Jump to content

Expanding the challenges forum to cover all save game discussion - opinions please


Recommended Posts

Something that has come under discussion across the forums recently is the wish to have somewhere on the forums for people to discuss and post updates on their games no matter who they are managing and without the restrictions that some forums have.

Currently I can think of a few places where this is happening in some form or another:

  • FM Stories - which has a very particular style which does not fit into this.
  • LLM - again, has a very particular style which does not fit into this.
  • The OTF FM thread - seems an odd place but quite a bit goes on here, although it is restricted to the one thread.
  • Here - with the slight exception of The Career Thread the threads here all heavily structured, which is not what everyone is after.
  • GPTG - the club threads in there are used for a combination of player/team discussion and career discussion.

I've been in discussion with Cleon from GPTG and one option would be to split the club threads from GPTG into player/team discussion (GPTG) and here (career discussion). This would mean that this forum would gain a whole load of new threads based around the popular clubs where people can discuss their careers managing them without the need for the specific focus that the other forums offer. For the not so popular clubs, a more general thread can be used, similar to the current Career Thread.

I'm thinking ahead to FM09 here, so let me know what you think.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • Replies 148
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Why you say that? what good and bad points do you see?

It seems logical that this forum is used for career updates and the GPTG used for discussing transfers and everything player related. If modded right, this could be very good and make threads seem less cluttered and possibly get more users doing the challenges.

Id love to hear some of the positives and negatives from other people though :)

Link to post
Share on other sites

I put my point across in the Career thread but to reiterate really as long as it doesn't fuel abuse of the forum by rogue's who come into this forum from the GPTG/LLM and post rubbish about their one season with whoever and never post again. I like to read the progression of clubs with certain users and as long as that continues then i'm all for it and support the idea.

Question, do you mean new thread will be started for specific teams like i.e Newcastle or Bournemouth?

Link to post
Share on other sites

I put my point across in the Career thread but to reiterate really as long as it doesn't fuel abuse of the forum by rogue's who come into this forum from the GPTG/LLM and post rubbish about their one season with whoever and never post again. I like to read the progression of clubs with certain users and as long as that continues then i'm all for it and support the idea.

Question, do you mean new thread will be started for specific teams like i.e Newcastle or Bournemouth?

Me and Dafuge have a pretty good idea who the idiots would be, if anyone was caught taking the mic, we'd soon sort them out. They'd only do it once trust me :). But yeah, I get the feeling this appeals to the people who prefer to see progression and read it like yourself.

And yes all the big or popular clubs would get their own threads. Smaller ones would be more generalised like league two thread etc. But I'm guessing a lot of threads would appear.

Link to post
Share on other sites

The only thing i'm really worried about is there being 100's of club threads cluttering it up the forum. We have a 'Lower League Management' couldn't we have a 'Bigger League Management' for people managing teams in the top 2 or 3 tiers?

There would be lost of threads but not all at the top of the forum. We'd have a sticky thread with all the related threads in one place, so they can be found easily. Or maybe if we got permission we could ask for a sub forum for club threads, but we'd need to check with SI. There are many things we can do and consider though, to keep it user friendly and so its less in your face, so to speak.

Check out this thread http://www.community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=29636 this is the sort of thing we'd want, only quality threads witha good opening etc.

Link to post
Share on other sites

As far as I'm concerned, I think the way things are at the moment is fine. TBH, I'm not a big fan of that idea because it would end up meaning that the team thread on the GPTG would only be about discussing players and you wouldnt be able to post your whole season summaries etc on there. I'm one of those who prefers to be on just one forum (GPTG) and dont really visit the others much, if at all. And I'm sure the problems will still remain because then you'll have people posting about their careers on the wrong forum and asking for help on players on the wrong forums (if that makes sense).

