Feedback: Official Forums

[Avecelestine.4075]

All looks awesome but so many buttons :o :o

[Paralux.6714]

The forums looks nice, however I have a few suggestions:

 

- Let us upload our own avatars _or_ remove the new ones. If avatars aren't for personalization then it's unnecessary to even have them.

- Make the icons which show which members has pressed "helpful" or "thumbs up" **a lot** smaller. Or, I have two ideas; either just have the user's names displayed in a small font at the bottom of the post in this format "_user123, user456, user... (helpful or a lightbulb) user678, user999, user... (thumbs up or a thumbs up)_" or display a list of members that has pressed (for example "helpful") when hovering the option.

- Increase the spacing between the posts or have something else separate them, like a line or make the post background a few s-h-a-d-e-s darker than the forum background.

- I'm a little sceptical towards the "thumbs down" cause I feel like it might create unnecessary conflicts or irritation.

[Turamarth.3248]

Positive :

* Working search engine

* Helpful/ Thumbs Down/Up is more transparent than the old +1 system

 

Negative :

* Loss of old content

* Tags (closed, dev response etc.) for the threads are far less obvious than the old visual indicators

* Time limit on editing posts

* In my opinion the whole user avatar system just adds useless clutter. We only have a few images available, so they don't help in recognizing the user.

* No date of the post visible unless I hover over the time

* No preview of the posts in the dev tracker

* No indicator whether there are new posts in a subforum after I my last visit

[Sorin.4310]

I actually like the mobile layout more. Each comment having a slightly grey background to distuingish from comment to comment is really nice. All that empty space on the desktop version is gone as well. The vote icons are smaller relative to the text size, and the helpful/thumbs down/up stands out less on the mobile version.

[Zoltar MacRoth.7146]

I'd also like a more compact view. All these icons and whitespace are nice, but it's harder to read than the old forum.

[Arnox.5128]

These new forums are **really** bad.

 

- The forum reputation system needs to go. Like, right now. Neutral post feedback is fine like "Funny" or "Weird" or what have you, but forums are not Facebook neither are they Reddit, and they should never mix. Take it from me who used to be a forum admin. I've seen five different forums use five different iterations of rep systems and they've ALL ended badly for mostly the same reasons. If this rep system is allowed to persist, it will make the GW2 forums completely about content generation and not about discussion as it used to be and should be.

- Locking forum features behind a rep wall is BAD and will stifle honest discussion in favor of making threads just to get likes.

- Drafts are not accessible at all during post/thread creation.

- Forum constantly annoys you with a message right in the middle of the screen that it saved a draft.

- Markdown is annoying and sometimes if you're not careful, Markdown will format your post in some way you did not want simply because you used the wrong symbols in the wrong places. BBCode has worked just fine for ages and people are much more familiar with it. Please switch back to that.

- No easy way to skip to the official ANet responses in threads anymore.

- Thread listings are too huge. Needs tightening up.

- Get rid of the intrusive and annoying edit locking and instead show an edit history for each post. This way, people cannot delete entire swaths of posts but editing can still be done conveniently and at any time.

[Kyban.4031]

It's nice but I miss the old Dev Tracker where I could skim the actual posts without having to drill into the thread to see if it was something I'd be interesting in looking into more, right now it's hard to tell what the dev might be saying at a glance (also keep it in order of dev posts not which thread has been added to most recently). It would also be nice if the icons of the people who "voted" on a post where hidden, at least to start with, then could be expanded if you're interested in seeing that, right now it just adds a lot of clutter.

[Malerian.8435]

Bloated, ugly, and cartoonish. Can we bring back the old format? Also all of the history of posts and other such things I was following are missing? Maybe I just have overlooked it?

[Belenwyn.8674]

Ij my eyes the new dev tracker is much worse than the old one. I am not able to see which dev posted or how many devs posted in a certain thread. The old tracker was much more convenient. I could see who has where and what.

[Gloam Drifter.9158]

Already put this in another thread before I saw this one (still kinda lost in this layout atm) but here are my impressions:

 

Going to give it a chance but feel like they need to fiddle with the layout a bit more.

There is a lot of space between post text vertically because of the likes and giant usernames. There is also a lot more horizontal room which makes lines pretty long unless you resize the window (maybe its better on mobile).

Seems like it would be good to put the username and likes on the left with the icon and set a fixed width more in line with the previous forum. I'm guessing this works better on mobile though and that is why it was done like this though I think a good medium should be more friendly for desktop users. I guess I can use browser extensions to modify the layout myself on desktop though if it comes to it.

 

I might also suggest that draft saved dialog just show up inline somewhere because its popped up over things a few times now. Seems to be a bit in the way sometimes.

 

On the good side though the new features are pretty nice.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

I have to say, I'm not fond of the 'Logged out due to inactivity' feature.

 

Nor the bug asking you to log-in when you are already logged in. If, of course, that _is_ a bug.

[Kossage.9072]

Thanks for the new forums! :)

 

According to the announcement on the GW2 main page, the plan is to keep the current forums accessible in an archived, read-only mode until the end of October, and the team won’t be migrating normal content from the old forum’s database into the new one.

 

I'm not sure if it's possible to do, but I'd like a way to at least preserve dev comments from the old forums in some readable form as many of those offered valuable insight into game mechanics, lore (such as clarifying some confusing plot elements like the great responses back in Season 1 about the motivations of Scarlet and Scarlet's Alliance, Dolyak Express threads) etc. that will be lost once the old forum content becomes inaccessible.

