Updated Forum Rules and Proposed Forum Changes

A combined "News and Development" section would be good, I think - the player events and SG recruitment sections kinda double up on the server forums, so they could just be removed, and leave events and SG activity to the server sections.

Can we have some clarification on what 'T for Teen' means in regard to the Comic and Hero/Villain Culture board?

Does that mean a total ban on all discussions of R-rated and TV-M rated material?

A general rule of thumb is this:

There is a grey area for many things, and much moderation is done at our discretion. Things on the forums, much like in real life, are not always black and white.

There are some threads, such as ongoing stories, where a bit of inactivity is going to be given the blind eye. Most Necro'd threads will not. There are times where we will allow the discussion of real life events, particularly when it is something on the level of a major natural disaster, and providing that discussion stays civil and non controversial. We will not allow the discussion of "sacred cows" here on the forums, bovines which could easily be interpreted as real life events including and centering upon: politics, religion or controversial societal topics.

The majority of us are adults here. We should all know what is and is not appropriate for discussion here on the forums. The rules are written in a way for us to bend the rules when, and only when, the circumstances call for it, at the sole discretion of Paragon Studios.

Re: AT forums - If you can't do the excellent Forum/Sub Forum idea as pictured above, leave them as is. If I want information on Tankers, I go to the Tanker section. A Brute is not a Tanker. A Corruptor is Ranged DPS and Support, not just Ranged DPS. So on, so forth.

If half of my power set is dedicated to buffing and debuffing, am I going to look in Ranged Damage, or Support?

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Re: Other Forums

News, Events & Announcements:

I've always wondered why Announcements and News, Events and Announcement Discussions are seperate. If you look at an announcement post, you then have to go to a discussion post to comment on it. That seems a little odd to me to have if you're wishing to reduce faff.

Supergroup and Villain Group recruitment: Always wondered why this isn't covered under Server forums.

Player Events: I can see as being of use to interest people to move servers, so keep it where it is.

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Development:

I'd recommend splitting this up into two sections.

1: Development (Has Develeoper's Corner, Dev Digest, Community Digest)

2: Testing and Technical Support (Has Gameplay/Tech issues, Training Rooms, Chararacter Copy Tool. Possibly move Mac Users to this section from Player Help.)

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Player Help:

Add a section on the Paragon Market and Paragon Reward System.

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For Fun:

I never really understood why Screenshots and Fan Creations, and Multi-Media City of Heroes and Villains were separate. Wouldn't one heading of 'Creative Works' suit better, covering multi-media to costume designs and so on?

Please don't hurt Roleplaying. In the EU Forums it took a long time for us to get a forum of our own. I'd miss it terribly if it went.

I never quite got Forum Games. Maybe some people love it though, so they'd have to say.

Regarding the EU forum subsection, I've never gotten much use out of it myself, so I won't speak on keeping/abolishing it. I'll note though that it's been used for organizing player meets. If it was removed, would the ban on cross-posting make trying to draw attention from say, the EU Server sections to Player Events prohibited? That'd be a worry for those trying to get promotion to an event taking place in real life.

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Server forums: As is.

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Rules Questions:

The Zero Tolerance policy from Section 16, how closely does it apply to works of fiction when posted on the boards? I'm eyeing the following in particular regarding that:

Emberly - Part of why player guides is it's own forum is autopurge. That forum is skipped over automatically when the pruning is run.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Texas Justice Odd. I post on other vBulletin forums that don't have that problem at all. I have one forum that I haven't had to log into since back around the beginning of Spring 2011 or so. I think someone posted something in the humongous thread over in Gameplay / Technical Issues & Bugs about the problems and what seems to be the solution from the Admin side. EDIT: Coolio posted it, found the post.

I think part of the issue is how they have it tied into the game account system.


Anyway:
1) Either move Tech issues to player help, OR post a link/announcement (not a sticky post, one like the link to current board policy) at the top of Player help or questions.

2) In pt. 3 of the revised TOS, it doesn't mention character names and it should. Maybe include a note that posting your own is okay (unless legal wants to get tightwad about that bizarrely reading clause in the fame EULA).

3) Pt 4 makes it sound likenits against the rulese to discuss a voluntary/purchased name change.

4) pt 5 - Pyramids - maybe add in your referring to nested quotes? Otherwise the way it reads I could be in trouble for my use of the multiquote feature.

