Does the forums need a rework?

A huge time lurker of the forums since the early days of 2.2 ARR, and I have also contributed quite a bit myself to topics I personally had an interest in. Yet after examining threads in many different parts of the forums, I feel these are dying.

With regards to people being permanently banned for stupid reasons and the people who should be on here aren't, many different avenues have been taken instead. As such while those are flourished with the influx on activity, these forums instead have slowly been dying. Check out many of the sections of Gameplay, such as Housing, PvP, Gold Saucer, even Dungeons. The only active forums I find are this one (General) and Lore, whereas all the others are so dry of input that they're almost like wastelands.

Do you think the Moderators led us down this path with people not being able to return to the forums thus stifling the community? Do you think the forums are antiquated and many features that should be appearant aren't here yet just aren't and it's hard to search for what you look for?

I wouldn't be surprised if forums just died off completely in the next expansion or 2 looking at things now, just deemed unnecessary for Western world.

Also many of the accounts of people that should be on here to give ideas to SE just can't, meaning there's a constant vicious cycle at play, where the ideas people want are slow to come into the game, because all the voices just can't get onto the forums.

What kind of a rework do you think could help bring life back to those wastelands?
Perhaps it's not the forums but SE not expanding on those areas (housing, gold saucer, etc) enough in game?

There is no real problem with the forums in themselves, so absolutely no need for any kind of rework of them.
Some categories are quiet, true. Mostly because either people don't have much to discuss about those subjects, or they just don't see any reason to post there.

If the forums are dying, it is because players in general do not seem to have much interest in classic webforums any more - instead most discussions happen on places like Discord or Reddit despite those being far worse organized for discussions. Don't ask me why this is so, I do not understand it.

The forums have become obsolete.

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Originally Posted by Cyreil

The forums have become obsolete.

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Obsolete in what way? All existing substitutes are inferior in most respects.

I think there are some tremendously useful improvements that could be implemented, yes.

Before any new "features" exactly, there's just the obvious issue that these forums are rather slow compared to any modern well-used game forum. Loading a poster's profile here, for instance, typically takes over 20 seconds. On the Overwatch forum, it takes about 1 second, and that already caches threads created, recent posts, and then begins progressively pre-caching all further posts by that user. Here, loading their threads or the posts would take a further click and further 2-8 seconds' wait.

The other complaints:

1. Tags are painfully insufficient, partly because of tags being limited to 5 and there being virtually no sort of common vocabulary surrounding those tags.
   
2. The Search and even Advanced Search functions are useless in most cases. The system has no idea how to distinguish actual thread subject matter from something mentioned but irrelevant. Each does as described -- finds the most recent time the word "Monk" has been used on the forums, even if that's merely in the profile of someone on the Marriage megathread, or finds the most recently bumped thread with the word "Dancer" in it because you were clearly most interested in "PotD - Corpse Dancer Quest", right? -- but that's hardly sufficient for the tasks we'd want those functions to fill.

Apart from the above (tagging, search, and speed), these are the main directions of improvement I'd like to see:

1. Page connectivity

   There's a huge advantage at present to being at the top of a page, and a huge disadvantage to being at the bottom of one, just by way of which posts are most seen. In that regard, the easiest solution would be to swap to an uncapped vertical format. Atop this though, it can feel pointless to reply later in a busy thread, even when one's comment would still be pertinent, just due to the number of pages that would then separate the two posts. It'd be best to note at the bottom of each post how many replies a post has received and for those to be optionally openable directly below that post (ideally, in summarized form if extending beyond the currently visible page until clicking on the individual responses to expand them).

2. Quoting QoL

   Allow players to click and drag across another posters writing and then "Quote" that section in particular via a pop-up button. Allow any such quoted section to be expanded directly within the responder's post to show (with the quoted portion colored) the full context of the original post at the time of the quote, and to be collapsed back as the reader desires. Moreover, subtly underline the portions of an initial post that have been quoted by others. Perhaps even allow "quotes" to be made via a few different reactions ("Agree", "Disagree", "Confused", "Curious", "To Answer" etc.), and color the subtle underline accordingly. Maybe even optionally make use of a marginal space, where mousing over that subtly underlined area would give a blurb of the reply which quoted it. The underline would be optional; for my own part I'd likely only have it show when mousing over the post or even within a few lines of the underlined portion.

