YOU HEREBY ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THE REWARDS PROGRAM DOES NOT GUARANTY THAT YOU WILL EARN ANY POINTS. CURSE MAKES NO REPRESENTATION, WARRANTY OR GUARANTY THAT YOU WILL RECEIVE ANY POINTS THROUGH YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THE REWARDS PROGRAM.
This perfectly illustrates the lack of clear explanation of the program Curse felt was important enough to put near the very top of the home page. Clear lack of follow through or critical thought on this one. Seriously, what's the point if nobody has any idea what they're even signing up for???
Good to see some changes going on but what about the design of the front page (or obvious lack thereof)... this was clearly thrown together without any care or consideration, when is this going to get fixed?
The headline text is literally a copy and pasted phrase from the Wikipedia article on Starcraft... at least put some thought into the MAIN HEADLINE of the site, this is just blatant laziness and sends the message to new visitors that this is a half-ass project. (To see where the text is plagiarized from, see: http://tinyurl.com/ht5wa2o )
The "For Authors" section is presented so poorly nobody who signs up for the "rewards program" will have any idea how to get points or how it functions. When you click to learn more it takes you to a wall of text ToS agreement, and even there it's so poorly explained that when I read over it twice I still didn't understand. How is this good marketing, or persuasive at all? It just makes the site look spammy, confusing and unprofessional.
No dynamic changing of the top linked map means 3-year-old Mass Recall will literally be there forever. Makes the site seem very stale. Why not give admins the power to choose what goes there, or present an evolving news reel up recent popular projects, like the way it used to be? (Instead the news section is pushed all the way to the bottom of the page, and still cut off for no apparent reason).
All in all it's pretty poor presentation, I highly recommend Curse gets someone who understands UI design or a professional web developer to help on this. Thanks for reading, fingers crossed some work gets done on this.
So for the 3rd time in a year Curse has silently and randomly given me a "Curse Premium" account. Not even sure what this does for me or why I should care. After a few weeks it disappears and I'm back to normal. This happening to anyone else?
Totally agree, the organization is poorly thought out and could be easily improved. I love the voting idea but keep in mind if it is even a mediocre amount of work Curse isn't likely to do it. Curse has proven to always go with the "this is easier/better for us" option instead of the "here's what our audience is telling us" option.
I think you'd be better off trying to recreate the effect from scratch with a simple trigger: unit dies (with behavior on) -> recreate unit at structure
So I have the Marine and Marine Copy. Whenever I try to change the name of one, it automatically changes the name to the other, so it will be Marine and Marine Copy or Joe and Joe Copy etc. Is there some weird setting somewhere doing this? I recall having this work fine before, but obviously something is different now...
I think we need to first address the glaring errors, rearrange the poorly designed home page and restore the features that were inexplicably removed before we start compiling a "wouldn't it be cool if" wish list.
It's very likely that only a select few changes/updates will be made from this point (how many YEARS did it take to get to this update?), so it's important that we prioritize the most important things and don't try to tell FlameGoat to do 100 small, unweighted preferential changes. If FlameGoat delivers some long laundry list to whatever developer is managing all these Curse sites, it's highly probably he'll just pick the easiest tweaks and fixes, do those, and then expect us to be happy for another 6 years.
So FlameGoat, before you lock this topic or whatever, let's make sure we have a clear vision of THE MOST IMPORTANT changes, things we all uniformly agree need to be changed (like the front page layout), and don't just tally long list of every user's recommendations.
Interesting I've never heard of a sc2 map developer outsourcing directly to other game companies, let alone vastly known ones. What kind of help are you potentially looking for from them? Modelers/animators I'm assuming? Or something else
Hi FlameGoat, thanks for the reply, I appreciate how much time you're taking out of your day to answer people. I think Curse sent the right person.
The design of the front page is good, it's clean, professional, and matches the other sites we have here (check wow.curseforge.com minecraft.curseforge.com wowace.com so on and so forth). Some of which have been up for quite a while now. So it wasn't rushed, nor is it a bad design - in fact, based on modern design practices it nails all of the most essential tasks and exceeds our quality standard here at Curse.
In terms of being mobile responsive and using lots of white space, yeah you could say the homepage is "modern" in its aesthetics... but that's not what I was talking about. The execution is pretty poor you have to admit... nobody really tested the site or proofread before launching... Come on man there are only 2 buttons above the fold and they both go to the same page.
And the Rewards Program debacle with the wall of text and unclear rules... Anyone who agrees to join it has a 0% chance of understanding what they just signed up for.
And the verbose and misleading headline of "Starcraft II" that looks like someone literally copy and pasted the first sentence out of the Starcraft II Wikipedia page for a headline...
