Mod Browsing Overhaul Discussion

[Lollia]

3 minutes ago, Qrsr said:

Yeah its a disaster.

I can't quite tell if that's sarcasm or not, but I'll let it slide.

It IS a disaster when you've been carefully re-organizing two different mod pages for multiple hours, make everything public, only to have both changelogs vanish into oblivion, and then have people doubting that you ever made changelogs to begin with. I don't wish it on anyone.

[AnakinTheWeird]

Aight, so since it's gotten pretty obvious that the devs low-key hate us (or at least think we should stfu and mindlessly consume their product), does anyone have any suggestions for alternate modding sites? Because this isn't going to get better.

[zloybelka]

2 hours ago, Qrsr said:

Here another icon problem which is present more than ONE week now, it shoud not be hard to solve:

Below the BBCode box, you can see "]"

I've seen it like that for quite some time because of low screen resolution

[Teraon]

56 minutes ago, AnakinTheWeird said:

Aight, so since it's gotten pretty obvious that the devs low-key hate us (or at least think we should stfu and mindlessly consume their product), does anyone have any suggestions for alternate modding sites? Because this isn't going to get better.

Steam workshop? 

[Qrsr]

34 minutes ago, zloybelka said:

I've seen it like that for quite some time because of low screen resolution

Correct, still super buggy.

[HadToRegister]

So, the posts in this thread, have been split into singular threads covering each topic, so where are they?
So far, splitting each topic brought up in this thread, have been split to their own threads, and has made it, so I can't find them, and continue posting in the appropriate threads.
Or was that the plan?

[Glitchfinder]

32 minutes ago, HadToRegister said:

So, the posts in this thread, have been split into singular threads covering each topic, so where are they?
So far, splitting each topic brought up in this thread, have been split to their own threads, and has made it, so I can't find them, and continue posting in the appropriate threads.
Or was that the plan?

They're over here. So far, they only have part of the first day of this thread sorted out into the new posts. Presumably they'll start back up tomorrow morning, once the weekend is over.

[jaitsu]

On 3/28/2025 at 7:42 AM, Demorphic said:

 I think there's little we can do at this stage to satisfy your complaints

 

There's plenty you can do, you just refuse to do it. Whether it's out of stubbornness or you guys screwed up somehow and dont want to admit to it, a serious error in judgement has been made here; but please don't sit there and pretend that the devs hands are tied. No one with a functioning cerebral cortex is going to buy that.

Edited March 30 by jaitsu

[UX99]

On 3/28/2025 at 7:42 AM, Demorphic said:

...

In terms of ignoring some feedback, we've read all of the feedback but yes, some of it will need to be ignored, at least in terms of responding to everything. There's been 1.8k replies in this thread alone, and that's excluding feedback from multiple Discord servers and Reddit and various other social channels. We need to organise feedback and build a list of priorities for the next period of work.

Are we lying? well I don't think this is happening intentionally. We are a team of humans, with human fallibilities, working on a fairly complex project, trying to build the ship while it is sailing, while managing a huge range of expectations and both internal and external priorities. We definitely have pride in wanting to do something worthwhile and do good work. We by nature value our own internal priorities but always endeavour to balance this with lots of user focus groups, beta testing period, Hotjar surveys and raw data coming into our dashboard, to ensure we lead by user priorities.

Like I said previously, a big news piece will be coming your way, probably on Monday, with a lot more context and things we will be working on as a result of all the feedback. Following that a breakdown of planned work will be published in our monthly update. Our objective has always been to find a balance between improvements and continuity, to develop our infrastructure to support the growth of the platform, while clearing away so much technical debt and accumulated issues with the site.

...

