New Board - Props and Slops

[llamabeast]

It would be nice if it would be possible to at least retain the ability to edit the OP's of each thread, (This would also solve the MP issue mentioned before.

This is a very good idea.

[Endoperez]

It seems that the forum update mostly improves the moderator side of things. I was expecting something that helped on the user side, not something that totally changed the look. This is made worse by the fact that the new look is horrible, especially the current shrapnel games from page, and especially the bland, BLUE cd in the middle. It's like a hole in the middle of a page, not an eye-catcher, and a blank cd certainly doesn't give a good image of your games. Other problems I have with the current Shrapnel Games frontpage. I understand it's still under construction (link to free games doesn't work), but IMO that's just more reason to point these out now when people are still working on it.

- The cursive titles It's what we do and Buy it! Buy it! are horrible. Please replace them. Defining your publishing as something you do feels bland, and the buy it! line seems way too direct, even desperate. IMO, even something like what we do best and order today! would be a vast improvement. I'd also like to see It amuses us and take it! take it! (blog and free games, respectively) changed. I don't think your blog (from which I've only read discussions about the niche game economy) is supposed to be amusing, and Take it! again goes way above my comfort level.

- The title images (Our games, Our blog, Our forums etc) should link to the page in question.

- I really hope the images under "Our games" are temporary. They make it look like all your games were sold either in dvd cases or in boxes, but at least Dominions 3 isn't.

- Ordering your games alphabetically by category doesn't work. The current way starts from BOARD games, and ENDS in STRATEGY and WAR. This doesn't work for "publisher of permier war and strategy games".

Being able to edit first posts of threads is important, but preferably there should be some way to set any post as always-editable, because there are mods (e.g. Conceptual Balance for Dom3) that have several different versions that are made downloadable as different attachments. When a version changes, all of these should be edited.
Perhaps making all posts with attachments always editable?


Color scheme of the new forum is bland. The old brown gave the forum most of its feeling, IMO. Please bring it back, if possible.

Graphic ads on the side of the forum are really distracting. Text ads on the side are fine, and image ads on top and on bottom are tolerable, but breaking the color scheme with off-color ad is really bad. If you need an image ad on the sidebar, please put it to the top of the bar, to where the main menu is currently located.


The new forum software doesn't jump to the first unread post of a thread when the thread is opened normally. You have to click the tiny arrow-icon next to its name. This is counter-intuitive. Most people don't want to read the whole thread again every time even a single post is added to it, and the first page could still be opened by selecting the '1' that's after the title.


As said before, the poster's name on top of each post takes huge amount of space. I really liked the old system, but I understand you aren't changing back to it. Still, could some vertical space be saved by moving some of the info to the center of the name/avatar line? Perhaps the new activity indicator bars? Also, it might be better to limit the avatar size so that large avatar won't strech that space any further. Changing it now, before new, bigger avatars are uploaded, would be better.


The size of text in the reply box is tiny when compared to the actual text size. This might be due to my personal settings, but I haven't been able to find an option for changing text size in the new software. Is there any way to change the size of the text in text field, or the the size of the text on viewn posts?

EDIT:
As some other people, I was shocked when I first saw the new forum. Color scheme and look were a big part in that. I even felt like this wasn't the same forum at all, and that I might leave it just for that, and the small things yet to be ironed out.

[Mindi]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

It seems that the forum update mostly improves the moderator side of things.

I won't address the site design as that wasn't my portion of the change over but I will say although there is a great addition to moderation there is also a great amount of new features for users. Read my "PLEASE READ" stickies, I posted some of the new features in there although I only touched on a portion of the new features. Also additional features will be coming.

Being able to edit first posts of threads is important, but preferably there should be some way to set any post as always-editable, because there are mods (e.g. Conceptual Balance for Dom3) that have several different versions that are made downloadable as different attachments. When a version changes, all of these should be edited.
Perhaps making all posts with attachments always editable?

Asked and answered as to why we don't want all posts to be always-editable. We've had a good suggestion about allow OPs to edite first posts, I'm going to investigate that option.

As said before, the poster's name on top of each post takes huge amount of space. I really liked the old system, but I understand you aren't changing back to it. Still, could some vertical space be saved by moving some of the info to the center of the name/avatar line? Perhaps the new activity indicator bars? Also, it might be better to limit the avatar size so that large avatar won't strech that space any further. Changing it now, before new, bigger avatars are uploaded, would be better.

