BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
Administration and Moderation => BattleTech News => Catalyst Asks You! => Topic started by: Paul on 27 October 2011, 17:44:01
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Randall mentioned in his blog that we'd like to get your input on the kinds of things the website needs in your eyes. Be it brand new things, or something you remember from before you want back, fire away!
Paul
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Initial thoughts -
New Clean Layout, no more "classic" - Very Cool.
Large dorky text declaring "THE BOARD GAME" - Very uncool.
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Not feeling "The Board Game" either, I would rather see "Battletech: A Game of Armored Combat" instead.
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I like the general look of the new main page, but I'm seconding the cheesiness of "THE BOARD GAME". Bad, bad!
Also, this is probably a display setting on my end, but for me the forums are teensy-weensy. Tiny, tiny text. When I + the screen 3 times it becomes readable, but then when I go back to the main page the screen is 3x larger.
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Looks essentialy the same except a new URL and a slightly diffrent font? Beyond that it doesn't look like much really changed.
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The pull down menus are hard to read if they overlay text. The opacity needs to be raised.
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To be honest, I miss the forum having a skin that screams BattleTech. Back when the forum got hacked in January and had to be nuked from orbit and rebuilt, one of the forum guys said the plain-vanilla skin would be temporary, and it's still around, 9+ months later. Conversely, the Shadowrun forum started out rather plain and now has the whole SR and JackPoint logos and looks more Shadowrun-y than it ever did before. This forum doesn't have to be anything fancy, though. Heck, I'd be okay with even the BT logo. But I do miss the old, unmistakably BT look of the pre-nuking forums.
Also, I agree about the whole "The Board Game" bit, which I noticed shows at the top of the forum. BT did start out as a board game, but it's become so much more beyond that, and I'd hate for new people who get directed here based on a different avenue—such as ClickyTech or the MW games—and feel like they're in the wrong place.
The new main site design looks good, though. And I've been wondering for a good while when "Classic" was going to disappear from the site, considering how long it's been since it vanished from the books.
Also, any particular reason the URL is "bg.battlecorps.com"? I noticed battletech.com still redirects to battletech.catalystgamelabs.com.
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Yeah I'm not feeling "The Board Game" too much.
Yes the opacity of the menu items is a bit too light, I could see the HTML line from a chapter right on a selection.
Also the Game Intro page linking to the Getting Started page, I think the first image is broke but more importantly the link that provides ideas for getting started is way down in the page. Maybe if we brought it up a bit that would help. Still getting over the new oil smell, ah I love it!
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Also, I feel that New/Upcoming Releases should have a thumbnail of the product in question.
And is the favicon an olive branch? *gasp*
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BattleTech "The Board Game" as opposed to what? BattleTech "Knitting Challenge"?
I second "BattleTech: A Game of Armored Combat".
Also, if you're going to rebuild the Universe section you may want to incorporate Camospecs and the MUL into it. See what 'Mechs they use, how pretty they can be, and might as well link books from the store.
I think also that you're going to have some confusion with people going to battletech.com and ending up here: http://battletech.catalystgamelabs.com/ instead of bg.battletech.com
I actually like http://battletech.catalystgamelabs.com/ for its look. Just needs more of this site's content.
Also, I don't know if you guys are involved at any level with sarna.net but those guys have got a great wiki up. Might be time to incorporate that, let the fans run it to save you the headache.
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+1 on the cheese with "THE BOARD GAME" on the homepage...
+1 on the old forum skins making a return. They had a cool look to them. The forum background now is too...stark...
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BattleTech "The Board Game" as opposed to what? BattleTech "Knitting Challenge"?
I guess as opposed to "Clicky-tech Battletech" or "Battletech the video game". :-\
Although most other forums put BT as a miniatures game, not a board game....
And for some reason my avatar was deleted. ???
The little "CBT" icon on the windows tab is gone too.
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Although most other forums put BT as a miniatures game, not a board game....
In BT, you can play with quarters if you wanted to, just like you could with Candyland or Monopoly if you were so inclined. But if you plunked down some quarters at, say, a WH40K tournament and declared those to be your space marine proxies, there would be so much havoc cried about that. That's the real difference. Board games, you can proxy just about anything. Miniatures games, you have to proxy with an ACTUAL MINIATURE—or at the very least, an empty miniature base—or people tend to get upset.
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In BT, you can play with quarters if you wanted to, just like you could with Candyland or Monopoly if you were so inclined.
