Am I the Only One. . . .???

You're not the only one. My guess is that it is the way that it is because it has to work with/on Stardock. But I could be completely wrong.

I don't think you're alone at all. As far as forums go this one isn't very good at all IMO. But it's free, the game is good, and the content and developer response here is generally good so I don't mind much.

Actually, three lists: Galactic Forum, GC Strategies, and GC Mods. There's quite a few threads requesting using different software for the board, so I'm assuming that there are reasons that the switch hasn't happened.

Yeah, it's painful.
I post, but I can't follow the thread or remember where I posted so I can't continue thoughts... or read feedback on those thoughts.

Another problem is the lack of synchronization between the newsgroup, Stardock Central's newsreader and this forum. NNTP threading beats this forum and Stardock has already setup a newsgroup server.

Well, could we get a response from Frogboy, or crew as to the future of this forum?

Please, and Thanks

Toothy

Frogboy/Staff, Please respond as to future Forum Status.

Thanks

Toothy

*Bump*

The forum is the way it is. Sorry if you don't like it. There is the news server you can post to if you want.

Frogboy,

Any chance of setting up a newsgroup just for strategy? I think part of the swamping is the tech issues vs. the strategy issues.

I'm no expert at this but when I want to catch up on responses to my posts I just do a search on my Username and hey presto....
Greetings

Frogboy,

What's with the hardline and no explanation? I, and many others, have voiced our frustration a multitude of times concerning this amateurish forum that we have to slog through to learn the intricasies of this game. The only two responses I've seen are basically the same: the above, oh so informative "The forum is the way it is. Sorry if you don't like it" and another one that basically said "The forum can't be changed." The last "quote" is actually me paraphrasing. I'd look up the orignal post, but of couse I can't b/c it's impossible to do a real search, and I have no idea where to find it in the morass of messages that is this board. If you guys (the developers) are willing to settle for a forum that stunts the GalCiv's community's ability to discuss issues, so be it. It's your company, and you can cut whatever corners you want. Though it is a shame that you're not taking full advantage of your customers enthusiasm for your product, the only thing I really resent is the fact that you bill yourself as having an unprecedent level of player support, but you're not even willing to answer a simple question. All we'd like is the courtesy of a real answer to what I think is a fair question: With so many inexpensive, well-tested software packages that make it fairly trivial to give the community what they need, why have you so steadfastly decided that the "the forum is the way it is and it cannot be changed" ?

(Frankly, this attitude is an all too common, tell-tale sign of flaky spin-doctor tech support. You present them with a question whose answer makes them look good, you get a flowery response that ends with "if we can be of any more service, please don't hesitate to call us." Otherwise, they put you on hold, and then the phone line mysteriously disconnects after a few minutes. In the case of a forum, this translates to either ignoring the question or posting a pseudo-response like the one above.)

~SDC~

MadMaz:

Okay, then let me be candid: I disagree. I think the forums here are good. The forums here offer an unpredecented amount of customization by us. You can see player ranks and get instant profiles.

There are features I would like to see such as the ability to "subscribe" to threads but overall I don't really see an issue with the forums. And there is a news group as well for people who want to use those.

I think history has shown that we clearly listen to the requests of customers. But if we don't agree with them, we shouldn't feel compelled to change.

I am a pretty cranky guy at times. And I think that there is a lot of pidly belly aching and a general attitude of "If you don't do exactly what I want you to do then everything's terrible."

Over time, the forums are and have been improving and they will continue to. I personally hate the out of the box BBS forum style packages that so many sites are using. You're free to disagree with that of course. But that's my view on it.

In the past month we've added a heck of a lot of new features to this forum, added sub-sections, integrated it with the Metaverse. And instead of any positive feedback we just hear more complaints that it hasn't magically changed into some preconceived generic BBS forum package.

So how's that for a "non flowery" response?

~SDC~

Brad, I think the main concern here is not "the forum system sucks", but "the forum is too crowded". And I kinda agree - when I came here the first time roughly two weeks ago, it was easy to read, but now, theres just too much chattering and noise to follow important threads. So, what people are suggesting (and I fully agree with that), is making some new subsections (like strategy and mods) - and how much work would that be ?

I mean seriously, I don't know how much work it would be

But it would make sense I think to add some more forums, like the mentioned "tech support", or just "support" for people who have problems. A "suggestion" wouldn't hurt either. I know theres a thread about bugs and suggestions, but face facts, most people are making new topics anyways, due to the size of mentioned threads.

