Please upgrade your forums.

I can't be the only one that is annoyed by this. Not only does the layout look like something that belongs in the late 90s, but the sheer fact that there is such a small character limit with the only way to bypass it by having to edit every post you make is a little bit ridiculous in this day and age.


This makes anyone that wants to post guides here or give any meaningful feedback completely turned off. Don't even get me started about the lack of a edit option on mobile....seriously?

I really hope something is in the works, because it's in dire need of a upgrade, especially if you compare it to other mmo forums.

also when uploading images, if they are just a bit large they get resized so much, leaving a portion of the posts Windows empty. allowing a bigger space for pics would be great, on top of better layout overall

I'd also kill for a proper spoiler tag...

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Originally Posted by Selova

There is such a small character limit with the only way to bypass it by having to edit every post you make is a little bit ridiculous in this day and age.

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Originally Posted by SoleilAlphi

also when uploading images, if they are just a bit large they get resized so much, leaving a portion of the posts Windows empty. allowing a bigger space for pics would be great, on top of better layout overall

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Originally Posted by Enla

I'd also kill for a proper spoiler tag...

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All of this. Not many people know that spoiler is HB /HB. I mean, the layout doesn't bother me so much, I like it simple. The char limit is crazy though. You can view the site in website mode to edit on mobile, but you shouldn't need to do that imo. Just like we shouldn't need to edit posts to get past a char limit.

I'd definitely like to see an upgrade. It'd be pretty neat, too, if we could display our achievement points next to our avatar or something. :p

Also the launcher's layout now that we're at it. I feel like playing in 1995 when I open it.

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Originally Posted by Selova

I can't be the only one that is annoyed by this. Not only does the layout look like something that belongs in the late 90s, but the sheer fact that there is such a small character limit with the only way to bypass it by having to edit every post you make is a little bit ridiculous in this day and age.

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Well, the layout style of the forum is not SE's fault as the forum software is not their own software - the FFXIV forum uses VBulletin which is proprietary forum software (probably the widest used forum software on the net really) so they're limited by what the software allows. Also the forum's brown colour scheme is a legacy of the original Lodestone for the now shutdown 1.0 version of FFXIV which had an interface in a more old fashioned style, so the forum's colour scheme was styled to fit that accordingly.

As for the posting restrictions blame the zealous testers on the Beta forum for that, they spammed the Beta forum to hell and back, so SE introduced posting restrictions there, and probably was spooked so much about it that they introduced similar restrictions for posting here on the main forum when ARR launched as well, so as to prevent that happening again. So once again, 'this is why we can't have nice things.'

Really it should taken them all of a minute if not less to change the character limit. They won't comment on it or fix it though. I don't know or care about what happened during beta, this board is now for paying customers and they need to readjust.

I really wish they would remove the character limit in posts. I'd prefer the daily post limit removed as well, but if they won't remove it, at least implement a count so we can see how many we have remaining per every 24 hours. It's annoying to type out a well-thought out post and then be told after you get ready to post it "You have reached your daily post limit".

I've never really posted on any forum that has a 1,000 character limit per post that you have to edit to bypass. I may not be the most active forum poster so maybe my experience is irrelevant but still. Arbitrary limits are arbitrary, and I find there to be very little excuse for 2017-2018 software that should be updated relatively often to have such limits.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

As for the posting restrictions blame the zealous testers on the Beta forum for that, they spammed the Beta forum to hell and back, so SE introduced posting restrictions there, and probably was spooked so much about it that they introduced similar restrictions for posting here on the main forum when ARR launched as well, so as to prevent that happening again. So once again, 'this is why we can't have nice things.'

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The beta was over four years ago. I have moderated forums with a large member base and they didn't have such an arbitrary restriction. It doesn't even work as a spam filter since everyone knows the workaround. Why they actually keep it is to filter spam, not that it works for that either. At this point, there simply isn't a good reason.

