The Games Category: Discuss

Ponster

thelordofcheese wrote: »

or having a Subforum for all the various premiership football teams and then popular players.

The Roy Keane forum has been mentioned several times I believe



I've always seen the Games forum like Sports which only gets about 4 new threads per month.

super_furry

Sabre0001 wrote: »

Pruning back is fine but I wouldn't agree with lumping everything in together - that is why original splits occured and why people ask for new forums.

As I remember it though, many people we against the splits are they went ahead against the wishes of the forums users.

Kurtosis

Ponster wrote: »

I've always seen the Games forum like Sports which only gets about 4 new threads per month.

It actually took me a good year to find the Games forum itself, I just kept overlooking it with Game Awards, Editing and Reviews forums surrounding it!

Pruning back is going to make the Games forum more accessible and easier to find, and so should bring more discussion to it. That seems to be the main aim of the proposed reshuffle so why not just give that a try first?

Ponster

super_furry wrote: »

As I remember it though, many people we against the splits are they went ahead against the wishes of the forums users.

Unless you can link to examples where admins split forums against the wishes of the members I'm going to call shenanigans on this one.

thelordofcheese

Ponster wrote: »

The Roy Keane forum has been mentioned several times I believe

if ever there was proof that some people shouldn't get what they ask for, this is it.

Ponster wrote: »

I've always seen the Games forum like Sports which only gets about 4 new threads per month.

It should be more like the film forum, IMNSHO.

Ponster

penguin88 wrote: »

Pruning back is going to make the Games forum more accessible and easier to find, and so should bring more discussion to it. That seems to be the main aim of the proposed reshuffle so why not just give that a try first?

I kind of agree but I think that a dead-ish forum that gets less than 1 new thread per week isn't going to add all that much to Games discussions.

Out of curiosity, which forums would you suggest be pruned and folded back into 'Games' ?

quarryman

Ponster wrote: »

I kind of agree but I think that a dead-ish forum that gets less than 1 new thread per week isn't going to add all that much to Games discussions.

Of course it will! That's the whole point!

If Trophy Manager has a dedicated thread in the Games forum then anyone and everyone interested in games is going to see it and possibly drop in.

I didn't know Trophy Manager existed (or even know what it was) until I saw it under your avatar about an hour ago (I have signatures turned off). I went in, click on a few threads, realised they weren't that active and moved on.

I'd certainly have paid more attention before now if i'd seen a thread in Games.

It all boils down to the fact that people aren't going to navigate the drop-down menus looking for something that might interest them based on the name.

super_furry

Ponster wrote: »

Unless you can link to examples where admins split forums against the wishes of the members I'm going to call shenanigans on this one.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=225882

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=225711&page=1&pp=20

Retr0gamer

Ponster wrote: »

Unless you can link to examples where admins split forums against the wishes of the members I'm going to call shenanigans on this one.

I was around at the time. I remember practically all the games forum regulars were against the splitting of the forums. I remember the issue died and a few weeks later the Xbox and Playstation forums were created under consoles despite most people not wanting them to be created.

Kurtosis

Ponster wrote: »

I kind of agree but I think that a dead-ish forum that gets less than 1 new thread per week isn't going to add all that much to Games discussions.

Out of curiosity, which forums would you suggest be pruned and folded back into 'Games' ?

I'd be of a similar opinion to you on scrapping the individual game forums that are inactive. Just looking through briefly, some forums with less than 1 page of threads in the last 2 months are: Wolfenstein, Warcraft, Resident Evil, Half Life, Racing Sims, Role Playing, Second Life, Unreal, Warhawk, Final Fantasy, Counterstrike, Command and Conquer, Battlefield, Game Editing, Game Awards and Game Reviews.

Now, commenting as someone who is completely ignorant to the workings of all of those forums above, I would say that all of them bar Game Reviews (I think with this the division is probably justified) could easily have all their discussion accommodated by the Games forum. Even if the focus was shifted more towards the Games forum that would be a step in the right direction.

