I definitely think that you should be able to use both Open Invitations AND the forum to look for games. I find the Open invitations are a great way to quickly find an interesting game, and the forums are a little... harder to weed through. I think both way has their merit,but I think that players (especially new ones) will find the Open Invitations way and easier way to get started!

I think the forums will definitely be a good way to find more experienced players who know exactly what they're looking for, and will be great at helping players to find like-minded players in order to plan games together!

Please, please, don't take away our Open Invitations!!!

I am a new player, who bought into the Beta a week ago. Do I understand correctly that this "ticket" is about removing the Browse Public Games option, in favour of forums?

This, to me, is a bad move. I LOVED browsing for my first game, reading the description and characters and applying with my own. Even the flavour picture in the title also adds a lot. The forums do not seem to offer the same thing, mostly it's "title" + looking for players threads, with brief game descriptions and a ton of "I would like to join" replies. I realise this could change.

I suggest you keep both systems, but improve the Browse Games section. Condense it into a grid layout, with Title on flavour picture on top, and maybe a short summary of the game below. Mousing over would expand into the full description, or maybe just make the user click, as some get quite large. Filter features would be easy to implement on a grid layout, etc. etc. but moving finding games entirely into the forums is imho a bad idea.

Please do not remove Open Invitations

Duplicate suggestion: https://storium.uservoice.com/forums/211322-general/suggestions/6094917-bring-back-the-apply-to-join-feature

Suggest moving votes to here: https://storium.uservoice.com/forums/211322-general/suggestions/6095302-don-t-remove-open-invitations-until-you-have-som

100% agree. Why can't there be both? The forums are an excellent option for advertising and if you're actively looking for recruitment (or maybe if you want to be more selective!) but there's absolutely nothing wrong with the "Open Invitations" option.

And then there's even more potential awkwardness where a narrator may have told a potential player their ideas made the cut in the public forum but when it comes to app time, it doesn't actually work out and now they have to reject that player.

Not to mention the awkwardness of public rejection within a forum if the narrator has to politely tell and enthusiastic player that their ideas don't make the cut. How difficult for both the narrator and the player!

Removal of the open APPLY TO JOIN option and replacing it with the Forum was not a good move, in my opinion. Yes, we wanted forums, and perhaps modifications for the open invite system, but to remove the open invite system completely? Finding players only through open forums will be detrimental to encouraging new players to Storium to join in. As a player, I don't want to have to sift thought mass amounts of back and forth forum posts between narrators and prospective players.

Linkback to the forums (for whatever reason): https://storium.com/forums#/category/newcomers/thread/s35c4d

Yes, please! When I first heard that the 'Looking for Players' page was going to be removed, I thought that this was such a bad move. I love the idea of the open invitation and being able to play with character creation while checking out the other players and applicants' characters for inspiration. The forum is a good way to seek out players if your game needs more or you've re-opened invitations again due to retired characters. It's also a good way to communicate between narrator and potential players, but I think I wouldn't be playing as many great games as I am now if the recruitment process was always purely forum based. I agree with many of the others: Have an open invitation/recruitment page so people can play around with character creation and that allows for communication between narrator and their potential players.

It's complicating the procedure to get into a game for no clear reason. They've already said they will be implementing Search By...features. So now, instead of applying directly to a game you find using the frontpage search, you will have to go to the forum, find it *again*, request an invite, go to your message page to check for the invite, and then back to the game page to create your character? Tuning one step into 4, depending on how you count it? Why?

Am I one of the few people who doesn't think rejection in an open invite system is a bad thing? It's how you learn and improve.

agreed - at least keep LfP open as an option until we can tell whether the forum option works well/better or not, or if they work best in tandem with each other rather than either/or?

While I am happy to have the forums, I don't want to see the Open Invitation system go away. It's a low pressure system for curious players to investigate the cards and set up for a game without bothering the narrator. Not everyone is comfortable on the forums and the forums aren't necessarily going to be any more informative for the players than the Open Invite. Yes, there is a risk of rejection in Open Invitation, but it's brought a lot of different people together so far.

Agreed! I posted my feelings on this on the feedback item about forums here as well as on the forums themselves. The forums are an excellent new tool and option for recruitment, but I don't want to get rid of the previous system too.