Feedback from completely new user - Page 3

Acenoid · May 10th, 2015, 03:37 PM

Compared to the beginning several things improved already a lot.

I'm sure you only find a few of your commonly used categories overloaded correct? Maybe spend 20 minutes to clean them out from the sections / snippets you do not want to see. Then the items are maybe more appealing to you.

Regarding the lag between the switching - after a certain update a while ago performance increased quite a bit. But I also try to make my topics not too long.
Maybe a few more topics but a little smaller will speed things up for you and provide you with more overview.

I'm sure there will be more UI updates & improvemnts coming.

Best regards

ShadowChemosh · May 10th, 2015, 04:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Acenoid

I'm sure you only find a few of your commonly used categories overloaded correct? Maybe spend 20 minutes to clean them out from the sections / snippets you do not want to see. Then the items are maybe more appealing to you.

I prefer to just enter the Snippets of info I need and then press "CTRL-SHIFT-`" and that does an auto-remove all sections/snippets without data entered. Really great feature that was added recently.

Just another way to accomplish the same thing. But I see it as a strength of RW...

MNBlockHead · May 10th, 2015, 05:21 PM

One design option that might be nice is an option to hide all empty fields in view mode. I know that you can remove empty snippets from a topic simple enough, and I can create my own topic template if I find that I'm always removing or adding a snippet type to a topic type, but often I don't have anything to enter now but may go and add something later. Having an option to only show empty snippets in edit mode and hide them in view mode might be a nice way to make things feel less cluttered.

That said, I feel that while interface improvements are always welcome, delivering on promised functionality has got to be first priority. The content market, journals, calendars, and ability to print are all far more critical to the RW's current and potential customers.

adzling · May 10th, 2015, 05:57 PM

It's confusing, inobvious, dense and ugly.

Entering content is relatively straightforward if tedious and too fragmented.

Using it during play to reveal things to players in a controlled and predictable way is very difficult when it shouldn't be. It should be dead easy and seamless.

The product has some great functionality and it's the best thing I've seen to date but the interface is gravely holding it back.

This is borne out by others I have talked to who have tried to use and given up.
Hardcore gaming geeks who live for PnP.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mystic Lemur

The interface is "bad" and you think they should make it "better." Do you have any specifics? What's not working? What's frustrating? LWD is not going to retain someone just to work on the interface, but the existing design team could certainly work on specific issues if they knew about them.

Dervish · May 10th, 2015, 10:57 PM

How is it confusing?

What makes it inobvious?

In what manner is it dense?

Ugly thats debatable as beauty is in the eye and all that... but i do know that making something look good and functional eats up a great deal of system resources so given the choice i will take functional but ugly every time.

I know you said in an earlier post you have used realmworks for about a month ballpark how much actual time have you spent working in realmworks as opposed to the period of time you have owned it ? Have you looked at any of the tutorial videos or pdf resources.....

ArgoForg · May 11th, 2015, 04:23 AM

I can see it being tedious for people who may only want to put a few bits and pieces in, or for whom backstory is not nearly as important as raw info for game-- stat blocks and such. I can also say that yes, I can see some-- not a lot, but noticeable-- lag when opening a new subject.

That tedium doesn't apply to me, personally, however. Using it for world detailing and creation, I actually appreciate all those blank spots-- they help me to think of areas I may not have already thought about for topics, or help me dredge up new ideas I hadn't considered. I am by no means a slave to the "fill every blank" mindset, but I do think having more of those filled than not actually helps enrich my campaign world. The players may not need to know NPC X's brother was killed and the murderer was never caught and that drives him. But I do.

I wouldn't call the GUI kludgy, myself, but I'm mostly comparing it to Access or Base (which is in effect what the software is), and some of the notetaking/wiki software I've tried to detail my campaign world. I haven't mucked around enough with Roll20 to know its capabilities (I don't really do a lot of VTT gaming), and RW is more specific to what I want, and light years better than everything I've tried short of maybe OneNote.

adzling · May 11th, 2015, 05:50 AM

The icons are mostly indecipherable, functionality is not consistently deployed and seems randomly located (I know it's not, it just seems that way to a beginner).

Have a look at any modern piece of software, this looks a piece of software from 1998.

I have used it to host two game sessions and spent about 15 hours on prep.
I have watched many of the videos on youtube except the insane 1 hour + convention videos.

The interface needs more work and by someone/ somepeople who know about this kind of stuff.

