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[BiggNife]

Piranha at this point you are complaining more about complainers than the complainers themselves are complaining

Just wanted to point that out

 

[MirageDwarf]

Not really. You're bitching about something that is completely avoidable. That pretty much proves that the only reason the OT's are a "problem" is because no matter what, somebody will cry about something.

Many times I don't keep up to date with games and hope that I will get easy to ready quick primer in official threads. Bloated PRfest OTs are useless.

 

[JJD]

I don't disagree with any of this.

But my issue with OTs is greater than simply structure. They're sales pitches. Maybe it became that way, maybe it's always been that way, but it's goddamn cringe-worthy all the same.

Until people can get past the idea that an official thread is to sell people on a game, rather than set the tone for the discussion (though the two likely go hand-in-hand for most), they're always going to come off as shill-like and PR-invoking servicing of a game no one involved has actually played.

Then you'll have to agree that the Revelations OT is making a damn fine job.

 

[Brazil]

I honestly don't think they're a plague. I just like beautiful things, and that ACR OP is pretty.

I have no problem with them being huge information dumps as long as the vital information (release date, platforms, this kind of stuff) is in the very first post. Besides, once the thread gets to page 2, you don't even have to ever look at it anymore.

 

[MC Safety]

I don't think those threads foster discussion. I think they're giant ego strokes.

If we're talking about games, do we really have to dress up each official thread as if it comes directly from the marketing department of the publisher releasing the title?

 

[plc268]

My main issue with that AC Revelations OT is that it's less about Revelations and more about AC in general itself. You should be offering info about that particular game. If you want to give people more info about the series, do it in a separate topic or perhaps link the OTs of previous games.

I don't mind elaborate OTs as long as they're not overly filled with BS. If you feel the need that you need to list every mobile AC game for the sake of your OT, then you've kinda missed the point of an OT. Also, images are nice, but using images only for text is a travesty and should not be done.

No OT should ever be longer than 2-3 posts, IMO... and that's even stretching it. Instead of creating a huge ass OT post about the entire series, you're better off creating your own wiki on wikia instead (if there isn't already one).

 

[D4Danger]

I agree with everything ghst said

this part in particular

moreover, this kind of yawning fanboy rubbing material only serves to set up a sycophantic worship tone for the rest of the thread, stifling rational debate. how dare anyone criticize a king in his own palace?

this is a problem and it's the reason we have those threads like the Uncharted 3 review thing from last week. most OTs act like an incubator for fanboys.

 

[Zeliard]

If your OP is going beyond one post you should probably consider condensing a few things. Ask yourself, how much info do you really need to convey? Do you need huge image headers taking up unnecessary space when something smaller would be far more effective from a simple legibility standpoint? Do you need massive paragraphs describing each major and minor character and/or location? Every gameplay feature?

And possibly the worst part - do you really need to shove actual marketing blurbs and quotes in there (that you aren't mocking)? Is it necessary to use the marketing's own words to describe the differences between various pre-order bonuses in your OP? I mean, what is that, really? It happens a lot.

Some people are using the kitchen sink approach with some of these sprawling OPs. Less is more; put the most pertinent info on there. Keep it informative, keep it concise, and try to make it something that will give PR less of a hard-on. No need to bog it down with the stuff that only someone who is already swamped in the lore will remotely care for, and lathering up in unseemly PR-speak that is only doing the publisher's work for them and just comes across as strange and off-putting.

Ultimately, just from a simple pragmatic, functional standpoint, these things are ridiculous. Scrolling through to find info you may want is made unnecessarily cumbersome, and updating the OP with useful info is basically pointless since it's buried underneath everything else. Often times the average reader will never even see that the OP was updated if they don't scroll to whatever section happens to feature new updates, and if the OP is some gigantic thing then they're far less likely to do so. So you lose one of what should be the primary purposes of an OP - keeping people up-to-date.

 

[sonicmj1]

Go back and read my posts. So far I've been called a coward and to fuck off because I said "people will bitch about anything" in a nutshell.

