welian
#BlackLivesMatter
You are all under arrest for violation of good taste. 
News 5.0 - Style Update
- Thread starter The Dark Wizard
- Start date
- Status
Mobius
Three Thousand Club
Best staff response ever.welian said:You are all under arrest for violation of good taste.
Lonely Star
Dead for Years
I just opened the site on mobile... I LOVE it! It is absolutely perfect on my tablet. But again, not a fan of it on desktop.
Quiet Is Violent
Eight Thousand Club
I'm back once more to negate what I said earlier: I love the white. It just took a little for my eyes to adjust. Plus, now I look all cool using this site at school cuz it looks sleek as f**k. The layout as a whole seems more open and less boxy, which is great because it gives moose more room to roam! Ya that's all I'll probably just keep posting here until I fully adjust.
Macaberz
That's just like your opinion man
Ya'll just need to install F.lux if the white is too bright for yer eyes 
Mystik
Sith
I really dislike this. I personally never found the loading times too much of a burden and if I must be frank - this theme makes the community seem unprofessional. The old one was polished, new, and set us apart from other roleplay forums..
**the link is only to show how similar this is to other sites, not to promote, demote, etc**
**the link is only to show how similar this is to other sites, not to promote, demote, etc**
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Pariah Stark
The Sad Reality
On mobile, the site looks more "native"; as if it was built with that in mind. Everything functions smoothly, runs faster and the mechanics seem to flow a bit more naturally for a mobile site - a great step into portability. It looks a lot better and it feels a lot better in my hand. I've also felt the dreaded boredom of the loading screen on my phone; the several seconds it took just to switch to my Alerts or PM's from the main screen. I can absolutely understand wanting to address that as a problem.
But, for the desktop site, I can only agree with many of the complaints I've seen here. There is so much less personality to it. My first impression of this site when I first saw it was, "you can see the effort that went into this" because, well, it felt like you could see the changes, additions and even removal of content over time. It felt unique and and the lighter colors made for a pleasant view, although I myself prefer dark colors with high contrast most often in a tinted hue of green or blue to give it a dark, cool feel. Nevertheless, the former style wasn't upsetting. The former style had flair. It had appearance. Admittedly, I thought it was fairly simplistic, too, considering I've been around to plenty of roleplaying sites that have been bloated with additions and plug-ins trying to add some odd functionality if only to appease a small crowd on the site. I never felt while on the Desktop that it was a mess; the layout was fine, whether I was on my 15in laptop screen or 32in PC monitor.
This new style looks basic. This new style looks like it was the first generated content for a forumotion free forum and it just stuck. The bland fonts, the dull nature of the color scheme, the sharp, square edges that give it the very conformed feel. It feels bland. I look at the screen and there's no homely sense. It lost a certain appeal that made it seem unique. There are also several things that I notice that actually make me feel like this new style is more constrained than the old one. For instance, instead of having a completely open backdrop, it's actually a contained unit with colored background - likely for loading purposes. Either way, it makes the site feel smaller. The biggest example I can give for this is that prior to this, I could see the Online Staff Now, Members Online Now and a handful of New Profile Posts on the old style while on this style I don't even get the full Members. At first glance, this style already took some information from me. Sure, a nice load time is faster, but now I have to scroll down to get to information I might have found interesting beforehand - which wastes time all the same. Additional things I dislike: there are no subheaders that differential the Staff members, and prior we used icons. Not to mention, I know this spacing inconsistency exists because now I have to go back and fix several of my posts to update their spacing to this new style.
But, more than anything, I have to agree with @The Creator Prime when he said it felt like things just became an authoritarian regime. Everything is streamlined, everything is square, everything is dull, everything conforms, everything is sharp, crisp and there is absolutely none of the jovial feel or spark that came with the old site. The top navigation bar before this one was shorter and felt more lively while this one feels like its just a strip with a uniformly matching font ran along the top. The fonts for our names, our titles, the buttons, the navigation, the forums, the subforums, etc. all feel exactly the same even if they aren't and that lack of diversity makes the site feel more bland and in extension of it feeling more bland what little thematic presence that you can experience from it is so sharp and conforming that as soon as I read the words "authoritarian regime" it immediately clicked and I thought, "well, he's not wrong."