And don't even get me started on the mobile version. I mainly read the forums on my phone and the amount of stuff you can only do in a very annoying, roundabout way, or even not at all, is crazy.

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Originally Posted by Lilseph

Also the launcher's layout now that we're at it. I feel like playing in 1995 when I open it.

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Hey, they've made huge strides on their launcher!...

https://i.imgur.com/s7i8O1F.jpg

...*shudders*

SE used to lead the pack in innovation back in the day. Now in so many ways, in and out of games, they are playing catch up and still cannot do things that other games and companies have been doing for a decade. It's kindda sad tbh.

I really think it changed, like it does in so many industries, when the business people overtook the people who genuinely loved gaming. Now it feels like its about just profit instead of design, games and everything that goes along with it. As a designer I can say, very few companies care about innovative or good design. They want max profits (for max bonuses) and want to appeal to the most people, so they keep it as simple and lackluster as possible. Which usually does not result in anything too great.

Do it cheap, do it easy, do it fast.

While we're asking for improvements, you need to be able to click on the "Community Moderator" symbol on some forum threads to go directly to the CM post. It's ridiculous to have to scroll through pages and pages of a forum thread just to see what the "official" response to it is.

ETA: I would have thought that SE would have in-house programmers for the forum and websites, but they're using vBulletin, which is run on PHP and uses a MySQL database. Just about anyone who has ever tinkered around with that sort of thing could figure out how to tweak these forums to add much-needed functionality. That's the whole point of vBulletin--to be infinitely customizable to suit any company's purpose and needs. The fact that so little customization seems to have been done speaks volumes.

It'd be nice if they turned on pms too. At the very least for mods to use so they can issue warnings privately versus just banning people outright over a minor issue like using a swear word which can permanently lock players out of community events, bug reports, and leaving feedback for gms. I know the forum system se uses here have that functionality built-in they just have it disabled.

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Originally Posted by Velisra

While we're asking for improvements, you need to be able to click on the "Community Moderator" symbol on some forum threads to go directly to the CM post. It's ridiculous to have to scroll through pages and pages of a forum thread just to see what the "official" response to it is.

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Isn't that already doable by clicking on the post on the dev tracker in the main page?

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Originally Posted by Squintina

Isn't that already doable by clicking on the post on the dev tracker in the main page?

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Sure, but what if it's an older post? If you don't look at that tracker frequently, and you see a thread in the forum that you'd like to see the CM response for, it's not going to be easy to find it via the tracker. It would be easy to find if you could click on the icon next to the thread title to go directly to the CM post. More ways to find information quickly isn't a bad thing.

It would also be handy if they added a bit more to the mobile version. I have a laptop but picking up my phone to look through the forums or where to find an item while simultaneously heading to it in the game is faster than stopping what I'm doing on the game and switching over to the browser. Maybe just let me edit my posts on mobile at least...

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

The beta was over four years ago. I have moderated forums with a large member base and they didn't have such an arbitrary restriction. It doesn't even work as a spam filter since everyone knows the workaround. Why they actually keep it is to filter spam, not that it works for that either. At this point, there simply isn't a good reason.

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Similarly, one would think then that the daily post limit would be sufficient. I mean, what kind of spam would require a larger character count over a larger post count?

Threw my hat into this earlier today with a necro. Throwing it in here. The state of the forums is abysmal--from it's arbitrary restrictions to its mobile features. If I accidentally hit the "Full Site" at the bottom instead of "Request Full Website" in my phone's options, I've yet to find a recourse to get back to the mobile version other than logging out and back in.

That's now 2 of my 20 posts for today for this cause.

In order to get back to the mobile site, you have to relog on the forums.............

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Originally Posted by 347SPECTRE

In order to get back to the mobile site, you have to relog on the forums.............

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I know.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

I've yet to find a recourse to get back to the mobile version other than logging out and back in.

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Unless you're saying there is absolutely no other recourse, in which case...that's dumb and another thing that needs fixing.