Well, because ranting about Maple is obviously off-topic to anything Maple.
Either that or we're no longer allowed to rant about Maple at all (as opposed to only having the threads there locked or deleted sometimes).
I guess it could be worse, though. It could be like RuneScape, which hides the "Rants" section altogether unless you're logged in lol.
On a related note, Questions, Tips, and Tricks got moved to a subcategory of General Chat. Were they that pressed for space on the main forum page? It looked fine to me o_o This just makes it harder to browse those topics (latest post doesn't seem to show up).
I guess it could be worse, though. It could be like RuneScape, which hides the "Rants" section altogether unless you're logged in lol.
On a related note, Questions, Tips, and Tricks got moved to a subcategory of General Chat. Were they that pressed for space on the main forum page? It looked fine to me o_o This just makes it harder to browse those topics (latest post doesn't seem to show up).
What's worse is that a new player with a question is unlikely to be able to find that section to post in.
More work for the mods, I guess.
But I think it's a thing with new admins, they always want to rearrange things, to feel like they've made their mark, or just to make the forums resemble what they're used to from their last place of work. So what if the users are used to something else, and not complaining? Fixing the things the users actually complain about (like, say, the contents of the threads being ignored) is way harder.
Anyway.
Personally I mostly browse the forums through http://forums.maplestory.nexon.net/discussions , which gives all the threads, regardless of section, sorted by last update date. It's the most effective way to find everything that's been said since I was last on. And of course there is no link or shortcut to it anywhere on the main page or the "forum features walkthrough" guide. I learned about it from a comment by Neospector. I tried asking about other hidden forum features, but got no response. So who knows what other conveniences the staff keep to themselves.
Oh boy! More last minute changes without informing or asking the players first!
"We totally know what the players want!"
No you don't here are so many examples of opposites:
- Server time changed from PST to UTC.
- Removal of old forums archive.
- Shining Santa Boxes
- Choco Power! Event
- BFF Event.
- Royal Hair/Eyes
- Cash Shop Specials
- Philosopher Books and removal of Breath of Divinity Ring
- More hidden additions to in-game censorship and more blocking of certain igns.
- Constant poor latency still unfixed, which got even worse in Scania after Wednesday 22nd, 2017 at 12 AM UTC.
Again, it's just the tip of the ice berg. Sure there may be some explanations behind some of them, but this doesn't remove the dissatisfaction of people. It feels like all this change is an "illusion" of making things better. Day by day more Bug Reports, Rants and Raves (how ironic it being in the Off-Topic since a majority of those are related to Maple), and Suggestions are constantly being ignored that can have the potential to truly be "A Better Maple". Instead we're being handed nerfs like candy while suffering from constant unwanted changes that don't really fix anything, and makes this worse.
The changes from major sections to subsection are one of those unwanted changes that don't really fix anything, and makes this worse. Aggraphine has expressed the concern of not being able to see any new updates from threads in the subsection on the main page, while AKradian wonders about policy changes and highlighting to give what the players want.
It's honestly such a pain so many of us are here but the persistence of Nexon "oh we know exactly what the players want" and change it without notification or asking beforehand is the problem.
I consider this a lack of communication and a complete utter fail in Nexon's part in identifying key ideas to reconsider possible ideas and changes. It's honestly quite depressing.
Looks like the rants are now leaking into the main Off-Topic section because people don't know to click the little subsection text at the main menu, but go inside offtopic, and seeing no subforum to click in there. This is gonna be a mess.
We have plans to introduce additional sections and reorganize the structure of the forums.
There's a lot of unnecessary scrolling on the forums and overlapping sections.
Many of those sections will either no longer exist or be merged with existing sections.
Those particular sections are currently under debate of whether they'll be joining their parent categories and will be child sections for the meantime.
Once we've finished restructuring the forums, we'll be sure to create a thread to collect feedback and what you guys think and if there are additional sections you'd like to see added or removed.
Can you at least put the child categories in the correct sections, and also make them visible at the top of the section so that people can navigate to it easier if they're already in the main section (see the old forums for reference).
Currently they're only accessible through the small text on the forum frontpage, and it's confusing as you're navigating through the forums.
