I've made some contributes and tried to touch on some interesting points and ideas for gameplay. But you can only go so far with the information you have. In due time this forum will be drowned in posts and most likely a lot of the regulars you've seen in the Destiny forum will vanish under the tide of excitement. I try to follow posters who I respect to others out of courtesy for their follows, humor, or wit. I'd say if you see someone taking the time to respond in complete sentences with structured thought to follow them. They are gems in a sea of the faceless.

I disagree with a couple points here. To begin, your assessment that the new style of foruming encourages "3 word meme answer[s]" is something I disagree with on all accounts. In all of my eight years here, I have seen very little change in these sort of posts and they have persisted through the new forum transition. More on this point, the removal of the forum time limit does not, nor did it, have an impact on a poster's content. Anyone willing to post a short, "worthless" blurb for comment was not hindered, as the post limit only affected frequency, and not length, of posts. Short posts and frequent posts are mutually exclusive and do not come hand in hand. Honestly, I think there has been very small amounts of critically useful discussion on this site (with a few exceptions) in quite some time. It is my opinion, however, that this is a result of two things. Pre-b.next, there wasn't much to talk about. During the darkness, every facet of every topic was practically scrapped clean, especially here in the community forum. There was simply nothing new coming from Bungie to truly fuel the furnaces of conversation. Post-b.next is a different story entirely. While the available content has increased, I believe that the new pageless and bottom-up post order has changed how people respond to threads. It was vastly common knowledge that many users simply read the OP of a thread, perhaps a few posts, then used the "respond" button to add their thoughts, skipping dozens of posts - and often pages - that may have already stated the same ideas that the user wanted to express. In many instances, conversations would periodically repeat themselves as new users came and left a thread, pushing older conversations into seldom-read pages allowing the new users to state the same ideas and rebuttals that were well-expressed and rebuked. The new style lets the most recent and often more relevant posts float to the top where users can easily read them, a simple method that allows pertinent, popular, and useful ideas to be easily communicated and shared without the inherent repetition that plagued the threads and forum as a whole. With shared ideas being more easily expressed and less often repeated, we are seeing shorter threads, simply for the fact that the same posts aren't being repeated ad nauseum as the pages tick past. To some it may look like there's less discussion, but really there's simply less noise.

Yeah. Basically either you have no discussions now, or any discussion is only between two people- or at least everybody is replying to one person so each discussion THAT person is having is between two people. It's definitely a shame, but I don't think Bungie is going to change anything about the sub-threads now that they're this far in, unfortunately. :(

June 10th, 2013.

Its more likely the new reply system. Unless you actually click the reply button to see extra responses then you will never know. I find myself engaging in less conversations because they are generally hidden.

I hear ya.

Discussion isn't dead. It's just... missing in action.

Just wait.

Bungie.net has always had its highs and lows in population. Some who know of this are optimistic and assume this is a very low period that will pass. They ignore the fact that bungie has made official trailers and announcements of their new game, Destiny, and the fact that the Destiny forum gets posts not in 'x posts per minute', but 'x minutes per post'. The other forums get posts every few hours, and frankly anyone familiar with the private group feature on this site knows that this update was anything but an improvement. I myself think this is a wonderful experience in terms of experimentation. In many threads I debated how terrible things would be if Bungie.net had features such as likes, followers, ignore, and popularity sorting; yet my arguments were all hypothetical. To see here it put to the test in raw reality, and to see my points validated, is very insightful.

I think that, as people increase in familiarity with the new layout and members, the old zealousness and community will return. Right now our family is going through a change and inviting new members in. As the excitement around destiny increases, the discussions on b.net become more and more fragmented. I expect the new community to reach its full potential a couple months after destiny's release.

I don't really recall there ever being a time when there was an abundance of intelligent, levelled discussion. This is the Internet, after all, but I do know what you mean. Despite all the hubbub about Destiny, I'm spending much less time on these forums, partially because, quite frankly, there is no weekly update yet. That, and these forums no longer feel unique. It doesn't feely nearly as "homey" as it did before.

It's the nested replies and the post order. If they'd just fix it, it'd solve a lot of the problem. But hey, I'm just repeating what the angry crowds have been yelling for two months now, what do I know.

Discussion isn't dead. I just had a 200+ post thread just a week or so ago.