Better communication and update frequency

[GrimCamel]

I'm very willing with discussing alternative ways for my suggestion to work out to elaborate on the topic, things that you like and dislike about the suggestion, constructive critisism, pros and cons but please leave the "this cannot be done due to -" unless your an admin and actually posess this information.
Please stick to topic and be professional. I don't want to fight anyone because our opinions differ.
Thank you

[BlackOak2]

I love this game but it's downfall is the long time between updates and the communication. Even if updates like bug fixes are made in the quiet they need to be advertised so the community can see the developer activity. To keep the community active, updates also needs to be more frequent. If it'd coders you lack, advertise it, artists? Advertise it. Money? There's a millions of ways to earn money to fund the site.
I don't need to tell you twice that your forum and chat feature is out of date by at least a decade, I'm sure that's in the roadmap somewhere but your community needs to know when things happen not that they're planned. I've played this game for about two years now and I see great potential if enough time are spent on game development. During my time the only big feature has been the tobiano and it still lacks completion.
Hire some scheduled coders or artists to keep the site moving forward in a more reasonable pace.
I've even contacted you in the past about a artist position to keep you going but that's irrelevant to the subject.
Even if there's no updates rolled out at the moment, we as a community need site devs and admin to stay in contact through newsletter and inform the playerbase about the current situation and what to expect this month. Weekly updates is the goal to strive for to keep a satisfied community but even monthly would be appreciated.
We need improvement and we need to know you're serious about this game and making it complete beta stage.
*mic drop *

My opinion.
Updates: Although there is a long time between updates and it has me sitting on pins and needles at times, I'm favorable to the long spans between each one for the following reasons:
First, the game is not complete. By taking time on each update to get the images, game responses and interactions correct, I feel my personal game won't be interrupted on 'unforeseen' bugs and issues. I've spent time on many other games and these 'unforeseen' bugs and issues have been very commonplace and at the very least annoying when the knowledge behind them is that, if the people responsible for writing and bug-checking them had just opened their eyes, they would have seen it before release.
Second, I can take my time learning the new update before I'm hit with another and so can the community. Once the community has learned the intricacies of the new update, we can also aid our other members and our new members to the new update. It gives us plenty of time to adapt, absorb and stride forth. This is extremely important.
Third, I'm not inclined to miss much if I take a month or a couple months hiatus, especially if life hits hard and long. But this isn't really crucial in the long run.
Fourth (and last at the moment), for the most part, these updates are huge, affecting many, if not all parts of the game. Even with thorough pre-release testing, locating all the bugs is next to impossible, so letting time pass between one update and the next is extremely important to locate and fix all the potential bugs so that it doesn't snowball into the next update... eventually left alone, bugs can take down entire programs.
Perhaps it would be nice to see the schedule for upcoming, or currently-being-worked-on projects: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0HhYF ... V6aGs/view
I'm not sure if that is still being used.

Chat & Forum: I actually like the way the forum is presently set up. Although I would want to add perhaps more categories, as an example, maybe break down the studs forum into: Pony, Horse, Draft, Cross, but who really knows if that would make finding what we want quicker or not. Often when I search for what I'm looking for, my chosen keywords are bounced back because there's just too many returns. That's really my only complaint for forums.
For chat, although the chat program appears older-looking and I have to type in my commands when I want to 'whisper' to somebody, I really don't see much of an upside to changing chat to another program, so I'm not sure what the problem is with chat... I suppose just it's look? Perhaps it would be nice if we could integrate into chat a little more, for instance, if we put a horse id number into chat, it pulls up the horse in chat for us. But I don't know if this is necessary, though it might be nice, or how much work that would be, or if it's even possible. Chat is a nice feature, but I see little reason to want to change it. That being said, most of my nonchalance toward the chat could very well be because I don't use it regularly.

In conclusion: We have two admins that work on this game in their free time. From what I recall, they both have full-time jobs and this game has been a labor of love from them. It comes down to their decision if they choose to put more money and effort into this game by hiring other employees or quitting their jobs. Personally, since I would probably be this way, I would want to spend my own efforts on a game to get it right, not trust somebody else with such things, but that's my own feelings.
I am happy with the set as it now is. Maybe I would like a quick: upcoming.... (whatever it might be). We get that, usually within the month of a new release (unless some troubling bugs suddenly pop up). It might be nice to hear about what's scheduled next. New tack is scheduled next... we recently had Tom ask us our opinions for wearables.

