Greetings warriors of Calradia!
With Bannerlord’s Early Access release on the horizon, we want to take the time to step back from the game for a brief moment to discuss some of the work we have been doing outside of the game to support our community -- more specifically, the overhaul of our official forums!
The forums have always been at the heart of the Mount & Blade community, serving as a platform where like-minded users can come together to discuss our games, share knowledge, seek support, form clans, organise events, and work on modding projects together. In addition to this, they act as the main point of contact between the community and ourselves, allowing us to engage with each other and share ideas in a relaxed environment, and ultimately, as we are sure many of Bannerlord’s multiplayer beta participants can attest to, create better games!
But, truth be told, our current forums were starting to feel a little dated. And while they are perfectly functional, they are perhaps a little lacklustre when it comes to providing the community with the features and tools needed to help the community thrive. We decided that it is time to really up our forum game and provide our community with an updated platform that caters to their needs.
So, with that in mind, we want to introduce you to some of the new features that you will have at your disposal when the new forums go live.
Home page:
- The forum home page acts as a hub where users can quickly and easily access game and support forums. It also houses featured content from across the forums which we feel deserves to be highlighted and presented to the entire community.
Social Groups:
- The new social group feature allows like-minded people to come together in their own dedicated forum. We think that this will be a welcome addition to teams working on projects together, such as modding teams and event organisers, as well as, clans and any other groups that are looking for their own space to hold discussions amongst themselves in a more structured area that they have total control over.
Modding:
- Modding has always been a major part of Mount & Blade games, and as such, we wanted to provide our modding community with a dedicated area where they can come together to share their knowledge and ideas with other modders and present their mods to the wider community. In other words, the modding section is a new hub for all things modding!
Media:
- The media section allows users to share their videos and screenshots in one place, with support for a number of different external media sources, such as Imgur, YouTube and Twitch, which is presented in a structured gallery that is easy for users to browse at their leisure.
Streams:
- Similar to the media section, the new forums also contain a dedicated streams section that displays Mount & Blade live streams from both Twitch and Mixer in a single place, allowing users to watch and engage with streamers directly on our forums.
Trophies:
- We have included a new trophy system with the forums which provides users with goals and achievements that they can work towards by being productive members of the community.
Badges:
- Badges are quite similar to trophies in that they serve no real purpose other than to show other community members just how awesome you are! However, the key difference with badges is that they are presented to people based on the contribution they have made or for something that they have achieved during their time within the community.
Tags:
- Users are now able to tag their posts, which should come as a welcome addition to any forumite. This should make locating specific topics of discussion much easier in the future!
Prefixes:
- Prefixes allow users to see the current status or subject of discussion for a post without having to open the topic and read it. For example, in our help section posts are set to automatically include an “Unsolved” tag which can then be changed to “Solved” when a solution has been found. Similarly, prefixes can be used to highlight something specific about a topic, such as if it is multiplayer or singleplayer related.
Question Threads:
- Question threads allow users to pose a question to the community with which they are looking for a specific answer. Once they are happy that their question has been answered, they can select the best answer to be highlighted for other users to see.
Steam Login:
- Users are now able to create a new forum account, or link an existing one, to their Steam account. Right now, this serves no other purpose than ease of access for users, however, there are a few ideas of how this could be expanded later down the line, so watch this space!
Reactions:
- We added the ability for users to react to posts, similar to what you can find on any typical social media site. Right now we have limited this to just positive reactions, however, we would like to include the community in this discussion and come to an agreement on what the scope of reactions should be. After all, the last thing we want to do is detract from the active discussions, debates and general engagement that our current forums facilitate and promote.
We also want to use this blog as an opportunity to warn our community that the forums will go offline on Monday (20/01/19) so that the update can take place. We expect that this process will take 2 days, and unfortunately, you will be unable to access or use the forums during the transition. However, once they are back online all of the features outlined above, as well as many more (such as quality of life improvements, a new forum structure, new guidelines and rules, and a number of other improvements that we will leave for you to discover) will be available to you. We will also be opening a topic to discuss these changes and listen to your feedback on ways in which the new forums can be improved, so if you have any ideas you would like to share or any new features that you would like to see, take a note and make sure to share them with us next week!
At this point, some of you might be wondering, or perhaps even a little worried about what will happen to the current forums and the wealth of content that has built up there over the years. Well, have no fear because our main requirement when deciding to go ahead with this change was to ensure that all of the current content would carry over to the new forums. So in short: nothing will be lost. However, if you still have concerns and if there is something of value there that you are worried about losing, you have until Monday to make your own backup!
Finally, we would like to thank our entire volunteer moderation team for the incredible amount of enthusiasm and work they have invested in creating the new forums! They truly champion the ideals of our community, and in all honesty, without them, our community wouldn’t be as amazing as it is today: thank you!
