Okay don’t get me wrong. I’ve used discourse/seen discourse on a lot of sites. Discourse is Tree of Savior’s forum provider basically.

Personally it’s a really cool way to set up and have a forum experience for everyone. Everything is slick and you can see updates/posts in real time.
That’s really cool honestly

I just feel like it’s really hindered the Tree of Savior Community experience.

1) Allowing users to flag and get topics (admins aren’t even safe from this) removed or taken down or hidden.

• While I get this is awesome since we can remove spam threads on our own or even really bad threads without Moderator actions. But at the same time, it’s so easily abused.

If you’ve been around for a while, you’d remember the days near release when flagging was basically a drug. And you could take down thread after thread with just a few people. I mean that’s just crazy! And if someone didn’t agree with you, flag them till their posts no longer show up.

2) I’m not sure how much forum traffic Discourse can handle.

• I’m not an expert on how much discourse can handle but I feel like the reason it’s mostly down is because it can’t handle all the forum traffic it gets on it during times that people are most upset. And again, that can make people more frustrated that they can’t even access the forums to see why the game is down.

Again I could be wrong. I mean it’s possible that any forum would be subdued to all the traffic ToS brings to itself during times of user frustration and distress.

3) Community Trust.

• Let’s say we got two users, Jim and Mary. Mary is not very active, but when she is. She rocks. She helps out users, she gives class advice, and even shares her art. Then we have Jim. Jim sucks. Jim likes to post bait, spam, and insult anyone who has anything that is different than his own opinion. But here’s the thing. He’s more active than Mary. Therefore he gets to be a higher rank than her due to all his posts and his online activity.

Anyone else see a flaw? Discourse is kind of cool that it in a way, allows the players to moderate the forums themselves. That’s great if everyone is willing to do their part to keep the forums running. Of course everyone isn’t and I’m not bashing the occasionally funny threads that everyone can get a laugh in.

In most forums I’ve seen, there are systems in place that only allow model users to grow in rank (usually, feel free to correct the heck out of me if I’m wrong.) and keep those who deserve it with less rank.

Anyone else agree or am I just a paranoid weirdo?
(Or both hahaha)

I just want the white background back.

I TL;DR everything and just stared at that chitoge picture for a moment, sorry!

but okay I read #3 too, I do agree with you because currently there are people like that.

Yes I remember the forums near launch.It was quite crazy and there was a lot of traffic.However,I think there was a rather large majority that agreed on what deserved flags and what didn’t.It’s a forum,you can’t make everyone happy.I think most of what got flagged to death deserved it.Besides,we’ve been more limited in flags since then I believe.[I know some of us used to have 3 a day and now only have 1].

Point 2 I completely agree with,but I think that could be improved on IMC’s end.

Your last point would be an issue if this forum was actually maintained the way they said it would be in the beginning. We’ve only seen staff members appear out of nowhere,not any regular users promoted to any new ranks.Even then,the way it’s worded makes me think that they intended to review who got promoted,not just have it be an automatic process.

Otherwise,I actually am a big fan of the interface and how it actually works.I wish we had a lighter color scheme option as well as this one,but that’s a minor complaint.

The only reason I thought it was automatic is because basic user rank to member rank is automatic.

But it’s possible they need confirmation from a moderator to get higher ranks.
I’d have to do research but I believe the basic settings on a Discourse forum without any changes to the rank system are automatic.

But Discourse does allow admins to change how ranks are achieved.

Haha. Chitoge gifs are fun.

I think you’re right,and I believe they have a setting the Admin can turn on that requires all approval before any rank/trust level changes can be done.

Just like we see the notice that all outgoing mail was disabled,I think the same has been done in the case of promotion from trust level Basic and onwards.It’s sad to me,because although I think it’s not a lot of people,I think some have earned the right to be promoted and could really help to clean up the forums.

I agree. There are some users that given the power to effectively clean up the forums, could do a great job. The only bad part is, who and how much power? And who decides that? I wish we could like make a poll and do like a weekly vote on members and then allow people to vote on the most voted users or something. And then spam it till ToS sees that we want it to thrive. We’re not all here to trash and complain (even if there is a lot of it and makes very good points). And we aren’t just going to leave because we’re frustrated. All the complaining comes from that fact that we all adore ToS and want it to be what we fell in love with the moment we first heard about it.

Not only does that build moral by showing that they want the forums to be a nice place, but it can give them time to just focus on bug fixes and annoucements.

Leave the forum cleaning to people who love this place and want the forums back in their old former glory.
It was one of the biggest reasons I continued to stay was the community. While yes, there are other reasons that could push me away (I won’t list them because I feel like that would just push this thread in another direction), the biggest for me was the way the community changed on the forums.