Additionally, I feel like improving the forum functions, customization and security should outweigh re-organizing sections that already work as they are.
We have plans to introduce additional sections and reorganize the structure of the forums.
There's a lot of unnecessary scrolling on the forums and overlapping sections.
Many of those sections will either no longer exist or be merged with existing sections.
Those particular sections are currently under debate of whether they'll be joining their parent categories and will be child sections for the meantime.
Once we've finished restructuring the forums, we'll be sure to create a thread to collect feedback and what you guys think and if there are additional sections you'd like to see added or removed.
Thank you,
Arwoooo~
I want you to realize two things.
Thing the first: If it's decided that Rants & Raves needs to "no longer exist", then there are going to be a fair few unhappy people who will see this as Nexon trying to stifle complaints.
Thing the second: Child categories do not show on the main forum page, of their parent category, when a new post is made in the child category. Putting both Rants & Raves and the Help section under a parent category does nothing but reduce their visibility. Which is going to lead to a substantial amount of "oh sorry but you posted in the wrong section" remarks from staff. And should someone who needs help, by the grace of effing Talos find out how to post in the help section, then unless everybody else knows to actively check that child category for new posts, their thread will go largely ignored.
Child Categories are only going to frustrate people and reduce visibility. You will not see a recent post in a child category. This is why I made the conscious decision not to use them in the first place.
We have plans to introduce additional sections and reorganize the structure of the forums.
There's a lot of unnecessary scrolling on the forums and overlapping sections.
Many of those sections will either no longer exist or be merged with existing sections.
Those particular sections are currently under debate of whether they'll be joining their parent categories and will be child sections for the meantime.
Once we've finished restructuring the forums, we'll be sure to create a thread to collect feedback and what you guys think and if there are additional sections you'd like to see added or removed.
Thank you,
Arwoooo~
I strongly recommend to ask for feedback before you make changes, since those changes will be irreversible in part. Once you merge caterogies, it will not be possible to sort each thread back to its correct section again if we manage to convince you the categories should have remained separate.
So how about posting a description of what you see as the final configuration for the forums, and the rationale for it, and let us comment on that based on how we know our community behaves, and what we know of how Vanilla behaves (for example, that child categories are hard to find and use)?
Just to clairify, removing the sub section does not mean we're disallowing those discussions in new sections of the forums.
To help players adjust to the changes, we will have a pinned thread to help inform players what topics can now be apart of the section.
Here are a couple changes that we are planning:
General Chat will be merged with Questions, Tips, and Tricks in regards to MapleStory.
As the description of this section suggests, we expect players to use it to discuss general MapleStory knowledge and information. Of course, this includes MapleStory questions, tips, and tricks.
Game Guide will be merged with Cash Shop Guide.
The Cash Shop is a part of the game and there's no need to create such a heavy emphasis on the Cash Shop on our forums.
Rants and Raves will be merged with Off-Topc.
Off-topic will now be a place for most conversations players have that's not related to the game. This includes rants and raves.
Additional changes are being made, but I hope this sheds some light on the recent move of those specific sections.
Again, we will have a feedback thread created for what sections players would like to see on the forums along with sections players deem unnecessary.
If you have ventured into Rants & Raves to check the content of these forums first, then you would notice that the majority of threads are related to maplestory. This is where angry/nonconstructive threads in the General section gets moved, that's also the reason they're mostly about the game.
If anything should me merged to "save space" I'd say it's the Maple Media and Fan Creation sections as both cover the same thing in different formats.
But again, don't make any of these changes when the forums are not capable of properly linking these together and preserving visibility.
I'm also curious what the new sections you're planning to add are, I feel like we have most everything we need already.
Edit: Actually, are you now talking about an actual merge and not having subforums for specific topics anymore? Because that'd be a disastrous mess in my opinion. For the love of RNGesus, don't merge or move any of the support sections into each other.
If you have ventured into Rants & Raves to check the content of these forums first, then you would notice that the majority of threads are related to maplestory. This is where angry/nonconstructive threads in the General section gets moved, that's also the reason they're mostly about the game.
