This redesign is the ugliest gahdamn thing I have ever seen, and if I am forced into this I'm gonna have to figure out a way to read my fictions without this enshittified hot mess, maybe some sort of RSS? IDK. I find most of my stories I read here from the ads and if y'all keep going down this path I'm just going to turn ublock back on out of sheer spite. It's laggy, butt ugly, and just painful to look at. I know I'm probably farting into the wind here because some greety tool with an MBA decided to revamp the site to make number go up, but I'm putting this here anyways. It sucks so much.

The new design is not great on the eyes.

Less is more. Your current design is very low friction and mostly clutter-free. This new design is... not that. If you need to change things under the hood to make things work, fine. But you cannot expect me to believe that you needed to change the UI look and feel to accommodate that. If you feel the need for change, err of the side of less UI elements and animations and colors and... not more.

Loading any page takes maybe twice as long as the previous "legacy" design (tested on multiple chapter pages, multiple story pages, front page, Popular, Rising Stars). Scrolling any page is "sticky", with a noticeable delay before the page follows the motion (tested on same pages as above). Testing platform: Windows 10 x64, 48Gb RAM, Firefox 140.11

It's incredibly ugly and generic. Why are you trying to make the site look more like Webnovel, or any of those novel pirate sites? Feels like you're removing the soul the site. I've gone and read a few chapters of a story I like while using your new UI, and I genuinely hate it. For some reason, the font is brighter, harsher, and sharper, and hurts the eyes to look at. The background is also darker, which contrasts with the text, increasing eye strain, even when using other themes. I don't know, it just seems poorly designed and implemented, and in need of a lot of work, despite the fact that you seem ready to push it as the default, and only option, fairly soon. Don't ban me for my opinion.

They say the old system is out of date and broken, then update what needs to be updated, there is nothing wrong with the UI. Making things worse just so it looks "sleek and modern and yadda yadda" is a terrible decision.

Auto hiding my menu whenever the mouse loses focus is extremely annoying and jarring. Furthermore, you have replaced all of the text-based labels that I rely on with pictograms. Having to try and scroll over every single icon Brute Force to figure out which one is the correct one, takes way more time than simply reading.

As title says. I like this design, I do not like "modern" designs. Please let me just keep using this one?

I tried the beta when it first came out, it was slower and less functional than the current design. Now I receive random pop-ups for the beta when I am just trying to read. I already pay you guys for ad free, not cool sneaking in other random pop-us. For actual feedback on the beta it is very difficult to read with it on my kindle because it still shows the main site in the background. Get rid of the useless frame and just open the story. The new menus look like they are trying to mirror the phone app, but they are much slower, and at least with the Kindle native resolution don't show enough information to be useful. All the space is taken up by title snapshots and blank space so I can only see two books on screen per bar at a time. Any chance you can make a redesign option that mimics the current design if you have to switch framwork?

Hi, I would like to suggest a change to how status tags work on Royal Road. Currently, the **Stub** status/tag seems to override the normal story progress status tags, such as **Ongoing**, **Completed**, **Hiatus**, or **Inactive**. This makes it harder to tell what the actual state of a fiction is. For example, a story can be both **Stubbed** and **Completed**, or **Stubbed** and **Hiatus**, or **Stubbed** and **Ongoing**. These are not mutually exclusive statuses. “Stubbed” tells us about the availability of chapters, while “Ongoing/Completed/Hiatus/Inactive” tells us about the progress or update state of the story. Because of the current overlap, readers often have to manually check the summary, chapter list, or external links to figure out whether a stubbed fiction is actually finished, abandoned, on hiatus, or still ongoing. That is inconvenient, especially when browsing/searching through many stories. My suggestion would be to separate the tags into three categories: 1. **Story Type** * Original * Fanfiction 2. **Progress Status** * Ongoing * Completed * Hiatus * Inactive 3. **Availability Status** * Stubbed * Unstubbed This way, a fiction could clearly show something like: * Original / Completed / Stubbed * Fanfiction / Hiatus / Unstubbed * Original / Ongoing / Stubbed This would make browsing, searching, and filtering much clearer. Readers would not have to guess whether a stubbed fiction is also completed, ongoing, inactive, or on hiatus. The Stub tag is useful, but it should not replace the actual progress status of the story. Thanks in advance.