Sorry for the wall of text. xD

I’ve always been really against mass player moderation. Of course, with people posting explicit images or etc, it’s nice, but it’s nowhere near as efficient, consistent, and objective as an actual moderator. Plus it causes a bunch of issues where different people have different ideas of what a clean forum looks like or people just flagging each other then they disagree on things which haha.

And yeah, it feels like the autoupdating + endless scroll (hate this honestly) + the huge images in the bg taking up bandwith leads to the forums being completely unable to handle traffic at peak hours. I personally think the forums/website are hideous honestly so I’d prefer a phpBB forum in a heartbeat. Plus, the auto image resizing is really annoying for artists and guild threads. It does prevent people posting obnoxiously large images to piss each other off but it should at least be enabled on some sections and disabled on some others.

I didn’t even know community trust existed laughs. This community is so divided though, I’m unsure if it would ever be a smart idea to put someone at a higher rank than someone else without it being tied to some responsiblity.

The site admin,who appoints/appointed past moderators would be in charge of deciding that,since they literally have the power to change the trust levels of users.

I fully agree with you.The complaints wouldn’t be so extensive and massive in number if people didn’t love the game and it’s potential as much as they do.

This is why I’ve personally debated making a topic calling on users to rally together and send messages through their other outlets,such as their Korean email address,their WolfKnights page/FB if they have one [haven’t looked it up,personally].Anywhere it seems like they might be paying more attention,I think it might be worthwhile to overload them with messages saying how passionate we are about this version of the game lasting,but that we need them to meet us halfway.We want to help them succeed,but they need to help us in return.

Sorry if I got a bit preachy there,but I’ve been feeling a bit desperate lately.I’m quite scared for the future of the game.

We need a mod, but the question is if it should be a complete outsider (like WP did with Cinnabomb from iRO [I doubt she actually has a “civilian” account]), or someone from IMC directly. It can’t actually be someone from the playerbase due to risk of bias.

And I kinda agree I liked the white background better. The dark blue color scheme is just painful to the eyes (literally and maybe medically).

I feel like “mass player moderation” is one of Discourse’s biggest fails.
And it’s very evident here. I’m not talking about anyone in particular when I say this, but we have a lot of opinionated people among our forums.
That isn’t a bad thing, per say, it just makes the forums a little harder to control. Plus a lot of people are probably feeling very invincible since you don’t normally see ToS staff punishments on the forums.

Which I mean if it was in-game or forum punishment, I’d rather see the in-game stuff. Like maybe I sound dumb saying this, but I loved the bot/gold seller ban updates. Like they just felt good to see to me.

Yes so community trust is kind of weird.
The basic set up is like, Basic User -> Member -> Regular -> Leader. That’s just the unedited plain jane set up.

Now Basic User through Regular are supposed to be automatically given to you based on how many times you log in within a year/month plus the amount of posts you make. Leader, is only appointed by the staff of the Discourse forum.
As you move through the ranks, you get basically more likes, more flags, and that’s basically about it.
Leader is supposed to have the ability to basically act as a moderator. You can delete topics, move them, hide them, even edit posts.
(I might be wrong about the deletion part)

It took me a while honestly to get used to the auto scroll. Also it can be kind of glitchy or laggy at times.

@Melon I’d be behind you if you made such a thread, but as always, be prepared for whatever comes up on your forum. I was personally worried about making this one, but was like, why not. Bring on whatever shows up I guess, haha.
It seems that someone can always find an argument/take offense if you don’t word things correctly.
(Sometimes it doesn’t even matter, haha.)

It’s worse to have a dead forum, then one that’s full of complaints.

But no I didn’t take anything preachy from it. I get what you’re feeling. I am feeling a bit uneasy about what’s happening to the game.

@think-of-name-later
Well we technically do have mods, haha. Just they’re hiding somewhere and we’d like them to come out and play with us.

Maybe I will do it then,and post links of where to send messages.As regular as I am here I think I could handle opposition,but I’m still nervous anyway! It feels a bit silly,but I think it’s because I love this place and the game so much.

Pfft that’s a good thing. Don’t lose that. x’D
Don’t let anyone on here make you feel bad about wanting to make ToS a great place again.

If they get mad at you, just tell them I threatened commander load fail at you.

How do I become a model user so I can get Lolicon rank?

I feel like you deserve the Lolicon rank, model user or not. x’D

I would be more active here but people spam and post garbage. The better communities are on discord tbh

Topic posted! I hope it does something…

I saw and tossed you a like.
Good luck and I’m sure it will do something. They can’t ignore all of us?
Hopefully.