[Decision] Restructuring of TW forums to better accommodate TW Multiplayer activity

**Hader** · March 05, 2010, 04:55 PM

Restructuring of TW forums to better accommodate TW Multiplayer activity

Supporters: (when applicable)

EDIT: One small opening note; this proposal also includes some other forum restructuring ideas, not just ones for multiplayer. So please, read on!

Alright, this isn't anything set in stone as a proposal yet. But an idea I really want to see worked on.

A lot of this site is very much centered around Modding Total War game, from RTW to NTW, and I am not condemning this fact in the least. I merely wish to improve the function, if you will, of the Multiplayer aspect of this site. It's hard for me to explain this well, but just look at it like this:

We have plenty of forums dedicated to modding, in every TW game to date since Rome Total War. With each game, there is a Mod Workshop, a Mod Threads section with Released mods and WIPs subforums, and a Hosted Modifications forum for any and all released major mods of all the TW games and their expansions. It goes without saying that this is quite a lot for the modding center of this site, and it is constantly being improved.

However, the multiplayer forums are, shall we say, overlooked? Underplayed? Whatever you call it, the fact stands that multiplayer gaming for the TW games is underplayed in many ways compared to modding on this site. Each game has one subforum dedicated to everything multiplayer, and that is it.

Now again, I am not saying that it is bad we emphasize modding so much, it definitely has made the site as great as it is today. But what is wrong with adding more emphasis to multiplayer? This site is Total War Center. There is no real reason why multiplayer gaming in the series should be neglected. While the multiplayer aspects of the games arguabley do not get as much attention as mods do, they are still popular in their own respects. Look at the ones for RTW, M2TW, ETW and now NTW - all have a fair amount of activity, especially for being given just the one small forum to post in as they have.

So here is my proposal: A reorganization of the TW forums to better...accommodate, I guess you could say, the multiplayer aspect of TW gaming. Below is the idea I have in mind for a slight forum reorganization. The main goal in mind is to, of course, bring the multiplayer forums into a greater role. However, I have highlighted some other reorganization ideas that are not related to the multiplayer idea, but could possibly serve some use in being reorganized.

First off, a reference for the current forum structure in the TW area, minus the TW Discussion and Resource Center (please state if you think this forum category should be affected as well, for the purposes of this I didn't see enough evidence to support its inclusion but the possibility still exists.)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Here is the proposed reconstruction, with additions highlighted in blue , changes/moved/renamed forums and categories highlighted in green (non bolded green text for minor changes in name to make for more consistant naming patterns, but which entail no structural changes) , forums I think could be brought up for discussion of placement or name change possibility are highlighted in purple and deletions/consolidations/expansions highlighted in red. Explanations for each individual case are below this second spoilers set.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Alright, here is the breakdown:
-------------------------
The big change, Multiplayer-
Okay, this is the most obvious change here, as it should be. Moving multiplayer to the front of the category page, and (possibly) adding two subforums for it, to add more depth and possibly more content. This is still just a preliminary idea, and the only thing I really wish to get out there with this is that we should bring Multiplayer to the front of the category for all to see. Any additional subforums are subject to change of course, as a result of deliberations here.

All other changes for NTW-
The only other 2 possible change lie with the Research subforum and Reviews subforum. I don't see anything wrong with them, but they may be a bit out of place here. Depends on the overall consensus with the rest of the reorganization I guess, but I would say these two forums should be fine no matter what, though can be moved if desired.

All other changes for ETW-
Same reasons as for NTW, see above.

All other changes for M2TW-
The name changes highlighted in green I show because I feel they should be named that to show some consistency in forum names; If you compare to ETW and NTW, they all begin with the full, proper title of the game before the rest of the forum name. In Medieval II section, this is not the case, and I feel a slight name change will at least make things look more professional at the very least.

All other changes for Eras-
Name changes are for same reasons highlighted above in MII:TW. Only other thing at hand is the presences of the Medieval/Shogun forum. How should we handle it?

-------------------------

Since this restructuring involves a lot of moving around for some forums, I volunteer to do the necessary dirty work of getting threads moved to their respective locations, getting forum rules set in place in new forums, etc etc...

Of course, these are just my preliminary ideas. Feel free to scrutinize everything as much as you want, I want this to build up to become something everyone can hopefully participate in in some way. Give your feedback, good or bad.

