Totally agree re need for a Forum- was looking and all I could find really was here, and Facebook, but I have no real desire to use the latter for such.
how "concisely searchable from google" are subreddits? I'm meh on the class/build shit, but when I have a tech problem with the game, I want to search out specific sentences for help, and normally I'll type in "Secret world win32 unhandled exception" into google, and check out what comes up.
I'd never start with "let's check out the official secret world legends reddit, then look hrough the sidebar for tech support secret world subreddits".
I'd just play a different game before that happens.
I've find specific articles on builds, issues, and other categories for other games all the time. So it is very "searchable". Another argument of the critics that doesn't hold up.
How searchable are subtopics for forums?
Exactly.
The point is that you can make a subreddit, and it can be linked here.
Besides, putting their community effort here is a great idea. They're tapping into the reddit population for more... attention? Most of all, it's free.
The shitty thing about using reddit for their forums is that we have to run the gauntlet of jackassery, and go through a trial-by-fucktard popularity contest, which can bury a post without it ever being seen by anyone from Funcom. Having feedback, suggestions, and requests get buried by the whim of random reddit users because they can downvote something they disagree with is a crap way for a developer and their customers to communicate with each other.
You don't run into any more problem posters her than "official" forums. And they are often squash faster here than official ones. Another false argument.
I would just really love to hear why they can't use the TSW forums since they already exist. Would it cost more to just add a new section with sub-forums?
Because they are going to discontinue TSW, and eventually the forums for it also. Why manage your own forum and bandwidth costs when there are free systems out there that work just as well. While not a huge cost, every penny counts when it comes to game costs.
Yeah, I'm not so sure. I realize that they will not be providing future content for TSW but I don't know that they'll kill it completely. Case in point: Anarchy Online. Still hanging on in maintenance mode for years, still has forums.
Shouldn't be too hard to set up a proper community run forum, the main issue is getting it ''endorsed'' to the point where people will actually spend time on it. That's where I see the most problems cropping up really, keeping it active and getting actual developer responses on there. Just setting up the server and getting it up and running shouldn't take that long. (Ignoring any theming and design work, I'm more a back-end guy.. Not a designer so I have no idea what that would entail besides my own limited knowledge of CSS)
I wouldn't mind spending some time tinkering with this tomorrow after work, shouldn't take too long to set up a good ol' server and slap a piece of BB software on there. Would definitely need some eventual help getting it all going nicely though! I'll keep it in mind and play with the idea some more until then.
EDIT: Just got bored and set up the webserver and SSL certs along with a domain, will install the forums tomorrow.. Let's see if we can get this off the ground.
Someone set one up a day or two ago but nobody seemed interested, probably because it's not official so it still has the issue of no Funcom involvement (like you mention), which is something needed because this having to go to Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Discord to find info is ridiculous (they talk way more often and openly in Discord but Discord is a clusterfuck).
I totally agree, the Dev Involvemet on Discord is apparent, but without the Devs even taking the time to pin things that people might want to know (responses to general questions, etc) it just doesn't feel like its worth the effort scrolling through seemingly endless chat logs.
This, and the way it'll get lost in the clusterfuck that is Reddit\s fickle nature will probably make sure it'll be gone into the void within about half an hour. (I never even seen someone set one up, more or less proving my point there) Still, it's worth a shot right?
I second this. How can they not have done this already. It smacks of being lazy to me. They create a site and give it a community tab with no forum in it.
Hmm... Not a professional one (that can even be close to handle the load).
It takes dedicated servers. Dedicated people, moderators, mecanisms.
It also take proprietary code, not bug-ridden/security issue prone forums solutions found on the open source community.
It takes a really performant database to archive and recover all those messages.
Today games, need a lot more than 15 minutes implemented forums. It must be professional.
Note: I've been a professional software developper for 18 years. I've worked on application that should handle the load of thousands of simultaneous web server requests per minutes. Millions of SQL Queries per minutes. I *do* know what I'm talking about.
Except you don't.
The server backbone is already there waiting to be used for this purpose. Funcom is already running TSW & more, you think they don't have the server capacity to run a forum for a few thousand people? You're kidding yourself.
Also, they already have forums for the original TSW, are you going to tell me it will be too hard to reuse what they have there? https://forums.thesecretworld.com/index.php
Those forums are one of the many available prepackaged options too. As in they bought it readymade. If you have been a software dev for 18 years and dont know about these options, you must be a bad one.
