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Hey guys,

Know this is a difficult subject (and really impossible to please everyone!) but I feel the forum setup of Dakka has gone from "40k, WHFB, Warmachine, + Other Games" to "40k/AOS". It now feels a lot more like Warseer where you have to cycle an awful long way down the page to get to anything that isn't GW, and I wonder if the forum is going to go the same way where you lose the players of those other non-GW games.

Now I know the vast majority of traffic on the forum is for 40k - it's the history of the board, the name, and GW not having its own forum means that I think Dakka is a community centre in that regard. But, does it really need 8 forum sections? Having 'army lists' and 'tactics' in one section seems logical to me. You could also make similar arguments for 'proposed rules' and 'YMDC'. 40k would still be front and centre, but surely it doesn't have to have a page-full on my small laptop screen

Also, I think putting what are fast growing communities and games that are becoming massive from every report you read (X-Wing as one example) and the likes of Warmachine below 'Other GW stuff' (games that have been discontinued for 10 years) and LoTR; I can understand in terms of keeping the board neat and in one section, but it's really changed the character of what this board covers, and I think for what used to be Dakka's greatest strength - the depth and variety of games that it gives space to.

For the first time the other day I actually typed in "wargaming forum" into Google, which I am sad to admit as I've generally had such an enjoyable time here, and the atmosphere is so much lighter than a lot of other places. But, as someone who has little interest in 40k and AoS, I feel like I'm essentially having to scroll down to 'off topic' or 'video games' to find what discussion there is in the historical section, Infinity, or board games.

Just read the results of another communities poll, where something like 38% of 40k gamers played other games. It would have been interesting to see what that figure was even 5 years ago, and this definitely seems like a step backwards in terms of the general widening of the hobby demographic and the games people have had an interest in. And perhaps a lot of those people were looking at the other forum sections, even if they weren't posting in them?

As a counter to my own points here I know the 'build and they will come' argument has been largely disproved (I'm not asking for a return of Infinity list building, which got 1 post a week if it was lucky!) But, I think there is a qualitative argument about the 'feel' of a forum, and this has certainly been a big change. In my view a step back from where Dakka was positioned and towards Warseer as what 'feels' like a GW-only forum. Think there is also a bit of 'self-fulfilling prophecy' in there, and you can think of the ability of somewhere like Dakka to shape the community and its outlook.

Anyway, sorry to go on for so long! Turned into a bit of a ramble. But, as a fairly longterm member, who really has enjoyed spending time here, thought I would post my thoughts about how the feel and balance of the forum has changed.

I suspect it was more of an illusion than a reality what you're talking about, virtually all of the boards that got folded up were quite simply all but dead. There just aren't the posts to warrant keeping on huge forums for Warmachine or Infinity, unfortunately.

I think the hope is to have More discussion of other games, but to keep that discussion lively we need to have active forums!

Is your main suggestion the order on the page - putting "More Games Workshop Miniature Games" under "Other Miniature Games"?

We came very close to calling that "Other" section "Fantasy", btw, but decided it needed to be a catch-all for anything that wasn't SciFi (including Historicals, etc) as a section title.

Just looking for more specifics on what you think would make it look "right". Cheers

Thanks for the reply, having read it again realise that was a bit of a rambling mess (so thanks for taking the time to read through!)

Yes that was what I meant really, I think I would definitely move 'More Games Workshop miniature games' under 'More Sci Fi' and even under 'Other Miniature Games'.
Or combine 'More Sci Fi' and 'Other Miniature Games' into a job lot (I'm not sure that the distinction is necessary)

It might also be worth putting 'Board Games, Roleplaying Games and Card Games' into this section. Those are a massive industry, growing, and I think get a fair amount of traffic. Again, I think moving it off into the bottom of the forum makes it feel like a secondary consideration.

Finally, I would reduce the 40k sub-forums to 7 or even 6, just to reduce the overall spread of the board and as there are some un-necessary splits in topic there.

 Pacific wrote:
Thanks for the reply, having read it again realise that was a bit of a rambling mess (so thanks for taking the time to read through!)

Yes that was what I meant really, I think I would definitely move 'More Games Workshop miniature games' under 'More Sci Fi' and even under 'Other Miniature Games'.
Or combine 'More Sci Fi' and 'Other Miniature Games' into a job lot (I'm not sure that the distinction is necessary)

It might also be worth putting 'Board Games, Roleplaying Games and Card Games' into this section. Those are a massive industry, growing, and I think get a fair amount of traffic. Again, I think moving it off into the bottom of the forum makes it feel like a secondary consideration.