If anything should me merged to "save space" I'd say it's the Maple Media and Fan Creation sections as both cover the same thing in different formats.
But again, don't make any of these changes when the forums are not capable of properly linking these together and preserving visibility.
I'm also curious what the new sections you're planning to add are, I feel like we have most everything we need already.
We're currently missing the most important section when it comes to fostering a great community!
Players are more than welcomed to rant in the General Chat section of the forums if it's Maple related as long as it follows our CoC.
Took a risk with cubing your equipment and ended up with terrible lines? That's general MapleStory chat!
Star Force says 70%, but it feels more like 0%? Rant about it here!
Your package you ordered from Amazon dropped into the Atlantic Ocean? Rant about it Off-Topic.
Players are more than welcomed to rant in the General Chat section of the forums if it's Maple related as long as it follows our CoC.
Took a risk with cubing your equipment and ended up with terrible lines? That's general MapleStory chat!
Star Force says 70%, but it feels more like 0%? Rant about it here!
Your package you ordered from Amazon dropped into the Atlantic Ocean? Rant about it Off-Topic.
We're currently missing the most important section when it comes to fostering a great community!
Players are more than welcomed to rant in the General Chat section of the forums if it's Maple related as long as it follows our CoC.
Took a risk with cubing your equipment and ended up with terrible lines? That's general MapleStory chat!
Star Force says 70%, but it feels more like 0%? Rant about it here!
Your package you ordered from Amazon dropped into the Atlantic Ocean? Rant about it Off-Topic.
I think that Rants & Raves belong in Feedback more than in General Chat, since they usually are feedback or impressions, albeit not very constructive (so, not a suggestion).
And what is this most important section that we are missing?
So you are referring to a complete merge of topics and not having Child Categories/subforums available, then? How will you preserve old threads and pinned threads that are currently in their own separate subforums? Cash Shop Guides is a full page of pinned threads, if you merge that entirely with Game Guides, none of the Game Guides will be visible as none of them are pinned. Sure you could unpin the CS guides, but then those would be harder to find. It's not really about emphasis, it's about order.
It'll also water down the General Chat with rants, questions, tips, when we've had some pretty decent quality discussions in these sections. I fear it'll become "spammy" if these are all supposed to share space, and rant threads pertaining to Nexon's practices would become locked instead of moved. Activity is great, but we don't have a system like reddit to separate the relevant from the noise aside from repeated bumping, which nobody likes.
Just trying to understand exactly what it is you're trying to do here, and how you will implement it. Because right now it's a half-measure that doesn't serve anyone. The site currently doesn't properly handle the existence of forums within forums, and a full merge of several topics inside one forum would seem unorganized to me.
Just to clairify, removing the sub section does not mean we're disallowing those discussions in new sections of the forums.
To help players adjust to the changes, we will have a pinned thread to help inform players what topics can now be apart of the section.
Here are a couple changes that we are planning:
General Chat will be merged with Questions, Tips, and Tricks in regards to MapleStory.
As the description of this section suggests, we expect players to use it to discuss general MapleStory knowledge and information. Of course, this includes MapleStory questions, tips, and tricks.
Game Guide will be merged with Cash Shop Guide.
The Cash Shop is a part of the game and there's no need to create such a heavy emphasis on the Cash Shop on our forums.
Rants and Raves will be merged with Off-Topc.
Off-topic will now be a place for most conversations players have that's not related to the game. This includes rants and raves.
Additional changes are being made, but I hope this sheds some light on the recent move of those specific sections.
Again, we will have a feedback thread created for what sections players would like to see on the forums along with sections players deem unnecessary.
This honestly smacks of a really hamfisted attempt at leaving your lasting impression on how things run. If this were a forum software that, much like vBulletin allows for, actually displayed sub-sections within their parent section then I wouldn't be as against this as I am.
What truly concerns me, and many others, is whether or not our feedback is going to be taken into account BEFORE any irreversible changes occur, or if you're just saying that you "value" our feedback to placate us, before then proceeding to wholly and utterly disregard it.
