ID:132906
 
Tiberath wrote:
How you came to the conclusion that browsing games is difficult is also beyond me. I don't consider two clicks to get here to be "jumping through hoops". Considering the website back in '03 had the same amount of clicks to get to Unpublished Games (Games Live -> Unpublished Games).

I think it's pretty good (better than anything we've had before), but I am coming from a biased view of knowing how it all works. As are you and others in this thread. The best way to know is to query new people and see how they find the site. I've tested it with many people and they haven't had problems (although they haven't necessarily stuck around due to content or interest). If you or others can do the same, we could use the feedback.

Like I've said a bunch of times before, a lot goes into this little project because we have to manage the software, the website, and the community. We try very hard to take user feedback into account, but that is challenging when some users want things a certain way and others want it the opposite. Most common are blanket statements like "X sucks" which are absolutely worthless to us outside of lowering our opinion of the commenter.
Tom wrote:
but I am coming from a biased view of knowing how it all works. As are you and others in this thread.

Not necessarily. I don't go browsing for games and very rarely use that all purpose list of games. I generally stick to BYOND RPG submits and random pager invitations. I'll grant that I knew the page existed, but not from where the link to it was located. Logic told me that it'd have to be somewhere on a games page. =)

Another thing to take into account is the user I'm initially replying to has been around almost as long as I have, and probably knows how to browse the site as well as I do. My point is merely that the difference in layouts from 2003 to 2009 isn't really that big. The only difference outside the clicks themselves is the location of the second link. Where Unpublished Games was a big category box in 2003, it's now a small link down the bottom of the byond.com/games/ pages. Still not "jumping through hoops" in my books.

The best way to know is to query new people and see how they find the site. I've tested it with many people and they haven't had problems (although they haven't necessarily stuck around due to content or interest). If you or others can do the same, we could use the feedback.

I don't have any friends to invite to BYOND really. Most of my friends are less computer orientated than myself. They'd rather deal with physical cards, dice and console control pads. However, I get asked a lot of questions from the general community via pager and MSN, very rarely does someone ask me where to find something on the site. Short of the site's search engine thing, I've not really had to explain anything outside of setting up guilds and setting permissions and whatnot like that (which reminds me, I should probably that stuff into an article).

Like I've said a bunch of times before, a lot goes into this little project because we have to manage the software, the website, and the community. We try very hard to take user feedback into account, but that is challenging when some users want things a certain way and others want it the opposite.

That gives you two options and a qualifier. Majority Rules, what the developers think is best for their future plans and to make the decider: Which one is easier to maintain.
Tom wrote:
Most common are blanket statements like "X sucks" which are absolutely worthless to us outside of lowering our opinion of the commenter.

Assuming that was directed at me, I made some pretty direct points about what Xs suck. They shouldn't be worthless, since most of them have a pretty obvious solution

Basic website layout/focus points
-On the homepage, why are the sign up/log in links in the upper right corner when everything else is focused around the center? They should both be buttons, next to each other, centered below the BYOND logo, in the blue section.
-When you click to view any category of games from the top menu bar the page it takes you is ridiculously unfocused, there are multiple games all over the place, that seem to just be random selections from the category. The links to browse more/recommended are barely noticeable (as mentioned below), it doesn't tell you what the games are, are they all live? favorites? just in the guild? why don't the ones in the bottom section have a Play Now! link? Actually, I think I'd rather see the Play Now! link from the above ones gone since its somewhat redundant, and seems out of place where its currently located.
-On the download page the links are set:
Download Now - Win98/2000/XP/Vista [zip] [448.1030]
Something more informative would be better. What is that first link for? What is that number on the end?
Download Now
Win98/2000/XP/Vista [v448.1030]
[Download exe] [Download zip]
This was most likely setup to match with the download links for the other operating systems, but with the additional material it doesn't work out very well.
-And why are there My Account/Logout options in the top right of the download page? (or any other page they might be on?) They seem completely out of place up there, and they're just another repeat of the My Account from the menu bar.
-I'd also prefer the website be designed around, and maintain a certain screen size, instead of spanning infinitely (width wise).


links are mixed in with plain text
- There are multiple plain text links on pages like this (http://www.byond.com/games/) mixed in with everything else. Most of those links could be buttons, the See recommended games, See more games, and Play Now! links for example.
- Any links that span more than a line are also way too long. "Download the latest version of BYOND." Why? That could just say Download, or Download BYOND, pretty much every link in that box to the left is too long. And again, they would look better as buttons, possibly with a fancy little image representing them, especially a Download one.