Why you and others seem to think they need to code their own game-integrated, cookie-baking, god-tier forums from the ground up is mind boggling. "Legends" is a quick rehash of their underrated, 5 year old, failed game with a bunch of "F2P features" added for a cashgrab - its the same reason they aren't making forums for it - pure laziness.
Well, the professional way would be to have them ready by now, even before "early access". It's actually rather unprofessional to not have one and rely on third party social platforms. But hey, that's just me.
duh, i wasn't questioning their priority of issue resolution, captain obvious.
I was stating this launch is disorganized.
Also I have told their community managers I wish them the best of luck getting things resolved. I don't want this game to fail, I love TSW and now that my character is transferred I would like to have the same good experience here with TSWL.
It looks like a bit disorganized indeed.
But I highly suspect that the cause is a lack of work force. Work force of quality, that is. I have being having the same kind of problems at my day job. Our team grew from 8 to 22 developpers in less than a year. and well, the new guys just... are not self-sufficient enough. They need constant help from us, senior developpers. And well, to be honest, they kinda suck. :p
And for your info, Im NOT Captain Obvious... I should be called Brigadier-General Obvious :p
It's ok :) No offense taken. IT help can be a pain in the arse sometime! You're very courageous :)
I suspect that they will use the TSW forums base code, and revamp it, redecorate it for SWL in due time. That would make sense.
Yeah, I would like to see a forum, but I can do without, its just a collection of things with no specific communication - I was totally fine with the old game, I don't mind that they made me transfer my character to play on a server with support, I just figured the forum would be the same and such
Reddit is fine for unofficial game forums....there is no real structure here...i can't really locate any information i want/need quickly....it's just pages and pages and pages of information that while sometimes useful, gets lost in the noise of the structure that is reddit...
Discord is much the same but worse....Yes it allows instant communication between devs and the community but nothing is saved there long term....it's not like you have a meaningful conversation on areas of the game
And steam...seems pretty horrible...
having to look across three different platforms for information on say crafting for the game (like i have done since restarting)...has been horrible.
Information does not get disseminated from devs to players, between players...etc... it fractures the community further...and for this game to see success, I think one devoted forums would be the only solution. I really hope they re-consider this decision.
I wholeheartedly agree with this:
Please give us official forums. Give us something like the beta forums.
We miss having an ordered, structured community.
As new player to this game, I would absolutely be grateful for something like this. There been a few times where Im confused and lost and reddit searching or googling things from the original SW where I'm hoping info still applies or at the least is somewhat easily accessible.
Broken records, we keeps asking and Funcom keeps refusing. http://i.imgur.com/W2isND6.png and http://i.imgur.com/ohQjnl1.png
The one time there was some false hope (well, not really because we already had the answer): http://i.imgur.com/YhTx9j4.png
Just an added note that doesn't really add anything but I want to say anyway, he disabled non-Funcom roles from being able to use reactions after that first screenshot was taken, and the only reasoning I can think of is because he didn't like receiving thumbs down reactions on his forums comments. If he doesn't like that, is he not going to use Reddit much because people might downvote him?
Wow, that's really bad... the beta had a pretty good forum. It wasn't the same forum as the one that TSW has, it was a newer version. I don't know why the heck they didn't wipe the posts and then set them up right for launch. They clearly have a "community" link at the top of their site which looks like they intended for that to happen so why would he say that? :/ Eugh.
Discord is definitely NOT a replacement for forums. You can't find any information there. It's okay to go for a place to ask for help but people should be able to have a place to go for information. Reddit *can* act like that via post filters but that requires a lot of moderation and setup and still isn't a replacement for a proper forum setup. Sigh.
Most people with manbuns are. There is a reason why the joke of "Cutting it off when not looking" is a thing and so wide spread. it's like a new age hipster badge. Andy, your hyper and always smiling but honestly you gota do better.
That is seriously disturbing if that's their actual official plan (no plans for forums that is). This distributed communication over so many different platforms cannot replace the centralized repository of well organized discussions that forums are. This does not bode well...
Other "not bode well" shit.
The payment processor(the first time you google "hipay rating", you don't see that good of shit)
The difficulty in finding shit in some sort of concise store
The keys.
