Official Forum Feedback Thread
By
8_Ball,
Posted on: 2009-07-31 13:32 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
At the top left of every post is a star that shows if a post is old (white star) or new (dark red star) (these colors apply for the hero skin at least). The red star sort of blends in with the dark background it is placed on, which can make it easy to overlook.
Maybe it would be easier to spot at a glance which posts are new if this icon was made more distinct (possibly by making it a bright yellow)?
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Unread or newest posted? Cause it says newest post.
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Originally Posted by PhiloticKnight
That's what the little downward pointing triangle is for, to take you to the first unread post.
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How do you read a post's edit history?
A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!
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If you do that by accident, there's a "View First Unread" link to the top left (just underneath the big red "New Reply" button). It will take you to the first unread post, even if you accidentally clicked on the thread title or a page number.
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Originally Posted by Steele_Magnolia
Clicking on a thread that has new posts no longer takes you to the new posts, it takes you to the first post on the thread. You lose your place in the thread.
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First unread, but it's a darn small target to click on.
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Originally Posted by ObiWan_NA
Unread or newest posted? Cause it says newest post.
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Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
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Going to address just these two points.|
Originally Posted by Aggelakis
4. Need an easier way to ignore users, it's currently hidden under the unintuitive "USER LISTS" option in their profile. (Subjective: "User Lists"? Really? What a ghastly name for a menu.)
Extremely subjective: 1. Need a way to turn off JUST signature images. I want to see what people put in their posts. I don't care about their signature images. Right now, I'm forced to adblock, which means I miss out on people's links after I've adblocked the images. |
You can also ignore users from your UserCP. There is a link on the left labeled Edit Ignore List. Of course, you have to manually type someone's name in the box to Add them, and if you have the memory problems I have that's not always easy.
I would much rather that they find a mod that adds an Ignore User icon into the area where a Users name and information are. Heck, they could even replace the Add Reputation icon with it. I'm wondering how soon it will be before they remove Reputation entirely, just like they did with the Stars on the old forums.
And for those of you that are worried about your Reputation, you can go into UserCP and click Edit Options to turn off the capability to Show Your Reputation. I've seen several do that already. (BTW, this was a freebie I threw in to go with the two points Aggelakis had.)
I agree that we need more control over what images we turn off. Luckily, we can uncheck the Show Images box (bottom of the three options) and turn off images in posts while still being able to see avatars, text sigs and links in sigs. If someone, such as Positron for example, makes a post with an image in it that I want to see, it will give me a clickable link instead and if I CHOOSE to see the image and click it then it opens a new window with the image only in it. I'd still prefer being able to turn off images only in sigs only, but until then this will work and doesn't need an addon that only works in certain browsers.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
Okay, one minor gripe here, and I'm hoping someone can show me where I'm missing the option to change the setting.
The little triangle that indicates new posts disappears much too fast.
I was on the forums until rather late last night, then didn't get on them until after 5 this afternoon. Went into some of my usual forums to look for new posts, saw one and clicked the triangle, read the new posts, used the Jump menu at the bottom as usual to go to the forum index, and all the New Post trianges were gone.
No clue now what's got new posts and what doesn't, unless I start looking at the Last Post column and looking at date and times.
We need an option to be able to change how long the New Posts triange stays on a thread, with a semi-reasonable limit.
The New Posts link at the top is useless to me since it shows ALL forums, including French and German, not to mention those in forum sections I have no interest in.
Sure, I could set the Subscribed threads to email me, but that would quickly fill my email box and then it becomes almost as useless.
I'm really hoping there's a setting I'm just not seeing and that someone will point it out to me.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
(QR)
My biggest gripe is that, if navigating by the standard index, you have to go through a link to get to a subforum group to follow a link to get to a subforum. Superfluous, unnecessary extra step there.
Can we get the option to view all the subforums grouped straight on the index?
Or hell, not even the option, just make it work like that.
I know these boards can do it. Do it!
I see absolutely zero point in having to follow the menu to a submenu of subforums before actually going where you want to go. I especially hate it when the internet is acting up- I already have to drag myself through hell to view each thread, do I have to do it again for each subsection of subforums?
Which reminds me of a feature that I don't think is supported on these that I would still like to dreamily wish for- View Entire Thread.
