Guild Wars 2

Relatively soon this forum will be 3 years old. Here are some things it’s STILL missing:

• A darker theme. White was the new black all the way back when the first Assassin’s Creed was released. The fad has moved on, and now this blindlingly white background doesn’t really cut it. We should have at least the option of using one darker theme. Ideally, we would have multiple themes to choose from.

• A search feature that actually works. Try searching “Revenant” for a laugh. This forum had a search feature that worked years ago, I have no idea how they broke it. And no, telling people to search through Google is not a fix, it’s just a crutch.

• An Ignore List. Another feature the forum had years ago, yet it was removed.

• A “Show ArenaNet posts” feature in topics. Again, the forum had this a while ago – when you opened a topic that had a dev post, you had the option of navigating directly to said post. No idea why that was removed.

• Time stamps on the topic list, so we know when was a topic last replied to by looking at the subforums. I think ArenaNet didn’t want to add this so people wouldn’t be able to quickly measure how active the forum is, but c’mon, that isn’t fooling anybody.

• Decent time stamps on each post. Posts either say “x time ago” or they list the month, day and hour, but not the year. If you set posts to show month/day/hour, you won’t know if you are reading a topic from 2015, 2014 or 2013.

• Decent text formatting options. Textile is a joke. We should at least be able to edit with a UI helping in doing so, even if we weren’t to have more formatting options.

In the original Guild Wars, ArenaNet did not have official forums. Instead, they used fansites to host, organize and moderate forums for the game. This allowed different communities to appear (the Guild Hall community was different from the GWGuru community that was different from the GWO community), but you know what else? All those forums had every feature mentioned above, while this, the official forum, doesn’t.

Some more things:

• Using the space below our names for something. All that empty space is just wasted, and currently it’s adding to the blinding white in the forum. Post count? Something fun, like forum titles? There’s a lot of potential, all of it more interesting than a white nothing.

• Game integration: want to know hours played? Achievement points? WvW rank? We all know real PvP happens in the forum, and giving people access to random information that is mostly useless but would lead to gloating and e-kitten would surely make things more interesting.

The search feature problem has been brought up time and time again. From what I understand, it is permanently broken. It would require wiping the whole forum of posts for it to be repaired.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Forum-s-search-feature-doesn-t-work-A-tip/4612877

Until they decide to basically do a new forum (v low priority Vs the game itself), it is how it is I’m afraid

Anet has stated that they no longer have a relationship with the person/company responsible for the forum software. That is why they cannot fix the search feature. So I don’t see any of those ideas happening with the current system. Anet did state they are entertaining the idea of using a new forum system but nothing has been stated other than that.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Anet has stated that they no longer have a relationship with the person/company responsible for the forum software. That is why they cannot fix the search feature.

Isn’t that, like, REALLY bad? Something that makes ArenaNet look really poorly compared to pretty much anyone else?

I honestly liked the GW1 model more. But if ArenaNet decided to follow the bandwagon and have an official forum, ostensibly because every other MMORPG has one, they should at least invest on it enough so it has all the features forums from every other MMORPG have as well. Or at least features the old GW1 fansite forums had.

And if the idea is that forums are not important and thus not worth fixing, because only a very small minority of players bother with them, and more people use Twitter/Facebook/whatever the fad is now… Then why have an official forum in the first place?

I don’t remember many of the things you state working on the forums…ever. Search being about the only one. As for dates (year), the year will show up if you refresh the page.

Regardless, as noted above, these features may be present in the new forum software, whenever (and if) that should ever be implemented.

Good luck on your suggestions.

Test.8734:

Relatively soon this forum will be 3 years old. Here are some things it’s STILL missing:

• A darker theme.
• A search feature that actually works.
• An Ignore List.
• A “Show ArenaNet posts” feature in topics.
• Time stamps on the topic list.
• Decent time stamps on each post.
• Decent text formatting options.
• Using the space below our names for something.
• Game integration:

1. A dark theme wouldn’t go with the official colors of Arena Net
2. I believe they tried but it is to broken to fix without major reconstruction of the forums.
3. Would be nice but not necessary. Report him and he will get what needs to happen.
4. Would be nice so when we need to see their post to not go through 20 pages to find it. Granted the dev tracker sub forum is there.
5. simple QoL change, just look at the first post.
6. Kind of already there, switch between the “ago theme” or “X at X time theme”
7. I don’t see a problem with them
8. I don’t seem to have that problem, jokes aside, Something like how many legendaries you own or characters to 80/ map complete you have?
9. Eh, I feel also a QoL change and something that would make things a bit more toxic.

