*** Important *** Feedback Required V2

Myrddin

Hi all, just to say muchas gracias to all those who contributed to the previous feedback thread. The comments and observations were very helpful, & we were able to sit back and re-evaluate things with the help of your feedback. So, following on from the previous feedback thread, there's a few things to note.

1) The category is bloated, with too many redundant forums & is spread too thin.
2) The +1/-1's for a PC Gaming forum both had merit, we're still hope-full of creating one given the advantages listed below (it will allow us to get rid of a few forums, & house their content under one hopefully more active roof, as opposed to several dead/quiet forums)

Ok, to address the first part. The bloated category. We've come up with a solution which will reduce the number of forums in the Games drop down menu from 21 entries, to 14, by consolidating some forums, & simply retiring others. Here are the proposed changes:

1) Rename Steam & Valve forum to PC Gaming
2) Move PC Gaming to the Consoles Sub-Cat
3) Rename the Consoles Sub-Cat to Gaming Platforms.
4) Rename Shooters Sub-Cat in order to be a catch all sub-cat for dedicated games forums (name of sub-cat to be determined)

5) Move Starcraft, Elder Scrolls, Minecraft & Pokemon to the renamed Shooters Sub-Cat
6) Create a new Sub-Cat to house Game Development & Editing, and Game Recording (to reduce their collective footprint on the drop down menu)
7) Make JRPG's it's own full forum & evaluate it after a while in terms of viability.
8) Allow one thread in each of the console forums, with a healthy dose of mod discretion, to allow smaller game discussion as per suggestion. Maybe something like a "What you are playing? PS4 Edition" type thing, or something along those lines. It already kinda happens in the forum megathreads anyway, this would just be a way to formalize it, & would vaguely echo the ethos of how the PC Gaming forum would work too. This would be basic level og game discussion, & wouldn't impact on this forum.

9) Massively Multiplayer has some dead sub-forums. Retire Star Wars:TOR & Eve Online.
10) World of Tanks & World of Warcraft look ok for now. These will be left alone & will remain part of Massively Multiplayer as subforums.
11) Retire the dead Trophy Manager forum, which is a sub-forum of Football & Championship Manager.
12) Guitar Hero & Rockband, and The Sims forum are dying/dead. Retire them.

13) Mobile Gaming, will be renamed as Mobile Games. It will also remain as a subforum of Games.
14) RPG's & Strategy forums are very quiet/almost dead. Retire them.
15) Retire the failed Survival Sandbox forum (last post 1 month ago as of today) & let Games & PC Gaming take up the slack.
16) Retire the dead Webgames forum, PC Gaming would easily cater to this given pc's use browsers more fundamentally than consoles do.

So as you can see, by retiring RPG's, Strategy, The Survival Sandbox, & Webgames, and by having a PC Gaming forum there to take up any slack, we believe there is definite justification for having PC Gaming around. Between the main Games forum, and PC Gaming, we have the same coverage we've always had, but in a much tighter space.

As always, we'd really appreciate your input...constructive input at that Cheers all

Kiith

I like the changes. A lot of inactive threads can be merged, cutting down the clutter, and allowing for a more focused Games category in general.

Also, i'll always approve of somewhere to chat about the awesome pc gaming is. A dedicated Mod thread? Yes please

Nody

Kiith wrote: »

I like the changes. A lot of inactive threads can be merged, cutting down the clutter, and allowing for a more focused Games category in general.

Also, i'll always approve of somewhere to chat about the awesome pc gaming is. A dedicated Mod thread? Yes please

That's not nice to exclude all our other good posters; I'm all for inviting them in after all :P . But yes; finally a dedicated forum for the PC Master race meme's gets my thumbs up if nothing else (after all as the Master race player I'm all for a master race meme thread).

Amirani

I'm surprised to find I agree with essentially all the suggestions, great work.