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Yes.|
Originally Posted by Chompie
(QR)
My biggest gripe is that, if navigating by the standard index, you have to go through a link to get to a subforum group to follow a link to get to a subforum. |
It is quite retarded and annoying.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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Are you looking for something along this line? If so, just bookmark that page.|
Originally Posted by Chompie
(QR)
My biggest gripe is that, if navigating by the standard index, you have to go through a link to get to a subforum group to follow a link to get to a subforum. Superfluous, unnecessary extra step there. Can we get the option to view all the subforums grouped straight on the index? Or hell, not even the option, just make it work like that. I know these boards can do it. Do it! I see absolutely zero point in having to follow the menu to a submenu of subforums before actually going where you want to go. I especially hate it when the internet is acting up- I already have to drag myself through hell to view each thread, do I have to do it again for each subsection of subforums? Which reminds me of a feature that I don't think is supported on these that I would still like to dreamily wish for- View Entire Thread. |
If it is something else, I'm not understanding you well enough to know if there is something similar available.
Me? I preferred the old Favorite Forums view, and figured out how to make an approximation of that view here and then wrote up a brief guide for it. It doesn't get it perfectly like the old Favorite Forums view, but it's close enough for my needs.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
Is nice to have the forums back, the colours look quite pleaseing on the eye, far better then the old US ones, maybe not as nice as the EU ones where, but is a diffrent engine and im sure will be fab. My first sorta look over them is that ther is way to much to read now and that i have a lot of catching up to do. As we are now mixed with the US the posts and threads have all multiplyed big time from our small quaint EU forum i'm so used to reading.
But this is nice as finally be able to commit on posts that we were not able to before and hopefully express our views in amoung the wonderfull COH community, i hpe that the community feel will grow now with the EU + US all mixing thier opions and the devs will be able to digest the EU views in amoung with the US counterparts.
Look forward to reading the posts and trying to take it all in as its alot more overwhelming now in this big ocean of posts compared to our smaller EU pond of posts we are so accustomed to
Have now been on the new forums for a good 50 mins or so, at times they seem to come to a complete standstill, maybe its just the sheer amount of users now on them, but before could click (eu old forums) a link and would appear on screen, now it sometimes freezes and then dont respond. Sexy jays costume request thread seemed to struggle to open, maybe as so many posts on it. Guess as its new forum it maybe still needs a bit of optimization and tweaking to make it fast as the old forums used to be for viewing
@Snow.
Defiant: Snow + many other alts
Arc ID 61069
Well, after spending the weekend with the forums, I've concluded that I find it difficult on my eyes. The post's background needs to be darker to offer more contrast. The white text on "bright" just makes everything blur after a while and I find myself squinting.
Teams are the number one killer of soloists.
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I have to concur. After giving the boards a little time, I've found that the contrast (or lack thereof) is really harsh on my eyes...and if I spend too long on the boards, it'll trigger a migraine. A darker background that gives us more contrast would be most welcome.
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Originally Posted by SerialBeggar
Well, after spending the weekend with the forums, I've concluded that I find it difficult on my eyes. The post's background needs to be darker to offer more contrast. The white text on "bright" just makes everything blur after a while and I find myself squinting.
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This.
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Originally Posted by Croesis
Villain skin needs Arachnos Icons instead of Statesman stars for thread icons.
Also... first! |
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
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You know, I forgot about the language sections being the topmost tier. I'd still like my full index as the index, but yes, this is exactly what I wanted. |
Originally Posted by Texas_Justice
Are you looking for something along this line? If so, just bookmark that page.
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I love you! |
Originally Posted by Sorciere_NA
To address some legibility issues with the forum, I have written a small style file to be used with the Stylish Firefox extension (it can probably be adapted for other browsers that allow user-defined CSS styles, such as Opera).
The style file does the following: 1. Remove underlining from title and date links in thread lists, and author links next to posts. Underlining is a form of emphasis, when you emphasize everything, nothing is emphasized. Excessive underlining hurts legibility because it obscures descenders. 2. Thread titles and dates have been recolored in a light yellow. This color choice attempts a compromise between good contrast and reduction of halation (halation is the effect of white letters "glowing" against a dark background, which is often assumed to reduce legibility). The author names (except rednames) and titles of individual posts are similarly colored for visual uniformity. 3. Author names in thread lists are colored a dark gold. I chose a muted color to make it easier for the reader who is scanning the thread list for a specific thread title to skip over superfluous information. 4. Gradient backgrounds were largely replaced with uniformly colored background. Gradients may be pretty, but they don't provide the eye with a visually stable backdrop. The background color was chosen to both be an approximation of the gradient colors and to contrast well with the font colors. 5. The default font is Arial, which was designed for printed matter. The style file substitutes Verdana, which was specifically designed for high on-screen legibility. (Note to the designers: The fallback option in the default font-family CSS entry has a superfluous space, "sans- serif" instead of "sans-serif"). 6. An extra separator has been inserted between the forum title and forum description so that they aren't smushed together. Note: I do not intend to maintain this style file. It is primarily intended as feedback for the forum designers (and my own use), and while others are welcome to use it, too, it is very unlikely that I will publish updates if changes to the forum break it. |
Thanks to your work, I just taught myself some CSS and Stylish so as to create a Villain Skin version. Some notes:
- I lifted the colors from the old UBB forums exactly because I know people have been asking for a 'classic' skin. However, my own personal tastes tend toward something more muted, so, if you look at the bottom of my Stylish style sheet, you'll see optional color codes to use for the backgrounds.
