New Design Updates + Bugfixes 7/22

Ben M. said: Why would you want fewer games on the front page?... It just means more clicks to get to your game... or bookmarking the games page and never using the home page... it was 4 to begin with when they made the change, now its 6 which is still less than the original site, but much better that said i wouldn't be oppossed to maybe doing something to make more efficient use of the space there, but I don't have any suggestions for that Its not that I want less games on there, It just needs to be much more efficient, like you said. Maybe I just feel like those slots are meant for when I realize my game is in three minutes and I don't want to navigate through a now somewhat clunky UI to get a hold of the session. I don't play six games a week- but hey. 

There is no obvious link to a Campaign's Forum like there used to be. Please find a place for it and put it back.

Idea: Perhaps if we could select 1-6 games to show on our home page, the ones we want to have immediately access to no matter what?

The new home page is more functional for me! Majorly Love having Next Game Time on the home page. Awesome usefulness.  "Next Game Not Scheduled" is also a nice new phrase for any back-dated games. Next Game Time is much more important than Last Time Played. This is great. To improve homepage views of my Games, please consider accommodating longer Game Titles, at least 2 lines of the Title if not the entire title regardless of wordcount. Screenshot of current truncated game titles: As it stands now, if I start a series of games with this kind of serial titles, they would all appear to have the identical title due to truncated line-length. Adventures In The Nation Of Latvia Adventures In The Nation Of Thailand Adventures In The Nation Of Gold Dragons Homepage would currently show those 3 different titles as the same as each other: Adventures in the Na... Adventures in the Na... Adventures in the Na...

GenKitty said: Idea: Perhaps if we could select 1-6 games to show on our home page, the ones we want to have immediately access to no matter what? Like setting games to "Active" or something?

I also want to add that you want to minimize the number of clicks that your users have to go through to get where they want. For instance, split Community into direct links to the Forums and Help Wiki, move Tools to a sidebar, move LFG to the main bar, keep Games as a link to an old-style Games menu, have Marketplace go straight to the marketplace, and move all of the other sub-fields to a sidebar. For example, your top bar would be: Home | My Games | Looking for Group | Marketplace | Forums | Help Wiki | Subscribe | Messages | User Account (I'd argue that this is the only thing on here that should be kept a drop-down menu) While you'd have a sidebar that's something like: My Games Start a new game Player Directory LFG Marketplace Tokens Maps Tiles Modules Tools Character Vault Compendium iPad and Android Help Wiki Blog Maybe also have stuff for genres in the Marketplace section of the sidebar. The top bar should be for broad, general stuff and key features, while the sidebar (which should probably move up and down as the user scrolls through the page) provides more specific stuff. This way, you have ways for users to quickly navigate from point A to Point B from a single page without having to click through dropdown menus like in the current iteration, which, rather than minimizing the number of clicks required, move them so rather than clicking between pages to get where you want, you click just as many times, if not more, on one page to get where you want.  Notably, certain features that you only needed one click to get to before (Marketplace, My Games, LFG, Player Directory, the Forums, the Help Wiki) now take more clicks to get to, while the side bar and top bar model would let you get where you need from just about anywhere on the site, while also putting everything out in the open so you don't need to click through dropdown menus. And I would recommend shrinking things down to about 60-70% of their current size, since everything does feel rather oversized and clunky on many desktop and laptop monitors.

Sugar said: You could place the text over the con, as it is with the market place objects, but this would likely result in a much busier and harder to read icon as well as a less uniform area, since not every game icon is the same size or shape.I'm worried less about the text over the con thing (although placed loosely as it is, it looks a little sloppy,) so much as the lack of uniformity due to the different image sizes and the multiple stacks. Results in a lot of empty WHITE! spaces in the middle of everything. Having them side-by-side in one row with an extension arrow and cutting everything down to three our four games before hitting us with "View All Games>" could help with that. I care less about white space than I do about being able to access as much of the information I care about as possible without clicking everything. If you're worried about uniformity, maybe putting them in a visible grid would help? Tenacious Techhunter said: There is no obvious link to a Campaign's Forum like there used to be. Please find a place for it and put it back. This would be quite helpful, both for the homepage and the menu, as the current lists are a bit hit and miss. Gold said: The new home page is more functional for me! Majorly Love having Next Game Time on the home page. Awesome usefulness.  "Next Game Not Scheduled" is also a nice new phrase for any back-dated games. Next Game Time is much more important than Last Time Played. This is great. I definitely like the idea behind this, but from my experience as a GM I find it less than helpful. In particular, there doesn't seem to be a way to auto-schedule games and it's tedious to have to reset the date every week, particularly when it's the same time and date each week, so my games are never up to date and the current style of listing won't show them properly.  Of course, the ideal way to fix this would be to add a repeat funtion to the scheduling and leave the display as is.

