The New Shiny Escapist

[Susan Arendt]

-snip-

Certainly, Susan. Nonetheless is the site as it was redesigned ... not much aid to that goal of making it more streamlined. Yes, the old site was cluttered in some parts and I agree that it turned out better - in those parts. But the mainpage is still a clusterfuck of randomness.
(And it was before just as well, the main difference people see now, though, is that it has much less visible structures than before. But for instance the complaints about the randomness with the sizes and positions of the features on the mainpage are considerably misplaced, as the old mainpage had the same issues, just not as obvious as now.)

That said, I'm a Web Developer, not a Designer ... I can only tell as much, it's merely a radical turn that has some major flaws in some departments, but also some major improvements in others, and as such gives the viewer this classy "It's change, and I see bad points!!!!" feeling.
That doesn't mean, though, that, when people complain about the current design, it's an issue of them actually hating it overall. It's more that they feel the need to address those problems first of all, to get them solved immediately, or at least as soon as possible. And, in all honesty, I understand that. And I know that it's an issue of a bunch of hours to get everything done properly when such complaints pop up. And I understand that some things read like a slap to the face ... But that's what our, and our colleagues' jobs are like, and will always be like.

Dramatic calls for a boycott, or leaving the Escapist, may not be the most appropriate or most desirable way to express ones' complaints, but it's one that needs to be seen as a statement. People wouldn't leave, if their complaints didn't have at least some grounding - unless they wanted to leave anyways and just looked for a reason.

Sooo ... what did I want to say with the core of this post again? .. Ah right ... Noone wants to call you guys drunk clueless jackasses. But it's the way it reads, as the negative points are what immediately jumps to ones eye, and need to be solved asap. And that's all the community wants to tell you guys ... Wrong wording at some points, sure ... But it's neither anything new to the Internet or the Escapist. Heck it isn't even new to the human kind overall. That's how people express their issues with anything they don't like ... Stomping their feet. Either with rather ... soft and respectful wording ... Or with a can of shit spurted out.
Both are valid and both are just as true. The latter does sound worse, disrespectful and whatnot. But it's the same thing, and something one has to deal with in this environment ... As offensive and disgusting it is, it's unavoidable, sadly ...

I'm just going to have to disagree with you on that final point, that it's unavoidable. Believe me, I understand people's reactions, and genuinely want to hear what people find fault with. But if you can't treat me with respect, I'm not going to listen to you - just as you wouldn't want to listen to me if I was being disrespectful towards you. (And I don't mean you, specifically, because obviously you're being perfectly civil and lovely. It's the greater "you".)

 

[keiskay]

the only thing that bugs me is the fact that there a less viewable articles now and theres not even a list of articles on the front page. the three important reading ones rotate out throughout the day, so if you saw one you thought sounded interesting but had to do something before reading it, your pretty much screwed.

 

[thalendiril]

I am not liking this new style very much at all. I feel that the front page is very cluttered with thumbnails and large amounts of space which make it really hard to read what each of the different features are. Some things feel out of place -such as the news feed- and there is less actual information to see. I miss the old news feed which took up the center of the page and went all the way down, by which offering MUCH more in the way of the most recent articles. I don't want to see just the five most recent articles on one page, but I want to be able to see everything that I've missed since I last checked the site, picking and choosing which posts I want to read as I go down the page.

 

[jFr[e]ak93]

I guess it looks o.k... I hate it, but it's pretty. It seems rather chaotic on the main page... video here, news there, article on the left, form on the right... the old page was super well designed... oh well. I'll get used to it I guess.... or I'll hate it still....

The Escapist was Awesome... then it took an arrow to the knee...

 

[PxDn Ninja]

So the new layout looks absolutely terrible. The load times are ungodly, and most of the time it just fails to load at all. With all the hate I'm reading that agrees with me, I can't imagine it is due to high traffic volumes.

I'll continue coming each week to watch ZP, but aside from that I might be pretty much done with the escapist. Pitty too, as for years this was my favorite site to visit.

