Dev Post AllisonBerryman Posted January 13, 2012 Dev Post Share Posted January 13, 2012 Next week, we’re going to implement some changes to the Forums based on feedback we’ve received from the community. These changes are meant to help address some of the concerns the community has and to make Forums organization a little easier to use overall. In the layout we have now, things like Guild Recruitment and Server Events are spread out and can be difficult to locate. We’ve also seen some requests for places on the forums where players can go to discuss things more closely with others on their particular server, and for a place for suggestions for the game. To start addressing some of these concerns, we will introduce a new forum section: Server Group Forums, and will place the Suggestion Box back in its rightful place under General Discussion. The Server Group Forums will be divided by server type (PvE, PvP, RP, and RP-PvP), and then alphabetically by the server listing. We have grouped several servers of the same types together to provide areas where players can more easily talk with others on their server (and other players on the same types of servers) – about crafting items, grouping up, hosting events, and more. Each Server Group Forum hosts several servers. If your server’s name falls in the alphabetical range in the forum title, that’s where you’ll post! Each Server Group Forum has a Guild Recruitment subforum, where players can recruit others into their guilds and look for a guild. There are many more subforums for recruitment in this organization than previously, so it will be much easier to find a guild on your server! We ask that you please use a [server Name] tag in front of your threads in these forums when they open to make it easy to see when you make a thread that is specifically intended for other members of your server, and to make sure everyone can see relevant threads easily. As a side effect of opening these new forums, we will close the Guild Hall and Server Events sections of the forum, as the content for those forums now belongs under our Server Group Forums. We’ll leave those forums visible for a time (but not open for posts) so that you can grab the text of your recruitment posts (or any other posts you’d like to keep from those forums) and post in the new Server Group Forums. We will also add the Suggestion Box forum to create a place for constructive suggestion threads to live. We encourage you to share your ideas! We understand that some players would still prefer individual server forums. If volume in the Server Group Forums dictates and it is still too difficult to locate information important to you that relates to your server, we will continue to consider additional changes. We believe this organization will allow us to have a thriving area for per-server discussion, and we’ll remain flexible and receptive to feedback from these changes. As always, if you have any other suggestions for the forums (new forums you’d like to see, changes that would be helpful), we’re glad to hear them. Thank you for providing your constructive feedback! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimer_Lins Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 (edited) A great step, thank you! Moving the Events forum around to be more accessible is something I would also like to thank you for, especially since I run multiple events every week. This is something I'm extremely pleased to see coming! I look forward to seeing how the new forum layout works. I'm not totally sold on the idea of server group forums, but I'm game to give it a try. Again, thank you for listening to us. Edited January 13, 2012 by Jimer_Lins Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaick Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 (edited) And people say Bioware doesn't listen. Thank you Allison for this update. Edited January 13, 2012 by Jaick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lethal_ghost Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 Better late than never Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JediMasterRyanW Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 Cool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarthRavnos Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 Will we see search functionality corrected as well? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brentonj Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 Why not just have individual server forums instead of grouping them together? Just seems downright lazy and apathetic. In addition to mass confusion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pauleh Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 (edited) Great, so more sections of mess. This really is a bad idea, not quite sure what you guys are thinking of. If lack of moderators is the reason why you won't do individual server forums and you won't hire more, then please start up a community program that let's people elect other players to mod their respected server. Edited January 13, 2012 by Pauleh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dev Post AllisonBerryman Posted January 13, 2012 Author Dev Post Share Posted January 13, 2012 A great step, thank you! Moving the Events forum around to be more accessible is something I would also like to thank you for, especially since I run multiple events every week. This is something I'm extremely pleased to see coming! I look forward to seeing how the new forum layout works. I'm not totally sold on the idea of server group forums, but I'm game to give it a try. Again, thank you for listening to us. Thanks for your constructive feedback! We're looking forward to improving the Forums and getting continued feedback from everyone, and hope the new layout will be helpful and make the Forums much easier to use! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarthRavnos Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 Will we see search functionality corrected as well? Disregard, it appears to be on and working right now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mechintel Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 Why isn't every server getting their own forum again? It seems stupid that you are making people preface their topics with the server name when you could completely bypass that just by categorizing all threads of a particular server into its own forum! It's not like I care what events are happening on Hedarr Soongh when all my characters are on Helm of Graush just because it is also a PVP server that begins with the letter 'H'. Needlessly complicated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattdell Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 We ask that you please use a [server Name] tag in front of your threads in these forums when they open to make it easy to see when you make a thread that is specifically intended for other members of your server, and to make sure everyone can see relevant threads easily. So, what you're saying is, you want us to make posts with our server name in them, because in reality we AREN'T receiving individual server forum categories. I'm not sure you understand what we want. This game has 120 servers (I didn't count and don't really care). What this means is that the customer base wants 120 individual forums to separate them all from one big pile of unreadable nothingness. We did not ask for 3 more subforums that have absolutely no link to any server. Get your head out of the sand, please. