A tech forum observation

[Nut]

I recently nearly lost my second league I started due to the game crashing when I go to save and corrupting the files ( I had'nt backed it up the first time and after 2 days of trying everything under the sun and on the verge of deleting the game managed to get it to work again) Now I manage each of my teams games individually so as you might imagine it was a very large time investment on the first one I lost and could of been on the second.

I typed the first paragraph to put into perspective my frustrations allready when I came to the tech forums to look for help. I tried search first ofcourse and read through more threads than I want to count but anytime I found one that was exactly the same problem as mine being that the game was playable but would crash and corrupt if I tried to save it the thread starter never followed through on the thread which resulted in it's being closed leaving me no closer to ending my frustration.

The reason for this is in my opinion the fact that when I made my own post it took 2 days for it to pass moderation and actually be posted in the forum. Now I understand moderators are busy but watching all these other posts being added( I assume others that waited but were ahead of me) and be replied to ect just adds to the frustration and makes you want to just give up. Even the reply needs to be moderated first before it's posted. All these things in my opinion greatly discourage people seeking help aswell as people who may be able to help.

I did however take the time to reply with my results anyhow in the hopes it does help someone in the future but I was very close to not bothering with it as I went from checking the forum every chance I had to giving up on it (which is when my post was added)

Anyhow what I dont understand is that the time required to proof read every single post and then adding it is actually more than just deleting the ones that should'nt be allowed while making those in need wait even longer to be able to play a game they payed for increasing the frustration and as I was VERY close to just deleting the game myself as I tried what I could think of alone. If that had happened I would also of course pass along that information to the communities I run thus hurting this game (which really is a great game btw).

So basically what I'm saying is that allthough once your post gets in it is responded to I personally feel that by making the person wait 2 days for the post to even appear does hurt the game.

[MorseMoose]

Posts are being moderated in the tech forum? I haven't noticed that.

My observation is that there should be a Mac Tech Forum and PC Tech Forum. That way the mods don't have to ask "Mac or PC" and someone can be a little more specialized. And if someone wants to help recreate the bugs, they know what platform it is.

[Who Killed Kenny?]

Is it being posted in two days? Or is it being logged as a problem in two days? If its the former, then there is a problem. If it is the latter then its probably directly related to the number of bugs versus the number of bug loggers. There are normally a lot of bugs that appear after a major release. Thats true with any program.

[Tony M]

Originally Posted by MorseMoose

Posts are being moderated in the tech forum? I haven't noticed that.

My observation is that there should be a Mac Tech Forum and PC Tech Forum. That way the mods don't have to ask "Mac or PC" and someone can be a little more specialized. And if someone wants to help recreate the bugs, they know what platform it is.

Only new users get moderated. Normally, TS questions have Mac in the title if they are mac-specific, and if they don't it can be added.

[Tony M]

Originally Posted by Nut

The reason for this is in my opinion the fact that when I made my own post it took 2 days for it to pass moderation and actually be posted in the forum. Now I understand moderators are busy but watching all these other posts being added( I assume others that waited but were ahead of me) and be replied to ect just adds to the frustration and makes you want to just give up. Even the reply needs to be moderated first before it's posted. All these things in my opinion greatly discourage people seeking help aswell as people who may be able to help.

I did however take the time to reply with my results anyhow in the hopes it does help someone in the future but I was very close to not bothering with it as I went from checking the forum every chance I had to giving up on it (which is when my post was added)

I found your post and approved it over in Technical Support. One of the problems is that as a moderator it's not instantly visible that a post is awaiting approval and in your thread's case Nutlaw responded to it, and his post by being a reply to an unapproved thread needed approval as well.

For some reason it didn't show up in the moderation queue.

Normally posts will be approved within a few hours, but apart from Markus, Andreas and Steve, none of us who inhabit the TS forums are OOTP employees and as such sometimes have other things to deal with.

[Goodsox]

Only the first two posts need to be approved for a new member. This is to help keep spammers off the board. We try to get to these ASAP, but there may be a few times that someone doesn't get to them.

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by Nut

I recently nearly lost my second league I started due to the game crashing when I go to save and corrupting the files ( I had'nt backed it up the first time and after 2 days of trying everything under the sun and on the verge of deleting the game managed to get it to work again) Now I manage each of my teams games individually so as you might imagine it was a very large time investment on the first one I lost and could of been on the second.

I typed the first paragraph to put into perspective my frustrations allready when I came to the tech forums to look for help. I tried search first ofcourse and read through more threads than I want to count but anytime I found one that was exactly the same problem as mine being that the game was playable but would crash and corrupt if I tried to save it the thread starter never followed through on the thread which resulted in it's being closed leaving me no closer to ending my frustration.

The reason for this is in my opinion the fact that when I made my own post it took 2 days for it to pass moderation and actually be posted in the forum. Now I understand moderators are busy but watching all these other posts being added( I assume others that waited but were ahead of me) and be replied to ect just adds to the frustration and makes you want to just give up. Even the reply needs to be moderated first before it's posted. All these things in my opinion greatly discourage people seeking help aswell as people who may be able to help.

I did however take the time to reply with my results anyhow in the hopes it does help someone in the future but I was very close to not bothering with it as I went from checking the forum every chance I had to giving up on it (which is when my post was added)

Anyhow what I dont understand is that the time required to proof read every single post and then adding it is actually more than just deleting the ones that should'nt be allowed while making those in need wait even longer to be able to play a game they payed for increasing the frustration and as I was VERY close to just deleting the game myself as I tried what I could think of alone. If that had happened I would also of course pass along that information to the communities I run thus hurting this game (which really is a great game btw).

So basically what I'm saying is that allthough once your post gets in it is responded to I personally feel that by making the person wait 2 days for the post to even appear does hurt the game.

Now that two moderators, a hall of famer, and an up-and-coming minor league star have answered your concerns, I feel free to make the following observation:

Your post contains:

Six paragraphs.
480 words.
2,483 characters.

Not one of them a comma. Not a single comma! That is remarkable.

[kq76]

Just to let you know, this moderator thinks you have a point and due to the higher ratio of new users to spam in the first month of release, I made a suggestion that we do away with approving new users in the 1st month after release. That doesn't mean it will happen, just that it might get considered.

Thanks for sharing your experience with us, sorry for your frustration. Hopefully things will get better for you here from here on out.

[1998 Yankees]

I've never seen this many moderators in one thread, either. It's like a convention.

[satchel]

Originally Posted by kq76

...this moderator thinks you have a point and due to the higher ratio of new users to spam in the first month of release, I made a suggestion that we do away with approving new users in the 1st month after release. That doesn't mean it will happen, just that it might get considered.

Good eye, kq.

[Nut]

Thank you very much for the replies and mabey just remove it for the tech question forum especially with it's release on steam bringing in alot of new people into a still buggy game ( like me ) It's been awhile since I used this forum set up but I believe that's doable but I may be wrong aswell hehe. Anyhow my game is still crashing here and there but I'm still sticking with it aswell as it is a very fun game to play.

Thank god for back ups is all I know hehe. I'm sure this has been suggested in the past but the ability to save into multiple files so you have more than one back up without investing the extra time would make it alot easier to not lose your hard work, aswell as perhaps make it easier for you to work out those kinks as we'd have more resources to pull from to help with. Basically a save as feature instead of just save so we could choose how many or few files we'd like to rotate our saves into.