One query I'd have on "retiring forums" such as Strategy and RPG - I presume this retirement would involve a merge with Games or whatever, rather than a full delete? There's still some good stuff in there that would be a shame to lose.

johnny_ultimate

And a further plus point - I can finally send all those annoying master race memes to the ghetto home they deserve :P

Seriously though, I think fundamental changes like this will be positive for the category. The category is fragmented as it is, no doubt, but some splits are always going to be necessary - it'll never be beneficial to boil it down to a single master 'games forum', as that's a recipe for pure chaos. The problem with having a main games forum as busy as this one is that an awful lot of stuff gets lost or drowned out - the most popular games dominate, whereas discussion interesting indie, niche, genre, classic or mobile games run the risk of getting lost if they're not bumped nearly immediately. The mobile games forum, for example, was not created just to split the category further, but to allow discussion of an increasingly diverse variety of games that alas were struggling to stay afloat here.

IMO the new form will hopefully give a lot more space for topics to breathe, while also significantly decreasing the amount of different forums in the category. It'll be a bit of work to ensure we don't return to the bad old days of discussion of a single game being split over multiple forums, but I think generally it's far more accessible than it was two or three years ago. Fingers crossed these sort of changes will further refine the category.

I notice that everyone who has weighed in so far is a mod - hopefully regular and occasional posters alike will also weigh in and tell us whether or not we've not grown increasingly delusional and removed from the everyday reality of posting in the boards.ie games category Above all, any changes we're proposing have been suggested as ways of making the games category a more user friendly place to read and post.

Polar101

Are the game specific forums really necessary? Wouldn't it just be better to have a single (or more) threads on the general gaming forum. If you have some games that have a separate forum, and some that are on the general, then in order to find a thread, you have to know if that particular game has a separate forum or not.

johnny_ultimate

Polar101 wrote: »

Are the game specific forums really necessary? Wouldn't it just be better to have a single (or more) threads on the general gaming forum. If you have some games that have a separate forum, and some that are on the general, then in order to find a thread, you have to know if that particular game has a separate forum or not.

Because a lot of them cover topics ill-suited to a single thread here. Look at forums like the Minecraft or Pokemon ones to see very active communities discussing a wide range of topics, and even organising events both in game and IRL. The last thing we want to do is kill off strong communities just in the interest of drop-down menu tidiness!

In response to feedback on the issue over the last few years, there has been a significant move away from forums dedicated to single games in recent years, and the proposed revisions would take that even further. If a new forum of that type was suggested over in forum requests, the game would have to be exceptionally popular for the idea to even be entertained - indeed, Minecraft was probably the last new game to have earned and maintained such popularity. The failure of The Survival Sandbox alas highlights how even many extremely successful genres struggle to expand beyond the remit of dedicated megathreads in the games forum. However, several forums more than earn their keep as separate entities - the ones that will be kept - and there's no point breaking what isn't broken. It would also be very unfair on the posters and mods who have managed to evolve those forums into lively and busy communities.

Myrddin

Diego Simeone wrote: »

One query I'd have on "retiring forums" such as Strategy and RPG - I presume this retirement would involve a merge with Games or whatever, rather than a full delete? There's still some good stuff in there that would be a shame to lose.

Yep, should we go ahead with these proposals, content can be salvaged before a forum is retired

McSasquatch

Looks good to me - I recently suggested that the Steam forum be repurposed into a general PC forum (and wanted it for more legit reasons than "PC master race" ones :pac:), so I'm happy out! As johnny says, there'll always be some fragmentation, but this should go a long way to resolve some of the clutter.

ShadowHearth

Looks good on a paper so far. Less forums, the less spread out of community.
Pc master race forum is nice. So many more topics can be discussed. It will be a great start for people to look information if they finally feel like ditching pitchforks and straw hats. :pac:

As much as I love eve online - the forums is dead. I am pretty sure there will be a lot more action and discussion if we will have a whole thread in pc gaming, instead of dead sub forum.

Strategy game forums had to go ahead ago. Again, they will be a lot more active topics if we will just have dedicated threads.

Grumpypants

I give this two thumbs up. You may proceed as planned

CastorTroy

When do you expect to carry out the changes? Like when can we banish the PC snobs to their private room?