TLDR: One button for readers to say ‘Thanks for the chapter’ could make a huge difference in keeping authors motivated. ~~~~~~ Write-up: Making TFTC a button or a quick way to "like" the chapters would do so much for author support. Almost every app has a version of this function. Major writing platforms similar to RoyalRoad have them: Tapas, Scribblehub, Wattpad, Webnovel (through monthly votes). Even Inkitt has a version of it. Yet, RR only has the comment and rating system. Why is this important? Let’s look at the statistics. While exact conversion may vary by platform, these ratios are conservative estimates based on observed trends across multiple writing and content platforms. View-count is the 100% baseline for who is reading an author’s story. The conversion from views to likes is typically around ~ 1% - 5%. Views to comments are around ~ 0.1 - 1%.* When I was doing my research, I picked out 5 different stories using the RoyalRoad Advanced search bar. All of these stories were very meta. They had about 600 followers, Ongoing, hovered around a 4.5-star rating, and were all litrpg-based. Most would agree that these stories were doing decently well despite being below a 1k threshold. Yet something that these stories all had in common was that they all had >=3 average comments on their five most recent chapters. Many of them even averaged around 0. For these examples, I estimated expected likes using a conservative ratio model: Likes ≈ Average views × 1% – 5%. The first story: Total Views: 58,770 Average Views: 852 Followers: 615 It has less than 3 regular comments on most recent chapters and 0 on the one that was posted around 2 days ago. By the views:likes ratio model, this story should be averaging ~ 9 to 43 likes every chapter release. The second story: Total Views: 123,371 Average Views: 1,435 Followers: 618 It has less than 2 regular comments on its five most recent chapters. By the views:likes ratio model, this story should be averaging ~ 15 to 72 likes every chapter release. All of the other stories were in the same boat. But, this last story I checked is a bit of an outlier in my original sample size. I decided to go up a hundred followers and see if the amount of commenters would drastically change for that author. This story has an overall score of 4.72/5 with 91 ratings. It had perfect style, story, grammar, and character scores (even after removing review swaps). So, overall it was pretty impressive. I looked at its relevant stats: Total Views: 148,955 Average Views: 1,992 Followers: 744 Despite all of its accolades, this story only has an average of 4 regular comments on its five most recent chapters. By the ratio model, this story should be averaging ~ 20 to 100 likes every chapter release. When I looked at stories under 600 followers, results could be even more dismal. Life happens to consistent commenters. They can miss chapters, lose interest, or fall out of sync… and the result can be multiple chapters with little to no comments. Well-followed authors can experience long stretches with almost no engagement and without visible support, even these consistent authors can feel discouraged. Especially when bots scrape stories and inflate view counts, it can make it impossible to tell how many people are really reading. Authors are human, not machines, and each silent post can feel like shouting into the void. For anyone under 600 followers this is already their reality. If that author with a silent majority asks their audience whether they want the story to continue and then gets crickets, it can make a lot of strong, promising writers decide that it’s time to give up. For anyone in the chasm between 0–700 followers, trying to write consistently turns into a torturous venture. There are countless posts on the royalroad subreddit of authors in this range trying to find the magic panacea that will help them start seeing some kind of engagement on their novel. And when commenters can be as low as 0.1%, the silence can be like a slow poison. Even a small number of likes shows proof that real readers are present which can bring immense relief and make the process for authors feel worthwhile. Readers can actively acknowledge a chapter with a simple click without putting pressure on the silent majority to comment. It’s a win-win for readers and authors. I floated this idea around on the subreddit about three-ish months ago, and the support for the idea was incredibly positive. https://www.reddit.com/r/royalroad/comments/1olub5t/anyone_else_want_a_like_button_for_chapters/ I didn’t put in a ticket because the idea was previously reviewed by the site around three years ago, and at that time the site noted that authors had differing opinions on whether they wanted the feature. But, from the conversations I’ve seen, and the positive responses in the community, it’s clear now that support is strong. I believe now is the perfect time to bring this feature back into consideration. ~~~~ Sources: https://scriptorium.kimbooyork.net/p/the-1-of-readers? *Write-up on how AO3 readers engage with a story https://www.shortimize.com/blog/what-is-a-good-view-rate-for-tiktok / https://www.swydo.com/blog/tiktok-metrics-organic/#:~:text=A%20good%20TikTok%20comment%20rate,lower%20than%20overall%20engagement%20rates. *On Instagram Reels & Youtube Shorts content, a “good” views to likes ratio typically hover around 5%. Comments can be >1%. https://forums.tapas.io/t/tapas-engagement-what-s-the-real-percentage-of-likes-and-comments/91151/2 *On Tapas, authors report averaging even higher likes. 5% to 13% of their viewcounts. *All of these numbers are further confirmed by doing math on and visible view, like, and comment count.

I find the new UI to be horrible! The Screens are so busy it distracts from the content. It is painful for me to use and it hurts my eyes. I have tried multiple times to use it, and I can't stand it. I tried but I beg you to reconsider.

After swapping over to the redesign the novel chapters gain significant bloat/slowdowns to them. There is a delay when loading, delay when scrolling which makes the text choppy, as well as general sluggishness to the site which does not mesh with a modernized design. Please take a look at modern coding practices to prioritize user experiences or allow a minimal user friendly design like the existing/old one to remain in place. Change for the sake of change when it provides only negatives for the users moment to moment experience is not great.

What happens if they choose to go the way of Webnovel? This company is Not Your Friend. It is, as a whole, amoral. You cannot trust a corporation to not fuck things up for the sake of potential future profits. They're dipping their toes into the enshittification swamp, and it will make all of our experiences worse. If they're going to force this change for the worse upon us, it shows a fundamental lack of respect for the users, and more importantly, *they will do it or something similarly unpopular again, and again, and again.*. If any of you fine authors read this, and if you don't like it, you should use what influence you have to make sure your voice is heard, spread it around.