I suppose that's all I have to say. I wasn't going to bother commenting at all, not because I didn't care, but because the suggestions did come across as a little more complaining. That and we have had other requests for this. And also because I do like the way the game is set up and my comments for this post would rather have the game remain how it is and not agree to the changes offered.
So those are my reasons why I must disagree with your offered changes.

They have a point: you did come across a little rough. But also, you have a point, this is supposed to be an open place to discuss possible changes. I hope we can settle down again and offer opinions as our community does best: insightful, questioning and amiable. But perhaps I am a little late.

[GrimCamel]

I love this game but it's downfall is the long time between updates and the communication. Even if updates like bug fixes are made in the quiet they need to be advertised so the community can see the developer activity. To keep the community active, updates also needs to be more frequent. If it'd coders you lack, advertise it, artists? Advertise it. Money? There's a millions of ways to earn money to fund the site.
I don't need to tell you twice that your forum and chat feature is out of date by at least a decade, I'm sure that's in the roadmap somewhere but your community needs to know when things happen not that they're planned. I've played this game for about two years now and I see great potential if enough time are spent on game development. During my time the only big feature has been the tobiano and it still lacks completion.
Hire some scheduled coders or artists to keep the site moving forward in a more reasonable pace.
I've even contacted you in the past about a artist position to keep you going but that's irrelevant to the subject.
Even if there's no updates rolled out at the moment, we as a community need site devs and admin to stay in contact through newsletter and inform the playerbase about the current situation and what to expect this month. Weekly updates is the goal to strive for to keep a satisfied community but even monthly would be appreciated.
We need improvement and we need to know you're serious about this game and making it complete beta stage.
*mic drop *

My opinion.
Updates: Although there is a long time between updates and it has me sitting on pins and needles at times, I'm favorable to the long spans between each one for the following reasons:
First, the game is not complete. By taking time on each update to get the images, game responses and interactions correct, I feel my personal game won't be interrupted on 'unforeseen' bugs and issues. I've spent time on many other games and these 'unforeseen' bugs and issues have been very commonplace and at the very least annoying when the knowledge behind them is that, if the people responsible for writing and bug-checking them had just opened their eyes, they would have seen it before release.
Second, I can take my time learning the new update before I'm hit with another and so can the community. Once the community has learned the intricacies of the new update, we can also aid our other members and our new members to the new update. It gives us plenty of time to adapt, absorb and stride forth. This is extremely important.
Third, I'm not inclined to miss much if I take a month or a couple months hiatus, especially if life hits hard and long. But this isn't really crucial in the long run.
Fourth (and last at the moment), for the most part, these updates are huge, affecting many, if not all parts of the game. Even with thorough pre-release testing, locating all the bugs is next to impossible, so letting time pass between one update and the next is extremely important to locate and fix all the potential bugs so that it doesn't snowball into the next update... eventually left alone, bugs can take down entire programs.
Perhaps it would be nice to see the schedule for upcoming, or currently-being-worked-on projects: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0HhYF ... V6aGs/view
I'm not sure if that is still being used.

Chat & Forum: I actually like the way the forum is presently set up. Although I would want to add perhaps more categories, as an example, maybe break down the studs forum into: Pony, Horse, Draft, Cross, but who really knows if that would make finding what we want quicker or not. Often when I search for what I'm looking for, my chosen keywords are bounced back because there's just too many returns. That's really my only complaint for forums.
For chat, although the chat program appears older-looking and I have to type in my commands when I want to 'whisper' to somebody, I really don't see much of an upside to changing chat to another program, so I'm not sure what the problem is with chat... I suppose just it's look? Perhaps it would be nice if we could integrate into chat a little more, for instance, if we put a horse id number into chat, it pulls up the horse in chat for us. But I don't know if this is necessary, though it might be nice, or how much work that would be, or if it's even possible. Chat is a nice feature, but I see little reason to want to change it. That being said, most of my nonchalance toward the chat could very well be because I don't use it regularly.