I also painfully miss a working search function (or just advanced - I dunno what it is but I never find the topics I'm searching for) and a "view posters posts" function: I could click your name and see all the posts you made (which would be highly interesting to many of us no doubt), or click my name in the morning to find the topics I made yesterday evening and check them for replies.

Constructive criticism is the magic word

I think next week we could add a technical support and a suggestion forum.



~SDC~

Oh boy, will you marry me ?

I seriously think I'd support this game even if it sucked, just because of the "customer support" you are doing. Thats something I've missed for a LONG time.

Madmaz,

Seriously, watch what you call flaky tech support. These guys have done nothing but listen and improve this game since I've been here, and it's only been 2 weeks since I had it. Their giving away a free expansion pack in june, and frogboy is answering questions on a sunday, let alone Easter sunday. If you disagree with the choice, that's fine.I would personnally like them to focus their efforts on improving the game even more. But this is the farthest thing I've seen from bad support, as a matter of fact it's the best I've seen.

Later

~SDC~

Twisti,

Reading/posting via Stardock Central makes the forums much easier to navigate.

~SDC~

Phaedyme: I seriously doubt I could convince my boss to let me install Stardock Central at work

Could a group be added just for the Metaverse discussions? That is something people either care a ton about or don't care about at at all.

Since I have to admit to not seeing the newgroups take off or even mirror the volume of the Forums, any chance of a Palm conduit for Stardock Central to DL Discussions?

One of the challenges when MIRVing high volume groups is that people tend to keep posting to the high volume group, rather than going to the subgroups.

It would be great if someone could move comments to where they belong, rather than where they are posted, but I also understand this takes lots of effort.

IMHO frogboy's priorities:

galciv bugs: high
1.03 patch: high
tech support: high
having the forums easily integrate with stardock: high
making the forums perfect for everybody: low

I'm sure that the forums are on his list of stuff to take care of. He has posted that he will be adding tech support and suggestion forums, but as far as it goes this is pretty far down the list of things to take care of.

Thanks for the response Frogboy. It's probably apparent that I can be cranky too

Anyway, I don't want to give the wrong impression. I didn't mean to generalize what I said to all the other facets of your customer support. Frankly, that's what I found so inexplicable about the whole thing. The lack of a meaningful response to an honest question (that's been put forward *so* many times) seemed completely incongruent with your excellent responsiveness in so many other areas.

But I do disagree with what you said. I'm really, *really* surprised that overall you don't see an issue with the forums and think they are quite good. Perhaps you can't see it because you've been using it for so long, or your attached to it, or you already know all answers to questions, or it reminds you of Os2 or something. I don't know. But I do believe you when you say that you really listen to your customers, and I hope you take that to heart when we say that, from our perspective, this board is almost painful to use.

I don't know why you hate forum software packages so much that you'd rather reinvent the wheel. The fact that you listed "adding subsections" as a new feature is telling in terms how unnecessarily painful it is to stick to a proprietary system. What would normally be a trivial 1-minute task probably involved a ton of changes with your system (adding buttons to the stardock UI, changing your page generation code, etc.) My guess is that the lack of positive feedback with these changes is not because people don't appreciate your work, but, rather, that it doesn't occur to them that you've willingly chosen to take on a boatload of work to provide something that is usually very easy to get.

Anyway, thanks for the response (the flowery level was perfect) and I'm sorry if I gave you the impression that we (or at least I) think everything is terrible. Far from it. We'd all be much happier gamers if every company's customer support was as "terrible" as yours though I do hope you reconsider one particular choice you've made.

- MadMaz

btw, profiles and rankings are also things you get free with those systems. Linking those profiles to you your metaverse database can also be done. And if stardock has a capable web browser, you would no longer need to maintain 2 systems.

~SDC~

I have to go with the "This forum softare blows" crowd here. I'm a big fan of vBulletin myself for what it can do.

It's not bad, the game gods knows I've seen far worse software used by game companies, but other than that it's graphically pretty and lets Brad insert company proprietary widgets like our Metaverse icons, it has nothing going for it.

The forums in their current state is workable. I think if a suggestions section can be made we can make suggestions on how to improve the current forums further.

I have no problems with the current forums. I just would like to see 3 things (low on priority, I suppose, I'd rather have the game enhanced LOL ): search feature, list of past 10 posts of the user (link to user profile), and edit post

crap, soon as I wrote it I see there is a search feature. Well, all the more for the edit function request LOL