Forum design is questionable.

#1 - Sept. 24, 2012, 4:08 p.m.

Hey, this forum design has been bothering me so much, I’m wondering if anyone feels the same way. As an artist, focusing on graphic design, I can’t help but wonder who designed this forum and why they choose to sacrifice standard features and functionality for this minimalistic approach. Why did they make it such a challenge to post and image in the body of your topic? It’s nearly impossible to have a cool signature because the signature form only allows 100 characters. I’ve spent some time trying to fit an image or signature into the forms to no avail. Maybe there’s a way, but I havn’t found it.

Forum designers, I know how you have your reasons for trying something different and being minimalistic, but you didn’t have to remove the most basic and essential features that most forums offer. The overall website design is great, but the forums should stick to the industry standard design, because it works. The forums were not ready when the game was released, and I think it was because they were still working on the design and layout. The outcome is overdesigned and lacking functionality. I have a feeling I’m not the only one who misses the standard forum layout that we all know and love.

#7 - Sept. 25, 2012, 3:56 p.m.

Tortoished.7986:
Hey, this forum design has been bothering me so much, I’m wondering if anyone feels the same way. As an artist, focusing on graphic design, I can’t help but wonder who designed this forum and why they choose to sacrifice standard features and functionality for this minimalistic approach. Why did they make it such a challenge to post and image in the body of your topic? It’s nearly impossible to have a cool signature because the signature form only allows 100 characters. I’ve spent some time trying to fit an image or signature into the forms to no avail. Maybe there’s a way, but I havn’t found it.

Forum designers, I know how you have your reasons for trying something different and being minimalistic, but you didn’t have to remove the most basic and essential features that most forums offer. The overall website design is great, but the forums should stick to the industry standard design, because it works. The forums were not ready when the game was released, and I think it was because they were still working on the design and layout. The outcome is overdesigned and lacking functionality. I have a feeling I’m not the only one who misses the standard forum layout that we all know and love.

Some of the “standard features” that you may have come to regard as “essential” for forums are intrusive and easily abused by players. We prefer to have our moderation team working on moderating discussion content. We would rather have our resources focused on keeping an eye on whether people are posting in a respectful tone, whether people are being constructive with their discussions/comments, etc. rather than on spending their time moderating forum signatures, images, or disruptive uses of text.

We have disabled image-based signatures on purpose. Only text is permitted for forum signatures.

We have removed most advanced font formatting features such as changing text colors or sizes on purpose, because those features are often abused on the forums.

As for images, they can be attached to your post. I understand that this is not ideal for certain purposes/edge cases, however attaching images to a forum post will work for the vast majority of forum users.