I was 99.9% sure I had already reviewed this forum, so I checked and I did but it seems to have been six years ago. Six years is a lifetime (at least for me) so I wanted to see what y'all were up to now.
Preface: As always, nothing is personal and most comments are subjective. At the end of the day, you know your community and your goals the best, so take what works and leave behind what doesn't.
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First Impressions: Okay, honestly, this first comment is definitely an outlier problem because I don't know too many people with my setup... but I have a 4K monitor (two, actually, but I'm only viewing the forum on one) and your forum and text look like ants across my screen :X I've attached a screenshot to this post so you can see. I am absolutely NOT suggesting you make a change that would benefit people with 4K monitors, but I just wanted to call it out as an FYI. You're far from the only site, and I include like, the internet as a whole, with this problem, so don't worry about it too much.
ANYWAY, moving on: first impressions are pretty great. I like the use of original art for your banner, and it does intrigue me a bit further to see what appears to be Ponyta, Alolan Ponyta, and what appears to be a fakemon ponyta of the... ghost type? While I don't often go for fakemon as like, a concept, they could definitely be a great addition to a Pokémon RP. Sidebars aren't super my favourite anymore but I like that you have
something to help guide new/prospective members. I also like that you call out the season, show when seasons will change, and that you're calling out specific character archetypes that you're encouraging more of. The ginjika section is intriguing. Not sure it's for me, if I were looking to join a Pokémon RP right now, but it's a point of interest rather than a negative / a deterrent — I can see scenarios where ginjika would be a fun addition to an RP.
The staff count seems rather large for an RP forum with 53 accounts, but it looks like a couple of those aren't content moderation mods so it's not too overwhelming.
First Time User Experience (FTUE): Pretty dang solid. It's a pokémon RP forum, I can easily find links to content that I need to know before joining / jumping in. The flow is pretty standard and well defined (Starting Info > Character Creation / Management > In-Game Content > OOC Content). I think my only criticism here is that the rules have this RED TEXT with some disclaimers / callouts about the bullet point preceding it, and red text always makes me feel like I am back in school and getting chastised by my English teacher, haha. The contents of the red text themselves aren't bad, it's just kind of off-putting at a first glance.
- Suggestion: I would def recommend a different treatment to draw attention to these callouts: in addition to the potential negative reception from folks due to the colour red, there are colour blind folks that can't see red. I'm not saying you can't use colour to note important text or organise content, but it shouldn't be the sole way of doing so. Certain colours are also not great against your background, EG the blue "Trainers" text in your stats box (and I presume that's the member group colour as well) is virtually impossible for me to read due to the contrast between the text colour and bhe dark background. Breeders also has this issue, but less so than Trainers.
The one thing that I think breaks up this FTUE is the staff board. Firstly, I wouldn't expect to see that board, as someone who isn't even a member. I know I can't click into it and see the content, but it's really far removed from the category's theme of "Let's Get Started".
- Suggestion: Just hide the whole board for staff only. Guests and members (rightfully) can't see into it, so there's really no reason to show that it exists. If you really want to keep it as-is in terms of non-staff visibility, totally up to you, but I would in that case recommend shifting down to the bottom of the forum.
I am surprised that I can't see a general/OOC section, but I'm going with the assumption here that's a members-only area to preserve privacy. I think that's OK, though it might give me pause about joining since I can't get a feel for how the community interacts OOC.
Content: Honestly pretty standard! I see everything that I'd expect to see in a roleplay, especially a pokéRP. The only callouts I really have here are:
a) there are a lot of different locations; personally, I'd create a category to hold all RP boards, each area of the region is a board, each location in a region is a subboard, and each subboard for specific things is a sub-sub board. Subboards are infinitely nesting within the hard-coded 1000 boards limit the software has. It would help a bit with first impressions as there are some boards that are less active than others (also there seems to be a small bug on your forum in the Character area where a board shoes -1 threads/posts)
b) I mentioned I really liked the forum information being laid out in the sidebar, but what I
don't see right off the rip is an overarching plot. I eventually found it, but if I'm a prospective new player I'd expect to see the plot linked in the sidebar with all the other pertinent links. Similarly, I would really also expect some sort of line in the top box under "important info" that it's a slice-of-life RP with an overarching but not participation-mandatory plot.
and lastly, c) I completely missed the bit in the rules about whether or not this is an APC (acct per char) or APP (acct per person) site -- I see now that it's APC, but I would definitely expect a little bit more attention drawn to this since APC vs APP is a really big determining factor in the RP community for many many people.
Final Thoughts: I think, looking at my past review and the forum as it currently is, that not a whole lot has changed since I last looked other than my own tastes, haha. I don't know if that's "good" or "bad" necessarily, but if you're looking to grow your community, the only thing I would really recommend in addition to the points above would be maybe a new theme to jazz it up to be more in line with contemporary RPs.
Hope this helps! Let me know if you need me to expand on any of these comments.
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