Myrddin

CastorTroy wrote: »

When do you expect to carry out the changes? Like when can we banish the PC snobs to their private room?

I think we'll giv e the idea time to float, so ev eryone who wants a say can have one. A few days, maybe a week or so? We'll bump the thread if needs be anyway

degrassinoel

I think it's a good idea, even though one of the forums i assist in moding will be retired. Hopefully it works out as intended

Am just curious as to multiplatform games being strewn across multiple forums, how's that going to be addressed?

CastorTroy

Isn't the plan to keep the main forum for games while the platform forum be used for platform specific info? Like Last of Us be discussed in the Games forum but PS Plus be discussed in the Playstation forum.

McSasquatch

I'd prefer if each platform forum had it's own thread for Game X, Y or Z rather than one Game X superthread in a main gaming forum. It's one of the reasons I want a separate forum for PC gaming.

Myrddin

degrassinoel wrote: »

I think it's a good idea, even though one of the forums i assist in moding will be retired. Hopefully it works out as intended

Am just curious as to multiplatform games being strewn across multiple forums, how's that going to be addressed?

We're not looking to splinter discussion, so the majority of games discussion will remain here in this forum. Some splintering will be allowed, & mods will use their discretion in making such judgments. For example, fleeting discussion about games happens in the PS forum, spawned by the PS+ thread. This is ok, it's contained within that thread & is much more a "Talk about this months games" rather than the in depth game discussion that happens here. PC Gaming will work a bit differently, but will be there to compliment this forum, not compete with it

CastorTroy wrote: »

Isn't the plan to keep the main forum for games while the platform forum be used for platform specific info? Like Last of Us be discussed in the Games forum but PS Plus be discussed in the Playstation forum.

Very much so, but we'll just formalize the bit of leeway that mods already use. As above, you will find some basic games discussion happening in the console forums, it's inevitable to get at least some. Such discussion will be limited to a general "What are you playing? PS3 Edition" type thread etc. But yes, by & large there aren't any real changes to the current setup.

McSasquatch wrote: »

I'd prefer if each platform forum had it's own thread for Game X, Y or Z rather than one Game X superthread in a main gaming forum. It's one of the reasons I want a separate forum for PC gaming.

That's more or less how it used to work here. The same game could be discussed here in this forum, the playstation forum, and the nintendo forum. Discussion was hugely fractured, & made reading threads a huge pain given the amount of cross posting going on. Those days are well & truly behind us. Don't be under the illusion that PC Gaming would be allowed to work like that either, this forum shall remain the main forum for Games discussion. PC Gaming will fill the void left by retiring some of the forums mentioned in the first post, it will be ok for any games out of the spotlight, modifications to games, pc game community setup/discussion, steam/origin/gog etc, to facilitate multiplayer gaming, & all that kinda thing. Brand new release games will still have their discussion here

Skerries

Sephiroth_dude

That's me out of a job so issss itttt? :-p

Myrddin

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

That's me out of a job so issss itttt? :-p

We'll have a chat at some stage with the affected mods in the gaming mods forum & see what can be done, this thread is really to see if the proposals have the support of the community so there was no point in sorting out the finer details incase none of it went ahead

Sephiroth_dude

Ahh ya no worries I was just messing around

McSasquatch

Myrddin wrote: »

That's more or less how it used to work here. The same game could be discussed here in this forum, the playstation forum, and the nintendo forum. Discussion was hugely fractured, & made reading threads a huge pain given the amount of cross posting going on. Those days are well & truly behind us. Don't be under the illusion that PC Gaming would be allowed to work like that either, this forum shall remain the main forum for Games discussion. PC Gaming will fill the void left by retiring some of the forums mentioned in the first post, it will be ok for any games out of the spotlight, modifications to games, pc game community setup/discussion, steam/origin/gog etc, to facilitate multiplayer gaming, & all that kinda thing. Brand new release games will still have their discussion here

That's disappointing then.