Avatars on profile pages still have unbounded size. Avacyn's avatar is the worst offender.

I can confirm the pull down menus and sign in & out now work fine on my android phone with chrome. Good stuff. And overall while I'm not super enthusiastic about the new look, I certainly appreciate the quick response to the day 1 issues.

Derk G. said: I can confirm the pull down menus and sign in & out now work fine on my android phone with chrome. Good stuff. And overall while I'm not super enthusiastic about the new look, I certainly appreciate the quick response to the day 1 issues. Thank you for the update!

Roll20 and menus are working on my Nexus 7 Android 5.1.1

Gold said: Click the link above (which still retains the URL name "LFG"). Notice how PRO users' games are labeled PRO, and Plus users' LFG listings are labeled Plus? My confusion is where Non-Subscriber Accounts are labeled "FREE" on their LFG search result game listing titles. Consequently half the games in LFG are "Free" and half are not "Free".  What is a game that is not labeled Free? It almost implies that a Non-Free must be a paid game, because it does not say Free when so many others do. Makes a "Pro" game appear that it might be a game that charges money to play Overall, I'm liking the incremental improvements and response to user feedback. Launching a redesign is tough and always causes waves. I think Gold's point here is pretty important. From a UX standpoint, the LFG listing display of the GM's account level does seem to indicate that some campaigns are free-to-play and some require money.

The quick response to user feedback is amazing, Roll20 dev is the best.   I agree with most of the critic and comments on the new layout on this threat. My feedback could just be personal taste and small details, but here it is: My first impression is that the web sites have too many elements, I think that is mostly because to the "line" design.  You can just ignore this feedback if you want: I personally liked the old pink logo on blue background, the contrast between blue/purple and pink made it neutral. Not too "boyish" and not too "girly", fit the mood for all kinds of games from light to darker campaigns. I think one of the front page's purpose is to put players in a mood to play their games.  Thanks for a great web site and community!

No background behind preview pane for custom character sheets: nor behind the "From The Dev Team" section.

I think Gold's point here is pretty important. From a UX standpoint, the LFG listing display of the GM's account level does seem to indicate that some campaigns are free-to-play and some require money. I think it's pretty obviously in the 'GM ID Card' section. Maybe make it more obvious, by putting more stats there: A line of Achievements, for example. That'd communicate the GM's qualifications to run a game. If that's not the intent, then it should be removed. You might be looking for a game that has Pro features because you want to see them in use, so it is relevant. But it's also implying that GMs who pay roll20 money are better than those who don't, and that's not true at all.

I've encountered an issue when displaying time zones for games on the home page compared to the game details page. For the time displayed in the game details page, as well as while browsing games that are looking for players, I see that all the times are in the local timezone. However, on the home page it is set to a completely different zone (GMT-4 I think)

I believe that if you care about a business and the people who work there then you have an obligation of honesty when you see a false step. The issue of most concern with the new Roll20 site is that it shows a lack of business and marketing savvy. Ultimately, this will hurt potential growth of a great product, and with it, it's members. Unfortunately, many wonderful development houses aren't as proficient in marketing/branding/promotion. Small example, the new home page with the cute, "The is how we roll," sentence does absolutely nothing to help someone unacquainted with Roll20 understand what they have to offer. Frankly, neither do the images, and the opening descriptive text isn't sharp enough. The old site at least had the sentence, "Join 800,000 tabletop gamers," that invited someone interested in gaming to find out more. I sincerely hope Roll20 will engage a design firm as capable of building their brand as they are capable of designing virtual tabletop tools. Roll20 Folks, you're a great team of talented people. I highly suggest honoring it and the potential of what you've created with equally great marketing. Perhaps a meeting with William Morris Endeavor might be appealing? I hope so and wish you continued success. Best regards.