Also, please note, I drafted this up in 2 hours and still feel like there is some big inconsistency somewhere in this form of legislation...I will keep updating it on my own with both my thoughts and any other suggestions. As I said...this a is a very, very big WIP/idea

Regards,
-Hader

Space Reserved for documenting changes to the above proposal

**Viking Prince** · March 05, 2010, 06:57 PM

The short point of this is to seperate the multiplayer from the TW game forums. I am not certain that is really a good idea. I would think that each game forum should be a base of operations for all activities related to the game. I guess I am simply not seeing why your change would improve things.

**Hader** · March 05, 2010, 07:06 PM

Originally Posted by Viking Prince

The short point of this is to seperate the multiplayer from the TW game forums. I am not certain that is really a good idea. I would think that each game forum should be a base of operations for all activities related to the game. I guess I am simply not seeing why your change would improve things.

It would give MP Gaming in Total War games a larger role in the site, really. More attention. Multiplayer is just underplayed a bit, especially compared to modding, and from an administrative standpoint, is also a bit overlooked. Total War Center doesn't have to be all about mods, a good fraction of any TW game has a fair bit of work put into custom battles/multiplayer, so why not give the people who prefer multiplayer over playing and making mods a little more room to go about their business? We do with mods. Multiplayer can be the same, conceptually, which is what this aims to do.

**Spiff** · March 05, 2010, 07:55 PM

I couldnt really support adding 4 new forums to the main index, frankly I think its about twice as large as it should be already. Is there enough activity in the Medieval 2 and Rome multiplayer communities to warrant their inclusion in this proposal? Empire and Napoleon I can understand, but the older titles not so much. I could be wrong on that though, and of course you could argue that if they are less active then this proposal will generate more traffic.

My main problem though is the current state of the main index - if you could do this while also removing 4 forums from the main index then I'd be happy to support. Something like consolidating the mod threads and hosted modifications forums.. or putting the various "Community News, Articles and Interviews" within one main forum.

**Hader** · March 05, 2010, 08:00 PM

Originally Posted by Spiff

I couldnt really support adding 4 new forums to the main index, frankly I think its about twice as large as it should be already. Is there enough activity in the Medieval 2 and Rome multiplayer communities to warrant their inclusion in this proposal? Empire and Napoleon I can understand, but the older titles not so much. I could be wrong on that though, and of course you could argue that if they are less active then this proposal will generate more traffic.

My main problem though is the current state of the main index - if you could do this while also removing 4 forums from the main index then I'd be happy to support.

Well, if you have ideas to do that, go ahead and post em. I know there are plenty as is but 4 more wouldn't hurt too much, IMO. If everyone really didn't want that extra clutter, then maybe consolidate Mod Threads with Hosted Modifications or even the Workshops? If we do that to each category, then there ya go, no net gain or loss of main index space.

Honestly I don't think clutter should be an issue with this; anyone who doesn't want to see any category of forums can just click the little arrow in the title bar and hide the whole category anyways. I usually keep a few like that whenever I know I won't be visiting those places.

**Viking Prince** · March 05, 2010, 07:16 PM

What about a single centralized forum under TW General Discussion and Resource Center for general MP discussion, player recruitment, chat, and general info and then simply link to the various forum games? Such as TW-based Community RPG's -- is this what you are talking about doing?

**Hader** · March 05, 2010, 07:33 PM

Originally Posted by Viking Prince

What about a single centralized forum under TW General Discussion and Resource Center for general MP discussion, player recruitment, chat, and general info and then simply link to the various forum games? Such as TW-based Community RPG's -- is this what you are talking about doing?

That simply seems like too little, if you ask me. We already have one subforum for multiplayer in each games category, and that seems like too little too. This proposal is meant to bring the multiplayer forum, and with it the whole aspect of multiplayer gaming, to the front of the category, and let it grow into the bigger role it can certainly fill. I'm sure if clans and players alike were given more than one slightly-hidden forum to conduct their business in, they'd be a bit more active in posting, and just in overall contributions to multiplayer gaming in TW altogether.

**Viking Prince** · March 05, 2010, 07:41 PM

Originally Posted by Hader

That simply seems like too little, if you ask me. We already have one subforum for multiplayer in each games category, and that seems like too little too. This proposal is meant to bring the multiplayer forum, and with it the whole aspect of multiplayer gaming, to the front of the category, and let it grow into the bigger role it can certainly fill. I'm sure if clans and players alike were given more than one slightly-hidden forum to conduct their business in, they'd be a bit more active in posting, and just in overall contributions to multiplayer gaming in TW altogether.

