What we have:
- MPQ News and Announcements
- MPQ Tips and Guides
- Roster and Level Help
- Theories and Statistics
- MPQ General Discussion
- MPQ Character Discussion
- Speculation and Concepts
- MPQ Events, Tournaments, and Missions
- MPQ Alliances
- MPQ Suggestions and Feedback
- MPQ Bugs and Technical Issues
Some merits of the old days, it used to be that the Character/Event forums were solely technical. Character threads were about character stats, Event threads were about nodes, points, enemies, rewards, etc. We had Event Archives and Character Tier threads stickied at the top. I see that as a good thing we have lost, and it will influence my suggestions going forward (so you can start on the same page as me, to better understand my suggestions).
News & Announcements? Gone. It’s basically an archive. If you want to keep it as an archive, that’s cool, but News and Announcements need to be in the most highly trafficked area, which is near always going to be General Discussion. There’s merit to having a record of official announcements. But it’s basically an archive, and not a forum section (literally doesn’t meet the simple definition of a forum).
Tips and Guides has RALH and T&S under it. For organization purposes, I would remove them from the “Categories” page, and mention their contents in the blurb for Tips and Guides. Theories/Stats tend to lead into Tips/Guides, so I would leave them as one forum (though it might still be beneficial to have a stats sub-forum that serves as an archive).
Roster Help becomes a monthly sticky thread in General Discussion. It’d be like “July Roster Questions”, people ask a question, high traffic of General Discussion helps them get quick answers (and possibly several answers), once a month thread is replaced so it doesn’t get too long and bogged down. Might could even make it broader, make it a simple Q&A thread, and then it would catch other common threads as well (like everyone who asks questions about Kaecilius each time Strange Sights is run, or every time people think Sniper’s are broken because their passive doesn’t trigger Doctor Strange, instead of getting a few threads about those topics each time they roll around). First post might still point people towards other sections of the forums, so someone who has a more in-depth roster question might go to the Tips and Guides section seeking help.
Character Discussion is for character threads. I would say MOST of these threads should be the ones that say “***** Character Name ". Tier lists are okay, the stickied stuff seems fine, some group threads (like the Sinister Six thread and the "what 3s do you never use?" thread on the first page) are good. It’s a useful place for mass-changes like the Team-Up Tile thread. The thread on 3 Sell Price doesn’t go with that kind of technical info, nor does the roster help (they’d go in that Q&A thread). Mostly fine as-is. Same with the Speculation/Concept thread underneath it. Some of this will bleed over into General Discussion from time to time (like, speculation on new characters for the “Summer of Spidey” teased in the Doc Ock article is broad enough that I’d keep it in General Discussion, and the "Why 3 Star Lord isn’t trash" thread might work well in General Discussion, even if it technically belongs in the " Star Lord (Peter Quill)**” thread, and that may be somewhere that it might need case-by-case consideration).
Events used to be a great resource for technical information. The DDQ Crash threads, the bracket size threads, the PVE/PVP threads that are formatted “PV(E/P) Event Name (Start Date) to (End Date)” are good threads. Some stuff that’s been added there recently (like all the threads on scaling changes) are solid additions, less technical, more discussion, but that’s okay. All of the Kaecilius threads, the one about Magneto as a double agent, Bullseye/Moonstone frequency, etc, should either be in general discussion or the Q&A thread I suggested. They’re cluttering up the Events section, and that’s bad (and most of them wouldn’t be there if they weren’t moved from Gen Disc in the first place).
MPQ Alliance section… I’ll be 100% honest, my first year I played in an alliance I found in-game that just kinda worked, my second year I joined a more competitive alliance via a reddit thread, and have been with the family that evolved from that first group of 20 for over a year, serving as a commander for a good stretch of it, in one of the… well, I forget how many alliances we have, but it’s at least 7, and I think I always forget one, so probably 8. I’ve never been to this section of the forums. So I can’t say where it should go. I don’t see a reason it needs to exist other than to keep recruitment posts from cluttering up other areas. I have no idea how much traffic this section gets, so I can’t say if it’s helping or not. For organizational purposes, it might make the Categories less cluttered to put Alliances under the Tips/Guides section, but that might make Alliance threads harder to find for new players. So I have some theoretical rambling here, but no real suggestions, because I just don’t know this section that well.
Suggestions and Feedback are tricky. We give suggestions and feedback in all areas of the forum, from specific character/event threads to discussions in General Discussion. Hell, the speculation/concept area of character discussion is basically “character suggestions”. I think it’s a necessary evil that these threads exist organically, where they are started, and that the S&F subforum just goes away. Does a thread complaining about character availability in Vintage tokens go in General Discussion (because it’s a discussion), Characters (since we’re talking about availability), Events (since these tokens are only available during off-season events), or Feedback (since it’s a complaint, suggesting something is dissatisfying and needs evaluation/addressing?). I know I’m being a pedant about suggesting it could go in so many places (you’d NEVER put that thread in Events, for example), but my point is that it’s better to let it grow and let the discussion evolve on its own, which will often mean letting it live in General Discussion so it gets healthy traffic for the discussion to thrive. It would make things harder for the devs to find in one neat place, but I believe the increase in discussion quality (by letting them live, and not killing them by moving them to a dead forum) would be worth it.
Bugs and Technical Issues, I’d roll these together. Maybe “MPQ Troubleshooting.” A place for when the game isn’t working properly. Help for technical problems, specific bugs could be in a sub-forum (these posts would 100% be the “Devs Aware” threads, to help aggregate data for bug-squishing, and if someone has a problem that is related to a bug, we link them to the specific bug thread). And MAYBE a “Troubleshooting” section could have a monthly thread for “Troubleshooting Needs of the MPQ Community”, and if I think there’s a particularly great discussion about changes to PVP in the Event subforum, I could post it here, to help the Devs aggregate meaningful discussion (you know, since I killed the feedback section in the previous paragraph).
So, TL;DR, JHawkInc’s Revised Forum Sections:
- MPQ General Discussion
- MPQ Tips, Guides, Theories, and Stats
- Character Discussion - Speculation Subforum
- Events
- MPQ Troubleshooting - Official Bugs Subforum
- MPQ Alliances?
The Q&A thread in Gen Disc would de-clutter a lot, and that would take us from 11 sections to 6, with possible sub-forums for data collection (stats in the Tip section, event history in the Event section, official bugs in Troubleshooting), reversed for Characters (keeping the speculation and fan made stuff separate from the official content).
I appreciate the work you’re trying to do to improve the forums. I’ve been a forum user across the internet for most of two decades, and have administrated my own forums during that time as well. I get the kind of hurdles that have to be jumped to keep things organized/functional, and I appreciate you putting in the effort to make this place the best it can be.
Also, I don’t know if it would be possible, but reverting to the old forum style would be nice. Nothing kills a forum faster than an unnecessary upgrade. Hell, it’s been almost a decade and you can still piss of D&D players by mentioning the word “Gleemax”, because of how horrible that forum upgrade was. Just being able to use the old pictures for AP and Character Icons would be worth it.
And anybody let me know if they think I’ve missed something, or if they see flaws in my outlines. I’ll be glad to explain where something would go in my design, or to update it to make sure it appropriately accommodates our needs (I mean, by “my design” I just mean “a summary of the stuff I’ve talked about”, it’s not sacred or infallible by any means, and suggestions/improvements will be gladly accepted!).
