[Karinya]

Originally Posted by Saren

I think setting an advanced/basic divide into the forum is only going to cause problems, people are going to disagree about what is advanced and what isn't.

1. Mechanics forum - had popular support and like I said before game mech is not endgame specific. I think most people would agree that Armando has been doing advanced game mechanics for some time and he's not even 75 yet (I think he said 70 recently). Advanced game mechanics isn't defined by what mobs or situations you are applying the mechanics to but by how you are applying them. The only thing with this is that it might work best with some fairly strict posting rules and perhaps a new moderator responsible for deleting random question threads and the like.

Armando is the obvious choice for this job if he's willing to take it. Although it could probably be done by existing mods, anyway. Random question threads shouldn't necessarily be deleted - although maybe locked with a short "Read the stickies" post, or moved out of the forum if they don't belong. Deletion is an extraordinary measure that should be reserved for egregious flaming, commercial spam, or something similarly intolerable (not merely clueless, because that's fixable if you don't beat them up enough to make them stop listening).

2. Instanced/special battle areas forum - with Dynamis, Limbus, Salvage, Assault etc sub-forums. Give people a place to talk about these things, strategy, setups, what merits/gear xxx job needs to fight xxx mob etc, without making a status separation about them. The name could do with some work because ideally there would be room for besieged and campaign in here aswell.

3. New Subforums in the monsters section - HNM, Sky/Sea NM, BCNM etc, not sure how much you would want there. Again, gives people a dedicated place to talk about them and strategies without attaching status to it as such.

I think these belong together - BCNM is a special battlefield, but it also contains special monsters (as do all the special zones listed above). And not putting Divine Might in the sky section or Limbus in the sea section is just going to confuse people. (Although a sticky "If you are looking for (topic), click here" post - that actually functioned as a link to the correct forum - might help with that kind of issue.)

Most of the real assholes would be in the "Claimable HNMs" (or whatever you want to call it) forum, just like they are in game. XD Something about content where you can't win unless someone else loses either attracts or creates assholes, IMO.

I know Ping is busy and that's a lot more work than just one endgame forum so it might not be practical but I think it might fill the gap that people are finding and keeps the discussion categorized according to what it is rather than how difficult it is to do or how well certain people do it.

I think the amount of work wouldn't be based on the number of forums (other than initially), but on the total traffic - which would probably mostly come out of threads that already exist in other parts of the site.

[Kittyneko]

PiNG is actually busy yes, but that doesn't mean you can't suggest your ideas. A good idea is always appreciated, and in time, anything good can be implented on the site. I like this idea a lot, because as it is, endgame linkshells have barely anything useful to read in typical threads on here. (Regarding events that is )

[Saren]

Originally Posted by Karinya

Armando is the obvious choice for this job if he's willing to take it. Although it could probably be done by existing mods, anyway. Random question threads shouldn't necessarily be deleted - although maybe locked with a short "Read the stickies" post, or moved out of the forum if they don't belong. Deletion is an extraordinary measure that should be reserved for egregious flaming, commercial spam, or something similarly intolerable (not merely clueless, because that's fixable if you don't beat them up enough to make them stop listening).

I had Armando in mind when I suggested it but like you said, not totally sure it's needed and I didn't want to nominate Armando for a lot of work he might not be interested in.

I was reading what I said over again about an hour ago and completely agree with you on everything you said here about deleting and question threads, those sorts of threads provoke people to test and the wiki could be used to point people to the helpful posts.

Honestly I don't know enough about endgame yet to go into the fine tuning of what should go where so I tried to keep it fairly general. The reason I suggested putting new sub-forums in the monster section is because it's already there and people are used to using it for HNM and BCNM but I can definitely see your point.

As for the instanced/special area forum, the other idea I had that I didn't put in my first post was that it might help if the instanced/special access area had one big prominently placed guide with a brief intro to each area, how to access them and with any required links to other closely linked things (e.g the sky nms) either on this forum or ffxiclopedia or something. I didn't put it in because I didn't want to sound like I thought I should be writing it or that I wanted to fob a lot of work off on someone else for my own convenience.

Edit: As for the subforums, perhaps grouping by location might work best for this so there aren't too many of them. Say lump Salvage, Einherjar and assault together for example possibly with besieged as well.

The main concern I have about doing it this way is that I wasn't sure how much linking/multiple copies of information it might mean, as you mentioned. That and I'm not sure if it's worth the work for the amount of use it might get.

[IfritnoItazura]

Originally Posted by Yellow Mage

I've flip-flopped. I'm pretty sure everything that could be discussed in an Advanced Strategies forum could either fit in a Wiki, or be nothing more than flamebait.

Wiki is not a good format for holding discussions. As someone who uses forum and wiki extensively, I would say a forum is better for discussion, while a wiki is a better for presentation.

It makes a lot of sense to first post new strategy, testing, and theory in a forum, and after some discussion create a guide or chart or something in wiki, with back reference to the relevant discussion thread(s).

No offense to the person who proposed it, but I'm strongly against the use of the word 'Advanced'. Meaning of words matters a lot, especially when it comes to titles, and that includes sub-forum titles.

[Murphie]

I still say we don't need another Moderator, regardless of whether we get a new sub forum or not. We already have over nine thousand.

[Yellow Mage]

"Over nine thousand" references don't usually do it for me, but that one caught me completely off guard.

[TheGrandMom]

Originally Posted by Saren

I think setting an advanced/basic divide into the forum is only going to cause problems, people are going to disagree about what is advanced and what isn't.

I can see this happening. A person new to endgame is going to consider doing Roc or Smirugh (sp?) as "advanced" (or any other word you apply to it) and then you'll have some elitest that will say "if you don't camp Tiamat, Nidhogg, Vtra, etc. then you don't know what advanced is..." or some shite. An advanced forum will invite snobs like this to come to the forums and we'll lose some of the good people that post here. I'm sure that some sort of section will eventually be put up but I certainly hope that we are very very careful how we do it and how it is moderated so we can keep the open friendly atmosphere that we have now.