Well let's see what others have to say. Perhaps more input from others will convince me.

Remember my other idea though if this gets bogged down regarding a single centralized forum under TW General Discussion and Resource Center similar to TW-based Community RPG's . It might be at least a step towards better visability. It would at least allow all MP to meet and greet in a single location.

Good luck!

**Hader** · March 05, 2010, 07:45 PM

Originally Posted by Viking Prince

Well let's see what others have to say. Perhaps more input from others will convince me.

Remember my other idea though if this gets bogged down regarding a single centralized forum under TW General Discussion and Resource Center similar to TW-based Community RPG's . It might be at least a step towards better visability. It would at least allow all MP to meet and greet in a single location.

Good luck!

That was one of the first things that came to mind for me actually, but after I thought about it more, it didn't seem like enough. I guess one way for me to put it is that with this, I hope to just make TW multiplayer gaming a bigger thing on TWC then it has been; to make it more than Modding Central and more everything Total War. When someone first looks at the TW sections, they see at least 3-4 forum categories with the word "Mod" in it. Nothing multiplayer, which is something that has been popular for long enough and certainly has potential to be a bigger thing than it is now. At least on this site.

**GrnEyedDvl** · March 05, 2010, 08:58 PM

Right now Sim and I are taking a look at the entire forum structure anyways for technical reasons. Basically the way forumcache works combined with our huge number of forums and usergroups is eating up server resources and has the added negative of adding clutter to the forum index. There is quite a bit of posting about this in the Tech Bazaar. Basically we are using a ton of RAM and bumping up against 100% CPU far too often.

I am not opposed to adding a few more multiplayer boards, but I seriously doubt we can add 15 or 20. We are currently looking at ways to reduce the total number of forums on the board. We have a lot of forums that are never or rarely posted in, and a lot of other things that can be condensed/combined.

For the main index clutter one thing we pretty much have agreed on is to move all the Tech Help sections for each game inside the General Discussion forum for each game. That would be a net removal of 4 forums from the index, adding 4 back in the form of multiplayer sort of defeats the purpose there.

We have been looking at some things along these lines for a couple of weeks now and no real decisions have been made yet.

**Hader** · March 05, 2010, 09:25 PM

Originally Posted by GrnEyedDvl

Right now Sim and I are taking a look at the entire forum structure anyways for technical reasons. Basically the way forumcache works combined with our huge number of forums and usergroups is eating up server resources and has the added negative of adding clutter to the forum index. There is quite a bit of posting about this in the Tech Bazaar. Basically we are using a ton of RAM and bumping up against 100% CPU far too often.

I am not opposed to adding a few more multiplayer boards, but I seriously doubt we can add 15 or 20. We are currently looking at ways to reduce the total number of forums on the board. We have a lot of forums that are never or rarely posted in, and a lot of other things that can be condensed/combined.

For the main index clutter one thing we pretty much have agreed on is to move all the Tech Help sections for each game inside the General Discussion forum for each game. That would be a net removal of 4 forums from the index, adding 4 back in the form of multiplayer sort of defeats the purpose there.

We have been looking at some things along these lines for a couple of weeks now and no real decisions have been made yet.

Well I have one idea off the top of my head that addresses that issue specifically: What if, in every Mod Workshop, we consolidated the 6 or so sub forums in there already into 1 single forum again, except to reduce the clutter that plagued that system before, perhaps create either tags/prefixes for each of those modding categories to use in every thread (so everything is posted in one forum, with those tags/prefixes taking the place of the subforum describing what the mod question is about).

Or something along those lines...I guess I should look at it more, but there is something to go off of, getting rid of those 6 sub forums in the Workshops could help a lot, if we can find a clean and easy way to do it.

**GrnEyedDvl** · March 06, 2010, 10:45 PM

Originally Posted by Hader

Well I have one idea off the top of my head that addresses that issue specifically: What if, in every Mod Workshop, we consolidated the 6 or so sub forums in there already into 1 single forum again, except to reduce the clutter that plagued that system before, perhaps create either tags/prefixes for each of those modding categories to use in every thread (so everything is posted in one forum, with those tags/prefixes taking the place of the subforum describing what the mod question is about).