In conclusion: We have two admins that work on this game in their free time. From what I recall, they both have full-time jobs and this game has been a labor of love from them. It comes down to their decision if they choose to put more money and effort into this game by hiring other employees or quitting their jobs. Personally, since I would probably be this way, I would want to spend my own efforts on a game to get it right, not trust somebody else with such things, but that's my own feelings.
I am happy with the set as it now is. Maybe I would like a quick: upcoming.... (whatever it might be). We get that, usually within the month of a new release (unless some troubling bugs suddenly pop up). It might be nice to hear about what's scheduled next. New tack is scheduled next... we recently had Tom ask us our opinions for wearables.

I suppose that's all I have to say. I wasn't going to bother commenting at all, not because I didn't care, but because the suggestions did come across as a little more complaining. That and we have had other requests for this. And also because I do like the way the game is set up and my comments for this post would rather have the game remain how it is and not agree to the changes offered.
So those are my reasons why I must disagree with your offered changes.

They have a point: you did come across a little rough. But also, you have a point, this is supposed to be an open place to discuss possible changes. I hope we can settle down again and offer opinions as our community does best: insightful, questioning and amiable. But perhaps I am a little late.

Great reply, welcome to the discussion. Im currently on my phone so forgive my potential typos.
Its a great point that some ppl likes to take time to learn the updates and on some point I agree as well for the example the tobiano update. Im still learning and looking for secrets about it and its been out a while now. However I would never suggest every update to be huge. Just an announced bugfix counts as an update in my book. I love reading patch notes.
Your statement regarding bugs didnt mention its impossible for devs to launch any 100% bugfree update since there is endless amount of devices, browsers etc that the community uses. There wilö always be bugs more or less. Ive seen some during my time the most common one thats been here for as long as I played it the messy horse pictures that sometimes appears but its not game breaking.
When I started this thread I didnt k ow they were a two man studio and that makes their pace a bit more understandable and Im would never suggest them to quit their jobs for this project but I would still recommend getting some more ppl on the project but thats up to them.

I agree with your chat suggestions. It would be great to show off your horse in chat. It would be great if it supported pictures but that might be difficult to monitor. Another fun thing ive seen other sites and games do is supporting personalised colors which is also a pretty neat feature.
And for the forum, great suggestions. Some ppl are very used to this type of forum. I first encountered it in 2009 and I thought the settings layout was complicated and I think it could have a more efficent layout. From this thread experience alone I as a thread creator felt very powerless in my own thread then topic side tracked and things got aimed at me personally. Theres no option to block someone from your thread or delete statements, I can only make said users go invisible for me and that dont feel great as I am the one hosting this thread and I want to see what is going on. Another thing is I wont get notified about activity unless qouted which is also a downside as a thread creator unless I missed a feature or two.
Anyway, thank you for posting your opinion on the matter

[Baranduin Brewster]

Another thing is I wont get notified about activity unless qouted which is also a downside as a thread creator unless I missed a feature or two.

You can always subscribed to the topic to get notified of activity.

[BlackOak2]

Great reply, welcome to the discussion. Im currently on my phone so forgive my potential typos.
Its a great point that some ppl likes to take time to learn the updates and on some point I agree as well for the example the tobiano update. Im still learning and looking for secrets about it and its been out a while now. However I would never suggest every update to be huge. Just an announced bugfix counts as an update in my book. I love reading patch notes.
Your statement regarding bugs didnt mention its impossible for devs to launch any 100% bugfree update since there is endless amount of devices, browsers etc that the community uses. There wilö always be bugs more or less. Ive seen some during my time the most common one thats been here for as long as I played it the messy horse pictures that sometimes appears but its not game breaking.
When I started this thread I didnt k ow they were a two man studio and that makes their pace a bit more understandable and Im would never suggest them to quit their jobs for this project but I would still recommend getting some more ppl on the project but thats up to them.