Mmm, indeed.
I'm just pondering the question when I go to another forum and look for "Battletech", and they have both "Miniature Games" and "Board Games" categories, it's usually considered a miniatures game.
Board Games for me would be something like Monopoly or Risk or A & A.
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Eh, I only consider it a "miniatures game" if you're playing hexless. Otherwise I think of it as a board game.
But I see your point. It's all just semantics, really.
Anyway, I also vote for "A Game of Armored Combat." That tagline is what BattleTech has always been about, regardless of whether you're playing on a hex map, miniature terrain, a computer, a gaming console, or with Clix 'Mechs.
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Maybe just needs something more like Battletech: Heavy Metal Mayhem... [drool] :-* :D
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Maybe just needs something more like Battletech: Heavy Metal Mayhem... [drool] :-* :D
Battletech: Big Stompy Robots of Doom!
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To be honest, I miss the forum having a skin that screams BattleTech. Back when the forum got hacked in January and had to be nuked from orbit and rebuilt, one of the forum guys said the plain-vanilla skin would be temporary, and it's still around, 9+ months later. Conversely, the Shadowrun forum started out rather plain and now has the whole SR and JackPoint logos and looks more Shadowrun-y than it ever did before. This forum doesn't have to be anything fancy, though. Heck, I'd be okay with even the BT logo. But I do miss the old, unmistakably BT look of the pre-nuking forums.
Also, I agree about the whole "The Board Game" bit, which I noticed shows at the top of the forum. BT did start out as a board game, but it's become so much more beyond that, and I'd hate for new people who get directed here based on a different avenue—such as ClickyTech or the MW games—and feel like they're in the wrong place.
<snip>
I agree with Mr. Lee wholeheartedly on these points
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Cool, lots of feedback on the site name. Perhaps other elements could be looked at next? Consider the point to have been made.
Paul
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Whoa. When did the url change to bg.battletech.com? Could've sworn it was bg.battlecorps.com not half an hour ago...
[applause]
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The white (or light grey I'm told by others) central frame (I guess that's the right term?)...that's a bit rough on the eyes, contrasted against the darker background image. It seems to clash a bit. Is there any chance to make the two match a bit more?
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Not feeling "The Board Game" either, I would rather see "Battletech: A Game of Armored Combat" instead.
If we're voting, that gets my vote also! O0 I don't care much for "The Board Game" either, to tell the truth. :P
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I liked the old site entry better. I enjoyed having the Links/Timeline/Galley/et all down the right side.
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Main page doesn't really work at 1080x1920, nor at 1800x1440. :P
The Hammerhands looks just pants with it's legs cut off, and not being vertically centered. :(
You've lost the little Atlas in the url; Now, it's like an olive branch or something: Not Cool. #P
I'm thinkin' the IWM "logo" needs to be their logo. :D
Oh: Forget the "armored combat" noise. It's "Mobile Warfare", for crying out loud. >:(
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Fix the "out-of-date" Links section,,,,,God,anuff allready. >:(
Other than S7 website,,,,theres nothing else to "see" #P
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You've lost the little Atlas in the url; Now, it's like an olive branch or something: Not Cool. #P
Exactly! There are no (real) olive branches in BattleTech!
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Oh: Forget the "armored combat" noise. It's "Mobile Warfare", for crying out loud.
Sure, if that had ever been a tagline for anything BattleTech-related.
Okay, on the main page: The thumbnails for "Latest Releases" and "Coming Soon" (currently J:FR and TR3055U. respectively) link directly to the thumbnail jpgs. It's more usual for such to link to either the specific product page or to the general section in question. The latter would probably require less back-end work and would easily allow for rotating products again.
The row of links on the bottom feels a bit clunky. Find A Game, Master Unit List, and Camo Specs Online are fine, but the text for Iron Wind Metals Miniatures takes up two lines where all the rest fit on one, and the text "BattleCorps Fiction Site" is a bit off-putting. I suggest changing them to "Iron Wind Metals" and "BattleCorps Fiction," respectively.
Randall (and other BT luminaries) do a lot of posting via Facebook and Twitter. A feed of these posts would be nice, at least for the Classic BattleTech Facebook/Twitter account.
The icons for the various networking sites are probably too subdued. Given that they're nowhere as intrusive as on other sites, the icons in the top bar could stand to be made more prominent.