Thats possible, but it probably wont happen in the first round of whatever we decide to do. The main problem there is there are soooo many existing threads. We would probably have to write a custom query to change all of them inside a given forum at once, and I am not so sure how popular something like that would be. There also seems to be an issue with resource tradeoff that AL ran into when testing some prefixes for the moderators. It seems that in some cases the prefixes can use more resources than the forum does because of how the cache is built. If that is truly the case then we would actually be doing more harm than good.

We currently are looking at the most inactive forums we have first. There are actually several with 0 posts that will probably be first on the chopping block along with some general moving and merging.

**Hader** · March 07, 2010, 08:15 PM

Originally Posted by GrnEyedDvl

Thats possible, but it probably wont happen in the first round of whatever we decide to do. The main problem there is there are soooo many existing threads. We would probably have to write a custom query to change all of them inside a given forum at once, and I am not so sure how popular something like that would be. There also seems to be an issue with resource tradeoff that AL ran into when testing some prefixes for the moderators. It seems that in some cases the prefixes can use more resources than the forum does because of how the cache is built. If that is truly the case then we would actually be doing more harm than good.

We currently are looking at the most inactive forums we have first. There are actually several with 0 posts that will probably be first on the chopping block along with some general moving and merging.

Acknowledged. We'll see how it goes after that.

In the meantime, while kinks are worked out (and I slightly redraft this proposal), how about we look at 'step 2' (or 3 if you prefer) of my main plan of multiplayer expansion. The main idea I had in mind in integrating TWC a bit more with the MP community after the forum restructuring was holding tournaments and/or competitions in MP itself. I would think the best way to go about this would be to maybe structure it after the PotW and AAR competitions; we have people who lead/host/administrate the competitions/tournaments, and we make awards for winner of the tournaments. For awards, they would also be something like AAR competition rules, where a 1st/2nd/3rd place standing in a TWC Hosted tournament gets you so many points, and a set accumulation of those points determines a medal (if any). Thoughts?

**Spiff** · March 07, 2010, 08:30 PM

It just occurred to me now but you could always use the steam groups thing to help build the community in that regard. If you got more people to join the TWC group you could announce tournaments and such through that.

I mean, theres nearly 1000 people registered in that group, it could be interesting to make use of it - or try and find someone willing to (I dont actually play empire much at all.. let alone multiplayer)

If there are people already running tournaments you could advertise them in the group through announcements and such.

**Louis Lux** · March 06, 2010, 01:59 AM

Spiff and GrnEyedDvl posts outline the main concerns this proposal generates, but I still like the idea of giving more attention to multiplayer.

Total War games don't have a great focus on multiplayer unlike warcraft and other strategy games, and I never really felt like playing multiplayer, but I support a movement towards a better multiplayer experience offered by TWC, like leaderboards, awards and the mentioned support to clans.

**Squid** · March 08, 2010, 11:06 AM

I just have to ask, what multiplayer activity? You've mentioned that the workshop should be condensed into a single forum with prefixes, and yet just by a quick glance there's more posts in a single day in the workshop forums than in multi-player forums in a week. If the mod workshop forums only need a single forum, then multiplayer doesn't needs one on the front page at all.

I'd have done more than a quick glance but couldn't figure out how to get the search to display all posts with the last week/month etc.

**Hader** · March 08, 2010, 01:05 PM

Originally Posted by Sqυιd

I just have to ask, what multiplayer activity? You've mentioned that the workshop should be condensed into a single forum with prefixes, and yet just by a quick glance there's more posts in a single day in the workshop forums than in multi-player forums in a week. If the mod workshop forums only need a single forum, then multiplayer doesn't needs one on the front page at all.

I'd have done more than a quick glance but couldn't figure out how to get the search to display all posts with the last week/month etc.

My mention of condensing the workshop was a suggestion aimed at GED for technical purposes he outlines, and really has nothing to do, officially, with my proposal as is. My initial ideas don't even touch on the workshops much at all, and certainly not to a high degree.

I believe that there is enough multiplayer activity, and at least the potential of it, to merit at least moving the MP forum to the front. Certainly giving it some more attention wouldn't hurt in upping the activity. Hosting tournaments and the like is a different step, a different story, and not really part of this proposal.

**Squid** · March 08, 2010, 04:37 PM

If there's no, or at least relatively little, activity putting it on the front page is a waste of real-estate. I'd rather go at it the other way, host a tournament to gauge if there is the potential for activity before changing anything else.

**Hader** · March 31, 2010, 05:44 PM

Abandoning this for now too, any changes or whatever else that I will do with this I will just make a new proposal if need be. This is obsolete now.

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