3. Better threading.

   Let players choose as they post, and others influence by review, whether something is pertinent to the thread as a whole or only by way of reply to another. Those less pertinent to the thread as a whole can take on a lower font, be more indented, etc., as according to the reader's set preferences. You can have well-liked posts with many "To Answer" replies, for instance, be made more visible, as they're likely to be house more of the useful guiding questions for a thread.

4. "Summarize" function.

   This one's complicated, but think of it as just using a customizable algorithm to made an entire thread far more quickly digestible. Readers can set their own weights to just about anything.

5. "Recommended" Page (?)

   Based on set forum interests and/or on previous searches and participation, you can have a "Recommended" Page, rather than everyone just using the New Posts function or checking the newest X posts of a (usually innately still too broad to be all that useful) sub-forums.

6. More involved "tagging" and a "cross-threading" support.

   As part of the thread creation process, have the TC select, say, whether they which to ask for advice, whether they wish to share an opinion, want to gather opinions, etc. Thereafter, as they write in the title, tags, and content, the system will check each against existing posts to recommend existing threads that would be more usefully house the content of the would-be new thread. Similarly, show when a given post has been quoted or linked in or from other threads, with handy links to said its place in said threads.

7. Notifications

   Notify people via the forum interface, optionally, when they've been replied to, when they've been liked, a(subscribed) thread they've participated in has been continued, or a new recommended thread has appeared, with further weights in each (e.g. only tell me if these people have done so).

8. Greylisting and Blacklisting

   Conversely, allow people to de-weight or generally remove certain posters, or those with certain types of reports made against them, from their forum experience.

9. Goldlisting (?)

   Opposite to the above, weight these specific individuals higher. This might also carry over in some way to default or general weights, effectively pushing forward de facto community leaders.

10. Dark Mode

    I like not being blinded by the forum's colors late at night.

I second the grey/blacklisting. Gold listing is a bad idea as is reccomended. I want to browse at my choice, not have my screen taken by stuff that isn't relevant, and raising in theory is good, it can also lead to them and their followers drowning others out.

I think we need to see moderators here more and actual community responders or hell just someone from the devs to appear once in a while thats not in the tech support thread

Category revamp. There's some oft talked areas like glams etc but nowhere to stick them.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

Gold listing is a bad idea as is reccomended. I want to browse at my choice, not have my screen taken by stuff that isn't relevant, and raising in theory is good, it can also lead to them and their followers drowning others out..

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True, true. To be clear, the two points with "(?)" I'm not sold on in their current iterations, though I do think there's something in that vein that'd be beneficial.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

Category revamp. There's some oft talked areas like glams etc but nowhere to stick them.

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Shoot, 10 points of stuff and I forgot to mention the more immediate potential fixes. I'll second that.

If it's the same as the business I work for, forums are just becoming antiquated. There's way more engagement on other platforms that can be more easily quantified and allow for a more personalized reply. Just look at how many of the posts outside of the 'Lore' sections are just the same thing said over and over. It becomes a bunch of white noise and it's the same way on pretty much any game forum you go to.

That said, I think they could consolidate some of the sections here and give some space for evergreen topics like glamour. like MistakeNot said, people are going to spend less time on them when there's more convenient ways of engaging with the community like Discord or Twitter.

Shocked the devs have never tried AMAs on reddit before just getting a translator to help, maybe someday

Some of the forum sections are just bleh. I've seen people go to housing thread and make a suggestion to get shouted down by the same 2-3 people then it devolves time after time into some kind of mud slinging competition and derails off into how much dirt someone can toss on someone from other threads. Basically stuff that needs to be nipped in the ass cheeks severely and swiftly deleted out of the thread to keep the conversations on track. As a slightly newer poster to the forums I lurked for awhile before signing up to use them. I also had problems just getting my forum account going, as every time I tried to log in it said I had insufficient permissions to basically log in. One day out of the blue I tried again and was able to finally log in. Might be why the forums seem devoid of new posters is they are having trouble getting signed up to use them in the first place.

