Hello, Antarans. In light of Discord essentially replacing the forum for most uses, I think the forum itself could be streamlined to bring it back to... actual usefulness. I don't want to just structure the forum how I personally would like it, I want to make it as easy-to-use and accessible as possible. There's a lot of good content buried on this forum, and plenty of more content to be had. If you have any ideas, please post below. Regards, Kazyyk
Maybe icons with pictures of each race to click for lore somewhere? Lore is a little bit weird to get to. Other than that just maybe an ooc forum that says "this week on Antares!" And we can all chat in a new thread each week about what happened. People will get to catch up on roleplay they didn't see, too.
I have not been very active her for a while, but a big problem that caused me to leave is a lack of a central plotline. There hardly is any staff to help guide a plotline, and I believe that there are other problems, but the main root of a lot of problems here is a lack of staff. As for the forum, I hardly need to use it. I do use it time to time, but mostly for application purposes.
Honestly, after thinking about it, OOC chat is the only thing outclassed by discord. The New player, Lore, Administrative, IC, and Subforums are pretty useful. I feel like Factions/Settlements (from the Subforums) could go into lore because it, essentially, already is official lore; the only difference being that it is made by the players. IC forums are a little weird. It has a use but hardly anybody uses it. I believe the news is fine, however, I think General Discussion has been replaced by Starnet_IM. I think it would be beneficial if Market and Trade became Market, trade, And Hiring. It feels strange looking for jobs in the Subfourms under settlements. I believe it would make it easier and more efficient for players to find jobs if all the job requests were moved to a more general and popular location in the forums. Somebody brought up a plot line, but that's another topic entirely. However, if we were to put one in I believe the news should have a section covering noteworthy plot line events.
Yeah, it's widely accepted that the forum sees little use, so I feel it'd be best to crunch down what isn't relevant anymore. Like Username was saying, there's plenty of subforums that are real quiet. They could just be removed or nested into another node so things aren't so spread out. Oh, and remove badges. They're pointless and really do nothing but take up a hotbar slot that might be better suited for something else. Finally make that apply button big and obvious, and possibly make the whitelist easier. But ya already know that.
Everything on the forums seems perfectly serviceable to me, not much to really change. The most useful part of the forum is it's permanency, so whenever you need to make something to refer back to (colony information, lore, guides, etc) this is definitely the best format. I don't think the forums can be any more or less than they are now, at least not without a concerted community effort. I'd be fine if nothing changed, or at the very least nothing removed. I accept that my opinion doesn't really add much, but I figured it was worth voicing that I was fine with the status quo.
load times are a bit long, if i want to quickly naviage the forums, i have to mentally make sure i am taking the shortest route, every time I need to look something up or want to link a thread to someone... that's my main issue witht the forums.
