steamcommunity.com/app/17740/discussions/ and then make a topic for an upcoming event in one of those
I just quit all of the empires groups because i got fed up with notification spam couple of months back.
Iam sure it will be fine having a group where everybody can post and everybody would be subscribed. Might make a lot of spam. Unless forums would be restricted. Thats why there would be just one. I would like to keep it very clean. EDIT: thats also why I want a separate group, which would focus only on this.
Even just being in 1 group you get spammed. People don't need reminders every hour for an event. Ether I am going or i'm to busy. 8 reminder b4 an event is only going to piss people off. That's why I removed myself from all of them. I would understand if maybe 1 the day of and maybe even 1 a little before an event to get people in TS. Other then that it's just annoying.
This would not be for "announcements" or any kind of fast/short notice reminders. It would only be for single messages days before the event. For example, for this league that we currently have. One thread would be created with all the info and the linkage. And then one other thread for every match with all the info like where to confirm that you are attending the next match (which would be done in teams steam group forums, just like the reminders and announcements as it is now). All of this few days before they would happen or as soon as possible. This would all simply pop up in your top steam corner green message. I wouldnt even make announcements or events most probably. (maybe events, but not sure on that one though) Just a simple single channel for staying updated with upcoming events for empires.
That's basically what we're already working on. In the future all events and announcements will go through the official empires group. And there will be a separate event schedule in the main menu and on the front page.
But people are gonna have to go either in-game to check, or be lucky enough to be online at the time of the announcement/event. This one is a bit different. If it would be done in this way, mostly everybody would go through the message. Because it would be in steam, until checked. But I mean, If you plan on doing this and have somebody who would actually care about it, then go ahead. I just thought of this idea and I thought it would be ridiculous to come here, suggest it and expect somebody to care about it And I actually thought of pretty nice way of staying updated. I got a Thunderbird client. I made it to read RSS of the general forum. I made a filter which would look for thread names which would contain words like "league, match, pug, event...". When it finds some, it sends me an email and opens a file on my PC. ( of course I would still also check manually ) And Iam pretty much everyday on a PC, or mobile at work. Dont think it would be too hard and I play pretty much 80%-90% of weekends organized matches, so I thought why not. Also... Is the future far enough for such thing to not start right now?