Someone actually seemed to imply that I wanted a pvp suggestion I made to sound like turning the whole game into a gank fest which is what I expressly did not want, and explained how to go about keeping entirely separate instances of an area that pvp is possible in as opposed to just making the whole game a no holds barred pvp gankfest like they seem to think I suggested. So people bring their own incapability of reading to many threads as well. I can't blame moderators for feeling their time is wasted on NA forum. The toxicity and general lack of etiquette of any reasonable kind is very in yo face here in almost all areas of the forum for all to see. And if one account is actioned against, it's a quick contest to fill the void with the next abrasive person it seems. Who can be the next class clown, who can be the next mr. unpopular opinion guy, etc. Can you honestly blame them for giving up on the wasteland? I can't. Do they have an obligation to police their own forum a bit better? Sure. But it's their company, they gonna run this the way they want to regardless of what we feel they are obligated to do. What is our recourse? Call mom and dad and complain about it? Get on reddit or "the twitter" and call for boycotts of s.e. because someone's feelings got hurt? Go ahead. Send a letter to the BBB? Or just do like me and chuckle and try not to let what some one that probably hasn't brushed their teeth in 5 or more days bother you and just enjoy the game.

I would like to see 1) more moderating. We have a local troll that, quite honestly, should've been dealt with quite a while ago. 2) more onboarding/acknowledgement from the devs of forum feedback.

The second point would appease a lot of people in the forums, healers especially. And would also bring more people to the forums.
Sadly the devs acknowledge reddit more than they do their own official forums. It's immensely frustrating.

I second more moderation. People don't seem to be reading forum guidelines these days.

I’d love to see the community managers participate more in the forums. When I was in WOW, seldom did a day pass that a Blue post was not made somewhere.

As it stands now, the NA forums have devolved into “The Complaint Department” and the only official posts you see are broadcasts that go out to everybody.

It really feels like we have been abandoned here. :(

I'm still questioning on the people banned from forums if it led to this case. Hate to use a meme but #BringSelliBack2020, important people on this platform that need to use but can't, thus also limiting the spectrum of conversation of which can take place, resulting in a lot of the same stuff repeated.

I'm also not saying what the forums need to be reworked to, but does it need a rework? FFXIV are infamous and it has a really bad reputation in the community especially with lack of engagement/ terrible moderation as well, would a calamity-esque nuke to the forums be an ample solution at this point?

The forums seem really old. Not how they look, but the way they work. I don't really have a good comparison, but many years ago I was active in some forums and they usually were faster, had more options, and so on. This site just seems so ancient.

I like about forums like these how it has multiple discussion topics that don't become outdated after 1-2 days (like it's on reddit where you usually don't see FFXIV topics from a few days ago or so), so that you can discuss one topic over a long time span. It's more than just a chat where you just talk about some very recent stuff. It stays for longer. So I don't think they are obsolete. They just nneed a slight improvement.

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Originally Posted by Kiurai

Shocked the devs have never tried AMAs on reddit before just getting a translator to help, maybe someday

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I'm not shocked in the slightest, honestly. While an AMA can be a good way to gain some interest in a project or topic it's also an amazing to shoot yourself in the foot. And you can't just have a translator, you're going to need someone who can bridge the gap between the host's culture and both the general English speaking culture and Reddit culture to avoid any gaffes.

It's easier and safer PR wise to keep with the Letter from the Producer format instead of a general AMA. It's a more controlled environment.

If you want those other areas to be more populated then just remove the General Discussion forum (/turn GD into off topic, anything that isn't feedback for the game but relates to the game itself, or heck any FF game lol- and make a sticky note that it will be generally overlooked in the curation of feedback). Add a few more descriptions to some of the other forums so the entire or near entire breadth of the game has a place for each section.

Sometimes I could have posted in those other areas but they're so quiet, and sometimes more bogarted, that I just feel General Discussion is the best place for the most open / quantitative discussion. Sometimes the conservative and focused nature of the sub-forums can produce better results, especially if you were looking into lore perhaps, but that approach can also be chains to the future and more creative discussions as I've seen on a few occasions (as the conservative and focused nature produces better grasp of the now, but a limited scope in return for the future- stereotypically speaking not everyone is the same of course lol).

Something I think would be interesting is with things the team thinks were successful and influenced by the forums just creating a small showcase of how feedback is taken into consideration and those successful examples. You could show the 'bad' ones but then you might be encouraging people to find those forum posters lol. "Timmy suggested we do that, the team thinks it bad, I knew it, everyone knows it, the game would be better without him, he is a huge dodo".

