Hey Hopscotch!
I have been noticing that due to the Following tab being in the 7th position, it has been getting less attention, making it harder to just get attention from your own followers. The only reliable way of getting plays & likes is by getting curated on some higher tab. I think this needs to be updated.
The front page should be the following tab. Here’s why it would be extremely beneficial to Hopscotch:
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Masterpieces is inactive. In my opinion, Masterpieces should not be the first tab. Masterpieces features great games but it gets updated rarely due to its high requirements, therefore people have kind of already played most of them many times. For example my project had been on top of Masterpieces since like March I think, which is 6 months of people opening Hopscotch and just seeing that immediately. It’s great for me, I’m really happy with that, but the inactivity on that tab makes it almost… boring. I think it should keep its same high requirements, but it should not be THE FRONT page, I think it’s a great fit for second tab.
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You see more new projects frequently. It’s not only the Masterpieces tab that’s inactive, even the excellent tab has had like 2 projects since August. None of these 7 first tabs are getting updated frequently - which is totally fine, the quality expectation for them shouldn’t be lowered, but people just don’t see new projects frequently. The following tab shows you projects from creators you care enough about to have followed, these are projects you want to see in theory.
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It’ll create more attention on non-curated projects. How many non-curated projects have over 10 likes? Almost none to be honest. Is it because they’re “less good”? Could be, but I know for sure a lot of these aren’t getting as much attention as they would if the following tab was higher.
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More likes leads to people publishing more often leads to higher average quality. Am I the only one that has noticed that people publish wayyy less often nowadays? It might be because the quality focus is higher but I think it’s because it’s depressing to put tons of work into a project as a beginner and have it not be good enough for the Rising tab, therefore people publish less because they’re discouraged from the very beginning. If they can get their followers to easily see it, they’ll get more likes, be happier, put more effort into Hopscotch, therefore we will have more Excellent/Rising projects, maybe even more masterpieces because people will stick around longer, and therefore get to develop their skills to a higher level before they eventually leave. I genuinely think that having the following tab so low is damaging Hopscotch
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Make people follow more people. I feel like people don’t go on profiles and click the follow button much anymore. I don’t know about this one but even when my project is the very top game on masterpieces, I’m getting less frequent follows than I previously had. I don’t really care since I don’t publish often but I can imagine the effect is much worse for people not on the front page. This will bring value back to the follow button, which will make people check out creator pages more often.
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It’ll reinforce the sense of community. Hopscotch feels pretty “divided” to me atm. Not in a way where everyone hates each other but in a way where people just don’t care about what others are publishing. Putting the following tab first is a small change that can make huge improvement to this imo. If the first thing you see when you open the app is what others are publishing (not what 3 or 4 creators have published in the last year), you naturally are forced to care more.
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It’s really hard to come back. It’s really tough to return to Hopscotch after a long period of inactivity since a lot your old followers are now gone, and those that are left don’t even see your projects. For example, @CodingRoyale returned 3 days ago after 3 years of inactivity, this is a Hopsctcher with 7 projects with over 60 likes, and 2 Masterpieces. For their return they got no more than 3 likes, which I think is not proportional to the number of followers they probably have that are still active. It’s really hard to return after long inactivity. Even me, for my last two projects (each being after a one year inactivity period), before them getting Masterpieced, they don’t get that much attention, and you need to post on the forum and tag people to get them started. Not everyone has a huge taglist with 60+ people to notify every time they publish, so I can imagine it’s a real struggle to even get them noticed at all in many cases.
TLDR: following tab should be before Masterpieces
Anyways, tell me what you guys think about this; personally I think that having it being 7th place is just straight up damaging the community, and I think for a small change it could really do so much good to the community
Also, for newcomers who have followed no one yet, the tab should be empty, and there should be a thing telling them to follow creators to get projects in their feed, along with a button to see the community that takes to the Masterpieces tab or the Excellent tab. It should NOT just bring them to the Masterpieces immediately if they haven’t followed anybody because I very much suspect that quite a few newcomers don’t even know about the following function, and many of those who know just don’t care
before the forum i forgot you’ve been on for so long
