New Forum feedback
New forum looks good, feels odd but I think that is just something I'll get used to. There are a few things that I do think should get some tweaks already.
The list of forums. Right now Bug Reports is at the bottom of the list in the Under the Campfire section. I personally feel like this is a pretty important section and if possible should be moved up top with General Discussions and Feedback. Being at the bottom it's more likely to get missed by those that don't frequent the forums or are new, which will increase the odds they head to General Discussion or Feedback instead with their bugs.
Posts not showing new/new comment. Can't tell when someone has added a comment to a post. Only know a post is new to me if I don't recognize the title - which at some point will be more difficult when people use same title for something. Is there a way to add the "new" and "x new comment" we had on old forums?
Dev/Community Manager/Mod post. On old forums anytime Dev/Community Manager/Mod commented on a post there would be something to let you know. Also if you clicked on the little icon that said Dev/Community Manager/Mod it would bring you to their first comment in the post. Can we get that on these forums? It was super helpful, especially when it came to seeing someone at BHVR answered a question on the forums.
Comments
-
Nevermind on the new/new comment section. That wasn't appearing when I posted this but after I hit post I saw it's now a thing. 😁
0 -
there are some things i'd like to be changed, such as bringing back the red highlight for vote ups and how you mentioned the background for comments made by BHVR, devs, mods etc and the red/blue highlight for the post that has a BHVR or a mod comment
also bring back the perk icons for the rest of the subforums, they looks out of place with the subforums that do have the icons
4 -
visually i'd call it a complete downgrade tbh, lost all personality the old one had and now it's just plain grey, it's bland. also the new formatting for the recent discussions page is atrocious.
15 -
Yeah, it feels like a blog rather a forum.
7 -
I find it very hard to read the "new" after a thread's name. Need to get real close to make out there's even a number there to begin with.
3 -
They made Recent Discussions much worse. It now only shows the 1 pinned thread and the 10 most recent posts. Plus I don't care for how they layout the recent discussions either.
6 -
I keep randomly getting signed out even though I selected the option to stay logged in. Kind of annoying.
4 -
Yeah, I don't really know why they spent an entire day making the forums look worse.
5 -
I've just adjusted that function, it shouldn't log you out anymore only after really extended period of time.
1 -
I will be making adjustments to that over the next few days - changing the colour of that black as it really is pretty hard to read on the dark background.
3 -
I think it's a downgrade both visually and functionally.
Not being able to see "latest post by ImmersedNurse" on a thread is a downgrade.
This forum is still a pale shadow compared to forums that I enjoyed as far back as 2007. It's almost like BHVR is too cheap to even give us a place worth posting in.
0 -
it just looks really bad. like who signed off on this blog looking design?
everything is now annoying to find.
in dark mode the whole forum looks like it was designed by someone submitting an assignment their first web design class.
forums have been around for a real long time, we have literally decades of examples of what works and doesn't work. And we end up with this. I honestly thought I accidently clicked on some janky bootleg forum trying to poorly copy the official forum, I was really surprised when I realized this WAS the official forum.
please revert back to the original design, the old one did look dated, but it was 1000% better than what ever the heck this is now.
2 -
why does a forum need to automatically sign you out? that type of function is only ever needed for retail, banking, sensitive information websites. I've never seen a forum automatically sign you out...there's no reason for that.
1 -
Maybe I'm just not used to it yet, but so far I'm frustrated with many things that were possible in the old forum that are no longer possible.
Latest Discussions
Unlike in the past, the "Latest Discussions" section, which is the most frequently used section, does not show the number of latest comments. To view it, you must access it from each category's subpage.
Also, "Latest Discussions" shows the Meet your maker forum as well as DbD. I am not interested in that and find it intrusive.
Tabs in the upper left corner
The tabs in the upper left corner are very difficult to use.
They are Home, Latest Discussions, Categories, Information Center, and a selection of forum subcommunities (DbD, MYM, BHVR).
Selecting Home and BHVR takes you to the same page. That is, the page where you select whether you want a DbD or MyM forum.
Clicking on a category will take you to the DbD Forum home page.
The Information Center displays patch notes, rules, game information, etc.
Frankly, it doesn't seem to be organized yet.
Clicking on a category should give you access to a pull-down to categories such as lore, off-topic, etc.
Dark Mode
As someone already mentioned, the design is not suitable for dark mode.
Some areas are darker black than dark mode. The ribbon button on the favorite discussion falls into that category.
I'm sure there are many more, but these are the points I have noticed over the past day. I'm sure I'll add more, but I can't count on my voice being heard since the feedback section of the forum has been removed.
0 -
Postscript:
I am accessing from a smart phone and the bottom of the latest discussion page is terrible.
I can go to the next page but cannot go back to the previous page.
0 -
I can address a couple of your points right now.
Recent Discussions is still customisable, I'm checking which options that I can switch on/off to make it more user friendly (accounting for mobile users here as well).
The "home" button is temporary, it's to help fix an issue with the mobile version where there's no way to switch between sub forums - this is something that we've raised with the hosting company.
The same with the recent discussions pulling from both sub communities - this is something that will be fixed so that on DbD you will see only DbD related threads, and on MyM you will see only MyM threads.
Colour schemes can still change, there's some changes that we can make to make things more visible etc and we will be doing these over the coming days...we're still a wip on here right now. Those changes should help with dark mode as well.
2 -
Recent Discussions is still customisable, I'm checking which options that I can switch on/off to make it more user friendly (accounting for mobile users here as well).
