I personally believe that this new Forum has more functions that allows for a community-like system. The other forum was simple and broad which let us see everything in one picture unlike this forum where each individual message feels like it's own page. It's harder to have a continuous discussion because the layout discourages it. I believe this is what the group was aiming for and hoping to transfer all spammable discussions into the discord server, leaving this site with only the discussions that matter.
Though I don't dismiss the new functionality of this forum, I do dislike how complicated it is with all these buttons and little pockets and lines and etc. Either this will be solved with time and my getting used to, or it's just a bad design in general (which I don't believe is the case).
Maybe a midpoint between the overly simple design of the previous forum and this one.
And on a more selfish and personal note... my 24k likes in the previous forum can't be changed into 24k reputation points