You guys broke SO MANY design patterns with this new design. Why did they incorporate SO much AI on the redesign? It got horrible on mobile, it looks polluted, also the writer's info is only 100% align on the mobile version, while on the web it is completely desaligned. r/royalroad - Why AI on the redesign? r/royalroad - on web on web For bigger screens, the index part got AWAY too big for something with only 2 rows. There is NO distinction between where the reviews begin and where the description ends. The graphics distribution is completed desnecessary, and the blue color is such a basic thing, the old golden one is AWAY better. Light mode is looking AWAY better than dark mode r/royalroad - the chart violate data-ink ratio (https://medium.com/@vaniv7397/data-ink-ratio-fcad209ef425) the chart violate data-ink ratio (https://medium.com/@vaniv7397/data-ink-ratio-fcad209ef425) I think the problem is that you guys are just reverting the background on the modes but forgetting that the blue and black is not as complementary, because they lose contrast. There needs to be adjustments in the colors when dealing with dark mode. My opinion is that in dark mode, the numbers on the first row should be white, the primary title on the second row (RATING, RATING DISTRIBUTION) should ALSO be white. The subtitle on the first row should be a greyish blue. Also, the background, instead of black, should be dark blueish grey. The icons in the dark mode should be of a color 4fc3f7. Also, in my experience, DeepSeek creates a more organic and prettier ui/ux code than Claude. Allowing the number of elements to be 20 does not work all that well on mobile, and by taking away the color difference between the release date and the chapter name, it gives the idea that the scroll is too long. r/royalroad - Why AI on the redesign? This is breaking many design patters. r/royalroad - Progressive Disclosure Failure Progressive Disclosure Failure https://www.nngroup.com/articles/progressive-disclosure/ Following the logic implemented by putting the mouse on the like button, when putting the mouse on the red button, the color change should be the last one (the one that appears when clicking on dislike) instead of the first one. This break component contract. The new beta redesign problems are just an example of what happens when you simply implement AI designs without further testing or control. Im sure that AI allows for shipping the changes much faster; however, it also causes generic pattern overuse, and constant design pattern flaws. Im not judging the use of AI, im a fullstack i know perfectly well how well it assists us. HOWEVER you guys NEED to review their generated code, not just aply it. My reddit post with the images https://www.reddit.com/r/royalroad/comments/1uhbsz0/comment/ou6qzd1/?screen_view_count=2

I have tried the redesign I didn’t like it. But you keep on having the pop up to try it again and again. Is there any way to stop it from popping up permanently instead of the remind me in a week option.

I’d like to propose an addition to the site’s discovery system that complements Rising Stars rather than replaces it. Right now, Rising Stars does an excellent job highlighting momentum—stories that are gaining attention quickly over a short window. That’s valuable. But it leaves a gap for stories that grow steadily, convert well, and hold reader interest over time. There’s a meaningful difference between: - A story that spikes quickly - A story that sustains and proves itself under extended reader exposure Both are worth surfacing—but they represent different kinds of success. --- ### Proposal: Introduce Three “Proven Growth” Categories These would highlight stories that demonstrate durability, not just initial velocity: 1. 3-Month Proven Growth Stories that have shown consistent follower growth, strong view-to-follow conversion, and retention over a 90-day window. 2. 6-Month Proven Growth Stories that have sustained that performance over a longer period, indicating stable reader interest and continued discovery. 3. 12-Month Proven Growth Stories that have demonstrated long-term value and ongoing engagement well beyond initial launch cycles. --- ### How It Would Work - These lists would be based on: - Follower growth over time (not just spikes) - View-to-follow conversion efficiency - Sustained performance after initial exposure - Similar to Rising Stars: - Stories can enter and exit these lists - Rankings would decay over time, ensuring the lists stay dynamic - No permanent placement—continued performance is required --- ### Why This Matters Right now, the most visible list on the site (Rising Stars) is often interpreted by readers as a recommendation of quality, when it is actually a measure of momentum. That disconnect can lead to: - Reader frustration when expectations don’t match experience - Strong, steady-performing stories being overlooked - Discovery skewed toward short-term spikes rather than long-term value Adding “Proven Growth” categories would: - Give readers a clearer signal of tested, sustained quality - Reward stories that perform well under real, extended readership - Balance discovery between what’s hot now and what holds up over time --- ### Final Thought This isn’t about changing Rising Stars—it serves an important purpose. This is about completing the picture: - Rising Stars → “What’s trending right now” - Proven Growth → “What has proven to be worth your time” Both signals matter. Right now, only one is highly visible. Adding the second would improve discovery, reader trust, and long-term ecosystem health. --- Would love to hear thoughts from both readers and authors on this.

I have tried the redesign I didn’t like it. But you keep on having the pop up to try it again and again. Is there any way to stop it from popping up permanently instead of the remind me in a week option.

Table of contents on the fiction page should not be both scrollable and paginated - its inconvenient to navigate this way. Pick only one. Personally I prefer old design's paginated TOC

