Re-Organizing Forums - Feedback Requested!

[Maxine MagicFox]

Wanting to re-organize the forums a little....

Thinking of creating an "Explorer's Guild" category (like the Valerie's Bar category) and putting all of the EO games underneath it.

I would like the forums to look something like this:

Into the Labyrinth
Stays same

Valerie's Bar
Discussion
Atlus USA - Actually, should I change this into a generalized "games" board?
Debate
Stories and Artwork (renaming to expand beyond only EO stuff like it became over the years.)
Roleplaying
Text Games - Thinking of eradicating this?
NSFW section

Explorer's Guild
General (should I? Is this a need on this forum?)
EO1
EO1 Spinoff (should I make this a subforum?)
EO2
EO3
EO4

Trash Can
Trash Can (unchanged)

Thoughts? Opinions? I think the EO section is definitely needed. This layout was fine when there were only two games, but the series seems to be growing rather fast suddenly. ^_^;

[Kimiko]

Atlus - Can just be omitted I think. Games in general we discuss here in the What are you playing thread.

Explorer's Guild - Definitely have a separate section for the upcoming game. Name it something like 'New Etrian Odyssey: Millennium Girl' because we don't know yet how spin-offy/remakey it will be. Don't forget to move the threads from the EO1 and EO4 forums. Also change the description of the EO4 forum so it doesn't say 'upcoming' anymore.

General - Might be useful. Let's try it for a while. Search the other forums for threads to move.

[Maxine MagicFox]

I had the same feelings about the Atlus section. And I do not want to discourage the "what are you playing thread" but wouldn't it be a little nicer to have a section where we could discuss individual games that we like? I don't think that diminishes the importance of that particular thread - it cleans it up a little. It becomes a rant of what we are doing in the games we are playing and, as many of you use it, a place where we can get some aid and advice.

Hrrrm, but yeah, I think I could see individual threads in the game section becoming that, too... hrrrm..... I'll think about this some more and see others' opinions.

As for the other stuff *nods* Yeah, I've been busy these past weeks and haven't been able to get around to certain things, though the EO4 description was a bit of an oversight. Sorry. ^_^;

[Snowdome]

How about sorting Explorer's Guild in descending order (in terms of releasing date)? I guess newer titles have more access so it should make sense for popular ones to be in a higher position.
Also, I agree that we should not call the upcoming game "Etrian Odyssey I Spin Off" since it got a better name than that. Personally I think "New EO I" is fine, or use "Shin SQ I" until the official name come out. Also, I think there is no need for a standalone subforum for the "New EO" series until more titles from that series is in development. (Afterward, maybe make a section similar to Explorer's Guild for that)

Edit: Come to think of it, for further compression, you can group them into 3 subforums under Explorer's Guild, one for each of "(news/speculation for) upcoming titles", "current title" and "past title". But then, someone will need to move threads from first to second and second to third one when new games are released/revealed, and rules/options in the "past title" forum to add something like [EO2] in the title of each thread.

[Maxine MagicFox]

Nah, that's too much condensing in your second paragraph. Plus, I want those new to the series able to feel like they can comfortably enter an old forum and not be afraid of spoilers. Plus it's nice to have a little bit of freedom in those sections to sort of "rate guilds" and stuff like that.

[Maxine MagicFox]

@theories and specs: could that be something discussed in the possible "general eo forum"? or were you thinking of something else?

[noodles]

I think a games board would only have one active thread after a short while.

[Maxine MagicFox]

[Kimiko]

Maybe the mods need to be more active in moving threads to their correct forum then?

[PLA]

^ You're all arrested.

[Maxine MagicFox]

I think noodles is the only active mod these days T-T ... I miss Kino....

<_< Should I look for new mods?

[noodles]

AND YOU THOUGHT MAKING ME A MOD WOULD BE USELESS!!!

But, unless you have a ton of work for us, i'd say let's wait until it becomes necessary to bring more people in. Kino only gets more busy as time goes on but she still might come back, and Zeta still exists

[Maxine MagicFox]

Mod issues aside (and Noodles, if I thought you would be useless I wouldn't have hired you, haha) the forum reorganization is complete.

What do you guys think?

... o_O; Going to take some getting use to...

[Maxine MagicFox]

*mutters* Wasn't it just barely a year ago that I made the design for this forum after our move to the new software. I'm in no hurry to do that again any time soon. I'm more interested in doing things like fixing the art gallery or finishing up the back end of the current site, finishing up the new design for the main site, re-publishing our still-missing pages.

I just wanted to do this because, honestly, things were looking a little too cluttered and I was worried about how things were appearing to new people coming onto the forums. That organization had been fine with one or two games (I think I said this) but I didn't feel it was making a good appearance of itself anymore with the series now growing.

[Maxine MagicFox]

? ^_^; Tom, I think you're over thinking things a little and you should probably frequent more forums. These are how forums are naturally styled and while, yes, I could custom HTML edit things like that myself, there really is no reason why and would actually make things a little awkward I think.