For new players and visitors, the "Game Intro" section is severely lacking. Don't just throw PDFs at people; explain what BattleTech is! Short and sweet would be ideal: "BattleTech is a board game that simulates combat a thousand years in the future. The principal weapons of war in this far-flung time are the BattleMechs: gigantic, walking tanks controlled by a single pilot. Unlike traditional board games, in BattleTech there are no set playing pieces. Instead, players are free to choose from any of the thousands of different units - 'Mechs, vehicles, infantry, aircraft, and more - published over the past thirty years and can play out whatever scenarios they want." Etc., etc. Walk them through the game step by step, showing how each new product can add to the BT experience. That section should be a combination of mentor and honest salesman, something new players will turn to again and again until they're comfortable with the game and universe.
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Right now the pictures from Latest Releases and Upcoming releases link to a tiny picture only instead of the according product.
I like the overall layout of the site but perhaps the pictures leading to BC and the MUL can be changed? The others are intuitive- showing gameplay for the 'Find a Game near you', a well painted Mini for Camospecs and a Minibox for Ironwind Metals.
I suggest some Logo for the MUL (or some BT art with someone pondering over a list or hologram?) and for BC- well, why not go with the logo?
BTW-what is Community play?
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BTW-what is Community play?
I'm guessing this is a "Find BT players in your area!" kind of deal.
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I'm guessing this is a "Find BT players in your area!" kind of deal.
Makes sense.
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Love the look of the new site..just have a couple bits of constructive criticism:
1) "Battletech: the board game" just...sounds a bit off. I concur with those who say "Battletech: A Game of Armoured Combat"
2) I hope that we will get the full tables and complete blank record sheets files.
3)I agree with those who would like the Atlas head icon in the URL, not the silly olive branch. That is not something I would expect
from a war game.
4) On the links, you really need to take out:
Battlehex(they have been out of business for years),
Armorcast(their license expired in 2007, and their site even says any orders after Dec 14, 2007, will not be be filled)
FASA Studios(Again...dead for years)
MechWarrior Dark Age(Gone with the original closing of WizKids)
Maybe pull Virtual World, as the site no longer has anything Battletech related on it that I could find through a quick
look around.
Big things I really like:
1) No more of that floating news box that you could click on, and if it was bigger then screen, you couldn't scroll down.
2) Easy finding of the core books Errata. Will we be seeing the rest of the Errata for other books put up there?
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3)I agree with those who would like the Atlas head icon in the URL, not the silly olive branch. That is not something I would expect
from a war game.
I'm guessing this is probably the default favicon for the web hosting they have, but it's definitely worth mentioning..
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- A link from the forum header back to the main Battletech page. It is annoying to have to go with my bookmarks to go from the forums to the main page, instead of just scrolling up and clicking on the link that did exist in the old pre-hack forums but is now missing.
- Agree that "The Board Game" sounds stupid.
- Agree that the Latest and Upcoming Releases needs to link to the product. Also, would it be possible to fit more than one of each? Maybe tile them in rows above each others?
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Ditch the board game explanation, A Game Of Armored Combat sounds cool and has worked great as an explanatory statement since the very beginning.
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I normally read the site from work (ssshh, don't tell anyone) which means that I access it from a rather locked-down version of Internet Explorer. I don't know if it's just me, but the Legal tab is on a second line, distinct from the other tabs, which seems a bit odd.
I like that you've got facebook, twitter and RSS buttons up on the top right, but would it be possible to have seperate RSS feed buttons within the News and Announcement and Battleblog areas of the front page, specifically for those two streams? It looks as if the RSS feed at the moment is for site changes, whereas what I'd like to be able to do is set up a feed just for the News and Announcements stream.
At the moment, only the News and Books & Games menus are drop down menus overlaid on the page. The white frame around each item and the colour of the backdrop on each entry make it a bit difficult to make out the extent of the menu - would it be possible to have a darker colour for the frame? A white frame over a light gray background is a little tricky for my eyes to pick out.
Will there be a version of the website aimed at mobile devices? One of my favourite things about the forum is that I can read it from my Blackberry comfortably, and without devouring my monthly bandwidth allowance.
With the logo reading "BattleTech: The Board Game", it might be worth adding links in the links area to the BattleTech family on BoardGameGeek and the MechWarrior family on RPGGeek. There isn't a particularly large BattleTech presence there at the moment - I added sixty or so entries for BattleTech products to BoardGameGeek myself earlier this year - but it might generate a bit of free traffic back and forth, and more exposure is generally a good thing. A number of boardgames companies have blogs or issue news releases on BoardGameGeek as well - it might be worth seeing if you can pipe your news stream for new product releases into their site as well.