I recently discovered something about Royal Road's author controls that I think creates a bad incentive structure. I was reading a story, got a few chapters in, and decided it wasn't for me. I left a detailed comment explaining why. It wasn't a review or a rating, it didn't affect the story's stats, just feedback. A week or so later I discovered the comment had been deleted and I had been blocked by the author. At first I was annoyed because I'd actually spent some time writing that feedback. But after thinking about it, I became more concerned about what it really meant, and the systemic problem it revealed to me. Royal Road doesn't allow authors to freely remove negative reviews and ratings, which makes sense. If they could, ratings would become meaningless. However, authors can block users before those users leave a review. In practice, that means an author can remove criticism from their comments section and simultaneously prevent the critic from ever leaving a review or rating. Win win, right? That creates a perverse incentive. If an author sees a thoughtful but critical comment, there is a real incentive and reason to block and prevent any future review. Afterall, anything below 5* will just drag down your average. The result is that comment sections become increasingly positive, not necessarily because readers have no criticisms, but because readers with criticisms disappear. The effect on readers is equally bad. My takeaway from this experience was not "leave a better comment." It was "don't leave a comment at all." If criticism in the comments can get you blocked from reviewing, then the rational choice is to skip comments entirely and go straight to reviews and ratings. Ironically, that pushes feedback into the most public and consequential place available. Instead of receiving constructive criticism in comments, where it's primarily seen by the author and existing readers, authors receive criticism in reviews, where potential new readers will see it before they even start the story. Feedback that might have addressed a specific issue in chapter 150 can end up motivating a critical public review instead. And the reader may not even be able to fully explain their critique, after all, reviews that contain spoilers can be removed. The result is that feedback becomes both more visible and less useful. I can even imagine some readers may skip reviews altogether and go straight to a rating, simply because it can't be deleted as easily if they accidentally spoiler something. I don't think that's healthy for either side. If Royal Road wants reviews to remain independent, authors should not be able to prevent someone from reviewing or rating simply by blocking them. Authors should absolutely be able to moderate their own comment sections. But they should not be able to decide who is and is not allowed to participate in the review system. The current setup encourages silence, resentment, and pre-emptive escalation. A system that encourages discussion should not make readers feel that leaving feedback is risky, or authors feel like they must silence every critic just to keep up. (copy pasted from the forums, where someone told me this was the place to put it.)

I occasionally stalk my user retention page to see if anybody is currently reading. I keep my progress set to chapter one. Well, I thought I saw a different number than had been on chapter two, so I went to check if anybody was reading at the time. Nobody was there, but when I went back to my user retention page, the number had changed. I got excited thinking someone was reading it now, but realized it was because of my own progress changing. I feel that, especially for smaller authors, the fact that we're registered as a reader can throw off our metrics. Thank you for your consideration.

There isn't an actual list of the authors we've chosen to follow. There's one for the stories, but when we click "Follow" on a person's profile page, there isn't a list for those. It seems reasonable that there's a single page for managing these kinds of subscriptions? Something like, "Here are all the authors you've chosen to follow," with a link to the author's bio. The current setup only alerts me if the author releases a new fiction. What about for when I miss that notification or I want to see if they're still active? Or I completely forget who I'm following because they haven't posted in ages and I want to update my list?

it's too cramped horizontally. the old font is better.

A history of shown adds so that if you saw a add, accidentally refreshed the page, pressed new chapter or if you simply want to look at all the different ads, you can go to your add history and find a previous ad

I have several issues with the new design. I will put them down here, even if you do not listen to it all, please go through and see if you think any of it seems like a legitimate issue. -The Reading history, Follow Updates and Recommended for You, take up way too much space on the top of the home screen. They are huge in size and are would honestly be more useful if they were smaller and look better. I know you can minimize them away entirely, but I like the recommended being around without taking up half a screen of space. -THE Story Homepage: In old version The title, the tags and the image were its own separate thing with a really nice Dark Grey Color breaking up the monotony and separating out the parts further, with ALL the buttons shoved to the side. Below that then separately were other details that you would want. NOW, all the buttons, the title and tags, the warnings, reviews, Authors Details, the story image and Achievements are all shoved together making the whole thing look so cluttered. All with the same blue everywhere. The only thing I liked was being able to see the rating. -The Synopsis when you open lists like Rising Stars or Top Ongoing barely contain 2-3 lines and are essentially useless, only taking up space as you WILL have to press read more. Those lines are not even enough to hook you in. Only the title, tags and rating are important to that. Trust me, and look at Rising Stars and you will realize how useless it is. -Not everything needs to be a floating widget thing with transparent background disconnected from all other parts of the page. Having a consistent and continuous page is much easier on the eyes, readability and quality of appearance. The closest I have come is making it 100% opaque but then there is not much distinction between background dark color and the dark of the color in front. Grey is the only one it works well with. -Color Schemes, Please do not make all clickable text like the Titles Blue, most of the buttons, lines are all blue. It all looks samey and less distinctive. Again Grey is the only one with Yellow titles. Allow the same Dark theme coloration as the Old dark theme. There are obvious differences between the current dark theme Black and the Older Dark theme black which I feel is easier on the eyes. Regardless, allowing users to have both will be very good. The blue line that appears after each fiction in the list to separate it, looks awful, but I have no actionable thing to say about it. -The new Font is waaay worse than the old default. At the very least add Default (Legacy) Option as I do not remember the font names. Overall: I am sorry, but to me the new look is so generic like I opened and random website made from the same old ass template. It can be good if effort is put into it, but right now it ain't it. AT THE VERY LEAST LOOK FURTHER INTO COLOR THEORY for the site.

The new UI has a blue line below each fiction's box, this severely messes with the intuitive "blue line is chapter" that was there before. Removing that line and changing the colour of the author name would concetrate the blueness of the chapter list column on chapters only.

It would help finding stories that people remember reading but can't remember the name of. Currently, while it is possible to search for them in history manually (by checking every title you've read over a certain period, then checking the description and tags), it takes time and much of it because you can't just search for certain tags in it. It could help greatly with the "forgot the title" forum.

The new redesign doesn’t interact well with any accessibility aid I’ve tried it with. This is a medium inconvenience for me, however I can see it being a larger problem for blind or near-blind users.