I dont know if you guys are looking for other ideas but I think the best way to handle this would to just split the good player and team guide forum tbh. Make one forum which is only about players and make one forum which is only about teams/clubs. So nobody could come into the players forum and post their teams and ask which players to sign and nobody could go onto the teams forum and ask about a particular player or players. Or atleast that is how it would work in theory.

I know it would seem a little contradictory since the teams would obviously consist of players. But I think it could work with a few modifications. It would definitely make it less cluttered if the two things are in different areas.

Just an idea. :)

Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm not sure if it would be good or bad tbh

I think one of the major pros for this forum would be the fact that this would bring in a huge amount of traffic, which is something that some of the threads in here have been suffering from without.

The major con I can see is that there will be a lot more active threads on the first page, but since the bottom half of this forum is made up of threads that haven't been posted in for ages I can't see that it would really be a big problem.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I am all for this idea. It would increase the userbase of our forum, which can only be a good thing. Providing, of course, that it attracts a much higher proportion of good:bad users.

Also, I forsee the same problem that Paul mentioned. If the moderating continues to be as good as it currently is, then I see no other ways why this wouldn't work.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hows about a completely brand spanking new sub-forum :-D

I think that career discussion and the challenges go hand in hand, especially the way people have taken to reporting on them in this forum. Whilst a brand new forum might be good it would probably kill off this forum completely.

Link to post
Share on other sites

As far as I'm concerned, I think the way things are at the moment is fine. TBH, I'm not a big fan of that idea because it would end up meaning that the team thread on the GPTG would only be about discussing players and you wouldnt be able to post your whole season summaries etc on there. I'm one of those who prefers to be on just one forum (GPTG) and dont really visit the others much, if at all. And I'm sure the problems will still remain because then you'll have people posting about their careers on the wrong forum and asking for help on players on the wrong forums (if that makes sense).

I dont know if you guys are looking for other ideas but I think the best way to handle this would to just split the good player and team guide forum tbh. Make one forum which is only about players and make one forum which is only about teams/clubs. So nobody could come into the players forum and post their teams and ask which players to sign and nobody could go onto the teams forum and ask about a particular player or players. Or atleast that is how it would work in theory.

I know it would seem a little contradictory since the teams would obviously consist of players. But I think it could work with a few modifications. It would definitely make it less cluttered if the two things are in different areas.

Just an idea. :)

This is basically why we are trying to get everything sorted and in 1 place, rather than spread out everywhere. I want to keep GPTG forum about players and not achievments as such, as most of the threads in here cover that aspect.

Link to post
Share on other sites

this forum is used for career updates and the GPTG used for discussing transfers and everything player related

Before I mention my thoughts on the idea, I'd just like to ask some questions. As someone who's never, ever been in the GPTG forum, I can't say how it does or doesn't work, but the thought of Updating in one forum, then discussing my players and transfers in another ludicrous. It would be a lot of bother just to do both, and I could see people either doing one, or none of the mentioned.

Smaller ones would be more generalised like league two thread

I had pondered the idea, but upon though, what happens when the player gets promoted or relegated. Are they no longer allowed to post in that thread, and must switch their game into another, or would they simply stay in there, and perhaps become the only person posting, feeling alone that no one is there to appreciate that they took Redbridge FC to the Premiership?

Check out this thread http://www.community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=29636 this is the sort of thing we'd want, only quality threads witha good opening etc.

I notice on this thread, a lot of people are asking others for hints and tips on staff and players. Again, with players that get to 2040 and some to 2010 - would this not further seclude the threads, especially as if "Joe Bloggs FC" only has 2 posters in it, and one advances while the other is a casual player.

And yes all the big or popular clubs would get their own threads

Don't you think that if you secluded all the clubs to their own thread, people would be less likely to read up on your career, other than people playing the same game as them. It would damage the atmosphere in this forum, and you would be left with Arsenal supporters licking the bottom of other Arsenal supporter, and the same with any other club thread. I don't think this would benefit anything at all, and cause divide within the forum.