It's almost expected now that big releases are staggered across the different platforms. PC and Wii owners are usually (though not always) the ones made to wait, so participation in the multi-platform superthreads for huge titles (GTA, Assassins Creed, Dark Souls, Watchdogs et al) brings the risk of huge spoilerage once the games have launched on PS and Xbox. It works the other way too of course, with console versions of - off the top of my head - Diablo 3, Elder Scrolls Online etc. arriving after the PC release. In such cases is it not possible to have a platform specific thread in each platform forum?

What about games that are completely exclusive to a particular platform? Does it not make more sense to allow discussion of those in the relevant platform forum?

There are other considerations as well. As you know, modding is an important part of the PC gaming experience. If we're allowed to discuss the modding of a game in the PC forum, and I would assume the discussion of recommended hardware, drivers etc (specific to individual titles rather than general hardware discussion), then by making them discuss the gameplay here, you're just creating fractured discussion for PC gamers anyway.

Anyway, I'll leave it there. Thanks for the opportunity to leave feedback, and I generally welcome the proposed changes.

Myrddin

McSasquatch wrote: »

That's disappointing then.

It's almost expected now that big releases are staggered across the different platforms. PC and Wii owners are usually (though not always) the ones made to wait, so participation in the multi-platform superthreads for huge titles (GTA, Assassins Creed, Dark Souls, Watchdogs et al) brings the risk of huge spoilerage once the games have launched on PS and Xbox. It works the other way too of course, with console versions of - off the top of my head - Diablo 3, Elder Scrolls Online etc. arriving after the PC release. In such cases is it not possible to have a platform specific thread in each platform forum?

If the likes of Nintendo fans have to wait longer for a game, they're going to want to avoid spoilers etc, that I understand. So what is it you're proposing, that they be allowed talk about the game in platform specific forums, purely to avoid spoilers etc? Maybe I'm missing something, but apart from "Two more weeks to go!", "Ten days left!", " Nearly there now!" type posts, what would the discussion of such actually be? There are no current plans to revert back to the stage where full on games can be discussed in the hardware forums, quite simply, the benefits of centralizing everything here in this forum outweigh the negatives.

What about games that are completely exclusive to a particular platform? Does it not make more sense to allow discussion of those in the relevant platform forum?

Not really, this forum here is to discuss games. The platform forums, do have a slight leeway for the good of their respective communities to discuss elements of games, but by & large having a central location for all games discussion is the model being used, & that came in well before I became a Cmod. I think most would agree that it has worked very well.

There are other considerations as well. As you know, modding is an important part of the PC gaming experience. If we're allowed to discuss the modding of a game in the PC forum, and I would assume the discussion of recommended hardware, drivers etc (specific to individual titles rather than general hardware discussion), then by making them discuss the gameplay here, you're just creating fractured discussion for PC gamers anyway.

Given the example you cited, discussion of that mod (and the game) would be ok to run in PC Gaming...there's structure and then there's rigidity...there's a difference between the two and the mods of this forum, and the platform forums, have been excellent at making that distinction to allow or move certain discussions from the platform forums. PC Gaming will be no different, though it will have a fair bit more leeway than the platform forums do. Don't worry, should it go ahead we're very hopefull it'll find it's own groove and be an active forum given time

Anyway, I'll leave it there. Thanks for the opportunity to leave feedback, and I generally welcome the proposed changes.

You're most welcome, and thanks too for your feedback. Everything asked is helpful

Kiith

Games will stay the same, and people will be expected to

tag anything story related. Will still allow for any discussions of games that have staggered releases.

degrassinoel

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

That's me out of a job so issss itttt? :-p

ye're welcome over at zombie survival dude, it's fierce hard work moderating that forum :P

COYVB

Myrddin wrote: »

If the likes of Nintendo fans have to wait longer for a game, they're going to want to avoid spoilers etc, that I understand. So what is it you're proposing, that they be allowed talk about the game in platform specific forums, purely to avoid spoilers etc? Maybe I'm missing something, but apart from "Two more weeks to go!", "Ten days left!", " Nearly there now!" type posts, what would the discussion of such actually be?