Oh, and now you're insulting my intelligence with not being able to create decent argument because there is no need for one. If you don't like those OT's, don't click on them.

The problem is that "people will bitch about anything" means absolutely nothing either way. It's not an argument for the current state of OTs, just as it fails as a rebuttal against people complaining about these kinds of threads.

A number of legitimate concerns have been raised about mega-OT opening threads. These include:

• Poor formatting making threads difficult to read due to forced side-scrolling
• Heavy use of images making the threads impossible to read on mobile devices due to excessive time spent loading content
• Huge amounts of information making the thread difficult to digest for people curious about a game who are not mega-fans of the game or franchise in question
• Mega-threads reading like PR and encouraging a hype circlejerk around the game, suffocating more substantial discussion

Telling people with those concerns to just shut up and go away because "people will bitch about anything" (or "your concerns are stupid") doesn't answer anything. Where should those people go if they either want to participate in the thread but cannot due to size/formatting, or if they want a basic summary of a major release and cannot find it in the space best suited to that sort of thing on GAF?

I don't care too much about this because I don't spend a lot of time in OTs, but I suspect there's a way out of this that can work for almost everyone, so I don't see the need to suffocate this kind of discussion. People will support anything, but that doesn't mean that everything with support is worth supporting.

 

[flyinpiranha]

So your stance is that you have not been dismissive or condescending or insulting to people at all or that you have but it's okay because some people were mean to you?

How does your logic simply not apply to everything, as well? If you do not like something, why engage in any discussion about it at all? Why are you here? Why are you talking to me? Or can we simply agree that not everyone holds the same standards of what they feel is ignorable and beyond commenting on?

I'm here because I don't want the large OT's to change. If I did want them to change I probably wouldn't be here as I would just avoid them. I avoid things on forums that don't interest me or find ways to do it. If it's a large OT that I don't want to read I know for a fact since lurking ages ago and being a member for a couple years that the first pages are largely "waiting' posts. So I would skip to page 2.

There are obviously 3 groups, like the OT, dislike the OT, don't care and aren't here discussing it.

Change will happen if this thread topic is pushed with a ton of agreements. I don't want that change. So I'm voicing my opinion and yes, I was a little brash at first because my first post was helpful then I started to read the "fuck off" comments and replied in kind.

Piranha at this point you are complaining more about complainers than the complainers themselves are complaining

Just wanted to point that out

Yes, it degenerated to that and I am not happy the discussion went that way. Probably got too defensive.

Here are my reasons for the NOT having OT's change:

*Easily avoidable by people
*Phone usage shouldn't be the main priority - this is a media heavy (links and discussion with pictures) board
*Great content and information I wouldn't have found by just "googling" information
*The creator of the OT is reachable by PM if I have a question unlike Wiki
*the user base is also approachable about things brought up in the OT that I would have normally not known.

These aren't always things I take advantage of, but I don't want the option to do so taken away. The MGS4 OT I read a lot of and got some of my story straight. I never finished Brotherhood so I'll be using the OT of Revelations to catch up on what I missed as the story is great, I just burnt out on the game after 30+ hours.

I apologize for being defensive, it's a personality fault and I understand that "people bitch about anything" is a terrible argument but it does hold some validity to this argument as the thing people are complaining about is so easily avoidable.

 

[MirageDwarf]

There should be two weeks polling in each official thread about if poster should get his/her thread rights revoked for six months based on OP's content.

 

[Kikujiro]

The point of an OT is to give concise information about the game: an overview of plot and gameplay, release dates, system requirements on PC, different SKUs, a sampling on media like screenshots or major trailers, and some previews reviews. It's not about 300MB and 20 posts of every bit of series minutiae imaginable.

Furthermore, I don't think I've seen ANYONE ever complain about a thread being too small unless it's a troll thread. Most people seem to LIKE concise yet informative threads. This whole "BUT THEY'LL BITCH ABOUT IT ANYWAY" is an illogical and ignorant attempt to make everyone who disagrees with you into some kind of collective hypocritical hivemind.

You have some statistics you want to share?

