Check out Telltale's new beta site!

[OMA]

Hello, I'm writing here since I can't even post in the beta site, because I never receive the confirmation e-mail (not even in the spam folder).

I feel that switching the forum software from the mature, tried and tested vBulletin to an untested (until now) custom-made proprietary forum software is a mistake. vBulletin has been working great for lots of years. Why change that to reinvent the wheel while doing a worse job overall?

The new interface is confusing, hard to navigate, and has poor design choices. The new design is bad for both low and high resolution screens. In low resolution screens, you have too much fixed bars at the top taking screen real state. You have:

- The top grey "telltalegames" bar (with options for "Store", "News", etc...)
- The dark grey "ticker" bar which also contains the "Login" and "Cart" buttons
- The animated thick beige bar that appears when scrolling down just to inform you of what forum are you in and giving options for "like", "dislike" and "flag".

All those fixed bars make the actual forum viewport too small in a low/medium resolution monitor (I use a 1360x768 screen). Why make all those top bars fixed? It would be way better if they all just moved up when scrolling, like in the old website. No need to have all that stuff at the top of the screen at all times. When you're reading a forum, you don't need to have access to ALL those buttons at all times. You're just reading text! And while reading text, it's better to have a big viewport, rather than a small one that forces you to scroll a lot.

In addition to the visible scrollable part of the forum being vertically small, it's also inexplicably narrow horizontally as well! Why? This makes the website worse also for high resolution monitors and also makes it look like a really old website (old websites were narrow since they were made for the low resolution monitors of the day). In my other monitor, which is 1920x1080, the whole website looks too narrow, because it's made for a width of only 1024 pixels! The old forum was made for a width of 1280 pixels, which is still narrow for a 1920 pixel width monitor, but quite better. Also, 1280 is the minimum width most people have. Who has a 1024x768 monitor nowadays? (unless browsing with an old iPad).

So the new design manages to be bad both for low and high resolution screens...

Also, the nested messages are ok for a comments section in a blog, but not for a forum! Also it's missing regular forum features such as attachments, subscriptions, polls, etc... which is regular fare for any standard forum.

I can understand that implementing all those features can be time consuming, but again, why reinvent the wheel when the vBulletin forum software had those features years ago and Telltale was already using it in the old site?

I think Telltale should only remodelate the other parts of the site, but not the forum. They can't reach in a few months the quality vBulletin and other forum software have reached in more than a decade (vBulletin started development in the year 2000!).

Sorry if I might sound harsh but I think it makes no sense to reinvent the forum. Other sections of the website, sure, but not the forum, for the reasons stated above. Surely TTG should have other development priorities than redeveloping a forum from scratch when there is an already mature forum software such as vBulletin.

[DjNDB]

Originally Posted by Alcoremortis

Well, I've been talking and apparently there's a very easy fix that will give the best of both worlds. Most recent comment at the last page (so we get chronological order), but it has a link back to see the rest of the nested comments. I'm assuming this would be similar to what youtube has, but nicer.

That sounds like my suggestion.
I would love to see more people's opinions in the replies to my post, because i think that approach is a quite promising compromise that needs to get attention and criticism.

We need you guys to join the beta and voice your opinion. The Beta is the best time to change every aspect of the site, because it is still under development. I hope it will be maintained well later on, but at some point it might be much more difficult to get something changed.

So people, join the beta now and feel free to make suggestions for changes.

[Vainamoinen]

There still seems to be some hefty email verification discrimination going on, so I can't really suggest to try the new website in my German adventure forum. First the fix, then I'll spread the word...

[DjNDB]

Originally Posted by Vainamoinen

There still seems to be some hefty email verification discrimination going on, so I can't really suggest to try the new website in my German adventure forum. First the fix, then I'll spread the word...

It's strange though, that the E-Mail verification worked in the closed beta with the same mail accounts.

[Vainamoinen]

Originally Posted by DjNDB

It's strange though, that the E-Mail verification worked in the closed beta with the same mail accounts.