I think one of the major pros for this forum would be the fact that this would bring in a huge amount of traffic,

Do we want traffic, or quality posters? We've all seen what happens to traffic. 1,000 new sign ups, 998 of them don't even get past the sign up stage, 1 of them lasts half a season and the other goes on for the entire length of FM, while only 2 of the original sign up members still track it. IMHO, if you want traffic, then put a big red arrow and a "Free Money" sign underneath it next to the forum, because it'll attract a similar brand of posters. But if you want genuine posters, who are here to help build a community, then I can only suggest moving the forum above Bugs, Data, Translation, Editors and Skinning forums, at the very least. There is debate as to weather or not it belongs above forums such as FMS or T&TT, because all are used frequently, but for those mentioned, if people want them and don't know where they are, they generally post in GD anyway, and get directed with a link, rendering it pointless that those forums are in the position they are.

To summarize. I'm not entirely sure this would be a great thing, based upon my own argument. however, I'm all for giving things a shot, and am honestly not 100% certain what would happen. As mentioned, I'm not a fan of GPTG, so don't know how they work, or why this needs to be done, so if someone could explain to me, with some detail what would be changing, I'd appreciate that.

I will say this. For people who are just looking to start a "Hey Guys, this is my career" thread and post at their own will, while others read up on there careers, I think this would be a great idea.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks for your input Nep, I'll do my best to answer your questions or add to the discussion.

Before I mention my thoughts on the idea, I'd just like to ask some questions. As someone who's never, ever been in the GPTG forum, I can't say how it does or doesn't work, but the thought of Updating in one forum, then discussing my players and transfers in another ludicrous. It would be a lot of bother just to do both, and I could see people either doing one, or none of the mentioned.

Currently the club threads in the GPTG contain a mixture of the 'who should I sign' type stuff along with the career type updates that you are used to in this forum. The split would allow the GPTG to focus on player discussion (which is what it was designed for) while at the same time giving people a place to go to should they wish to discuss their careers. Naturally there will still be a bit of cross over where players will be discussed here but it will be something that will be up to the moderators to keep an eye on.

I had pondered the idea, but upon though, what happens when the player gets promoted or relegated. Are they no longer allowed to post in that thread, and must switch their game into another, or would they simply stay in there, and perhaps become the only person posting, feeling alone that no one is there to appreciate that they took Redbridge FC to the Premiership?

My idea would be that there would be club threads for people who want to manage one club only and separate threads for people taking various different general starting points, a bit like the career thread is now.

I notice on this thread, a lot of people are asking others for hints and tips on staff and players. Again, with players that get to 2040 and some to 2010 - would this not further seclude the threads, especially as if "Joe Bloggs FC" only has 2 posters in it, and one advances while the other is a casual player.

These types of threads would only be used for the most popular of clubs, there would be no point for example to have a Wycombe Wanderers thread.

Don't you think that if you secluded all the clubs to their own thread, people would be less likely to read up on your career, other than people playing the same game as them. It would damage the atmosphere in this forum, and you would be left with Arsenal supporters licking the bottom of other Arsenal supporter, and the same with any other club thread. I don't think this would benefit anything at all, and cause divide within the forum.

The other option I was considering was to have a 'big clubs' type thread, it may be the case that the individual club threads are sparse or not neeeded at all. It all depends on what sort of numbers take part in the threads.

Do we want traffic, or quality posters?

Obviously this sort of thing is very hard to predict. I imagine that the initial traffic will be focussed towards the sort of threads they were associated with before, I can't see them suddenly starting massive of new sign up threads for example.

To summarize. I'm not entirely sure this would be a great thing, based upon my own argument. however, I'm all for giving things a shot, and am honestly not 100% certain what would happen. As mentioned, I'm not a fan of GPTG, so don't know how they work, or why this needs to be done, so if someone could explain to me, with some detail what would be changing, I'd appreciate that.

