Updated Forum Rules and Proposed Forum Changes

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I am fine with AT consolidation as it has been proposed. As a Tanker, I see comparison between Tanks and Brutes a lot on these forums, and IMPO merging the two subjects jsut seems a natural way to streamline the discussion.

One thing I saw:

Meant to say 18000px^2. Need more sleep I suppose

And Thnx for pointing that out Tex. Looks like I've been personally mistaken for years

I think the AT forums are the 2nd to last that should be considered for reorganization/merging - the very last thing that should be considered would be the individual server forums.

The AT Forums address a specific need - how to build and play a specific character. Brutes, Tanks, Scrappers, and Stalkers all plow into melee, but they each have unique strengths and weakness. To mush them into one forum (melee) or two would really alter the function of these forums in an undesirable way. Oh, and Epic ATs all in one forum? SoAs and Khelds are completely different and nothing positive would be gained by putting them together.

In fact, while I know it's completely counter to your expressed desire to prune the forums, I could see a benefit to leaving the AT forums exactly as they are and adding in the play-style forums. So if my question is about a great tank build, I go to the tank forum. If my question is how to tank with brute or a tank (or whatever I feel like trying to tank with)... I go the the tanking forum.

However, the various general discussion forums could definitely stand to be reorganized. I've been using the forums for years and I'm still not always sure where I should post something or where I should look for it.

Read my stories!

"Playstyle Conversion": See above comments

"Forum Rules and Regulations":

1) Duh and "ok to go";

2) When someone is PM'd about an infraction please specifically state What was said by the person being PM'd or an actual quote so that they know to be more careful OR have a chance to clarify. Yes I realize it's up to the mods to interpret, but still give us a chance to edit/correct. ;-)

3) Again Duh;

4) What about "a rep said to do this to solve the issue" or "it was confirmed that this is being dealt with" with an obvious lack of names, etc;

5)
a) Spam: Duh;

b) /sign: Eh, this is an iffy thing as it can serve as the metaphorical picture expressing a thousand words;

c) Petition: k;

d) Lobbying: Agreed;

e) Pyramid: I can see where this can be a problem, but perhaps we can introduce a forum function that allows one to HIDE part of the reply like other forums I use. Something like a *spoilers* tag that works the same way the quotations function does;

f) Cross-posting: I can see how this would add to the bloat, but some things may apply to two areas of the forums. In that instance I would suggest that someone simply link to that post in an existing thread however instead of creating a whole new thread;

g) Contradictive: ?...you mean negative feedback or the "I'm right, you're wrong" stuff;

h) Rant: Sometimes you just wanna let it all out...how about an "oops let me delete this thread" button;

i) Non-Constructive: Overly non-constructive yes, a passing "I don't like X" is a no so long as it doesn't violate Rant;

j) Departure: How about a consolidated Departure thread somewhere, like they do for the "I hit 50" threads;

k) Necros: You know, some times a thought or idea pops into someone's head that simply doesn't show up or hasn't shown up on a forum in ages. OR you have those of us with weak search-fu. Why create a new thread that talks about an old thread? One would think that this would help keep the clutter down;

l) Answers: Soon(tm)

6) Exploits: If it lets people cheat ingame, then yes. If it lets me say make things visually nice (on my end only) until we get an official addon (maps, icons, etc), then I'd have to plead against it;

7) Inappropriate/OT: *snickers* Ttttteeens play this game? j/k;

8) Ads: We don't need no stinking Ads;

9) 4-letter words: Everybody slips now an then and should be more careful, but see 2 above;

10) Proxy: Not even my Browser uses proxies :-p;

11) No Sue 4 U: I'm pretty sure this falls under Rant;

12) Official: I've seen alot of inhouse thread duplication in which one is a locked information thread while the second is the SAME information, but unlocked and has comments:

13) NDA: I'll assume this becomes void when the related content has entered a Live stage;

14) No Piggs 4 U: As others have said, I'm assuming that using things like "silence the sound" mods won't result in reprimand as it's a client side (not cheating) endevour;

15) PGC: What about images freely available on a google/images search;

16) Wrist Smacking: k;

17) Mine: Yours :-p;

18) Copyright: How soon(tm) would we expect...nm;

19) Hand Cracking: k;

20) Changes: I'd assume that we'd be given some sort of Notice that changes have been made or if this is not the case, then I'll suggest that it Does in the future;

21) made you look

Well, this is a big enough topic that it deserves reading, dedicated thought, and (if inspired) feedback from all the participants - aka the CoH community. Thus, here's my input:

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The concern is that we have too many different forums on the COH message boards. As such we are currently considering consolidating and removing some forums.

