Forum suggestions to be ready for the influx of users

1) Can the subforums be made more accessible? I feel like 90% of the viewerbase never see anything but the "General Discussion" section and the posts with mod announcements. If the home page would list number of new posts with new messages since I last opened each subforum, I might actually consider looking at the home page, and I'm sure I'm not the only one...
This could also make it more feasible to introduce a subforum with things like media discussion and off-topic that doesn't directly relate to Ashes. These might be better suited for Discord than the forum, but if they're gonna happen anyway and not be deleted by moderators, we might as well have a place for them to go, assuming that place isn't a cemetery.

2) I really think we need downvotes/dislikes. There's so much misinformation coming from people who haven't been here for more than a week and confidently asserting their assumptions into the world. Downvotes would help draw attention to flawed assumptions, instead of letting the majority opinion be decided by the first three people who happened to show up.

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patrick68794

second idea is not a good suggestion in my opinion. All that does is reinforce a hivemind where people with dissenting opinions will be downvoted and ignored, even if they have real constructive feedback and/or criticism.

unknown

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nanfoodle

This is the fear of feedback. Nothing to get ready for. IS will decide what game they are making and everyone has been invited by Steven to give feedback.

Laetitian

I am literally only talking about disinformed users presenting their assumptions as fact, dragging other uninformed users down with them, where in reality those users would actually appreciate the status quo if they tokn the time to understand the full concept.

Happens all the time around here, and has been happening a lot more recently. Has nothing to do with me not appreciating newbies.

@Rippley
As for fresh input, it has its purpose, but you also have to take into account that the longer development has gone on, the less useful it is to suggest 180° changes. not even just as inspiration. You have to understand the game's target audience and the intended idea behind the system a little more than that, if you want your feedback to be Alpha-2-appropriate.

Rippley

Ill never understand people who want to censor forums so that they can only see posts from people they agree with.

Yuk

iccer

Laetitian wrote: »

I am literally only talking about disinformed users presenting their assumptions as fact, dragging other uninformed users down with them, where in reality those users would actually appreciate the status quo if they tokn the time to understand the full concept.

Happens all the time around here, and has been happening a lot more recently. Has nothing to do with me not appreciating newbies.

@Rippley
As for fresh input, it has its purpose, but you also have to take into account that the longer development has gone on, the less useful it is to suggest 180° changes. not even just as inspiration. You have to understand the game's target audience and the intended idea behind the system a little more than that, if you want your feedback to be Alpha-2-appropriate.

We should add community notes under such posts, so people with some knowledge about the game could add context.

I'm joking, but it might not be a bad idea.

Noaani

Laetitian wrote: »

Noaani wrote:

However, that confidence is misplaced - it may well be that no one that is inclined to like/dislike has even read the post at that point in time. If a post has no likes or dislikes, you won't know why without reading further.

But that's not the part we can do anything about with the design of the platform.
I've pointed out a problem, and offered a solution for reducing the impact of the problem, and your counter is "But that won't fix the problem for every user, and every user is responsible for themselves, so let's do nothing."

See, the problem as I see it is that you are trying to avoid reading, because you can't read.

I never said or suggested any of this. My point is not that it won't fix things for every user and so shouldn't be done. My point is that it will make things worse for every user that attempts to glean any information from likes and dislikes.

It is worse for every poster other than those that literally ignore it, and so why add it?

Again, ratio is irrelevant. If there is a dislike, the comment will be perceived with more caution than if there wasn't one.

Have you ever seen a forum with 1000+ users and a dislike button?

Every post that has more than 50 people read it has someone dislike it.

Keep in mind, there is nothing at all stopping people from pressing dislike on posts they actually like, or from pressing it on posts they haven't actually even read. This isn't just something people can do, it is in fact something people actively do. Best estimate from YouTube back when they had likes/dislikes is that for every 100 likes, there would be three false dislikes - but that was from a website that was so large as to cancel out people just trolling - something an MMORPG forum can't do (meaning; that ratio will be higher on Ashes forum).

In which case there also won't be any contradicting comments to read, so it won't make much of a difference whether the user clicks away before scrolling to the bottom, or keeps reading. This is another case we cannot do anything about with the design of the platform.

As you can see by simply looking at these forums, there are more people posting than liking/disliking. Assuming a post with no likes or dislikes will also have no replies is simply not a valid argument. However, pointing out that looking at likes or dislikes is not a valid means for determining the value of a post due to the fact that there may be no likes or dislikes is absolutely valid. Statistically, there will be 20 people look at a post before there is a single like or dislike - so 20 people will be in the situation I talked about above for every single post (on average).

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