The point of an OT is not to give concise information, who decides that, you?
I'm happy if the OP has information about every edition of the game because for me those are useful information. If you and others don't care about them that's fine, but you can just ignore them and since there are no rules on how to make an OT that's the way it is.

Calling the OPs PR viral marketers is unfair and uncalled for, that's the bitchy attitude, seems like they are banging your girlfriends or something.

 

[Vamphuntr]

I agree with the OP. Not only it's hard to find information about the game since it's way too long but it's also in image form. Moreover, it's so bloated that probably no one will read it and ask the same dumb questions over and over again in the thread. The joke that Aeana said in that thread is hilarious. (System requirements to load OP is probably higher than to run the game).

Since GAF have been working on new policies lately to make the experience more enjoyable, I think we could work something on OT standards. Not to restrict creativity but to at least make the OT useful. Having all the important information as text and not on an image is a good start. Limiting the size of the OP to 1-2 post is another good one. If it doesn't fit in 2 posts, you can probably trim your OP down. Not having 50 pictures would be another one (I'm looking at you AC thread) I also don't think you need to show a picture and describe each character seperately unless it's an RPG and they are playable. Same for all the locations, a few pics to show how they look is fine but mother of god that was way too much.

 

[Sean]

I appreciate all the effort that goes into these OTs but there really needs to be a rule that it goes 2-3 posts maximum and isn't ridiculously image heavy. It ends up either crashing your browser (especially mobiles) or taking five minutes to load. And when it's so lengthy like that (15 posts!) I just ignore it completely.

 

[br0ken_shad0w]

We need more joke OTs like Crysis 2 and Dragon Age 2.

 

[Synless]

We need more joke OTs like Crysis 2 and Dragon Age 2.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=374106

 

[Trojita]

Haha wtf at the asscreed OP.

My Xenogears OT was nice and concise.

 

[Sullichin]

Are you new on the internet?

there are tons of free stuff on it that people made without any form of payment or even ads.

Hey now, no I'm not new to the internet. Weird thing to say. In fact I used to have a fan site of my own back in the day when I had lots of free time, I reviewed games and never got anything except (every once in a while) some free games to review and not even enough ad money to pay for hosting. Point taken, though.

I'm just saying some OTs look like straight up advertisements, sales pitches for the game, to the point where it almost seems fishy that someone would do it for free. It doesn't really add anything to the OT if everything's an image that uses the game's font. It's less utilitarian and more show-offey. It just looks like those press kits that you see on publisher's PR sites. I'm all for being passionate about games, I love how communities form around this industry. But like others have said in this thread, they often read like press releases.

 

[Oni Link 666]

I thought OP stood for Opening Page. What's the problem?

 

[hikarutilmitt]

I like everything but the "Has to fit one post" thing. If the guy wants to make 50 posts to fit his super ultra mega OP, fine. I just really hate text in images. And I don't like how long some of those image intense topics can take to load.

The idea with being a single post limit for the first post is that it limits the nonsense that may be present, limits the amount of bandwidth and makes it actually, ya know, useful. I could see maybe needing 2, MAYBE, but fitting what's needed for that particular game (not other games, too) into a single post should not be at all difficult.

 

[SouthernDragon]

In my opinion, an OT should:

- communicate basic information about a game, and provide links for extra information and content.
- generate hype for the game
- contain text
- be limited to two posts
- facilitate discussion about the game

The AC OT is excessive. An OT which generates more discussion about the OT than the game itself has failed.

 

[Kai Dracon]

Seriously, I have to ask: who gives a swat of an OT is "too big"? It's the first post. You never have to see it again, ever, after the thread grows beyond the first page.

Isn't this just more "I HATE THESE PEOPLE WHO ARE DOING SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T REALLY AFFECT ME BUT FUCK THEM THEY SHOULDN'T BE DOING IT! JUSTIFY MY ANNOYANCE!!" bullshit?

It's true that some GAF OT's get really huge, and some are better than others - but it's also a GAF tradition and gives GAF some character. I'd rather let some OT's go wild than try to bring in silly community censorship and paranoia over whether your OT is "permissible".

