First impressions of the new EQ2 Players

Discussion in 'EQ2Players.com Website Discussion' started by ARCHIVED-0naoko0, Dec 17, 2009.

  1. ARCHIVED-0naoko0 Guest

    EDIT: The new EQ2 Players is CRASHING the in game browser / the ENTIRE game on use. What the heck, Sony? Did you not test this at all? Players: Don't attempt to use the new site in game unless you're willing to risk a game crash. Seems to be fixed.
    And they're not good.
    I mean, why would anyone want to remove useful functionality from their website?
    I must admit that the new look is great, I must stress that it's all very lovely - but some very important features (and a mass of lesser ones) have been removed, some of which I'm going to mention below...
    If, for any reason, I've been completely dumb and missed something blatently obvious which contradicts what I'm saying below, please point it out - I'll happily edit it accordingly. Do correct me if I'm wrong about these things, because I really hope I am.

    Alt checking:

    I think one of the major problems with the new site is that you're unable to view alts of other players. This was an extremely useful feature, especially for leaders and officers of guilds - who use it to keep out troublemakers, check duplicate characters, etc etc.
    EDIT: After reading through some of the initial replies to a feedback thread asking what features people used the most, a lot of them seem to mention alt listings as a big thing... Why was it removed again? I don't exactly see the problem if you could hide your alts through the privacy settings - as I'm sure some people would like to.
    Implemented. Thanks!
    Guild chat:
    The old guild chat had it's issues, but it was definitely useable. The new chat is only useable as a small popup in the bottom right hand of your screen. Having the option to "pop it out" to a new window would be awesome, or a link to a fully fledged chat would be even better. The option to use it as a small chat box at the bottom should still remain available, and being able to minimize it without leaving the chat would be great. You could even make the little "Enter Guild Chat" link flash when there's a new message available. In order to clearly show whether you're logged in and out, a small "status light" could be added, green for logged in, red for logged out - for example. A clear "Exit" button could be displayed to avoid any confusion.
    Mostly implemented. Any chance we can minimize the embedded chat without logging out? I remember SOE saying they want this implemented site wide. Will we be able to navigate pages without logging out / logging in of the chat on each refresh? Much like Facebook. If so, PLEASE make it minimizable with a flashing notification if there's new chat. You may want a clear "Logout" link instead of an "x" as well. Just to be clear that it actually logs you out and doesn't just hide the chat.
    Any chance we could have item linking through the guild chat implemented with the current item database on the website? It would be great for guildies to be able to link items in the chat. For example, it would be extremely useful if the "\aITEM 1295869984 -769470232:large redwood room divider\/a" could be parsed as a link. Could even have a little popup window of the item. You could even implement linking from the web chat. Let's say you're browsing the item database and you have guild chat open? There could be a link on the item page that will automatically place a link to the item in the web chat box ready for you to send. This would be super useful and very cool.
    In summary - make this tiny new guild chat available in a larger form. Adding the ability to minimize it without logging out, while being able to see when a new message has been sent to the chat, would be great. A clear indication of whether or not you're still in chat with a visible link to disconnect could be helpful. An inactivity timer could prevent any unwanted abuse (like leaving it logged in for days at a time).
    Search bar:
    The new search bar is difficult to use. It's very web 2.0, but at the same time is very confusing - and I usually end up on the "advanced search" page anyway - regardless of what I try to do.
    As an example, I'm going to search for our guild: Lost Legion of Crushbone. I click the search bar, type Lost Legion - and the nifty new drop down appears. I click "Search Guilds: Lost Legion". Nothing happens. I sit there for a few seconds until I realize that the drop down is only the category I have selected to search through - and not the actual "search button". Why is this lacking in intuitiveness? Because I can't tell it's only a choice of category - there's no visible indication that I have chosen it. Whether or not this assumption is correct - after clicking the actual button (the magnifying glass) - I was brought to the advanced guild search anyway. Is this search bar completely useless?
    Implementation of radio buttons makes it much easier to use. Thanks!
    Sorting:
    The ability to sort lists / columns seems to have been completely removed - in both the guild roster, leaderboards etc. Why would anyone want to remove this functionality? It was great being able to sort by rank, name, class or whatever else.
    Exactly what we needed. Thanks!
    Guild profiles:
    After managing to find our guild through the advanced search page and not the search bar - A page of information appears regarding it. The same information seems to have taken up a lot less space with the old website, but I digress...
    I feel that I want to look over our roster, y'know, for the fun of it. So I click "Guild Roster", which is easy enough to see.
    I'm given a list of 5 members . There's some pretty obvious problems with this list:
    - I can only see 5 members... Which is absolutely useless for guilds with more than 5 members. Improved - but still no choice in the displayed number. (I'm aware this is in the works) Any chance we can have the option to see all at once like before please? Not massively important, but more functionality = better, right?
    - I have no idea in what order they were pulled from the roster, it seems completely random. Fixed with sorting. Thanks!
    - I can't sort by any of the columns in the list. In fact, the columns aren't even labelled...
    - Character names do not link to their profile. Why? Implemented.
    The ability to adjust the amount of members displayed at any one time would make this roster actually useful. Sorting would be nice, like the old website had - and links to character profiles would be sweet. Hey, you could even put a link to their rankings if they haven't turned it off in their individual privacy settings - maybe our guild could still have fun chats about them without being hindered by lacking functionality (column sorting, again).
    EDIT: The new guild pages are being described as a disaster in other threads, is this really what you were aiming for with the new site, SOE?
    Summary:
    Personally, I'd like to see a lot of the old functionality added to the new site. The current one is very restricting in comparison, even in basic areas like functionality, navigation, etc. If there's some reason why any of these things have been cut back, like bandwidth, server load or whatever - I'd happily subscribe to use the old site over the new one. What I wouldn't ever consider subscribing for, is ease of use. If EQ2 Players ever had an "advanced" version, where it included such features as actually being able to see more than 5 people at a time on your guild roster - it'd not be something I'd want to pay extra for. Making life harder for everyone, as an incentive to pay extra, would be pretty low, and I sincerely hope this isn't the plan. I hope SOE continues to improve the functionality of the new site - as it looks fantastic, it's just lacking in some basic areas that made EQ2 Players a regular stop for me and many others throughout a playing session.