It is absolutely dog shit awful on mobile (which is what I primarily use to read RR) I almost fucking cried from how terrible it is to use and then actually cried from relief as I barely managed to find out how to change It back

Ratings without reviews can be unhelpful to authors. Please add the following information to the analytics->ratings interface when hovering over a rating: •Date: When a rating was left. •Time Since Starting: The number of days passed between first opening chapter 1 and leaving the rating. •Last chapter read: To tell us if the person continued after leaving the rating. Because ratings get lumped together, you'd want to add it to the "ratings by chapter" section and demarcate each individual rating. So, a hover-over might say: 3-star rating on Chapter 5 25/6/2025 22:13 UTC Time since starting 1.34 days. Last Chapter Read 6. Other information that might be helpful: •Total chapters opened: Many skipped chapters could be suspicious. •The Median* total time spent on each chapter, including all time between clicking on a chapter, and opening any other page on Royal Road. •Average (Mean) rating for this reader: Lets us know if the reader liked the story. For some readers 4-stars is bad, for others, it’s great. •Mobile/Web •Used TTS I’d only suggest adding the more detailed information if the author clicks on a specific rating, which would then bring it up. Basically, we want to know as much as possible about each rating, without having any way to single out or identify a reader. [*We use median time because a user could open a chapter, read it, and then close their browser. It could be days until they login to Royal Road again. That long gap would skew the results.] So, why do we want this? Here’s 3 different 3.5-Star reviews that tell very different stories: RATING A 3.5-star rating on Chapter 5 25/6/2025 22:13 UTC Time since starting 1.34 days. Last Chapter Read: 5 Total chapters opened: 5 Median time per chapter: 0.25 hours Average Rating for this reader: 4 Stars Read on Web and Mobile TTS used In rating A, the reader gave it a chance, got to chapter 5 and decided not to continue. As a writer, we start to think that chapter 5 may have an issue in it. RATING B 3.5-star rating on Chapter 17 25/6/2025 22:13 UTC Time since starting 5.34 days. Last Chapter Read: 19 Total chapters opened: 19 Median time per chapter: 0.27 hours Average Rating for this reader: 2.5 Stars Read on Web In rating B, 3.5 stars is a good review, above average for the reader and they are continuing with the story. While we may not like the rating, there’s not really a problem with our book. RATING C 3.5-star rating on Chapter 20 25/6/2025 22:13 UTC Time since starting 0.005 days. Last Chapter Read: 20 Total chapters opened: 20 Median time per chapter: 0.003 hours Average Rating for this reader: 1.5 Stars Read on Web In rating C, we see the telltale signs of manipulation. The reader opened chapter 1, quickly clicked through to chapter 20, and left a rating. This is one we should report to moderation, so they can take a closer look and make the final determination.

I do not like the new design, I would prefer the old one. Is there an option to remain on the original design of the site? the new one looks bad.

I get that the backend framework for the site is out of date, and has issues with new browsers and such, but that's no reason to need to change the front end UI. The new UI just makes the site look more generic, while also making the actual text of the stories harder to read. (The old default font was easier on the eyes to read, in letter shape, spacing/kerning, and color, plus the whole thing with the margins.) Instead, why not just recreate the original UI on top of the new backend framework? Even if it isn't perfectly identical, and I don't expect it could be, it would still feel like the same website we are used to.

I notice that some stories, especially first stories, tend to have consistent improvement as the story continues. I do not it is fair to such users that there might be a number of negative reviews for their early chapters but also a number of very positive reviews for later chapters, or I suppose many positive reviews for early chapters and many negative reviews for later chapters, for folks that lose momentum, but I'd like to focus on the positives. I believe that overall rating should weight review scores closer to the current chapter logarithmically compared to reviews in early ones, so that reviews about the first few chapters have almost no weight, reviews from the early-middle have moderate weight, and middle-present are considered much closer together as quality and content stabilize. Alternatively, maybe reviews should get 'stale' after awhile with more chronologically reviews weighing more; I also notice an umber of stories abandoned in favor of a rewrite instead of fixing the old one, because the old one has the poor rating attached to it.

