Well, we finally made it. Firstly I want to thank you all for signing up, secondly for your patience and thirdly for your forbearance. Albeit the team has worked hard to bring the site together. If you do spot anything (from typos to missing features), please use the Forum Feedback thread to tell us what and where, and we will look into addressing it. We want to make this site the best it can be, but that requires input from everyone.
With that said here, are a few subjects I dare say, might come up: -
No light theme
Presently we only have the two Dark themes but rest assured we will add light themes down the road. There's a surprising amount of work required balancing out these things, especially when it comes to responsive design, and it just didn't seem sensible to hold the forum back from launch for that alone.
No image upload or Giphy Integration
We don't possess the necessary Voodoo required to host unlimited image upload (that would undoubtedly kill our server off in a matter of weeks) so, you'll have to be linking to your own Imgur accounts, I'm afraid.
Secondly, albeit we all appreciate the strategic use of a good Gif (we'll at least I do), too much of a good thing can derail a thread into a meme fest when every Gif is just a quick search away within the forum tools. So we feel it's sensible to make people put a bit more work into their Gif wizardry.
No Most Posts, Reactions or Points tables
A bit of a staple at other sites, but in our view, such tables can, unfortunately, become a bit of an unhealthy fixation for some posters who can and do obsess over their standings, and we'd prefer people come to the site and post because they have something to say rather than because they feel they need to, to maintain their position on the greasy pole of perceived popularity.
Now with all of that said as to what you won't find, onto some features, you will find:
Dedicated OT Preparation Board
We want creative posters to be able to make truly kick-ass Hype and Offical Topic threads (Hype| and OT| threads as seasoned forumites might know them) for the site for game launches, events or subjects close to their heart and we have set aside a limited access board specifically for members who want to work on such things (alone or together), so they can test out and fine-tune their OT| and Hype| threads before they are posted to either the gaming or Offtopic forums once completed (Hype| during the build up to a . People who volunteer to undertake OTs will be granted access until their work is complete.
Events Calendar
In conjunction with the above, we want to track the big game releases and provide everyone with an overview as to what's coming over the year. This naturally is going to be reliant on a lot of community effort to make it pay off but we hope it becomes a notable feature of the site.
World Board (Opt-in)
Based on past experience, albeit we want to give members a place to discuss politics and current affairs if they feel the need we also wanted it so that members with no interest in such things weren't necessarily subject to it by forum osmosis. Our solution was to come up with a board that is member opt-in (available under user settings) and is only viewable by those members who choose to Opt-in. During the Sites private launch period, we won't restrict any new sign-ups from opting in. However, when the Site does go live publicly, we will be putting some stringent criteria in place in terms of community participation for new sign-ups to fulfil before they even unlock the ability to Opt-in, to avoid some of the shallow trollish conduct we have witnessed elsewhere.
With that said here, are a few subjects I dare say, might come up: -
No light theme
Presently we only have the two Dark themes but rest assured we will add light themes down the road. There's a surprising amount of work required balancing out these things, especially when it comes to responsive design, and it just didn't seem sensible to hold the forum back from launch for that alone.
No image upload or Giphy Integration
We don't possess the necessary Voodoo required to host unlimited image upload (that would undoubtedly kill our server off in a matter of weeks) so, you'll have to be linking to your own Imgur accounts, I'm afraid.
Secondly, albeit we all appreciate the strategic use of a good Gif (we'll at least I do), too much of a good thing can derail a thread into a meme fest when every Gif is just a quick search away within the forum tools. So we feel it's sensible to make people put a bit more work into their Gif wizardry.
No Most Posts, Reactions or Points tables
A bit of a staple at other sites, but in our view, such tables can, unfortunately, become a bit of an unhealthy fixation for some posters who can and do obsess over their standings, and we'd prefer people come to the site and post because they have something to say rather than because they feel they need to, to maintain their position on the greasy pole of perceived popularity.
Now with all of that said as to what you won't find, onto some features, you will find:
Dedicated OT Preparation Board
We want creative posters to be able to make truly kick-ass Hype and Offical Topic threads (Hype| and OT| threads as seasoned forumites might know them) for the site for game launches, events or subjects close to their heart and we have set aside a limited access board specifically for members who want to work on such things (alone or together), so they can test out and fine-tune their OT| and Hype| threads before they are posted to either the gaming or Offtopic forums once completed (Hype| during the build up to a . People who volunteer to undertake OTs will be granted access until their work is complete.
Events Calendar
In conjunction with the above, we want to track the big game releases and provide everyone with an overview as to what's coming over the year. This naturally is going to be reliant on a lot of community effort to make it pay off but we hope it becomes a notable feature of the site.
World Board (Opt-in)
Based on past experience, albeit we want to give members a place to discuss politics and current affairs if they feel the need we also wanted it so that members with no interest in such things weren't necessarily subject to it by forum osmosis. Our solution was to come up with a board that is member opt-in (available under user settings) and is only viewable by those members who choose to Opt-in. During the Sites private launch period, we won't restrict any new sign-ups from opting in. However, when the Site does go live publicly, we will be putting some stringent criteria in place in terms of community participation for new sign-ups to fulfil before they even unlock the ability to Opt-in, to avoid some of the shallow trollish conduct we have witnessed elsewhere.