And are we just going to have a permanent ad for Mass Recall above the fold instead of something dynamic or informative? The presence of the link itself basically ensures that another project will never oust it from its #1 spot, so it'll undoubtedly be there forever. Obviously this wasn't by design, whoever made the site just "put the most popular content on the site in this box" which was another oversight... It all boils down to lack of really caring or knowing about what the community wants... but now I'm a broken record.
So most importantly, if we all in unison agree that something fundamental has to change about the homepage, will it get done? Can we start some kind of petition or something? I only ask because I'm a huge fan of this community and what it produces...
Hey Mr Flamegoat it was nice of you to explain what add-ons were but we aren't asking for more information about the Curse promos, we're asking for changes to the front page. Thanks for answering but the front page feels very much like a cut-and-paste thrown together template. It's clear whoever made it was (a) in a rush, (b) doesn't have an eye for design, and (c) doesn't really understand who the mapster community is and why they come here.
These are the real issues that need to be addressed...
Hey FlameGoat, haven't seen you around personally but thanks for taking the time and creating this topic for feedback. I get that this site is just one piece of a much bigger puzzle but for a lot of us it's home. I like the new setup for the most part but here are the glaring problems:
1. White on white background. This is the brightest site I've ever seen. Can we at least make the margins light gray? This would be incredibly easy for the developer to implement. Even better, let us pick the color dynamically.
2. Guess my avatar is gone. Spent a good amount of time photoshopping it together. Is there any way to recover it? Would have been nice to have some warning so I could have saved it. I really liked that thing. Guess I'll use this robot chick now.
3. The front page showcases information in a, uhh, less than perfect manner. The big, main Call To Action is to get people to start a project. We should be showcasing maps and projects instead.
4. Also the default map segregation is "popular" (not recent) which is basically assuring that it will never change for the rest of the history of this site.
5. Why cut off the News section at the bottom? Why not just have it longer at the end, if its the last thing on the page anyway? It's tough to even read it. I think the news section should be higher (personal opinion) but the way it is now you can't tell what the projects even are. The old news section had picture and you could even integrate videos. This only gives us 2 cut off sentences. Definitely took a big step back here.
6. The order of information on the front page is all out of wack. When you come to a site, you should see the most important/most popular things first (ie, the news, then maybe trending maps/projects/assets, then forum discussion). The top section of the front page, the most important and visible chunk of content on the site, reads "Starcraft II: StarCraft II is a real-time strategy video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment." Ok, I'm pretty sure anyone coming to this site already knows that. This section looks like it was thrown together without much thought or design.
7. The second section on the front page is the "For Authors" thing that pushes the rewards program. But when you click it to learn more, it takes you to a wall of text user agreement that nobody will ever bother to read. In the 4th paragraph down it tell you how to actually earn "rewards": (1) submitting Add-Ons; (2) participating in testing new features or applications available through the Sites; (3) moderating Sites forums; or (4) engaging in other activities for which points may be earned.
Ok... what are "add-ons?" What does any of this mean in plain English? I get that you guys want to get more people involved in this program but it is advertised horrendously and with zero business acumen... plus it's taking up very valuable front page real estate.
-----
Overall I'm happy to see the site get a face lift and my complaints are only based on my first time reaction. But thanks for listening and I'm interested to see where we go from here.
0
0
Good to see some changes going on but what about the design of the front page (or obvious lack thereof)... this was clearly thrown together without any care or consideration, when is this going to get fixed?
All in all it's pretty poor presentation, I highly recommend Curse gets someone who understands UI design or a professional web developer to help on this. Thanks for reading, fingers crossed some work gets done on this.
0
So for the 3rd time in a year Curse has silently and randomly given me a "Curse Premium" account. Not even sure what this does for me or why I should care. After a few weeks it disappears and I'm back to normal. This happening to anyone else?
0
Well done can't wait to try it
0
Totally agree, the organization is poorly thought out and could be easily improved. I love the voting idea but keep in mind if it is even a mediocre amount of work Curse isn't likely to do it. Curse has proven to always go with the "this is easier/better for us" option instead of the "here's what our audience is telling us" option.
Regardless, hopefully this is addressed soon.
0
Thank god for this, the new color scheme is complete garbage. Still amazed at the low bar Curse has for web "design."
You're doing the lord's work, Alevice.
0
I think you'd be better off trying to recreate the effect from scratch with a simple trigger: unit dies (with behavior on) -> recreate unit at structure
0
Got it, thanks ImperialGood you solved a problem that's plagued me for years :)
0
So I have the Marine and Marine Copy. Whenever I try to change the name of one, it automatically changes the name to the other, so it will be Marine and Marine Copy or Joe and Joe Copy etc. Is there some weird setting somewhere doing this? I recall having this work fine before, but obviously something is different now...
0
I think we need to first address the glaring errors, rearrange the poorly designed home page and restore the features that were inexplicably removed before we start compiling a "wouldn't it be cool if" wish list.
