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.
“GW2 takes everything you love about GW1” – M. O’Brien
“We just don’t want players to grind in GW2” – C. Johanson
“The most important thing in any game should be the player” – R. Soesbee
Ok I edited in some paragraphs. I’ll check out the reddit link, though I still want to hear some thoughts on the design, so I know I’m not some crazy artist and over analyzing things, which could be possible.
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 in 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.
Content Marketing Lead
Twitter: @ArenaNet, @GuildWars2
In-Game Name: Cm Regina Buenaobra
One would think you, as an artist focusing on graphic design, would appreciate a clean and attractive design that doesn’t impede the site’s actual content.
Just sayin’.
Hit level eighty
Priorities, what to do?
Spend hours with dye
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 in 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.
What about forum signatures, there is a way to allow people to have images in signatures and still control them. There are quite a few GW2 Signature generators out there, yet I can’t display one on the official forums? As Someone who has ran quite a few community forums I know there are ways you can easily limit signatures without too much moderation overhead. At the very least give us a way to pick a character with some basic information about the character in our signature.
Thank you for the reply ReginaBuenaobra, it’s nice to read the actual reasons behind the design coming from the team. I understand why the choices to limit content are based on user abuse, which is what I assumed. I also feel like it limits those of us who have no intention on abusing the tools. From my experience on forums across the web, the majority of users don’t use images and signatures to abuse or harass the community. I have seen those that do, but the moderators usually take care of inappropriate material rather quickly.
Corian and LittleZoe, as for the overall look and feel of the forums, I actually like the layout, font choices, and positioning. I was mainly commenting on the lack of tools and functions; Such as avatars, signatures, post count, forum ranks, and images in the body of the text. These are things that customize your forum posts and give them personality. I don’t expect the design team to read this and incorporate these things based on my opinion, but it’s something to think about.
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.
I’m glad. Signatures with pictures are usually obnoxiously over sized with gaudy/ugly/bright pictures of anime girls in them with big….eyes. I’m not saying that’s the kind of signature you’re after but those sort of signatures seem to be the norm.
I’m happy with text-only signatures. If we could use images, the current requests for image-based signatures would just change to “Please let us use bigger images!” until people got signatures measuring 1900×1200px.
The only thing that bothers me is the big empty white space below our names; it feels like this space was meant for some kind of feature that is still waiting implementation.
“I think that players are starting to mature past the point of wanting to be on that
treadmill, of being in that obvious pattern of every time I catch up you are going to
put another carrot in front of me” – Mike O’Brien right before Ascended weapons
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 in 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.
I strongly agree with Regina and in favor of keeping the forums this way also;
the simplicity keeps it easy to read, to the point, and very professional.
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 in 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.
I may just be spoiled by XenForo, but it would really be nice to at least track threads you were active in and be able to jump to the first new post since you were last on.
I may just be spoiled by XenForo, but it would really be nice to at least track threads you were active in and be able to jump to the first new post since you were last on.
You can. Just click on your name and hit the “find all posts by” option that pops up.
I like the design very much, somehow it’s much easier on the eyes than other forum designs. Not all of us are young gamers, dontcha know!
The one thing I miss is a “new posts” button. In gaming, if I happen to get inexplicably booted or experience some other sudden technical issue, I’ll think “I wonder if anyone else is experiencing this” and go to the game’s official forum to see. At times like that a “new posts” button is helpful.
I disagree with the ‘easy on the eyes’ sentiment of the above poster. I find the white background excessively bright, and it cause issues with my eyes adjusting when I switch between this forum and others that generally have a darker background.
I also find that the white background causes more eye strain, particularly at night when I have most the lights off in the house.
