That should clear up everyone's questions, right? Good ...
As a development team and as a company, we know that the forums are extremely important to some of you, and we know that some of you have put a lot (!!!!) of effort into building up the community here, especially those who have written the more creative poetic stuff. C'mon, how many of you have > 5,000 posts, raise your hands. That amount of effort is *staggering*. Seriously, I think the highest post count I've seen was ~8400? Over 2.5 years, that'd be like 10 posts EVERY DAY since AG2 launched.
The effort of migrating that much data from AG2 to AG3 is almost as staggering, since the guy who wrote the AG2 forum software didn't make it terribly efficient, and the way we're linking accounts, etc., between the two systems might cause problems. Trying to migrate it to AG3 will be a pretty big job, and it will probably fall in my lap since I'm sorta the database guru around here, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's up to me whether I want to do it or not. If Dan says do it, I do it.
Whether we start over, and wipe everything, and build a new forum engine, or implement someone else's forum software, remains to be discussed internally because it's not a critical feature for us yet. That doesn't mean it's not important to us, it just means we have to get core features working like, y'know, logging in.
Will we migrate old posts into the new forum software? It depends whether we can find an easy way to make the old forum data compatible. Nothing's *impossible* but it's also not practical for us to spend development time (read: dollars) for us to spend a big amount of effort trying to sort stuff out so it's all perfect and pristine.
If we start over with forum posts, will we archive the old forums? Again, nothing's impossible, but I can't answer that right now.
What will happen to your armor points for forum posts? Well, since armor points are also up in the air regarding the same sort of "wipe vs migrate" discussions, I can't answer that question right now either.
Please direct people asking about the future of AG2 forums to this thread if they start asking questions in other forums/threads. I'll post updates to this thread as I have more information.
Sadly, it seems that looking back on the forums via the Wayback Machine and other cache sites may not be an option as AG blocked the community from being crawlable
I tried to find TTICA via the Wayback Machine and I couldn't even access the main community page.
Which, of course, means if the forums get erased, they get erased for good. In other words, we'll never see any of our precious posts again.
That's why I'm going to screenshot and upload everything myself.
Will AG3 have buttons for editing posts, previewing posts, and a "subscribed threads" tab where you could see any new posts in threads you have posted in or manually subscribed to?
Will AG3 have buttons for editing posts, previewing posts, and a "subscribed threads" tab where you could see any new posts in threads you have posted in or manually subscribed to?
If only we had an admin here.
It would be foolish of them to not include those features. Most if not all modern forums have them.
i like it the way it is too but there is room for improvement, i've said it before and i'll say it again, there should be the option of sub-threads, like in the call of duty sticky have like a division for each call of duty game
There's no point in it. Making different threads for different topics (like your Call of Duty example) is what the forums are made for. Sub-threads would subsequently make it harder to keep track of for mods.
There is a point. There are specific topics that want to be discussed within the CoD thread, but you can't keep track of all of them because of how it's made, and you can't make individual threads regarding CoD because they'll get locked. In this current version of ArmorGames, yes, it'll be harder to keep track of. However if they update the forum features and moderator tools it'll be easy.
I think subthreads that are tagged in a similar way could actually work in keeping track of discussion topics instead of limiting a topic in one huge thread. That way, users could discuss more specific topics per subthread and if the forum features are optimized, other users will benefit from finding their specific topic of discussion within a group of subthreads easily. I really do hope for a reworking of the AG forums structure.
I think a good idea is to make a link in the toolbar at the top to find friends. also there should be a easier way to like a video because I know some people in real life that dont know how to favorite a game... Like at the top the heart should say "favorite" even though that people dont understand... just an option. for the people that are new also.
I think a subthread feature could be useful, but may end up making a thread more complicated than it needs to be. If there was a plan to make one I would suggest having it in a beta and having a poll to see if people enjoyed the feature or not.
I don't know if it was suggested already, but I think that AG3 forums should have a feature to allow users in their profile pages to keep track of their previous posts in a thread or at least just the thread link. Maybe something similar to an update system would be nice: if somebody responds to the same thread you posted in, you could opt for having certain levels of notifications on your profile page. This could help people keep track of threads they create in a better way and allow users to be much more active in the forums.
P.S. Something completely different.. YES, please make the Community link much more noticeable, perhaps even changing the name to simply 'Forums'