I think if you did a poll of new users you would find a lot of people saying the same thing, at least judging by what I have heard and the posters in this thread (ignoring the apologists).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dervish

How is it confusing?

What makes it inobvious?

In what manner is it dense?

Ugly thats debatable as beauty is in the eye and all that... but i do know that making something look good and functional eats up a great deal of system resources so given the choice i will take functional but ugly every time.

I know you said in an earlier post you have used realmworks for about a month ballpark how much actual time have you spent working in realmworks as opposed to the period of time you have owned it ? Have you looked at any of the tutorial videos or pdf resources.....

MaxSupernova · May 11th, 2015, 06:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adzling

The icons are mostly indecipherable, functionality is not consistently deployed and seems randomly located (I know it's not, it just seems that way to a beginner).

Have a look at any modern piece of software, this looks a piece of software from 1998.

I'd definitely support these statements.

After a while you just get used to it. Which really isn't high praise for an interface. "It sucks, but after a while you just get used to it! -- PC Magazine".

MNBlockHead · May 11th, 2015, 07:46 AM

I'm hoping that the Web version will eventually help with interface. Still, the current interface doesn't bother me. That said, I'm using it for world building and and an at-table reference. I've not used it to display anything at-game for my players.

As for the specific complaints:

"The icons are mostly indecipherable"
This one I really don't get. The icons in the ribbon interface are for the most part pretty self explanatory. If I was a new user and didn't have the icon labels, "Reveal History" may be confusing until I understood that the green ball is the reveal indicator. Also the lego brick doesn't make me think of "categories". But any piece of software I've used could be picked apart in this way, especially if used internationally—something in/obvious to you may be the opposite to someone else, especially if from another part of the world.

I think where most people would argue is the icons used for the topics and articles. For example, I don't like the monster or race/species icons because I'm only using RW for a DD5e medieval fantasy campaign and those icons make me think of science fiction. But I can change those icons. I don't know that RW could find an icon set that would make everyone happy. I could think of some cool improvements, like having a small icon for EACH monster to left of each monster article, but that would eat up screen real estate.

It might be nice if RW could support people offering "skins" or if content in the CM could also come with custom articles, topics, tags, and icons. But I'm not sure that is going to very important to most customers.

Functionality Not Consistently Deployed

I'm not sure what this refers to. Without specific examples, I don't know if I agree or not and am unsure what RW developers would do with this feedback. If you mean that the GM's and player versions have different functionality, that is by design.

Functionality Seems Randomly Located

Hmm. I have to put myself into the shoes of myself when I first used the program. Now that I'm so familiar with it, I don't find it hard to find what I want. But when I began to use it, yes, it took me a while to find what I needed. I didn't quite understand breaking up the world vs. story almanac vs. the mechanics reference and or how a topic was different than an article. Once I started using it, I appreciated keeping story topics and mechanics articles separate. After they updated the software to support custom views, I no longer has an issue with World vs. Story.

My only current complaint about where functionality is located is that I can't back up or sync while working in a realm. Having to back out of my realm to the realm list is inconvenient.

Where I DO agree that the interface needs improvement

I don't think that this has been mentioned in this thread yet, but there are a couple areas where I think the interface could really use improvement.

1. Remember last expanded/collapsed state of menu items

2. Easier to apply filters. Perhaps some kind of quick filter" functionality.
RW offers very powerful filters but it can feel cumbersome to quickly apply them. For example filtering on suffix or tag. If there were someway to show a pick list of all tags in a realm, all categories, or all suffixes, without overly cluttering the interface, that would be helpful. There are data-analysis and litigation-support products that do this nicely.

3. Allow for creation of more story almanacs.

All of the above, however, are "nice to haves someday."

I would much rather have the calendar functionality implemented. :-)

Parody · 12:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adzling

The icons are mostly indecipherable,

If you're talking about the ones used for Topics/Articles then I agree that they're pretty arbitrary. I'd like to be able to add icons, but it's a very low priority thing and likely to still be indecipherable to others.

Quote:

Originally Posted by adzling

functionality is not consistently deployed and seems randomly located (I know it's not, it just seems that way to a beginner).

Yeah, there's things I don't like here either; they're a big post waiting to happen.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MNBlockHead

3. Allow for creation of more story almanacs.

Well, I've got an "I'm watching a Christmas episode of a comedy show in the background while writing this post." miracle for you!

Add Topic.png

(Unless you meant making more than they allow already.)