    Cheers for the new site SOE - but please don't take away what made it useful.

    EDITS: Additional stuff found, or pointed out, after this was initially posted:
    - It seems it's very difficult to tell whether a page is still loading or not. I'm going to guess it's due to the new design being very web 2.0 - and using some clever scripting. But if it's possible at all (I don't know, I'm not a web coder) - a clear indication of whether or not a page is still loading would be nice (spinny thing in the bottom right, maybe?).
    - Another concern I have - is that will this new script heavy / image heavy site work well with most players using the in game browser? The browser isn't great to begin with...
    - Not able to look up item discoveries.
    - Also, why isn't there a search bar on say, the guild profiles? Before you had it on the left for easy access, no matter which page you were on. Now it seems you have to go back to the home page or click "search" (new tab??) in order to do this... Wouldn't this increase the load on the site?
    - Crashing on use with the in game /browser.
  2. ARCHIVED-Malachani Guest

    ^^^^ WHAT HE SAID!!!! Every word.
  3. ARCHIVED-Xalmat Guest

    You can't even look up your own item discoveries anymore.
  4. ARCHIVED-0naoko0 Guest

    Xalmat wrote:
    Confirmed - added to list.
    Can't find the functionality to do this, either.
  5. ARCHIVED-zorkan Guest

    Maybe SOE should have had this tested with some actual players before putting it live. This is another horrible development of making things worse instead of better.
    Sure, it looks fancy, but who cares about that after 5 minutes? _Functionality_ is all that matters to such a page. Instead they just improved the marketing possibilities of the page.
    Newsflash: This page will not be used in its current form since basically most useful features have been taken away.
    Easy first start for improvement: Enhance the .csv and .xml guild files so people can use their own, functional site. Thank you!
  6. ARCHIVED-Kurindor_Mythecnea Guest

    I vote for a reversion unless the OP's issues are addressed.
  7. ARCHIVED-Qagmire Guest

    I can't say much eitehr way, as I'm still getting the "site under maintainence" message when I try to log on.
  8. ARCHIVED-Ldarax Guest

    Seems like spent AAs are off too, on my monks profile it say 496 points spent!
  9. ARCHIVED-Transen Guest

    My First Impressions:
    This is a very stable test run. I'm able to find relevant information about a players' gear, stats, skills, and AA's without having to load more than 1 page. It's taking time getting used to the new design but is very crisp if not entirely clean. Could use a little more uncluttering and polish.