- I got rid of the pesky grey box for avatars. Gifs with alpha channel transparencies work correctly now.
- I got rid of the background graphic (States and sig NPCs).
- Increased default text size from 10 to 11.
- I tried to make the new colors stick into the wysiwyg editor, but they often don't stick.
- The bottom left panel under the avatars (where the rep and report icons are) are not in the style sheet. They are 'hard coded' into the html of each page and repeated over and over again (so much for style sheets!
). At least, as far as I know they can't be changed with Sylish. - Changed link colors: unvisited=bright red, visited=washed out red.
Speeding Through New DA Repeatables || Spreadsheet o' Enhancements || Zombie Skins: better skins for these forums || Guide to Guides
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Except I loathe the sig graphics (and img tags in signatures that bypass the limits), yet I have to be able to view images to even attempt to layout the Scoop in a forum friendly manner. |
Originally Posted by Texas_Justice
Instead of disabling Signatures, try disabling Show Images instead. Sure, it means that if Niv or Posi or someone posts a pic in a thread that you won't see the pic initially, but you will have a clickable link so that you can see the picture in a separate window if you want to.
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There is no excuse that I've seen that gets around the fact that people should have the ability to say "no" to images (either embedded or as img tags) in signatures.
Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters
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Originally Posted by Texas_Justice
I agree that we need more control over what images we turn off. Luckily, we can uncheck the Show Images box (bottom of the three options) and turn off images in posts while still being able to see avatars, text sigs and links in sigs. If someone, such as Positron for example, makes a post with an image in it that I want to see, it will give me a clickable link instead and if I CHOOSE to see the image and click it then it opens a new window with the image only in it. I'd still prefer being able to turn off images only in sigs only, but until then this will work and doesn't need an addon that only works in certain browsers.
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When looking at suggestions like this, it's easy to evaluate them in context of the old forums.
What we need to remember is that on the old forums the posting of images was limited to the Dev/Community team, while on these new forums *everyone* can do so. Consequently it was rather rare to run into images on the old forums, but now that everyone can use them we can expect them to be used *much* more frequently, hopefully to good effect.
We're going to see people using screenshots to help describe problems they're having, graphs in balance discussions, and pictures of fuzzy kittens in photo albums.
Not only are we going to see images used much more often, we're also going to see cases where multiple images are set to be displayed adjacent to eachother. This is great for comparisons, and provides an overview that is not trivial to replicate with links to images.
We also have a rather extreme example in the City Scoop. Try reading an issue of that with images disabled. It's... not quite the same.
Basically, disabling images in order to avoid signature images comes at the cost of the functionality offered by our newfound ability to post images. As people start taking more and more advantage of that ability, that cost can become quite high.
The alternatives aren't exactly great either.
Sure, we can turn signatures off entirely, but signatures can contain relevant information, and many use their signatures to bring attention to interesting threads. In other cases, the signatures can actually contain the answer to a question, or at least part thereof.
We can also use adblocking extensions to block individual signature images. However, these blocking rules must be applied individually to different image locations, which means that as you keep reading threads with posters you haven't seen before, you have to keep adding blocking rules, something that can become especially cumbersome in big threads, such as the "official" threads about various issues.
This is further complicated by people using "cycling images" (using image links that refer to alternating images). In these cases, each cycled image must be covered, which means that sometimes it's not enough to make one blocking pass through someone's signature. Sometimes you'll have to add one more blocking rule just by hitting refresh on a thread (repeated until you've gone through all their alternate images). Sometimes you'll be able to block several alternates at once by using rules for a specific directory, but this will not always be possible (people using different locations for different sig images), and sometimes you'll run into people using the same directory for both signature images and other images (which means that if you block out all their alternating sig images with one rule, you'll also block other images they might post).
And of course, some people are using more than one signature image, which again means more work to block them all out.
As more and more people start to use signature images (and also *change* those images), the work to keep them all blocked will continue to rise (and the number of applied blocking rules will become quite high).
Basically, all options suck to some degree, including the option to completely remove sig images, since there are obviously people that like having them. In my opinion, removing sig images would be the option that sucks *the least* though.