Of course more CM interactions would be nice but I'm aware that's stressful and not always feels productive lol. So that's just like "yes please come and try the poison, it tastes horrible but drink it anyways thanks" ;3.. Not noting just for the individual but potentially for the company as well. "We're looking into that" == you promised me by the third Tuesday of the 4th month that this would be done!

Certainly might be an internal confirmation bias but people who say the forum moderation is inconsistent or harsh, I sometimes wonder.... since I've probably one of the highest post counts, am not always in agreement with people, and am not posting in fear of punishment. I've reported very few people and of those I've seen something done each time. It's hard for me to agree that rules are not consistent or are hard to understand as at at least to me it seems pretty easy / straight forward. Like I remember someone told me to gdiaf and they /hope/ a door hits me in the rear. Wishing someone physical harm I thought worth a report, even though they were part of a fairly big media group for the game yet moderation still removed that person.

Technically I half wonder if one of our medals relates to reporting because not too long ago I got my fifth medal shortly around what I'm going to guess was my 10th report. . . .(mentally counted them, fairly certain it's 10 or under). All pretty obvious things, telling / hoping people have physical real life harm, someone who looked like they might inflict self harm (seemed like a joke thread in the beginning but it quickly got dark so I reported myself and said I think this thread is going south in a very bad way), one post that just had a "flower you" but they didn't say flower lol. If anyone is wondering now "omg has he reported me!?" if I've responded to you then no, I never respond to someone I've reported (another thing I see sometimes "they said something diabolically horrible and so I'm going to quote it and spread it around even more" lol- don't). Not liking my idea or being a bit rude is not report worthy, launching into a tirade of hyper-aggressive inflammatory pejorative personal character attacks (rather than the discussion itself) well that'd be different (and of course like I said I'm pretty sure I'm at or around 10 now).

Personally believe there should be forgiveness opportunities, assuming you didn't dox* someone in real life or something extreme as people have bad moments and perhaps need to be reminded to be 'in check', but sometimes I've a hard time believing when someone says they got banned for no reason. Like at this point I believe you're not telling me the whole story so it looks like 'no reason' but there totally was one. Often I see people excuse their poor behavior because of someone else, "they looked at me (or SE) aggressively so I punched them in the throat- it's fair, I don't understand these rules!!!". Like the common thing on the internet where you make your opponent the monster so all the harm you do back is 'justified' or not an issue. * (with information not made available by the person posting, like if you link your youtube channel to your account I'm not going to think that really counted lol.. I'm talking more like personal phone numbers, address, real name, things you didn't put out there for the intent of being known for and especially in context of 'having something done' with that info)

"I don't like what you're posting so I'm going to derail your thread". Two wrongs don't make a right. And generally it appears it's one annoying wrong is responded to with a more aggressive and particular 'to that person' wrong. Like I said "they looked at me rudely", and maybe they did, but that doesn't mean you get +1 them and be like "burn them in the grave".

To me it appears the moderation team wants very open discussion without targeting the personal person and in part use each person's perspective as a variable in determination of that "targeting" (which is why you might sometimes see someone confused "I called 5 people a simple name and nothing, but then the 6th time something?! so inconsistent!). Simply if you just didn't call people the pejorative you'd probably have been fine, because you used it 5 other times wasn't a badge of honor as much as it was it seems the conversation wasn't damaged at it's use for whatever reason as no one reported it. It seems discussion/feedback is of one of the higher priorities, even if it can be a bit difficult, like the GMs for the most part allowed us to talk about gay rights and marriage way back when Yoshida was determining what to do with the marriage system. So if you're trying to silence someone you're going to have a harder time if they've not directly broken the rules, which I think while sometimes can be 'annoying' is a good thing. Personally think formats like reddit are terrible places for diverse discussion and only work well of like minded people (good for somethings, bad for other things).

Here, if you don't like a conversation to the point you need to 'shut it down' then the best choice is not to participate.

tl;dr- seems a bit like mentor discussions sometimes where a few bad moments or people paint the entire community, maybe here and there we could tweak some things but I've a hard time thinking it's really 'that bad' and generally think "it's one of the better places to be if you want to discuss diversely and have feedback considered.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

Sadly the devs acknowledge reddit more than they do their own official forums. It's immensely frustrating.