Umm, we've posted for 3 weeks that the new avatar size is 80x80m and that no one CAN upload bigger avatars, so this is not an issue. As to why things are on the right or left and not in the middle, I think I answered the reasoning for that in an earlier post.

The size of text in the reply box is tiny when compared to the actual text size. This might be due to my personal settings, but I haven't been able to find an option for changing text size in the new software. Is there any way to change the size of the text in text field, or the the size of the text on viewn posts?

Let me check and see if something was changed. This is probably caused by existing users not being switched to the standard editor. I can probably do a mass update this evening to do this, but you can do this yourself by going into your usercp, edit options and near the bottom where it says editor, switch from basic to standard or expanded.

[Ninave]

Originally Posted by Mindi

Umm, we've posted for 3 weeks that the new avatar size is 80x80m and that no one CAN upload bigger avatars, so this is not an issue.

There is this thin blue box around the avatar that is of the maximum height (80) and avatar-width (Mozilla 3.0.1). It messes up the avatars that have transparent backgounds to blend in to forum and I think it looks silly with normal avatars as well. I would really like to see it gone (even tough my small pink blob seems quite funny bumping in to lines and turning back again and again).

Also the animated clapping hands... Urgh. Still there.

[lch]

Default font size in non-WYSIWYG edit boxes is better now!

[Tim Brooks]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

...not something that totally changed the look. This is made worse by the fact that the new look is horrible, especially the current shrapnel games from page, and especially the bland, BLUE cd in the middle. The cursive titles It's what we do and Buy it! Buy it! are horrible. Defining your publishing as something you do feels bland, and the buy it! line seems way too direct, even desperate.I don't think your blog is supposed to be amusing, and Take it! again goes way above my comfort level. I really hope the images under "Our games" are temporary. They make it look like all your games were sold either in dvd cases or in boxes, but at least Dominions 3 isn't. Ordering your games alphabetically by category doesn't work. The current way starts from BOARD games, and ENDS in STRATEGY and WAR. This doesn't work for "publisher of permier war and strategy games". Color scheme of the new forum is bland. The old brown gave the forum most of its feeling, IMO. Graphic ads on the side of the forum are really distracting. As said before, the poster's name on top of each post takes huge amount of space. As some other people, I was shocked when I first saw the new forum. Color scheme and look were a big part in that. I even felt like this wasn't the same forum at all, and that I might leave it just for that, and the small things yet to be ironed out.

Tell us what you 'really' think, Edoperez.

Thanks Mindi, for all of your hard work! You are greatly appreciated, here at Shrapnel, if nowhere else.

[BadCompany]

Originally Posted by Tim Brooks

Thanks Mindi, for all of your hard work! You are greatly appreciated, here at Shrapnel, if nowhere else.

Ditto.

[JimMorrison]

Personally I'm kind of a stickler for not having things "remember me", I don't like leaving my passwords laying around - even on Firefox.

Anyway Mindi, we know (or we SHOULD know) that you all went through a lot this weekend, and I for one also appreciate all the hard work and attention to detail that was paid. It's obvious that you all want these forums to be attractive AND functional. To not only entice random surfers, but to also properly display the communities that spring up around these games, and the high level of support they tend to receive from their developers.

The problem - and I do think it's ironic that there are so many comments from Dominions players, seeing as it is the highest selling title from Shrapnel, as well as claiming the most active community - is that we are being asked to give up a LOT of functionality and capability, for a lot of control and marketing (for Shrapnel).

I don't think that anyone meant to put anything in a threatening way, but there is wisdom in looking at this from more than a police sort of view. I see so many replies with "this was out of hand", "we don't want that", "people would do this", that remind me of someone cutting off their foot to stop from stubbing their toes.

All leading up to this conversion, many of us were a bit excited, because we kept being told the new software would "allow us to do so much". Currently all I see is that the software allows YOU to do so much - but all the users of the forums get, in trade for all that we are giving up, is slightly larger avatars.

I believe your team is highly underestimating the importance of the Edit issue. I believe you also badly underestimated the PM issue. 300 is still a bit cramped for a really active player, and I think it's a bit silly that the suggested answer is manually archiving what could potentially be 10-15 messages a day.