Further, I find that your claim of there being "too much unnecessary scrolling" on the main forum page to be unsubstantiated at best, and an outright fabrication at worst. The only thing people have complained about since September are a lack of features, or things not functioning the way conventional logic dictates it ought to. I'd like to emphasize for a moment that features does not encompass throwing the whole of the forums into disarray under the guise of "making things better".
Now, I'm going to give you my personal opinion on all of your proposed changes and reasoning for them.
Merging General Chat with Questions/Tips/Tricks will be a very bad idea. The Q/T/T section presently fields all questions pertaining to the game, while GC contains threads covering a myriad of different subjects regarding the game. To merge these is going to cause a clusterfuck on the level of creating a multi-reddit of two different, but very similar high-volume subreddits and trying to adequately use it as such while differentiating between the two. It's just not going to work.
I feel that the Cash Shop Guide section performs a function wholly removed from what your interpretation may be. It has seen no activity since the move to the new forums solely due to the fact that no new function-based cash shop items have been introduced since. I would strongly suggest either leaving it as is, or being rid of it as a whole.
Merging Rants and Raves with Off-Topic feels like it's detracting from the nature of 90% of the threads housed within. The vast majority of those threads are complaints about the game itself. To imply that peoples' rantings are not related to the game is utterly ludicrous. These sections must not be made into one.
What are these "additional changes" you're talking about? That's far too much of a blanket term for my, and others', liking.
We're currently missing a couple key ingredients towards becoming more of a closer community.
Off the top of my head, I'd say two small, but very important elements towards building a close-knit community are:
1. Custom Avatars
2. Introduction Section
One allows us to identify each other as individuals and tells a lot about that particular mapler's interests.
Knowing who is who and what that mapler likes goes miles beyond how simple it sounds.
Two allows the first stepping stone to help new applicants ease their way into entering our community.
Meeting new people is always a terrifying experience, but as a community, there's a lot we can do to help them with that process.
Being friendly goes a very long way as simple as it sounds.
We have around a hundred new applicants each day, but without introducing yourself, I can see how it would be difficult to inject yourself.
We're really pushing for custom avatars, but there's one out of two things we can do from our end in a snap.
We're currently missing the most important section when it comes to fostering a great community!
Players are more than welcomed to rant in the General Chat section of the forums if it's Maple related as long as it follows our CoC.
Took a risk with cubing your equipment and ended up with terrible lines? That's general MapleStory chat!
Star Force says 70%, but it feels more like 0%? Rant about it here!
Your package you ordered from Amazon dropped into the Atlantic Ocean? Rant about it Off-Topic.
I think that Rants & Raves belong in Feedback more than in General Chat, since they usually are feedback or impressions, albeit not very constructive (so, not a suggestion).
And what is this most important section that we are missing?
Comments
Either that or we're no longer allowed to rant about Maple at all (as opposed to only having the threads there locked or deleted sometimes).
http://forums.maplestory.nexon.net/categories/rants-and-raves
These are all maple related, they should be a subforum in the general section if anything. Not offtopic.
I guess it could be worse, though. It could be like RuneScape, which hides the "Rants" section altogether unless you're logged in lol.
On a related note, Questions, Tips, and Tricks got moved to a subcategory of General Chat. Were they that pressed for space on the main forum page? It looked fine to me o_o This just makes it harder to browse those topics (latest post doesn't seem to show up).
What's worse is that a new player with a question is unlikely to be able to find that section to post in.
More work for the mods, I guess.
But I think it's a thing with new admins, they always want to rearrange things, to feel like they've made their mark, or just to make the forums resemble what they're used to from their last place of work. So what if the users are used to something else, and not complaining? Fixing the things the users actually complain about (like, say, the contents of the threads being ignored) is way harder.
Anyway.
Personally I mostly browse the forums through http://forums.maplestory.nexon.net/discussions , which gives all the threads, regardless of section, sorted by last update date. It's the most effective way to find everything that's been said since I was last on. And of course there is no link or shortcut to it anywhere on the main page or the "forum features walkthrough" guide. I learned about it from a comment by Neospector. I tried asking about other hidden forum features, but got no response. So who knows what other conveniences the staff keep to themselves.
I keep everything in my toolbar, so I didn't even notice.
"We totally know what the players want!"