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Curious what you mean by this. I know Reddit gets to interview the dev sometimes, but in essence so do we (and more of our questions are answered than reddit's). It would be weird to have our own CM create questions and then interview them, would feel like a a PR stunt lol. So in so much that it makes sense our community gets more attention than reddit's I believe. Could always nominate an interviewer or entirely free form question interview with the forums (most upvoted questions get asked), but if it's free form I think you'll get a lot of thicc bum questions and if it's a specific person then how in the world are you going to decide who without making someone annoyed lol.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Curious what you mean by this. I know Reddit gets to interview the dev sometimes, but in essence so do we (and more of our questions are answered than reddit's). It would be weird to have our own CM create questions and then interview them, would feel like a a PR stunt lol. So in so much that it makes sense our community gets more attention than reddit's I believe. Could always nominate an interviewer or entirely free form question interview with the forums (most upvoted questions get asked), but if it's free form I think you'll get a lot of thicc bum questions and if it's a specific person then how in the world are you going to decide who without making someone annoyed lol.

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There's frequent mention of Reddit in the liveletters, the feedback there, posts, etc.. We seldom hear about the official forums. Some forums have been making amazing feedback threads that cover a lot of ground when it comes to what people would like to see within some features. Some, decently easy fixes. Sadly, over the years, when those features do get changes they aren't only out of line with what had been posted/desired, but the complete opposite at times. Which really imprints the feeling of not being heard.

It's a bit of a running joke that you come to the forums to vent, not to be heard by the devs. Especially if you hang out in the healer forums and have been getting SE's cold shoulder for the past 4 years.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

There's frequent mention of Reddit in the liveletters, the feedback there, posts, etc.. We seldom hear about the official forums. Some forums have been making amazing feedback threads that cover a lot of ground when it comes to what people would like to see within some features. Some, decently easy fixes. Sadly, over the years, when those features do get changes they aren't only out of line with what had been posted/desired, but the complete opposite at times. Which really imprints the feeling of not being heard.

It's a bit of a running joke that you come to the forums to vent, not to be heard by the devs. Especially if you hang out in the healer forums and have been getting SE's cold shoulder for the past 4 years.

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I hear your feeling on it but I don't think it has to mean they functionally acknowledge reddit more when making decisions, at least in comparison to the forums. Functionally being more than literally just saying the word, like how most often questions are made by our community and sometimes reddit gets some. As for hearing but not doing thing of course, if they hear you doesn't mean they have to do it lol. During the 2.0 beta era they had announced what they will do to blue mage (well shower thought about it), and I was like please god no. Guess what happened lol. Please god no happened XD. Hated it then and still hate it now :p (hate being that first world spoiled child hate, more like dislike but dislike doesn't offer me enough satisfaction to say how truly annoyed I am by the design of it haha).

If what they said long ago is true still they spend a lot of time gathering feedback from all the forums and reading them / giving them to the proper departments. This was said in a question I asked actually lol. Way way back when. Just because they don't high-five people doesn't mean they're not doing it, but I can see how the silence feels like they're not even listening. I mean not too long ago they had to hire another CM with translation skills, if they didn't care they'd have just our Titan holding it all up lol but they gave titan a team :p.

Perhaps something they might consider trying is a bit like what they do with bots and RMT reports ("x actions taken, x banned"). Perhaps posted by one of the CMs, is like "this month we translated X threads/posts/words" whatever metric coveys action but also makes them comfortable to share. Assuming they already organize their information on what they've translated / not, it might not be too annoying to put that info together. May also give Yoshida feedback to mention their community occasionally to bring that vibe. I imagine he says reddit as any other feedback would probably be assumed to be coming from us so there is no reason to have to say it's from us as that would be obvious (us being all the forums).

It is technically possible they don't listen at all and just listen to reddit but I find the evidence lacking in that they've not done what some healers want in the forums, or that a few times in a live stream they said the word "reddit". Such that it doesn't mean they are ignoring their own forums and especially in the context that they have said in the past that they spend a lot of time dealing with their forum feedback.

And counter to that I could list a few suggestions that feel awkwardly on the nose to be coincidence- in terms of things suggested / desired for that have then showed up in game later (that or I'm Nostradamus with too many posts and have guessed quite a few features at this point). Part of the issue in general, beyond some of the silence, is that these things take time, especially since you have to imagine they've a plan already laid out, so it's not like they're thinking "what to add in tomorrow's patch guys? seriously we have to put something out" lol. They already have a bunch of stuff they're going to do, so many ideas and desires will be put on the back burner and put into the queue.