5) Pt 5 - The last bit about asking questions on the board - maybe add a link a d a not to drop a line by the support page if an (immediate) official answer is required/desired

Please don't merge the AT forums. Instead of scrolling through a list of forums to get to the discussion about a particular AT, which is done once and then you're right at the relevant information, instead one will have to sift through two or three times as many threads and skip past the ones that are for other ATs. The system has worked well for years: if you want to talk about something as it relates to a specific AT, you go to that AT's forum. If you want a more AT-agnostic discussion, it probably goes in the general ATs & Powers forum.

Character Copy Tool probably could be a link somewhere in the Test Server forum rather than showing up as its own pseudo-forum.

Announcements and Announcements Discussion seem like they could be consolidated. Maybe instead of having 20+ stickied threads, Announcements would benefit from having subforums: Updates (patch notes, etc), Server Status (downtime, etc), Paragon Market, and some place for things like Intrepid Informer, announcements of coming content, etc. I've had more trouble trying to figure out what's going on with the state of the game wading through the sticky announcement threads than any other part of the forums. I'd love to be able to go to a forum consisting of nothing but patch notes.

Also, some space could be saved by getting rid of the forum descriptions. In many cases, these are just extra words: "This section is for discussions relating to $forum_title." Others could probably be eliminated by having the relevant text appear once you were on the page for the forum; the title should be enough to tell you what the forum is for.

In the case of some of the bigger groups of forums, like AT and Server, dropping the description, post and thread counts would leave the forum name and most recent post name/poster/timestamp. Probably could downsize the star graphic as well, and then it might be possible to put two or three AT or Server subforums in a (multi-line, possibly) row.

Even leaving the layout as it is, ditching most of the redundant descriptions would clean up the page quite a bit.

I agree that condensing the AT forums into Some Other Organization could easily be more confusing than just having a bunch of different forums. However, there are forums that could be merged or scrapped to help with bloat. I think a few of these have already been mentioned, but I'll add my input too since you asked!

- Move the "Player Events" and "SG/VG Recruitment" threads out of the "News, Events, and Announcement" forum group. This is a great place to disseminate official information from Paragon Studios and having those two forums there has often struck me as strange. Maybe consider moving the Dev and Community Digest feeds here too. Again, that's information straight from Paragon Studios. Could easily put it all in one place.

- If you want to keep "Player Events" and "SG/VG Recruitment" forums, move them to the "For Fun!" forum group. While I do think groups could do without that specific forum for sg/vg recruitment, I think it could still be useful to new players. I'm undecided about keeping or scrapping them, but I do think they should be moved out of their current forum group.

- If you're going to keep the Mac Forum, move it to the Development forum. Most of what's in there is tech support, so I think it should really be with the other technical support resources. I hesitate to suggest scrapping it entirely since I imagine digging through a bunch of general tech support posts could be frustrating if you need help specific to a Mac, but still. I think it should probably be with the other tech support stuff.

- Merge Player Guides and Player Questions into one forum. "Have a question? Want to offer some guidance? Post here!" or something like that.

- I'm not a badge person, so I don't know how useful this section is, but...how useful is it? It seems like strategies for getting badges would go in the "Player Guide" section, while the coordination of obtaining said badges could be moved to the appropriate server forum.

- I don't want to exclude our non-American friends from having a place to talk and plan things together, but are the two lounges necessary? Could they be merged into one forum? I'm not in this category of player, so I'm not sure how helpful those two forums are for our non-American subscribers. I'd like to hear how they feel about them.

- Merge the Screenshots and Multi-media sections into one forum.

- The "Suggestions and Ideas" forum seems out of place in the "For Fun!" forum group. I agree players should have a place to voice ideas about the game, but is this section actually necessary? Couldn't suggestions and ideas just as easily be placed in "Player Questions" or "CoH/CoV Discussion" or "General AT Discussion"? If you want to keep "Ideas and Suggestions" though, I'd suggest moving it to the "Development" forum group.

- Maybe combine the two PvP sections into one PvP forum and move that forum to the "Player Help" forum group.

- Leave the AT forums as they are, but maybe add the type of play style as part of the title. (I forget who suggested this, sorry!) "Blasters (Ranged Damage)" or "Controllers (Crowd Control and Support)."

That's all I have! YMMV.

Add me to the 'please don't change the a/t forums unless you can then add sub-forums' (which, realistically, has no benefit over the existing structure).

