Forum Streamlining

[Rhaegar]

Rhaegar has just posted a new devlog: Forum Streamlining.

There are some big changes coming to the Pirates of the Burning Sea forums this week. We think they will improve your Pirates of the Burning Sea forum experience by reducing the signal/noise ratio and will allow us to respond to threads more often.

You can read the article here, and then share your comments in this thread.

[FlipFlops]

Good stuff, there is alot of sub forums and stuff can easily get lost in the jumble.

This + 2.10 = good month? Hopefully.

[Remus]

Interesting.

Will there still be the Ships, Ship Combat, & Ship Skills; PvP and Conquest; Economy; Avatar Combat & Avatar Skills; World & Missions; Careers; Graphics and Sound sub-forums?

I am a little disappointed that you have set the level as high as 25. New players looking for advice will be forced to post in the Help forums, but neither sub-heading Useful posts from players and developers and A list of issues and how to solve them looks like being the place to ask questions. Perhaps one of these boards is the place to ask, in which case please sub it as The place to ask questions and find answers on how to play the game.

I wonder what you will put in the Wardroom. I have seen new games do well with boards only accessible to buyers of a premium edition, but players tend to migrate to the general forums after a few months - the discussion is more interesting and you have a wider group of people to talk to. You won't see me in the Wardroom, for example. I do happen to have a Captain's Club account, but it isn't this one.
Incidentally, The Wardroom is hardly the place for captains to meet - it is the commissioned officers' domain and captains can only enter by invitation.

[ArmEagle]

Sure, but could you move my site/contact thread somewhere, where I can still post but don't need to be active for? :
http://www.burningsea.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22831

[Maryart]

The limitation for logged in last 30 days could help reduce the trolling from the ragequitters.
Limitation of lvl 25 is somehow ambiguous as I myself have spent several months of active gameplay below lvl 25 actively doing eco and rising lvls by solo PvE-ing thats slower for lvling than doin missions but a faster way to learning things (time economy not running back and forth the mission givers and the mission locations but instead already tagging the next 3pack). It will also put out of forum the level-by-pvping players. Those are not worse to a guy that got fleeted up by his soc in a couple of hours and still doesnt know nada about the game. A better one would be time spent in the game (for ex atleast one month active player)
Restricted suggestions box can lead to less suggestions.
Also would be nice a section of retired players. Legitimacy for those that do not have time to play atm but would like to post their knowledge as well as find out if there are their mateys left if considering comeback.
Help section needs logical subdivisions so that one can find what hes looking for (See Remus) and also because of the fact that it is going to be flooded by the threads of those not eligible to other forum sections.

[Tedril Goveko]

I've just been reading the latest news about the forum streamlining and to be honest i'm not very happy. The changes to access rights etc i'm ok with, but reducing how many section we have is just wrong.

Currently there are too many sections in one view, but there are also too few in another view, it's already dificult to find information on specific areas of the game in the forum due to the fact that the sections are too generic and information easily getting lost, when the forums are streamlined it will only make matters worse.

With the new streamlining it seems we will only have a general section and a guides section in which nto post and ask for info, meaning that someone could post a question on a specific area of the game and it would soon be lost unanswered amongst the rest of the random postings that are made.

Please FLS reconsider this.

We need at the very least as subsections of the guides forum ...

• Career discussion
• Ship discussion
• Avcom discussion
• Economy discussion
• RvR discussion
• Mission discussion

... simply to make it simpler for people to find posts and information.

Streamlining the way you suggest may be easier for you to check forums because you have less sections, but for us it will become a huge task finding information that we need.

Please reconsider this.

[Tedril Goveko]

Originally Posted by FlipFlops Good stuff, there is alot of sub forums and stuff can easily get lost in the jumble. This + 2.10 = good month? Hopefully.

I have to disagree, there's not enough sub forums in my opinion, if i want to find information about certain aspects of the game currently i have to go through a section that is generic to 3 or 4 aspects and hunt down posts.

For example if i want to find specific information about the privateer career i have to trawl through the generic career forum to find privateer posts.

If we only have the guide and general chat forums in future this will make it even harder to find specifics.

We need more forums that are less generic not less forums that are more generic, organisation is the problem with this forum, not overabundence of sections.

[sneakdoggiedog]

I like the changes.

One suggestion for the future:

Why don't you have an automatic spot to list character names with posts? And I am not talking about the voluntary kind. If all forum posts had the mandatory display of character names, there would be accountability for the trolling.

It would save FLS a ton of time sifting through posts to delete trolls. Why they are anonymous is beyond me. Peer pressure keeps many in check more often than a forum MOV. When we know that a player is being a jerk in the forums, we can ask him/her to tone it down more effectively than a GM.

Some players think that they can say what they want without conseqences because they can not be detected and it gets out of control. As a parent, this is how it works.

Accountability.,...learning life's lessons early on potbs

[Barberouge]

So to summarize:

- Latest news, Live Events, The Age of Piracy, The Salty Sea Dog Inn, Get Support, Game Key, Download & Installer Issues, Power & Prestige Beta, Forum Experiments are removed or compressed.

- The Wardroom and The Gunroom are added.

As already said, some sub-categories for The Galley (General Discussion) category would be better.

I can't see the purpose of a Captain's Club only category, as everything we need is already on the other categories. I prefer to talk with everyone than only those who chose to get some gaming advantages. Talking with the dev team... If it's talking about which film they saw yesterday, I don't care much TBH (I already have my soc mates do to that). If it's talking about the game, hearing their views, getting a better understanding of what they do and how they do it, then I think it would be better opened to the whole community.

I'd rather see a "Talk about PotBS with the dev team" category than a "Captain's Club only" one.

[Joseph Fletcher]

I like it, clean and simple. Along with the wiki this should give us everything we need.

I'm not sure about the 30 day limit when you can log in a F2P account just to reset the clock. The only real limit is having the game installed. The L25 I'm also not sure about, I guess it stops people creating accounts simply to post in the forums, I don't know how much of a problem that is though.