    [Bugs]
    Skills
    • Skill bars out of order or missing. Crafting skills are under the Adventuring bar while Adventuring skills are under the Harvesting bar while Harvesting skills are under the General bar.
    Character Dev & AA
    • The AA's are showing incorrect Points Spent (in many cases, showing far more points spent than can be currently made).
    Persona and Stats
    • Damage Mitigation info missing Divine Resist. Parry Skill showing nothing.
    Web page Design
    • Horizontal bar at bottom of page blocking interactivity with the web page that's behind it beyond the visual location of the horizontal bar.
    • Search Bar on Profile page not searching. Instead it sends you to the home page.



    [Feedback]

    Persona and Stats
    • Fourth Bar needs to be added for Offensive/Healing Stats including critical damage/healing.
    • Need to add Critical Mitigation stats to Mitigation bar.

    • Spell/Combat/Melee Haste stats need to be added where relevant. Spell haste needs to be seperated between the different types (example: Beneficial, Detrimental, and so on) and effects that add haste to all spell types subsequently added to each Spell Type's total.
    For example, you have 10% haste from an item and 25% from a buff. 10% from spell haste, 30% from an item with Beneficial Alacrity, 11% from an item with Detrimental Alacrity, and 18% from an item with Subjugative Alacrity. The results on a glance of the profile should look something like this:
    Haste Effects
    Melee: 35%
    Beneficial: 40%
    Detrimental: 21%
    Subjugation: 28%


    Web page Design
    • Means of glancing at someone's alts is needed (not just your own).
    • Regular search bar needs server sub-option. Alphabetical listing based on names entered.
    • Profile page loads far too slowly and far too sloppily. Something akin to the streaming patchers' loading page screen needs to be added (aka: Loading Circle).
    • Remove Community News/Station-Cash tab from profile page. Don't need it there.
    • Huge 14-Day Free Trial Button on home page? If I'm signed in and I'm already subscribed to the game, I don't want to see an offer for the free trial. Other than that, I don't have a problem with it.
    • The link for uploading a new profile image needs to be turned into a vertically slender button below the equipment grid.
    • Additional Options page for altering the layout of the profile page needs to be added.


    ((Edited for Additions/Corrections))


  10. ARCHIVED-Aaisha Guest

    "Guild chat: The old guild chat had it's issues, but it was definitely useable. The new chat is only useable as a small popup in the bottom right hand of your screen. Having the option to "pop it out" to a new window would be awesome, or a link to a fully fledged chat would be even better. " Can't find it!!! Can someone please give me instructions on exactly what page I should be on?....I NEED MY GUILD CHAT!! lol
  11. ARCHIVED-leannel Guest

    Maybe I'm missing something. But what happened to the best in class leaderboard?
  12. ARCHIVED-Gaige Guest

    Ya not a fan of the EQ2players changes at all tbh.
  13. ARCHIVED-Kenban Guest

    Aaisha wrote:
    When your on one of your characters pages you should have a bar on the bottom of the screen which lists all your alts and the last button on it is to join guild chat.
  14. ARCHIVED-Aaisha Guest

    "When your on one of your characters pages you should have a bar on the bottom of the screen which lists all your alts and the last button on it is to join guild chat."
    THANK YOU!!!
  15. ARCHIVED-asdfasdf Guest

    Fisrt of all, the page width and length is out of the normal resolution range (1024*768 or 1280*1024) though maybe it's for wide screen but still wierd. I think it's easy to auto-resize depend on viewers resolution.
    And the scripting is bad, very slow loading and always stuck while Im clicking some pictures. The lightbox for pictures is alos suck too.
    Why can't you just design a simple and fast homepage? Which means it is easy to access the information pages for vet. players, but not too annoying to new players.
    Please have a look at WoW's website (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/), cool promotion at the first page, and then redirects to the normal-useful-handy-and-fast homepage.
    There is no excuse for this crap, it is easy to have an virtual testing site before it launchs.
  16. ARCHIVED-MoeSizlak Guest