The main reason this is being considered is that there currently isn't a place on the forums for people to discuss their save games, which is something that has cropped up on various forums. I've been keen on expanding the career thread idea to make it open for everyone to take part, which in turn would give the people posting in the GPTG forum somewhere to discuss their careers, since that forum isn't really designed for that.

In a nutshell, I'm proposing that this forum changes from the challenges, sign ups and experiments forum into the challeneges, sign ups, experiments and career discussion forum. The major change in this forum would be the addition of a load of new threads where people would update on their games in the way people have done in the career thread.

I will say this. For people who are just looking to start a "Hey Guys, this is my career" thread and post at their own will, while others read up on there careers, I think this would be a great idea.

In a way, this is the idea, only it will not be a case of people just starting a new thread when they start a new game. It would be structured in such a way that there is always a relevant thread for people to post in, without starting a new one. With the new forum software it would even be possible to move posts from an existing thread to a new one, so for example if a big clubs thread was started and a significant number of people were managing Bayern Munich, a Bayern Munich thread could be started by moving all of their posts to the new thread.

Obviously this is still in the ideas stage so if you've got any questions keep them coming, and if there's anything I haven't answered well enough please feel free to ask more questions.

Link to post
Share on other sites

If I were to continue playing my dafuge challenge with Chippenham, would I then post it in a Chippenham thread or a Dafuge challenge thread?

There wouldn't be a Chippenham thread as that would come under the 'dafuge's challenge thread'. The individual club threads would only be started on a needs basis if one club is dominating a particular thread and warrants its own.

Link to post
Share on other sites

But that will still mean a LOT of club threads, I imagine all of the Premiership will need their own one, then a few from Championship, Leeds and Nottingham Forest normally have one, then you have all the big clubs abroad, at least 30/40 imo

By the looks of it there's about 20 on the first page of GPTG, this forum has threads on the first page that haven't been used for over a month.

Link to post
Share on other sites

The thread in OTF is good in my opinion. There are people who want to ask something, to make stories about his/her careers, etc. without any restriction. Why would we make several threads? The only way that I see is making a "career" forum. It would contain "English leagues career", "Spanish leagues career", "French leagues career", "Other leagues career", etc.

Link to post
Share on other sites

The thread in OTF is good in my opinion. There are people who want to ask something, to make stories about his/her careers, etc. without any restriction. Why would we make several threads? The only way that I see is making a "career" forum. It would contain "English leagues career", "Spanish leagues career", "French leagues career", "Other leagues career", etc.

This is basically what I'm suggesting, only instead of making a new forum I'm suggesting it should be combined with a forum which is already catering for this sort of thing to an extent.

This is not intended to replace the OTF thread, that is something which is up to the OTF mods.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah I think including all of the club threads from GPTG wouldn't be a bad idea. Obviously there would be a bit of a mess at the start but after a while once it's settled down it should be fine.

If you do it for the start of FM09 then it means that any additional half hearted challenges and signs up that are produced will just be absorbed into the mess that will happen anyway.

I think that if the move was to happen though it would have to be made clear as to what goes where (as I'm sure it would be), but it would be more beneficial for everyone if this forum was more publicised by SI - especially if the scenario idea that has been discussed comes to fruition as well. :thup:

Link to post
Share on other sites

One of the things I particularly like about this sub forum is that it is not frequented by many of the idiots who are so prevalent elsewhere.

I think that creating somewhere for everyone to post "update threads" is an excellent idea, but I can think of no reason whatsoever why it should be done in CSU&E.

If there is a demand for a forum to be created to house "Update threads", then by all means create one, but don't think for a minute that just lumping them all in here because none of the other forums want them is a good idea.

I think this is an awful idea.

If there is a big enough demand then create a seperate forum.

Link to post
Share on other sites

The first question to be asked is what is the purpose of the Challenges and GP&TG Forums (what kind of posts belong/are wanted there).

