EVE General Discussion

Why would they start listening now?

So which idiot forgot to test the forums on large screens and ignored all the negative feedback and problems from last time around? Putting the black borders together gives me around a 1400x1400 resolution black box which is just a stupid design move. The forums use less then 50% of the screen. Who wants a tiny little strip in the centre of the screen?

Simple: because for every thing that makes them better, there is at least one thing that makes them worse.

Once again, they have added a ton of (largely useless and pointless) bling and removed functionality in the process.

It's ridiculously easy to make Akita T happy.

1. Listen.
2. No, really, listen — don't just detect the sound/observe the text.
3. Provide options.

Unfortunately, CCP has proven quite inept at the first two, and are apparently lethally allergic to #3.

How have they removed functionality? What useless features? Am I not replying to your post? Seems like the forums are working fine to me.

Plus, my eyes don't kill me after reading for longer than 20 minutes, unlike the old forums.

Honestly, I'd like a list. What was so good about the old forums, that these forums just seem so terrible? Because, from using the old forums for so long, these new ones seem like a god damn blessing to me. I don't feel like I'm stuck in the 90's any more.

Regardless, I don't play EVE for the forums. I play EVE for the Spaceships and Barbie Dolls, so long as I can read and write crap on the forums, I'm happy and could care less how they look, so long as they work. Which, as far as I can tell, they do.

I get that, and I know the new forums aren't perfect, but does anyone realize how much the other forums sucked? Good results take time and it's great for Akita to have input, but it couldn't hurt to be a little more constructive and little less personally offended when CCP finally gets on the right track.

I really, really hate the old forums. They were awful and seemed like nothing more than a featureless, naked version of phpBB. That's my opinion. My opinion is that it is good the old, terrible forums are being abandoned and the new, beautiful forums with a few little and some serious things that need to be fixed. As it is, in my opiniony opinion, that these forums are a vast, huge, megalithic improvement over the horrible horrible old forums.

So is Akita's hoping for the new forums to be destroyed by malignant people really an appropriate option?

That's not wider, that's LARGER. It's just a fancy way of zooming in. You can see even LESS text on screen that way.
So thanks for a "suggested solution" that completely defeats the purpose of what was asked.

Ok, let's repost that list from April (which hasn't been addressed in any way since).

• Remove wasted space in border, headers and block-level padding.
• Remove redundant and duplicate information and links.
• Remove pointless links.
• Remove contextually useless — or even harmful — links (e.g. "new thread" next to "new topic" in thread view, where it is not needed and where it is horribly poorly placed).
• Remove the quote number limits (but keep nested quote limit not to break the layout too much).
• Remove all javascript link triggers.
• Remove the interpret-while-typing features from the editor (or at least make it a toggle) — it interferes with the entry of special characters and entities. This will also remove the perceived lag when editing posts.


• Change settings link to actually link to the forum settings.
• Change the style of text to allow for browser-based text enlargement.
• Change the combinations of font and background colours to provide proper contrast (may also require a change of fonts altogether).
• Change the table-based layout into a semantically correct one.
• Change heading-style fonts (sizes, weights and decoration) to match the contextual importance of the heading.


• Consolidate most, if not all, javascript files into one (yes, even the google stuff).
• Consolidate the "meta-page" links (index, search, dev posts, rules, archives) to all exist side-by-side.
• Consolidate the personal tracking functions (favourites, RSS) to all exist side-by-side.
• Consolidate positional navigation (bread crumbs, thread title) into contextually and semantically coherent groups.


• Restore the sidebar functionality (EVE website, bug reports, account management, downloads, features lists, back-story and lore lists, EVE store, etc etc etc).
• Restore signatures, with all the standard forum markup.
• Restore settings to show/hide signatures.
• Restore settings to show/hide race.
• Restore images and add CSS-based rules to keep the layout from breaking.
• Restore proper in-line image alignment.
• Restore animated smileys.
• Restore settings to enable/disable images.
• Restore text decoration (colours, sizes).
• Restore text markup (code, pre-formatted).
• Restore post separation design (e.g. through alternating colours).
• Restore ability to differentiate between viewed and changed threads.
• Restore normal page behaviours through the use of common HTML so that javascript is not needed to use the forums.
• Restore design of lists (with hanging first/indented following lines).