 

[CoL0sS]

Will take some getting used to, but it's definitely not good. Bright, cluttered and too...sterile. Also, older videos are hard to find (unless you specifically know what you're looking for) and site is slow as hell. News should be at the top, it took me five minutes to find them first time. I'll adjust to it, but I think this was unnecessary. I don't mind change if it for good, but this...meh

 

[FEichinger]

-snip-

-snip2-

I'm just going to have to disagree with you on that final point, that it's unavoidable. Believe me, I understand people's reactions, and genuinely want to hear what people find fault with. But if you can't treat me with respect, I'm not going to listen to you - just as you wouldn't want to listen to me if I was being disrespectful towards you. (And I don't mean you, specifically, because obviously you're being perfectly civil and lovely. It's the greater "you".)

No offense taken, even if you had meant me in specific.

It might be that I've faced that often enough and just don't give a damn anymore, but ... meh ...
Ignoring statements based on their wording/the fact that they're blatantly disrespectful is just fine, it is of no aid whatsoever to stop such statements or to get the heating issue solved. That effectively means, it's considerably counter-productive - while it does help against some headaches.
That said ... Guess we're heading slightly off-topic here.

 

[Stormwaltz]

(leaving)

 

[Sabrestar]

I've had a chance to play with the look for a while now, so here are my impressions in case this thread is still being closely monitored.

On balance... I don't really like what I see. Here are my arguments, in the hope of offering constructive criticism. First, I agree that the front page desperately needed help, and this is much improved. However, I mostly access the site from an RSS feed and rarely look at the front page, so this doesn't affect me much, even though it's improved.

My main negative is the very bright colour scheme used. Yes, the old site was black text on white too, but there were a lot more dark-coloured borders and backdrops. Maybe I'm alone in this (I can't be the only thirtysomething reading this site), but I stare at monitors all day for a living, and too much white really hurts my eyes. I vastly prefer white-on-black for the sake of reducing eyestrain (a main reason I dropped iGoogle for Netvibes as my homepage - a white-on-black option), and this redesign is so much white, it actually encourages me to spend much less time on the site than before. This, obviously, is a Very Bad Thing.

I'm not crazy about the new article font, either. It's okay, but it seems like on all the computers and monitors I've seen it on (at least three by now), it anti-aliases really badly and turns very blurry for my eyes, making it even harder to read. It's not a deal-breaker, but combined with the above, it hurts. I've always had 20/20 vision and I try to be careful that all the time I spend in front of computers doesn't make it worse. But this is the second long post I've made on the site in the last few minutes, it's been about 10-15 minutes in this visit to the site, and my eyes really hurt by now. So much so that I'm looking forward to finish typing this so that I can let them rest. Not good.

DSLReports, a telecom news site that I also frequent, has selectable colour schemes (probably managed by selectable CSS stylesheets) that affect the entire site, and has let me switch to a less eyestraining set of colours. I'd love to see the Escapist do something similar. Some people may see this as being nitpicky, but when the redesign of a site makes me really want to stop visiting it for the sake of my physical well-being, I'm very concerned.

EDITED TO ADD: Let me also note that I could not find the "new message" alert, which was very prominent on the old site. I had to carefully search the page looking for where the messages were located; I'd probably have missed them for several days if I hadn't gone out of my way to look for the alert. (When I first saw the new site, there was a dismissable note appearing under the title welcoming me back; could this be a good place to put "You have X new messages"?)

A final note is simply that I don't think the site looks at all distinctive any more. It's hard to pick out anything (especially with all the whitespace) that stands out as "This is the Escapist". The first time I visited a news link after the redesign (before I saw the redesign announcement), I thought I was on Engadget. I had to double-take to remind myself what I had clicked on.

You have good ideas here, but I think they need some accessibility refinement. Thanks for listening.

 

[Brandon237]

For folks saying you didn't' ask for this...actually, many of you did. We got a lot of feedback that the site felt too cluttered and was hard to navigate. If you have constructive criticism, please let us know. We know the sudden change is a shock, but once you've had a few days to get used to it, please let us know what you think. We want this to be something you guys find can embrace.

I don't blame you guys for freaking out, but please, we'd really appreciate it if you used it for a few days to see what you think.