I'm personally in no hurry to go anywhere else - I like it here. But rather than viewing things as threatening, please just have a little break and then look at these issues again. It's not that people are itching for a reason to leave, are ungrateful, or are otherwise unhappy with Shrapnel. But the Dominions community is very active, and very prolific. It's in everyone's best interests if you at Shrapnel continue to provide room for us to do our thing, and if we keep our thrumming hive of activity here, posting links and drawing attention. Just to reiterate - we WANT to stay here, so please reconsider how inhospitable the new forum functions, for our needs. I won't even go into the look of it, I think if it works great, people will tend to get over the rest.

<3

[Annette]

I'm going to reply in Mindi's place as she's busy at the moment working on some of the reported issues. Edit: I took so long writing this post that this sentence is no longer true!

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

Personally I'm kind of a stickler for not having things "remember me", I don't like leaving my passwords laying around - even on Firefox.

I'm pretty sure this was addressed in the main thread we're using for making bug reports. This is one of the things Mindi is looking into.

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

Anyway Mindi, we know (or we SHOULD know) that you all went through a lot this weekend, and I for one also appreciate all the hard work and attention to detail that was paid. It's obvious that you all want these forums to be attractive AND functional. To not only entice random surfers, but to also properly display the communities that spring up around these games, and the high level of support they tend to receive from their developers.

The problem - and I do think it's ironic that there are so many comments from Dominions players, seeing as it is the highest selling title from Shrapnel, as well as claiming the most active community - is that we are being asked to give up a LOT of functionality and capability, for a lot of control and marketing (for Shrapnel).

Yes, that is our goal. I don't agree that it's ironic that the majority of comments are from Dominions players; I think it's to be expected. As you said, the majority of our forum users are Dominions players, so it makes sense that they would make the majority of posts. We also have not yet publicly announced we're open after a three day hiatus, and I think we're seeing the Dominions community return more quickly than some others.

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

don't think that anyone meant to put anything in a threatening way, but there is wisdom in looking at this from more than a police sort of view. I see so many replies with "this was out of hand", "we don't want that", "people would do this", that remind me of someone cutting off their foot to stop from stubbing their toes.

All leading up to this conversion, many of us were a bit excited, because we kept being told the new software would "allow us to do so much". Currently all I see is that the software allows YOU to do so much - but all the users of the forums get, in trade for all that we are giving up, is slightly larger avatars.

Are slightly larger avatars truly the only new feature you see? And that just sort of happened; we don't really see it as an improved feature. With our goal of growing and servicing our tight-knit community in mind, we've added several social networking tools. Some of the new features like the ability to create social groups (added with the multi-player community in mind), post photo albums, and run arcade game tournaments may not be important to some, but we believe they will be enjoyed by others. These are the types of activities people who flock to social networking sites enjoy, and we believe it's a great opportunity to have these types of networking tools within our smaller community where many meaningful relationships already exist.

I'm not sure if you've had a chance to fully explore the expanded options in your user control panel, and I know that some of the functionality there is still being tweaked, but there are many more controllable options for you there than we offered in the previous format. One of my favorite new features is the ability to forward and copy other users within the private messaging system. Maybe I'm alone, but this will make my life easier.

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

I believe your team is highly underestimating the importance of the Edit issue. I believe you also badly underestimated the PM issue. 300 is still a bit cramped for a really active player, and I think it's a bit silly that the suggested answer is manually archiving what could potentially be 10-15 messages a day.

We're not underestimating the importance of the Edit issue at all! Mindi and I have both posted in various places that we've heard some good suggestions and are exploring options for this. Some very valid reasons for needing this feature to be improved have been brought to our attention, and this is a high priority on our list of changes. You won't see a full restore, and you probably won't see a change immediately, but please do understand we are committed to finding a compromise so we have a win/win situation. In the meantime, if anyone needs a post edited, it can be done by contacting a moderator with your request.

I think raising the pm limit to 300 is a good compromise, and we may have to come to agree to disagree on that for the time being. It's the same limit QT3 imposes on it's users, where there are also large communities running multi-player games. I understand it feels stifling to go from absolutely no limit to this, and that's our fault for being so liberal in the past then imposing a limit. The ability to export pm's to a text file, while seen by some as a punishment, is actually an enhancement some users have requested.

