Forum proposals and questions

[Musicman247]

Can you please elaborate on what you mean by "secondary sex characteristic"?

[Тeatime]

Well, basically any sexually distinguishing feature that's not straight up genitalia.

[Musicman247]

I'm still not tracking. You mean like the timbre of one's voice or something?

[Velvet LeChance]

It's referring to any sexual characteristic that develops during puberty, which extends from breasts to body & facial hair.

[Musicman247]

The forum is supposed to be family friendly. If discussion of anything turns into an argument, flame war, or becomes too graphic, then the Mods will step in. Doesn't matter what the topic is.

[Velvet LeChance]

T's question pertains to what is and what isn't too graphic.

It's something that differs by social norms and something that it is as such necessary to clarify on a global forum.

[Musicman247]

I'm not going to make a list of what is and isn't acceptable, because context is key. Anything could be acceptable or unacceptable based on context and wording.

Your best bet is to PM a Mod, or the entire Staff, before posting anything you think could possibly be inappropriate.

[OblivionDuruza]

This isn't so much a solid proposal, as a soft suggestion. When we first introduced the Skyrim Forums they were inundated with a virtual tidal wave of new threads, many of them dupe topics or as close to. After much deliberation and consultation the then Mod Team decided to take some of the load off by breaking the Skyrim subforum into 'General' and 'Help' subforums. This was done largely to ensure that genuine threads seeking assistance with the game would not get lost amongst the large number of other threads posted by excited and eager TES fans.

Because the ESO forums have been far less active than the pre- and post-release Skyrim forums, it may not be worth having two separate forums. I say this, because we do seem to be getting several Help-orientated threads posted in the General ESO subforum as it is, and this certainly isn't causing any real issues. It might make it simpler for new users to simply merge the two, for this particular instance. Just interested in the current team's thoughts.

[Alarra]

Hi Duruza, and thanks for your suggestion! We agree that the ESO Help section isn't seeing much use, and that therefore it does not particularly need its own section right now. I've removed the ESO Help subforum, and its existing posts have been moved to the regular Elder Scrolls Online section.

[The SheoDovah]

A majority of the Player Guilds Subforum in the ESO forum seems to consist of 95% spam and i think only a minority of users follow the rules. It seems to be an excuse for people to spam their guild and could be putting people off the forums if they lurk on the guild one. I think the entire player guild subforum needs to be investigated and an overhaul of how the guilds are handled in there is needed to avoid more spammers.

[OblivionDuruza]

Thanks for getting back to me Alarra . Sorry about the majorly delayed reply, by the way (as seems to be the case more and more often recently, I'm just finding myself to be so busy!)

[bluewind]

As a new forum member I have been exploring all the nooks and cranies of the forums. I have two ideas I would like to share.
Note: I have only played Skyrim. I'm sure my ideas can be implamented in the other areas, but I can only use Skyrim examples.

1) Popular topic discussion stickies on approprite forums. As these questions no doubt get asked often, it would be handy to be able to leaf through a thorough thread debating it.
a) One could be race benifits and drawbacks according to players and good tatics to use with each race to influence your choice. For example, I always like to pick races with no skill bosts in my character's main areas to help overall leveling (gives extra levels in used skills to aid in overall leveling)
b) Another could be marriage canadates with pros and cons (such as ability to accept the gift in skyrim, max lv, follower?, skill set, and tolorability of their marriage dialogue). I presonality have married people with good stats who ended up having dialogue so anoying, I wanted to rip my own arm off and beat them with it! I have heard of a few burried threads out there, but they are gender specific and usually on the females only.
c) A third example would be the benifits and drawbacks of certain playstyles, weapons, and spells. I know there are a lot of spells out there I never have used and would love to know if they were worth learning and how they could be utilized. I would also love information on how vampirism effects restoration spells. Another interesting conversation in such a thread would be which staffs are worth the inventory space

2) An age check at registration. This could allow for special forums in the mod section for mods which are mature in nature which would stay hidden from those below the age of 18. These mods of course would follow the site's given rules, but would be slightly in bad taste to discuss in front of minors.

