Upcoming Forum Changes


theOcho

 

Posted

Greetings All,

In the 11 months since we’ve made the switch to the new forum software, we’ve seen a lot of growth and change in how people interact on the Official City of Heroes Message Forum. When we launched the new forums, we enabled a number of features as a sort of experiment, to see how they would be received by the forum populace. After almost a year of gathering feedback and watching how the different features were being used we’ve decided to make some changes.

Both the Reputation feature and the Tags feature had some promise, however neither feature has been as productive as we had hoped. As a result we have decided to suspend use of both features on the forums. While some of you enjoyed the Reputation mini game and others did a lot of good work using Tags, both features were misused more often than they were used productively.

Also with the move to the new forum software, we saw a merging of the North American and European forums. We’re still extremely pleased with this move, but the resulting forums are very large and a bit cumbersome. In an effort to reduce the number of sub forums and thereby increasing the communication density, we have the following changes planned:

  • Combining the Hero-con Forum with the Player Events Forum. With our decision to focus on an increased number of Meet and Greets this year including appearances on both coasts instead of a formal Hero-con this makes the most sense.
  • Removal of the Super and Villain Group Recruitment forum. Recruitment for specific Super and Villain Groups seems to belong better in the server forums for the respective Super and Villain Groups. We are more than happy to move your current thread to the correct forum and for the rare cases that involve Super and Villain Group Coalitions that spawn multiple servers, we are available to discuss individual solutions with you.
  • Consolidation of the Mission Architect Forums into a single forum. While both Mission Architect forums get traffic, often times having multiple forums for the same feature ends up splitting discussions unnecessarily. Consolidating both these forums should help make sure that any relevant discussion is seen by all of those interested.
  • Consolidation of the PvP Forums. For reasons similar to Mission Architect situation, the two PvP forums will also be consolidated into one forum.
  • Combining the Multimedia and Screenshot and Fan Art Forums. Both of these sub forums deal with different forms of visual representation. Combining them should give those of you who frequent them a wider exposure to some great creative talent!

With these alterations to the forum features and structure, we are also revising the Message Forum Rules and Guidelines. The new Message Forum Rules and Guidelines can be found here. The new version is basically the old Message Forum Rules and Guidelines expanded to be a bit cleaner and clearer. There is one significant change however, and that is how we will be handling the off-topic forums moving forward.

The off topic forums (Comic Hero/Villain Culture and to a lesser extent the server forums) over the last year have been the location of the most contentious and non productive discussions found on the forums. Frequently these non productive discussions have centered around a few topics: real world events, other MMO’s/other video games, and the physical forms of actors/actresses. As a result we will be tightening the restrictions on what is allowed to be discussed on these forums.

Going forward, non-CoH topics will still be permitted in these forums, but only those with some relevance towards CoH. Included in this list are: Comics, Anime, Science Fiction and Fantasy, and anything else that directly relates to the Super Hero/Villain Genre. While we wish to encourage discussion, often times topics not focused on these subjects quickly became filled with personal attacks and other non productive commentary. Such acts don’t encourage community within City of Heroes nor does it make the City of Heroes forums a pleasant place for visitors. This especially holds true for threads focusing on the physical attributes of real world people, which often cross the lines of acceptable content and therefore will no longer be permitted on the forums.

So when are these changes going to take place you ask? Well here is our current proposed schedule:

7/26
  • Announcement of the Changes
  • Removal of Tags and Reputation
  • Begin the Feedback process through the corresponding Announcement thread
7/30
  • Close the feedback process, including a response to issues raised

8/2
  • New Rules officially enter enforcement, and forum modifications take place.

Since these changes will directly affect you the forum users, we’d like to hear your feedback in this thread. While some of these changes are a dramatic difference from how the forums are currently managed, we feel that they will provide a more productive and enjoyable experience for all of those who visit them.

We appreciate your patience while we work on implementing these changes, and look forward to hearing your opinions on them.

Thanks,

The OCR team

To give feedback, please use the Official Discussion thread found here.