I agree with your chat suggestions. It would be great to show off your horse in chat. It would be great if it supported pictures but that might be difficult to monitor. Another fun thing ive seen other sites and games do is supporting personalised colors which is also a pretty neat feature.
And for the forum, great suggestions. Some ppl are very used to this type of forum. I first encountered it in 2009 and I thought the settings layout was complicated and I think it could have a more efficent layout. From this thread experience alone I as a thread creator felt very powerless in my own thread then topic side tracked and things got aimed at me personally. Theres no option to block someone from your thread or delete statements, I can only make said users go invisible for me and that dont feel great as I am the one hosting this thread and I want to see what is going on. Another thing is I wont get notified about activity unless qouted which is also a downside as a thread creator unless I missed a feature or two.
Anyway, thank you for posting your opinion on the matter

Baranduin is correct. You can subscribe, you can also bookmark. I've done both, that's why some of my replies to certain topics is within a minute or two of another's posting.

One of the things that must be kept in mind when monitoring one's post is to remember the type of community we all have worked hard to build and maintain. It can take a few words to spur on or a few words to settle down. But I digress.
I would agree with personalizing colors in chat. It would make reading certain people's posts quicker, especially when we get a lot of people in chat. But there is always the option of creating a private chat window for that.

I may be wrong with this, but I think most of the behind-the-scenes work right now is not on bugs but on the next update. The nice thing with this game is that the bugs we do find during release, are most often just a couple, and all the same across the board. Once the bug comes to light, there is a bug post about it, we get to fill our information into the post (if we remember and are affected by it), and depending on how involved it is, it gets fixed within a week, two weeks, or sometime under a month. It seems many of the bugs we do come across are a little involved to fix... or maybe that's involved to hunt down, I'm not sure.
And of course, no release is ever bug free everywhere, however some of those bugs are less bugs and more overlooked 'make-it-work' sections with whatever. But if the same type of bug comes out every release, then it just makes the game and game developers look bad. The messy horse pictures, I'm assuming you mean the text horses 'image rendering', this isn't a bug as it's just the render machines get choked up. It's kind of funny picturing them like cartoons, the machines coughing away, spitting 2-D horse pictures on the ground. But there really is no fix for that. If the renderers get backlogged, there isn't too much to be done. When we have new image-type releases, our admins turn on more renderers to help with the load, but that doesn't necessarily fix the backlog, it just helps get through it quicker. Long story short, rendering issues is arguably, likely the biggest problem the game has (though I don't think of it as a problem). But with the ability to see our horses grow up, age and change on a turn-by-turn basis, I accept the occasional render issue as simply a 'technology hasn't yet progressed far enough'.

I do like being able to block people from forums, but none of these forums are 'owned' by our own farms, so I shrug my shoulders and ignore such statements or find facts to back my words up or even 'see their point' and accept what they say. It is important to be able to acquiesce at times when the need arises. But that's really neither here or there.

Perhaps if you have something specific that you have experienced and seen well-used and accepted by other communities, you can do some research on it and lend your finding to the community. This way, the community can read up on it, do some follow-up research and give their opinions on it. Insofar as our admins run the game, they are very much attuned to us as a community and they do try to give us what we want. There may be many parts of the game that may be 'broke' in some players eyes, but unless there are enough players it disturbs during gameplay, it will not be mainstreamed in front of something that the community wants more (with the exception of bugs). A big example is the gelding feature. I'm sure all of us want geldings to be implemented (sterile mares as well), but there was a greater push for patterns to come into the game. Although geldings may make the game economy run perhaps more stable, and perhaps be a much easier and quicker implementation, we as a community, were more interested in getting patterns introduced.

And don't forget, tobiano wasn't the last update we received. After that it was breeding energy for stallions and coolers were introduced, then our annual Halloween, following that was the energy search. Next on the agenda will be our annual christmas release (holiday...) and the wearables (which may or may not be the very next release). Considering the releases, we've had a lot this year, but I'm taking into account the sheer size of the tobiano release.

If you have a specific idea of a format or program that may work better for the community, do some research on it and let us see exactly what you mean. I might be interested in a changed forum or chat format. It works for me now, but that doesn't mean something else wouldn't work better.

[GrimCamel]

-snip-

Baranduin is correct. You can subscribe, you can also bookmark. I've done both, that's why some of my replies to certain topics is within a minute or two of another's posting.

One of the things that must be kept in mind when monitoring one's post is to remember the type of community we all have worked hard to build and maintain. It can take a few words to spur on or a few words to settle down. But I digress.
I would agree with personalizing colors in chat. It would make reading certain people's posts quicker, especially when we get a lot of people in chat. But there is always the option of creating a private chat window for that.

