Posted 11 April 2014 - 10:27 AM

Greetings MechWarriors,

It is with great pleasure that we introduce to you a number of changes which we will be making to our Forum Structure in order to provide a more user-friendly community experience. These changes will be un-veiled over the course of Monday, April 14th, 2014, and are listed as follows:

Ask The Devs will be renamed to Developer Vlogs in order to reflect our new video logs.



in order to reflect our new video logs. General Discussion will be converted from a section to a forum.



will be converted from a section to a forum. The following General Discussions sub-forums will be merged into the new General Discussion . (Threads without activity in over 30 days will be archived. Requests to re-open archived threads which remain relevant and constructive may be directed to the Moderation Team by using the forum "Report" feature to flag the topic and provide a relevant description of the request.)

MWO in the News

Gameplay Balance

Mech & Loadout

Maps & Modes

Tournaments & Events

Metagame

Upcoming Features

. (Threads without activity in over 30 days will be archived. Requests to re-open archived threads which remain relevant and constructive may be directed to the Moderation Team by using the forum "Report" feature to flag the topic and provide a relevant description of the request.) Various Archive sub-forums will be merged into one.



sub-forums will be merged into one. Community HPG will become a sub-section of MWO Universe .



will become a sub-section of . Merc Corps - Outreach will be renamed to Factions - Merc Corps .



will be renamed to . Barracks will be moved under Community HPG .



will be moved under . Fan Audio/Video, Fan Fiction, Fan Art and FanSite JumpShip will be merged into a Fan Sites & Creations forum,



forum, A Community Run Events forum will be created.



forum will be created. Simpits will be merged into Hardware & Accessories and moved under Community HPG .



Known Issues will be archived. In lieu of this, we will encourage players to use Bug Report templates in Patch Feedback .



. Feature Suggestions will be moved under Support & Feedback .



will be moved under . The Public Test sub-forums will be merged into one and moved under Support & Feedback .



sub-forums will be merged into one and moved under . All Jettisoned Communication threads will be moved to Kaetetôã.



threads will be moved to Forum Fun will be merged into Jettisoned Communication .



will be merged into . Clan Recruitment sub-forums will be created in advance and hidden until June 17th, when they will be opened to the public.



sub-forums will be created in advance and hidden until June 17th, when they will be opened to the public. Various forums will have their descriptions re-written in order to better describe the purpose of the forum.



Various forums will have Tagging systems introduced. A presentation example of how tagging works may be seen today in Website & Forums. This system will have pre-determined subjects for players to select as Tags for their thread. It will be expected for players to "Tag up!" their own posts, and we encourage players to maintain an etiquette and habit of doing so themselves, as we might not necessarily select the Tag you would have wanted.



systems introduced. A presentation example of how tagging works may be seen today in Website & Forums. This system will have pre-determined subjects for players to select as Tags for their thread. It will be expected for players to "Tag up!" their own posts, and we encourage players to maintain an etiquette and habit of doing so themselves, as we might not necessarily select the Tag you would have wanted. In order to prevent topic flooding of the new General Discussion, a global limit of 5 New Topics every 24 hours will be set on all forum members. Replies will not be affected by this limit.

Veterans will be correct to assume that the changes listed above present a new direction in our knowledge management and feedback process. I hope to address some of the reasons as to why these changes both old and new took place, as well as to dispel some of the myths.

The original General Discussion presented the same issues every video game forum team has encountered for years, which has only become an increasing problem as the internet and video gaming becomes more and more accessible: While this accessibility allows many great new gamers to reach us, join in and partake in our experience, it also includes a proportional appearance of more toxic users who would otherwise not be seen in such volume on the forums of past MechWarrior games. Other issues include:

High-rates of thread duplication. Conversations get swamped by one another and then replicated.



Larger numbers of player-to-player disputes reported. (This is often triggered by the high-rate of duplication, with players often repeating themselves and becoming increasingly belligerent in different threads of the same subject.)



Wide variety of topics generates difficulty in finding specific subjects. (This both adds to the Thread duplication and makes knowledge management on our end more difficult.)



Other sub-forums with specific purposes being ignored. (For example, a Website issue appearing in G.D. rather than Website & Forums.)

There is no simple or universal solution to this concern. Every development and community team has taken a wide variety of methods to address them. Some teams have addressed the issue simply by never using forums in the first place, only carrying out support and feedback through one-to-one Ticketing systems. As multiplayer interaction plays an integral role in the MechWarrior Online experience, which will only increase in importance with future modules such as Community Warfare, this option was out for us. Other teams have replaced their forums with systems such as an official Reddit. Inevitably, we felt it was neither in our nor the average player's best interests to provide an official service where players would be capable of down-vote bombing one another, especially given that we are here to have a fun experience. Seeing as how we already now have two fan Reddits following us, adding another also seems redundant, and unlikely to add more to the experience.

Borrowing the best ideas from these and other communities: The hope was to build a forum which would include all the organization of other AAA-game forums with the ease-of-use of various social media outlets. The original decision to split General Discussion was intended to be just the first step in a larger overhaul of the forums.

The next intended step would have been to generate a system which would take in all threads from the split sub-forums to aggregate them in a single reading place, not at all unlike Reddit's Frontpage. As time went on, it became evident that there was no simple plugin tool to provide us or adapt towards this functionality on IPBoard, With so much else to do and with new direction in our communications, we felt it necessary to take a step back and re-evaluate the situation. We sincerely apologize for any negative effect this well-intentioned change had on your impression of our team.

It is our deepest wish that these changes reflect our desire and efforts to have stronger interactions with the MechWarrior Online Community and that you are eager to provide us with your constructive feedback towards a mutual goal of bettering the game experience for all.