 

Having this old developer information accessible far into the future would not only help with fleshing out GW2Wiki articles with references to said comments but also give us a means to show curious players where to find information us veterans may be referring to when talking about the more technical or lore-heavy stuff. :)

 

EDIT: Oh, and having both the dev tracker and the arrow thingie to take the reader into the next post by a dev in the same thread would be useful features to port over from the old forums too! ;)

[Pittcrew.6592]

> @Malerian.8435 said:

> Bloated, ugly, and cartoonish. Can we bring back the old format? Also all of the history of posts and other such things I was following are missing? Maybe I just have overlooked it?

 

You can access the old forums via this link: https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum

But it seems like it will be closed in a few weeks (6 according to Gaile), so she urges people to copy over important posts if they want to. (ugh)

[MetalGirl.2370]

I feel like old forum is much better. The only thing needed fixing is search on it.

And showing icons for thumbs up/down is kind of pointless since it's not like we're very unique, there's like thousands of people with same pic so not like someone stands out that way. Maybe instead of clutter just put it in like "see who rated your comment" option or just remove all together.

Also, I think there should've been a background picture instead of blinding white still.

[kermq.6258]

Ossum like the new look, and support for mobile is even better now i can finaly keep up even in work when on old was harder, just adding night mode and will be super.

 

And i hope u will do better then other game company that uses Vanilla engine forums.

[kaat.8237]

I think the avatars for reactions need to be smaller. The poster avatar is a good size, just poor contrast with the reaction size. Lovely to have forums that work otherwise!

[Kyban.4031]

Perhaps add a reply function (similar to Reddit) so you can respond to a post without it being lost in a larger thread. Just having a "thumbs down" doesn't really add much to the discussion, where a reply could help promote it or let the poster know why you disagree and give you the opportunity to provide constructive feedback.

[Malerian.8435]

> @Pittcrew.6592 said:

> > @Malerian.8435 said:

> > Bloated, ugly, and cartoonish. Can we bring back the old format? Also all of the history of posts and other such things I was following are missing? Maybe I just have overlooked it?

>

> You can access the old forums via this link: https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum

> But it seems like it will be closed in a few weeks (6 according to Gaile), so she urges people to copy over important posts if they want to. (ugh)

 

I am just going to hop ship at this point. I guess reddit here I come.

[Neural.1824]

> @AegisRunestone.8672 said:

> You get to unlock it when you become a "Veteran." Which is obtained through getting positive feedback from posts (thumbs up, helpful).

 

Interesting. I wonder if it is purely based on upvote count, or if a downvote moves you away from obtaining that, thus allowing individuals to effectively prevent someone from ever attaining that status.

 

 

[AegisRunestone.8672]

> @Neural.1824 said:

> > @AegisRunestone.8672 said:

> > You get to unlock it when you become a "Veteran." Which is obtained through getting positive feedback from posts (thumbs up, helpful).

>

> Interesting. I wonder if it is purely based on upvote count, or if a downvote moves you away from obtaining that, thus allowing individuals to effectively prevent someone from ever attaining that status.

>

>

 

I, too, wonder that.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

Overall, these forums are fairly nice, but I do have two major complaints:

 

1. The time limit for editing a post. This makes many types of forum posts useless, because they are written with frequent updating in mind.

2. The page itself is way too wide. There is a ridiculous amount of blank space to the right of all posts that is irritating when you try to rapidly scroll by clicking the mouse wheel. Why is that space even there?

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

I feel that some kind of notice when a sub-forum has new posts since your last visit, as we had in the old forums, would be helpful. Now, for instance, to see if there are any new 'Game Release Notes', you must open that sub-forum to check. Also, the Dev response up/down arrows in a thread were very helpful.

[Donari.5237]

Another thing I've just noticed: These forums do not have the old forums' feature of adding an icon to threads in which you've commented. That was a nice QoL, I could skim down the thread list very quickly when in a hurry and spot threads where someone may have responded to my comments and need a response before I sign out (or sometimes I just want to focus in on my commented threads as those are de facto ones I have found interesting). I see there are notifications here, and they may contain the same information, but not in as quickly accessible a manner. Is there a way to add an icon for "you have commented in this thread?"

[MetalGirl.2370]

15 minute edit is insane.

I'll just give an example of a guy asking a question in old forums last week, and literally leaked his own CD KEY, so if he did that here and didn't know that it's important [like he actually didn't since he leaked it himself] and closes the window to wait for people to answer, he comes back later and once he realizes, he can't edit it and it's too late.

[Kitta.3657]

It seems currently that the Dev Tracker option is inaccessible through mobile. I could only get to it when I was directly linked to it.

Also the new way of doing Dev Tracker is in my opinion inferior to what we had before where we could see every post made by a dev and if we wanted we could click on it and go read the rest of the thread but in it's current form you can't see the post before clicking on it and then scrolling to find the post. This is simply a worse way to go about it in my opinion and I would like to be able to scroll through posts only from Devs instead of searching through a thread to see what was said - this is particularly frustrating for specific bit of information vs fluff comments.

 

I preferred the name of the poster to be on the side with the avatar which makes separating posts cleaner and easier to scroll through.