I may be wrong with this, but I think most of the behind-the-scenes work right now is not on bugs but on the next update. The nice thing with this game is that the bugs we do find during release, are most often just a couple, and all the same across the board. Once the bug comes to light, there is a bug post about it, we get to fill our information into the post (if we remember and are affected by it), and depending on how involved it is, it gets fixed within a week, two weeks, or sometime under a month. It seems many of the bugs we do come across are a little involved to fix... or maybe that's involved to hunt down, I'm not sure.
And of course, no release is ever bug free everywhere, however some of those bugs are less bugs and more overlooked 'make-it-work' sections with whatever. But if the same type of bug comes out every release, then it just makes the game and game developers look bad. The messy horse pictures, I'm assuming you mean the text horses 'image rendering', this isn't a bug as it's just the render machines get choked up. It's kind of funny picturing them like cartoons, the machines coughing away, spitting 2-D horse pictures on the ground. But there really is no fix for that. If the renderers get backlogged, there isn't too much to be done. When we have new image-type releases, our admins turn on more renderers to help with the load, but that doesn't necessarily fix the backlog, it just helps get through it quicker. Long story short, rendering issues is arguably, likely the biggest problem the game has (though I don't think of it as a problem). But with the ability to see our horses grow up, age and change on a turn-by-turn basis, I accept the occasional render issue as simply a 'technology hasn't yet progressed far enough'.

I do like being able to block people from forums, but none of these forums are 'owned' by our own farms, so I shrug my shoulders and ignore such statements or find facts to back my words up or even 'see their point' and accept what they say. It is important to be able to acquiesce at times when the need arises. But that's really neither here or there.

Perhaps if you have something specific that you have experienced and seen well-used and accepted by other communities, you can do some research on it and lend your finding to the community. This way, the community can read up on it, do some follow-up research and give their opinions on it. Insofar as our admins run the game, they are very much attuned to us as a community and they do try to give us what we want. There may be many parts of the game that may be 'broke' in some players eyes, but unless there are enough players it disturbs during gameplay, it will not be mainstreamed in front of something that the community wants more (with the exception of bugs). A big example is the gelding feature. I'm sure all of us want geldings to be implemented (sterile mares as well), but there was a greater push for patterns to come into the game. Although geldings may make the game economy run perhaps more stable, and perhaps be a much easier and quicker implementation, we as a community, were more interested in getting patterns introduced.

And don't forget, tobiano wasn't the last update we received. After that it was breeding energy for stallions and coolers were introduced, then our annual Halloween, following that was the energy search. Next on the agenda will be our annual christmas release (holiday...) and the wearables (which may or may not be the very next release). Considering the releases, we've had a lot this year, but I'm taking into account the sheer size of the tobiano release.

If you have a specific idea of a format or program that may work better for the community, do some research on it and let us see exactly what you mean. I might be interested in a changed forum or chat format. It works for me now, but that doesn't mean something else wouldn't work better.

Ah, I totally missed the subscribe option embedded in there but thanks for the heads up!
It's difficult for me to comment about what's going on behind the scenes as it is "going on behind the scenes" and I'm not sure how I would reply to your speculations whats going on behind the scenes either since you don't seem to be sure either, sorry.
And about bugs, yes that's exactly what I've been saying, no content can be guaranteed bug free no matter who developed it, they will appear and ofc I do agree with bugs should be fixed before moving on. As I mentioned, new updates doesn't have to include new content.
About the rendering, I'm not sure we are talking about the same bug, or we are and I'm just a bit lost haha! I think you're talking about the one where the horse itself fails to render and a lot of text appears? I've experienced this when using a slow or half functioning internet connection and I won't really blame the game for that since I know it's due to the connection. I'm thinking about when you take a picture of your horse, perfectly rendered and the picture comes out with lots of black lines sometimes messing up the entire picture and this seems to be a bit more random. Anyway, anything that isn't supposed to be a feature I would call a bug, fixable or not.

About blocking, yeah I just have a difficult time ignoring my own thread, I don't want to come across as abandoned but I think I could have been a bit more professional earlier in this thread.

And the tobiano update, no it wasn't the latest update I know but it was the biggest update during my time so I felt it was a good discussion point. It was a very appreciated update from my own experience.

