"First new post" isn't new at all

OK, I've had about as much as I can take of this nonsense. I try to be a reasonable person, when my first reaction to the new boards software was "What the hell, man! What the hell!" I thought I'd keep my cool and just give myself time to adapt. New forum software, new interface, a lot of stuff to learn. It'll be all good, right? Wrong. Not when a basic functionality such as going to the first unread post completely and plainly doesn't work.

What should "Go to first new post" do? Well, judging by its name, it should take me to the first post made into a thread since I last checked it. Fat chance. Not only does it not take me to a new post, it actually counts posts I made as new. Um, hello! They're not news to me. I made them. But, OK, technically they are new, so I can roll with that. But even that aside, this still doesn't work.

Here's how the forums have been working for me all day: I haven't logged in for around a week, so when I logged into the forums today, there were a lot of new threads and a lot of old threads with new replies in them. I used the microscopic little triangle to go to the first new post in them and, lo and behold, it took me where it was supposed to. So I posted in a few threads, took a stroll around the house while the windows in my living room were being replaced, came back to the forums and decided to check out what had happened in the past half hour.

You'd think the posts made AFTER I posted would be new, but no! The little triangle thing kept taking me back to the OLD posts that had been newest when I first came online today, but were no longer newest or unread. I read them. In fact, I quoted them. It's kind of hard to quote someone if you haven't read his post. The "Quote" button is right next to each post, so I have to at least have had the post drawn on my screen. But no, that's still undread and the damn function keeps bringing me there, so I have to scroll down, flip through the pages and manually find the last post I read. Well what the HELL is the point of having an option to take me to the first new post if it doesn't take me to the first new post but some random location in the thread so I have to manually look for the REAL first post? At that point, I may as well start from page one.

I tried to give these forums a chance, I really did. But it's just one thing after another. The colour scheme sucks, the functionality is down the toilet for the most basic stuff, direct-poster replies and multi-level quotes are gone... And now I'm finding that the most basic functionality of any forum - finding where you left off a thread - isn't working right. Oh, and the Dev Digest is still gone, to the point where players are having to make their own. Now, I'm grateful to the many people who have rigged up versions of the digest, but come on! What did this forum shuffle fix that was worth breaking practically everything?

I'm sorry. I just finally feel fully justified in being very loudly indignant. This is an absurd, embarrassing step down from what we had before, and it's only getting worse.

*edit*
And for the love of pi, where did the link to the official game site go? The old forums had a link to the effect of "Go back to City of Heroes" which brought you back to cityofheroes.com. No such thing exists now, and even clicking the banner up top brings me to http://boards.cityofheroes.com/index.php, the root of the forums (for which a link already exists) rather than back to the official site. Since I don't have any tabs with it open right now, the only way to check the server status is to open a brand new tab and write in the url by hand. Why was this functionality removed? Was it a problem to have a basic link of convenience?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I tend to agree... The problems with this new software far outweight the timeouts and invalid form errors on the old one. In fact, I'm still getting timeouts anyway...

Fail, tbh.

The worst part is that, for about the last year or so, I wasn't getting almost any timeouts and the only errors I got were when I walked away from the computer for an hour with a reply half-written. I've seen occasional slowdowns for all of O NOES 10 SECONDS!!! from time to time, but those were rainbows and kittens compared to this mess. And I'm still getting the same occasional slowdowns here.

Outside of the ability to post unnecessary pictures, what did I gain?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

There's a linky to the main site at the very, very bottom where fine print is usually kept. It just says "City of Heroes".

I'm more upset that I can't just scroll through all the subforums with the sweep of a mouse wheel and see if there's been any activity. I miss the old board.

Odd, aside from the double-login issue the first weekend, I haven't had any issues with the boards yet. Not a single timeout. There were times when the old boards were almost unusable.

Granted, I don't use the "go to new posts" link, but the other features, like organizing PM's, the "public messages" feature, the enhanced sigs... TAGS... and more relevant search.... better QR system... I think they're all quite an improvement.

I hear you, Sam. I've been having the exact same issues, with a very similar internal response.

We need an overhaul to the newly overhauled boards.

New format took a bit (i.e. a day) to get used to, and some Bookmark fixing, but I prefer the new boards now. 'cept for the NA tag, but that's temporary supposedly and it's really minor.

Frankly I didn't care for the "zoom to what the boards consider the newest post in the thread" thing, because it was very rarely the last post I had actually read anyway. Many times I had never clicked on a thread at all.

I've seldom had the need to go to the main site from here. Just not much of a problem for me.

You can multi-quote people. Too, if you want to address someone directly and aren't satisfied with it looking like a general reply to the thread, you can just quote them.

Color scheme is fine with me.

And I like the Euro-NA integration. I like that a lot, the most of all in fact, it breaks down the barriers. New perspectives, new people, one big happy family and all that.

New forums are okay with me. No timeouts or lost posts at all, issue-free.

I'm getting this stuff too. In addition to the boards seeming to load everything slower. But when I hit "first new post" it tends to take me to something I've already seen. In fact, sometimes it takes me to posts that are before MY post.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

\em puts on his VB admin hat

The problem, I believe, is related to the Thread/Forum Read Marking Type setting.

When I visit the forum on different computers I get different results for what is marked as being Read. This tells me the setting above is set for Inactivity/Cookie Based


A bit about the possible settings

<--------------

Edit: 'the hell? Where'd my avatar go?

Edit #2: Damn forums..when I first made the post my avatar was not there, norw it is. *shakes fist*

Double-clicking the icon next to the forum name is supposed to mark that section of the forum as read , but selecting the first new post still doesn't work at all.

Jer

edit: it turns out once I close my browser and re-open it, it has forgotten that I read it all and shows a couple pages of new posts going back several hours.

I'm with you Sam. I have a headache from screaming at the computer screen after this new 'great' forum is driving me insane. PK told me to log out after each session to tell the forums I'm really gone. 1) I don't want to do that. There's a remeber me function. 2) It doesn't really work either. If I remember I missed something and re-log it still takes me to posts I have read.

Please. Fix this. An alternative is that we get ourselfs a new forum. All you rednames will get green names and us forumites will have rednames.

//Jack

And fix the dev digest for monkey-sake!

For me the "go to first new post" button works on rare occasions, the rest of the time it takes me to one of the first 5 or 6 posts, no matter how old they are and when I was last listed as logging on. It's almost completely useless.

So far, I haven't seen these forums loading any faster than the old ones at all. The last hour it's been excruciatingly slow...

Hey, I like the new forums. And I can say that because I've made a career of rolling over and accepting whatever changes a company makes for me.

--NT

Hitting "first new post" for this thread just took me to the OP.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Yes, this feature seems to be buggy or, at the very least, not automated.

Here's the workaround I've been using:

Once I'm satisfied I've read everything I want to, I go to the top menu and select "Quick Links" and "Mark Forums Read." That will mark all threads as read and give you a better indicator of what's actually new. After that, you can use the "First new post" link at the top of any thread.

It's a hassle, but it does work.