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But saying "Boardgame" is just like saying,,, Manopoly,life or Sorry.Not to mention trying to keep my 13-year old son playing just got harder,for he says"WTF dad,I just gave "UP" boardgames.I dont want to be "board",,,heheee.Have to admite that he has something there. ;D
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I really miss the specific product pages. It is nice, to have them sorted, but if I want to link to a specific product, I want to actually be able to do it.
Please keep the new categorized pages, but bring the specific product pages back, too.
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Will there be a dedicated site at some later point for A Time of War, or at least a different header for whatever page covers the RPG? While it is tied into the wider BattleTech franchise, it is still a step removed from the tactical combat games in its focus.
Also, on the universe page, will the information be updated to reflect the shift in focus from the end of the Jihad to the dawn of the Dark Age; adding in the Republic of the Sphere, for example?
One other thing (for now); the page headers refer to "Battletech", as opposed to "BattleTech".
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No complaints other than "the Board Game" ... it is clunky and feels like it's leaving too much out. Makes me think of Spaceballs branding.
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To be honest, I miss the forum having a skin that screams BattleTech. Back when the forum got hacked in January and had to be nuked from orbit and rebuilt, one of the forum guys said the plain-vanilla skin would be temporary, and it's still around, 9+ months later. Conversely, the Shadowrun forum started out rather plain and now has the whole SR and JackPoint logos and looks more Shadowrun-y than it ever did before. This forum doesn't have to be anything fancy, though. Heck, I'd be okay with even the BT logo. But I do miss the old, unmistakably BT look of the pre-nuking forums.
I fully agree with this. I am tired of the generic, bright white background and would like some more options.
4) On the links, you really need to take out:
Battlehex(they have been out of business for years),
Armorcast(their license expired in 2007, and their site even says any orders after Dec 14, 2007, will not be be filled)
FASA Studios(Again...dead for years)
MechWarrior Dark Age(Gone with the original closing of WizKids)
Maybe pull Virtual World, as the site no longer has anything Battletech related on it that I could find through a quick
look around.
I would also recommend adding the wiki, SSW, and MegaMek because they are all great resources.
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Serious negative points for THE BOARD GAME.... Does that mean we are dropping all references to any novels/fiction/computer games/the RPG/clickytech and Minis on this perticular website?
Because to me at least BATTLETECH is a whole universe of things not just a dorky "board game"
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I personally question the "...The Board Game " being added to the title, though while it's true, what about the other parts of the Game, or are these parts no longer part of the site ?.
Dave.
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Battletech: The Board Game is just...awesome! Soon to be followed by Battletech: The Toothpaste and Battletech: The Adult Diaper (granted that would keep folks from having to make unnecessary bathroom trips during long campaigns).
Seriously, the smells of Battletech kneeling down to the Emperor.
BATTLETECH: I pledge myself to your teachings...
PALPATINE: Good. Good. The Cheese is strong with you. A powerful marketing icon you will become. Henceforth, you shall be known as Battletech...the board game.
There is a reason that Mountain Dew doesn't need to advertise itself as a soft drink, anyone who is interested already knows. If it suddenly became known as "Mountain Dew: The soft drink", I can't imagine they'd sell anymore. They'd probably sell less. Its redundant and rather dumbs down the product. Sorry, but this is epic fail.
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Link leading me to Catalyst Demonstration Team leads me to their news page, where their last announcement is from the 28.X. 2010. Today we have the date of 28.X. 2011!
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I don't like "A Game Of Armored Combat" because it breaks the fourth wall. I'd rather see something like "No Guts, No Galaxy" or "Heavy Metal Without the Hair. Or the Pants". I know it's just a game, but please, let me pretend
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Ditto everything Col Bosch said.
- The tagline as everyone seems to be saying *is* pretty cheesy. Just battletech is ok, really.
- The highlighted menu elements should be something other than black on white. It looks like a placeholder rather than something that fits with the rest of the site design.
- Will the site display reasonably on a 104x768 iPad? If it does, great. If it doesn't that definitely, positively, absolutely needs to be changed.
- I'm assuming many of the product previews will be re-populated?
- Game Intro and Downloads pages nearly replicate each other. Game Intro needs more explanation about the universe (as Bosch said) before we get to the downloads part (or even just a link to the downloads, maybe).