So not knocking your feeling of silence and not being listened to, just saying that doesn't mean that you must actually be ignored or that by mentioning a particular website that they've bias against their own community.

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

As it stands now, the NA forums have devolved into “The Complaint Department” and the only official posts you see are broadcasts that go out to everybody.

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Bit pedantic, but these are the english language forums not the NA forums. There are forums for all the supported languages.

More dev communication would be nice. It doesn't need to be full back and forth, but at least some level of communication from the top down.

And, it shouldn't even need to be said, certain users getting a perma-ban so they don't keep showing up under different names.

As others have said, though, a lot of the issues are sort of built around the fact that forums themselves are becoming extinct. I doubt we'll see the forums get any real work when other forum adjacent information delivery systems are just preferred.

There can and should be some rework in terms of how the forum works.

But, I will say this much: I like the forum as a traditional forum with loading being static and every post is seen (unless you block a user). I don't want Reddit style where people can make other people's posts be hidden or where the website itself chooses to hide posts and you have to "dig in" to see every posts.

Also, back to forum, what I do not want to see is what Blizzard has chosen to do with the WoW forum. Please, please, please do not go in that direction (at least, not all the way*).

I like having clear distinctions between threads with new posts and threads without new posts and having to reload the page to refresh.
I like not having to deal with trust system to be able to post image.
I like not being notified constantly with new posts/replies and being able to choose when I want to see new posts.

* A couple of things I do like about the WoW forum:
Being able to quote right from someone's post and seeing a live preview of your post.
In terms of notification, I think it'd be a good thing to receive a notification if someone edits their post to add a quotation from you. With the current forum, unless I'm mistaken, I think that won't register as a new post, so the edit might be missed.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

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It's not a matter of what they functionally acknowledge. It's about the resounding lack of communication in regards to forum feedback. And I'm not talking about how a few players would say something and SE would do otherwise. I'm talking about an entire subsection of the forums asking for a slight change of gameplay for over 4 years and then getting slapped with a pretty big modification in the opposite direction. Or the constant addition of new features that are then left to collect dust as unfinished products. Regardless of whether the community has been voicing their desire for improvements. Instead we get more new shiny, unfinished features.

Is there perhaps some logic behind their decisions? Do our expectations not meet some criteria? Maybe, but How would we know when SE never address us. It's even more frustrating from the fact that SE hasn't traditionally been bad at communicating with it's player base.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

It's not a matter of what they functionally acknowledge. It's about the resounding lack of communication in regards to forum feedback. And I'm not talking about how a few players would say something and SE would do otherwise. I'm talking about an entire subsection of the forums asking for a slight change of gameplay for over 4 years and then getting slapped with a pretty big modification in the opposite direction. Or the constant addition of new features that are then left to collect dust as unfinished products. Regardless of whether the community has been voicing their desire for improvements. Instead we get more new shiny, unfinished features.

Is there perhaps some logic behind their decisions? Do our expectations not meet some criteria? Maybe, but How would we know when SE never address us. It's even more frustrating from the fact that SE hasn't traditionally been bad at communicating with it's player base.

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I can definitely hear your feeling, mostly I was responding to the part of reddit and it being evidence they're unaware or have a bias against us. That feeling that they're in the shadows, perhaps listening to some other person you've never heard speak before, such like that- sure okay lol. Of course they've multiple forums so the shadows can easily just be someone speaking in another language within the very same community :p.

Just wanted to say putting a website's name in a few live letters doesn't mean they're no longer listening to their forum or even other websites, I mean I remember reading a decent amount of "oh noe" on reddit as well about the healer combat simplifications.

Not a disagreement on anything other than that I think there is evidence they have listened to us before, here, and that they don't have a particular bias "well if blue gartr says it then we have to do it!" lol. Even exampled my own, as part of like three other blue mage fans at the time years and years ago, that heard they wanted to turn blue mage into a side content and not make it a real job because they didn't think they could (early beta 2.0 era) and three of us going "what.. seriously, no- you can make it a real job". Clearly they wanted to do what they did anyways. Still think it was a mistake and that if it was the style of content they could have done better with magitek mechs like a xenogear sort of content, and if it was just the role play of being blue then they could have done that and still have kept it 'normal' as well on an aside note they can and (I hope should/will) improve the role play of other jobs too.