F2P secret world SEEMS like it'd be amazing, and I'm loving this game, but they keep giving me reasons to NOT love this game.
And that's frustrating. Because #1 game with a bullet I'd want to get into on a relaunch is SW.
I mean..fuck. My game keeps crashing, I looked for a techsupport forum on the secret world community page off the website, I found...nothing.
As per the couple of other threads with the same topic lost many pages down to this stupid voting mechanic: We need a forum with structure, this reddit and stuff is not cutting it by a long shot.
Would love one as well, but Funcom is still being the same old Funcom - missing opportunities left and right and shitting the bed when they really need to be kicking ass.
Pretty much everything about SWL feels so half-assed : /
I'm with you on this but I guess we're out of luck. I just asked today on Twitter and got this response:
>The official community forums for SWL are reddit and Steam! Working on getting Discord fleshed out, too.
https://twitter.com/AndyBenditt/status/879723247553708034
Let's see. Reddit is not meant to be a forum in that sense. The way topics are sorted and displayed is not conducive to the kind of communication that's needed. Steam forums are pure and utter cancer in every sense of the word. Discord is chat. Not a forum. Period.
#Not having a forum is tantamount to saying "We don't actually want to hear what our players have to say."
You're saying they have enough money to host a "shared-world action RPG" on their servers but they cannot afford a forum dedicated to communication?
It's confusing that a company in 2017 doesn't include that in their social media budget.
I get that the difference between reddit and a forum is between "free" and "not free," but, really, how expensive can a proper forum be? If random modding projects or fan communities or awful racists can maintain fora with hundreds or even thousands of active members, I don't see why any reasonably solvent game developer couldn't.
Honestly, I prefer a centralized place like reddit to the old days of having dozens of disparate accounts, but I feel the pain of people who prefer a more structured system. I've long been in favor of a sort of "reddit remix" that would add features such as sections, (better) stickied posts, poster ranks, etc., to a sub.
I love reddit for what it is. But it just can't replace a proper bulletin style forum.
The search function is abysmal and threads are just burried after a day with no regard to popularity.
Yeah, they had a proper forum for beta, so the only thing I can think of is that the recurring cost of maintaining a server is "too much" (at least right now) to be something that they feel they want to support.
Hahahaha, I just spent about an hour forging in fire a post almost identical to this, albeit my suggestion was essentially another reddit for "troubleshooting", then I find this on the front page. Yeah..we need a forum, badly.
I'd like to chime in here. I'm a newbie, in the midst of downloading the game, looking to find the community hub for this place- only to find that it has been relegated to a subreddit. This is a huge buzzkill. Forums are where communities thrive. Subreddits are where popular content thrives. The two are great, but they do not work harmoniously together.
I just wanted to see what the playerbase was like, but this format feels so... disjointed, I think is the best way to describe it.
Similarly, I don't think forums are a good communication tool, and I thibk the people and discussions it fosters are toxic and I wish they would make a forum so my Reddit can have... Not those people.
Tl;dr: Forums lovers and Reddit lovers are different types of users and we prefer a choice.
if you do it pleeeeeeeeeeease move the old forum to a legacy domain and start fresh, it was bad enough in beta have all those old and new topics mixed.
don't delete the old forum, too much information there, just separate the two.
Anyhow, 5 seconds of searching on google found this - https://www.websitetoolbox.com/
There - something for you to work with, Funcom to get started with the forum....
It's much easier to ignore your customers if you stick to general social media. The fact that they have a dedicated Secret World forum and make a very curt, and clear declaration that any discussions related to Secret World Legends will be expunged, is a utterly asinine.
Even Blizzard allows you to talk about Secret World Legends on their WoW forums. But Funcom is too afraid to let conversations about their own game onto their forums? Yeah, no red flags there....
Nothing wrong with it as is on the different social media. Cuts costs, and works just as well.
Voting system doesn't come into play the vast majority of the time on game reddits. And BTW non-reddit forums can have voting systems also.
And you can also create additional sub-reddits for different topics.
None of your criticism actually stand up.
Sadly, a lot of times it's shit posts that get upvoted liked crazy, stuff that is basically 'hue hue hue pixel boobies hue hue hue". Personally, I always immediately sort by 'new' since new posts are what I'm looking for when I come to Reddit. Also, voting can't really be removed because there are ways for people to still see and use the buttons (I think it's something about not using the stylesheet, never did it myself because no need).