Problem is, I am NOT going to be using it for a few days to make up my mind if my eyes itch >.<

And I would say the lack of... order on the main pages makes someone as lazy as I am not even want to bother. I appreciate that the new layout and a whole new system for some of the navigation must have been a LOT of work (the actual mechanics are certainly better, the look however...), but it just seems like too little thought and fixing up was actually done, And I have to wonder if the effort couldn't have been better spent slightly modifying the old, Not-as-blinding-as-a-mirror-on-Mercury style

 

[Hashbrick]

-snip-

Certainly, Susan. Nonetheless is the site as it was redesigned ... not much aid to that goal of making it more streamlined. Yes, the old site was cluttered in some parts and I agree that it turned out better - in those parts. But the mainpage is still a clusterfuck of randomness.
(And it was before just as well, the main difference people see now, though, is that it has much less visible structures than before. But for instance the complaints about the randomness with the sizes and positions of the features on the mainpage are considerably misplaced, as the old mainpage had the same issues, just not as obvious as now.)

That said, I'm a Web Developer, not a Designer ... I can only tell as much, it's merely a radical turn that has some major flaws in some departments, but also some major improvements in others, and as such gives the viewer this classy "It's change, and I see bad points!!!!" feeling.
That doesn't mean, though, that, when people complain about the current design, it's an issue of them actually hating it overall. It's more that they feel the need to address those problems first of all, to get them solved immediately, or at least as soon as possible. And, in all honesty, I understand that. And I know that it's an issue of a bunch of hours to get everything done properly when such complaints pop up. And I understand that some things read like a slap to the face ... But that's what our, and our colleagues' jobs are like, and will always be like.

Dramatic calls for a boycott, or leaving the Escapist, may not be the most appropriate or most desirable way to express ones' complaints, but it's one that needs to be seen as a statement. People wouldn't leave, if their complaints didn't have at least some grounding - unless they wanted to leave anyways and just looked for a reason.

Sooo ... what did I want to say with the core of this post again? .. Ah right ... Noone wants to call you guys drunk clueless jackasses. But it's the way it reads, as the negative points are what immediately jumps to ones eye, and need to be solved asap. And that's all the community wants to tell you guys ... Wrong wording at some points, sure ... But it's neither anything new to the Internet or the Escapist. Heck it isn't even new to the human kind overall. That's how people express their issues with anything they don't like ... Stomping their feet. Either with rather ... soft and respectful wording ... Or with a can of shit spurted out.
Both are valid and both are just as true. The latter does sound worse, disrespectful and whatnot. But it's the same thing, and something one has to deal with in this environment ... As offensive and disgusting it is, it's unavoidable, sadly ...

I'm just going to have to disagree with you on that final point, that it's unavoidable. Believe me, I understand people's reactions, and genuinely want to hear what people find fault with. But if you can't treat me with respect, I'm not going to listen to you - just as you wouldn't want to listen to me if I was being disrespectful towards you. (And I don't mean you, specifically, because obviously you're being perfectly civil and lovely. It's the greater "you".)

Look Susan you guys are offering a service and while you may not need to count on every member as you don't essentially plan on sales except for the pub club members you still need them to load up your ads. Most of the backslash isn't even disrespectful I understand the Escapist is a brand to you that you hold dear and this may also impact the blow of the harsh words a lot are given. Harsh but still constructive criticism, I may be wrong but I haven't seen one post labeling anyone a jackass or belittle anyone. If anything I've seen where people referred (myself included) to the design/code as amateurish. It's a harsh realization but it's true.

I wish I could have talked the way you do to my customers when I was in retail. You don't get that type of freedom you sit there and listen to all the things that come out of his/her mouth cause they are pissed off without saying anything back except "yes sir" "yes ma'am". I might want to find them in a back alley someday but that still doesn't change the fact something is wrong to the point they are irate.

Most are willing to cope with the new design, they just asked for a simple background to kill the white something that literally would take a minute of a designers time and yet here we are day 3 with blinding madness.

Call it whatever way you want but when there is 857 comments and only 10 or so agree with the change without any kind of negative there is something obviously wrong with the way it is now. I know we are just sheep to you guys but still the sheep need grass to survive. Leave them starving too long and they will look for new grass.