the colors are clearly geared towards anime central
Its nice that you want to support the over 9,000 DBZ/Naruto games by coloring the the hub to match, but I think everyone I've talked to about it finds it makes the website look childish (which is probably the goal) preferring the old color scheme. (But I haven't exactly been running surveys on it)

even the main guilds provide varied layouts making it difficult to find things
At least the 5 front page guilds should all be using the same basic layout, only keeping varied color schemes and such.
Some improvements were made to this last time I mentioned it, but it could still be better.
Used to browsing things here? http://www.byond.com/members/BYONDAnime
Good luck finding things here: http://www.byond.com/members/BYONDAction
In response to Falacy
Most of your gripes appear to be pretty minor, regarding consistency of links and placement and using images in place of text. I agree with a bunch of your points (especially the verbosity of text in some places) and we can try to shore some things up.

As with everything, we're never going to make everyone happy. For example, some people don't like image-links (particularly when the images are ambiguous, or require explanatory text, thus rendering them redundant). At one point not too long ago we didn't use them at all, but someone suggested putting in some BFBs ("big f**in buttons:) for common things (downloads etc) and it seemed to work. But it did introduce an inconsistency with other links, and we clearly haven't fully addressed that. No big deal, we can do it.

The color scheme wasn't intended to matchup with Anime. We had been using blue & orange in our logo for some time and it seemed like a good palette around which to orient the site. I personally like it a lot because it's fun & vibrant; I know that some other people hate it. Most of the people I've talked to outside of BYOND think it looks fine. I take these kinds of topics with a grain of salt because people have hated every iteration of the site (and software). We started as dark, mostly blue & black and moved to a yellow-ish and we got tons of complaints. Then we got complaints when moving to this. At some point I bet we'll go full circle back to black and people will complain again. So it goes.

You raise a legitimate complaint about the main guild layouts not being consistent with each other. We've had some discussions about this in the past. Right now, while I think it would be aesthetically appealing to have them use the same layout, I honestly doubt it make a heck of a lot of difference as far as traffic goes. We have bigger problems there. Honestly, it might be better to go in the opposite direction and make the guilds more standalone, with their own websites, and try to market them independently. So people could search for "strategy games" on Google and come upon the strategy guild, get into BYOND without necessarily running through the main site, and play those games. This might reduce some of the turnoff we're seeing now, where people basically look at us as an Anime site since those games dominate the listings.
In response to Tiberath
Tiberath wrote:
My point is merely that the difference in layouts from 2003 to 2009 isn't really that big. The only difference outside the clicks themselves is the location of the second link. Where Unpublished Games was a big category box in 2003, it's now a small link down the bottom of the byond.com/games/ pages. Still not "jumping through hoops" in my books.

Yes, this is one of the most exaggerated issues with the site. People remember the old layout as being all ponies and rainbows, but there were tons of problems. The front page ("published") consisted of old games and was reviewing new games every six months or so (if that). Those games were barely played. The secondary page ("unpublished") had everything else with very few filters to organize them. The new setup at least has games being actively reviewed and advertised, and you can still find other games through a variety of filters. It is true that if you just filter by #players you will see a bunch of dbz games, but that's just what our audience is right now. It is very easy to avoid those by looking at the different categories or supplying keywords.

However, I get asked a lot of questions from the general community via pager and MSN, very rarely does someone ask me where to find something on the site. Short of the site's search engine thing, I've not really had to explain anything outside of setting up guilds and setting permissions and whatnot like that (which reminds me, I should probably that stuff into an article).

That's good to know. I would like to get a more general new user feedback. Maybe we can setup a news post / contest around that.
In response to Tom
Well, about that color scheme, one thing that could be done is to provide a set of different color schemes in people's Account Options, which they can choose from. It could even be made as a members-only option.