No you don't here are so many examples of opposites:
- Server time changed from PST to UTC.
- Removal of old forums archive.
- Shining Santa Boxes
- Choco Power! Event
- BFF Event.
- Royal Hair/Eyes
- Cash Shop Specials
- Philosopher Books and removal of Breath of Divinity Ring
- More hidden additions to in-game censorship and more blocking of certain igns.
- Constant poor latency still unfixed, which got even worse in Scania after Wednesday 22nd, 2017 at 12 AM UTC.
Again, it's just the tip of the ice berg. Sure there may be some explanations behind some of them, but this doesn't remove the dissatisfaction of people. It feels like all this change is an "illusion" of making things better. Day by day more Bug Reports, Rants and Raves (how ironic it being in the Off-Topic since a majority of those are related to Maple), and Suggestions are constantly being ignored that can have the potential to truly be "A Better Maple". Instead we're being handed nerfs like candy while suffering from constant unwanted changes that don't really fix anything, and makes this worse.
The changes from major sections to subsection are one of those unwanted changes that don't really fix anything, and makes this worse. Aggraphine has expressed the concern of not being able to see any new updates from threads in the subsection on the main page, while AKradian wonders about policy changes and highlighting to give what the players want.
It's honestly such a pain so many of us are here but the persistence of Nexon "oh we know exactly what the players want" and change it without notification or asking beforehand is the problem.
I consider this a lack of communication and a complete utter fail in Nexon's part in identifying key ideas to reconsider possible ideas and changes. It's honestly quite depressing.
We have plans to introduce additional sections and reorganize the structure of the forums.
There's a lot of unnecessary scrolling on the forums and overlapping sections.
Many of those sections will either no longer exist or be merged with existing sections.
Those particular sections are currently under debate of whether they'll be joining their parent categories and will be child sections for the meantime.
Once we've finished restructuring the forums, we'll be sure to create a thread to collect feedback and what you guys think and if there are additional sections you'd like to see added or removed.
Thank you,
Arwoooo~
Currently they're only accessible through the small text on the forum frontpage, and it's confusing as you're navigating through the forums.
Additionally, I feel like improving the forum functions, customization and security should outweigh re-organizing sections that already work as they are.
I want you to realize two things.
Thing the first: If it's decided that Rants & Raves needs to "no longer exist", then there are going to be a fair few unhappy people who will see this as Nexon trying to stifle complaints.
Thing the second: Child categories do not show on the main forum page, of their parent category, when a new post is made in the child category. Putting both Rants & Raves and the Help section under a parent category does nothing but reduce their visibility. Which is going to lead to a substantial amount of "oh sorry but you posted in the wrong section" remarks from staff. And should someone who needs help, by the grace of effing Talos find out how to post in the help section, then unless everybody else knows to actively check that child category for new posts, their thread will go largely ignored.
I strongly recommend to ask for feedback before you make changes, since those changes will be irreversible in part. Once you merge caterogies, it will not be possible to sort each thread back to its correct section again if we manage to convince you the categories should have remained separate.
So how about posting a description of what you see as the final configuration for the forums, and the rationale for it, and let us comment on that based on how we know our community behaves, and what we know of how Vanilla behaves (for example, that child categories are hard to find and use)?
To help players adjust to the changes, we will have a pinned thread to help inform players what topics can now be apart of the section.
Here are a couple changes that we are planning:
General Chat will be merged with Questions, Tips, and Tricks in regards to MapleStory.
As the description of this section suggests, we expect players to use it to discuss general MapleStory knowledge and information. Of course, this includes MapleStory questions, tips, and tricks.
Game Guide will be merged with Cash Shop Guide.
The Cash Shop is a part of the game and there's no need to create such a heavy emphasis on the Cash Shop on our forums.
Rants and Raves will be merged with Off-Topc.
Off-topic will now be a place for most conversations players have that's not related to the game. This includes rants and raves.
Additional changes are being made, but I hope this sheds some light on the recent move of those specific sections.
Again, we will have a feedback thread created for what sections players would like to see on the forums along with sections players deem unnecessary.
If anything should me merged to "save space" I'd say it's the Maple Media and Fan Creation sections as both cover the same thing in different formats.
