Disappointed that the Vendetta Online forum went bye-bye

Phaserlight

Perhaps the sub-forum wasn't active enough?

There's a lot happening in this community, especially behind the scenes.  I used to appreciate that mmorpg.com had a dedicated space for discussing this game.  Initially I thought that the subforum wasn't showing due to inactivity, but yesterday I realized that it had disappeared altogether, threads merging into "Other Games".

At the same time, you are drawing attention to a game (Vanguard) under the same segment of the alphabet that has already closed down, preferentially giving it a dedicated discussion space.

Why??

sunandshadow

I'm also quite confused where the game development subforums have gone - I was hoping they'd be easier for people to find after the forum change-over. T_T  Or at leas a statement that game development topics now belong in the Pub would be nice.

Kyleran

Bill did say when the new forums came they were going to eliminate many of the less active ones in order to better streamline things.

Phaserlight

Kyleran said:

Bill did say when the new forums came they were going to eliminate many of the less active ones in order to better streamline things.

That I understand, however it seems like a mistake to favor a game that has been indefinitely shuttered over a decade+ old MMORPG poised to release for the iPhone and Steam in the next six months.

I'm assuming they did a little more research than pure post volume...

It chafes me because this game was the reason I joined mmorpg.com over a decade ago; I've been a player ever since, and am currently hard at work on another new project for the game.

Before you ask 'does anyone still play it'? I guarantee it outranks others on the 'front page' of the alphabetized game list in terms of player volume.  It also features a "universal" server design where everyone interacts in the same virtual space.  Someone other than myself will be asking 'why isn't this game on here'? before the year is out in all likelihood.

It's either a mistake or unintentional slap on the face.  "Hidoi" as they would say in Japan.

MikeB

We maintained forums that were considered remotely active and classic game forums.  We will be adding and removing forums over time as well.

MikeB

In the meantime, tag posts with the game title so that they can be found via search and such. I added the tag "vendetta-online" to your OP.

Phaserlight

MikeB said:

We maintained forums that were considered remotely active and classic game forums.  We will be adding and removing forums over time as well.

Well... that makes sense.  Look, it probably seems like I'm being hypercritical, and that isn't my intention.  It's just that... the timing is somewhat hilarious.

I don't expect everyone to follow this game as closely as I do, and I understand what things look like on the outside.

anemo

I kind of miss some of the less active forums as well.

Quizzical

MikeB said:

In the meantime, tag posts with the game title so that they can be found via search and such. I added the tag "vendetta-online" to your OP.

Now that's just ridiculous.  Unless you create a very, very prominent way to push people to search by tags, no one will ever think that if only they search for tags, they can find information that they don't expect to exist on this site.

Removing the less active forums is like Microsoft removing the start button from Windows because people didn't use it that often.  You don't need it very often, but when you need it, you need it and don't want to spend the next hour trying to figure out if Windows 8 has the same functionality buried somewhere that you can't find.

MikeB

Quizzical said:

MikeB said:

In the meantime, tag posts with the game title so that they can be found via search and such. I added the tag "vendetta-online" to your OP.

Now that's just ridiculous.  Unless you create a very, very prominent way to push people to search by tags, no one will ever think that if only they search for tags, they can find information that they don't expect to exist on this site.

Removing the less active forums is like Microsoft removing the start button from Windows because people didn't use it that often.  You don't need it very often, but when you need it, you need it and don't want to spend the next hour trying to figure out if Windows 8 has the same functionality buried somewhere that you can't find.

You can search by tags through the forum search functionality.

95% of the forums removed had like 0 activity in six months. Most weren't "less active" they were dead. Also, these removals were a necessity as our new forum software is not capable of scaling to the amount of forums we had, which is why we made the decision to cut a bunch of forums to begin with.

Konfess

sunandshadow said:

I'm also quite confused where the game development subforums have gone - I was hoping they'd be easier for people to find after the forum change-over. T_T  Or at leas a statement that game development topics now belong in the Pub would be nice.

God, I hope the Game Development subforums have gone away.  Add it to the Misc forums if it can't be considered a sub forum on its own.  I saw mention of an archive?  Whats the URL?

dupablada201

Yeah. Those new forum is not enjoyable by me sadly

Quizzical

MikeB said:

Quizzical said:

MikeB said:

In the meantime, tag posts with the game title so that they can be found via search and such. I added the tag "vendetta-online" to your OP.

Now that's just ridiculous.  Unless you create a very, very prominent way to push people to search by tags, no one will ever think that if only they search for tags, they can find information that they don't expect to exist on this site.

Removing the less active forums is like Microsoft removing the start button from Windows because people didn't use it that often.  You don't need it very often, but when you need it, you need it and don't want to spend the next hour trying to figure out if Windows 8 has the same functionality buried somewhere that you can't find.