So yeh no yeh? :D lol

I feel they have listened (on occasion at least), I've seen too many examples that not one of them was at least feedback listened to and implemented (some could have just been chance/circumstance), but I do agree they're very quiet and don't really interact too much beyond their streams (they do have community streams lol). I've thought about joining those but they tend to be during times that don't work for me, which isn't their fault since my schedule is so random. All of that is to say why I, at least in this thread, I tried to suggest some mild ways they might improve that without going from 0 communication to penpals (seeing as an extreme change might be unlikely and awkward for everyone to 'want' to try). I imagine they were burned pretty hard, or perhaps just burned out, and it seems like they respond less on all the forums in comparison to long ago (at least when I randomly check the Japanese forum it seems to be less there too, it used to be very frequent).

I just realized how hard it can be to post an image on mobile.
That's something I'd hope could be adjusted.

No amount of rework will save any kind of forum. The biggest virtue of the internet is freedom of speech, accessibility, anonymity. This means anyone can put a statement, regardless of the quality and viability of said statement, and said statement will find some traction regardless.
You cant do anything about that without destroying the internet in the process. The solution this forum has is to censor words by banning people, do you think this has done anything to alleviate situations where individuals reach the breaking point? No it hasnt.

To put a direct comparison to the salt mines game. Do you think a guy in League who keeps swearing, blames others for his mistakes is any different than a guy in here who goes dont tell me how to play regardless of the pleas of 3 or 7 other people?
Both just dont give an ounce of deep frying shit about their team. All that the strict ToS has done is give them a leeway to scream harassment whenever they want to whoever they want.
In Fact im gonna go ahead and say this community is more prejudged towards mentors and raiders than League of legends is racist to each other.

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Originally Posted by HeulGDarian

No amount of rework will save any kind of forum. The biggest virtue of the internet is freedom of speech, accessibility, anonymity. This means anyone can put a statement, regardless of the quality and viability of said statement, and said statement will find some traction regardless.
You cant do anything about that without destroying the internet in the process. The solution this forum has is to censor words by banning people, do you think this has done anything to alleviate situations where individuals reach the breaking point? No it hasnt.

To put a direct comparison to the salt mines game. Do you think a guy in League who keeps swearing, blames others for his mistakes is any different than a guy in here who goes dont tell me how to play regardless of the pleas of 3 or 7 other people?
Both just dont give an ounce of deep frying shit about their team. All that the strict ToS has done is give them a leeway to scream harassment whenever they want to whoever they want.
In Fact im gonna go ahead and say this community is more prejudged towards mentors and raiders than League of legends is racist to each other.

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Previously back in the early days of the forums, the mods would just perma ban any person that is deemed to break ToS even if the smallest infracture, or worse, get banned for quoting someone else who did break and while they are banned, the original perpetrator gets off free.

None of those accounts have been repealed and yes while there is still toxic individuals in this platform. The constant cycle of those bans though affected innocent people and thus by taking the people who can bring more different topics, those very same topics get repeated instead without much discourse, thus making the pool really shallow but seem more active.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...fficial-Forums

It's sad to see those forums die and more and more people give up on them and go to General just because it has the most people in it.

Even Dungeons just seems to have went under as well, despite being the main content of this game as well.

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Originally Posted by GenericMagus

A huge time lurker of the forums since the early days of 2.2 ARR, and I have also contributed quite a bit myself to topics I personally had an interest in. Yet after examining threads in many different parts of the forums, I feel these are dying.

With regards to people being permanently banned for stupid reasons and the people who should be on here aren't, many different avenues have been taken instead. As such while those are flourished with the influx on activity, these forums instead have slowly been dying. Check out many of the sections of Gameplay, such as Housing, PvP, Gold Saucer, even Dungeons. The only active forums I find are this one (General) and Lore, whereas all the others are so dry of input that they're almost like wastelands.

Do you think the Moderators led us down this path with people not being able to return to the forums thus stifling the community? Do you think the forums are antiquated and many features that should be appearant aren't here yet just aren't and it's hard to search for what you look for?

I wouldn't be surprised if forums just died off completely in the next expansion or 2 looking at things now, just deemed unnecessary for Western world.

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Character limit is annoying. It's been so many years and yet they continue to have one.