And for forum codes. I've only got experiencing coding pretty simple html so I can't give a coder's perspective on this one I'm afraid but I can highlight forum designs from other sites. One that I really think deserves a mention is www.chameleonforums.com/ who switched out their really old forum designs a couple of years back and gave it a modern and user friendly re-design. The forum is wide, have easily distinguished categories, features recent topics on the home page, makes it possible to support claims and statements by "liking" it and view other's likes, the text editor looks more modern, numbered replies. Their forum also goes along perfectly with the rest of the site style.
Toyhou.se also got a pretty good wide design and large user thumbnails and a side menu for easy browsing through the forum sections. Their text editor have less buttons for coding but does still support full html designs. What the forum lacks might be a section for recent topics which would be useful.
Lioden.com also deserves a mention. Their forum design is a bit slimmer and doesn't support as much html as TH but their layout feels very site personal and easy to navigate. Their suggestion forums also have a support and no support feature that lets the users vote for suggested ideas which is also a great feature. They also feature recent topics and posts and have a forum section dedicated for artists who tries to make a living outside the game's currencies. Their forum goes extremely well with the rest of the site layout.
https://community.blackdesertonline.com also have a decent forum structure which looks a bit more classic yet modern. Forum statistics displayed on the right with your forum content, latest profile posts/status and new forum posts. They have a reputation system which allows community to upvote good content which gives the poster good reputation which makes it easy to spot helpful members/helpers. They also allow you to tag your topics for easy searching

That was just a few from a great variety of communities which forums I've used a enjoyed with mentions of a few good features and design. Ofc, everybodies opinions differ with everything.

[BlackOak2]

Ah, I totally missed the subscribe option embedded in there but thanks for the heads up!
It's difficult for me to comment about what's going on behind the scenes as it is "going on behind the scenes" and I'm not sure how I would reply to your speculations whats going on behind the scenes either since you don't seem to be sure either, sorry.
And about bugs, yes that's exactly what I've been saying, no content can be guaranteed bug free no matter who developed it, they will appear and ofc I do agree with bugs should be fixed before moving on. As I mentioned, new updates doesn't have to include new content.

I have nothing more to say about this.

About the rendering, I'm not sure we are talking about the same bug, or we are and I'm just a bit lost haha! I think you're talking about the one where the horse itself fails to render and a lot of text appears? I've experienced this when using a slow or half functioning internet connection and I won't really blame the game for that since I know it's due to the connection. I'm thinking about when you take a picture of your horse, perfectly rendered and the picture comes out with lots of black lines sometimes messing up the entire picture and this seems to be a bit more random. Anyway, anything that isn't supposed to be a feature I would call a bug, fixable or not.

So not the rendering text issue. The lines - looks like a bunch of spiderweb-like lines over the horse. This is from some browsers or some pc, browser combinations. I occasionally get it on my horses (windows 7, avast safebrowser & firefox), and sometimes I don't. Then there is the great, big shadow that develops as we train horses, this is linked to firefox (certain versions, not all) and is a firefox issue, our admins can't fix that, firefox company (mozilla) has to fix it. They have been notified (quite some time ago). Chrome reportedly doesn't have this issue, and I think also IE doesn't as well. I don't recall others.
Either of these issues are annoying at best and a bit devastating at worst when we can't take a quality picture of our horses. There are certain workarounds, I suppose for the moment this is a necessary evil?

About blocking, yeah I just have a difficult time ignoring my own thread, I don't want to come across as abandoned but I think I could have been a bit more professional earlier in this thread.

And the tobiano update, no it wasn't the latest update I know but it was the biggest update during my time so I felt it was a good discussion point. It was a very appreciated update from my own experience.

Nothing to say here either. Except that yes, the tobiano update is a good discussion point.