[Musicman247]

Hi bluewind!

Your first suggestion is a good one, and one that we've implemented in most of the other game sub-forums. Giving a cursory look right now shows there are already 8 stickied topics in the sub-forum, one of them dealing with general things, and another dealing with character builds. But we're always open to new ideas, so we'll look into it.

An age check isn't a bad idea, but it's also very easy to circumvent. The site is supposed to be family-friendly as well, so any mature topics should be run by a moderator anyway, and mature pictures are not allowed.

[bluewind]

Glad you didn't think I was being silly. Being so new, I felt self concious even posting here! But I thought it was as good a place as any. Coincidently, where should I post Skyrim marriage questions? I wonder if stickies and such show up the same for me as other as I'm using the mobile version.

The mature mods I'm refering to would be like mods of non-nude suggestive clothing, quests with mature subject matter, and so on. Basically mods that while not breaking forum rules do go into areas you wouldn't want a 12 year old seeing (although, I hope that's a small demographic considering the game!). It's more for the protection of the forum. A parent throws a fit over their child seeing something here. UESP points out the child lied about their age to get there. All fault falls to the parent and child. End of story.

A small point I would like to also make is on the moble version. While well made, the drop down menus need some fine tuning. As of now, the page is tan with brown buttons and the drop down menu is tan text with shadow and a clear background. You can imagine how hard it makes it to use.

[Musicman247]

Hmm. I'm not seeing the drop-downs as having a clear background. What device/browser are you using?

[bluewind]

It simply says Browser, so I think it's the Android Browser. I just ran a test using Chrome and it displayed properly with a brown background in the drop down boxes. It must be an issue that only comes up with the Android Browser. I can't test the other browsers though because of avalible memory.

Edit: Another slight suggestion. As someonw who plays Skyrim on a PS3, I have unique issues from those on a computer. Is there an area or sticky in the help section for console users? Maybe a post on some of the worst and quest breaking glitches and how to avoid or fix them since console commands are not an option for us and fun tips on gameplay?

Edit 2: Also, how do I flip through the pages of a thread on the mobile version? I can't seems to find the option unless I switch to the regular version

[VirtualWeasel]

2) An age check at registration. This could allow for special forums in the mod section for mods which are mature in nature which would stay hidden from those below the age of 18. These mods of course would follow the site's given rules, but would be slightly in bad taste to discuss in front of minors.

Believe me, without someone digging into the PHP and creating a custom-coded website addon, it's not possible with this software. I believe this was a topic that someone brought up before (I'd also tried it myself elsewhere), but, it's just not really possible without paying someone out of the moderators'/users' pocket to code a custom addon.

Besides, IIRC the site does ask to make sure you're of a certain age, and of course those under 13 are going to lie to get in, but the end result is that the child is at fault in the situation, not the parent or guardian.
Also, as far as I know, the frequenters around here are all above at least age 14; I can't speak for new users, though.

[Musicman247]

I was sure we used to have a COPPA check at registration, but it seems to have been disabled. We're discussing it in the Mod sub-forum either way.

[bluewind]

Makes sense. It was silly anyway and I'm sorry to have bothered yall.

So did you figure out what's going on with the browser? I would prefer not to have to open chrome every time I want to get on here, but if I have to I will. I wish I could install firefox, but seeing as I have 2 factory browsers (android and chrome), a third would slow down my speed and end up doing more harm than good.

I actually am very grateful for this forum's willingness to hear user suggestions and the overall vibe of the forum. I've found good sites where the users and mods are all nice and helpful with just a few rude people here and there and I've been on sites where while members and/or mods didn't break forum rules, they did act condocending and unkind. I think this is one of the good ones from what I've seen so far. I wish I had discovered this during the hight of Skyrim popularity so the area I know best would be more populated, but it's still nice. I can't wait until a new console release comes out! I don't think I'll ever feel like I truely conquered Skyrim because it continues to surprise me, but if the next one is near as good as Skyrim, I will fall in love with it too. I'm hungry for more lore and crossing my fingers for more information on the argonions as so little is known about them. I can't wait to be in a more active area of the forum too.

