RTW or Colloseum subforum suggestion

[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?

[Tamur]

Hmm, I like the idea of a forum which threads are moved into as reference. However, having modded at boards for NWN where we did this sort of thing, I do worry about the fact that the mods would suddenly have a significant increase in their workload.

A conundrum if there ever was one...

[Blodrast]

Louis, I have to disagree with you on the issue that there are hardly any threads discussing "technical" aspects of the game...there are quite a few, written by Tamur, Soulflame, Quietus, therother, and others that I may not remember right now. The fact that they are so hard to find and are very few in comparison to the rest of the threads only proves that something needs to be done about them.

Anyway, I agree with the idea that those threads could go into the Guides forum. They don't necessarily need a forum of their own.
The idea was to make them more accessible (or accessible at all, to be more precise. Currently most of them are as good as lost).

As for the amount of activity in the Guides forum, as far as MTW is concerned, at least, I've seen a serious amount of activity in it this very summer (i.e., a looong time after its release). I've only been here a short time, I know, but when I came in June the MTW Guides were few and far between. A _lot_ of stuff appeared during the summer. And I can give you specific examples if you like.
My point is that I don't believe the RTW guides forum will simply wither and die, just as the MTW one did not. On the contrary, it will probably take a while until people are experienced enough to produce guides for all the factions (do keep in mind that RTW is way more complex than MTW).
For the same complexity reason, I believe there are far more game mechanics issues than in previous TW games - I mean, if you only consider the 500k or so of text files, which do shed quite a bit of light on the game mechanics, there's a lof of issues that can be covered...
Since the game is more compex, the mechanics is more complex, and there will be more to discuss about it.

I agree with Tamur though, that if this is the solution that's gonna be adopted (i.e., have a specific place for that kind of threads, be it in an already existing forum (e.g. Guides) or their own forum), it looks like more work for mods.
A (partial) solution to this may be having people PM mods when a new thread that qualifies as "game mechanics" (or whatever you may choose to call it) appears, and all the mod has to do is move it him/her-self (without having to browse all posts all the time and keep track to see if this thread evolved into a technical one or not...).

Finally, I might well be wrong and you right, and there be a very low activity level or interest (or both) in such things (although things do not seem to indicate that right now). In that case, we'll only have the already existing great threads by the people I've mentioned above put in their own separate place, and they will server as great guides/info/whatever. Where's the harm in that ? If it ends there, it ends there. No sweat. But at least that very useful info is there for someone who _is_ interested in it, and is very unlikely to find it otherwise (please keep in mind the fact that search is not likely to be a feature...at least in the immediate future).


blodrast

[Blodrast]

someone mentioned an Archive forum: those already exist...
I'm not sure exactly what their purpose is, though, i.e. what kind of threads are supposed to go in there ?
The RTW Archive forum only has one thread in it...