But again, don't make any of these changes when the forums are not capable of properly linking these together and preserving visibility.
I'm also curious what the new sections you're planning to add are, I feel like we have most everything we need already.
Edit: Actually, are you now talking about an actual merge and not having subforums for specific topics anymore? Because that'd be a disastrous mess in my opinion. For the love of RNGesus, don't merge or move any of the support sections into each other.
We're currently missing the most important section when it comes to fostering a great community!
Players are more than welcomed to rant in the General Chat section of the forums if it's Maple related as long as it follows our CoC.
Took a risk with cubing your equipment and ended up with terrible lines? That's general MapleStory chat!
Star Force says 70%, but it feels more like 0%? Rant about it here!
Your package you ordered from Amazon dropped into the Atlantic Ocean? Rant about it Off-Topic.
I took a screenshot of that F3
I think that Rants & Raves belong in Feedback more than in General Chat, since they usually are feedback or impressions, albeit not very constructive (so, not a suggestion).
And what is this most important section that we are missing?
It'll also water down the General Chat with rants, questions, tips, when we've had some pretty decent quality discussions in these sections. I fear it'll become "spammy" if these are all supposed to share space, and rant threads pertaining to Nexon's practices would become locked instead of moved. Activity is great, but we don't have a system like reddit to separate the relevant from the noise aside from repeated bumping, which nobody likes.
Just trying to understand exactly what it is you're trying to do here, and how you will implement it. Because right now it's a half-measure that doesn't serve anyone. The site currently doesn't properly handle the existence of forums within forums, and a full merge of several topics inside one forum would seem unorganized to me.
This honestly smacks of a really hamfisted attempt at leaving your lasting impression on how things run. If this were a forum software that, much like vBulletin allows for, actually displayed sub-sections within their parent section then I wouldn't be as against this as I am.
What truly concerns me, and many others, is whether or not our feedback is going to be taken into account BEFORE any irreversible changes occur, or if you're just saying that you "value" our feedback to placate us, before then proceeding to wholly and utterly disregard it.
Further, I find that your claim of there being "too much unnecessary scrolling" on the main forum page to be unsubstantiated at best, and an outright fabrication at worst. The only thing people have complained about since September are a lack of features, or things not functioning the way conventional logic dictates it ought to. I'd like to emphasize for a moment that features does not encompass throwing the whole of the forums into disarray under the guise of "making things better".
Now, I'm going to give you my personal opinion on all of your proposed changes and reasoning for them.
Merging General Chat with Questions/Tips/Tricks will be a very bad idea. The Q/T/T section presently fields all questions pertaining to the game, while GC contains threads covering a myriad of different subjects regarding the game. To merge these is going to cause a clusterfuck on the level of creating a multi-reddit of two different, but very similar high-volume subreddits and trying to adequately use it as such while differentiating between the two. It's just not going to work.
I feel that the Cash Shop Guide section performs a function wholly removed from what your interpretation may be. It has seen no activity since the move to the new forums solely due to the fact that no new function-based cash shop items have been introduced since. I would strongly suggest either leaving it as is, or being rid of it as a whole.
Merging Rants and Raves with Off-Topic feels like it's detracting from the nature of 90% of the threads housed within. The vast majority of those threads are complaints about the game itself. To imply that peoples' rantings are not related to the game is utterly ludicrous. These sections must not be made into one.
What are these "additional changes" you're talking about? That's far too much of a blanket term for my, and others', liking.
Off the top of my head, I'd say two small, but very important elements towards building a close-knit community are:
1. Custom Avatars
2. Introduction Section
One allows us to identify each other as individuals and tells a lot about that particular mapler's interests.
Knowing who is who and what that mapler likes goes miles beyond how simple it sounds.
Two allows the first stepping stone to help new applicants ease their way into entering our community.
Meeting new people is always a terrifying experience, but as a community, there's a lot we can do to help them with that process.
Being friendly goes a very long way as simple as it sounds.
We have around a hundred new applicants each day, but without introducing yourself, I can see how it would be difficult to inject yourself.
We're really pushing for custom avatars, but there's one out of two things we can do from our end in a snap.