 

[Steve Youngblood]

I'm here because I don't want the large OT's to change. If I did want them to change I probably wouldn't be here as I would just avoid them. I avoid things on forums that don't interest me or find ways to do it. If it's a large OT that I don't want to read I know for a fact since lurking ages ago and being a member for a couple years that the first pages are largely "waiting' posts. So I would skip to page 2.

There are obviously 3 groups, like the OT, dislike the OT, don't care and aren't here discussing it.

Change will happen if this thread topic is pushed with a ton of agreements. I don't want that change. So I'm voicing my opinion and yes, I was a little brash at first because my first post was helpful then I started to read the "fuck off" comments and replied in kind.

The only thing I would suggest is that I believe that it's possible for the best of both worlds to exist. What I'm personally interested in generally with an OT would be the highlights. What's new? What's innovative? What's the general buzz surrounding the title? What about this title makes it worth playing/discussing?

The "everything you ever wanted to know and then some" information could still exist, but I certainly would appreciate it more if there was something like a table of contents that would link me to the appropriate posts that dealt with nothing but the specific sections of minutiae that OTs currently subsist of. At least when it's categorized in such a fashion, it's easier to see why it's that long, as opposed to scrolling past section after section of information that is completely lacking in anything vaguely resembling a narrative flow.

But, I don't really care all that much. If there are enough people who love the way things are, I don't personally have a lot invested in this.

 

[Card Boy]

If an OP takes more than 15minutes to make then you are doing it wrong.

Look at my Rise of the Immortals, FM12, Nuclear Dawn, Stronghold 3, Bloodline Champions OPs. Simple OPs with minimal effort. Am i getting paid to spend 5 hours plus on an OP like the AC: R one? No, so why should i put in the effort? Only reason i made my OPs is for community awareness for lesser known titles.

 

[EmCeeGramr]

Seriously, I have to ask: who gives a swat of an OT is "too big"? It's the first post. You never have to see it again, ever, after the thread grows beyond the first page.

Isn't this just more "I HATE THESE PEOPLE WHO ARE DOING SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T REALLY AFFECT ME BUT FUCK THEM THEY SHOULDN'T BE DOING IT! JUSTIFY MY ANNOYANCE!!" bullshit?

It's true that some GAF OT's get really huge, and some are better than others - but it's also a GAF tradition and gives GAF some character. I'd rather let some OT's go wild than try to bring in silly community censorship and paranoia over whether your OT is "permissible".

OTs are used for information and updates throughout a game's life, leading up to and after launch. It DOES affect people.

 

[Phatcorns]

I just don't want shills making them. As long as the OT was made by an actual member of the neogaf community and not some shill who was paid to do it, go nuts, son.

 

[alr1ght]

Simply make it a necessity to post a wikipedia link to the game as the first line. There, done and done.

 

[Captain Tuttle]

I totally appreciate the passion and dedication it took to make that crazy AC OT but as a source of info it's pretty useless. It's just overwhelming. One post OT's are perfect, two post ones are really stretching it for me.

 

[iNvid02]

none of the images are wider than 1100px - thats fine for almost everything

sometimes you have to put down your mobile device and go to a computer. i read gaf on my phone all the time but have accepted that sometimes i cant read OT's right away because
its not really ideal on the phone, its not a big deal. cant argue with the bandwidth claim though, there is however a 56k warning up and it shouldn't affect most people with broadband anyway.

the first post has links to each section, its easy to navigate. if your just after basic info then yeah i agree its not perfect for that, but your on the internet, its all a search away.

as with all games nobody has played it yet, there is not much to discuss right now apart from finding new info, reading news and watching videos - or building hype.
the hype dies out pretty fast anyway, once the game comes out discussion shifts, people are playing and giving their own opinions about it.

 

[diffusionx]

In the middle of that giant OT was a review section. Now, who the hell is going to load up all those images again just to look at what reviews he posts in there? Especially since there is probably going to be a review thread when the embargo breaks. Are people making clean, short review threads as a reaction to these bloated OTs?