Retr0gamer

Game Awards is a forum that is only active at the end of the year to nominate the best games of the year and shouldn't be scrapped. All the rest really couldbe pruned other than Game reviews and Counterstrike because nobody wants anything to do with that bunch. Best to leave them in their cesspit. Console specific forums really should be under the Games section to initiate better discussion and to reduce the amount of piracy threads for mod chips and R4 cards which are really annoying me on the Nintendo forum. Sega should probably be left, it has a nice little active community.

quarryman

super_furry wrote: »

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=225882

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=225711&page=1&pp=20

An interesting post from amp:

So I logged in today to discover that Cloud has created two new forums for the X-box and Playstation respectively. Our Cloud moves in mysterious ways. /me bows.

and here:

I won't. As usual I must interpret Clouds will on this and after some thought I'm sure this will work. We will not be moving any threads to the new forums in the future. If people want to post about X-box or PS related stuff they can do it either here or in those specific forums.

I have opposed seperation in the past and am a bit annoyed at Cloud doing yet another one of his "come in, change everything and then buggar off" routines. However , the worst that can happen is that those forums will die.

The way I see it, Games is a hub for those people that consider themselves gamers. If fanboys want to post to their particular forum then they can. But if you don't want to you don't have to.

So even Games mod amp didn't want this and it was done behind his back.

If anything this has got worse and worse over the last few years.

What was it felt would be gained by granting forum requests to every poxy little game?

I stand by my original assessment: To make Boards look bigger.

kaimera

I'm in favour of thread tags alright as mentioned above - tag it [360], [ps3], [wii] etc etc so it's easier to see straight away whats being discussed and for searching.

Dont be at yourself

Some great points being made on all sides...

I like the idea that somebody mentioned of a 'Latest Releases' board. It would negate the need for boards to be created for the GTAs and so on which tend to have a big explosion of posts around the time of release, before quickly settling down to a trickle.

Somebody made the point that merging all these boards will make it unreadable, as posts will be pushed off the first page too quickly. As it stands, even the most popular boards in the category are quite slow moving in comparison to other boards on the website, and I think there is a lot of headroom to manage the additional volume of posts.

I'm not sure where to stand when it comes to categorizing by genre. It all comes down to volume of posts, and it may well be that they could be handled better by a Games/Latest Releases/Help & Support format rather than by category.

As a gamer, I don't limit myself to one genre of games, so it is somewhat cumbersome to have to navigate half a dozen forums to discuss my favourite games. As it is, despite being a big fan of strategy and racing games, I only ever pop into those genre-specific boards to do a bit of house-keeping and whatnot.

With regard to poker: I realise that the poker community is amongst the biggest on boards, and I tend to leave the moderating of those boards to their own moderators. I don't want to step on any toes and I'll defer judgement to them when it impacts on the poker boards.

kowloon

Merge them all but keep Quake I say.

dionsiseire

Just a Suggestion to throw out there and debate, i had a look at the structure and some of the forums and thought of the IF I situation , and i came up with this

(c) = Category
(f) = Actual Forum

Games :
->General Games (f)
->Sports Games (c)
->->Fifa (f)
->->Pro Evolution Soccer(f)
->->Football Manager(f)
->Action Games (c)
->->Battlefield(f)
->->Command & Conquer(f)
->->Counter Strike & Half Life(f)
->->Final Fantasy(f)
->->Quake(f)
->->Resident Evil(f)
->->Call of Duty(f)
->->War Hawk(f)
->->War Craft(f)
->->Magic The Gathering(f)
->->Halo(f)
->->Wolfenstein(f)
->->Metal Gear Solid(f)
->->GTA(f)
->->Fallout(f)
->->LittleBigPlanet
->Music Games(c)
->->Guitar Hero(f)
->->Rock Band(f)
->Strategy(c)
->->Holdem Poker(f)
->->Omaha Poker(f)
->->Chess(f)
->Massively Multiplayer(c)
->->Age of Conan(f)
->->Eve Online(f)
->->LotR Online(f)
->->World of Warcraft(f)
->->Warhammer(f)
->Web Based Games(c)
->->Trophy Manager(f)
->->Second Life(f)
->Consoles(c)
->->Playstation & PSP(f)
->->Wii & DS(f)
->->Xbox(f)

thelordofcheese

dionsiseire wrote: »