Some more slight complaints: text for alerts, Recent Activity and Postings all seems smaller and it runs together more with a lack of clear definition which the old style had. I haven't been playing with the site terribly long, but on desktop, it just has no flair. Oh, I can't do that thing where I float over the navigation bar, for things such as bookmarks, then just click the one I want to go to. That's an annoying loss considering I liked the function. Oh, another addition to this list: tabs for roleplays now don't even "pop" - they suffer the same dull, drab appearance as the navigation bar.
Overall, I feel like this became a mobile site put on desktop. Sure, it has some functionality boosts, but this style is nowhere near as appealing as the old one in my opinion. I feel as if a sacrifice was made for the desktop site so that the mobile site would become more usable. That is the exact impression this style update has left on me: that the desktop site was allowed to take a hit so that the mobile functionality and the bandwidth ate up by the older style could be addressed.
And, now to go fix the plethora of spacing issues the style update has caused my BBCoding.
But, for the desktop site, I can only agree with many of the complaints I've seen here. There is so much less personality to it. My first impression of this site when I first saw it was, "you can see the effort that went into this" because, well, it felt like you could see the changes, additions and even removal of content over time. It felt unique and and the lighter colors made for a pleasant view, although I myself prefer dark colors with high contrast most often in a tinted hue of green or blue to give it a dark, cool feel. Nevertheless, the former style wasn't upsetting. The former style had flair. It had appearance. Admittedly, I thought it was fairly simplistic, too, considering I've been around to plenty of roleplaying sites that have been bloated with additions and plug-ins trying to add some odd functionality if only to appease a small crowd on the site. I never felt while on the Desktop that it was a mess; the layout was fine, whether I was on my 15in laptop screen or 32in PC monitor.
This new style looks basic. This new style looks like it was the first generated content for a forumotion free forum and it just stuck. The bland fonts, the dull nature of the color scheme, the sharp, square edges that give it the very conformed feel. It feels bland. I look at the screen and there's no homely sense. It lost a certain appeal that made it seem unique. There are also several things that I notice that actually make me feel like this new style is more constrained than the old one. For instance, instead of having a completely open backdrop, it's actually a contained unit with colored background - likely for loading purposes. Either way, it makes the site feel smaller. The biggest example I can give for this is that prior to this, I could see the Online Staff Now, Members Online Now and a handful of New Profile Posts on the old style while on this style I don't even get the full Members. At first glance, this style already took some information from me. Sure, a nice load time is faster, but now I have to scroll down to get to information I might have found interesting beforehand - which wastes time all the same. Additional things I dislike: there are no subheaders that differential the Staff members, and prior we used icons. Not to mention, I know this spacing inconsistency exists because now I have to go back and fix several of my posts to update their spacing to this new style.
But, more than anything, I have to agree with @The Creator Prime when he said it felt like things just became an authoritarian regime. Everything is streamlined, everything is square, everything is dull, everything conforms, everything is sharp, crisp and there is absolutely none of the jovial feel or spark that came with the old site. The top navigation bar before this one was shorter and felt more lively while this one feels like its just a strip with a uniformly matching font ran along the top. The fonts for our names, our titles, the buttons, the navigation, the forums, the subforums, etc. all feel exactly the same even if they aren't and that lack of diversity makes the site feel more bland and in extension of it feeling more bland what little thematic presence that you can experience from it is so sharp and conforming that as soon as I read the words "authoritarian regime" it immediately clicked and I thought, "well, he's not wrong."
Some more slight complaints: text for alerts, Recent Activity and Postings all seems smaller and it runs together more with a lack of clear definition which the old style had. I haven't been playing with the site terribly long, but on desktop, it just has no flair. Oh, I can't do that thing where I float over the navigation bar, for things such as bookmarks, then just click the one I want to go to. That's an annoying loss considering I liked the function. Oh, another addition to this list: tabs for roleplays now don't even "pop" - they suffer the same dull, drab appearance as the navigation bar.
Overall, I feel like this became a mobile site put on desktop. Sure, it has some functionality boosts, but this style is nowhere near as appealing as the old one in my opinion. I feel as if a sacrifice was made for the desktop site so that the mobile site would become more usable. That is the exact impression this style update has left on me: that the desktop site was allowed to take a hit so that the mobile functionality and the bandwidth ate up by the older style could be addressed.
And, now to go fix the plethora of spacing issues the style update has caused my BBCoding.
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The Doorman
I leave, but i always return.