 

• There needs to be one survey at the top of the site, on every page that can have an alert, that displays once per account / IP address.
• After a week or two of votes, then those votes need to be published.
• I've seen elsewhere that votes are being grouped to where 3s are also being grouped with 4s & 5s.
  • This is simply wrong to do, and it only looks to be a sort of "coping" mechanism as a 3 out of 5 is not a good score. You, as in the team, not really you specifically, need to take a step back and try to apply that to other properties or ratings systems. Would you also think a 3 out of 5 for some game you like would also be "good"?

On 3/28/2025 at 7:42 AM, Demorphic said:

...

I have no doubt that Monday's update will not please people who just want to go back to the old site. (For context, the last time the site was updated, there were angry people who just wanted to go back to the old site). Change is hard, particularly when the added value seems to be limited, or unclear. We will be shouting a lot more about the added value and will keep adding value, and keep iterating. I hope that you can have a bit of patience while we work these things out and to some degree give us a chance to expand on this vision.

 

For a "beta" that was supposedly so well-liked and solid, there's so many issues that it feels like this is the real beta phase.

It's such a major downgrade with the number of features and usability that has been lost.
it isn't a matter of change, it is an objective downgrade.
And I do use "objective" intentionally as there really are just so many features that are now gone. There isn't a single user-facing part of this that actually helps the end-user.

At this point, it now seems like the team is trying to re-add certain aspects, such as the loss of Trending. Even the search system and the way mods would appear on the page are simply slower than before. If the goal is to now bring it back up to the quality (to the end-user) of the previous design, then there's something majorly wrong with the current one.

 

Keep the current design as default, but allow people to opt-out.
You'll still get a ton more feedback than before, and can have a comment box on why the person is "opting out".

Relying on only feedback from those that opted-in to the beta before was a bad move as you only gathered feedback from a very specific group of people.

I know that having changes only being opt-out would still draw a negative reaction to people, but it is a better way to actually collect feedback, even if negative, from a wider group.

Edited March 31 by UX99

[HadToRegister]

One more example of why the OLD Quick Search was extremely useful, using GOG's Quick Search.

1. I open Quick Search on GOG, I can still SEE, and INTERACT with whatever Page I'm on, there is no Big Dumb Window™ that opens up, and obfuscates my view, and completely prevents me from SEEING and INTERACTING with whatever page I'm on.

In Picture 1, from (Gog Example.Jpg) I'm going to search for “DIABLO”, so I typed in “D”, no results, then I typed in Di, and the drop-down list opened from the quick search, while still allowing me to see the page I'm on.
There are 2,598 results, because it's showing everything that has the letter combination of “Di” in the title (this is how I would use Quick search to search for MODS), so pretend all of those 2,598 results are MODS.
I also can just right-click on any of the mods that interest me from that drop-down, and “Open in new tab”

2. I continue to type in the quick search, and add an 'I' so now I have “Dia” in the quick search, and voilà, the quick search drop down, now reduces to 56 results.
Once again, I have the option of hitting ENTER and being brought to a page that contains the remaining 56 results that I can look at, at my leisure, or right-click “open in new tab”.

3. I continue to type and now have “Diab” in the quick search box, and it has been reduced to just 3 results, And I can see the result I want.
ALL while staying on the page I'm on, and being able to SEE, and INTERACT with the page I'm on, instead of some big dumb obstructionist Window popping up saying “HAY GUISE!!!! HERE’S A RESULTS!!!” I DID GOOD HUH?”

Now, to make this even more BEAUTIFUL, is, at that point I can refine my search, by continuing to type more letters in, or, I have the option to hit ENTER, and be brought to a page shown in (Gog Sorting.jpg), where I can now look at all 2,598, or 56, 0r 3 results, and the BEAUTY of that page is, (look up in the right-hand corner where those jolly, candylike red arrows® are pointing!!!)

They are pointing to the option to see the Result Page, as TILES OR AS A LIST!!!! 
How absolutely HANDY is that? It seems having those options would accommodate EVERYBODY on their site because of those options.
It's awesome that their web designers thought of their customers and gave them that option, isn't it?