Just a Suggestion to throw out there and debate, i had a look at the structure and some of the forums and thought of the IF I situation , and i came up with this
*Snip*

That's really just shuffling the deck chairs if you ask me, we're still left with a load on unneeded forums.
But kudos on putting in the effort though.

dionsiseire

its re-shuffling but i've left out a good load of dead wood forums already

you could now take this re-shuffle, and eliminate and merge forums that might need such actions

then you would have a clean and simple games section

Sabre0001

The "Pokers" don't want to go back as a sub-forum again. Also "Strategy" would be more commonly linked with Command & Conquer, Warcraft, etc as Poker is a game of chance :pac: .


If things are being put into categories there shouldn't be much sub-segregation i.e. Strategy is a catch all (not split into C&C, AoE, etc). Guitar Hero & Rock Band have lived together quite peacefully, FIFA and Pro Evo will have to learn to get along. I agree that MMO deserve sub-forums as there could be quite a lot of topics within that forum.

koneko

thelordofcheese wrote: »

I know i'm not going to get my way, but i still think i'm right. That said any move towards my glorious utopia would be a good one, i do genuinely believe the games section of boards could be very well serviced by about 3 sub-forums. five at a stretch.

I agree, I was against the splitting when it happened, and I think it had a negative effect on the boards, less interesting discussions. There are busier better games forums that don't split into categories *at all* and it works for them. I guess I haven't been around here much lately and have drifted to other forums instead. Games or game series that had individual boards can have one big thread dedicated to it instead.

Earthhorse

quarryman wrote: »

So even Games mod amp didn't want this and it was done behind his back.

If anything this has got worse and worse over the last few years.

What was it felt would be gained by granting forum requests to every poxy little game?

I stand by my original assessment: To make Boards look bigger.

If I remember correctly, and someone can correct me if I don't, around the time Dev was very pro setting up the various console forums. The reason being that gaming was moving online and wouldn't it be cool if boards could be at the heart of the various online gaming communities. Having not visited these forums much I can't say whether that has or hasn't happened.

If anything, I would say that boards is afraid of its own size. :eek:

The constant creation of new forums seems to be an attempt to direct users to small, focused communities and allow the "main" community, which often gets diluted as a result, carry on as normal.

But really, who cares if the main board gets busy for a while and topics fall off the front page? Is it more or less effort to click on 5 forums than it is on 5 pages of posts on one forum? We could also change the main forum to have a larger number of default threads displayed per page. Being busy should not be seen as a problem; the cross-pollination lost by creating sub-forums is greater than the loss of a few special interest threads in amongst the thriving activity. In my opinion.

Silverfish

Okay, just adding my 0.02 on the Battlefield forum / move to a general FPS forum.

Battlefield is a series, it has clans, it had boards leagues, it had a community. Doesn't compare with the likes of Bioshock and Prey and other standard once-off standalone FPS category games.

It fell off somewhat with the last release, but there are future ones ahead. If the online multiplayer is any good, we will have the same popularity again.

I'm not sure how on earth this would work with a big general category, most likely someone would propose a Battlefield forum, and we'd be back to putting forward umpteen pages of +1's and proposals to get it again.

I believe anything with a community, clans, teams and future releases should be left alone, i.e Battlefield, CoD, Quake, and CS or whatnot.

kaimera

Take the 4 categories with sub fora

Games
Consoles
MMO
LAN Parties
*Poker [i would miss the obvious one]

and work from that.

console exclusives can go in the console sections [not that there's really that many exclusives anymore] or else tag the thread title in 'Games'.

or else use yer subbed list people.