Will H. said: I think Gold's point here is pretty important. From a UX standpoint, the LFG listing display of the GM's account level does seem to indicate that some campaigns are free-to-play and some require money. ...You might be looking for a game that has Pro features because you want to see them in use, so it is relevant. But it's also implying that GMs who pay roll20 money are better than those who don't, and that's not true at all. Note: there is another design-element which indicates a Pro-Created game. It is a yellow highlight line on the left side (in LFG search results). In the old design, the Mentor's listing had a yellow background. Now it is a vertical yellow line.

Riley D. said: We're fine with folks doing the CSS override thing (it's your browser), but we're not going to be able to provide support for it...sort of a "here be dragons" deal. Hopefully that points you in the right direction, at any rate. Understood. Wasn't sure if it was a glitch or not. I will figure it out. Thank you for the point in the right direction.

One thought regarding the forums. When I'm looking at a post, there is a link to go back to the forum section the post is in, but no link for the overall forum page. For that I would have to click 'community' and all the way on the left 'forums'. This doesn't feel intuitive. Is it possible to change the line at the top which says 'Posted in General On Topic ' to 'Posted in Forums - General On Topic '  with the Forums being a link to the top level Forums page and General On Topic a link to the section?

Derk G. said: One thought regarding the forums. When I'm looking at a post, there is a link to go back to the forum section the post is in, but no link for the overall forum page. For that I would have to click 'community' and all the way on the left 'forums'. This doesn't feel intuitive. Is it possible to change the line at the top which says 'Posted in General On Topic ' to 'Posted in Forums - General On Topic '  with the Forums being a link to the top level Forums page and General On Topic a link to the section? Seconding this - it's a fairly standard forum/discussion navigation feature, one that I use a lot  in other forums since I tend to bounce between sub-forums and don't want to open three billion tabs. 

Toboe L. said: Derk G. said: Is it possible to change the line at the top which says 'Posted in General On Topic ' to 'Posted in Forums - General On Topic '  with the Forums being a link to the top level Forums page and General On Topic a link to the section? Seconding this - it's a fairly standard forum/discussion navigation feature, one that I use a lot  in other forums since I tend to bounce between sub-forums and don't want to open three billion tabs.  Agreed.  Pagination has made it more cumbersome to navigate since I go to "Page 1" and then have to click to the last page to get the newest stuff, then I have to back page twice. An alternative would be to display links to the different pages under the post title (or next to, or something). That way clicking the post title takes you to page 1, or clicking on the appropriate page link would take you that link.  Then I could jump immediately to page 3 (or whatever). Then a single back page would work, too.

Am I really the only one put off by having the games created and games joined in the same listing? It is beyond irritating for me. It takes me long to find what I am looking for now. Also, considering I am almost always playing on laptop or tablet, it would be helpful if elements on the site weren't so bulky. Especially considering my disability which requires me to zoom in on most pages.

 know I've seen a pink name somewhere  say that the new layout involved things like a professional consultant & focus group surveys with this one coming out the favorite/winner.  I can understand and agree that those are good goals, but now that there has been enough time for quick "oh crap, how did that thing  slip through like that " type fixes, I feel like it's reasonable to point this out to get the significant number of non-tablet/non-smartphone users out there.  This is what it looked like on my 7 inch android tablet yesterday: and on my windowsphone to say that the layout had some issues that needed sorting, lead to the question of if the runners up layouts were tubgirl, lemonparty, and 2girls 1 cup themed at the time since the layout didn't get much better elsewhere ( if  they was even accessible without a direct external link).  Granted, the site is much  better and reasonably functional (I can  post to the forum and get to/read/reply to PM's nor for example).  I'm looking forward to seeing how things progress from here In the future?  Tablets & cheap "burner phones" are dirt cheap these days , not to mention that most any cellphone store has some demo phones of the major mobile  OS's (and sometimes a tablet or two too) with internet access (in the us at least) that can at least check basic functionality against a staging server for the cost of a drive/walk to your nearest depending on location

Home page isn't displaying my localised time (BST), though the next game countdown thing works fine and is to be welcomed. Game page still displays localised time.