On one hand I'm a big fan of efficiency. On the other hand, part of my favorite corners of the forums are quiet areas. It is nice there to feel like a distinct voice and not one of the crowd.

For example: Freedom is one of the biggest population servers, but the Freedom server forum is quiet with pretty much only threads on upcoming trials/TFs. Mostly it's a sign-up calendar. Those rare times a question is asked, however, it is immediately and politely responded to by a handful of people. There is fewer avalanches of differing responses to overwhelm like there would be on the General CoH forum.

On a personal note: Please strongly consider leaving the Roleplaying forum as a separate entity. It is an active and a distinctive niche that would not merge well with other fan creation forums.

Edit: So far I like the AT split proposed by Xanatos the best. I can't comment on the other forums, as 99% of the time I read directly from my bookmarks: Whitemoore/PCU (Roleplaying), Community Digest, Dev Digest, City Life, Freedom, Best/Re-Design Costumes (Screenshots & Fan creations)

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Please post your thoughts in a concise, clear manner and avoid going off on rambling tangents.

On a humorous note, I had to read this line twice because my brain added "until the weekly Ustream Community Coffee Talks." I hope tangents will still abound in that casual forum!

Quote:

The City of Heroes Freedom forums are primarily for discussion of City of Heroes Freedom. However, we do allow a wider a variety of...

Which one: A wide? A variety of? A wide variety of? A wider variety of?

Quote:

For more information, please visit our Copyright page.

A link from the words "our Copyright page" to the appropriate source would be useful.

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17. Proprietary forums 18. Copyright

Personally the flow of the topics makes more sense to me if Copyright was item 17 and Propriety forums was item 18.




Otherwise, looks good to me.

Personally I'm hoping that language will be more closely moderated now that the forum rules are being reviewed in high profile and it explicitly states trying to get around the filters with abbreviations and substitutions, in text and images, is prohibited. The English language has many ways in which to express oneself without resorting to crass words which violate the T-for-Teen rating.

Thank you for soliciting community feedback,
~Llydia

I've often thought, especially around new set release time that the Powers forum should be lumped around powerset types rather than ATs, i.e Support/Control/Personal Survival/Ranged Damage/Melee Damage etc

Its extremely obvious with sets like Time Manipulation, which, at the bare minimum had active topics in the main Powerset & AT forum, in the Corruptor, and Defender and Controller AND Mastermind sub forums.

While alot of it can be discussion entirely based around that AT, for the most part these threads consist of discussing these powers usefulness disregarding the AT whos section they were in. In the Corruptor section the thread several times mentioned the different numbers available to the defender Time manipulator. very few of these threads discussed playstyles as limited to the single AT, as beyond Damage or Buff/debuff first, it again plays out fairly similar.

that being said, I can see it becoming alot more cluttered with any change, certainly mine with having tank primary and secondaries discussed in seperate areas, and those shared with scrappers and brutes would be monumentally cluttered, and even Zwilli's initial idea would be too,

you'd simple get threads starting Brutes: Kat/Regen, or Scrapper Kat/Regen, since ultimately the playstyles are so different, and a master of the same powerset layout on one AT may be very inexperienced with how it would play out playing for another ATs strengths. So i'd have to say, leave it the way it is.

And that has to go for the forums in general for me, there are areas I avoid, because theres no information I want there, and theres nothing I want to contribute to there, likewise there are bits I check infrequently for the same reason, I like that these areas are out of sight, and out of mind.

Yes its daunting to have alot of forums, but moreso it is annoying, very, very annoying to have a lack of forums and have to trawl through forum flotsom to find the threads i'd actually be interested in.


Regarding forum rules, they all sound like the usual stuff except;

While discussion with support should be private in some circumstances, in others it should be public, lets say I petition something thats broken that for advancement of your character purposes I need to find a way around, support tell me how, while passing it on to the Devs to get fixed. -- its alot mroe productive for me to share that info with everyone than everyone having to petition it themselves when it comes up for them.