Whilst the LLM and Stories Forums are for specific methods of play, the Challenges Forum doesn't have a specific style.

I have no problem with having all other Save Game Discussions in here - if there is more acitivity in here then any extra rubbish should just disappear down the forum - and if it gets too busy sub-forums could always be made in the future. (Though to be fair, looking through the GP&TG forum, the stuff that would go here isn't that many threads).

The main question is what is wanted in the GP&TG forum? - Just had a quick look and the larger more popular threads seem to be the Save Game/Story/Team Guide Threads. If these are the ones that will be moved in the future, and if you have a community like say the LLM or OTF forums, then moving them may gut that forum.

The opening post of those threads seem to be a Team Guide, that then as they go on start turning into a story - they may become disjointed in the future, if the opening post as a guide is in the GP&TG Forum, then the users progress is here, and questions and advice are over their.

One solution is to have the GP&TP discusing the players still, and have only the Team Guide bit of the longer threads there - discussing background on club, current squad, and any stories regarding peoples progress through the game with that team posted in here.

Then have threads for some of the popular teams, or a country thread to discuss general saves in that country. A general thread to discuss any old game you are playing on FM etc...

Link to post
Share on other sites

If each "major" club were to get it's own thread, then I would be completely and utterly against this as I believe it would ruin the atmosphere of CSE and create such a huge amount of clutter that it will destroy the community. Let me explain:

With 30-40 threads on major clubs together with more general ones, and saying that there are 20 or so used quite actively, yes it would bring activity to this forum, but it would so something else. It would stop new challenges, new AI experiments, and new sign-ups from getting the exposure they need, near the top of the forum, to grab users attention and get people to look at them.

The beauty of CSE is that threads can get attention from users when it hasn't been posted in a week. An AI Experiment, and I mean a meaningful detailed one, cannot be updated continuously, and is normally updated by one person alone. Now people will follow it, but they won't post in it that often and nor will updates come that often. It will however, under the proposed changes, quickly sink down the forum and gather little attention.

The same can be said for new challenges, of course the established challenges like Dafuge's and Gundo's will be perfectly fine due to the volume of users, but other challenges which need to be near the top to get attention and users will be relegated down the list of threads rather quickly and be cluttered up with "Man Utd Career Games", "Liverpool Career Games", "Real Madrid career games discussion".

The beauty of this forum is watching a sign up, an experiment, or a challenge which is quite small build up a following over time, build up discussion, and build up interest. This will be lost if there are dozens of non related threads.

Don't you think that if you secluded all the clubs to their own thread, people would be less likely to read up on your career, other than people playing the same game as them. It would damage the atmosphere in this forum, and you would be left with Arsenal supporters licking the bottom of other Arsenal supporter, and the same with any other club thread. I don't think this would benefit anything at all, and cause divide within the forum.

I completely agree with this.

The other option I was considering was to have a 'big clubs' type thread, it may be the case that the individual club threads are sparse or not needed at all. It all depends on what sort of numbers take part in the threads.

It could be sparse but if it is, it defeats your major pro for implementing this "I think one of the major pros for this forum would be the fact that this would bring in a huge amount of traffic,"

Thus making the change worthless.

I also believe, that despite whatever moderating or rules laid down, that any clubs thread will just turn into club discussions on who to buy, sell, keep from the youths and will be become less and less a career trajectory and more a club discussion.

Furthermore, how does club threads or even league/country threads account for career progression and moves.

To me, this can all be better handled by the career thread.

I'd also like to add that if the demand is there for club career threads, then create a separate sub-forum, I don't want them in here. A better way to increase users and attention for this forum is to position CSE, FMS and dare I say it (cos I think most of them are arrogant and insular) LLM higher up the list of forums and certainly above bugs, languages and editor forums!

We build communities and keep people interested, we add to FM and give SI's customers reasons to keep playing, keep buying, and keep improving the game by involving them.

