I’ve tried to adapt, but the OTG forum layout is so very unusable for me. It’s a long scrolling column of forum headers, and subforums are rather messily jumbled under each main header.
Is there a way I should be changing the appearance so it looks like, well, a forum?
/agree
there are a few different ways that the layout can be changed depending on what your preference is. If you prefer a more traditional forum layout, you can change to Categories. go to this thread for instructions on how to change your layout. its a few posts down in the thread. https://forums.oldtimersguild.com/t/discourse-101/131
I use the different views for different things.
I think the one you might prefer is the category view.
The top bar starts out listing all categories, tags, etc. Then 2 important buttons. Categories and Latest. Category view sets it up like we’re all used to seeing a forum. Top level categories (Game Dev, General Games, Featured Games, etc) with some sub categories. You can click to get to where you need. Latest provides a long, scrolling page that shows the most recent posts.
If there are certain categories you don’t want to see, you can click on the main category (such as Off Topic). Along that top bar again, all the way to the right, is a circle. This is where you can control how you see this particular topic. Click on the circle (open circle means normal), and pick the option that looks best for what you want to see. You can do this for any and every category, sub category or even just posts.
The search function here is GREAT. You can search on words, tags, etc., and it does an excellent job of pulling up those things. You can search only by category, the whole forum, find certain users, and more.
While I was typing, @SidonieAlaise posted an excellent resource as well. If you have further questions, please let us know. Let’s see if we can find something that works for you.
You can also try different themes. Some themes make the forum appear much less busy, like Sam’s Simple, for example. I like this one. To find the themes, click on your avatar, then the settings wheel, then Interface. Pick a theme from the dropdown. Don’t forget to click on “Save Changes” before you exit the page.
I’ve tried all the different themes (using Sam’s Simple Theme currently), and already have my default set to Categories. The menus are still a jumble, and entirely too much scrolling is required for navigation.
honestly, I hate this forum so much I am considering looking for other guild, I forum is garbage in my opinion…
For instance, phpbb has a beautiful interface, simple, clean and sensible. Lots of other forum software looks more or less like it… discource very much does not.
https://www.phpbb.com/community/index.php?
There is a “hamburger” menu next to your avatar that you can use to move quickly around the forums.
Once you set the categories and /or subcategories that you want to either watch or ignore, the forums sort of clean themselves up.
You can use the sidebar slider to move between dates in a thread, which IMO is easier than loading new pages.
Just some more ideas to help! 
The most effective “noise suppressor” for me is muting categories I’m not interested in. It’s a little tedious to set up, but it keeps my “Latest”, “New”, and “Unread” views nice and short.
I mute all the categories for games I don’t play/watch.
This!
I hated this new forum at first (and i still prefer the older formats but I’m old and cranky ans set in my ways 
) but once I got this under control it has become very straightforward and easy to read/follow.
I only have a handful of forums that are not ‘muted’ and I only click on “Latest” and “New” when I come to the site and that gives me a much easier to navigate list of posts to look through. I can also go back to the 'Category" view when I’m trying to look up something specific in a given forum.
Fortunately I started on these forums relatively early so there were only a few forums and it was easy to pick out the ones I didn’t want. But once started if there was ever a post that showed up in my ‘latest’ or ‘new’ that I knew I didn’t want I could easily click to that forum and mute it immediately.
I’m a third for muting things I’m not interested in!
I’d like to try to help you guys make this a better-looking place for you. If you’re interested, post a few screenshots here or in a PM and explain what is bad about it or what you’d prefer to see.
Thanks for this tip! My forums look much better being able to hide all those games I don’t play!
Thanks for the hint about themes. Forums are already much better. lol I can actually read them now. 
I cant even find any information on how to get to discord for SWTOR…
The OTG Discord information is located in a members-only location. I see you’ve made a post asking about that. In the meantime, portions of the server are open to the public. The link below should be good for 24 hours:
I put old timers guild in the search and nothing came back
Are we unable to friend people on the forums?