To collect or not to collect?

[KyleMassacre]

Lately I have been thinking about some of the untouched features of NWE since I just got back into the dev world and realized that there are quite a few. If you take a look in the admin panel and scan all your hooks that just opens up so many doors in itself. We can probably go on for days on hooks that can be used out of the box, or hooks that can be created way easier than people think. There are a ton of little hidden gems in the framework and probably a whole lot more than I have found. But one thing that really stands out for me is the lack of the StatAction use which brings me to this post.

For those that don't really understand what I am talking about, this can be a really useful tool. Right now out of the box it tracks all your page loads, logins, and registrations, but why limit it to those? For game owners you can use it to see how well a particular module that you just installed is doing by tracking the activity for that particular module, or what you can do is what I think my next idea(s) is going to be which i would like to get some of your feedback on from some of the more experienced webmasters. Now I think I may release all of this in one module but break it up into different updates since my time is kind of limited a lot of the time.

Basically this would be kind of a demo graphic/campaign manager which some of my ideas are:

• Player Location
• Player Age
• Player Sex
• Advertisement Campaigns

I know there are probably some people in the world that doesn't want this info to be stored or displayed which is fine because that doesn't have to be the case here. The way the system works is that it just tallies up by category and date so the information doesn't have to be associated to a particular account.

Also, a big part of getting a game going and keeping in running would require some advertisements right? So I figure this would be a great way of kind of keeping track of how well each of your campaigns are doing from within your game at real time. I'm sure some advertisement sites may have some sort of API that you can use to grab all of your data about it, but to be honest it would be a bit hard to create a single module to handle more than one API to display in a human readable format that is pretty enough to read.
And with my idea I would probably make a little somethin' somethin' to give some sort of signup bonus for each different campaign you were tracking. And with the demo graphics, I think that would help kind of figure out where you need to target based on sex, age, and location. If you have 10k signups from the states but like only 35 signups from the UK then you know that you need to focus maybe a bit on the UK.

Does this sound like something that would be beneficial to a game owner or something that is just kind of eh? Responses don't have to be limited to only this engine but can be in general, it's just that NWE has the built in means to do so that would be quick and painless to create. I'm just interested in hearing what people have to say about collecting this type of data is all.

[KaL]

This data collection is a great idea but not at this time. That module works best if you're applying towards a well establish game but NWE is still new. I think developer should focus on the design of the layout. That's what NWE is lacking, more interface themes, animated modules, and ajax modules to compete to today games.

[Sim]

IMO and from what I hear of others For new games, you want to collect information on what your players are spending more time doing on the site. What features are they spending most of there time on.

Are they battling?
Are they shopping?
Trading?
Training?
ect.


So game owners know to focus on this area to keep players coming back

[KyleMassacre]

This data collection is a great idea but not at this time. That module works best if you're applying towards a well establish game but NWE is still new. I think developer should focus on the design of the layout. That's what NWE is lacking, more interface themes, animated modules, and ajax modules to compete to today games.

We also have to look at the fact who knows what people actually have on their game. The marketplace isn't the only place to get modules it's just a place for people to list modules for game owners. People can have a lot of custom stuff that is not on the market.

IMO and from what I hear of others For new games, you want to collect information on what your players are spending more time doing on the site. What features are they spending most of there time on.

Are they battling?
Are they shopping?
Trading?
Training?
ect.


So game owners know to focus on this area to keep players coming back

That is a possibility which I mentioned "kind of" in my OP. Now if got talking like seconds/minutes etc that they are spending in a module, I haven't quite figured out or thought of exactly the best way to calculate it but it can be done I'm sure by using the pre/post process files and storing it like a session or something from when they access a module and leave the module.

This is all good information though, let's keep it up

[Sim]

That is a possibility which I mentioned "kind of" in my OP. Now if got talking like seconds/minutes etc that they are spending in a module, I haven't quite figured out or thought of exactly the best way to calculate it but it can be done I'm sure by using the pre/post process files and storing it like a session or something from when they access a module and leave the module.

This is all good information though, let's keep it up

You don't have to calculate there seconds/minutes. Just the # of actions for each action available on site. You could then log the actions by day. Turn it into some graph. Sort by averages and stuff. users are spending this many actions on this feature.

I released this new feature and it doesn't seem to be getting no attention or this new feature is getting more attention then my old feature which use to be getting the most attention.

[KyleMassacre]

That would be even easier to do the only setback would be the clutter that it can potentially cause but I can probably make a work around for it

[njfrlng]

The more information i can have as a game owner, the better!

[KyleMassacre]

Well I started messing around and came up with this based on Sim's idea

[VashNaroom]

I think for some games a player location is a valuable resource. When I started adding graphics to my basic TBG one of the things I did was add a player location flag so it showed for the player and view player. For corrupted realmz because we are concentrating more on clan events we choose to use the clan herald http://corruptedrealmz.com/modules/scre ... hots/7.jpg Knowledge is power as a game administrator. You can never know enough about what your players are doing. But also in doing so you open the door for even more possibilities of adding to your game to enhance the player experience.
Frequently checking your top player and view player logs also helps enhance not only what your players seem to enjoy but allows you to spot errors you may have done and players are abusing. I just spent a month watching a player exploit a bug (not due to an NwE mod, my own error)
I think these ideas are very good not only in helping the admin but also the game enhancement possibilities that you can add from each idea.

[Sim]

Well I started messing around and came up with this based on Sim's idea

Nice interface.