Pros, Cons, and Things to Imrpove

First off, I would like to say that I haven't really used the old forums too much. They just seemed a little too out of the way for me. Either way, I would like to be more involved with the community and what a better way than with the new forums.

Pros:

• I would like to start by saying that I really like the "Rioter Comments" on the side. This is incredibly helpful, especially with things like server maintenance and updates when you want to be up to date on how things are going.

• I find the formatting guide to be really helpful. I like how it is out of the way, but still easily accessible. However, I thing that it can be improved upon. It would be quite useful for the "input" to be able to be clicked on and inserted into your post (similar to the previous forums).

• The updating preview of your post underneath. I hate on most forums that you have to type out your whole post AND THEN look it over and make sure it is all formatted correctly.

Cons:

• The first thing, I really don't like the Reddit style of these forums. In the few months that I have used Reddit, I have yet to post more than once. I find the format very discouraging towards new people to the post. Unless you are early to post or post on a top comment, nobody is going to read your thoughts.

• Also, the up/down vote is also quite discouraging. It seems that the people who post their genuine opinions often get downvoted for not agreeing with the majority. The only people I see get upvoted consistently are those who try to be funny and are often off topic from the original post.

Things to Improve:

• As previously stated, the formatting guide.

• There should be more customization.

• As stated in other posts, Avatars would be a great addition. I personally don't really like the summoner icon choices (outside of the new team icons) and would like more options.

• It would be really nice if the background color could be customizable. I often browse Reddit/forums at night. The white background is really painful on the eyes after a few minutes of reading.

• At least for me, I found the forums to be incredibly out of the way. You spend 90% of your time in LoL in the client. Except for system updates and server maintenance, I didn't really use the forums. The only reason I did use the forums for the previous reasons, is because there was a link in the client.

• I think this would be a useful addition to the client. If not a link to the forums, there should at least be a link to the LoL homepage.

• I am not sure how things were for the old forums, but in other games, there were not just Mods employed by the company, but player Mods as well. I find this to be incredibly helpful for keeping things organized and keeping the rage to a minimum.

I apologize for the long post. I figured, for my first forum post, I better make it count. :)