 

[John Rabbit]

OTs should basically follow the dark/demon's souls OTs.

 

[iNvid02]

In the middle of that giant OT was a review section. Now, who the hell is going to load up all those images again just to look at what reviews he posts in there? Especially since there is probably going to be a review thread when the embargo breaks. Are people making clean, short review threads as a reaction to these bloated OTs?

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=32488094&postcount=6

 

[FlashbladeGAF]

never forget

[/QUOTE]

 

[randomkid]

Seriously, I have to ask: who gives a swat of an OT is "too big"? It's the first post. You never have to see it again, ever, after the thread grows beyond the first page.

Isn't this just more "I HATE THESE PEOPLE WHO ARE DOING SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T REALLY AFFECT ME BUT FUCK THEM THEY SHOULDN'T BE DOING IT! JUSTIFY MY ANNOYANCE!!" bullshit?

It's true that some GAF OT's get really huge, and some are better than others - but it's also a GAF tradition and gives GAF some character. I'd rather let some OT's go wild than try to bring in silly community censorship and paranoia over whether your OT is "permissible".

Some people are saying that aggressive sales-pitch OPs set a tone in a thread that doesn't foster good discussion. That affects more than just the first page.

Who knows if a Stump-like OP for a big game would lead to less problematic official threads? It's worth a shot. I don't read official threads until I've beaten a game so it doesn't affect me much.

 

[Phatcorns]

none of the images are wider than 1100px - thats fine for almost everything

sometimes you have to put down your mobile device and go to a computer. i read gaf on my phone all the time but have accepted that sometimes i cant read OT's right away because
its not really ideal on the phone, its not a big deal. cant argue with the bandwidth claim though, there is however a 56k warning up and it shouldn't affect most people with broadband anyway.

the first post has links to each section, its easy to navigate. if your just after basic info then yeah i agree its not perfect for that, but your on the internet, its all a search away.

as with all games nobody has played it yet, there is not much to discuss right now apart from finding new info, reading news and watching videos - or building hype.
the hype dies out pretty fast anyway, once the game comes out discussion shifts, people are playing and giving their own opinions about it.

Are you a shill? Like, seriously, no disrespect if you aren't, but if you're getting paid for it, you're actually working against yourself because not making the relevant information we want to find easier to find on a phone is limiting the audience you reach.

 

[Evlar]

The AssCreed OP is unreadable for me for a few reasons. First, it's poorly formatted. Far too much information is piled into GAF forum presentation, a layout which is suited for correspondence-style communication between participants. These OPs want to be Wikis or something, with reference structures, search functions, a table of contents, and so forth. There's certainly a lot of data there but I doubt anyone is actually reading most of it. It's difficult to find what I need to know.

Second, it relies FAR too much on images. This makes browsing the first page of the thread, as the limits of the forum software enforce a load-all-at-once, vertical tower structure. The pages become slow to load, slow to peruse, and even harder to find what you need. Note even real PR outlets don't toss gigantic towers of images at readers. Slideshows and thumbnail menus are great innovations that just don't work on a forum.

On a side note, I browse NeoGAF with images off, so many of these OPs are turned into inert piles of URLs. The ACR OP looks particularly bizarre in no-images view... it encompasses 15 posts, yet only a handful use anything close to the maximum forum post size (by character count). Post 1 is an inch-high stack of URLs. Post 4 has only two links and nothing else; post 6 has only a single lonely image URL without any readable text at all. If the OP wasn't trying to turn NeoGAF into a virtual GameSpot by linking in vertically gigantic images, that "Original Post" could have probably been handled in half as many actual posts without editing the text at all.

Finally, as others have said, it makes regurgitation of PR into something of a virtue. NeoGAF is suited for discussion, debate, argument, discovery, not sales presentations. I want to hear a multitude of voices, not one guy's marketing project. Perhaps the regular NeoGAF gravity will inevitably assert itself in these threads after a few pages of backslapping the OP, but why grant this kind of sanction at all? It's out of character for the site. Furthermore, the expectation of reward offered to some past GAF OPs is a troubling trend, as it gives the posters who are most likely to indulge in fanboyish behavior material encouragement for shitting up the place.