tba

Ok the facts as they stand, there are 48 forums related to computer games

of these there are

8 MMO forums (age of conan, EVE Online, Warhammer+ 1 sub, second life, lord of the rings, World of warcraft +1 sub)
8 FPS forums (Quake, Unreal, Counterstrike, Half Life, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Halo, wolfenstein)
5 Console specifc forums (SEGA, Nintendo, Playstaion, XBOX and Console modding)
5 random games boards (games editing, game reviews, game awards, competitive gaming, arcade & retro)
5 oddballs (Resident evil, warhawk, GTA, Guitar hero, Metal gear solid)
4 Sims (Pro Evo, Footbal manager + 1 sub forum, Flight Sims)
3 RTS (dawn of war, C&C, warcraft)
3 whose purpose I cannot determine (IGN, soldat, opflash)
2 Genre related one (strategy, racing sims)
2 about Lans (lan parties + 1 Sub forum)
2 RPG (Final fantasy, Elder scrolls)
1 web games forum

1 devoted purely to games (games)

also there are 10 real World Games (real world games, Games Workshop, Poker +5 sub-forums, chess, magic the gathering)

(I hope i didn't miss any)

---

Lets look at both sides, bitches

We hate change, plus I will no longer be teh mod!

We continue down the route we have now and the number of forums gets larger and larger till it everybody has a forum for their favorite game. The advantages to this are great, we no longer have to listen to stupid idiots who hate the game we love, we get to feel like part of a community of like minded individuals and best of all the thread we started is there on the first page...easy to see.... for two years.

It also however brings up the issue that sits in the back of your mind (i know its there) we are all gamers, we love to play video games, we love to buy them, we love to talk about them, all the time. If somebody says they only ever play one game, they are lying or they are not a gamer, they are an addict (I cite WOW as case in point mu'lord)

So why corner yourself off in a little cubby hole clutching your game like a piece of well cooked noodle, share that badass game, get it out there.

Tear it down, viva la revolution!

We shake things up. We look at the whole structure and rationalise it. We stop making forums for new games that may be flashes in the pan, we push the community back into a big hole and we start talking about games again, we start arguing about games again, it will be fun.

The disadvantages are it may be harder to find a topic that you want to read as there are more things on your screen, fanboys will have to be friends or get banned. we may get introduced to genres and games we assumed were pants.

But the advantages are we will have a greater wealth of topics, some of which you would have never read, your stubborn opinions might be challenged and you may find a gem.

This new forum for a new game thing is a stupid precedence that has developed, sure I visited elder scrolls a bit when oblivion came out, i hoped into half life a good bit when portal came out, I even had a look in Halo when number 3 came out, long story short they are all dead or on their knees, never visit them anymore, my attention has moved elsewhere.

Before we decided is the best route I think that we all need to be on the same page, are we happy with the way Games is structured ( i don't think so, some may argue), the fact is that we cannot keep going the way we are going, it won't work.

I suggest

Games Discussion

Games
New Releases
Retro/Arcade
Games Reviews/Awards
Clans/Groups/Guilds

MMO---

WOW
etc...

Gaming Hardware---
Quake---

I reserve the right to change my mind though.

Dont be at yourself

I believe anything with a community, clans, teams and future releases should be left alone, i.e Battlefield, CoD, Quake, and CS or whatnot.

I acknowledge that these things come in crests and waves, but the Battlefield forum is very slow-moving at the moment. There is only one thread showing posts from October, and threads from the 1st of August are still on the main page.

These boards are very inactive and there is some merit to the argument that if they are consolidated, they may prosper.

Silverfish

Right, the last current release was 2142 which sucked a lot, BFV, BF1942, BF2 are still being played, when BF2 was released I'd say there was a good 2 / 3 years activity on that forum.

Sorry, I still don't see the logic in the argument FOR amalgamation of all the forums, but you're the boss.

Anti

Leave it the **** alone i say.

quarryman

Manties wrote: »

Leave it the **** alone i say.

why? Its not working.

Anti

It works perfectly fine for me.

tba

Im not sure that the community thing is as big an issue as it may appear. With the new social groups option it is very possible to set up matches/clans by simply signing up to a social group devoted to organising matches. They are social events after all.