GalCiv III uses a borderless windowed fullscreen mode, which provides a glitch free and instant Alt-Tab to anything else. This being said I do not constantly alt-tab out of the game to write on the forum. I just have a paper sheet and write down any problem or idea I have while playing the game. Later on I will log to the forum and reorganize all my notes into a single feedback post. I feel this makes for a better quality result than posting whatever comes to my mind just as I am thinking of it.
Wow, that is exactly what I am trying to avoid. Sure, as I said Stardock has done a good job in terms of making a fullscreen game, (or borderless window which in this case is quite effective, but uses more resources). The fact is, when people have to literally write down on a piece of paper to participate in giving feedback, that is truly absurd. The shear number of people that will not be willing to do such a thing.... well that should be obvious.
You seem to think I have something against forums, and I feel they very much have a use. Even when used as a feedback mechanism for game discussion, they can be useful and I'm not at all against it. But not for game development/testing. I guarantee you their internal testing team does not use a forum to report problems and issues, and if forums truly were superior then they would be.
I am used to it. This is why I can suggest such a thing. But I can understand it is annoying if you are not.
I will tell you my exact method for sharing just any custom screenshot and having it uploaded on the web in under a minute. I use it to post pictures on any forums, facebook, chatroom, you name it. I do this pretty much everyday and it is a very useful method for me. I have to thank Imgur for being such a quick en efficient tool for doing this.
Not everyone is able to accomplish this. Feedback should not just be coming from a few that are willing and have experience posting on a forum. Just because you are willing and have found an easy method (which I still say is quite long) doesn't mean others can and will find a duplicate method. Don't get me wrong, that is quite similar to my process as well, so much that I have all of those tools "Snip-It, MS Paint etc..." as a keyboard shortcut. That doesn't mean however, that it should be that way.
If the process is easier, more people will participate, period. There is nobody that can refute that fact. It's plain and simple.
Have you ever used the stackexchange? As you type a question (or maybe title and issue found) you see other possible issues from the database, This could allow others to see issues before they actually make a post, often stopping them from doing so and possibly provoking them to read the issue and embellish if something may have been left out. Even more so, if they see the issue already published, they can then "Up Vote" or whatever you want to call it to signal an agreement of the issue.
I've got to say the biggest failure use of forums is the infamous "+1" post. I mean really how many times do you see this done, and how crazy is it for people to have to go through and actually count? That is why so many blog/comment/forum postings have moved to an Up Vote type system.
Posters and devs can see what the hot topics are from the number of replies, previous discussions can all be browsed so if you dont want to post something duplicate you can read the post titles of what has been posted before. Of course most people do not do this so we end up with duplicate posts anyway, but its not such a big deal. Most of the feedback are stuff that SD already know themselves anyway.
That is such tidious work for people to go through and attempt to "find" if their issue has already been posted. When you say most people don't, I might say almost nobody does. I have done a first page perusal, and that is it. In terms of the number of replies indicates a hot topic, I would disagree. There are a number of topics that get posted that have many replies that have nothing to do with true feedback, and the number of replies in no way indicates the popularity of the post. So you have to go through and read all the 20, 30, 80 replies to get a feeling of how many agree and how many disagree, no quick glance to determine. That is entirely not productive for the stardock team.
A forum is mostly a place to discuss and exchange information. This is its main strength, others can add yo what you say, or correct you if you are wrong. There also seems there is a sweet spot as to how much traffic it can have. Too little posting and it is a dead forum. Too much posting and it becomes overwhelming. I think StarDock forum is in the green zone so I like coming to it and reading replies to interesting topics without having dozens of new pages to read everyday. I can also do this during lunch at work, while opening the game is impossible.
I generally agree with this statement. Forums are often a good place to discuss and exchange information. They are not a good place for software development and testing. I really can't imagine any decent sized software company who uses forums internally as their testing reporting and feedback tool. If anyone knows of any, please do tell me as I'm quite interested to see and hear the results. I'm always open to being wrong.
There are sooo many things that can be done to make issue/bug reporting easier. Once again look how the stackexchange does it. But, it comes down to one thing.
If the process is easier, more people will participate, period. There is nobody that can refute that fact. It's plain and simple.
Remember, that one guy who isn't all that computer savey, but loves to play games and really wants GalCiv III to be awesome, may have some great insight that could be shared, but he just isn't one to use forums. Lets not loose good insight due to the reporting mechanism, that's just silly.
In a final note. If moving away from forums is not an option, then simply adding a way to post to the forums from within the game with access to screen shot tools and the like would still be an improvement and increase participation.
GalCiv3 Forums