If RPN was a defined term, this theme would be it's denotation.
A roleplay site.
The previous theme was it's connotation.
A warm and inviting artistic roleplay community.
(Probs got those terms switched up but y'all gonna get it.)
I'll know it as inviting, but I can't say the same for newcomers.
But it does work well with my phone.
That fact, I cannot argue.
A roleplay site.
The previous theme was it's connotation.
A warm and inviting artistic roleplay community.
(Probs got those terms switched up but y'all gonna get it.)
I'll know it as inviting, but I can't say the same for newcomers.
But it does work well with my phone.
That fact, I cannot argue.
Orikanyo
Do you hear it? The screams of Gacha salt?
Honest opinion, rather the simple style where you don't have to dig for the interest check, but thats my two cents. The layout otherwise seems fine.
Pariah Stark
The Sad Reality
You know what? I can sum up my thoughts on this in a whole lot more concise way than my prior rant.
In the style update, we lost the banner and slogan for the sake of "using space better", but what it feels like now is that we've transitioned from a Nation of Creation to a dark blue regime of conformity.
But, I'm not going to be that guy that "just complains" - no, you asked so politely for people to give alternatives or ideas.
Well, at the very least, put the slogan back on there in a smaller font. It may seem irrelevant, it may seem frivolous, but the icons such as the crest that each one of us saw every time we typed in "rpnation.com" and that slogan many of us have read when we first started on the site are some of the biggest impressions on us. Icons, slogans, etc. - they are symbols that help bind a community together one way or another, even if it's just a silly little addition to a banner. It wouldn't hurt functionality, you could probably find a way to make it look good and match the height restriction the rest of the banner has and if you use it to extend the home URL you would likely even help solve the issue a few mobile users are having in that they can't easily click on the banner for navigation.
Or, if you were willing to just slightly increase the size to give us a smaller version of the old crest and slogan. It's not much, but it's something; it's something from the old style and it would work two-fold in helping make the button more easy-to-click on mobile and the few of us that preferred the older style something to cling to. It's not a request to rollback to the old style, but it is a suggestion that might help out the transition.
In the style update, we lost the banner and slogan for the sake of "using space better", but what it feels like now is that we've transitioned from a Nation of Creation to a dark blue regime of conformity.
But, I'm not going to be that guy that "just complains" - no, you asked so politely for people to give alternatives or ideas.
Well, at the very least, put the slogan back on there in a smaller font. It may seem irrelevant, it may seem frivolous, but the icons such as the crest that each one of us saw every time we typed in "rpnation.com" and that slogan many of us have read when we first started on the site are some of the biggest impressions on us. Icons, slogans, etc. - they are symbols that help bind a community together one way or another, even if it's just a silly little addition to a banner. It wouldn't hurt functionality, you could probably find a way to make it look good and match the height restriction the rest of the banner has and if you use it to extend the home URL you would likely even help solve the issue a few mobile users are having in that they can't easily click on the banner for navigation.
Or, if you were willing to just slightly increase the size to give us a smaller version of the old crest and slogan. It's not much, but it's something; it's something from the old style and it would work two-fold in helping make the button more easy-to-click on mobile and the few of us that preferred the older style something to cling to. It's not a request to rollback to the old style, but it is a suggestion that might help out the transition.
Pariah Stark
The Sad Reality
I'm pretty sure that was fixed before the style change. I watched CJ make a ton of the spotholders for the Interest Checks and place them, I do believe.Orikanyo said:
Mitheral
"Growf!"
Ve haf vays to make you post! Post or you will be "site"-ed.
Oh, oh ... here's an idea. We could get a censor to scan posts and put lines through bad words. (Leave them readable, of course.) This is not a serious idea. Just poking fun at the suggestion of the police car concept.
However, the text boxes need to be boxed. They are boxes after all. can't have people thinking outside the box.
Oh, oh ... here's an idea. We could get a censor to scan posts and put lines through bad words. (Leave them readable, of course.) This is not a serious idea. Just poking fun at the suggestion of the police car concept.
However, the text boxes need to be boxed. They are boxes after all. can't have people thinking outside the box.
welian
#BlackLivesMatter
@Pariah Stark
I hear your complaints about the current site banner. I'll do what I can, but I'm going into finals so you're just going to have to sit tight for several days. I will find a way to bring back the crest while conserving vertical space, and I will find a way to make it eye-catching, clean, crisp, and fit with the site's new sleek and professional personality.