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Well, I'll not repeat my objections that relate specifically to the Scoop. Those are better handled elsewhere.|
Originally Posted by TheOcho
Objective Feedback: Objective feedback is based upon what you as a user see or experience that other users may also see and experience. This feedback usually can be replicated easily as it involves facts and unbiased opinions. Example: On the villain skin links are unreadable because of the color.
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That the forum password is the same as the game password is a huge security hole that should receive top priority to be fixed. The password entry page isn't secured, and this would allow malicious users with the technical know-how to take over not only the player's game, but potentially their PlayNC account.
The font size about 1-2 points too small for the web. Readable type on the web should be at least 12 point to reduce eyestrain.
Gradient backgrounds increase illegibility.
Lack of contrast between read and unread posts promotes reader confusion as to which posts are read or not.
Lack of an option to prevent display of all graphics in signatures. As I have an interest in viewing images in posts (layout in the Scoop), I need to be able to see images. However I don't want to see the sometimes full page graphics some users are already using in their sigs by way of the IMG tags. Additionally, even with the forum sig graphics, the images are distracting at best. So having an option to disable all sig graphics while still showing would be an useful option.
Box under avatar: not needed and visually disruptive.
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Originally Posted by TheOcho
Subjective Feedback: Subjective feedback is based upon how you feel or experience the forum as yourself. This experience may not necessarily be replicated because it is based on feeling and emotion. Subjective feedback is important to us but it is usually helpful if more information is present to describe what and why you feel the way you do. Example: The villain skin is very nice, I wish the hero skin was as nice because I mostly play heroes.
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The turquoise default/hero scheme makes me sick as it looks like someone got sick on the screen.
The villain scheme is not that much better as the contrast is still bad.
As to the reputation settings, I am completely amazed that this is even an option. Did no one learn from the staring fiascos of threads, the AE ratings system, or the previous attempts at allowing users to rate others? This takes the forum titles that were a cause of division, and makes the situation even worse.
Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters
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To the last appropriate place YOU were. FYI these forums F@$###2ING SUCK! i still can't find the post I LEFT MYSELF in this thread... and that little down arrow only jumps to the last post in the thread, not the one I LEFT MYSELF. PLEASE for the love of god someone respond back to me in a message because there is no chance i'll be able to find the repsonse to this in these stupid horrid threads now :/. God i don't even know if i have a clue where to find a stupid personal message, god these new forums suck so bad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Originally Posted by Sarrate
You can do that now, but it's counter-intuitive compared to the old boards and easy to miss. Stealing an image from one of Vivace's post
 [edit: The button could stand to be bigger.] |
Plasmic's Guide to Sonic/Mental
Plasmic's Guide to Regeneration
Plasmic Fire - 50 Fire/Rad Victory Server
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This is my biggest problem. Before, threads with new replies in them used to light up in bold and a different background colour, so seeing which thread had new responses in it was easy. Just scan the thread list. Now it's like a scavenger hunt. Is this thread ever so slightly bolded? Does it have a microscopic triangle next to its title? Is the icon next to it a closed envelope or the almost identical-looking open envelope? It's doable, but in terms of convenience, it's one small step forward and one giant leap backwards.|
Originally Posted by Spinomania
It's hard to see new threads, threads with new answers, etc...
The old forums were easier for the eyes. Though it's good to be able to have signatures (even if it won't let me) and to post pictures. |
And why not simply have the old functionality where clicking on a thread's title automatically takes you to the latest new reply? It's what people are going to use the most. Who the HELL goes to the first page of threads every damn time, even if they've read and responded to them? Latest unread reply is the default functionality, so why shunt it over to the world's smallest triangle?
I don't know what they did on the technical side, but they killed the majority of the convenience and usability features the old boards had.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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<qr>
Wow... I was certainly expecting a downgrade in usability with the switch to the new forums but I am much more disappointed than my expectations.
Can we have ?
- Smaller avatars
- Smaller left box parts with all the user info
- Better index with all subforums for English that I could bookmark (and I am saying so being French and having no interest whatsoever in the French sections)
- Smaller icons in the index!!
- proper CSS tags (classes!!) where appropriate to edit the look & feel like graying out the signatures (a div tag with no class element)
New forums are ok i suppose cant say i love the Hero colour theme it seems kinda washed out. But my biggest annoyance is the fact that you no longer jump to the newest post in a topic when you look at it or am i missing something?
I've had 2 forum timeouts so far this morning, whilst trying to post. I guess that, when they updated the forum software, they didn't upgrade the creaky hardware they're hosted on!
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
That's what the little downward pointing triangle is for, to take you to the first unread post.