I personally don't like huge change smaller ones would have been better. This new design is ugly and a pain, simple is nice and easy to use, no complaints from people. This just seems to be a way to enlarge advert banners so there in your face more, to try and get more money from people, I find that personally offensive. Making the site less user friendly unless you PAY to have them removed? Not cool. It all being a bit bigger isn't so bad for me with my terrible eye site but I have learning difficulties and dyslexia basically making any major change a struggle to wrap my head round. Put it bluntly it would be nice to have the option to make it look the old way. If theirs a public vote on having it changed back, I vote a 100% YES! to have it the old way again, as this is an eye sore.

1.  My biggest issue is the LFG button. I just don't understand why you would hide your differentiating feature. It's not about existing players finding it. It's about the new players. When I first started looking for online gaming groups this was the feature I was most interested in. This is the feature that helps new people in the gaming community get started. It saddens me that bringing new gamers into the community doesn't appear to be a top priority of R20. 2. I would have rather seen a move to a grittier, more pulpy style than this bland, "clean", half finished look. Take a look at the RPG google hangout communities for many examples of that style.  With regards to the "half finished look": One simple suggestion would be to change that broken (dashed) line between your logo and the drop down menus at the top of the page. It just looks like a formating error. Another is to deal with (remove?) the small writing in the drop down menus. They look very out of place and , frankly, unprofessional against a backdrop where the font around is so much larger. 3. I'm not sure why you were fixing what wasn't broken. You're general style was fine before, not great but not detracting. I would have rather seen this effort go into making it easier for GM's to add content to campaigns etc or fix the issues a lot of people seem to be having with Video and Sound in games.

Sean L. said: 1.  My biggest issue is the LFG button. I just don't understand why you would hide your differentiating feature. It's not about existing players finding it. It's about the new players. When I first started looking for online gaming groups this was the feature I was most interested in. This is the feature that helps new people in the gaming community get started. It saddens me that bringing new gamers into the community doesn't appear to be a top priority of R20. You realize they added it back in yesterday right?... its at the top of the page right next to "Create New Game"

What does the blog have to do with "Community"? Most people don't go to the blog to interact with other community members.

G V. said: Toboe L. said: Derk G. said: Is it possible to change the line at the top which says 'Posted in General On Topic ' to 'Posted in Forums - General On Topic '  with the Forums being a link to the top level Forums page and General On Topic a link to the section? Seconding this - it's a fairly standard forum/discussion navigation feature, one that I use a lot  in other forums since I tend to bounce between sub-forums and don't want to open three billion tabs.  Agreed.  Pagination has made it more cumbersome to navigate since I go to "Page 1" and then have to click to the last page to get the newest stuff, then I have to back page twice. An alternative would be to display links to the different pages under the post title (or next to, or something). That way clicking the post title takes you to page 1, or clicking on the appropriate page link would take you that link.  Then I could jump immediately to page 3 (or whatever). Then a single back page would work, too. Another vote for being able to get back to the main forum page from any page. Also seconding that the forums in general are clunky. This is the main form of communication outside games, it is highly used. Pagination makes for nice loading times and sizes but there is no way to get to the newest post without clicking and scrolling and that is annoying. Why is there not a link to latest post or better yet, first unread post?  I realize you continue to work on improvements and this is purely constructive criticism. I actually like the design of the new site except for the forum issues above and the fact that in the menus you have to move your mouse to the left to select anything. Also a bit disappointed that the wiki has not yet be moved to the new design but I am sure that is being considered last. H

Thanks for the changes and constant updates! I love that you have added pagination to the forums.  Appologies if this has been addressed.  Any plans to "auto-magically" jump to the last post of a multi-page thread when returning to a thread?  Thanks

Ben M. said: Sean L. said: 1.  My biggest issue is the LFG button. I just don't understand why you would hide your differentiating feature. It's not about existing players finding it. It's about the new players. When I first started looking for online gaming groups this was the feature I was most interested in. This is the feature that helps new people in the gaming community get started. It saddens me that bringing new gamers into the community doesn't appear to be a top priority of R20. You realize they added it back in yesterday right?... its at the top of the page right next to "Create New Game" Sign out of roll20 and come here as a new person checking out the community would see it. Its not there. Again, my main issue isn't having to click more for existing members. It's the removal of advertisement to NEW players about one of their best features. In fact, I'm not sure it's even possible to see what the LFG feature looks like now without creating an account.