But I plan to pass this semester first.
I hear your complaints about the current site banner. I'll do what I can, but I'm going into finals so you're just going to have to sit tight for several days. I will find a way to bring back the crest while conserving vertical space, and I will find a way to make it eye-catching, clean, crisp, and fit with the site's new sleek and professional personality.
But I plan to pass this semester first.
InfiniteChaos
Oblivioux
I think having the name is a little unnecessary. IS there anything that could be done to make loading times more quicker, I sometimes have a very slow computer being on this site.
Pariah Stark
The Sad Reality
Why do you want to give a recreational roleplay site a sleek and professional personality? With utmost respect, that seems slightly counter-intuitive.welian said:
The Doorman
I leave, but i always return.
[QUOTE="Pariah Stark]Why do you want to give a recreational roleplay site a sleek and professional personality? With utmost respect, that seems slightly counter-intuitive.
[/QUOTE]
Agreed.
I, for one, am a big goofy art-lovin' dork, and I belong a cubicle as much as this site belongs in a professional environment, LOLOL.
[/QUOTE]
Agreed.
I, for one, am a big goofy art-lovin' dork, and I belong a cubicle as much as this site belongs in a professional environment, LOLOL.
Elle Joyner
Fracturer of Fairytales
Yeah... not really understand all these "it's so professional" comments. It's... a roleplaying site. It's legitimately not supposed to be professional 0_o At all.
Mobius
Three Thousand Club
Maybe that's what's really throwing me off...It doesn't look as fun and happy as it used to.It looks all stiff and,well...professional xD .Can't we go back to the more fun past version? I miss the light colors,the simple design,and the big shark logo at the top xD .
I miss the light colors,the simple design,and the big shark logo at the top xD .
Pariah Stark
The Sad Reality
@Mobius Whoa bro, we were already told not to just blindly request to go back to the previous version. These guys worked plenty hard on this, and it does merit a few benefits. Do I think it's worth it? No, but that's irrelevant because it's not my decision as to if it stays. They asked for comments and constructive criticism.
welian
#BlackLivesMatter
Users, aka you guys, are the source of our quirky fun. A professional and minimal layout takes the focus off of RPN's personality and puts it on yours. DeviantART and Tumblr also have dark and arguably severe site styles, but are hotbeds of creativity. That's because they're designed to put the content first and allow easy consumption of it.
Now, we've chosen our course for the next part of the site's future, and we are going full steam ahead. We will be tweaking the boat along the away - trial and error, after all, it's not like we have an entire professional design and marketing team at our disposal - and you are welcome to sail with us, or wait for the next boat.
This discussion is now over. Take your suggestions and critique to the Site Information and Questions subforum where they belong, as this thread needs to stay on topic. I will be happy to read and respond to them there.
Now, we've chosen our course for the next part of the site's future, and we are going full steam ahead. We will be tweaking the boat along the away - trial and error, after all, it's not like we have an entire professional design and marketing team at our disposal - and you are welcome to sail with us, or wait for the next boat.
This discussion is now over. Take your suggestions and critique to the Site Information and Questions subforum where they belong, as this thread needs to stay on topic. I will be happy to read and respond to them there.
Elle Joyner
Fracturer of Fairytales
Oh, that's my bad. I thought this was where we were supposed to leave feedback *Sheepish*
Athens
Lore Hoarder
Not trying to be rude or anything, but he said that if we saw anything that needed to be fixed or had any feedback in general that we wanted to put out, that we could comment it here.
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Mobius
Three Thousand Club
[QUOTE="Elle Joyner]Oh, that's my bad. I thought this was where we were supposed to leave feedback *Sheepish*
[/QUOTE]
Agree...if it wasn't for the fun I have with my RPing buddies on here,I'd be leaving.The staff have just been so...I don't know lately.Sorry for giving my opinions which is what I thought this thread was for.
[/QUOTE]
Agree...if it wasn't for the fun I have with my RPing buddies on here,I'd be leaving.The staff have just been so...I don't know lately.Sorry for giving my opinions which is what I thought this thread was for.
asriel dreemurr135
Rp Lover
i opened rpn and it was like bam new layout
Athens
Lore Hoarder
I have nothing against the new design, but it will take some getting used to seeing as I'm strictly a desktop user and everything feels so empty and serious-like.
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