I assume he's talking about stuff like Watch Dogs, for example, that could see as much as a 6 month delay before appearing on Wii U. That'd make the Watch Dogs thread in Games a no go area from its release on other consoles right the way through to its release on Wii U

Skerries

degrassinoel wrote: »

ye're welcome over at zombie survival dude, it's fierce hard work moderating that forum :P

I hear you need braaaaains for that forum!?

Myrddin

COYVB wrote: »

I assume he's talking about stuff like Watch Dogs, for example, that could see as much as a 6 month delay before appearing on Wii U. That'd make the Watch Dogs thread in Games a no go area from its release on other consoles right the way through to its release on Wii U

Nothing will have changed in that regard though, it's the way it has worked for ages. I remember avoiding the Link Between Worlds thread on here for ages, as didn't want a single spoiler. If you want to preserve the game for yourself, an exercise in care is always needed online. I'm not sure what the proposal is to alleviate this though, allow a Watchdogs thread in the Nintendo forum? There's no guarantee you won't get someone wandering in there & posting spoilers either, & at the end of the day, with the game not released on that system, what would there be to sustain a thread?

McSasquatch

Myrddin wrote: »

If the likes of Nintendo fans have to wait longer for a game, they're going to want to avoid spoilers etc, that I understand. So what is it you're proposing, that they be allowed talk about the game in platform specific forums, purely to avoid spoilers etc? Maybe I'm missing something, but apart from "Two more weeks to go!", "Ten days left!", " Nearly there now!" type posts, what would the discussion of such actually be? There are no current plans to revert back to the stage where full on games can be discussed in the hardware forums, quite simply, the benefits of centralizing everything here in this forum outweigh the negatives.

There's plenty of discussion regarding a game before it's release - previews, trailers, proposed features, pricing, plot speculation etc etc. Reducing it to mere counting down the days is a little unfair. Everyone can take part in the chat until the game is released on one format. After that the thread is a no-go for those still waiting for the game on their platform of choice. Avoiding a thread or two is fine but staggered releasing affects a hell of a lot of games. However, if people are genuinely

tagging plot details as Kiith says, and actively asked/encouraged to do so, then fair enough.

Myrddin wrote: »

Not really, this forum here is to discuss games. The platform forums, do have a slight leeway for the good of their respective communities to discuss elements of games, but by & large having a central location for all games discussion is the model being used, & that came in well before I became a Cmod. I think most would agree that it has worked very well.

Given the example you cited, discussion of that mod (and the game) would be ok to run in PC Gaming...there's structure and then there's rigidity...there's a difference between the two and the mods of this forum, and the platform forums, have been excellent at making that distinction to allow or move certain discussions from the platform forums. PC Gaming will be no different, though it will have a fair bit more leeway than the platform forums do. Don't worry, should it go ahead we're very hopefull it'll find it's own groove and be an active forum given time

I welcome the leeway - good news indeed! And I know the mods here do a great job by and large, and are fair and even-handed so no worries on that front.

C14N

Not that this is a pressing issue or anything but why don't Poker and Chess fall under the categories of "Tabletop and Board Gaming"?

Myrddin

C14N wrote: »

Not that this is a pressing issue or anything but why don't Poker and Chess fall under the categories of "Tabletop and Board Gaming"?

Good question. The short answer is Chess is where it is now, because those within the Chess community are quite passionate about the game...so much so in that there are strong arguments to consider Chess as a sport. To place Chess within the confines of essentially a board gaming forum, would be a step in the wrong direction. We need to increase exposure to the Chess forum, make it easy to find, easy to see, & hopefully grow it into a more active forum (it's been making decent strides ever since it was moved out of the Strategy forum & into its own slot).

Poker is in limbo, not quite a game, not gambling, and also not a sport...it just doesn't 'fit' in Tabletop & Board Gaming. We have however greatly streamlined the Poker forum, which had a ton of redundant subforums at one point last year, and which is now down to just one subforum.