ESOCommunity

I'm sure that this very controversial title has attracted your attention.

Off topic is probably my favorite forum section and I love reading the discussions which take place there. Probably my number one reason to come to ESOC these days considering my reduced activity in AOE3. I also love how active off topic is, there are new discussions about society and other things taking place constantly, it's super refreshing for me. I enjoy this forum immensely.

It has come to my attention, however, that many people do not enjoy off topic and would like to see it gone; or at the very least have a secondary role compared to what it is today. Many people want this for different reasons, an important thing to underline here, imo.

The gist of it is that ESOC should be an AOE3 platform first and foremost. People come to ESOC and see that unread topics are mostly off topic and have little to do with AOE3 itself. They want more AOE3 content. Other people are tired of reading posts which are unrelated to AOE3.

I am opening this topic so that the community itself can share their insight on the off topic section. I have a gist of it from several people but I would like to know more. I am opening this to where anyone can participate in this discussion because I feel like staff should not be the only people who partake in these discussions. After all, this is a community site.

My proposal is simple. Off topic should be made into a single section again. Off topic should be a closed section. To access off topic requires you to ask to join a group (anyone can join). Off topic then shows up normally for you as it does today. However those who aren't interested in the myriad of things discussed in the off topic section will, by default, not be presented with this section.

Thoughts on this proposal?
What personally brings you dissatisfaction with the off topic section?
What would you change?
What would you like to see more of on ESOC forums?

e.g. I have had people say that they would like a more active strategy section. I have had people say that they would like to see off topic removed, plain and simple (that's a little too drastic for me personally). I just want to gauge what people think on this one.

I participated a lot in off topic until I saw every single thread getting derailed by the same people over and over again, always turning the topic into a personal battleground and eventually resulting in the thread getting locked because of that. I have for the most part ignored it for the last weeks and months but I'd prefer it just to not show up at all. It should keep existing as a section but you should be able to choose if you don't want it to spam your feed since it's really only spam at this point except for a few people engaging in actual discussion

jesus3 wrote:you should be able to choose if you don't want it to spam your feed

You can do that somewhere in the control panel

Thanks @Kaiserklein I found it, let's hope it works. Then my previous post is kinda unnecessary now, didn't know there was a function like that.

Off topic is recently a mess due to that one person who shall not be named, that will bait every thread with absurd statements, that nobody is quite sure if it's troll or just crazy.

Imo dont close or restrict offtopic,instead, i would propose to make everyone "unsubscribed" by default, so it never apears in the recent /unread, unless you actively go to your personal options and enable it. This way for those who like it it wont change anything, but it wont steall space from aoe for those who aren't interested in offtopic.

We could just seperate the "Active Threads" into "Active Threads - Off Topic" and "Active Threads - AOE3"

Make off topic great again.

jesus3 wrote:Thanks @Kaiserklein I found it, let's hope it works. Then my previous post is kinda unnecessary now, didn't know there was a function like that.

The thing is that you need to go to the control panel and do it from there.

It's kind of a hassle. I think it should by default not be in active topics. I want to filter out the forums set up for tournies for instance, but it's a hassle to find that option.

lemmings121 wrote:Off topic is recently a mess due to that one person who shall not be named, that will bait every thread with absurd statements, that nobody is quite sure if it's troll or just crazy.

Imo dont close or restrict offtopic,instead, i would propose to make everyone "unsubscribed" by default, so it never apears in the recent /unread, unless you actively go to your personal options and enable it. This way for those who like it it wont change anything, but it wont steall space from aoe for those who aren't interested in offtopic.

Yes. Agreed.

However the complete removal of off topic is something I disagree with completely.

Thoughts on this proposal?
What personally brings you dissatisfaction with the off topic section? Nothing
What would you change? Nothing except to make Off Topic great again
What would you like to see more of on ESOC forums? Moar Off Topic

Yea that's my point. Without acess to any data i would say that 90%+ of the users are with every subscription on default. If you make offtopic unsubscribed by default you will hide for everyone who isnt interested.
If you want you can always go to your options and enable it...

It's not that is should be removed, since people enjoy spending time there. I get the feeling that aoe3 content is less and less these days. I am not talking about patch balance/map topics or tournaments. I refer to how the game could be played: variations of how a civ is used (cases with/out tp, in maps with heavy/low resources), a civ's possibilities, etc.), same MU in different maps, efficiency of units on a specific case. For some advanced players, many of those might seem trivial, however, there are few threads that deal with such issues. Even if they are, they are lost in-between spam, making the thread unreadable.

I would also like to see some different approaches in tournament design. Now, more and more smaller tournaments rise up. It could be a nice opportunity to test some other seeding ways or scheduling policies in those.

I think the original purpose of the "ESOC Talk" section was awesome, and threads abiding by that original purpose shouldn't end up hidden. In light of that, I think the current "ESOC Talk" section should be renamed to "Off topic - General" (or all subsections of off-topic recombined into just "off topic"), and the "Welcome section" should be renamed to "Community". Then, threads that are relevant should be guided into the "Community" section. I'd put want threads like these there:

viewtopic.php?f=314&t=11955
viewtopic.php?f=314&t=10638
viewtopic.php?f=314&t=11790 (this one could even go in AoE3 section)

Basically, I want "off topic" to be just anything about politics, news, sports, etc. If it's relevant to aoe3 or ESOC, even if it floats off topic a bit (e.g., the travois one talks about linguistics stuff a bit), I think it's good community building stuff.

Of course the community team would have to be responsible for making sure things end up in the right place.

lemmings121 wrote:Off topic is recently a mess due to that one person who shall not be named, that will bait every thread with absurd statements, that nobody is quite sure if it's troll or just crazy.

Imo dont close or restrict offtopic,instead, i would propose to make everyone "unsubscribed" by default, so it never apears in the recent /unread, unless you actively go to your personal options and enable it. This way for those who like it it wont change anything, but it wont steall space from aoe for those who aren't interested in offtopic.

Is it me?

ez

User was warned for this post

The display filter is a pain in the ass... @devs

I think it's a good idea to have opt in to off topic like iNcog said. That would allow those who are constantly complaining about it not to have to see it and it wouldn't change for those who like it

Imo, if people are more interested in off-topic, the free market has spoken.

If you want more activity in AOE3 forums, then make more AOE3 things happen. Those who complain about this should make a personal effort to attract users to those forum sections, by posting more interesting stuff.

You can't complain people are free to choose whatever they find more interesting. If you do so, you're worse than Communists.

Also, if you don't like off-topic, don't read off-topic.

You have your own active threads in that widget on the landing page. You don't have to follow or read what most people read.

This whole thing sounds like envy to me. Some people seem envious of the interest the off-topic section is generating.

meh where else are they gonna spam their useless shit x)

Dolan wrote:Also, if you don't like off-topic, don't read off-topic.

You have your own active threads in that widget on the landing page. You don't have to follow or read what most people read.

This whole thing sounds like envy to me. Some people seem envious of the interest the off-topic section is generating.

haha this! ez

User was warned for this post

Hazza54321 wrote:meh where else are they gonna spam their useless shit x)

here http://eso-community.net/viewforum.php?f=80

@musketeer925 You can have a hidden forum called "stupid shit" where users who want to join into that part of the forum can opt in and opt out as they wish.

first

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3557&p=79920

viewtopic.php?p=288900#p288900 Kami for fucking president! Thanks for hearing us!!!!!!!!!!!

Diarouga had done a thread with age1 scouting patterns. We could add the ESOC maps to it and refresh the Strategy Wall with new BOs.