And for forum codes. I've only got experiencing coding pretty simple html so I can't give a coder's perspective on this one I'm afraid but I can highlight forum designs from other sites. One that I really think deserves a mention is http://www.chameleonforums.com/ who switched out their really old forum designs a couple of years back and gave it a modern and user friendly re-design. The forum is wide, have easily distinguished categories, features recent topics on the home page, makes it possible to support claims and statements by "liking" it and view other's likes, the text editor looks more modern, numbered replies. Their forum also goes along perfectly with the rest of the site style.
Toyhou.se also got a pretty good wide design and large user thumbnails and a side menu for easy browsing through the forum sections. Their text editor have less buttons for coding but does still support full html designs. What the forum lacks might be a section for recent topics which would be useful.
Lioden.com also deserves a mention. Their forum design is a bit slimmer and doesn't support as much html as TH but their layout feels very site personal and easy to navigate. Their suggestion forums also have a support and no support feature that lets the users vote for suggested ideas which is also a great feature. They also feature recent topics and posts and have a forum section dedicated for artists who tries to make a living outside the game's currencies. Their forum goes extremely well with the rest of the site layout.
https://community.blackdesertonline.com also have a decent forum structure which looks a bit more classic yet modern. Forum statistics displayed on the right with your forum content, latest profile posts/status and new forum posts. They have a reputation system which allows community to upvote good content which gives the poster good reputation which makes it easy to spot helpful members/helpers. They also allow you to tag your topics for easy searching

That was just a few from a great variety of communities which forums I've used a enjoyed with mentions of a few good features and design. Ofc, everybodies opinions differ with everything.

This part is very helpful for our community. This allows us to cruise through other sites' forums and take a look at the way they're set up. I will be looking over some of these myself and may have some further comments.
The comments I have now:
We've previously discussed getting thumbs up/thumbs down on site. We have this ability through facebook (maybe some others) for our horses. I don't use facebook but our admins do.
I would like to upgrade our suggestions section to have simply like/dislike choices when we don't have anything else to add to the topic (I used it very often when I played Howrse).
We do have a recent topics on our homepage, but I could agree having an expanded version of this in our forum setup. However, we do have the unread section which I find quite handy. What I might like added, is the ability to exclude certain forums from the unread choice. Maybe there is and I've missed it though.

Thank you for doing this bit of research. I hope our community joins in to take a look at your forum suggestion sites and we can discuss this further.
I might even add for you to update your first post to include your forum research and your topic headline.
I'm bookmarking this so I can look through these other forums a bit better.

[GrimCamel]

So not the rendering text issue. The lines - looks like a bunch of spiderweb-like lines over the horse. This is from some browsers or some pc, browser combinations. I occasionally get it on my horses (windows 7, avast safebrowser & firefox), and sometimes I don't. Then there is the great, big shadow that develops as we train horses, this is linked to firefox (certain versions, not all) and is a firefox issue, our admins can't fix that, firefox company (mozilla) has to fix it. They have been notified (quite some time ago). Chrome reportedly doesn't have this issue, and I think also IE doesn't as well. I don't recall others.
Either of these issues are annoying at best and a bit devastating at worst when we can't take a quality picture of our horses. There are certain workarounds, I suppose for the moment this is a necessary evil?

Smart reply layout you did there, I will try to do the same to make things more simpler this time around But yes the first one mentioned is the one I'm refering to. I've encountered it on my laptop a fair few times, win 10 (prob not updated either) and with Chrome but it is as you say, It's not game breaking for my part at least.
Since I use chrome I have not encountered that firefox bug at least. It's a shame the issue is on their side since theyre such a popular browser you would like to think they stick up to date :/

This part is very helpful for our community. This allows us to cruise through other sites' forums and take a look at the way they're set up. I will be looking over some of these myself and may have some further comments.
The comments I have now:
We've previously discussed getting thumbs up/thumbs down on site. We have this ability through facebook (maybe some others) for our horses. I don't use facebook but our admins do.
I would like to upgrade our suggestions section to have simply like/dislike choices when we don't have anything else to add to the topic (I used it very often when I played Howrse).
We do have a recent topics on our homepage, but I could agree having an expanded version of this in our forum setup. However, we do have the unread section which I find quite handy. What I might like added, is the ability to exclude certain forums from the unread choice. Maybe there is and I've missed it though.

I'm with you on all points here, great suggestions. It would certainly add to convenience to have the new topics section either moved or show up agian in the forum itself, more inclusive or not.

Thank you for doing this bit of research. I hope our community joins in to take a look at your forum suggestion sites and we can discuss this further.
I might even add for you to update your first post to include your forum research and your topic headline.
I'm bookmarking this so I can look through these other forums a bit better.