People who frequent the bugs forum, the editor forum, data issues, and the guides will go looking for them, they know what they want. Users find the community forums by chance, or out of interest. I know I didn't discover CSE until a while after I joined, because it is so far down.

So please, don't implement this. Create a separate forum for them, and move the community forums of CSE, FMS, and LLM further up and see the difference, because it would be huge.

Link to post
Share on other sites

One of the things I particularly like about this sub forum is that it is not frequented by many of the idiots who are so prevalent elsewhere.

I think that creating somewhere for everyone to post "update threads" is an excellent idea, but I can think of no reason whatsoever why it should be done in CSU&E.

If there is a demand for a forum to be created to house "Update threads", then by all means create one, but don't think for a minute that just lumping them all in here because none of the other forums want them is a good idea.

I think this is an awful idea.

If there is a big enough demand then create a seperate forum.

One of the arguments for including them here is that this forum already caters for this type of thing to a certain extent already, moving them to a brand new forum could potentially render this forum extinct. Since the split from GQ, the threads in this forum have suffered from a lack of access of people regularly visiting, expanding the forum to cater for something that is wanted across the forums could kill two birds with one stone.

Link to post
Share on other sites

The first question to be asked is what is the purpose of the Challenges and GP&TG Forums (what kind of posts belong/are wanted there).

Whilst the LLM and Stories Forums are for specific methods of play, the Challenges Forum doesn't have a specific style.

I have no problem with having all other Save Game Discussions in here - if there is more acitivity in here then any extra rubbish should just disappear down the forum - and if it gets too busy sub-forums could always be made in the future. (Though to be fair, looking through the GP&TG forum, the stuff that would go here isn't that many threads).

The main question is what is wanted in the GP&TG forum? - Just had a quick look and the larger more popular threads seem to be the Save Game/Story/Team Guide Threads. If these are the ones that will be moved in the future, and if you have a community like say the LLM or OTF forums, then moving them may gut that forum.

The opening post of those threads seem to be a Team Guide, that then as they go on start turning into a story - they may become disjointed in the future, if the opening post as a guide is in the GP&TG Forum, then the users progress is here, and questions and advice are over their.

One solution is to have the GP&TP discusing the players still, and have only the Team Guide bit of the longer threads there - discussing background on club, current squad, and any stories regarding peoples progress through the game with that team posted in here.

Then have threads for some of the popular teams, or a country thread to discuss general saves in that country. A general thread to discuss any old game you are playing on FM etc...

The main purpose of the GPTG was to discuss players and particular players which may be good for certain teams. Currently it is being used by people to discuss their careers at those clubs, which isn't really what it was designed for. I've got no doubt that moving the career discussion element from that forum would ruin it, in fact I think it would have a positive effect on the forum focussing it towards what it was designed for.

I think if a split was to happen, we would have to make it perfectly clear well in advance what sort of things were expected in the different forums.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I think having threads for each club defeats the point dafuge initially raised in the career thread earlier on - people would then just be charting thier progress with a specific club whereas the Career Thread was originally intended to get people playing games where they moved around to take on new jobs/challenges in the same save game.

I think the best thing to do would be to create a few different career threads with different starting points. Then you would have the 'Work Your Way Up From The Bottom Career Thread' for those who want to start unemployed with Sunday League rep as well as the 'In At The Deep End Career Thread' for those who want to start with a pro/international footballer rep. I guess it would be up to the mods to monitor and make sure people are starting out in the right thread. In addition to those, we could have an 'International management career thread' and regional threads such as 'The Asian Careers Thread' etc.

Individual club threads would overwhelm the forum too much and actually create less interest in the challenges and other threads. Players would just start up their Man U/Barca game and ignore some of the really interesting smaller challenges like the San MArino Double and Britain/India Challenge. In my opinion, if threads based on saves played at one club are really desired, a seperate forum would be the best way to go. However, if 'career' discussion is desired, the threads should be more general and could easily fit in here.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Wegason, thanks for your input, I'll try to respond to some of your points.