I understand the need for culling, but please, please acknowledge that the a/t are, on the whole, very different from each other. I don't play my MMs as 'support' and I certainly am incredibly offensive on my trollers (all two of them) and Dominators. My Brutes may be 'melee', but apart from my Stoner they're not 'Tanks'.

Since we potentially have an influx of new players, who already will be confronted by a 'categorised' a/t interface when they load into the character creator (I have kept silent on how much I dislike this), changing the forums will add to the 'all these are support characters - they must be h3al0rs!' mentality and this will lead to an ignorance of all the other things the a/t can do.

And before I get flamed beyond belief, I'm not targeting Defenders with my last post - I have seen Corruptors and MMs played as h3al0rs more than a few times, particularly since GR launched.

My point was not specifically aimed at 'healing' sets (even though these sets often have more buffs/debuffs than heals anyway), but that powersets can play very differently on different a/t (and is also highly dependant on the gumby behind the keyboard).

News/Events/Announcements
Announcements and discussion.
- Consolidate this. There's no need for a locked official post, and then a cross-post to an appropriate discussion.
Calendar
- leave as-is, I guess. I never use it.
Player Events
-As-is.

Remove SG/VG recruitment. I think the individual server forums would be more appropriate.

I had thought about removing Player Events, but having that forum likely eliminates clutter within the server forums and City Life.


Development:
Remaining as-is would probably be fine.


Player Help
- leave most forums as-is
- Add a single "PVP" forum


Archetypes and Powers
- Rename "Archetype Discussion", and keep the AT-specific forums there.
- Eliminate "Powers and Discussion". This could probably fit in with either "City Life", or "Player Questions"

For Fun!
- leave City Life, Suggestions, CaH/VC and Roleplay as-is
- Combine Multi-Media and Screenshots/Fan Art.
- A combined "International Lounge". Granted, I know it might sound like I am lumping the Oceanic and European players together unfairly, but we don't have an Asian lounge, South American lounge, African lounge, etc.

Server forums remain as-is.

Thank you, Champion.

At the risk of getting hate from my fellow Oceanics, I wouldn't cry if that forum was merged, or made into a sub-forum somewhere else. Then again, I don't use it much, so I'm probably not the best to speak on the subject.

I do know there is the 'Australia' channel in-game and probably several others (which largely don't help if you're not playing on Justice) so these could be used to add to SGs etc., but doesn't help for out-of-game event organising. This role could be done in another forum, or by a sticky, or some other method.

The only time I've used the 'Oceanics' forum lately was to vent my frustration regarding the massive impact the long maintenances are having on Oceanic players, but predictably there has been no comment from PS/NCsoft on this (I didn't expect there would be). In terms of game time, I usually organise this in-game anyway, as I play mainly on Freedom which doesn't gel with the majority of Australian/NZ players preferences.

The updated rules read as pretty standard fare. No complaints or suggestions.

As for re-working the board, here's my humble suggestion:

News, Events & Announcements

• Announcements
• Discussion

• Developers' Corner
• Developer Digest
• Community Digest
• Suggestions & Ideas
• Paragon Market & Paragon Rewards
• Training Room
• Copy Tool

• Player Questions
• Player Guides
• Gameplay & Technical Issues (mac user forum either merged into this or as a child forum)
• In-Game Systems (below sections would be child forums)

1. Badges & Gladiators
2. Base Construction
3. Inventions & Auction House
4. Mission Architect
5. Player vs Player

• CoH: Freedom General Discussion (merged w/ EU & Oceanic if possible)
• Player Events or Calendar
• Role-Playing
• Comic & Hero/Villain Culture
• Multimedia & Fan Creations
• Forum Games

Sure, re-work and merge the AT forums. I propose this:

ill/rad controllers (All posts are immediately followed up with an automatic message pointing to Local_man's ill/rad guide)
fire/kin controllers
other controllers
everything else.

snarkyness aside, here's what i'd really suggest: put the PvP forums under Player Help, consolidate News and Development forums...

Look, I know you want things to be one click away from the main forum page, but with all the varied topics and types of discussion we have, it's not feasible. All this stuff you're doing trying to make things "easier" for the freebie players who decide to purchase ViP access? Not needed. These people aren't going to be brain-dead troglodytes, they'll be every bit as logical and reasonable as the rest of us, and can find what they're looking for in a couple clicks.