Finally, I would reduce the 40k sub-forums to 7 or even 6, just to reduce the overall spread of the board and as there are some un-necessary splits in topic there.

I just want to make it clear up front that I no longer play 40K, so I absolutely want to make sure the site continues to cover all aspects of miniature gaming well.

However, there are also certain realities that just cannot be ignored:

1) 40K is still by far the most popular miniature game (by a lot).
2) GW does not have its own official forums, which means the highest demand for forums on our site is going to be for GW games.
3) As popular as many other miniature games are becoming, there are also LOTS of them, and our experience has shown pretty clearly that for the most part people prefer to go to the manufacturer's official forums to do most of their discussions about those games, which is totally understandable.

The reorganization we recently did was in no way designed to prioritize GW games, quite the opposite really. The goal was to make sure all the remaining non-GW forums were organized in a way that they contained a steady discussion...in other words, a reason to check back each day to that forum to see what the conversations are.

We did some pretty thorough research on all our forums, and the ones that were eliminated/consolidated had a really, really poor level of posting in them.

And in fact, the overall number of GW forums was cut down as part of that reorganization. Couple that with getting rid of the 'extra' forums for Warmahordes & Infinity (which were absolutely pretty dead), there are actually quite a few less forums on the site, which makes it easier to scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the stuff you're looking for.

Having said all that: I still get it. All the GW stuff is at the top of the page so it can feel like this is a GW site just with 'other' stuff at the bottom. However, a lot of that unavoidably comes from the 3 points I made at the start of this post.

If 40K (and GW) are still the market leaders (which they are) and there is still the most demand for discussion forums for their games (which there is), then they *deserve* to be at the top of the page. And if they are at the top of the page, then everything else needs to come below them.

I think maybe part of your other issue is that there are relatively few games that have their own named forums, and lots of games are clumped together into 'misc.' types of forums. However, the fact that there ARE so many, many different games out now (and more coming out all the time) actually makes it impossible to start creating a forum for each new game that comes out. That issue was a big part of the discussion we had internally when trying to decide things about this reorganization.

If we were to create a different forum for every game (or even just for every different game manufacturer), the truth is that the vast majority of those forums would sit relatively empty, generating maybe a post or two a week. I know that because that's how most of the manufacturer forums we *did* have behaved before we consolidated them together.

Just like gaming in general is splintering into a ton of tiny little pockets, there just isn't enough people to create a regular discussion on most of those games except for maybe one or two threads, as people tend to *prefer* to go talk about game 'X' on that manufacturer's official site/forum. Us creating forums for those games/manufacturers will not change behavior...we tried and it didn't work.

Consolidating some of the 40K forums together on principle sounds nice, but the truth is that all those forums generate enough traffic to warrant their existence. If any of the forums that we consolidated would have had the traffic of even the lowest performing 40K forum, then they would not have been consolidated. So it just does not make any logistical sense to consolidate any of the 40K forums, even though there are so many of them. Getting rid of those would not help to generate traffic in other forums, it would just push more active 40k topics of different types together in a jumbled mess.

With all that said, I do hear (and agree) with what you're saying, and I will definitely continue to ponder it, so any further suggestions you have are definitely appreciated.

Oh, and the only reason that the 'board games/card games/rpg' forum is down in the 'more dakka' section is because they are not miniature games, and miniature gaming is the focus of this site, not because we don't love those types of games or think they're hugely popular.

Many thanks for taking the time to write the reply Yakface, that makes sense and I can see why you have made the changes you have.

For myself, I've started to get used to the forum layout so it may be part of this was just me and getting used to the change! I think some other users are in the same boat as well, as it seems like the posting has picked up in the other game forums.

My only final concern would be in having the 'More GW Miniatures Games' section above the likes of X-Wing, Warmachine, Infinity etc!
I know LoTR, the new board games etc. don't have an official forum but a lot of those games do have their own dedicated forums and fan communities around the web - it also 'feels' a bit wrong to have unsupported games and 'one and done' board games above the rising stars of something like X-Wing for instance.

Anyway thanks again for taking the time to reply.