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JediMasterRyanW Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 Thanks for your constructive feedback! We're looking forward to improving the Forums and getting continued feedback from everyone, and hope the new layout will be helpful and make the Forums much easier to use! Is there any word on polls or search function making it back in? I know search was taken out for "technical reasons", but I never heard why polls were removed. Was this intentional or will they be put back in? Still appreciate the other changes, thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bluestone Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 We ask that you please use a [server Name] tag in front of your threads in these forums when they open to make it easy to see when you make a thread that is specifically intended for other members of your server, and to make sure everyone can see relevant threads easily. We all know that people aren't smart enough to read this and actually put their Server name in the thread title, or even at the front of it. They are meant to do that now but don't. It will cut back on the time it takes to hunt for events and guilds on the same server sure but I will still have to open 2 out of every 3 threads to read the first post or two to find out which server it is for because people just don't follow rules like this. The easiest solution is to just have one forum per server. Since telling posters to put their server name in their title is beyond the comprehension of most of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarka Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 Thanks for the changes, but I'm still wondering when or if we'll ever see the search function re-appear. Any comment to add Bioware? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimer_Lins Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 Why isn't every server getting their own forum again? Ostensibly because they all need to be moderated and more forums increases the workload of the community team. I'll be interested to see how this compromise works. Like I said above, I'm not totally sold on the idea but it's a heck of a lot better than what we have right now. Couple that with making the forum organization a bit flatter, and we're making good moves here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trotsky_tor Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 Why would you not just create server forums for each server? When a heavily populated server gets paired with lower pop ones and just spams off posts for the lower pop servers those players are going to be (rightfully) aggravated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimer_Lins Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 Thanks for the changes, but I'm still wondering when or if we'll ever see the search function re-appear. Any comment to add Bioware? Look at the top of your window. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dev Post AllisonBerryman Posted January 13, 2012 Author Dev Post Share Posted January 13, 2012 (edited) The search feature is now available again. You must be logged in to use it, but you should notice the search bar above the thread listing in the forums Edited January 13, 2012 by AllisonBerryman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mechintel Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 The easiest solution is to just have one forum per server. Since telling posters to put their server name in their title is beyond the comprehension of most of them. Not to mention it serves as an automatic filter for the threads that actually matter to me. Right now the fix is apparantly "Oh instead of 1 out of every 120 threads being geared towards your server we are making it so that it's 1 out of every 40. GG us!" You've completely missed the point. How about we do away from subcategories all together and put everything in one forum. But wait! Here me out. People who want to talk about PvP can put a [PvP] tag in front of their posts and people who wants to talk about Guild Recruitment can put a [Guild Recruitment][server Name][Faction][Guild Type] tag in front of their posts. Problem solved! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
penultimatejawa Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 For the love of Darth, can we get some themes and default font choices?? The text on this forum just about makes my eyes bleed! *Especially* the bright yellow on dark blue for dev posts (which is most of what I check for). Am I alone in this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mairu Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 Why can't we just get individual server forums? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mechintel Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 Ostensibly because they all need to be moderated and more forums increases the workload of the community team. This doesn't reduce how many threads are going to appear. If anything this "solution" is going to cause more work for moderators who now have to enforce some asinine rule about prefacing your threads with a category tag instead of just allowing you to click on that sub-category and be presented with ALL the threads that would need that tag in front of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pauleh Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 I love Bioware, but so many backwards choices recently... server forums, high resolution textures, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabarok Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 It will be nice to see the Suggestion Box. Just the other day, I was thinking that something like this would be nice to have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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