102 replies to this topic

[Kyle Polulak]

Greetings MechWarriors,

It is with great pleasure that we introduce to you a number of changes which we will be making to our Forum Structure in order to provide a more user-friendly community experience. These changes will be un-veiled over the course of Monday, April 14th, 2014, and are listed as follows:

• Ask The Devs will be renamed to Developer Vlogs in order to reflect our new video logs.
  
• General Discussion will be converted from a section to a forum.
  
• The following General Discussions sub-forums will be merged into the new General Discussion. (Threads without activity in over 30 days will be archived. Requests to re-open archived threads which remain relevant and constructive may be directed to the Moderation Team by using the forum "Report" feature to flag the topic and provide a relevant description of the request.)
  
  • MWO in the News
    
  • Gameplay Balance
    
  • Mech & Loadout
    
  • Maps & Modes
    
  • Tournaments & Events
    
  • Metagame
    
  • Upcoming Features
• Various Archive sub-forums will be merged into one.
  
• Community HPG will become a sub-section of MWO Universe.
  
• Merc Corps - Outreach will be renamed to Factions - Merc Corps.
  
• Barracks will be moved under Community HPG.
  
• Fan Audio/Video, Fan Fiction, Fan Art and FanSite JumpShip will be merged into a Fan Sites & Creations forum,
  
• A Community Run Events forum will be created.
  
• Simpits will be merged into Hardware & Accessories and moved under Community HPG.
  
• Known Issues will be archived. In lieu of this, we will encourage players to use Bug Report templates in Patch Feedback.
  
• Feature Suggestions will be moved under Support & Feedback.
  
• The Public Test sub-forums will be merged into one and moved under Support & Feedback.
  
• All Jettisoned Communication threads will be moved to Kaetetôã.
  
• Forum Fun will be merged into Jettisoned Communication.
  
• Clan Recruitment sub-forums will be created in advance and hidden until June 17th, when they will be opened to the public.
  
• Various forums will have their descriptions re-written in order to better describe the purpose of the forum.
  
• Various forums will have Tagging systems introduced. A presentation example of how tagging works may be seen today in Website & Forums. This system will have pre-determined subjects for players to select as Tags for their thread. It will be expected for players to "Tag up!" their own posts, and we encourage players to maintain an etiquette and habit of doing so themselves, as we might not necessarily select the Tag you would have wanted.
  
• In order to prevent topic flooding of the new General Discussion, a global limit of 5 New Topics every 24 hours will be set on all forum members. Replies will not be affected by this limit.

Veterans will be correct to assume that the changes listed above present a new direction in our knowledge management and feedback process. I hope to address some of the reasons as to why these changes both old and new took place, as well as to dispel some of the myths.




The original General Discussion presented the same issues every video game forum team has encountered for years, which has only become an increasing problem as the internet and video gaming becomes more and more accessible: While this accessibility allows many great new gamers to reach us, join in and partake in our experience, it also includes a proportional appearance of more toxic users who would otherwise not be seen in such volume on the forums of past MechWarrior games. Other issues include:

• High-rates of thread duplication. Conversations get swamped by one another and then replicated.
  
• Larger numbers of player-to-player disputes reported. (This is often triggered by the high-rate of duplication, with players often repeating themselves and becoming increasingly belligerent in different threads of the same subject.)
  
• Wide variety of topics generates difficulty in finding specific subjects. (This both adds to the Thread duplication and makes knowledge management on our end more difficult.)
  
• Other sub-forums with specific purposes being ignored. (For example, a Website issue appearing in G.D. rather than Website & Forums.)

There is no simple or universal solution to this concern. Every development and community team has taken a wide variety of methods to address them. Some teams have addressed the issue simply by never using forums in the first place, only carrying out support and feedback through one-to-one Ticketing systems. As multiplayer interaction plays an integral role in the MechWarrior Online experience, which will only increase in importance with future modules such as Community Warfare, this option was out for us. Other teams have replaced their forums with systems such as an official Reddit. Inevitably, we felt it was neither in our nor the average player's best interests to provide an official service where players would be capable of down-vote bombing one another, especially given that we are here to have a fun experience. Seeing as how we already now have two fan Reddits following us, adding another also seems redundant, and unlikely to add more to the experience.




Borrowing the best ideas from these and other communities: The hope was to build a forum which would include all the organization of other AAA-game forums with the ease-of-use of various social media outlets. The original decision to split General Discussion was intended to be just the first step in a larger overhaul of the forums.

The next intended step would have been to generate a system which would take in all threads from the split sub-forums to aggregate them in a single reading place, not at all unlike Reddit's Frontpage. As time went on, it became evident that there was no simple plugin tool to provide us or adapt towards this functionality on IPBoard, With so much else to do and with new direction in our communications, we felt it necessary to take a step back and re-evaluate the situation. We sincerely apologize for any negative effect this well-intentioned change had on your impression of our team.

It is our deepest wish that these changes reflect our desire and efforts to have stronger interactions with the MechWarrior Online Community and that you are eager to provide us with your constructive feedback towards a mutual goal of bettering the game experience for all.

Over to you miSs!

