Player controlled "retirement/snooze"

I'm starting a new thread to discuss the idea of player controlled "retirement/snooze" that came up in the dead "snooze_your_games" thread. It was difficult to discuss there because everyone was confused which version of snooze/retirement everyone else was talking about.

My idea is that it would be useful for a player to control whether games show up in the "My Games" section of the main page, the "Game Forums" section of the forum page, and the "Latest Game Posts" list, without losing access to them completely, which is what happens if you "Leave Game" on its "game details" page, especially if it's a private game (if it's a public game you can keep access by saving the url somewhere, but that's sort of a pain).

I suggest we implement this by adding buttons or toggles to the "my games" page. I just grabbed a couple symbols from the website to represent the three sections, but we can pick or design different ones for clarity if people prefer. They could also have mouse-over text to explain for clarity as well (like the buttons next to the characters in the "my characters" page, i.e. "Edit Label/Type," "Edit Character", "Add to Library", "Delete Character")



By default, they can all be ON, but users can turn them OFF at their own discretion.

For example in my games, I might turned OFF all buttons for "The Haunting" because that is a completed game that is no longer active. Typically this sort of game would be retired by the GM, but in this case, the GM is no longer active on the site. For "Shinobigami," I might turn OFF "main" and "forum" page buttons because we finished the first mission and are on indefinite hiatus, so I don't need quick access to that game for now, but we might do another mission in the future, so I want to make sure I don't miss an announcement by keeping on "Latest Game Posts" button. For "Gamers' Plane Development," I might turn OFF "Latest Game Posts" because it's an active community forum that can flood my "Latest Games Posts" list, but I want to keep quick access to it so I can check in when I have time. For active games like Microscope, I would keep them fully ON.

Personally, I can't think of a reason I would differentiate between "main" and "forum" page buttons, so we might only need two buttons instead of three, but they are two different places on the website, so maybe other people have reasons to turn one OFF and keep the other ON.

Cheers! That's a really clear statement of requirement.

A clear statement indeed. I'd vote for all three buttons, as they can be quite useful. On mobile, I tend to use the homepage exclusively 90% of the time - if not more. (it became so much more useful along with mobile layout, cheers Adam.)

Still not a fan of it for the same reasons as on the other thread. But I'll go with the majority

I am also not sure about needing to differentiate between main and forum, but think this could be useful.

Being able exclude games from the Latest lists (and maybe have them behave like Public games and be listed there?) separately from excluding them from the Your Games on the homepage and the Games menu on the topbar is ideal. I can see cases where we might want them in one of those places but not in the other.

If people have long enough lists they may want to shelve games into a drawer like the Retired Games list to clean up the list.

You still think this will kill games, eh ... shoot, I thought having the control tucked away from the main page would make the chance of accidentally turning it off much less. Even if it does happen, I would think it would be rare and a quick @ mention or message would still be able to get the person's attention, so if it does happen it's not permanent and could be fixed pretty quickly, so I thought it probably wouldn't kill a game. But I could be wrong.
I like that idea.
Yeah, maybe if you turn OFF all buttons, the game is moved into a spoiler section like retired games, until you turn them back ON.

I do have a long list (20+/-) and I like this idea.

I also like Chalrytharendir's representation of what could be on the My Games page.

Bumping this again after a conversation on discord.

My problem. This is my "Your Games" section.



...also I'd like quick access to a couple of public games that I follow.

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The "Your Games" section of the homepage was always a bit of a hack. It's just the bottom of the Forums page that's been dumped on the homepage.

The idea that has been proposed is that we have the idea of "following" games.

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Proposal for discussion:

Following would only change the homepage (which Bowlofspinach doesn't use, so soz Bowl). The Your Games section would become Followed Games.

By default, you'd follow all your existing games, but you could turn off following a game (somehow).

You could choose to follow any game.

Maybe up here for public games.


Dunno. But maybe worth a discussion.

If we unfollow one of our own games, will there be an easy way to find it again later? I am not sure where else they are listed.

Like with the Retired Games +Section, could we add unfollowed games to there, or something like it?

But for me the whole point of following a game would be to see its posts in my feed like I do with games that I'm playing in.

I guess it's a difference in how you and I use the site. I just don't see a point in introducing a "follow" feature if it doesn't do that

I like the idea a lot but have the same concern as vagueGM.

Dunno. Maybe that heart thing is a toggle on all games to make it very turn on/offable. If it's even a heart icon. I'm not sure what icon we should use. Pinned is gone. Star for bookmark? Heart for favourite?

Maybe I'd be able to integrate that with latest [game] posts too. I don't know. This is just idle chatter at the moment.

That is mainly where I would want it.

Wile you are poking around in there, maybe this 'not showing in the latest' logic can be applied to 'Community Posts' and other 'Latest' blocks so players can exclude certain subforums ('Site Discussions', maybe for those who have not interest in this stuff?) from their feeds?

Me too and this above.

I think my solution above solves the first problem (My Games clutter on Front Page) and is nice because it gives people control regardless of how they use the site. If you want games removed from the front page, but stay in the forum page, you can make that choice. If you want them removed from Latest Games Posts, but stay at the bottom of the Front Page, you can choose that, etc ... I think the idea had pretty good support except for Bowl, but the great thing about my solution is that anyone can just leave all toggles on and the site remains the same for them if they don't like it.

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I like the idea of following. I think the Heart icon works, binoculars is probably too creepy ;)

If you put the heart toggle on the Games Details Page on public games then anyone interested can toggle it. I suggest it adds it to the My Games page and then you can toggle it further to select where you want the game viewed using the 3 buttons that I suggested before

So we'd have:
Games I'm Playing
Games I'm Following
Games I'm Running

If all toggles are OFF, then the game moves into a spoiler archive, so you can still find it again later (like retired games). For Followed games, if you toggle the Heart OFF, it removes it completely. For Played Games, if you Leave the game, it removes it completely.

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For ignoring certain community forums: Maybe there's a different toggle (or we could reuse the heart) that's automatically ON on each community forum but you can choose to toggle it OFF? When it's OFF, it removes that forum from the Latest Posts and Community Posts sections, but keeps access via the Forums page, so you can turn it back on in the future if you want.

That looks real good.

Agreed!

I still don't like this but it seems I'm overruled on that

Can you remind me of the reason? Maybe there's a tweak to my idea that will address your concern?

I can see the point of snoozing games on the front page and as long as they would pop up when there's a new post in there as Adam originally suggested, I'll even support that one. But making games entirely invisible there, hiding them on your latest post feeds and just shielding yourself from any way to see the activity in them will definitely lead to games dying. At least some people will mute a game on accident and never notice until it's stalled.

Organizing your front page is one thing but if you're in a game, you should get post updates for it through the means that you use.

Being able to follow games and maybe setting up groups that aren't games and have different settings would be better options that don't carry that risk.

As for hiding community forums from your feed, that's what the latest game posts feed is for. It was a stated design goal for GP from Keleth to lead people to the public threads to strengthen the community.
I get why its appealing to just shut all of that off and only look at your games and I'm sure plenty of people would like that. But it goes directly against the goal of the site