    Agree with everything OP said.
    Additionally the tooltips when mousing over gear aren't right, they dont' show the item name or stats, just some of the effects on the item.
    Also, why can't we have our quest journals yet when accessing our character profiles? Hell, I'd just settle for a list of the open quests on my journal, it would be nice to get where you are in the quest, etc, but for starters I'd just settle for being able to see the title and zone of all the open quests in my journal.
    On the servers page, it just shows a total character count of the server, something like # of chars currently logged in, or even number of accounts logged in in the last 24 hours would be much more beneficial when trying to guage server population.
  17. ARCHIVED-SgtMurder Guest

    1. Bring Back Best in Class
    2. Find a way top remove or rework so those who achieved their "best" feats with exploits don't show up
    3. I do think it "looks" better
    4. ditto to what everyone else has already said
  18. ARCHIVED-Qanyena Guest

    I find the new EQ2players site something I won't check often. Although the look is good the speed of which it loads is total crap and this coming from a x4 machine with a 60 megabit connection. Even went to the office and loaded it on a full t3 and man talk about crawl.

    Also lots of the nice features are missing and of course we have tons of duplicate information. The welcome screen marketplace etc. I think the idea to change the site was nice but it misses the mark by far and SoE really needs to rethink it.
    Oh and logging in and selecting remember me on this computer is having no effect what so ever. IE 8 also won't load the upload page. I had to load firefox to upload my paperdoll image. Get script errors all over the place.
  19. ARCHIVED-Healani Guest

    When the site came up last night, I spent most of my time finding things I didn't like about it more than I liked. The only good thing I really had to say was that it looks great.
    My notes on what I don't like about it (I'm sure some of them have already been mentioned):
    • The Community News should be at the top of the home page not underneath the link for the current game update and Station Cash boxes.
    • The search bar sometimes would find what I was asking for if it was a character. The rest of the time it took me to the advanced search page without having any results from what I typed in the bar. This I believe is due to the fact that it just defaults to character searches. Though some of my searches for characters resulted in the same advanced search without any results.
    • I can understand the Free Trial at a prominent place on the home page when I'm not logged in, but once I'm logged in, it should disappear.
    • I like the Top 10 lists, but I would rather be able to chose which player and guild top 10 stat shows up when I'm logged in. Barring that, I'd rather just see a link to Best of the Best and Best guilds or maybe have it cycle through the lists, having a different one each day.
    • When I go to my profile page, I shouldn't be forced to scroll down through the community news links/Marketplace catalog box to actually get to my profile information. When I look at profiles of characters that are not mine, I don't have to scroll through this extra box to get to their information, I shouldn't have to do that with my own profile. This is one of the changes I really hate.

    • As a guild leader, I found the ability to see other players' alts very useful when someone was looking to join the guild.
    • The search bar on the profile page is worse off than the one on the home page, I've not once gotten it to do a successful search. It always takes me to the advance search with no results.
    • As the guild leader and founder, I am unable to adjust find a way to change the website URL listed on the guild overview.
    • The guild roster is a major disaster IMO. No column headers, undetermined sort order, only 5 members listed at a time, inability to sort guild members in different ways, and there are no links to members profile pages. This is ridiculous. It's one of the worst rosters I've ever seen for functionality.

    • What are all the numbers on the roster? It's hard to tell without labels, though I have managed to figure out what all the columns are except for the last one.
    • I was hoping to see the ability to see just your guild members rankings for the various stats that are used for the Best of the Best come back, but alas, with no way to even just sort the roster by name, class, level, etc. there is also no way to look at how your guild members rank via each other.

    • Leaderboards are missing Best in Class.
    • I would like to see the same rankings listed on our character profiles include all the ones that are on the Best of the Best and the same for the guild profile rankings. If we don't make the top 100 in one of the Leaderboard lists, we don't know where we are since they don't all appear on the individual character/guild profiles.
    Overall, I was disappointed in this change, other than it looking awesome, I found it harder to use the features that I spent most of my time using if the features were still on the site somewhere.
    Leaha Lifegiver
    Mistmoore Server
  20. ARCHIVED-Malachani Guest

    WTB revision to old site until you figure out what functionality is... how about doing some scripts to find out what features players use the most on it, and not eliminate those!