 

[ballbarius]

It's exactly like IGN... Give us the escapist back

 

[Don Reba]

Also, folks, this should go without saying, but we're far more likely to listen to your feedback if you're not being a total cock while delivering it. (This obviously doesn't apply to to the post I'm quoting, which is perfectly fine.) We're not trying to fuck anyone over, or trick anybody, or just generally ruin your experience because we think it's hilarious to watch you all freak out. We launched the redesign in response to a great deal of feedback that we got, over several years, that our old site was confusing, cluttered, and just plain hard to use. If the new design we've chosen needs a bit of tweaking yet, that's ok - we didn't really expect it to be perfect right out of the gate. That's why we're asking for feedback, so that we can focus on the areas that really, truly don't work for you guys and try to find some kind of compromise.

Speaking to us like we're all clueless jackasses who just got drunk one night and decided to fuck up the site just for kicks doesn't help anyone. We all work very, very hard on The Escapist, not just because it's our jobs, but because we believe in it. We want it to be great. We want it to be something that you genuinely look forward to visiting every single day. And we're pretty sure you want it to be that, too.

So how about giving us the benefit of the doubt that we genuinely want to move forward in a positive way, and stop talking to us like we're beneath your contempt?

It is difficult to give you the benefit of the doubt when you made this design in the first place, then pushed it through in contempt of all the PC member complaints, and still acknowledge none of the criticism. Besides, there are real reasons why you would want to ruin the experience for regular members: to attract more new members or to get more ad revenue, for example.

 

[Benny Blanco]

I fear change...

 

[Susan Arendt]

-snip-

Certainly, Susan. Nonetheless is the site as it was redesigned ... not much aid to that goal of making it more streamlined. Yes, the old site was cluttered in some parts and I agree that it turned out better - in those parts. But the mainpage is still a clusterfuck of randomness.
(And it was before just as well, the main difference people see now, though, is that it has much less visible structures than before. But for instance the complaints about the randomness with the sizes and positions of the features on the mainpage are considerably misplaced, as the old mainpage had the same issues, just not as obvious as now.)

That said, I'm a Web Developer, not a Designer ... I can only tell as much, it's merely a radical turn that has some major flaws in some departments, but also some major improvements in others, and as such gives the viewer this classy "It's change, and I see bad points!!!!" feeling.
That doesn't mean, though, that, when people complain about the current design, it's an issue of them actually hating it overall. It's more that they feel the need to address those problems first of all, to get them solved immediately, or at least as soon as possible. And, in all honesty, I understand that. And I know that it's an issue of a bunch of hours to get everything done properly when such complaints pop up. And I understand that some things read like a slap to the face ... But that's what our, and our colleagues' jobs are like, and will always be like.

Dramatic calls for a boycott, or leaving the Escapist, may not be the most appropriate or most desirable way to express ones' complaints, but it's one that needs to be seen as a statement. People wouldn't leave, if their complaints didn't have at least some grounding - unless they wanted to leave anyways and just looked for a reason.

Sooo ... what did I want to say with the core of this post again? .. Ah right ... Noone wants to call you guys drunk clueless jackasses. But it's the way it reads, as the negative points are what immediately jumps to ones eye, and need to be solved asap. And that's all the community wants to tell you guys ... Wrong wording at some points, sure ... But it's neither anything new to the Internet or the Escapist. Heck it isn't even new to the human kind overall. That's how people express their issues with anything they don't like ... Stomping their feet. Either with rather ... soft and respectful wording ... Or with a can of shit spurted out.
Both are valid and both are just as true. The latter does sound worse, disrespectful and whatnot. But it's the same thing, and something one has to deal with in this environment ... As offensive and disgusting it is, it's unavoidable, sadly ...

I'm just going to have to disagree with you on that final point, that it's unavoidable. Believe me, I understand people's reactions, and genuinely want to hear what people find fault with. But if you can't treat me with respect, I'm not going to listen to you - just as you wouldn't want to listen to me if I was being disrespectful towards you. (And I don't mean you, specifically, because obviously you're being perfectly civil and lovely. It's the greater "you".)

Look Susan you guys are offering a service and while you may not need to count on every member as you don't essentially plan on sales except for the pub club members you still need them to load up your ads. Most of the backslash isn't even disrespectful I understand the Escapist is a brand to you that you hold dear and this may also impact the blow of the harsh words a lot are given. Harsh but still constructive criticism, I may be wrong but I haven't seen one post labeling anyone a jackass or belittle anyone. If anything I've seen where people referred (myself included) to the design/code as amateurish. It's a harsh realization but it's true.

