All in all the community fuction is not as functional as it could be, in a way it's down right user unfriendly. Hopefully when it returns it will return with improvements.
If it won't lets discuss what improvements we feel as the players should be made to make it more functional for us.
Just a few examples are..
The clan listing fuction of it. For the new player the idea of scrolling through endless undescriptive page after page needs changing.
The light blue heading background makes it impossible to read text.
The lack of messageboard integration with the sites messageboard. It would be far easier to keep people informed ingame of events as most don't visit the offical boards.
I would like to see the free community have a bit more practicality, more friendly interface. Possibly be able to access it from outside the game.
The email system is fine I use it practically everyday but i would like to see an improvement on the error checks. Such as if you go to send a mail and "person doesn't exist" or something like that you get a an error and the whole email closes. I can't remember if thats the exact error but it has happened to numerous times where i have lost lengthy in-game mails.
also to see in the inbox which mails are new and which are old. Some sort of indicator that shows its been read. Also a "delete all button" used to delete all the mail.
How about a longer recipient list, allowing you to mail more than 5 players?
well a by letter list for clans would be far nicer. (ABCDEFG...etc)
that simply would make finding a clan in that section far easier then clicking thu 78 pages to get to "G".
Being able to resize the community page would be nice...if I open it it takes up the whole screen like as if I'm in full-screen mode. and I have to move the whole page side to side... Lots of players play in Windows mode!
You can look up clan names in the list by typing in a part of the name, e.g. if the clan is named "good****" you can just type "goo" and start the search.
The interface is somewhat disorganized, at least for my resolution (1152x864 or 1280x1024). The clan list thingy by clicking on hundreds of numbers is annoying. Also when you click on clan, text is not properly formatted, buttons are overlapping text and it is hard to read. Those numbers for clan listing are not in one row. Are those e-mails I receive marked as new? I do not remember, I just know I always see "You have 1 unread message", but last one is 2 weeks old, I clicked on every one I have in inbox to make sure they are all read, and I still have the message when I log in.
Also when you receive a mail, instead of one row saying "you have 1 unread message" some envelope icon or so could pop up offering you to click and read new mail instantly (just like that question mark for quests).
The only info I could get through in-game petition was "it's brought down for maintenance and will stay down uptill further notice". Well... "whan it's done" is not looking like a good point, really.
It might be ok for people who never use it. But for now... /clanwarlist and similar commands don't work and new clan war interface never shows alliance name. Nicely done, NC!
Needless to say clan notice is shown every time you log in, but noone can change it... ever.
To make it more usefull to yourself and others, what changes would you like to see?
Biggest improvement would be being able to access mail and clan function from outside game, e.g. via the website. I would love it if we could write/read in-game mails via the website. Writing would be far better with working cut&paste, and of course printing out mails would be cool, too. Same for clan messages. And it also would have the advantage that you could contact people in game via the web by sending a mail (without using MSN which not everybody has, or wants to use, or can use from work :) ). Clan listing could be improved, too (search via alliance e.g., or being able to adjust the number of clans listed on one page).
To make it more usefull to yourself and others, what changes would you like to see?
We are not in suggestions forum, are we?
I have already suggested few changes that can help. But it doesn't matter, since whatever developers will put on community server after maintenance will be over (if it will... don't you remember times of C2 when we had no community server at all) will be something they have implemented already.
You can't copy/paste any text in the game. It's ridiculous even though developers don't take our complains into account.
You can't see alliance information like it is (was, actually) presented for clans. You have to pinpoint every clan individually if you wanna deal with alliance.
There is no alliance-wide memo/board/notices.
In-game boards are far from being useful as they are due to interface and management problems.
In-game mails are tedious sometimes and their interface is cumbersome. You can't mark a mail are read - it will be displayed as new mail in your inbox forever.
Message editor is bugged big time: scrolling from the bottom produces inconsistent cursor position. Just try to scroll 1,5 screens high text and modify it.
Clan listing has only few options - search filters by name and leader nick. Nothing more... Not ranking, level, number of clannies etc.
You can't find clan name some person belongs to (even though server has this information).