Half-Life Fallout: We need to change the forums - Half-Life Fallout

neva-, on 06 March 2010 - 12:42 PM, said:

I approve of this. Also, where are FF 13 and God of War 3 threads! HLF am disappoint.

This is a good idea. I noticed how bloated the forum menu was recently too.

I don't see the current system as a problem, though it would be REALLY cool if you can choose how everything is organized FOR YOUR ACCOUNT ONLY. For instance, you can combine forums into each other and name them whatever you want.

THATS the future. That way, everybody gets what they want.

Trueness, customization is the future.

Soon we'll be able to make our own custom everything. We'll all just walk around with 3D glasses on, replacing tennis balls with hand grenades, skateboards with hoverdecks, give every girl the body of a porn star. You could turn the world into a completely alien landscape, turn mountains into jelly and make chocolate rain, design your own trees, give animals human faces or vice versa. You could walk around being racially colorblind, or paint your house in any color instantly, just to see what it would be like.

...omg I have to invent this.

Mowgli, on 09 March 2010 - 01:08 AM, said:

sir, i would like to purchase said invention

RuSTeD, on 07 March 2010 - 10:16 PM, said:

If there is a FF 13 thread. I will rage.

RuSTeD, on 08 March 2010 - 12:16 AM, said:

"Oh why oh why isn't everything ready just the way I like it? Why isn't there someone who does all the work for me? Why do I have to type my posts myself and not have a secretary to do it for me? How come HLF doesn't give me a complimentary foot massage?"

You want a thread to exist? MAKE THE THREAD, you lazy slob!

I agree with what you are all saying, it's a tricky one really.

We don't have a massively active community (yet).... so having loads of sections, stretches us out more than what seems necessary.

However, I don't know about removing sections like TF2, L4D etc


If you post a list of what you think would be 'ideal' then we can all pitch in and discuss the new forum order and take it from there.

The "icon next to post type" is definitely the way to go. So, for example, in your "Valve" forum there's a little icon next to the thread to indicate what its about; Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress, etc. Same goes for "Other Gaming", a little icon to represent whether or not its PC, X360, PS3, DS, or PSP, and something to signify "general" or "multi platform".

Off Topic doesnt really need icons since everything goes.

A system where more threads exist in a single section of the forum should help increase post rates, and at least the illusion of an active community. The more you segment the forum the less likely people are to go into certain areas to post, thus lowering the likelihood of people posting in particular topics.

EDIT: Here's a rough mockup of how our current news forum channel would look with an icon system.



Essentially you'd have all Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, Steam, and Valve news collected in one forum, with the appropriate icon next to each thread. You'd have another channel for Other Gaming, with appropriate icons for systems, and a final channel for Off Topic discussion. Maybe one last channel for HLFallout specifics such as site news, bug reporting, organised games, etc.

EatChildren, on 09 March 2010 - 02:54 PM, said:

This.

EatChildren, on 09 March 2010 - 09:54 AM, said:

This is good, I like it. I do think that the icons should be a little bit smaller than your mockup; I think otherwise they'd feel a little bit obtrusive. That being said, that's pretty much exactly what I had envisioned, so I'm all for it.

yes, it makes more sense, nice job eat. I also agree with trapped, the icons are a bit too big, probably 10 - 20% reduction would be nice.

On another thought: didn't we have this system before? and people complained that it was all jumbled? lol (of course we had 10x more posts per day...)

Eat I agree with the icons. But as trapped said they need to be a bit smaller.

I like the idea of icons or avatars next to certain threads, either the most visited or news topics. I'm totally on board with that.

Credit to GUI for being awesome and suggesting it in the first place

Looks good,

What about the actual forum sections though? What do we need / don't need?