I wish I could have talked the way you do to my customers when I was in retail. You don't get that type of freedom you sit there and listen to all the things that come out of his/her mouth cause they are pissed off without saying anything back except "yes sir" "yes ma'am". I might want to find them in a back alley someday but that still doesn't change the fact something is wrong to the point they are irate.

Most are willing to cope with the new design, they just asked for a simple background to kill the white something that literally would take a minute of a designers time and yet here we are day 3 with blinding madness.

Call it whatever way you want but when there is 857 comments and only 10 or so agree with the change without any kind of negative there is something obviously wrong with the way it is now. I know we are just sheep to you guys but still the sheep need grass to survive. Leave them starving too long and they will look for new grass.

See, this is part of what really upsets me. You "know" you're just sheep to us? Why would I be taking the time to talk to any of you about this if that's how I felt? If we didn't care about the community's general happiness, we wouldn't be asking for feedback.

And it's far more than 10 comments, I assure you - you also have no idea the kind of emails and PMs we've gotten. Yes, many people are being perfectly reasonable and civil, and we genuinely appreciate that. But don't assume that simply because you don't see something happening that it isn't. I'm not talking about saying "I really don't like this" or "This hurts my eyes." I'm talking about people being genuinely, truly disrespectful, nasty, and rude.

Obviously, if certain comments keep cropping up, then that's clearly an area we need to consider. The color scheme is something that seems to be a recurring theme, so naturally that's an aspect of the redesign that we're going to think about addressing.

 

[Shadesong]

Call it whatever way you want but when there is 857 comments and only 10 or so agree with the change without any kind of negative there is something obviously wrong with the way it is now. I know we are just sheep to you guys but still the sheep need grass to survive. Leave them starving too long and they will look for new grass.

Grass that isn't flinging flashbangs at the sheep whilst cackling maniacally at the destruction inflicted upon their retinas.

Anyway, the bold above pretty much sums up my thoughts on the matter, though my visits to The Escapist have dwindled lately; but the general vibe coming from this thread seems to be that the users aren't too fond of the new design and I'm perfectly inclined to agree. I don't feel I need to further elaborate, it's all been said already.

 

[Furioso]

This place would not be the same without your voice!

According to members of the pub club, the pub club guys who got to view this early gave almost universally negative feedback, which was apparently completely ignored, is anyone going to address those accusations?

Also can't you guys at least give us a quick fix for the blinding white background, it should not be physically painful to view this website

 

[Gincairn]

personally I'm not a fan of the new look, for the simple reason that it took more 5 clicks to get to the latest episode of The Big Picture as opposed to just 1.

Why remove all the content links to make people hunt for it?

 

[drivel]

SO. UGLY.

 

[viranimus]

Is it possible under this new formatting to utilize .asp modules for the main profile page so that users can either close or minimize modules they find useless?

the way I am seeing it there is still too much redundancy on the profile page. For example the new "Your recent posts" table seems highly redundant when it only shows you your last 2 posts, Granted it does provide additional information like quiz scores and last friend/badge, but that is fairly useless information. Given that "Recent Comments section gives you a listing of the last 5 posts as opposed to the last 2, It would make sense to either close or minimize that module because the information it provides is lacking in relevance and as such is additional clutter.

Another one is the Escapist of Twitter and Facebook stories you might like feeds. I know I am not the only one but I have no interest in facebook/twitter. (I have no twitter and my facebook has a whopping 5 people on it) So I have little or no interest in cluttering up my escapist profile page with a feed of information I am not going to look at.

I mean I do see what your driving at. You in essence trying to create a sidebar that follows you on every page you visit on the site, but that information seems very redundant when you remember you have a profile page that gives the same info, in a more compressed format, and with more data.

(EDIT: So out of curiosity, is that why this is being done? To encourage people to explore the site more, instead of doing what most users generally do, parking on their profile page and either selecting the video/article they wish to view or hitting F5 to refresh to see if they got a new message or look to see if there are new posts in the latest/most post feeds?)

The advantage to being able to either close/minimize each module of data can dramatically help improve navigation as those modules will not have to load with each and every page. My suggestion is to allow the profile page to be where you pick and choose your individual layout preferences and let people have more control over the data they are seeing. Given that that sort of a layout option is something thats been pretty commonplace since 2002 I cant see that as being something too complex or out of reach of the developers.