Disclaimer: I am autistic. I am being blunt to attempt to convey all the information cleanly. None of this is an attack. I understand that you *have* to switch (eventually) due to the old framework being end of life. I appreciate that you are intending to delay till you're happy with it (not that most people read notices but that isn't mentioned in the popup when people get to try it out). That being said, I'm going to try to leave a few pieces of concrete feedback about what looks bad/... The context is that I love royal road because (legacy) is highly optimized for *reading* and consuming content. While it DOES have the ability to leave comments/discuss/... you have to choose to engage with that (rather than sites that try to FORCE you to do that and intentionally interrupt your reading and don't care if you have a good reading experience). Things that were better in the legacy: A chapter page: 1. Old had "Search Title" (in words plus symbols). The new one moved it all the way to the very top, and it says "Control+K" as text rather than Search. As if the keyboard shortcut is more important than the fact that that is where you search. I'm a fan of keyboard shortcuts, but I literally had trouble *finding* the search and I thought it had been removed. Please put "Search" in words rather than the keyboard shortcut inside there. Also the "advanced" search is bright and blue next to "Control+K" and only with pictographs rather than text. The bright blue highlighting is confusing and draws more attention than it needs. Also the pictograph is confusing cause it doesn't seem to make sense. whereas 2 magnifying glasses, or maybe a microscope would make it clear you're looking more closely (if you can't use text.. I PREFER text). 2. Reading Preferences: Old had "Close" in text as the button near the bottom and an "X" at the top. New has an "X" at the top and lost the "Close" button. I always used "Close" and its harder to see/notice (yes people figure it out but it's more friction) [Luckily pressing "Escape" works for both of them] 3. Story Title/Chapter Title/Author... Old has ... [Story Title / by Author [stars] / Chapter Title] which is nice and clean. It's optimized for reading. New is: Chapter title first (confusing), then Story Title (weird to go in that order) [Stars]. Then the Author.. it doesn't say *by* the author, it's *implied*. And the author section... has achievements, levels, avatar, etc... tons of things that (this is bad) make it look like a social media site/webnovel/distract you from reading/take you out of reading. The "follow" button is fine (new/not in old). The info itself isn't bad, but that it's always there. You have hover-overs.. putting all that extra info in a hover pop-up would be much better. The reordering of Chapter Title before Story is confusing. The story is what you're reading, the chapter title is a sub-piece. I liked "By authorname" and it's very nice and clean, non-distruptive and it's already a link (and you can make things show up on hover if you care. 4. Fiction Page/Donate/Report Chapter; Donate button is missing on new version (or it's sufficiently hard to find/maybe a symbol?). You also made Fiction Page/Report chapter ALL CAPS. NOTHING should ever be all caps unless it's a warning/emphasis (case in point in this sentence). Studies have shown that making things all caps makes it harder to read and take longer to read. The different shape of the letters genuinely helps people to read things quicker/less effort. 5. Previous/Next buttons. Old had "<< Previous Chapter" and "Next Chapter >>" The new is ALL CAPS which is annoying and harder to read. (Genuinely studies show that making things all caps makes it harder to read). The switching of the arrows from << to <- is minor. You made the rectangles rounded (which imo doesn't improve things), I liked the hard sharp rectangles. 6. More "all caps" that is really bad: You made chapter titles be all caps. The author literally chose a chapter title and you overrode it to be all caps. That's egregious. Not only does it make it harder to read, but imagine an author has a title like "cOrRuPt" << that would be lost entirely because you changed what the author chose. *NOTHING* should be all caps unless it's a warning/emphasis, e.g. "WARNING: This will permanently delete your account. Are you sure? Yes/No" (and then only a limited amount should be all caps) 7. Everything just blends in in the new version. For example the search bar is barely differentiated from the background. I *like* the grey rectangle/section around author/title/chapter/fiction page/donate/report/cover image. You went "minimalist" too far. I *like* that it's not just a tiny border around things. Yes you've reclaimed some real estate but I don't think it's valuable. I like the tiny gray border *around* the chapter contents. 8. Everything is rounded. I don't like rounding everything. Sharp corners are minimalist. I'm guessing you're trying to be more like apps because everyone is doing it/you think it's modern. While I hate this, it's not that bad and I could live with it if forced. I would be unhappy about it though. This isn't a place where rounding is providing value. In the old thing, the only thing that's rounded is "Reader Preferences" which is a little weird (would rather that become a sharp rectangle than make everything rounded). 9. At the end of chapter... the old version had, e.g. [SUPPORT "TITLE"] (old version had ALL CAPS here, and that is BAD), and then Paypal, Patreon, Prev Chapter, Fiction Index, Next Chapter, RSS button. Aside from the all caps (should be fixed) of the support/title... that was good and nice and clean. The NEW version: first off says [A SUPPORT "TITLE"] Yes it has "A" in there for no reason. ALSO in all caps and that should be undone. Then the patreon link is HUGE and looks like an advertisement. It doesn't match the rest of the theme and takes you out of it. It's intrusive. ALSO the paypal link is missing when the person doesn't use paypal. IMO it's much easier to have a standard UI and grey it out/cross out (like the old setup) rather than removing the button entirely when it's not applicable. Alternatively to put them in the same place/same size and just remove the button (but don't MOVE the other ones) when they're not relevant. Paypal button ALSO looks like an ad, with a weird color that takes you out of it. 10. Going to a chapter and pressing "End" (as in keyboard) used to go to the very *start* of the comments. This is cause comments weren't pre-loaded I guess. This was a nice (accidental?) feature. If I wanted to get to the bottom of a chapter, I can press End and I'm right there (or maybe page up once). The New version goes to the end of the comments, presumably cause it's pre-loading everythign. That means I have to keep pressing up/page up/... to find end of chapter. I'm assuming preloading comments also is slower. If you want to keep this, please add a new button up top to go to end of chapter. 11. Your "prev chap/next chap" buttons moved from the border (prev was all the way left, next was all the way right) to being squished. It feels less useful/annoying and thus it moves/isn't always in the same place depending on how many items you need to put in. 12. Comments sections: You are *implying* replies/threads rather than making them explicit. The *explicit* reply information (e.g. seeing lines showing what is part of something is helpful. With the old lines youc ould mouse over something and easily find the parent or grand parent, ... e.g. which ever you wanted just watch that line and scroll up till you find it. With the current one having different colors for depth; A: MAY NOT work properly for colorblind people unless you took that into account with color choices/I don't know the right colors but just pointing that out and B: you can't tell what's a parent/grandparent/... and again it distracts from the actual reading. 13. Comments section buttons: Reply/Rep/Edit/... are all the way on the left now. Disrupting the reading. it USED to be all the way on the right, e.g. if you didn't want to interact you could easily read comments. It's easy to find the buttons but they're out of the way unless you need/want them. Now they're in your face and you have to manually skip them. Same for "1 day ago" (when the comment was sent). That moved from all the way to the right to all the way to the left. This one is less obviously bad, it MAY be a good chance, as that IS something you sometimes want to know (and if you see it you may change how you respond). 14. In comments section, name of person who commented and WHEN they commented (e.g. "1 day ago"). The old had the name in blue (highlighted) and the "when commented" was very subdued, gray, ... it's clearly not the IMPORTANT info so that's the right choice. The new system made everyone's name white/subdued and the "WHEN" bright and in your face. This again counters.. the WHEN is not the important info and should fade into the background/be dim to make it clear that's not the important info to be able to gloss over it easily. Improvement: When you mouse over "1 day ago" it gives you the actual date and time. THANK YOU. That's a good improvement. 15. Comments avatars... somehow you made the avatars non-trivially smaller on the screen and (possibly due to the reduced size) the "pro" crown under the avatar has an uncomfortable amount of empty space between the avatar and the crown. On the older version the spacing made sense. 16. About the author section at the bottom. The old one was NICE AND CLEAN. Very cool. *that* is where achievements/etc all belong AFTER the chapter, not before. Also that was a very clean way of doing it. That is now missing in the new version. Pretty much everything I've given imply general principles that the new design frequently violates, all of which make it harder to read/interrupt the reading process/...