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

I'm personally in no hurry to go anywhere else - I like it here. But rather than viewing things as threatening, please just have a little break and then look at these issues again. It's not that people are itching for a reason to leave, are ungrateful, or are otherwise unhappy with Shrapnel. But the Dominions community is very active, and very prolific. It's in everyone's best interests if you at Shrapnel continue to provide room for us to do our thing, and if we keep our thrumming hive of activity here, posting links and drawing attention. Just to reiterate - we WANT to stay here, so please reconsider how inhospitable the new forum functions, for our needs. I won't even go into the look of it, I think if it works great, people will tend to get over the rest.

<3

And we WANT everyone to stay and be happy. We understand that there are some who are disappointed with the look and disagree with our design decisions. That's to be expected, and we experienced the same reactions when we launched what is now the "old" site. This is a good thread for voicing those opinions. What is truly helpful to us are constructive suggestions for improving functionality, and these should be reported in the stickied thread at the top of this forums.

Thank you for your feedback.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by Annette

Are slightly larger avatars truly the only new feature you see? And that just sort of happened; we don't really see it as an improved feature. With our goal of growing and servicing our tight-knit community in mind, we've added several social networking tools. Some of the new features like the ability to create social groups (added with the multi-player community in mind), post photo albums, and run arcade game tournaments may not be important to some, but we believe they will be enjoyed by others. These are the types of activities people who flock to social networking sites enjoy, and we believe it's a great opportunity to have these types of networking tools within our smaller community where many meaningful relationships already exist.

I'm not sure if you've had a chance to fully explore the expanded options in your user control panel, and I know that some of the functionality there is still being tweaked, but there are many more controllable options for you there than we offered in the previous format. One of my favorite new features is the ability to forward and copy other users within the private messaging system. Maybe I'm alone, but this will make my life easier.

Well, I think this passage here, hits on where the perceived value isn't translating from administrator > user. I know not everything is working fully, or implemented yet, don't get me wrong there. But for many of us who are here already, the loss of things that are so integral to our use of the site, severely hampers our desire and enjoyment for seeking out and trying new features, so we only see the one that was pointed out so far, the avatars.

I am sure with the current user base, if you asked people if they would prefer to have unlimited PM storage, or "photo albums", the overwhelming majority would choose the PMs. And it is this sort of decision that has led to such frustration from a number of people here. I mean, how many PMs worth of data does a single 800x600 image take up? Doing away with multi-quoting (I noticed that the forum no longer quotes the quotes of a quoted post, guessing PMs no longer do either) would do wonders for the actual storage space involved. And then it bears asking if those stored PMs actually impacted the site functionality or stability before the conversion tests were started? If not, it seems entirely reasonable to just expect it the next time, and warn people pre-emptively in a few years when someone thinks it's a good idea to go through all of this hassle again.

"Social Networking" is indeed popular. Mostly among 15 year olds, who shape much of what is "popular" in a consumer sense in this society. It can be directly tracked, that the rise or decline in popularity from on networking site to the next, is directly correlated to their high school age users. The argument being voiced is threefold: First, the Shrapnel community has very few users in that demographic. Secondly, adding that sort of tools is not entirely likely to spontaneously garner any sort of attention from them - shrapnelgames.com is not the new Facebook. And finally, if by some tragedy of fate they DID show up here it would be highly disruptive to the community at large, and would probably kill Shrapnel, for a short boost in sales.


I know you said that rather than keep hearing complaints, you want suggestions to make things better. It must be somewhat disheartening, after all of this effort, to think that what you are seeing as complaints, largely are actually those very suggestions - but are generally the same suggestion in other words, "please don't make so many changes". It's hard to make suggestions that you might see as constructive, when to us the long term usability of the forums themselves has been compromised. Shrapnel Games, and the games that you distribute, has always been about niche appeal. I've read very verbose and well thought out blogs, posts, and news releases explaining why it's never been Shrapnel's goal to be "popular", or to compete in popularity contests. I think we're all just completely mystified, and a little distressed at how much of these changes are based on what "popular" sites do.

<3 always,
James Douglas Morrison (AKA Damon Schmitt :P)