Would the game be better without this forum?

I love the forum. Not only does it add to the game but it also gives me hope for humanity as I have noticed in recent years people setup Facebook Groups instead of forums. Not only is that diabolical for anything other than a small group a lot of people don't even know what a forum is because of it. :eek:
 
Just a musing here, not a criticism in any way:

I'm sure, like a lot of you, I spend time on the Interwebs, on here, on YouTube, etc - picking up information about what's going on in various places around the galaxy, or what's coming up in the game. This recent update gave us the new 'encounter' with the Thargoid ship stealing our escape pods, but it was an encounter I already knew about - I'd seen someone streaming it, and read about it on here. It was great, but...

..but what if I hadn't known about it, if I wasn't expecting it, what would that encounter have been like? Pretty scary right - with the amazing sound design and look of the alien ship.... I've never been hyperdicted, but I'm pretty sure I would have needed backup underwear, if it had happened to me BEFORE I even knew the Thargoids were coming back into the game. Afterwards, I'm pretty sure that I would have gone in to open, hit up a big port, and told every one of you I could find what had happened! I would have engaged. Some of you might have believed me, some might not, some might have gone out to check, and the story would take hold - then an article would appear on GalNet, and so on. Imagine if Galnet was the ONLY place you used for news?

TLDR : Imagine for a minute what the game would be like if real Cmdr interaction and Galnet were the only places that galaxy happenings were distributed.

I agree that it would be awesome not to need to visit the forum. Basically in most games I never go to the forums as there is little to no need. In ESO I went to the forum to find a guild and then to report bugs as that was all the forum was needed for. Issue with ED is that it needs forums to exist- it needs youtube videos and other step by step guides as well as 3rd party apps to be playable - it is ultimately poor game design that pushes us to play the game half in forums and half in the game as the game misses a lot of mechanics to support itself, thus ruining of the content is inevitable.

Example - to get the Palin mission - I would have never even known about the mission without youtube, same for lost megaships ect ... there is nothing in game that would drive me to those areas and reveal this hidden content, thus forums/ youtube and other social media are a necessity to play this game which is a terrible shame. The game has some awesome content, but to get to it or to find it, most will resolve to youtube thus see the content before they play it.

As I said above if this game had ingame drives and mechanics that push players towards the content as is common in most games then we wouldn't need youtube and forums as much and the game would be much better for it in my opinion (which is of course highly subjective in this instance as it is based purely on my perception of what is a good or bad game design)
 
Now that would be special, but the internet has changed everything, if it wasn't on here it would be somewhere else. And you forgot to mention the sheer negativity and venum in some of the subs. Best just to be abit disciplined in what you read on here.

also as a side not, I'm thinking of bringing my T9 to harvest meta alloys soon, if you interested in meeting up to provide escort, would love to have another Welsh Cmdr on my wing. At my estimate on a full load of 250 profits will be 300mil.

CMDR Valleys
 
As someone who knew this forum before you all came along (but I love you all, honest) ... If this forum as we know it now didn't exist, then you'd all be on some other forum. Someone would have set one up. There'd have been lots of them (just like there are now anyway) and one or two would be head and shoulders above the rest. As was said above, there would also be Reddit and let's not forget Youtube.

TLDR - If there wasn't this forum, there'd be other sources.
 
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Nope, even the salty comments are often from players who always come back when there's a new update and the cycle continues. (see the sinusoidal wave on steamcharts). If there wasn't this forum, i'd expect the effect would be worse because more who "rage-quit" or "bored-quit" (but actually took a break from the game) could truly forget about ED.
 
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Now that would be special, but the internet has changed everything, if it wasn't on here it would be somewhere else. And you forgot to mention the sheer negativity and venum in some of the subs. Best just to be abit disciplined in what you read on here.

also as a side not, I'm thinking of bringing my T9 to harvest meta alloys soon, if you interested in meeting up to provide escort, would love to have another Welsh Cmdr on my wing. At my estimate on a full load of 250 profits will be 300mil.

