New Members Information

[mayormommy 8]

With the Omnibus being down, we've had a lot of questions posted in General Discussion requesting very basic information. I'd encourage everyone to visit:

New Members Information

to see if the pinned threads there will answer their questions before posting here in General Discussion.

Thanks!

MM

[GRYINX 0]

Why is the Omnibus down?

[sim1234 62]

Originally posted by: GRYINX

Why is the Omnibus down?quote>

It is down because dirk has just upgraded the website and a few of the articles in there are of no use any more as they relate to the old website so the Simtropolis Help Squad are updating the articles before they put it back up.

[onlyplace4 603]

This is a great idea if only new members would read things like this. I've jast answered about the bezillionth request for where to get gmax, even though there is a sticky about it. Ah well, we were all new once

[ckotchey 0]

With all due respect to those who have used and maintained this website through its history - and I do recognize that this is one of the focal sites when it comes to SimCity 4, but as a new user to the site myself, I understand the confusion that other new users are finding with this site.

In short, I find the whole organization method of "everything goes in a forum post" very difficult to work with. I don't know if it's the whole mindset/paradigm I have, but I've always treated forums as the "discussion goes here" part of the website, but other general, static information, like "what is gmax? where can I get it? how can I learn to use it? what is STEX? what is NDEX?" should go into a simpler FAQ/Link/Information page (or series of pages) outside the scope of the forums. Again, I'm only speaking from personal experience, but when i first found this website, I was a bit confused by the fact that, in a sense, it has no "home page" - it simply lists an overwhelming collection of forums, each on a different topic - and as a new user, I don't know (or didn't know) what all these topics even meant (for example, BAT, NDEX, STEX, etc.).

Digging through days, months, and years of posts to find an article with the basic information you are looking for tends to be quite tedious, and I'm sure after paging down a few times, it's easier for a newbie to simply add yet another post, asking the most basic questions - which is fine if you ask me for a format such as this - but I see that some number of people get quite frustrated with it.

Anyway, i think you get my point. Just adding my $0.02 to the discussion by saying that it's not the lack of information at the site (well, at least while the site is under re-construction), it's the organization and difficulty in finding the good, relavent information. I think this site would go a long way to correcting this if the "home page" were replaced with a FAQ page, or list of links, with links into the appropriate locations in the forums (sort of like The Tips and Tricks Site at simcity.ea.com), for example, instead of the home page simply redirecting straight into the forums.

[MemoK 0]

The only thing that annoys me a little as a new user is the huge amount of broken links and images that were left behind after the conversion from one plataform to another. Basically, a lot of the history of the forums is dead, like the first pages of the "Show us..." threads and some of the CJs.

Besides that, I find the site quite comfortable thanks to the Search feature. I would like to see the Omnibus' articles restored, together with the Modds section, but I don't mind the wait as there's a lot of interesting threads around here.

[DemDude1 0]

I have a simple question that might have a simple answer. Is there a list of what rewards are based on other factors? ie: BCS dealership Metropolitain ford is needed for a mansion and also for CXS Dealership SJW Motors which is needed for BCS Dealership Producta Nissan.....

Thanks for any help. I dont know if anyone replied to this but if so please put it in the pm thanks

[zane900 1]

This I think will improve unnessesary traffic in theis general topic area. The bad thing about is that some new people here may have already been players of the game for years. But, in general I think that it is a good idea. I mean you could say that traffic is good. But, not when your talking about the biggest sim city site in the world. A site with much more then on hundred and ten thousend users. Or is it million users. I always forget.