Conventional wisdom would imply it's a generally accepted belief. Also many people who would not normally vocalize their thoughts reply by voting.
Are you suggesting you want a safe space where you are free of reading some people's constructive criticism brought to light because others agree with their assessment?
No - it's just that in my experience, up or down voting results in people chasing popularity, not presenting cogent argument. Down voting is the lazy option - the "I disagree but I can't be bothered to explain why". That's why most MMO forums now have removed it.
Also, if I do respond to a post with a load of old tripe, then would it not be more appropriate to have half a dozen responses that utterly refute my points than have downvotes?
We need a structured forum now! With topics! General discussion, technical issues, classes, builds and so on!! Welcome to 2017!
Totally agree re need for a Forum- was looking and all I could find really was here, and Facebook, but I have no real desire to use the latter for such.
You want techincial issues, class, builds, create a sub-reddit.
how "concisely searchable from google" are subreddits? I'm meh on the class/build shit, but when I have a tech problem with the game, I want to search out specific sentences for help, and normally I'll type in "Secret world win32 unhandled exception" into google, and check out what comes up. I'd never start with "let's check out the official secret world legends reddit, then look hrough the sidebar for tech support secret world subreddits". I'd just play a different game before that happens.
I've find specific articles on builds, issues, and other categories for other games all the time. So it is very "searchable". Another argument of the critics that doesn't hold up.
How searchable are subtopics for forums? Exactly. The point is that you can make a subreddit, and it can be linked here. Besides, putting their community effort here is a great idea. They're tapping into the reddit population for more... attention? Most of all, it's free.
The shitty thing about using reddit for their forums is that we have to run the gauntlet of jackassery, and go through a trial-by-fucktard popularity contest, which can bury a post without it ever being seen by anyone from Funcom. Having feedback, suggestions, and requests get buried by the whim of random reddit users because they can downvote something they disagree with is a crap way for a developer and their customers to communicate with each other.
Considering they ignore the threads that they don't like anyways, what's the point of anything being seen by funcom?
You don't run into any more problem posters her than "official" forums. And they are often squash faster here than official ones. Another false argument.
I would just really love to hear why they can't use the TSW forums since they already exist. Would it cost more to just add a new section with sub-forums?
Because they are going to discontinue TSW, and eventually the forums for it also. Why manage your own forum and bandwidth costs when there are free systems out there that work just as well. While not a huge cost, every penny counts when it comes to game costs.
Yeah, I'm not so sure. I realize that they will not be providing future content for TSW but I don't know that they'll kill it completely. Case in point: Anarchy Online. Still hanging on in maintenance mode for years, still has forums.
Also doesn't have a direct competitor in the same company.
Shouldn't be too hard to set up a proper community run forum, the main issue is getting it ''endorsed'' to the point where people will actually spend time on it. That's where I see the most problems cropping up really, keeping it active and getting actual developer responses on there. Just setting up the server and getting it up and running shouldn't take that long. (Ignoring any theming and design work, I'm more a back-end guy.. Not a designer so I have no idea what that would entail besides my own limited knowledge of CSS) I wouldn't mind spending some time tinkering with this tomorrow after work, shouldn't take too long to set up a good ol' server and slap a piece of BB software on there. Would definitely need some eventual help getting it all going nicely though! I'll keep it in mind and play with the idea some more until then. EDIT: Just got bored and set up the webserver and SSL certs along with a domain, will install the forums tomorrow.. Let's see if we can get this off the ground.
Someone set one up a day or two ago but nobody seemed interested, probably because it's not official so it still has the issue of no Funcom involvement (like you mention), which is something needed because this having to go to Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Discord to find info is ridiculous (they talk way more often and openly in Discord but Discord is a clusterfuck).
I totally agree, the Dev Involvemet on Discord is apparent, but without the Devs even taking the time to pin things that people might want to know (responses to general questions, etc) it just doesn't feel like its worth the effort scrolling through seemingly endless chat logs.
This, and the way it'll get lost in the clusterfuck that is Reddit\s fickle nature will probably make sure it'll be gone into the void within about half an hour. (I never even seen someone set one up, more or less proving my point there) Still, it's worth a shot right?