It's very likely that only a select few changes/updates will be made from this point (how many YEARS did it take to get to this update?), so it's important that we prioritize the most important things and don't try to tell FlameGoat to do 100 small, unweighted preferential changes. If FlameGoat delivers some long laundry list to whatever developer is managing all these Curse sites, it's highly probably he'll just pick the easiest tweaks and fixes, do those, and then expect us to be happy for another 6 years.
So FlameGoat, before you lock this topic or whatever, let's make sure we have a clear vision of THE MOST IMPORTANT changes, things we all uniformly agree need to be changed (like the front page layout), and don't just tally long list of every user's recommendations.
0
Interesting I've never heard of a sc2 map developer outsourcing directly to other game companies, let alone vastly known ones. What kind of help are you potentially looking for from them? Modelers/animators I'm assuming? Or something else
0
Just out of curiosity, what sort of project would "require" donations
0
Hi FlameGoat, thanks for the reply, I appreciate how much time you're taking out of your day to answer people. I think Curse sent the right person.
In terms of being mobile responsive and using lots of white space, yeah you could say the homepage is "modern" in its aesthetics... but that's not what I was talking about. The execution is pretty poor you have to admit... nobody really tested the site or proofread before launching... Come on man there are only 2 buttons above the fold and they both go to the same page.
And the Rewards Program debacle with the wall of text and unclear rules... Anyone who agrees to join it has a 0% chance of understanding what they just signed up for.
And the verbose and misleading headline of "Starcraft II" that looks like someone literally copy and pasted the first sentence out of the Starcraft II Wikipedia page for a headline...
And are we just going to have a permanent ad for Mass Recall above the fold instead of something dynamic or informative? The presence of the link itself basically ensures that another project will never oust it from its #1 spot, so it'll undoubtedly be there forever. Obviously this wasn't by design, whoever made the site just "put the most popular content on the site in this box" which was another oversight... It all boils down to lack of really caring or knowing about what the community wants... but now I'm a broken record.
So most importantly, if we all in unison agree that something fundamental has to change about the homepage, will it get done? Can we start some kind of petition or something? I only ask because I'm a huge fan of this community and what it produces...
0
Hey Mr Flamegoat it was nice of you to explain what add-ons were but we aren't asking for more information about the Curse promos, we're asking for changes to the front page. Thanks for answering but the front page feels very much like a cut-and-paste thrown together template. It's clear whoever made it was (a) in a rush, (b) doesn't have an eye for design, and (c) doesn't really understand who the mapster community is and why they come here.
These are the real issues that need to be addressed...
0
Hey FlameGoat, haven't seen you around personally but thanks for taking the time and creating this topic for feedback. I get that this site is just one piece of a much bigger puzzle but for a lot of us it's home. I like the new setup for the most part but here are the glaring problems:
1. White on white background. This is the brightest site I've ever seen. Can we at least make the margins light gray? This would be incredibly easy for the developer to implement. Even better, let us pick the color dynamically.
2. Guess my avatar is gone. Spent a good amount of time photoshopping it together. Is there any way to recover it? Would have been nice to have some warning so I could have saved it. I really liked that thing. Guess I'll use this robot chick now.
3. The front page showcases information in a, uhh, less than perfect manner. The big, main Call To Action is to get people to start a project. We should be showcasing maps and projects instead.
4. Also the default map segregation is "popular" (not recent) which is basically assuring that it will never change for the rest of the history of this site.
5. Why cut off the News section at the bottom? Why not just have it longer at the end, if its the last thing on the page anyway? It's tough to even read it. I think the news section should be higher (personal opinion) but the way it is now you can't tell what the projects even are. The old news section had picture and you could even integrate videos. This only gives us 2 cut off sentences. Definitely took a big step back here.
6. The order of information on the front page is all out of wack. When you come to a site, you should see the most important/most popular things first (ie, the news, then maybe trending maps/projects/assets, then forum discussion). The top section of the front page, the most important and visible chunk of content on the site, reads "Starcraft II: StarCraft II is a real-time strategy video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment." Ok, I'm pretty sure anyone coming to this site already knows that. This section looks like it was thrown together without much thought or design.
7. The second section on the front page is the "For Authors" thing that pushes the rewards program. But when you click it to learn more, it takes you to a wall of text user agreement that nobody will ever bother to read. In the 4th paragraph down it tell you how to actually earn "rewards": (1) submitting Add-Ons; (2) participating in testing new features or applications available through the Sites; (3) moderating Sites forums; or (4) engaging in other activities for which points may be earned.
Ok... what are "add-ons?" What does any of this mean in plain English? I get that you guys want to get more people involved in this program but it is advertised horrendously and with zero business acumen... plus it's taking up very valuable front page real estate.
-----
Overall I'm happy to see the site get a face lift and my complaints are only based on my first time reaction. But thanks for listening and I'm interested to see where we go from here.