[Tsunamisan]

Moderation is nothing when you still allow people to cuss up a storm in game

[Heffay]

miSs, on 11 April 2014 - 10:27 AM, said:

And remember to Tag Up!

NPH needs to be featured in more MWO related memes.

Well, to be fair he needs to be featured in more of everything!

Edited by Heffay, 11 April 2014 - 10:40 AM.

[GaussDragon]

Tsunamisan, on 11 April 2014 - 10:35 AM, said:

Moderation is nothing when you still allow people to cuss up a storm in game

That's ******* ******** as shit and you know it. ****.

[Rebas Kradd]

Where is Off-Topic going?

[Heffay]

Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 11 April 2014 - 10:27 AM, said:

• All Jettisoned Communication threads will be moved to Kaetetôã

WHAT??? NO! You can't do that!!! /ragequit

Roadbeer! Sandpit! DaZur! Man the border crossings! We have... tourists coming in!

Edited by Heffay, 11 April 2014 - 10:44 AM.

[Xanilos]

Not sure the Forum Fun should be moved into Jettisoned Communications since it will be less visible there. Forum Fun helps with player retention and general enjoyment and as such it is beneficial to keep it as visible as possible.

Edited by Xanilos, 11 April 2014 - 11:02 AM.

[AlmightyAeng]

Xanilos, on 11 April 2014 - 10:59 AM, said:

Not sure the Forum Fun should be moved into Jett. Comns. since it will be less visible there. Forum Fun helps with player retention and general enjoyment and as such it is beneficial to keep it as visible as possible.

I've never heard of this 'forum fun' place. What does it do?

[Roadbeer]

MOAR POSTS FOR K TOWN

[Xanilos]

Spoiler

Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 11 April 2014 - 11:02 AM, said:

Jettisoned Communication, once resettled by the inhabitants of Forum Fun, will be given public visibility.

Just wanted to make sure it didn't get buried. The rest of the changes seem good.

Edited by Xanilos, 11 April 2014 - 11:17 AM.

[Danghen Woolf]

@ Nikolai and miSs

Thank you for the heads-up. Hopefully moving the forums around will help to clarify some things as well as allow for moderators to monitor the threads more easily. You guys and the volunteer Mods do a great job trying to keep everyone in line and every week I see several posts edited, moved, or closed by miSs to keep things from turning into mud-flinging. I applaud your efforts and hope to continue to see more involvement in community discussions by members of the PGI staff.

[Loc Nar]

Quote

Simpits will be merged into Hardware & Accessories and moved under Community HPG

Please do not do this. It used to be this way and it really sucked for those of us that actually build hardware for this game and want nothing to do with the endless drivel about graphics cards and RAM. All this will do is snuff out the smaller projects and force those of us with established build threads to bump them just to keep them visible, and hardware will be a mess again. Separating those 2 was the best thing that has happened to this forum in ages.

It's not in anyone's best interest to bury the fruit of the labors of this group's efforts. People that don't care at all about mechs (yet) are usually still interested in the cockpits. When I see hardcore stuff built for other games, it really makes me want to know why that person chose to go to such lengths and does much more for my own interest than anything their marketing departments can whip up, and positive exposure is not something that is in overabundance these days.

Please reconsider this choice, it's harmful to PGI, IGP, MWO, and builders/players.

Mechpit II (current pit)

Mechpit I

[Jabilo]

This is insane.

Forums are fine as they are.

I am an intelligent guy (kind off) and my head was hurting by the time I got to the end of the OP.

Ok, whatever, I guess I will get used to it.

[AlmightyAeng]

Jabilo, on 11 April 2014 - 11:29 AM, said:

This is insane.

Forums are fine as they are.

I am an intelligent guy (kind off) and my head was hurting by the time I got to the end of the OP.

Ok, whatever, I guess I will get used to it.

It's actually quite similar to the way the forums USED to be...before they abolished the 'general discussion' due to the intense amount of player vitriol and discontent. It was very difficult to find certain conversations for a long time...and so the threads died.

[Bagheera]

ib4 "circle of life" references

[Dracol]

Thank you for the heads up.

Really looking forward to the new Community Run Events sub-forum. With private matches arriving soon, the events should really start rolling out.

I agree with Loc Nar that Mech Pits should have their own sub-forum. The amount of time and dedication those lucky pilots put into their craft deserves recognition.

Edited by Dracol, 11 April 2014 - 11:42 AM.

[Iqfish]

Me likes

And I am prepared for the new General Discussion Forum

Edited by Iqfish, 11 April 2014 - 12:27 PM.

[Heffay]

If we want to make recommendations for adding to the predetermined list of tags, how would we go about doing that?

[Monky]

Yay now let the brown sea surge into one singular location and simmer!

As much as removing gendisc was a badly handled idea, you've got a lot of work to do to keep it in line and bring back readers/players who don't congregate here anymore. Good luck!

[Karl Berg]

Tsunamisan, on 11 April 2014 - 10:35 AM, said:

Moderation is nothing when you still allow people to cuss up a storm in game

CSR's have access to full in-game chat histories. We don't have a way to report in-game unfortunately; but if you could manage to take note of the time and a few usernames, the CSR's could almost certainly pull up that games chat-log and take appropriate action.