Did it? I never made another account, I must admit. I just used my properly imported account...

[corruptbiggins]

Originally Posted by DjNDB

So people, join the beta now and feel free to make suggestions for changes.

From the way other mods have spoken on this thread I seriously doubt any serious change (like the total abandonment of the new 'forum' idea) will be made. I'm voicing my opinion here because I simply do not want to use that other place and I won't be forced into doing so.

[Alcoremortis]

Originally Posted by DjNDB

That sounds like my suggestion.

Indeed. And I thought it was a good compromise. Best of both, you know?

[Chyron8472]

Originally Posted by GuruGuru214

These are all the things I've been saying for the past three and a half months, and it's exactly what I hoped and expected to hear the community say when the beta went public. I don't think I'll be able to continue using the forums either, if they remain structured this way.

Originally Posted by Darth Marsden

Likewise, sadly. I love hanging out here, but the new forum's just too cluttered to cope with.

Sounds like the active community should have a backup location in mind to go to if the beta does go gold. I don't want to lose the opportunity to hang out with you guys, but this place is the one community on the net I most frequent. It would suck to have to leave everyone I know here behind.

Originally Posted by GuruGuru214

I can tell you right now that this new forum won't tolerate a Whatever thread. If we were to allow that thread to continue after launch, it would collapse under its own weight within a month, and that's being generous.

Why don't they/you/whomever attempt to import the WOYM thread into the beta and see what happens?

Surely, they're not going to start the new community section entirely from scratch?

[RingmasterJ5]

As someone that actually finds Reddit's layout easy-to-use and is familiar with nested comments, this is an absolutely terrible idea for a forum layout. Everything seems slightly too large(when placed in a 1024x768-pixel region) to function in a nest-based system, and that ever-scrolling navigation bar shouldn't be following you at all.

[Vainamoinen]

Originally Posted by RingmasterJ5

As someone that actually finds Reddit's layout easy-to-use and is familiar with nested comments, this is an absolutely terrible idea for a forum layout. Everything seems slightly too large to function in a nest-based system, and that ever-scrolling navigation bar shouldn't be following you at all.

It's true, the size of the present messages is... presentational. Which of course adds greatly to the nesting confusion.

[GuruGuru214]

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

Why don't they/you/whomever attempt to import the WOYM thread into the beta and see what happens?

The closed beta version of the new forum actually did have the entire forum ported over, up to a point in September. None of us had to register new accounts if we didn't want to and all of the old threads were ported over, including Whatever. But this wouldn't actually show anything because nobody was posting in it.

Imagine a Whatever thread that grew to its current length from scratch, but under the nesting system. Imagine trying to find new posts in that clusterfuck. It can't possibly work. At best, we'd have to create something like the "Whatever thread for February 2013" and get a new one every month or something.

And all of the old threads are going to be ported over to the new forums, but I'm anticipating having to lock the current Whatever thread almost immediately.

[flesk]

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

Sounds like the active community should have a backup location in mind to go to if the beta does go gold. I don't want to lose the opportunity to hang out with you guys, but this place is the one community on the net I most frequent. It would suck to have to leave everyone I know here behind.

Same here. These forums are my favourite. Mostly because of the people here, but also because it's so well moderated. I also lurk quite a bit at the Double Fine forums and like the crowd there but it's not as well moderated and it doesn't have the go to first unread post feature. I love that feature since I'm a bit compulsive when it comes to reading everything in the threads i follow, and if that won't be possible without a ton of scrolling in the new forums that's a huge disadvantage for me.

[puzzlebox]

The beta is done for now - thanks so much to all who participated! Your feedback has been well received, and the web team will be making some updates to the site functionality before the big launch. We really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts!

[Chyron8472]

that was quick =\

[coolsome]

I couldn't even get (get) in the bloody thing!

[der_ketzer]

Originally Posted by coolsome

I couldn't even get (get) in the bloody thing!

And it was a better beta because of that fact alone.