HoneyBadger said: What does the blog have to do with "Community"? Most people don't go to the blog to interact with other community members. Blogs are still associated with "community" like things - it's a blog talking about stuff to  the community in this case; not everyone is going to go to the forums and search for sticky posts, whereas blogs are a timeline-based way of conveying info to a community (and can be less formal.) Besides, the devs are still GM/players - they should count as community members too! ;D Or, put a different way: a Blog isn't as related to Home, Game, Marketplace, or Tools: the other header links. Makes most sense to put it under the community.  Sean L. said: Ben M. said: Sean L. said: 1.  My biggest issue is the LFG button. I just don't understand why you would hide your differentiating feature. It's not about existing players finding it. It's about the new players. When I first started looking for online gaming groups this was the feature I was most interested in. This is the feature that helps new people in the gaming community get started. It saddens me that bringing new gamers into the community doesn't appear to be a top priority of R20. You realize they added it back in yesterday right?... its at the top of the page right next to "Create New Game" Sign out of roll20 and come here as a new person checking out the community would see it. Its not there. Again, my main issue isn't having to click more for existing members. It's the removal of advertisement to NEW players about one of their best features. In fact, I'm not sure it's even possible to see what the LFG feature looks like now without creating an account. Agreed. It doesn't read as obviously  that there's a way to find a group, especially in that all important "first look" screen. Furthermore, nothing in the little advertising blurbs below (under Tour) say explicitly there's a way to find groups via roll20. Everything on that logged out home page says "hey! We've got a cool VTT with lots of nifty tools!" but nothing about "also we can help you find other players and a GM!" You can't even browse the LFG listings when logged out, which is something that put me off roll20 for a long  time - I had quite literally no idea the tool existed until I was dragged in (kicking and screaming, I'll admit) into roll20 because my GM decided he  was going to use it. I was like "why the hell do I want to create an account just to play a short game why can't we just do it all via theater of the mind crap you made a map and aren't describing it as much asdfasdfadf fine"  It was only after I learned of ~LFG~ that I was intrigued enough to explore the rest of roll20.  TL;DR: LFG needs to be plastered all over the place. All over.

Riley D. said: We'll certainly consider giving more control over what games show up on the homepage. Just out of curiosity, why are the most recently played and/or the "next game starting" games not the ones you want most frequent access to? Is it just because you're in so many games, or...? I will add it to the list to add in some better navigation for the forums. John S. said: Home page isn't displaying my localised time (BST), though the next game countdown thing works fine and is to be welcomed. Game page still displays localised time. Which part isn't displaying the localized time? Under recent games on the landing page. The time is displayed as 2pm for me. That is, I think, the default Roll20 time rather than my localised time. 

HLazar said: G V. said: Toboe L. said: Derk G. said: Is it possible to change the line at the top which says 'Posted in General On Topic ' to 'Posted in Forums - General On Topic '  with the Forums being a link to the top level Forums page and General On Topic a link to the section? Seconding this - it's a fairly standard forum/discussion navigation feature, one that I use a lot  in other forums since I tend to bounce between sub-forums and don't want to open three billion tabs.  Agreed.  Pagination has made it more cumbersome to navigate since I go to "Page 1" and then have to click to the last page to get the newest stuff, then I have to back page twice. An alternative would be to display links to the different pages under the post title (or next to, or something). That way clicking the post title takes you to page 1, or clicking on the appropriate page link would take you that link.  Then I could jump immediately to page 3 (or whatever). Then a single back page would work, too. Another vote for being able to get back to the main forum page from any page. Also seconding that the forums in general are clunky. This is the main form of communication outside games, it is highly used. Pagination makes for nice loading times and sizes but there is no way to get to the newest post without clicking and scrolling and that is annoying. Why is there not a link to latest post or better yet, first unread post?  I realize you continue to work on improvements and this is purely constructive criticism. I actually like the design of the new site except for the forum issues above and the fact that in the menus you have to move your mouse to the left to select anything. Also a bit disappointed that the wiki has not yet be moved to the new design but I am sure that is being considered last. H I still think the bet solution would be to just use XenoForo for the forums. It would fix this and a lot of other issues. Riley D. said: We'll certainly consider giving more control over what games show up on the homepage. Just out of curiosity, why are the most recently played and/or the "next game starting" games not the ones you want most frequent access to? Is it just because you're in so many games, or...? Part of the problem is that next game dates aren't always kept up to date (it's a bit of a pain for games that repeat weakly, since you have to do it manually) and part of it is community groups or games that see more forum activity than active play.