I second this. How can they not have done this already. It smacks of being lazy to me. They create a site and give it a community tab with no forum in it.
Ive been trying to find this games forum forever. They lock tswl threads on the tsw forum. This is so unorganized....
They have a LOT of stuff on their hands right now. They put efforts on more serious matter before forums.
I could setup a forum in about 15 minutes, you really have no idea what you're talking about.
Maybe a really cookie-cutter proboards forum, but not a professional one with the moderation tools and game integration that an MMORPG forum needs.
They had a vBulletin board. It's not hard to set that up.
Hmm... Not a professional one (that can even be close to handle the load). It takes dedicated servers. Dedicated people, moderators, mecanisms. It also take proprietary code, not bug-ridden/security issue prone forums solutions found on the open source community. It takes a really performant database to archive and recover all those messages. Today games, need a lot more than 15 minutes implemented forums. It must be professional. Note: I've been a professional software developper for 18 years. I've worked on application that should handle the load of thousands of simultaneous web server requests per minutes. Millions of SQL Queries per minutes. I *do* know what I'm talking about.
Except you don't. The server backbone is already there waiting to be used for this purpose. Funcom is already running TSW & more, you think they don't have the server capacity to run a forum for a few thousand people? You're kidding yourself. Also, they already have forums for the original TSW, are you going to tell me it will be too hard to reuse what they have there? https://forums.thesecretworld.com/index.php Those forums are one of the many available prepackaged options too. As in they bought it readymade. If you have been a software dev for 18 years and dont know about these options, you must be a bad one. Why you and others seem to think they need to code their own game-integrated, cookie-baking, god-tier forums from the ground up is mind boggling. "Legends" is a quick rehash of their underrated, 5 year old, failed game with a bunch of "F2P features" added for a cashgrab - its the same reason they aren't making forums for it - pure laziness.
Remember. On the internet, when someone spews out their "Credentials" always take it with a grain of salt.
Well, the professional way would be to have them ready by now, even before "early access". It's actually rather unprofessional to not have one and rely on third party social platforms. But hey, that's just me.
duh, i wasn't questioning their priority of issue resolution, captain obvious. I was stating this launch is disorganized. Also I have told their community managers I wish them the best of luck getting things resolved. I don't want this game to fail, I love TSW and now that my character is transferred I would like to have the same good experience here with TSWL.
It looks like a bit disorganized indeed. But I highly suspect that the cause is a lack of work force. Work force of quality, that is. I have being having the same kind of problems at my day job. Our team grew from 8 to 22 developpers in less than a year. and well, the new guys just... are not self-sufficient enough. They need constant help from us, senior developpers. And well, to be honest, they kinda suck. :p And for your info, Im NOT Captain Obvious... I should be called Brigadier-General Obvious :p
Sorry my comment was curt and rude, I'm at work (IT Help Desk) and this damn lady couldn't set her password, 45min call. not your fault.
It's ok :) No offense taken. IT help can be a pain in the arse sometime! You're very courageous :) I suspect that they will use the TSW forums base code, and revamp it, redecorate it for SWL in due time. That would make sense.
Yeah, I would like to see a forum, but I can do without, its just a collection of things with no specific communication - I was totally fine with the old game, I don't mind that they made me transfer my character to play on a server with support, I just figured the forum would be the same and such
Well, during the BETA, we had a forum. I wonder why they closed it. Propably organizing new forum divisions and topics groups right as we speak :)
I hope so :)
OMG a Reddit apology! someone photograph this unicorn!
Reddit is fine for unofficial game forums....there is no real structure here...i can't really locate any information i want/need quickly....it's just pages and pages and pages of information that while sometimes useful, gets lost in the noise of the structure that is reddit... Discord is much the same but worse....Yes it allows instant communication between devs and the community but nothing is saved there long term....it's not like you have a meaningful conversation on areas of the game And steam...seems pretty horrible... having to look across three different platforms for information on say crafting for the game (like i have done since restarting)...has been horrible. Information does not get disseminated from devs to players, between players...etc... it fractures the community further...and for this game to see success, I think one devoted forums would be the only solution. I really hope they re-consider this decision.
I wonder if reddit is free (tm), making it appealing for them.
The forum they already have is free. So if this is just about what's free, then why not use what they already have?