• Add settings for page lengths (number of threads in forum view; number of posts in thread view).
• Add settings for font sizes.
• Add settings for width (including auto-width based on text size).
• Add settings for outbound link warnings.
• Add settings for portrait size.
• Add polls (for relevant subforums, e.g. F&I, Assembly Hall, Jita Park).
• Add Gzip compression.
• Add proper caching and expiration information to all files.

Ok, not entirely true. On the old list, I also had a note about the gignormous quote graphics, which they have reduced, and an snippy comment about the Like system, which I have then understood the philosophy behind (but I know that others would still keep that on the list).

The really huge issue is the over-abundance of (and occasionally very poorly used) javascript, which actually outright breaks things, and without which many of the fancy new features simply do not work for no good reason (e.g. search). As a result, in some ways the forums don't really have any of the functionality that was missing from the old forums: to make the forums useful, you have to disable the underlying code that (completely needlessly) feeds that functionality.

There is this design concept called “graceful degradation” — providing the same, or at least very similar, functionality even for browsers that do not have support for plugin x, or scripting language y, or image type z, or have all of them turned off or filtered for various reasons. These forums have none of that and that alone makes them very badly implemented. Everything relies on javascript being present and being allowed to modify even core behaviour in the browser, when really none of that should ever happen.
…and the new ones are (not just “seem like”) a featureless, naked, stripped-down version of yaf.net

Yes, they have applied a slightly more modern skin (which still breaks a huge number of principles of good design), but they have actually lost functionality in the process and replace it with graphical theatre with little added value, and the new design also cuts off a huge amount of relevant content.

So far, I have seen exactly two real improvments: longer posts and a (seemingly) more stable session handler… but then again, I almost never got logged out of the old forums, so meh — 1½…

These forums have allegedly been "in development" since forever ago, they still look and feel ALMOST EXACTLY LIKE THE ONES NEARLY HALF A YEAR AGO, with absolutely no visible FUNCTIONALITY improvement since.
When there are plenty of OPEN SOURCE forums that have much better functionality, and some of them have been developed in the spare time of a few people, NOT BY A GORRAM TEAM OF PAID SELF-PROCLAIMED EXPERTS.

If there's so little improvement needed to make these forums better, WHY THE HELL ARE ALL THE POINTS WE REPEATEDLY COMPLAINED ABOUT FOR MONTHS NOT EVEN ADDRESSED, LET ALONE FIXED ?
The most obvious answer is that nobody gives a flying fudge and they will most likely NEVER BE ADDRESSED AT ALL.

Yes, the old forums were pretty sucky, and these new forums do have a few nice features.
But for every good point about these forums, there's at least one if not several BAD POINTS to more than counter them in overall pleasantness.
So, one just has to ask the question - why not just upgrade the old ones with the good stuff, or the very least, why remove ANY functionality you had in the old ones, ever ?

More like, you had a car that was pretty junky, but it worked just fine in driving you from point A to point B,
...then somebody gives you a newer, shinier car that you hate driving (for a variety of reasons, some perfectly justified, some just personal preference)
...AND tells you that you will no longer be allowed to drive the old car (even if it's right there in the garage and in working order)
...while not listening to you saying why you hate the new car, nor allowing you to replace it with a different model that would annoy you less.
Wouldn't you say "screw it, I hope somebody totals this new car in the parking lot, so I can either get the model I want with the insurance payout, or at least be allowed to use my trusty old car for a good while longer".

So, yes, I demand progress - progress in the form of CCP actually listening to the thing we keep complaining about and fixing them before they FORCE us to use these new forums.
But at the same time, if that's not possible, or better said, because it's highly unlikely, hope for a disaster that forces THEM to be unable to force us to switch to the new forums.

Clearer now ?



Oh, yeah, that's TOTALLY gone now.
Try posting an image.

Here, I'll wait.

...