I’m aware this is an older post but I’d like to see if anyone else has some other feedback on this matter.

There isn’t much feedback to give really. Anet has stated that the current state of the forum is what we are stuck with due to problems with their forum contractor (read there is not relationship with them anymore). Unless they announce they are going to implement a new forum system there isn’t much to add.

To be honest I don’t see them implementing a new forum system any time soon. For one, it would be a huge undertaking to migrate all the posts from the old system to a new one, especially since the current forum contractor is no longer involved. That leaves only one other option, a new system and everything posted prior to that gets wiped out or archived. The current forum is a huge knowledge base even though the search feature does not work. It would be a shame to lose all of that.

Now to be fair, they did show us how to easily search for a term like ‘crafting’, you can easily do…

crafting -site:forum-en.guildwars2.com -r+m/2 method ^ max &alta-vista -grep -gnip -gnop #poundnothash -nowallys -someonewhouseselipseswaytoomuch

…which is pretty much the same thing.

Well lets theoretically say they are, what features would be nice to see.

Riku.4821:

Well lets theoretically say they are, what features would be nice to see.

Okay, I’ll play along. The one thing I do like about the current forum is that it doesn’t have all the unnecessary fluff like avatars, graphical signatures, and so forth that just bog a forum down. That said there are only two features I think would improve the forum.

1. A working search function
2. An ignore poster function. It would probably be used on me a lot But there are certain people here I’d rather just not see their posts.

That’s it. If they added those two things to what we currently have in this forum I’d be happy.

As noted above, it would be nice to be able to move immediately to a Dev post within a thread without having to find said Dev’s post in the Dev Tracker first, or go through each page of the thread to find it.

Ignore would be nice. I’m not sure how that works when someone quotes said ‘ignored’ poster, though.

Proper search function, of course.

Some posters like an RSS Feed function…I’m not that concerned about it, personally.

I would prefer either limited or no avatars and graphic signatures, and such, as it seems to bog down speed of access and volume of posts per page.

Forum status might be something to consider; then, again, it’s not really necessary…just QoL.

If I think of anything else, and this thread hasn’t disappeared, I will edit. =)

I rather like the white background. It makes it easier to blend in with other documents I have open while at work.

Test.8734:

Relatively soon this forum will be 3 years old. Here are some things it’s STILL missing:

• A darker theme. White was the new black all the way back when the first Assassin’s Creed was released. The fad has moved on, and now this blindlingly white background doesn’t really cut it. We should have at least the option of using one darker theme. Ideally, we would have multiple themes to choose from.

I have no argument with the rest of you’re suggestions, but as for the theme, dark text on a light background is much easier on the eyes. A dark theme might make the forums less useable for some people.

punkinkatt.4823:

Test.8734:

Relatively soon this forum will be 3 years old. Here are some things it’s STILL missing:

• A darker theme. White was the new black all the way back when the first Assassin’s Creed was released. The fad has moved on, and now this blindlingly white background doesn’t really cut it. We should have at least the option of using one darker theme. Ideally, we would have multiple themes to choose from.

I have no argument with the rest of you’re suggestions, but as for the theme, dark text on a light background is much easier on the eyes. A dark theme might make the forums less useable for some people.

There is dark text on light background and there is dark text on bright background. This forum falls into the dark on bright category and truthfully, it hurts my eyes. I have to dim it to avoid eyestrain.

- <input id=“newtopic_name” name=“newtopic[name]” size=“30” tabindex=“1” type=“text” value="" maxlength=“45”>

- Good (working) search function.

- Option to put threads (and comments) in a favorite list. [Workaround: Use the up-vote system.]