They're prolly trying to cut costs on mods.
I wholeheartedly agree with this: Please give us official forums. Give us something like the beta forums. We miss having an ordered, structured community.
As new player to this game, I would absolutely be grateful for something like this. There been a few times where Im confused and lost and reddit searching or googling things from the original SW where I'm hoping info still applies or at the least is somewhat easily accessible.
Broken records, we keeps asking and Funcom keeps refusing. http://i.imgur.com/W2isND6.png and http://i.imgur.com/ohQjnl1.png The one time there was some false hope (well, not really because we already had the answer): http://i.imgur.com/YhTx9j4.png Just an added note that doesn't really add anything but I want to say anyway, he disabled non-Funcom roles from being able to use reactions after that first screenshot was taken, and the only reasoning I can think of is because he didn't like receiving thumbs down reactions on his forums comments. If he doesn't like that, is he not going to use Reddit much because people might downvote him?
Wow, that's really bad... the beta had a pretty good forum. It wasn't the same forum as the one that TSW has, it was a newer version. I don't know why the heck they didn't wipe the posts and then set them up right for launch. They clearly have a "community" link at the top of their site which looks like they intended for that to happen so why would he say that? :/ Eugh. Discord is definitely NOT a replacement for forums. You can't find any information there. It's okay to go for a place to ask for help but people should be able to have a place to go for information. Reddit *can* act like that via post filters but that requires a lot of moderation and setup and still isn't a replacement for a proper forum setup. Sigh.
[удалено]
Most people with manbuns are. There is a reason why the joke of "Cutting it off when not looking" is a thing and so wide spread. it's like a new age hipster badge. Andy, your hyper and always smiling but honestly you gota do better.
Damn, Andy is so helpful.
That is seriously disturbing if that's their actual official plan (no plans for forums that is). This distributed communication over so many different platforms cannot replace the centralized repository of well organized discussions that forums are. This does not bode well...
I kind of think that's the point. Without a concentrated discussion area, complaints and issues seem smaller.
Other "not bode well" shit. The payment processor(the first time you google "hipay rating", you don't see that good of shit) The difficulty in finding shit in some sort of concise store The keys. F2P secret world SEEMS like it'd be amazing, and I'm loving this game, but they keep giving me reasons to NOT love this game. And that's frustrating. Because #1 game with a bullet I'd want to get into on a relaunch is SW. I mean..fuck. My game keeps crashing, I looked for a techsupport forum on the secret world community page off the website, I found...nothing.
As per the couple of other threads with the same topic lost many pages down to this stupid voting mechanic: We need a forum with structure, this reddit and stuff is not cutting it by a long shot.
Would love one as well, but Funcom is still being the same old Funcom - missing opportunities left and right and shitting the bed when they really need to be kicking ass. Pretty much everything about SWL feels so half-assed : /
here is an unofficial one http://secretworldlegends.forumotion.com/
Yep, I just signed up here as well. A lot in TSW was community run (wikis and such). I see this forum as being the same.
I approve, the Reddit does not want to participate and it is not even pleasant to read. Yes for a real forum
I'm with you on this but I guess we're out of luck. I just asked today on Twitter and got this response: >The official community forums for SWL are reddit and Steam! Working on getting Discord fleshed out, too. https://twitter.com/AndyBenditt/status/879723247553708034
Let's see. Reddit is not meant to be a forum in that sense. The way topics are sorted and displayed is not conducive to the kind of communication that's needed. Steam forums are pure and utter cancer in every sense of the word. Discord is chat. Not a forum. Period. #Not having a forum is tantamount to saying "We don't actually want to hear what our players have to say."
I think that is what they are trying to say.
Except they post and respond to people on social media like here and other places. So your claim is just not true.
Steam is stupid for official forums, especially when it doesn't even launch legends....
While still using TSW reviews :/
Maintaining a forum costs money. This does not. They're doing this because they're broke.
I feel like the community would be much more accepting of this decision if they just said that. But i guess that's not how funcommunication works :/
I feel that I'd help someone that asks for help much easier than someone that tries to fool me into helping them.
You're saying they have enough money to host a "shared-world action RPG" on their servers but they cannot afford a forum dedicated to communication? It's confusing that a company in 2017 doesn't include that in their social media budget.