You can search by tags through the forum search functionality.

95% of the forums removed had like 0 activity in six months. Most weren't "less active" they were dead. Also, these removals were a necessity as our new forum software is not capable of scaling to the amount of forums we had, which is why we made the decision to cut a bunch of forums to begin with.

On a less active forum, you can readily find and reply to threads from days or weeks ago.  Interaction was slower than in the pub, but it worked.  How do you feel about people constantly bumping weeks or months-old threads in The Pub because they want to add something on a lesser played game?  If that's what you want, then a given game with a recently closed forum might only see that happen once or twice a month.  But multiply that by hundreds of games and such thread bumping could account for a substantial fraction of threads in The Pub.

If you can't have hundreds of forums for separate games, how about at least one forum for the lightly played games where it is explicitly acceptable to bump months old threads for slow-moving conversations?  If you have to tag a bunch of old threads and dump them into a single forum, fine.  But what you've done is just shy of a ban on discussing less popular games.

The problem with searching by tags is that it flatly doesn't work.  You might well find a handful of threads related to a particular game.  But searching will not find most of the threads that you're looking for.  Try it for yourself with a few games you're familiar with and see if the familiar threads pop up.  They won't.  You've deleted something on the basis that there is an alternative that basically no one knows about and doesn't even work anyway.

And then there's the issue that it seems pretty random which games got their own forums saved.  Games with hundreds of threads, some of them recent, were deleted.  Yet dead forums like these got spared:

http://forums.mmorpg.com/categories/minecraft
http://forums.mmorpg.com/categories/dota-2
http://forums.mmorpg.com/categories/overwatch
http://forums.mmorpg.com/categories/bloodborne

Quizzical

This site used to be a good source of information on less popular games.  Not anymore, it seems.

Let's take one of my favorites as an example:  Uncharted Waters Online.  There used to be a ton of information in the forum on that game, so that someone who wanted to know about it could learn quite a lot.  Not anymore.  Now there are still some old press releases, a handful of screenshots, and that's about it.

From this site today, you'd have a hard time telling the difference between UWO and Pirates of the Burning Sea, a game with which it has little in common beyond some superficial things like sailing around on ships.  You'd certainly never guess that UWO is closer to EVE than it is to PotBS.

If you think the search tool is a viable alternative, then try it.  No really.  Stop reading this post and try it.  Try to find information on games whose forum you deleted.  There's not much left to find.  There used to be a lot for some games.

sunandshadow

Konfess said:

sunandshadow said:

I'm also quite confused where the game development subforums have gone - I was hoping they'd be easier for people to find after the forum change-over. T_T  Or at leas a statement that game development topics now belong in the Pub would be nice.

God, I hope the Game Development subforums have gone away.  Add it to the Misc forums if it can't be considered a sub forum on its own.  I saw mention of an archive?  Whats the URL?

Err, did you mean have or haven't?  

Ridelynn

MikeB said:

In the meantime, tag posts with the game title so that they can be found via search and such. I added the tag "vendetta-online" to your OP.

I may be niave and a total ignoramous when it comes to social media - but where't the button to tag a post? Is it like a hash tag in twitter and it automagically does it for me?

And how do we know what tag to use for what game? I would have thought "Vendetta Online", not hypenated... or VO since that's how it's sometimes called... i don't know. So know when I go to tag my post, or search for tags, it's a mess.

I can understand the technical limitation being an issue, but ... the alternative isn't spelled out very well just yet.

Toodles

Sigh - Just when I started lurking this site again after leaving it because of the slutty game ads they insisted on sponsoring, they go and try to make this move to 'social gaming networking' crap. And in doing so implement it horrible. 

Typical.

Meddle

We are working on a way to better expose the discussions tagged with games that do not have their own categories.  We'll get this worked out for you guys soon!

Ikeda

Honestly, if it weren't for @Phaserlight I would never have known or TRIED this game (especially on the iPad).  I think this is a very slippery trend with @MikeB @Meddle .  They pick NON-MMO's forums to save.  Nevermind the useful information.

The more I hear about this upgrade the more I don't understand why the hell it's happening.  I'd rather have information and access than the ability to pat myself on the back over some stupid forum badge.

And it's stupid @MikeB that you have to SEARCH for game forums.  I USED to be able to scan lists of games alphabetically... or sort them by popularity, or find their forums whether they were F2P... and now... they don't even get forums.  But heaven forbid DOTA keeps it's forum!  Them fanboi's would be in an uproar.

This upgrade is really a sad downgrade.

MikeB

Ridelynn said:

MikeB said:

In the meantime, tag posts with the game title so that they can be found via search and such. I added the tag "vendetta-online" to your OP.

