My feedback after a year!

Hill Myna

Farmer
Hello everyone!

As per my shiny new trophy, I’ve now been on the Forums for over a year! Time flies.

I just thought I’d give some feedback, hopefully you find it at least a little bit useful! :D

Forum Arrangement

Personally, I’d arrange the forums slightly differently; obviously I’m biased by my style of interaction (such as I don’t use mods, etc.), but hopefully this will provide a user’s take for you!

Welcome!
- Rules & FAQ
- News & Announcements
- Introductions

I’ve seen that it’s fairly common for people not to notice the Introductions forum; shuffling it right to the top might increase its noticeability. And putting it under Welcome! makes more sense than Off-Topic to me.

Stardew Valley
- Game Discussion
- Valley Showcase
- Guides & Resources
- Game Suggestions
- Fan Works
- Multiplayer (LFG)
- Board Game

The first four in this list feel like the “core four” to me – at least with the way I use the forums. So IMO they should definitely be first and foremost.

And it has always felt odd to me to have Multiplayer (LFG) where it is, in between Game Discussion and Guides & Resources. Was there a reason it was put there?

I have no comments on the forums after this point, they’re unchanged (minus having some forums removed from them, of course). I’ll write them anyways!

Support
- Help & Bug Reports
- Forum Feedback

Hold up, that’s not 100% true!

I think Support should be the first non-Stardew Valley forum, as it gets the most use by far. Positioning Help & Bug Reports nearer to the top also might prevent some of the (admittedly very small amount of) help/bug report threads posted in Game Discussion.

Modding
- Mods
- Modding Discussion & Creation
- Mod Support


Off-Topic
- General Discussion
- Creative


Quality of Life/Inconsistencies?
  1. The “expansion arrows” next to What’s new, Resources, Members, and Main Site are quite hard to press when using a touchscreen. I think it would help if they were a bit bigger. Maybe at least 75% larger?
  2. The Find feature is restricted to a member’s profile, making it inaccessible to non-members. Perhaps it could also be in the member’s “hover-over”, where Follow, Ignore, and Start conversation are? (obviously these other features aren't there when not logged in, Find would be the only button there)
  3. When in the Rules & FAQ, all the font in the header and footer becomes bold. Is there a reason this happens?
  4. I feel like the Help page could be in a more prominent location. Perhaps next to the New posts and Post thread buttons?
  5. When logged in on Desktop, it feels like Latest profile posts just makes the home page unnecessarily lengthy, maybe it could take up the same space as a forum, and Forum statistics and Share this page would still be inline with Latest posts and Latest resources (but shuffled up a bit)? That could compact the page.
  6. It makes sense to me that the Staff member tag under staff’s PFPs should link to the Staff members page. It currently does not, is this something you want to change?
  7. When you go into Members and click on Most messages/points/reaction score, the members in the list aren’t “hover-over-able”, despite being so on the general Members page. This feels unintended, am I correct?
  8. In the header, when logged in, it goes Forums, What's new, Resources, etc., but when logged out, instead of Resources, it says Mods. Unless I've been incredibly unobservant, that "tab" was renamed Resources fairly recently, is it supposed to only be called that when you're logged in? Also, I'm curious, what was the reason it was changed?

Additional Features
  1. There are so many amazing artists in this community; I think a Forum Banners system would be very cool! It could go behind the Stardew Valley logo (at the top of every page), and maybe could change once or twice a month.
  2. I know custom titles are a popular suggestion, perhaps instead of replacing Farmer, Moderator, etc., it could appear in a similar box to the Staff member icon? It would be awesome if you could change the colour of the text and “background”, too.
  3. I would definitely appreciate a “posts in-progress” page; it could be accessed through Find threads. Maybe this is weird, but I often have multiple posts on the go, and I’m sure I’ve got a couple of unfinished posts from donks ago, unnecessarily taking up server space.

Questions

Haunted Chocolatier Forums


Do you have any news to share about if/when there'll be a Haunted Chocolatier Forums? And in the meantime, is General Discussion the place to put threads about HC?

Threads in Guides & Resources

There are quite a few threads in Guides and Resources that don’t match what I perceive as that forum’s intended purpose, e.g. threads starting with the OP asking a question.

Here are some examples from the two pages:
https://forums.stardewvalley.net/threads/how-to-get-prismatic-slime.13084/
https://forums.stardewvalley.net/threads/how-to-get-prismatic-shard.12512/
https://forums.stardewvalley.net/threads/introduction-quest-didnt-finish.11987/
https://forums.stardewvalley.net/threads/best-fish-for-the-ponds.11258/
(because the link to a guide on an external website was removed from this one, it doesn’t make sense any more)
http://forums.stardewvalley.net/threads/seed-from-trees.9596/

I’m curious, is there a reason they haven’t been moved to Game Discussion?

–––––

I'm done now! Whew, that was long. I hope my 875 words of feedback are useful for you!

Before I go, a massive thank you to the mods and everyone else on these Forums for being so awesome! I’ve really enjoyed my first year here, looking forward to Year 2!
 
Last edited:

Odin

Moderator
Staff member
Thanks for sharing such in-depth feedback! The other mods and I will definitely be discussing everything here. A few things I can answer right away:
Do you have any news to share about if/when there'll be a Haunted Chocolatier Forums? And in the meantime, is General Discussion the place to put threads about HC?
A forum for HC is up to ConcernedApe and not something I have insight into. (I would personally like to see one, once that game is out, especially because I think this forum is a great place for the game's community! But I may be a bit biased.) And yes, General Discussion is the spot for threads about that game! We have one there currently where people having been sharing various announcements and other information about Haunted Chocolatier.

There are quite a few threads in Guides and Resources that don’t match what I perceive as that forum’s intended purpose, e.g. threads starting with the OP asking a question.
The way we've been approaching this is that any question that allows for open-ended discussion of game strategy and won't have a simple answer can be asked in that section. I do think it would be good for us to be clearer about this in the guidelines for that section, which currently don't mention this. I took a look at the threads you linked and agree some should have been moved to Game Discussion, which I've now done.

One thing I want to mention is that if you see a thread anywhere on the forums that you believe has been posted to the wrong section, please report it! (This goes threads in Guides & Resources that may not belong, or Haunted Chocolatier discussion somewhere besides General Discussion, or anything else.) The person posting won't get in trouble, we'll just move the thread if it's in the wrong place. Reports like this are very helpful as we don't catch everything, and other people on the forums will often see something before we do.
 
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