If each "major" club were to get it's own thread, then I would be completely and utterly against this as I believe it would ruin the atmosphere of CSE and create such a huge amount of clutter that it will destroy the community. Let me explain:

With 30-40 threads on major clubs together with more general ones, and saying that there are 20 or so used quite actively, yes it would bring activity to this forum, but it would so something else. It would stop new challenges, new AI experiments, and new sign-ups from getting the exposure they need, near the top of the forum, to grab users attention and get people to look at them.

The beauty of CSE is that threads can get attention from users when it hasn't been posted in a week. An AI Experiment, and I mean a meaningful detailed one, cannot be updated continuously, and is normally updated by one person alone. Now people will follow it, but they won't post in it that often and nor will updates come that often. It will however, under the proposed changes, quickly sink down the forum and gather little attention.

The same can be said for new challenges, of course the established challenges like Dafuge's and Gundo's will be perfectly fine due to the volume of users, but other challenges which need to be near the top to get attention and users will be relegated down the list of threads rather quickly and be cluttered up with "Man Utd Career Games", "Liverpool Career Games", "Real Madrid career games discussion".

The beauty of this forum is watching a sign up, an experiment, or a challenge which is quite small build up a following over time, build up discussion, and build up interest. This will be lost if there are dozens of non related threads.

I would be aware that allowing such a large number of club threads could swarm the forum, swamping out the challenge, sign up and experiment threads. Perhaps one way to combat this would be to initially restrict everything to a small number of threads, then expand to individual threads when the need occurs. The current forum software allows us to move posts and merge threads so this would be a possibility to keep the potential large number of club threads down.

One other way of promoting the challenges, sign ups and experiments is the stickied index threads, which we had in the old forum but don't currently have. I think this forum could benefit from a stickied thread indexing all the relevant threads from each area for easy access, which is something I intend on working on.

It could be sparse but if it is, it defeats your major pro for implementing this "I think one of the major pros for this forum would be the fact that this would bring in a huge amount of traffic,"

Thus making the change worthless.

What I meant by that was that certain club threads would not be needed (for example Bayern Munich) since the demand would be low, so these sorts of clubs could be combined into one thread. This was one way which the potentially large number of club threads could be curbed (as mentioned previously).

I also believe, that despite whatever moderating or rules laid down, that any clubs thread will just turn into club discussions on who to buy, sell, keep from the youths and will be become less and less a career trajectory and more a club discussion.

Furthermore, how does club threads or even league/country threads account for career progression and moves.

To me, this can all be better handled by the career thread.

My suggestion was to have separate threads for various starting points and aims, so if your aim was to start with a particular club and move around you knew exactly which was the relevant thread. One of the things which I think should be a rule in each thread is that you state your starting situation (reputation, leagues loaded etc.) and your aims, so it is clear which thread is appropriate.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I think having threads for each club defeats the point dafuge initially raised in the career thread earlier on - people would then just be charting thier progress with a specific club whereas the Career Thread was originally intended to get people playing games where they moved around to take on new jobs/challenges in the same save game.

I think the best thing to do would be to create a few different career threads with different starting points. Then you would have the 'Work Your Way Up From The Bottom Career Thread' for those who want to start unemployed with Sunday League rep as well as the 'In At The Deep End Career Thread' for those who want to start with a pro/international footballer rep. I guess it would be up to the mods to monitor and make sure people are starting out in the right thread. In addition to those, we could have an 'International management career thread' and regional threads such as 'The Asian Careers Thread' etc.

Individual club threads would overwhelm the forum too much and actually create less interest in the challenges and other threads. Players would just start up their Man U/Barca game and ignore some of the really interesting smaller challenges like the San MArino Double and Britain/India Challenge. In my opinion, if threads based on saves played at one club are really desired, a seperate forum would be the best way to go. However, if 'career' discussion is desired, the threads should be more general and could easily fit in here.