[OblivionDuruza]

I was sure we used to have a COPPA check at registration, but it seems to have been disabled. We're discussing it in the Mod sub-forum either way.

I certainly remember an age check when I registered. It was framed in such a way that it asked whether you were born before or after the date however many years before the day you were trying to sign-up on.

[Venger]

In Elder Scrolls games there are attributes and skills and races that define your character. And if you are a true roleplayer, how your character behaves.

We also have a strong fictional role-playing community here in UESP.

But we don't have an IRL role-playing game. We kid around by "Advancing to the next level" when we grow one year older. But it is like awarding people a +1; it inherently serves no function. My idea seeks to fix that. Here's what I mean.

Right now the User's Control Panel lets members of the forum toss in a few items, such as contact information, occupation, interests, etc. And while this is good and fine, what if we rewrote the UI to be more "in character"; in a roleplay-like fashion. Instead of Occupation, you would have Class. Instead of Interests it would have Skills. And so on. They would be a Race field; American, African-American, Asian, Russian, etc. And just like ES games, each race would have Attribute bonuses. And of course their would have to be a Back-Story field, where we would tell a bit about our self, such as true RPers do whenever they make a new character.
And like ES games, there would be presets to each field, Race, Attributes, Skills, etc. But then there would have to be a Custom field as well. This would be most useful in the Skills field, but doesn't have to be restricted to it. Likewise there would be a Birthsigns field, one for each constellation of the Zodiac. We'll have to either make up, or consult astrological sources to find out the appropriate "effects" each sign is supposed to have on our character.
And naturally, there will have to be an image for each Skill, as seen in Oblivion. In fact, I for one would prefer to mimick the artistry of Oblivion in this regard. There are already Birthsigns artwork, but we could put our own twist on it if we wanted. We could take after Morrowind's Class images too, and compile each Class image based on the major tools used in the skills that define that Class.

I post this idea for two reason:
1)For snowballing. What do you guys think of it / do you have any additional input.
and
2)Assuming it is a Go, I need help compiling the lists of Attributes, Races, and Skill. Understandably these lists will be somewhat long, but that shouldn't be an issue.

In short this idea is intended to make the User Control Panel more "in character" to the Elder Scrolls genre, to which this forum is about. Additionally, it would make visiting member's pages a worthwhile endeavor.
Take note that while this is intended as a mimicry of fiction role-playing games, the fields of input (race, skill, etc) must remain accurate to real life. So no, you cannot put your occupation down as Witch Hunter. Mostly because that won't be a preset (though I suppose you could make it a Custom class is you really wanted). And also because that is a really bigoted thing to do. Witches are not evil, just misunderstood.

The poll is intended as a petition of sorts. I do not know what sort of software or coding requirements are to be demanded should this idea receive a Go from the users of UESP. If a majority of users vote for 'Yes', then we can take this data, along with our well-fleshed-out new UI to Daveh / whomever is to rewrite the UCP in the hopes of seeing it brought to life.

[Velvet LeChance]

In particular I disagree with the idea of granting different races different attribute bonuses unless [scientific] evidence can be presented which supports the idea that such significant differences exist [and are inherent]. I disagree with promoting racial-identification and/or categorisation in general though.

Beyond that do whatever. I'm not sure if it's something I'd bother with though.

[Snake]

I like the idea but which admin is gonna be willing to change it, providing this is a go?

[Venger]

At this point finding an Admin to make the changes is ahead of the curve. First we need to see if the idea gains enough support. This is to be determined via the poll. Once that is accomplished we will then work together as a forum to layout and design the new User Control Panel, with documentation and drawings to support. When we are confident of our design and layout, we will then petition those able to make our changes come to fruition, whether they be Daveh, the site owner, and / or those with the power to give this project the green light. Once all those steps are met, then we shall divvy out jobs for those willing to participate in this project to write the required code and satisfy all of the "technical aspects".

[Deandra]

I sure hope this never becomes a thing. I love roleplaying, but I'd rather not have it shoved down my throat by the forum software. Also, I am not my characters.

You're free to have an in-character signature where you can write whatever you like.