I'm honestly just fed up with the delays and the empty promises. It feels like they care more about developer tools than the core product or improving the admin experience - which is what matters most when you're trying to build a community.
The moment you call it out, you'll see plenty of others quietly agreeing. But then there’s always that core fan club who'll defend anything, no matter how weak the response
Winner Winner... chicken dinner!
The issue is that the license holders that do care are too scared to speak out. There are about 6-8 heavy duty fan-boys over there that will do their best to trash anyone that complains and if they can't give honest answers about issues reported/improvements suggested they start their diversion tactics. And we all know what happens when you are very vocal about the issues that all that look with open eyes can see.
The entire feel of the Xenforo site has changed over the last few years, and even more so once Chris apparently took over the reigns.
They have historically been blind to the fact that they can't see that their concern with development tools/making 3rd party developers jobs easier that they forget what actually keeps a script alive, which is license holders forking money over to them for renewals probably more-so than new purchases. And you have to give those license holders a reason to renew, and generally it's not improvements for developers. It's improvements the end user of the script, the ones that visit and participate on sites that drive growth, can use. And if the admins feel that they are not getting any value for their renewal costs (which for the last 2'ish years you really have not) then they will quit paying those yearly renewals and some do start speaking out about it.
In a lot of ways they ARE stuck in that old vBulletin rut. Look at how ignored XFRM, XFES and XFMG have been over the last 5-7 years. There have been very minimal improvements made, but several very good ones suggested.
One simple one is with XFRM with being able to have multiple version files (think for each operating system) available for download from one entry. As it is now you have to create a new resource for each OS version. Or, again with XFRM, the ability to have a listing in more than one category without having to actually create a new entry and either link to the other entry or upload an entirely new copy of the resource - which means that you are then having to keep up with updates to it in multiple places.
Yes, it make take some coding.. but they are simple suggestions that would move the add-ons forward.
XFMG is similar with its content. There may be content that could be in different categories and yet you cannot list them in more than one. And you have to hope you put it in the most reasonably expected one.
Instead of creating their own end-user improvements, they roll third-party add-ons in and act like it's something new. All that is new about doing that is now instead of regular updates for problems with those 3rd party add-ons, you will be waiting 6 months to a year or more to get updates rolled out.
Honestly... once they get the new editor into play and it stabilized around that... that will probably be the last version I renew for. If they come out with some really new end user improvements in 3.0 I might look... but for me, the majority of my site traffic is on the 1st party and 3rd party add-ons. The forum itself is not the main draw.
As for Invision... several of my larger competitors run on older versions of it. And a few members from those sites that have come over have commented about how different my XF site is and how it's harder to find their way around. I know if I moved over to the newer Invision that would not be as big of a deal, but there is even a gap between those old versions and Invision 5.