The different career starting points with relevant threads was the starting point of this discussion, but the thinking was that the 'big clubs' thread would be overwhelmed with discussion about Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool etc. in the way it currently is in GPTG.

Perhaps if it started as just a 'big clubs' thread, then moved to individual club threads when the need occured, it wouldn't consume the forum?

Link to post
Share on other sites

I intended on just staying out of this conversation but I like the way it is now. If this is part of the overall changes then I'm not too keen on them.

This is nothing to do with the 'overall changes'. This is a discussion about how the load between two forums could be split to fit the needs of the forums in general.

Nothing has been decided yet, this truly is a consultation and we are desperate to hear everyone's views.

Link to post
Share on other sites

This is nothing to do with the 'overall changes'. This is a discussion about how the load between two forums could be split to fit the needs of the forums in general.

Nothing has been decided yet, this truly is a consultation and we are desperate to hear everyone's views.

Ok. I didn't really understand it anyway to be honest with you.

Link to post
Share on other sites

The different career starting points with relevant threads was the starting point of this discussion, but the thinking was that the 'big clubs' thread would be overwhelmed with discussion about Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool etc. in the way it currently is in GPTG.

Perhaps if it started as just a 'big clubs' thread, then moved to individual club threads when the need occured, it wouldn't consume the forum?

The good side to a general 'big clubs' thread is it gives the scope to move around have a 'career'. On the down side, there would probably be a lot of discussion/clarificaiton needed over what makes a big club - would someone starting at Lazio for example be able to contribute?

Whatever the changes are, I think the need for clear but flexible guidelines is great. The sıtuation to avoid is becoming too strict with the criteria for posting in a thread, thus defeating the point of a free discussion of current games.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks for your response dafuge, I do still however believe this would destroy the community, or at least damage it, and the best option would be rearranging the order of the forums in the forum display.

Does anyone else agree with my belief that the community forums (as I call them) of FMS, CSE, and LLM add more to the game, and improve and enhance user's experience of the game and keep people coming here, and therefore deserve greater prominence.

Link to post
Share on other sites

The good side to a general 'big clubs' thread is it gives the scope to move around have a 'career'. On the down side, there would probably be a lot of discussion/clarificaiton needed over what makes a big club - would someone starting at Lazio for example be able to contribute?

Whatever the changes are, I think the need for clear but flexible guidelines is great. The sıtuation to avoid is becoming too strict with the criteria for posting in a thread, thus defeating the point of a free discussion of current games.

Yes, I completely agree with you there. If we try and pigeon-hole every club with weak guidelines and then try and enforce them it would be a nightmare. It would just encourage people to argue over who deserves to post in which thread.

If these changes go ahead, we would need to think very carefully about how we brand the various threads to make things as user friendly as possible, but that's a discussion for later on if this goes ahead.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks for your response dafuge, I do still however believe this would destroy the community, or at least damage it, and the best option would be rearranging the order of the forums in the forum display.

This is exactly the reason I want to consult with people from both communities before committing to anything. Personally, I think the effect on the community is unpredictable. I don't think it would be fair to say that it would benefit or hinder it, but I think it must be made clear that this is something which could affect users from all over the place, not just CSE and GPTG. This move could potentially bring people in from all over the place, I know that this sort of thing would certainly interest people from the OTF.

This forum has a relatively low number of regular users compared to many other forums, increasing it can have unpredictable outcomes but if the people we are bringing to this forum are of similar mind (as in they like playing FM and discussing it) is it that big a risk?

Does anyone else agree with my belief that the community forums (as I call them) of FMS, CSE, and LLM add more to the game, and improve and enhance user's experience of the game and keep people coming here, and therefore deserve greater prominence.

Unfortunately this sort of thing is beyond me, there's not a lot I can do about it. However if someone more important is reading...

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...