 

[Ploid 3.0]

Never really clicked with assassin's creed, but wow this is hawt.

 

[pa22word]

Eh, I agree tbqh. 2ish posts should be the limit.

 

[Wallach]

Seriously, I have to ask: who gives a swat of an OT is "too big"? It's the first post. You never have to see it again, ever, after the thread grows beyond the first page.

My only problem with OTs is just that - there are times when it is not just the first post but the first 3+ full of images. There's no reason to use multiple opening posts just because you can't cram in enough stupid images into a single post. Images that contain text on them that we can't search, which is often why some people consider OTs like that nothing more than a scroll wheel workout until the discussion hits page 2.

Just restrict OTs to a single post. Bonus points if text is actually used in the post so people can search it effectively.

 

[dwebo]

none of the images are wider than 1100px - thats fine for almost everything

I don't have a beef with your OT or large OTs in general, but lots of netbooks and tablets (including ipad) are 1024px. Not sure how much that leaves after the avatar space and borders, but I'm sure that's listed somewhere.

 

[Gentleman Jack]

Never really clicked with assassin's creed, but wow this is hawt.

Looks like Rob Liefeld took up painting. That poor girl really should see a doctor about her spine.

 

[diffusionx]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=32488094&postcount=6

Yea, my whole point is that who is going to load up that entire thread again just to find the review section buried in there.

I'm not trying to hate on you or anything, it's just that these giant OTs seem to actively deter people from finding any information that pops up after the thread is made. My reaction to them is mostly "wow that guy put a lot of work in. I'm never going to look at this page again."

 

[TheSeks]

look at that monstrosity. i thought OTs were supposed to be things of utility, with the original post serving as a concise primer, laying out all the useful and essential information for anyone with a wayward moment to click on them; not masturbatory odes to the greatness of every last mitigating detail of a game.

when i click on an OT i'll want to find release/pricing details, a spattering of reviews and footage, and perhaps a tastefully concise blurb or bullet list highlighting some of the major innovations/selling points of the title. what i don't want is some catch all media dump which reads like the OP found a folder some PR rep left on a train and decided to type it all up verbatim, leaving any useful information marooned in a sea of extended universe fluff.

moreover, this kind of yawning fanboy rubbing material only serves to set up a sycophantic worship tone for the rest of the thread, stifling rational debate. how dare anyone criticize a king in his own palace?

I debated this in the BF3 thread Mr. Snrub posted: GAF's perchant for Magazine ad OP's is hilarious and bad.

Go look at any of Bruce Lee Roy's threads that haven't had their image hosts changed to his server, broken images and OP posts that basically have nothing or broken image icons everywhere. How the fuck is that helpful?

As well as the MISINFORMATION in OPs that don't take the fucking time to research their shit because they're busy with MY FIRST PHOTOSHOP PROJECT.psf's. :| The Battlefield 3 thread is all "LOL BAD COMPANY 2 INTRODUCED THE FROSTBITE ENGINE TO THE WORLD!" despite the fact I slapped the OP and said "No, Bad Company 1 did. Fix that." It still hasn't been fixed because "ZOMG IT TOOK ME TWO MONTHS TO WORK ON THIS OP! FUCK YOU!"

GAF should really go back to text-only OP's like I generally do if I post a thread because it's faster and generally formats with the board and doesn't require image hosts to forever host images and text in those images for information two years later. In addition to not taking 39 FUCKING POSTS to make an OP.

 

[Radec]

Hey now, no I'm not new to the internet. Weird thing to say. In fact I used to have a fan site of my own back in the day when I had lots of free time, I reviewed games and never got anything except (every once in a while) some free games to review and not even enough ad money to pay for hosting. Point taken, though.

I'm just saying some OTs look like straight up advertisements, sales pitches for the game, to the point where it almost seems fishy that someone would do it for free. It doesn't really add anything to the OT if everything's an image that uses the game's font. It's less utilitarian and more show-offey. It just looks like those press kits that you see on publisher's PR sites. I'm all for being passionate about games, I love how communities form around this industry. But like others have said in this thread, they often read like press releases.

