If you are redesigning journals, then it may be useful to consider the current three primary uses of journals and how they affect the community as well as the individual player. Here is a list in order of importance (or at least according to my opinion). Spoiler tag used as it’s a rather lengthy post:
[spoiler]
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Permalink of specific text:
The text, the actual entries themselves are the core of the journal page and the very heart of its functionality. On the forums, on tumblr, even on the irc everyone talks about the text whether they are a new player or and old hat with many fangs. Since it is against FBG policy (for good reason) to host or share large portions of text offsite, journal links have become increasingly more important over time as they do not suffer the same limitation (even fate text can be shared via a journal echo).
If you made a widget that showed 1. the event image, 2. the event title, and 3. the trimmed (250 characters?) version of event conclusion text for a single permalinked journal entry and had that link back to the main journal entry, that would be the bees knees for me. It’d also make wiki updates a lot cleaner as it would be much clearer where the text is to be trimmed at for the wiki.
This idea is probably infeasible as it’d need to differentiate between fate and non-fate text (it might already do this, but if not it could make implementation a nightmare.
A secondary concern about this however is that if you do show the event images next to the text on the actual journal page itself (and not just in a widget for use offsite) this could increase the data burden on mobile users. Mobile friendliness is a big deal, as many players of FL are mobile users checking the site between their other daily activities.
At the very least, I think it would be nice to have the option or choice to either pull through the most recent quote -or- to lock the widget in on a specific permalink quote from one’s journal.
2. Character identity / Adding contacts:
I’d say almost 90% of the time when I visit somone’s profile page it’s because they posted a link to it with the text "please add me as a contact/send me x social action."
This is where it really feels like a personal journal. Things like the cameo, the titles of midnight, inescapable, sagacious, etc, the clothes and other equippables currently on a character’s personage all help to provide a sense of identity, of who this player/character is and what they are currently doing. Pulling these images and qualities through to an export widiget would be useful for like a character blog where you want to say "this is me" or "this is my character". In this case it works sort of like a calling card. The widget you described would be best suited for this category, as a personal calling card for adding contacts at the click of a button. I’d still like the option of a trimmed version for just scrapbook and mantle or just a quote rather than something that always included a cameo and all kinds of other stuff for use in situations where my identity is already established and I am sharing for an alternative purpose such as described above or in the next section.
If there was a way to export the "add X as a contact in fallen london" button that’d be cool. I could see that popping up on peoples sites as a quick "click here to friend me :D" and that’d be convenient.
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Gameplay mechanics:
The value of certain in game qualities can only be viewed if displayed on one’s journal as a scrapbook item. These are things such as the airs of london. Looking at your opponents profile during a knife and candle duel is part of the strategy of that game (ex. what if they are wearing waxwail/shroud of little midnights/orders medals etc). I know I personally like to save a single cp of Confessions from the previous year and set it to my profile at the start of October since it appears invisible on ones mantle until a few days before Hallowmass goes live. Its a magic candle early warning system :)
It would be nice to be able to organize specific qualities and items that appear in the myself tab, like a favorites or a flagged important category so that they can be found quickly and easily (think gmail starred emails as an example). This could be a general comment on the layout of the myself tab and the way categorization works in fallen london, or it could fold into this export/sharing discussion if you wanted to create like a favorites bar (top five, top ten?) to display multiple qualities not just one or two scrapbook items. I dunno, this is more of a wishlist tech optimization than a simple widget and I guess if you export too much it could cause lag or something who knows. More qualities/items would be nice but isn’t strictly necessary.
In any event, pulling through mantle piece and scrap book images is a good idea just as long as it also pulls through the quality values. I could very much see a desire to pull through just these items and not the full cameo and everything as a sort of alternate widget format. [/spoiler]
And that’s a basic summary of my thoughts so far on the matter. Most of it I realize is wishful thinking, infeasible, or just so niche it’s probably not worth it to consider. But I do think your widget idea could work very nicely as a calling card format for inviting people to add your character.
It will get some blog and website use, but ultimately the place I tend to see these sorts of things are message boards forums signatures. So maybe keep in mind things like a rectangular aspect and an aversion to vertical stretch and animation effects like gifs. I imagine once these go live you’ll see them all over these forums in people’s signatures in place of where they currently link to their profiles with a hyperlink.
edited by NiteBrite on 4/20/2015
A banner/sidebar format might work well on blogs.
edited by NiteBrite on 4/20/2015
