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Subject: New forum system?
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I originally posted this in "The Underground", but I was noted that it was not the right place. So here we go again:

The forum system in Bungie.Net is now really akward to use. It's slow and there is no search function (right?). Also it shows very little of the topics now. For a forum this popular, you should really make it better.

Also the bottom thingy in the website is very slow to use and takes too much space. Ok, it looks nice, but you should not let artists decide about the website ;-)

Please, make more traditional system to the whole site.

  • 12.02.2004 7:54 AM PDT
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These Forums are pretty basic as far as some go, and personally, I think they are excellent. Admittedly, due to the strain that all the users, posts, and moderation puts on the Forums, they do go slow at some times. But apart from that, they cope really well, and are aesthetically pleasing as well as being easy to use.

I couldn't stand going back to a threaded view, it looks so tacky and unprofessional, as well as being twice as difficult to use.

Plus, Bungie have obviously thought of this and dismissed it...otherwise they wouldn't have upgraded the whole site, all pages and the 7th Column, to this new system. Get with the times, man.

  • 12.02.2004 9:53 AM PDT
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The forum is really being beta tested by us all right now. Bungie and the Ideal Science guys will be adding more features based on our suggestions. Forums this popular eat enormous amounts of bandwidth and server resources. Adding a search feature isn't as easy as you think...This place is almost like a html chat room at times. Making a script to search through our index would be somewhat difficult I imagine.

  • 12.02.2004 10:50 AM PDT
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And Zilppuri, thanks for posting to the right forum :)

And yea, that's a pink Master Chief with flowers right there ^

Your monitor is fine

[Edited on 12/2/2004 11:06:17 AM]

  • 12.02.2004 11:05 AM PDT
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Am I the only person who never has any problems with the bottom menu? It's like I'm the only one without a 186.

  • 12.02.2004 11:05 AM PDT
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Posted by: Tanikaze
Am I the only person who never has any problems with the bottom menu? It's like I'm the only one without a 186.


I love it. Contrare to the masses, I think it's a nice graphical method of navigation, and it's really quite easy to use.

  • 12.02.2004 11:12 AM PDT
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I don't have any problem with the bottom link bar thingy, people just don't realize you can shrink it with the upside-down triangle on the left edge.

  • 12.02.2004 11:15 AM PDT
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Now see, that even I didn't know.

  • 12.02.2004 11:16 AM PDT

Spamming Bungie since 2004!
Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.
GT-I Final I (i's)
Plz uze prper inglish n ur poasts!11! it makez it eazeer 2 reed!

Weird you are talking.

  • 12.02.2004 12:18 PM PDT
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I especially like how Page 1 of most of the forums gets truncated so there's a big gap in the posts between page 1 and 2. Most of the time page 1 only has 10-14 posts instead of 20+. The last item on page 1 and the first item on page 2 will be 20mins apart and you simply can't get at the missing posts.

And I like that, for some reason, you can't get to page 3 or higher on The Underground.

Yep...awesome forums. Very professional. I'm a ASP/ASP.NET programmer by profession and if I launched a public app like this with this many bugs and no freakin' search function, I'd either be fired or stuck working nights and weekends until I got it fixed.

[Edited on 12/2/2004 12:34:28 PM]

  • 12.02.2004 12:28 PM PDT
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Posted by: Vinkus
I especially like how Page 1 of most of the forums gets truncated so there's a big gap in the posts between page 1 and 2. Most of the time page 1 only has 10-14 posts instead of 20+. The last item on page 1 and the first item on page 2 will be 20mins apart and you simply can't get at the missing posts.

And I like that, for some reason, you can't get to page 3 or higher on The Underground.

Yep...awesome forums. Very professional. I'm a ASP/ASP.NET programmer by profession and if I launched a public app like this with this many bugs and no freakin' search function, I'd either be fired or stuck working nights and weekends until I got it fixed.


Hey there, nothing like new people bringing a bit of cockyness to the table.

Instead of criticising, perhaps you could delve into your infinite knowledge banks and draw out the solution?

I sincerely doubt you've come across Forums that receive as much activity and as many users as these do.

But, Mr. Professional, you're obviously far superior to the Bungie web team, so I guess you can just sit back and laugh at the pathetic lessers scrambling around, safe in the knowledge that you know everything that needs to be known and essentially all you'd have to do is click a few links to fix the Forums for all eternity.

  • 12.02.2004 12:43 PM PDT
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The only thing I don't like about the forums (but that's my fault, since I'm watching this site in a downgrade display) is the fact that I'm watching this site in a downgrade display (did I just repeat myself?). Sometimes I can't tell the post from the sig. I also can't create new topics. But in the end, the one thing these forums lack, is to have succesfully pass a writing- and IQ test before one can sign up. But I guess that goes for every forum nowadays since baby-brother and their fluffy-bunny can use the internet. With the difference that fluffy-bunny has no fingers thus really cannot be blamed for his bad spelling.

