Idea: Don't force the redesign. Please. It sucks and is incredibly ugly, and I hate pointless change, especially when it is forced. | Royal Road

New Idea

Don't force the redesign. Please. It sucks and is incredibly ugly, and I hate pointless change, especially when it is forced.

TRUELIKEtheRIVER 16 days ago

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.

Open Redesign

22 comments

TRUELIKEtheRIVER 16 days ago

Seriously, if y'all aren't gonna respect an opt out ("remind me in 7 days but haha no you suck we're just gonna do it anyways") you're just going to send the site further down the rabbithole of suck so many other services have gone through.

TRUELIKEtheRIVER 16 days ago

Oh hey, how neat. More tracking links in the follow list! Gotta love that invasion of privacy, ha ha ha!

TRUELIKEtheRIVER 16 days ago

Seriously, you all are fucking with my Special Interest. Stop it. I don't want royal road to be another entry in the annals of the internet slop machines, we already have all these AI slop covers and ads. Seriously, if you have the time to write a novel, you can make an ad without AI in MS paint or whatever you use on macos/linux. That's a way to get me to actually click on your thing.

eta 13 days ago

My theory is they're pulling a windows 11. Optimize for tablets and everyone else can suffer or go away.

TRUELIKEtheRIVER 13 days ago Replying to

eta
My theory is they're pulling a windows 11. Optimize for tablets and everyone else can suffer or go away.

Yeah, that tracks.

Jorlem 13 days ago Replying to

eta
My theory is they're pulling a windows 11. Optimize for tablets and everyone else can suffer or go away.

I disagree, on the basis that I primarily read RR on my iPad and the new site design is just as bad there as it is on desktop. A lot of the UI changes feel reminiscent of a new website design being beta'd over on SpaceBattles. I'm betting that there are some cheap-to-hire web designer consultant firms that are pushing this sort of UI fad when they are brought in to help 'improve' a website, without having actually used it themselves or asking users how they use it.

Derv 12 days ago

I admit I don't care for the current design. But it works and as long as I can just go to a list of my currently-read stories and read a few chapters, I'll gladly skip all the features I don't use. However, these AI redesigns probably actively hurt the way I work and I really don't want to have to change if I can avoid it. So, yeah, PLEASE don't force an unwanted redesign.

frozenbybirth 12 days ago

The followed stories page takes so much space per story now, renders the v2 version very inefficient

Shratath 11 days ago

Yeah the redesign screams mobile. And its reminding me of Nexusmods who did sth similar and everybody hates that. Imo keep the redesign for mobile and mobile app, meanwhile the current one should just stay as the default dekstop version. Just keep an option for us if we want to change it :)

Reading Fox 9 days ago Replying to

eta
My theory is they're pulling a windows 11. Optimize for tablets and everyone else can suffer or go away.

I don't think so. It performs a lot worse on my kindle than the current version. Poorly enough that if it switches as is I will likely cancel premium and go read elsewhere.

Reading Fox 9 days ago Replying to

eta
My theory is they're pulling a windows 11. Optimize for tablets and everyone else can suffer or go away.

I don't think so. It performs a lot worse on my kindle than the current version. Poorly enough that if it switches as is I will likely cancel premium and go read elsewhere.

JohnGaltOU812 9 days ago

The new main screen font is harder to read and causes more eye strain on small screens. The layout leaves more blank space that could have been used to make the text more readable because the font choice is poor and the layout is not optimized for human eyes. The fact that I can tell the popup to go away for a week and it comes back the next day confirms that the update was created by somebody who is bad at this. Don't update this site with literal garbage.

livebackwards 8 days ago

I agree, especially the follow list looks super ugly with those blue lines everywhere.

thelordcypher 7 days ago

So true, I tried to switch and it sucked, I know updates are tough for users to get used to but honestly its just worse let people keep the old one if they want

Nigou 7 days ago

Agree, the site looks just fine now, and hurt my eyes with the new design, don't force me to change for no reasons please

Cha0t1cNeutra1 6 days ago

I tried the new design for 20 minutes and half of it was trying to find out how to get back to the old design. The follow list takes up too much room and the extra crap at the top of the chapter is useless. I do like that you added options for reading preferences, but it doesn't fix the fact that the bad overshadows the good.

Giorgi 5 days ago

Why risk changing a proven design that works so drastically?

blugail 5 days ago

It would be wise to separate the UI design from the backend update. Do whatever is needed to make the site easier to run, but copy the original UI as much as possible.

Redrover1760 2 days ago

Agreed

crystalcat 2 days ago Replying to

blugail
It would be wise to separate the UI design from the backend update. Do whatever is needed to make the site easier to run, but copy the original UI as much as possible.

Agreed

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