Dissapointed no change to the "Do not discuss other games here" rule that broke one of my favourite subsections

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Originally Posted by VoodooGirl [*]Watching out for the Spinning Disco Portal of D00M!*

I've been considering what impact this might have on our forum community, and I'd like to propose a small modification. I think there should be a rule against calling any poster other than Golden Girl a troll. Calling Golden Girl a troll has become a forum rite of passage, and it's really part of our unique cultural distinctiveness at this point. I don't think whether or not she is actually a troll has any bearing on this; it's just a matter of community history at this point. We can't have a rule against calling Golden Girl a troll any more than we can have a rule against referring to Arcanaville whenever people argue about the defense cap.

Please leave the archetype forums alone! I spend 80% of my time in those when I am here.

I never go to the server forums though, do what you want with those.

Late to the party as usual, but here's another vote *against* merging the AT forums. Likely lots of repetition from what's already been posted, but here's my train of thought:

Merging will increase bloat: People already post the same question over and over in the Brute forum, adding that to the Tanker forum will just lead to it being more difficult to find anything for *both* sets of players and increase question repetition.

Similarly, I'm not sure a dedicated "Builds & Discusson" forum is a good idea either. It would invite lots of duplication of info as builds will end up posted both in their AT (or playstyle) forum and in the build forum itself.

It won't improve usability: Honestly, I can't think of a simpler layout than by AT name, add the "playstyle" descriptor if you must, but I'm in the camp that doesn't really care for those catgories either. Which brings me to...

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Originally Posted by Ultimus Unlike other games, the City of Hero archetypes are *ALL UNIQUE* -- Yes a Brute can be a Tank but also can be a melee DPS. The forums are not difficult to understand when I first joined this game I did not have trouble going through the various forums.

This. Seriously. In addition to being unique, many of them are quite versatile. One of the draws of this game for me has been, since the begining, that it does not conform to the "trifecta" playstyle in so many MMO games. I know the playstyle categories don't affect gameplay, technically, but they will impact how a new player views the AT they choose. It would make me a sad panda to see an army of new Brutes who don't max fury because they think they aren't a "DPS" class. Or corrs that ignore their secondary because they are supposed to be Ranged Damage. Or for that matter Blasters that do the same because they are ranged, so why take all those melee attacks? Okay, so that last one was overly dramatic.

For what its worth, my few cents:

Get rid of WAY too much stickies. Announcements are serious hard to read, sometimes its a stick, second time its a nonsticky, discussion forum is same story. Old news? Remove stick and let it move to other pages.

Leave the AT forums intact, i use them very frequent and people with specific AT questions (and like recent /time, their sync with primairy/secondairy sets), AT's are not hard to understand but are unique enough to have their own place and questions.

First, please leave the AT forums alone. If I have questions about a specific AT then the simplest, most logical place to go for answers is a forum based on that AT. If I have more general questions, like which AT to try a certain power set on or what AT is best for a certain task, then the general Archetypes and Powers forum is the place to go. There's no way to simplify the structure farther without making things more confusing because no AT plays enough like another to really merge them and since questions that get bumped off the first page are rarely answered you don't actually want high traffic in the individual AT forums. If there's some "the whole forum list should fit on one page" rule for web design then, respectfully, it does not apply to something as complex as a MMO. Besides, we can already collapse the various sections if for some reason we have an allergy to scroll bars...

I do agree that Player Events and Supergroup Recruiting are probably unnecessary since those are generally server-specific and therefore can just go in the server forums. I would also think the Screenshots and Multimedia forums could be merged. The Oceanic and European forums could probably be folded into the CoH General Discussion forum but I'd suggest polling the players from those areas first to be sure they don't mind. You might also fold Badges and Gladiators into the general Player Questions forum. Oh, and you could definitely merge the two PVP related forums.

But really, most of the existing forums need to be there. They're already as simplified as you can get without becoming muddled... if I want to know how Brute Electric Armor compares to the revised Energy Aura then I really don't want to wade through three pages of posts about Tanks or Scrappers. I'd much rather have to spin my scroll wheel for a second before clicking on a forum then wind up hunting through three times as many threads to find what I need.

I'm a fan of Zombie Man's list.

On the subject of consolidating the AT forums, I'm going to throw my hat in on support of leaving individual forums. I can see the appeal of grouping things into playstyles because that's how you've identified things in the game UI. However, if you do that I would use them as categories to finding the forum you want only. I would suggest that each archetype still have it's own actual forum.