  • 12.02.2004 12:46 PM PDT
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There are forums all over the net that are just as busy as these. Half the reason these forums get so many topics in the first place is because they are designed and organized so poorly and have no search function. Everyone is FORCED to add new topics because you have no way of finding the dozen of others just like it that were posted even a few hours ago.

I'm simply stating that a public site (ESPECIALLY one this busy) SHOULD work better than this. In my job, I'd be expected to fix blatant bugs ASAP...whereas these have apparently gone unrepaired for weeks/months? There is NO excuse for the Page 1 bug that leads to a dozen posts being unreachable because the web app simply decides not to display them on the page.

And how does being new to these forums have anything to do with anything? How do you know if I'm qualified or not? I've been a web application programmer for over 7 years. Am I an expert? In some areas, yes. Do I know everything? Of course not, but I know a flawed application when I see one. Unfortunately, regardless of whether my knowledge banks contain the solutions to these forums or not, I don't suppose Bungie is going to open up their servers and code to me any time soon, eh?


[Edited on 12/2/2004 1:25:44 PM]

  • 12.02.2004 1:06 PM PDT
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They're probably going to do a big overhaul. I'm confident that Ideal is working out all of the kinks, and eventually will fix the issues.

  • 12.02.2004 1:47 PM PDT

The web team are working closely with Ideal Science to solve these problems.
There are forums all over the net that are just as busy as these.
Are there also forums this complex? You have to remember that these boards and the 7th Column boards are run off the same system. You also have to remember that the incredibly complex Column is also present. There may be busier sites, but probably none that put as much strain on the servers as this one.

  • 12.02.2004 2:22 PM PDT
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Posted by: goweb
The web team are working closely with Ideal Science to solve these problems.
There are forums all over the net that are just as busy as these.
Are there also forums this complex?


Why should it be complex?
Like said above, there are several topics of the same subject (for example -on this subject), since after day or two they are forever lost in page 4 and below where nobody looks. Truth is that with a better system this would be lot less complex.
Ideal Science: Bulletin Board Software are really making stuff that other forum systems had 10 years ago.
Read 3DRealms forum for example.

This is quote from Ideal Science news from 11/15/2004:
If you are quick to compare Ideal BB.NET features to those offered other bulletin board programs, please be patient as we prepare for the 1.0 release. The early builds in the beta program will be very different from the final release build.]

So they are begging people to wait untill they get their forum to decent level, instead of choosing already working & tested system?

  • 12.03.2004 3:18 AM PDT

Did you read anything after "complex"? Because then you would have seen that it's the Column that complicates matters. We're talking about THOUSANDS of boards. Most forums are comprised of only a piffling few.

Because of this, there is a complex caching system in place. And it is this that leads to what you see. It's still better than the old crapness - you could be waiting for a quarter of an hour for your post to show up!

  • 12.03.2004 3:40 AM PDT

Only Becausae I'm Awesome

Forum Tutorials --- WATCH THEM AND LEARN

I've said it before, and i'll say it again.

We. Need. Milliseconds.

too many posts are colliding with eachother as they are made at the same time, and postID is having a hard time sorting it out.

But that's just my opinion.

  • 12.03.2004 4:42 AM PDT
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Are there also forums this complex? You have to remember that these boards and the 7th Column boards are run off the same system. You also have to remember that the incredibly complex Column is also present. There may be busier sites, but probably none that put as much strain on the servers as this one.


Complex and busy is Amazon, Ebay, etc. This, regardless of the number of boards, can't possibly approach the complexity and traffic of your average eCommerce site. Halo 2 was hyped for years, known to be THE tent pole game for Xbox 2004. The fact that "server strain" is even mentioned here implies Ideal Science, Bungie or whoever is responsible for these forums was simply not prepared for the level of traffic they now receive...despite that it should have been abundantly clear and the system designed to easily accommodate the expected traffic and then some. Buy better servers, temporarily lease more servers, move the 7th Column stuff off this server. If none of that is possible, there's design flaws in the application. A huge surge of traffic post-launch and for several months beyond surely was anticipated and the forums should have been designed to scale to the demand.

However, I haven't experienced any performance issues....and performance issues have nothing to do with the no search function, chunks of topics from page 1 not displaying, etc. None of that is server resource or cache related. Those are bugs and either oversights or poor design decisions. Whether these are due to budget considerations, an inexperienced development staff, poor management...who knows. For whatever reasons, Ideal Science has an unfinished product sitting under the glaring spotlight of one of the biggest games in recent years.

