I come from another ROSE server, and I used the forum a lot there - I was even a forum moderator in the last few months of the game. After seeing this forum and talking to other people who play the game, I came to the conclusion that the forum could use a major overhaul to be really user friendly. I realize we don't have the space to make a lot of tabs because the forum is shared by multiple other games, but I think with even using a little more frontpage space we can get a much better forum going.
Our current forum is split up in 6 subforums:
ROSE Community Chat
Game Discussions
Creative Contraptions
Technical Support
And lastly, 2 subforums for the closed test server Pegasus.
I can start with the 2 first subforums - their purpose is unclear to me. One is for talking about the community and the other seems to be for discussions. However, Clan Hall is under discussions while in my opinion, clans are the most important part of a ROSE community.
The marketplaces are also under Rose Community Chat, which is not organized at all. I suggest giving them their own Market Section with 2 subforums - Leonis and Draconis. Once you are in either of these subforums there are 3 more choices - Selling Section, Buying Section and Price Check. The old Leonis and Draconis marketplaces had 3 parts as well - Selling, Buying and the ability to create a topic right in the Marketplace subforum itself which makes it redundant as people posted both buying and selling topics there, and also price check topics.
In my opinion, we can get rid of the whole Discussions Section, and create a new section for new players. In here we can place both the Class Discussions and the Guides Section, as well as an Introductions section, so that we can get all new player posts with questions together - instead of all on a big pile in ROSE Community Chat.
As for the Creative Contraptions section, not much has to be done. Quest Submissions should be seen as a Suggestion and this can be put in it's own subforum. I would also create a new subforum named Modifications, for modifications and skins.
The last (active) subforum is Technical Support. This is fine as it is, if the Suggestions forum is moved.
The last 2 subforums, Pegasus Testing, can be hidden altogether. I might be wrong but I think the skill overhaul has long been rolled out, and there is no more point in keeping this around.
The layout as I see it would look like this:
ROSE Community Chat, with the subforums:
Clan Hall, Patch Notes Archive, Event Archive and ROSE International.
Suggestions, with the subforums:
Quest Submissions and Suggestion Archive.
Newbie Zone, with the subforums:
General Guides, Job Guides, Introductions and Class Discussion.
Creative Contraptions, with the subforums:
3D Creations, Player Screenshots, Player Stories, User Fan Art and Modifications.
Market Section, with the subforums:
Leonis Market and Draconis market - with both forums having 3 more subforums, Buy, Sell and Price Check.
Technical Support, with the subforum:
Bug Reports
I think these changes could hugely impact the usability of the forum, especially for newer players, which in the current forum setup have no place at all. The community here has been very welcoming to me and my friends so far, and it will only help Rose Online grow if the forum gives players the same feeling of friendliness.
We're committed to becoming an active part of this community and improving the forum would be a good way to help all players learn about the game.