I would suggest making the forum into a psuedo discord with a focus on forum games. This can net the forum a lot of post counts and views. This means:- If you post, you get post counts, post count is not disabled anywhere. Multiposting is allowed to reasonable limits just like in a discord. Reach a certain post count, users get a username color and a banner through rank usergroups. Users get money by posting which they can spend in shop to get upgrades. Form gaming seems to be the trend on forums nowadays. Highest likes, highest post counts, highest user rank, the like.