While we're talking about capacity let me mention something related. I was surprised to see Bungie talking about purging game stats...less than a month after launch. Again, I can imagine the huge amount of data involved in their stats-related stuff, but I have a hard time believing it could become an unmanageable amount in just a few weeks. This again suggests either inefficient database design, under-powered servers, or oddly under-estimated sales for the game. It doesn't seem that tables of mostly integers would be that tough to manage even if your talking about millions and millions of records if the tables are indexed properly. It's not a huge deal. After all, I don't need a lifetime history of my game data. But I was sort of surprised to see such an announcement so soon.

[Edited on 12/3/2004 6:21:35 AM]

  • 12.03.2004 6:02 AM PDT
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Posted by: Vinkus
Are there also forums this complex? You have to remember that these boards and the 7th Column boards are run off the same system. You also have to remember that the incredibly complex Column is also present. There may be busier sites, but probably none that put as much strain on the servers as this one.


Complex and busy is Amazon, Ebay, etc. This, regardless of the number of boards, can't possibly approach the complexity and traffic of your average eCommerce site. Halo 2 was hyped for years, known to be THE tent pole game for Xbox 2004. The fact that "server strain" is even mentioned here implies Ideal Science, Bungie or whoever is responsible for these forums was simply not prepared for the level of traffic they now receive...despite that it should have been abundantly clear and the system designed to easily accommodate the expected traffic and then some. Buy better servers, temporarily lease more servers, move the 7th Column stuff off this server. If none of that is possible, there's design flaws in the application. A huge surge of traffic post-launch and for several months beyond surely was anticipated and the forums should have been designed to scale to the demand.

However, I haven't experienced any performance issues....and performance issues have nothing to do with the no search function, chunks of topics from page 1 not displaying, etc. None of that is server resource or cache related. Those are bugs and either oversights or poor design decisions. Whether these are due to budget considerations, an inexperienced development staff, poor management...who knows. For whatever reasons, Ideal Science has an unfinished product sitting under the glaring spotlight of one of the biggest games in recent years.

While we're talking about capacity let me mention something related. I was surprised to see Bungie talking about purging game stats...less than a month after launch. Again, I can imagine the huge amount of data involved in their stats-related stuff, but I have a hard time believing it could become an unmanageable amount in just a few weeks. This again suggests either inefficient database design, under-powered servers, or oddly under-estimated sales for the game. It doesn't seem that tables of mostly integers would be that tough to manage even if your talking about millions and millions of records if the tables are indexed properly. It's not a huge deal. After all, I don't need a lifetime history of my game data. But I was sort of surprised to see such an announcement so soon.


The thing is -- the 7th Column IS on a different server. The recent upgrade to the Column was because of the large strain put on the servers back then, and Bungie did prepare for all the additional traffic, making the upgrade only two months ago.

Considering the rest of the site works fine, as do the Column pages, you are correct in saying that the problems lie in the Forums, but the issues are a side effect and not one that any amount of preparation could have compensated for.

In the end, the solution should be found by the service providers, Ideal Science. Bungie have been working closely with Ideal to try and figure out the problem and fix it. However, you can imagine the magnitude of the issue at hand, and that it's not something that's easy to fix, especially when the problem does not lie with the servers.

  • 12.03.2004 11:00 AM PDT
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Posted by: Vinkus
talk talk talk


In the land of the not quite relevant, the rebuttal doesn't need to have anything to do with the opposing argument.

  • 12.03.2004 11:23 AM PDT
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Recon, the truth is, you really are a hopeless fan boy. It just doesn't have any affect on the validity of your points.

  • 12.03.2004 11:42 AM PDT
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Recon, you are quite right. My Amazon and eBay comparisons were a little apples and oranges but the previous argument was that these forums are somehow supernaturally busy. So busy that one couldn't possibly expect any forum and underlying server to withstand the massive strain of it all; I just don't buy that argument.

Yes, this is "just" a software developer's web site. But it's Bungie's web site. The company responsible for what will be, by far, the best selling Xbox game this year. The company responsible for what was PREVIOUSLY one of the best selling Xbox games ever. The game was hyped, the stats and web site have been hyped with it. For the most part, it all lives up to it but the forums don't. Hell, they're barely adequate and they don't represent the company very well. That's all I'm getting at.

It's not a huge issue. You're right, it's all freebies for us....but I don't think it's too much to ask that all the forum topics get displayed on the page or that the damn thing have a search function. I just hope Bungie is getting some of their money back from Ideal Science or at least not paying them MORE to fix fundamental functions of the forums.

  • 12.03.2004 12:38 PM PDT

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