I may be niave and a total ignoramous when it comes to social media - but where't the button to tag a post? Is it like a hash tag in twitter and it automagically does it for me?

And how do we know what tag to use for what game? I would have thought "Vendetta Online", not hypenated... or VO since that's how it's sometimes called... i don't know. So know when I go to tag my post, or search for tags, it's a mess.

I can understand the technical limitation being an issue, but ... the alternative isn't spelled out very well just yet.

Just type the name of the game in the tags section and it should auto-fill for you. If a tag for a specific game is missing, we can set it up for you (I'm going to create a thread for requesting tags). If you're just searching for posts on a specific game, all you need to do is just search as normal and type the name of the game in.

MikeB

Quizzical said:

MikeB said:

Quizzical said:

MikeB said:

In the meantime, tag posts with the game title so that they can be found via search and such. I added the tag "vendetta-online" to your OP.

Now that's just ridiculous.  Unless you create a very, very prominent way to push people to search by tags, no one will ever think that if only they search for tags, they can find information that they don't expect to exist on this site.

Removing the less active forums is like Microsoft removing the start button from Windows because people didn't use it that often.  You don't need it very often, but when you need it, you need it and don't want to spend the next hour trying to figure out if Windows 8 has the same functionality buried somewhere that you can't find.

You can search by tags through the forum search functionality.

95% of the forums removed had like 0 activity in six months. Most weren't "less active" they were dead. Also, these removals were a necessity as our new forum software is not capable of scaling to the amount of forums we had, which is why we made the decision to cut a bunch of forums to begin with.

On a less active forum, you can readily find and reply to threads from days or weeks ago.  Interaction was slower than in the pub, but it worked.  How do you feel about people constantly bumping weeks or months-old threads in The Pub because they want to add something on a lesser played game?  If that's what you want, then a given game with a recently closed forum might only see that happen once or twice a month.  But multiply that by hundreds of games and such thread bumping could account for a substantial fraction of threads in The Pub.

If you can't have hundreds of forums for separate games, how about at least one forum for the lightly played games where it is explicitly acceptable to bump months old threads for slow-moving conversations?  If you have to tag a bunch of old threads and dump them into a single forum, fine.  But what you've done is just shy of a ban on discussing less popular games.

The problem with searching by tags is that it flatly doesn't work.  You might well find a handful of threads related to a particular game.  But searching will not find most of the threads that you're looking for.  Try it for yourself with a few games you're familiar with and see if the familiar threads pop up.  They won't.  You've deleted something on the basis that there is an alternative that basically no one knows about and doesn't even work anyway.

Searching by tags for games that no longer have forums doesn't work because the posts no longer exist and the new forums are, well, new. So, in order for tags to work, users need to create threads for these games and tag them appropriately. I imagine this is something most community members don't even realize is possible right now, which is a problem I'm looking to sort out in the short term.

As for having a separate forum for less frequently discussed games, I think I have an idea that could work pretty well.

GolbezTheLion

MikeB said:

Just type the name of the game in the tags section and it should auto-fill for you. If a tag for a specific game is missing, we can set it up for you (I'm going to create a thread for requesting tags). If you're just searching for posts on a specific game, all you need to do is just search as normal and type the name of the game in.

Doesn't that seem extremely convoluted to you? I really am having a hard time grasping the fact that you seem to think this is a better method than what was previously available.

Did you try actually using the search like Quiz suggested? Check that out and then get back to us.

Meddle

GolbezTheLion said:

MikeB said:

Just type the name of the game in the tags section and it should auto-fill for you. If a tag for a specific game is missing, we can set it up for you (I'm going to create a thread for requesting tags). If you're just searching for posts on a specific game, all you need to do is just search as normal and type the name of the game in.

Doesn't that seem extremely convoluted to you? I really am having a hard time grasping the fact that you seem to think this is a better method than what was previously available.

Did you try actually using the search like Quiz suggested? Check that out and then get back to us.

It's not a better solution but right now Vanilla has a maximum number of categories that we can utilize.  They are working on this but in the meantime we're going to work on making it as simple as possible to work with the tagging.  Things I'm working on now:

• Adding a drop down of all games that will either 1) lead to the category if the game has one or 2) lead to the tagged list of discussions for the games that do not have a category
• On the tagged games discussion list pages having the new discussion button auto-tag new discussions with the game tag name

Ikeda

Hell, @MikeB said he tagged this right?  Because I can't find this particular thread using the search function.

Ikeda

Ahhhh.... because the search function in the tabs isn't the search function under the specific pub section.. which isn't marked.. it's just a square... and when you click it.. it doesn't populate a full search bar... just another square you can type in.  

That is in no way convoluted.

sunandshadow

I'd like to recommend rolling Forum Q&A Archives (only 16 topics) in with Site Suggestions, if that will free up a category.