I'm just commenting on this bro:

I don't understand why the people making the OTs put so much work into the first post, seems like a total waste of time if you're not getting paid for it. Some of them have a ton of custom made images and are filled with information.

With that said, I think you should know why people do free stuff.

 

[Bumhead]

I don't mind length (wahey). I tend to buy a lot of games later due to Steam sales etc and I like the fact that I can search for a games |OT| on here and gather such a wealth of information.

The problem is when the OP's sacrifice information for presentation. The Ass Creed |OT| looks phenomenal but it's not an OT I'd ever read for a quick source of information. It's pretty heavy going.

Images are fine as long as the text below them is clearly legible and convenient to scan for information.

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

as with all games nobody has played it yet, there is not much to discuss right now

15 posts worth of nothing...?

I agree 100% that if you turn images off on your browser and see no information in an OT, then you have fundamentally failed in the basic premise of creating an informative OT.

 

[froliq]

I don't like the long OPs in the OTs aswell, but it's not like I read smaller OPs either. I just give it a look once and after some heavy scrolling I'll be done with it after it hits page 2. Sure, the AC one may be quite overkill. I just find it rude to bitch about it just because it doesn't suit your needs while you know he has put alot of effort and time into it.

I'm very interested in how this will end since it is becoming a bigger issue apparently. I hope there wont be too harsh rules on making an OT, if there even will be new rules. I see it as a good thing that people are so enthusiast and creative on making an OT.

 

[ghst]

The AssCreed OP is unreadable for me for a few reasons. First, it's poorly formatted. Far too much information is piled into GAF forum presentation, a layout which is suited for correspondence-style communication between participants. These OPs want to be Wikis or something, with reference structures, search functions, a table of contents, and so forth. There's certainly a lot of data there but I doubt anyone is actually reading most of it. It's difficult to find what I need to know.

Second, it relies FAR too much on images. This makes browsing the first page of the thread, as the limits of the forum software enforce a load-all-at-once, vertical tower structure. The pages become slow to load, slow to peruse, and even harder to find what you need. Note even real PR outlets don't toss gigantic towers of images at readers. Slideshows and thumbnail menus are great innovations that just don't work on a forum.

On a side note, I browse NeoGAF with images off, so many of these OPs are turned into inert piles of URLs. The ACR OP looks particularly bizarre in no-images view... it encompasses 15 posts, yet only a handful use anything close to the maximum forum post size (by character count). Post 1 is an inch-high stack of URLs. Post 4 has only two links and nothing else; post 6 has only a single lonely image URL without any readable text at all. If the OP wasn't trying to turn NeoGAF into a virtual GameSpot by linking in vertically gigantic images, that "Original Post" could have probably been handled in half as many actual posts without editing the text at all.

Finally, as others have said, it makes regurgitation of PR into something of a virtue. NeoGAF is suited for discussion, debate, argument, discovery, not sales presentations. I want to hear a multitude of voices, not one guy's marketing project. Perhaps the regular NeoGAF gravity will inevitably assert itself in these threads after a few pages of backslapping the OP, but why grant this kind of sanction at all? It's out of character for the site. Furthermore, the expectation of reward offered to some past GAF OPs is a troubling trend, as it gives the posters who are most likely to indulge in fanboyish behavior material encouragement for shitting up the place.

how i'd have put things if i could rite gud.

 

[ThatObviousUser]

The Mario 3D Land OP has been up for days!

You're going to make Andrex cry.

Lol. I couldn't have done all that even if I tried. Well, maybe I could have, but my Pokemon thread burnt me out.

To be fair, I did get a bit crazy for my Pokemon community thread (it's probably the biggest community thread atm), but hey, I get to be crazy once in a while.

 

[Parallax Scroll]

Embedding all your text content inside images is also giving a big middle finger to people with disabilities. Want to use a text-to-braille or text-to-speech converter on the page? LOL you can't!