There are subreddits I've been in where you get to know the regulars pretty well, but the examples I can think of were ones that moved from another forum to reddit. I only ever visit about 3 subreddits, and Discord is actually the social site I interact with most. I rarely use twitter, and Facebook is something I drop by once every 2 weeks to see what my family is up to...

I'm not sure what would make me browse forums directly, I actually have very little time for social media anymore. I think the thing that got me to stop using Joe User as a blog was mostly technical issues with the RSS feeds, but I can't remember the exact problems I was encountering. I mostly just moved to a Jekyll based blog, and Pleroma based Microblog.

There's plenty of other rss services that took over for google reader though. Feedly seems to be the most popular, but I use Newsblur myself.

I would agree that the priority should probably be Discord. Creating a community where you can post a question and there's people who will start discussing it immediately is great. It flows so much nicer than any forum could. However, the moment you want to go back and reference something, forums are far superior. I think there's colossal synergy between Reddit and Discord, which is what makes so many subreddits and servers thrive.

I use a program to write my message and then

paste it into the box on the forum.

It gets double spaced when I do this.

I do this because I use my spell check

and if the browser crashes I don't have to start over.

I would request a single spacing when I paste.

If you like the way the spacing works, it is fine for me the way it is.

Iben...all you need to do is type directly into the form....select all and copy....then press 'post reply'.

If it crashes...you have the lost text still...to repost...

Been doing that for yonks.

....and here it is...

We do have a forum bug reports forum, I just don't know which site it's on.

But fundamentally, what our forums need is a general overhaul/update.  The backend tech has been frequently updated over the years as you may have noticed how fast things are these days.  But the front-end is still essentially 2001 era.

I love forums and hate multi-player (specifically in the case of 4x games). I don't think people not liking multi-player keeps them from posting on forums at all. There are many, many forums that are mostly, if not entirely, filled by single player game people.

I do agree that a big chunk of the competition is discord. But the thing is, discord is terrible for long term solutions. It is great for communication between devs and the community, especially in early release situations where both quick and back-and-forth conversations are ideal. I just don't see people going to discord and doing searches to find answers that have long been answered. EVERY person asks the same question over again. Reading the FAQs that may be on the Discord servers, lol, unheard of!

Reddit is kind of the competition of forums, but one of the biggest actual competitors are the Steam forums. Many gamers expect and demand (sometimes in a very condescending and/or entitled way) that every game has to have a Steam forum and that forum MUST be the main forum for the game. If that is the game devs decision I am perfectly fine with that. But I am also fine with those forums being just what they are labeled by Steam.. which is "Steam Community Forums" with emphasis on the word Community in my opinion. And a game having their own website forum setup is great IMO. Another password... meh, big deal, that is exactly why I use a password manager.

Except most of us has been playing the game for years. A lot have been playing since before three. 

That’s not fair to the multiplayers, since we’ve only had multiplayer in three. The problem comes in the single player like me love the game; because, of the game. While multiplayers; usually like the game because of multiplayer. 

I do think that multiplayer needs to be fixed.

I strongly disagree with that assessment.  The way the various forums and sub-forums are laid out, it tends to be a chore to find what you're looking for (often because it's not in the forum you'd expect to find it).  Some reorganizing and streamlining is definitely in order. 

That being said, I still prefer forums, all else being equal.   

^  Well put. 

if you really think about it.. reddit is just basically a giant forum, one where replies are displayed in a way that tracks a conversation easily.

just imagine any forum being visited by any and everyone, hundreds and thousands of replies. normal forum can't really keep track of quotes and what not, especially if you have say 50 pages of replies and 30 of them are just 2 guys talking across each other.

obviously that doesn't really make anyone go to forum or reddit. almost any rando can start a sub and essentially their own forum for free, in a giant hub. your average forum can be thought of as a sub, "isolated" from everything else. that's the difference. what you do to attract traffic after that would be key to how many people visit the place. you can have a sub with no traffic, even though it's on reddit.