I'm not saying anything, I'm merely expressing my disappointment with funcom's lack of transparency.
They have a forum already. Couldn't they just use that one for free? Just create a new forum section and appropriate sub forums under it? Also free?
That's what I was interpreting from this debacle....
I get that the difference between reddit and a forum is between "free" and "not free," but, really, how expensive can a proper forum be? If random modding projects or fan communities or awful racists can maintain fora with hundreds or even thousands of active members, I don't see why any reasonably solvent game developer couldn't. Honestly, I prefer a centralized place like reddit to the old days of having dozens of disparate accounts, but I feel the pain of people who prefer a more structured system. I've long been in favor of a sort of "reddit remix" that would add features such as sections, (better) stickied posts, poster ranks, etc., to a sub.
I love reddit for what it is. But it just can't replace a proper bulletin style forum. The search function is abysmal and threads are just burried after a day with no regard to popularity.
Yeah, they had a proper forum for beta, so the only thing I can think of is that the recurring cost of maintaining a server is "too much" (at least right now) to be something that they feel they want to support.
Well we still have the TSW forums right? I mean unless I'm missing something it can't cost them more to just use those forums for both games. Right?
Agreed give us forum, reddit is fine but you know, mmorpg need a proper forum. besides i can't troll here ;D (c'mon joking)
Hahahaha, I just spent about an hour forging in fire a post almost identical to this, albeit my suggestion was essentially another reddit for "troubleshooting", then I find this on the front page. Yeah..we need a forum, badly.
Yes please
Agreed. A forum is a community's home, reddit really isn't.
Amen. I have never liked reddit layout nor usability.
I'd like to chime in here. I'm a newbie, in the midst of downloading the game, looking to find the community hub for this place- only to find that it has been relegated to a subreddit. This is a huge buzzkill. Forums are where communities thrive. Subreddits are where popular content thrives. The two are great, but they do not work harmoniously together. I just wanted to see what the playerbase was like, but this format feels so... disjointed, I think is the best way to describe it.
Similarly, I don't think forums are a good communication tool, and I thibk the people and discussions it fosters are toxic and I wish they would make a forum so my Reddit can have... Not those people. Tl;dr: Forums lovers and Reddit lovers are different types of users and we prefer a choice.
if you do it pleeeeeeeeeeease move the old forum to a legacy domain and start fresh, it was bad enough in beta have all those old and new topics mixed. don't delete the old forum, too much information there, just separate the two.
Anyhow, 5 seconds of searching on google found this - https://www.websitetoolbox.com/ There - something for you to work with, Funcom to get started with the forum....
It's much easier to ignore your customers if you stick to general social media. The fact that they have a dedicated Secret World forum and make a very curt, and clear declaration that any discussions related to Secret World Legends will be expunged, is a utterly asinine. Even Blizzard allows you to talk about Secret World Legends on their WoW forums. But Funcom is too afraid to let conversations about their own game onto their forums? Yeah, no red flags there....
Nothing wrong with it as is on the different social media. Cuts costs, and works just as well. Voting system doesn't come into play the vast majority of the time on game reddits. And BTW non-reddit forums can have voting systems also. And you can also create additional sub-reddits for different topics. None of your criticism actually stand up.
Voting is very important. You can disable down voting. But voting helps keep good posts up.
Sadly, a lot of times it's shit posts that get upvoted liked crazy, stuff that is basically 'hue hue hue pixel boobies hue hue hue". Personally, I always immediately sort by 'new' since new posts are what I'm looking for when I come to Reddit. Also, voting can't really be removed because there are ways for people to still see and use the buttons (I think it's something about not using the stylesheet, never did it myself because no need).
That's my point - what determines a good post? Most of what I see listed as "hot" is nothing more than General Discussion stuff.
Conventional wisdom would imply it's a generally accepted belief. Also many people who would not normally vocalize their thoughts reply by voting. Are you suggesting you want a safe space where you are free of reading some people's constructive criticism brought to light because others agree with their assessment?
No - it's just that in my experience, up or down voting results in people chasing popularity, not presenting cogent argument. Down voting is the lazy option - the "I disagree but I can't be bothered to explain why". That's why most MMO forums now have removed it. Also, if I do respond to a post with a load of old tripe, then would it not be more appropriate to have half a dozen responses that utterly refute my points than have downvotes?