RTW or Colloseum subforum suggestion

[Mithrandir]

I'm not familiar with the subscribe system, though I have seen the keyword around somewhere. Is this a way to organise threads into groups? I'll look around the boards and see what I can learn about that.

You can subscribe to threads, receiving a PM,email or both if someone replies to it.

[Tamur]

At the same time the new forum is likely to end up with less traffic, and that means less people posting their ideas and questions. Anything in the colusseum is guaranteed to get more views and therefore potentially more replies.

Very good point, and I agree entirely.

Since Tosa posted re: subscriptions, I've been able to check out and start up some subscription folders. I assume this hits the DB a bit, but is exactly the feature I was looking for.

Now to go through my list and subscribe, whee. Thanks for the help, everyone. Unless there are those who Really, really want this to happen, you can consider my request to be withdrawn.

[Blodrast]

i guess i don't feel very strongly either way, but here are my two cents:
it might be a good idea to have a more game-technical subforum, i.e. stuff about the details of how the game works.

I see several reasons for this:

- stuff like that is not interesting to everybody; people who don't wanna read it can simply ignore the forum, rather than having to go through all posts in the colosseum

- moreover (and this is not repeating the previous post), I'm sure all of you (including you, froggy, as you confessed a while ago after finishing the MTW guide) dissected a few games in your life to the point that a lot of the charm of the game was lost; you may not all share this feeling, and maybe you haven't come across such a situation, but if you have, you'll know what I'm talking about. Since such a subforum would potentially do that, it's better if it were separated.

- for people who _are_ interested in that stuff, and _do_ want to have access to them, it would help them have easy access to that info. Let's face it, searching for something in the Colosseum has a decent chance to come up with too many results, considering the incredible high level of activity it's been seeing lately (and which is likely to keep for a while, esp. considering the upcoming patch, which will be more significant than 1.1 most likely). Moreover, there have been quite a few problems with the database lately, and it seems like a search function won't help that; it's quite possible that search will be disabled for more and more forums, possibly for all. While I do agree that one can subscribe to threads, at the current rate of new threads it is very easy to lose stuff, especially if you're away for a few days...

Again, I'm certain that we can live without it just fine, but I think it may be worthwhile, overall...
That, of course, is merely my own personal opinion ;)


Edit: as for the "less views, hence less activity in it" argument, I'm really not sure it stands (sorry, froggy). After all, it is _exactly_ the same kind of thing as a "Guides" forum !
And yet, we have a Guides forum for each of the TW series !
And if it wasn't an issue for those, why would it be for this one ?
I mean, you can see that the Guides section get very few hits in comparison with the Colosseum, let's say. And as the game becomes more and more familiar to people, the Guides section as well as the potential one we're discussing here will both get few hits, mostly from the really hardcore players, or the newest newbies...
I pretty much see this potential subforum in the same position as any of the other Guides forums, and all pro and con arguments apply to it exactly the same as they would apply to any of those...
Again, I'm not a fanatical supporter of a new subforum, I'm just arguing some logic here...(or at leasy _my_ logic, which probably isn't universal ;)) ).

[Tamur]

Good post Blodrast. After trying to sort through the Colloseum and realising that there are ten pages of threads just to get back to the beginning of last week, let alone things that were active over two weeks ago, I've reconsidered and express a renewed interest in seeing this happen.

After today, I take the view that the Colloseum will remain the end-all of RTW discussion, but that the dissection that Blodrast mentioned simply needs its own space. I know if I were simply interested in a game, the last thing I'd want to see was a detailed formula about its mechanics. There seems to be a specific group of those who consistently post in the mechanics threads, and those who post on other discussions.

So I guess we need some more opinions on this.. I'm once again for it.

[TosaInu]

Hello,

Not the only reason, but a good reason to think about adding a new forum is an extremely high rate of forum usage. 10 pages in one week is quite a lot. The Sword Dojo is about good for anything STW related as topics stay on page 1 for weeks.

The other arguments sound good too and I guess there are others as well. I think it's pretty clear that another SP forum is required. I think we should change focus to how it should work and implement it as quickly as possible. Ideas please?

[frogbeastegg]

I pretty much see this potential subforum in the same position as any of the other Guides forums, and all pro and con arguments apply to it exactly the same as they would apply to any of those...

Exactly. I was thinking from the POV of someone who has watched the guide forums quite closely for months now. The simple fact is if you move a thread over to guide is very often all but dies; the viewcount plummets and replies are few and far between. Now, you could say that when the thread is moved its purpose has already been met, but that's usually not really true.

The question is how many forums like this do we want, and how many can we add before things are stretched too thin?

Just for the record I didn't exactly find MTW lost its charm, more that it never had any in the first place.

Anyway, good points.

For the record I also don't feel strongly either way.

[therother]

I think it's pretty clear that another SP forum is required. I think we should change focus to how it should work and implement it as quickly as possible. Ideas please?

Ok, I'll throw a few out there. I think the first question to ask is what do we want it for? Game research or to siphon off more of the current Colosseum to reduced the level of thread turnover?

Perhaps it'll only be for the posting and discussion of game research, e.g. questions such as "what's the best way to use archers?" or "how do you maximise trade income?" Or a more general forum for asking questions about the game - for example will threads asking questions such as "How do I reduce squalor?" be welcomed after that issue has been researched?

The first, more limited, idea will do little to reduce the post rate on the Colosseum. The second has a chance, but then runs the risk of defeating the purpose for which the forum was proposed if the number of non-research threads is too high.

Another way to go would be to have an archive forum, where good research threads would be moved to after they have run their course in the forum proper. There they would stay as reference.

The level of Moderating, I suppose, is also a question. If it is to be a purely research thread, that might require a fair degree of management of threads, moving/deleting threads as appropriate to prevent clutter.

Anyway, hopefully that should help get the ball rolling...

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Those are the early time... It will cool down a bit.

The main hall was good enough for MTW, and when some specific need arised (PBM, Guides...), specific forum were created.

Eventually, some non faction topics were included in the guides forum. The same will happen to RTW, and that will be moderator choice to move a topic or not.

I am not sure I like a game mechanic forum. Not many people would look at it, and we would miss potential input. I support that worthy research topic be moved to Guide forum to avoid their disappearance, but so far, I have seen none (there are some worthy topic, but too often the case get polluted by too many divergent input.. and it's not often conclusive... And it does not always look right anyway...). I am rather demanding

Louis,

[Morat]

The main hall was good enough for MTW, and when some specific need arised (PBM, Guides...), specific forum were created.

Would this not qualify as a specific need?

I am not sure I like a game mechanic forum. Not many people would look at it, and we would miss potential input.

We agree on this point. Perhaps there should be permenant links thread between the two forums, similar to the one therotter has produced?

I support that worthy research topic be moved to Guide forum to avoid their disappearance, but so far, I have seen none (there are some worthy topic, but too often the case get polluted by too many divergent input.. and it's not often conclusive... And it does not always look right anyway...).

Well, YMMV, it seems. I've seen a number of them that have helped my improve my gameplay immensely. Try looking in therotter's thread here:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=38742

I think that it is the threads linked to there that Tamur is talking about moving to a new forum, although I may be wrong. If you've not seen them, does that not mean that Tamur has a point about these threads getting lost?