Current forum activity

[Fieros]

Our forums have improved tremendously since the beginning last March; however, there still remains a problem. With 62 English sub-forums the conversations are well-organized, yet many remain undiscovered until hours or days after they are posted.

If you were to create a thread about Items, I want to know about it as it happens- even though I'm currently browsing the General Discussion area. That would require me constantly refreshing each individual sub-forum that interests me. Since that's annoying, I probably won't see your post until tomorrow or whenever I happen to check the Items sub-forum.

What results is a conversation that slowly, or never, takes place- which might have otherwise occured, had I only known about your post. This ineffieciency results in less feedback for SquareEnix and under-usage of the forums. What we need is a "Current Forum Activity" tab occupying the empty space on the right border that refreshes every 10 seconds showing the most recent posts as they occur. Also, a filter/checklist would be good so that we see posts of only the desired sub-forums.

Example:

"Current Forum Activity" tab updated every 10 seconds with most recent posts (not to be confused with "Hot Topics" on Forum Top)

Working example from another site here

[Sav]

I only browse via New Posts, so meh. Sounds pretty Facebook-ish, I suppose.

[Fieros]

I only browse via New Posts

Instead of having to go back and forth refreshing the "New Posts" that information could be automatically updated with additional details. The current forums are great, I just saw the potential for even more improvement.

[Jynx]

Most discussion happens in the "General discussion" forum either way, the area gets the most dev traction and therefore gets the most posts.

(Wether they are "General discussion" or not)

No one wants to post their idea for a new battle system in the Battle System forums because it has far less chances of being:

-Read
-Dev response

Personally I like it this way, I hate having to browse through 8 different forums to find discussion on a variaty of topics, and we are not active enough to require splitting the forums up so much. Unless a new patch comes out or someone is on a account suicide run most posts can stay on the front page for a fairly long time, get good views, posts, likes, and feedback.

When the game relaunches and if the community picks up by leaps and bounds then the sub-forums will have a bit more use as the overflow of topics in GD wont be able to keep up. But as it stands the sub-forums serve as nothing more than a un-used overflow for when General discussion gets out of hand in the future.

[DeadRiser]

I'd love for something like that. But ignores everything in general discussion. Everything else basically gets ignored

[Dreamer]

I honestly wish the devs would start avoiding General and posting in the other forums simply to encourage posters to spread out and post in the appropriate forums instead of throwing everything into just that one forum.