The gross part of BYOND does indeed consist of anime games. I was thinking that, maybe, some sort of sub-domain could be made for anime games. Right now we've got the main guild; RPG, Action, Strategy, Casual and Anime. Those first four all describe the genre of the game, while the latter one, Anime, rather describes the style of the game. Within Anime, we can also divide the games in RPG, Action, Strategy, etc...
Therefore, it could be appreciated by both the anime and non-anime community if there was a sub-domain such as "anime.byond.com" or "byond.com/anime" or even "byondanime.com", you name it.
In response to Tom
I find this page (http://www.byond.com/games/) to be quite pointless. Its just an extra page I have to click through for no real reason. Sure it advertises a few random games, but it adds extra clickage in the process. These could just as well be displayed at the top of the games list (http://www.byond.com/members/?command=search&type=games) in some sort of "featured" section or something.
The drop down list for "Games" should be taking me to the "Games" page (http://www.byond.com/members/?command=search&type=games) not some random list of who knows how they were selected games.
Optionally there could just be another menu that appears to the right when you hover over a Games category, that displays Games (http://www.byond.com/ members/?command=search&type=games&text=site%3ABYONDAnime) and Guild (http://www.byond.com/members/BYONDAnime) links, while clicking on the category will still take you where it takes you now (http://www.byond.com/games/?guild=BYONDAnime).
In response to Falacy
Falacy wrote:
I find this page (http://www.byond.com/games/) to be quite pointless. Its just an extra page I have to click through for no real reason. Sure it advertises a few random games, but it adds extra clickage in the process. These could just as well be displayed at the top of the games list (http://www.byond.com/members/?command=search&type=games) in some sort of "featured" section or something.

I agree with you in principle, in that the expanded search listing is more useful than the main games page. However, if you click on your expanded link there you get a list of Anime games, because they are both the most popular and the most played. What we're trying to do with the front page is advertise other games. It displays a combination of stuff from recommendations and the main guilds, which greatly reduces the representation of Anime.

While I don't think it's the root of the problem, it's possible that the layout is an issue. We could, for instance, experiment with showing this same content in the "more games" view (the layout of your search link above). I kinda like the current front page for new users because it shows a sampling of a bunch of stuff, like screenshots & medals, but I admit it's not that practical for returning users.

Overall, I don't believe we have a very good system yet, which is why I welcome suggestions (as long as people aren't assholes about it). Our fundamental problem is that, while we have a decent userbase, most are here to play Anime games so if we want to target a more general audience we have to downplay that genre.

Most of the games page is geared around promoting lesser played, non-Anime games but those are still not getting traffic. Part of that is not having the audience, but I think a greater part is actually the nature of online games-- they require multiple users to get going. As such, I'd like to focus on an "event" system in the future, where games could be scheduled and advertised so that when they get going they immediately have players. Easier said than done though (the waiting list was a similar attempt at this and results there are lukewarm at best).

Optionally there could just be another menu that appears to the right when you hover over a Games category, that displays Games (http://www.byond.com/ members/?command=search&type=games&text=site%3ABYONDAnime) and Guild (http://www.byond.com/members/BYONDAnime) links, while clicking on the category will still take you where it takes you now (http://www.byond.com/games/?guild=BYONDAnime).

I do think it'd be useful to have a way for "power users" to directly get to the full games listing, yeah.
In response to Nielz
Nielz wrote:
Well, about that color scheme, one thing that could be done is to provide a set of different color schemes in people's Account Options, which they can choose from. It could even be made as a members-only option.

The problem there is that some of our content (logos, ad boxes, etc) require a background so departing from a fixed color scheme is challenging. I also think this is something that would take some time to create and would only be used by a very few people.

Therefore, it could be appreciated by both the anime and non-anime community if there was a sub-domain such as "anime.byond.com" or "byond.com/anime" or even "byondanime.com", you name it.

Yeah, as I mentioned in another post, I've been mulling over the concept of advertising the guilds as separate sites, to allow new users to discover BYOND through specific games and players they are interested in. I think this is much easier said than done, though, because our community plays such an integral part of the user experience (for better or worse... well, let's be honest, for worse).
In response to Tom
The problem with the main games page is it isn't doing its job at all. I went and took a screenshot just to prove my point.

Besides having too many tables sandwiched together, every single game in that screenshot (Dragon Ball Lost Saiyans, Resident Evil Online 3, Grand Theft Auto: BYOND, Dragonball z Dark Apocalypse, Poké Earth [Sinnoh]) is a fangame. Though it can't be helped, every medal in that screenshot is also from a fangame.

There is not one piece of original content in that screenshot.
In response to SuperAntx
I don't know if Tom changed anything today, but I have not recieved many Anime games on my 'all games' page.
Then I noticed I was logged out...
Click the thumbs to open them.
This is my screen before logging in (in full screen mode)
Photobucket

Then...I logged in!
Photobucket

...dunno
Thought it might help or bring up a point.
In response to Super Saiyan X
I think the area under the search bar (Byond's not your browser's) is out of flow with the rest of the page because of the big empty space (White space w/e) beside the ads for Byond games. The rest of the page doesn't have much area that is unused, methinks it would be better if 2 more ads were put there or something to fill the space.

EDIT: On a side note I just found out what [IMG]http://i30.tinypic.com/118iu1k.jpg[/IMG] that arrow does. I always thought it was just pointing to the Byond logo.