Website and Forum Help, Feedback & Advice

[MusterBuster]

Hey People,

With so many story orientated games both on the horizon and on our shelves, we thought it necessary to remind you all about the hazards of posting spoilers and how to protect yourself against unnecessarily revealing the plot to the slower gamer amongst us.

What is a Spoiler?

A spoiler is absolutely anything which reveals a plot twist, suprise or resolution in a game. Think of spoilers as the guy who's seen a film 500 times and never shuts up about what's going to happen next as you're watching it and you're on the right lines.

Why are spoilers bad?

In a story based game, the twists and suprises within the plot line keep the gamer excited and involved. Remember the tooth fairy? That was exciting until your mum ran out of money and told you that a beautiful winged lady was not, in fact, stashing cash under your pillow every time you yanked a tooth from yer gob.

But... but... there's this REALLY hard bit and I want everyone to know how much I SMACKED IT!!

We know you'll want to discuss the plotline/gloat about your epic wins with your community chums, so we don't mind you posting spoilers as long as let everyone else know that your post contains elements of the plot line.

How do I mark a post as containing a spoiler?

There's a few ways:

1. If you're starting a new thread which will contain spoilers, just place the phrase *SPOILERS* at the end of the thread title, like this:

Final Fantasy XIII - The Chocobo Revelation! *SPOILERS*

2. If you're making a post which contains a spoiler, in a thread which has not been marked as containing spoilers, you can conceal the text so that users must highlight it with their mouse in order to read it.

To do this - you need to change the colour of the font to a specific HTML colour. First, highlight the spoiler text and hit the button. Then, select 'More Colours'.

The 'colour picker' box will appear. In the text entry field in the bottom right corner of this box, type "#FFFFFF" and click apply, like this:

This will change the colour of the text to match the background colour of the forums. Which results in this:

SPOILER BELOW! Highlight text to read:

Holy Moly! Apparently you'll need to use the X button in God of War III! 

Once you've done, be sure to set the font color back to black Just remember - hyperlinks will not be concealed in this way.

Please be considerate to the slower gamer amongst us and ensure you mark your plot related posts as spoilers!

Got more tips on spoiler safety? Post them here!

Much Love,

MB

[Pin-Pin-Ire]

I thought this was just common sense

[milnerant]

Final Fantasy 13 has... Chocobo's?

[xLegioNx]

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Pin-Pin-Ire wrote:
I thought this was just common sense

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To regular forum users yes, to others not so much. 

[Blarty]

It is common sense, although it's also very easy to add a spoiler in without it really being intentional, say a general game discussion on a non-hidden trophy or something like that

[Pin-Pin-Ire]

I wish OPM would read this; before they do their Podcasts

[MusterBuster]

Yeah, the colour changing thing doesn't appear to be common knowledge, but it's really useful. With GOW3 and FFXIII coming, I thought it best to get this posted so you can all link to it

MB

[Matt_FireWire]

I don't understand why you don't just have spoiler tags? [SPOILER][/SPOILER]

[MusterBuster]

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Matt_FireWire wrote:
I don't understand why you don't just have spoiler tags? [SPOILER][/SPOILER]

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It's a feature we'd love to have Matt! However our forums use HTML rather than BB code.

[eastavenge]

Worse of all things is when people put a spoiler in the title - Usually even then followed by *Spoiler* - It is too late if you've put it in the title!