Currently, in order to review a work on this site, it is necessary to also leave a star rating. I would like the ability to leave ratings without needing to also assign a star score, either because I don't believe I read enough of a work to give an honest evaluation, or because I wish to leave a more middling review without a desire to harm an author's rating / ranking placement.

Simple Explanation: All ratings would be given equal weight to move a story’s score. So, if a story’s current score is 4.9, and a reader rates(bombs) it with a 0.5-star rating this will only lower the score the same as a rating of 3.9 would… By contrast, if a story currently has a score of 1.5, and the user rates it as 5-stars, it will only rise the score as much as a 2.5-star rating would. More Details: There are a few problems with this, namely the use of “currently rated.” We need all scores to be deterministic, regardless of time. So instead of “currently rated” we need a base score, one that is different from the mean average. At first using the median seems like a good idea. 1,1,[5],5,5 -> base score (median) 5 1,1,[1],5,5 -> base score 1 Problem: It’s a bit “twitchy” one rating is all that separates a 1 from a 5. What we’re really trying to determine is the most likely score an unbiased reviewer would give. The score most likely to be in the middle if someone else rated it. So, let’s take something between the mean and the median, and use the mean-average of the middle 50% of scores (rounded up.) 1,1,5,5,5 -> mean of (1,5,5) = 3.67 base score [mean of all ratings is 3.4] 1,1,1,5,5 -> mean of (1,1,5) = 2.33 base score [mean of all ratings is 2.6] 1,1,5,5,5,5 -> mean of (1,5,5,5) = 4 base score [mean of all ratings is 3.67] [Observation: You could just use the middle 50% of ratings for the final score, but the bombers have a legitimate opinion, they’re just unfairly expressing it.] Now that we have our base-score we simply clip the values of the ratings to [BaseScore] ± [fair review range]. For the sake of argument, let’s make the fair review range 1. So, in the case of the ratings being: 1,1,5,5,5; we set the ratings range to 3.67 ± 1 Which results in adjusted ratings of 2.67, 2.67, 4.67, 4.67, 4.67 for a final score of 3.87 And in the case of the ratings being: 1,1,1,5,5; we set the range to 2.33 ± 1 Which results in adjusted ratings of 1.33, 1.33, 1.33, 3.33, 3.33 for a final score of 2.13 This is kind of interesting, but let’s look at the impact of this in a more realistic situation. Let’s start with a story with 9 x 5-star ratings. A perfect score of 5. Bomb it with one 0.5-star rating and, under the old system the score would be reduced to 4.55 The bomber has had great success and bombs again with another 0.5-star rating. This takes the story’s score all the way down to 4.18 “Hooray!” says the bomber, “I made a difference, and will continue to do this because I am the most important person ever, and no one else matters!” Now, lets see what happens in the bomb-proof system: The ratings are: 5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,1 so the base score is 5 and the ratings range is between 4 and 5. So, after one bomb, the story’s score becomes 4.9, and after 2 bombs, it becomes 4.81 The bomber still has a voice, their opinion still matters, but it no longer overrides everyone else’s. But what happens when we slap this system in with a bunch of preexisting ratings in a preexisting “best rated” chart, won’t it cause major disruption? Well, if you don’t want this, you could always widen the clipping range depending on how many reviews a story has. (A range of ± 4.5 is the same as the old system) I’d suggest: • Up to 20 ratings: The clipping range is ± 1 • At 100 ratings: The clipping range is ± 1.5 • At 200 ratings: The clipping range is ± 2 • At 500+ rantings: The clipping range is ± 2.5 Let’s linearly interpolate this, so at 60 ratings, the range would be halfway between 1 and 1.5 = 1.25 Another Caveat: Since reviews tend to be more accurate than ratings, someone put some thought into it and signed their username to it. I’d propose to giving reviews twice the amount of clipping range. So… now we have a system that makes single review bombs a lot less impactful, values reviews above ratings, and doesn’t affect the top 100 “best rated” leaderboard (very much). I strongly suggest first doing this as an optional mode where users may switch between the two methods (keeping the old one default), so that it could be looked at and scrutinized by the community before being adopted.