I am relieved to hear that. Hopefully we'll be able to customize it soon, since I don't plan on playing MyM.
It's been less than a week since the forum was redesigned, so I'm sure there will be lots of feedback. Just like PTB feedback right after releasing new content. I know it is hard to read through all of them, but thank you for responding to my comments.
As a user, I hope the usability improves.
0 -
To be honest, the new layout is minimalist trash, and I'm having a hard time wording that any more nicely. I'm sure a lot of it was due to limitations from "upgrading" the forum framework, and I've seen a lot of other sites make the same change in the last year.
Alternating and well partitioned posts, intractable elements (user names, flag/quote/voteup, etc) not being microscopic, a layout that actually looks like a forum and not a blog/twitter, the old layout was far more serviceable than this one. Probably just not going to bother anymore until the readability is improved.
2 -
My previous posts about dbd chapter concepts disappeared so I have to say I'm pretty unhappy with this change. Especially that there is no creation subforum anymore.
0 -
Can we get an option to change how many threads per a page show? It would be nice to expand the list of recent discussions.
0 -
unfortunately that's the maximum allowed on that page :( I can't increase it further
I don't think there's any way that I can even adjust the CSS to include more - otherwise I would.
0 -
When looking at a user's comment history the "more comments" button is a very similar color as the background, I only found it because when I hovered it, it highlighted and changed colors
0 -
The new forums was a very poorly thought bad decision. 🤡When you have a full community used to things/ways you keep them. This new forum is an utter joke and quite frankly the BEHAVIOUR makes it seem as though its a special ed class for toddlers with behavior problems. What the heck are you trying to get across with a ridiculous title like that? That name alone had me digging for the old forums like crazy making me think I was banned for nothing. 👺BEHAVIOUR FORUMS.. wtaf?!🤬
The date on some of these posts go back to Jan 2021, thats a year old and there is still so many complaints about functionality and display, I don't see these forums doing well and quite frankly I don't even want to use them except to spew my dislike for it. 🤮
P.S. The links in google directing to specific threads doesn't actually link up to that specific thread. It keeps going to the main page asking me to sign up or in. FIX THAT!
0 -
Not getting any notifications on mobile.
Not only are they hidden behind a secondary menu, but it doesn't flag up when I open that. Have to go into notifications completely and see if there's anything I don't remember.
0 -
I kind of hate the new forum. It's a tad harder to navigate, the "new" icons on posts are black on a VERY dark grey background instead of the old bright red, the side bar for moving to "my discussions" and whatever else (it's gone so idk) is now not as prevalent (something similar is in the categories page). Hopefully they roll it back or make the actual layout nearly identical to the old one with it just being a visual update instead of a UI nightmare.
0 -
The old forum was nearly perfect like the old in-game UI.
BHVR special ability: Changing things no one asked for.
1 -
Thanks for fixing the edit function @Mandy ! You're winning me back. XD
My remaining gripes are:
- Notifications not working on mobile, or not visible enough (and I somehow clear them without seeing them)
- Font too big (could there be options personalise font size? I can ctrl - but that just zooms out everything)
- Personal but, change all the green back to red pls? :P
1 -
yeah I'm not sold on the green myself either.
I have to work with DbD Brand Colours - so I am limited to what colours we can use. Problem with Red is that it's really hard for our colourblind folks to see anything as red on a dark background doesn't shop for them, which is why I'm trying to make things more accessibile. We'll definitely sort something out about that though.
Font being too big - that I might be able to change next week. I'm not sure about the names though - the names on posts look too small?
I'm not sure how much I can change with regards to the notifications on Mobile, this theme (it's a new theme, that's fully supported with updates etc, whereas the previous one was out of date and every update things would break, hence the change!)...It's definitely things I can bring up as requests to the hosting provider for sure though.
Ohhh I would love an actual mobile app - that would solve everything related to mobile (and yes I have requested that!)
2 -
Yeah the size difference between post content and names etc. is quite big. Reducing the size via browser so that post content isn't too big, makes names too small, and vice versa.
What I've found with the mobile version is, I can't see notifications without going into the sub menu. But if I have any notifications, and I even load up a page via mobile (but don't even check the submenu to see them), when I come back to the desktop version, all of my notifications have been cleared already so I miss any replies.
Even if the notifications weren't 'auto-cleared', it would be an improvement, even if you can't make them visible outside of the submenu.
0 -
Agree, the black on black is really hard to see, it's on my notes to find a change for that next week.
Unfortunately there's thing that had to change on the UI as we've updated to a supported theme with the hosting company...there are changes we can make, I might need a CSS wizard to help me to do somethings as that's slightly beyond my expertise lol.
1 -
I agree... it'll take a little getting used to but I like it
1 -
Just want to say thanks for being so quick on making changes based on feedback. 😁
I'm glad to see the dev/community manager/mod badges showing that they've commented on a post. Is there a way to make it so if you click on it you get brought to the first comment they made in a post like on the old forum? Right now if I click on the community manager badge on this post instead of it bringing me to your first comment it brings me to a search page showing all posts made by community managers on the forums.
Also is there a way to change the color of the dev/community manager/mod badge so it sticks out a bit if you're scrolling through a post to find the comments made instead of relying on profile pic? It was easy before to scroll through the comments on a post to find additional comments made by dev/community manager/mod when there was random red badge catching my eye. Currently the badge blends in with the rest of the text in a post.
1 -
Yes this is definitely something I want to add, and it's high on my priority list for next week, as it's something that needs to stand out. Just need to work with the CSS to make these changes
1