Thank you! I will probably try to edit the original post to be more inclusive and since some found it a bit bashing I could try to write it as more neutral which was my intentions to begin with.

[BlackOak2]

Smart reply layout you did there, I will try to do the same to make things more simpler this time around But yes the first one mentioned is the one I'm refering to. I've encountered it on my laptop a fair few times, win 10 (prob not updated either) and with Chrome but it is as you say, It's not game breaking for my part at least.
Since I use chrome I have not encountered that firefox bug at least. It's a shame the issue is on their side since theyre such a popular browser you would like to think they stick up to date :/

I don't know if it'll help or not, but for the lines, you can attempt to try changing the resolution on your laptop. I suspect it won't do anything, but you never know.
It is a shame with firefox and we all feel the same way.

I'm with you on all points here, great suggestions. It would certainly add to convenience to have the new topics section either moved or show up agian in the forum itself, more inclusive or not.

I could agree with this.

Thank you! I will probably try to edit the original post to be more inclusive and since some found it a bit bashing I could try to write it as more neutral which was my intentions to begin with.

Sounds Great!
Sometimes how we say things in our head is never how they sound coming out of our mouths. We are all guilty of sounding harsh or negative when we don't mean to at one time or another. And what's worse is that the world we live in, teaches us to be defensive, because otherwise we can't survive.
Thankfully, however, our community here works hard to be... NOT what the rest of the world expects is the norm.

******************************************************

Forum Topic Suggestions Changes - My Opinion for this topic.

I've taken some time to cruise the links you offered. Here are my opinions:

Toyhou.se: I agree with what you said about the 'good wide design and large user thumbnails'. However, this site wasn't very helpful for me. It's nicely set up, but I think it's too far removed from the type of site we are, to be of much use if we consider adopting some of it's setups. However, maybe I overlooked some things.

Lioden: I liked the format setup for this site's forums. It's visually appealing. The thing I liked best and perhaps we may consider adopting for our site, is the fact that each forum has a list of the most recent topics displayed in the front page of the forums board page: http://www.lioden.com/boards.php

BlackDesertOnline: This forum is quite a bit more massive than ours is. So having it broken down a lot more like it is, certainly makes sense. It's set up alright. It comes across as basic to me, as you said 'looks a bit more classic yet modern', it seems very simple, but has been modernized with uniformly updated graphics and colors. This site was nice to look at, but didn't really give me any additional ideas, except to visualize how large our own forum might one day become. I have mixed feelings about the good reputation voting. I like the idea of it, and I think it will really help our site, but at the same time, I don't want any singular player to be mass-pinged for help, just because they appear to be the 'best' at something. We are a community and we work to build up each one of our players to in a relatively short time become helpful members to others. However, I do like the ability to click on any person who posted and a pop-up shows their information. It's quite nice instead of being redirected to another page with their information, like we have here. However, I think I'd still like access to that redirected member-profile page.

ChameleonForums: What I like about this forum board is the ability to close certain front topics. I think that's just a nicety for a forum like ours, it's just not big enough in my opinion to warrant something like that just yet. I also like the fact that they appear to be able to make tags for their topics (after re-reading your posts about this site, I realize you said this as well for blackdesert, I didn't immediately notice that, but I still agree). If we had that ability then perhaps searching our forums may provide better search results, right now that's my biggest frustration with our forums. That being said, I'd like the ability to vote off certain tags that are irrelevant to a topic. I also like the 'click to expand' ability for long posts (in this case, I was looking at a quote or reply in a post). That would be a nice feature to be added to our forum. Often times, a reply is quoted and (especially for guides or in my case, my color studies), it makes a relatively short reply, super lengthy.

I couldn't look at the posting (I wasn't going to sign up just for that experience), so I'll have to take you at your word of the posting abilities. There are some positives that could add to our forums. But what I liked most wasn't so much changes in the forum layouts, but additions to our forum as it now stands.
Perhaps I'm just too much of an 'if it isn't broke, don't fix it' type of a person? Regardless, those are my opinions on the subject.

[Tom]

We already used Discord internally for our beta testers to communicate with us so we have now launched a Patreon where you can sign up to use it to chat with us and also see updates and future releases. Hopefully this will also increase funding for the game to help us develop it more. Thank you.