IMO A second big chance for exposure after Rising Stars is missing on Royal Road. If you don't hit it big on RS it's a long slog to higher followers. Yes, there is Trending (which appears close to random), but it's not anywhere near as much exposure as you get with Rising Stars. The reason main RS is so valuable is because it's linked on the home page, Trending is not. Possible solution. More lists which are shown on the home page. No point having a new list if it isn't on the home page. We know a lot of readers won't start a fiction until X amount of words has been posted. Perhaps a "100,000 Words" or "363 Pages" list could reward those who don't give up when they fail to gain followers. No rankings involved, just a straight forward these fiction recently hit 100K words (like the Updates list). The fiction is pushed down as new fictions break through 100K words. This would give every story which breaks above 100K words a chance of exposure. Like with Rsing Stars and Trending, could include genres as well. I've no idea how many new fictions hit 100K words a month, so the exact number of words could be adjusted so a fiction isn't on too long. There are around 12,000 fictions with over 100K words (364 pages) right now. That around 10% of all fictions on Royal Road. So overtime this could benefit a lot of dedicated authors and might encourage more to keep writing when they've missed main Rising Stars.

I wanted to share some feedback on the redesign. I understand that part of the motivation may be that the older site’s underlying infrastructure needed to be updated, and I can see why that work would be necessary. What I’m less sure about is why the technical rebuild had to be paired with such a large visual change at the same time. The redesign is quite significant visually, and I think that can make it feel jarring even if the new design is not bad in itself. In my experience, large visual changes are often easier for users to adjust to when they happen gradually, or when the familiar structure and visual identity are preserved while the technical foundation is improved. Sites like eBay and Amazon seem to have taken that kind of slower evolutionary approach over time. I don’t dislike the redesign in the abstract, and I can see that a lot of work went into it. But as a user, my honest reaction is that it feels harder to immediately like because the change is so large. That may partly come from familiarity with the old design, but user familiarity and habit are still important parts of the overall experience.

new UI SUCKS. stop spaming me with popups. i dont want it

Can you please add to the search option tags, hiatus, inactive, and stub? This is needed to exclude unwanted stories. Thanks!

New default font is harder on the eyes than the old one - I'm aware the original default font may be in the options somewhere, but I've been unable to find it, and having to search through all the options just to make looking at text on screen feel as nice isn't ideal. Also, I'm not personally a fan of the bright blue boundaries between novels and the like now. I preferred the old grey boundary lines - they were easier on the eyes, and I'd prefer to keep the amount of strong colour limited to the important stuff personally; having so much blue everywhere doesn't feel great. Additionally there's now a larger gap between novels for some reason? Instead of one boundary line there are two, with a gap between them. I don't really see the point

Tried Beta could not read the story or select my preferences without the strory scrolling in back ground. Site is fine the way it is

I'll just say it straight, I dunno if this new UI is any good. And perhaps more importantly, I don't think it's at all needed. Visually it's ok, nothing that jumps out as awful, imo, but it'll take some getting used to. What I'm not gonna get used to is how abysmally slow this new UI is compared to the old version. Most things were close enough to instantly loading for me on mobile with a good connection (basically all sub one second). The new UI has me counting seconds staring at nothing as it sluggishly loads up. Hope it can get fixed, but I just don't see the need to push a UI V2 when the existing one is perfectly functional and actually quite nice imo.

Each and every time that I look for a new story (nowadays at least) I already followed half of them while I didn’t really liked the others, which is okay for the later half but I still want some recommendation.

I do not like the new design I'd like to keep things as they are.

It's bad. I can sort of see what you are going for, but it's not a functional improvement. Just sitting on this page, I can hear that Firefox has ramped up to at least double the CPU to keep up with whatever the site is demanding. Typing is even pausing repeatedly. There are no settings to get rid of Dark mode, I've checked in the user profile, as well as in the settings. Dark mode is very hard on my eyes, as it is for many other people. Various pages have a floating title bar -that's abusive to those people with small screens, such as my 12" laptop. It can take up to one fifth of the screen permanently. (Or possibly desktop view on a tablet) I can see a "We don't have the resources to maintain two" blah blah reply from a while back. Please, be honest, and say "We want it this way, and we really don't care if you don't like it. You'll learn to live with it." You could run two separate server services, one with the old site, one with the new, as long as they share the same database calls. If you were completely rewring the back-end database at the same time, maybe. Still, having it be a cpu hog and force dark mode? That's not good planning. This isn't a modern user interface. This is just a changed user interface because someone was tired of looking at the old one. That's a valid reason to change, but I strongly recommend backing down on some of the resource intensive changes. Especially whatever makes it so that typing locks up in the middle of each sentence. So, to list actual suggestions: Disable active effects that require extra CPU on user machines. Remove floating 'chase' headers Allow backgrounds to be removed Allow light mode (don't force a single mode) Run the old site in a separate directory structure. "oldsite.royalroad.com" Actually try using the site in older hardware, rather than whatever high end systems you used for development. Related, try at least five different web browsers. (Safari, Firefox, Opera, Edge, Chrome)

We already have two reading emotes, but no writing emote. I think we should have one of those too.

Have all stories with unread chapters sort first (by date of post), as an option