CMDR Valleys

I couldn't escort a fly to a cowpat I'm afraid - my mining T9 might be up for some fun tho, with a bit of retrofitting :)
 
Despite the friction between the so called white knights and the haters this forum is a healthy place. Why Bran? Haven't you seen the arguments that go round and round... Yes, we all have.

However we need it to be this way as do Frontier. Why?

When an idea is posted or a rant one of three things can happen - People will agree, disagree and a few may offer alternative suggestions <-- These are the vital bit's that developers love to see, new takes on old ideas/mechanics. In business there are far to many 'yes' men already just watch W1A on the BBC to see exactly how things can get - Nobody wants to take responsibility or offer their ideas for fear of being derided by others whilst also agreeing with any idea that gets mentioned thus placing ownership and responsibility on the idea giver should anything go wrong.

We do the same in many ways. A thread is posted and most of the replies fall into one of two already mentioned camps, agreement or not. As the game grows and more players join/visit the forums the more the chance that new blood will turn up with a new idea/suggestion that had not crossed our minds or that of the developers. That's the great thing about forums, they are a melting pot for ideas/debate. Without them we would lose so much input to the game and it's direction just as the developers would miss out on our feedback.

Love the game or hate it, all of us have valid opinions which we have been given a place to share and discuss - Sometimes the topics can be deep other times rather shallow but you never know where the next big idea is coming from.
 
I think it's definitely good to take a break from this forum once in a while. The rest of the boards here are fine for advice on some of the more nebulous parts of the game.
With that said, with the new forum format, it has improved mightily. Even this place.
In the "old days" I would intentionally not come here for weeks at a time for two reasons:
1) Whiney and salty posts.
2) I didn't wish every facet of game play or "new items" to be dissected endlessly complete with work-arounds and video.

So, with the new format, I am now less reluctant to come here but am still selective on clicking thread titles. YMMV.
 
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When an idea is posted or a rant one of three things can happen - People will agree, disagree and a few may offer alternative suggestions <-- These are the vital bit's that developers love to see, new takes on old ideas/mechanics.

This reminds me of what Adam said on the stream was night when asked "what's the best thing the developers have taken from the forums as they hadn't thought of it?"

And the answer...

"we moved a light on the HUD" :D (think it was fuel scoop or landing).

Edit: Found it:

[video=youtube_share;Qrm-fmpyfZs]https://youtu.be/Qrm-fmpyfZs?t=1691[/video]
 
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This reminds me of what Adam said on the stream was night when asked "what's the best thing the developers have taken from the forums as they hadn't thought of it?"

And the answer...

"we moved a light on the HUD" :D (think it was fuel scoop or landing).

Edit: Found it:

At what o' clock please?
 
Yes it would, this forum of delusional people with no game design skills at all, that sends the wrong image to devs on the state of their game.
 
Nope.

For me, the forum is a bit like the Cantina at Mos Eisley; it's just somewhere gnarly old spacers can get together and shoot the breeze about stuff.

The one thing about Star Citizen that I like is the idea of wandering around stations as social interaction.
If we ever get space-legs in ED it'd be nice if there could be some kind of in-game "forum" where we could talk about stuff in-game.
Course, I've dabbled with stuff like "Second Life" and my interest lasted about half an hour so there's a chance I'd end up feeling the same way about it in ED too, and end up back here instead.
 
The one thing about Star Citizen that I like is the idea of wandering around stations as social interaction.
If we ever get space-legs in ED it'd be nice if there could be some kind of in-game "forum" where we could talk about stuff in-game.
Course, I've dabbled with stuff like "Second Life" and my interest lasted about half an hour so there's a chance I'd end up feeling the same way about it in ED too, and end up back here instead.

Didn't work for EVE apparently either.
 
This reminds me of what Adam said on the stream was night when asked "what's the best thing the developers have taken from the forums as they hadn't thought of it?"

And the answer...

"we moved a light on the HUD" :D (think it was fuel scoop or landing).

Edit: Found it:


I have to say, that's kind of arrogant, considering how many things in ED are incontrovertably downright halfassed and how many decent suggestions I see people making here.

I'm sure it was intended as a light-hearted comment but, y'know, sometimes it's not smart to joke about wearing seatbelts when you've got a long history of car crashes.
 
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