Otherwise the style and cleanliness looks good and represents Battletech well.
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I'm finding the new website to have a lot of wasted horizontal space on a widescreen monitor. The Mad Cat blueprint background is great, but I've seen it; I'd rather have the ability to see the upcoming releases and the latest releases at a glance and click over to CamoSpecs and back to see what's new and click into the forums without a lot of scrolling around.
Yes, I'm that lazy.
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Definitely need to ditch "The Board Game" tagline, it is stupid imho, and get back to "A Game of Armored Combat" that so accurately describes Battletech.
And being able to customize the forums has been a long time item I have wanted back since The Great Crash.
Put the menu back on the right side, it was great there.
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And just do you don't let yourselves off the hook, the errata page needs to be fully populated and indexed. The prominence of the core books is important, but easy access to changes is pretty important.
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One more against "...The Board Game". In my mind, it turns off the new kid because it makes him think of Monopoly, Chutes & Ladders, or Risk at best. It also turns away veterans who have been staving off the pressures of Real Life (tm) to play because it plants in their head that it's "just" a board game. Makes it easier to let go of the game imho.
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Joining in with the lack of love for "the board game". The old "Game of Armoured Combat" thing rings so much clearer and better for me.
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Home Page: The Boring. Need more dynamism (if that's a word) on the home page---maybe a larger image of something epic and Battletech. People like pictures. People like pictures of big stompy robots blowing things up. And people judge things by their cover.
Menu Font: The Temporary. I agree with Bedwyr---maybe put the menu items in Battletech font.
Product Listing: The Gathering. What DarkISI said---having the types of books listed by category the way y'all have it is awesome, but the old way of looking up products rocked, too. Can't we do both?
Image Gallery: The Missing. No image gallery? NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!
Battletech: The Board Game. 'Nuff said on that---ditto what everyone else said.
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The products page is definitely WIP. It proved quite challenging. Adding previews is on that list.
Errata: yeah, we're definitely not done there.
Gallery is also on the to-do list, but we decided against holding up the launch of the site for it.
Downloads: similarly, we're not done there yet neither.
Forum skins: also on the to-do list.
Paul
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The Universe Page's links go from blue to not blue depending on where you click, also the timeline stops at 3074 or so but I'm thinking that was done deliberately.
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The products page is definitely WIP. It proved quite challenging. Adding previews is on that list.
Errata: yeah, we're definitely not done there.
Gallery is also on the to-do list, but we decided against holding up the launch of the site for it.
Downloads: similarly, we're not done there yet neither.
Forum skins: also on the to-do list.
Paul
Good to know. Just so you know we do like those things and think they're important.
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I really miss the specific product pages. It is nice, to have them sorted, but if I want to link to a specific product, I want to actually be able to do it.
Please keep the new categorized pages, but bring the specific product pages back, too.
They're still there, there just aren't that many set up at the moment.
For example:
http://bg.battletech.com/?wpsc-product=blake-ascending
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Good to know. Just so you know we do like those things and think they're important.
Same here, just posting to make sure it's seen that the items aren't being collected, then ignored.
Paul
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Under the "Books & Games" link, could you add a link to record sheets from the Technical Readouts page? The second paragraph has the relevant text in it already:
Pre-filled record sheets (http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=489) for the various units found in the technical readouts are published separately.
Errata Link: Again, a link to the relevant forum would be awesome.
Mistakes happen, and sometimes players come up with situations the designers, writers and testers never imagined. If you believe you’ve found a problem, report them in the appropriate thread on our forum (http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/board,82.0.html).
Some of the text on the page is kind of awkward. For example:
If you want to see what errata we have issued for our products, please find them here.
Just my 2 cents, but it would sound better as:
Here is all the errata issued for our products.
Also, you change voice in the last paragraph. It goes from "we" and "our" to "they".
Catalyst rolls in any approved errata every time they reprint a product.
Catalyst rolls in any approved errata every time a product is reprinted.
I like the categories shown in the "Books & Game" link. I hope you'll carry that same organization to BattleCorps in the future.
Can a product be listed in more than one category? For example can I find XTROs from both the "Technical Readouts" link and the "E-Publications" link? (It would be really nice if I could. And probably help your SEO stuff too.)
Edit: By the way I just looked at the markup you're using on the site now. Nice use of H1-H6 tags and other semantic markup. If only the people at my day job used such markup, my life would be a heck of a lot easier.
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What everybody said about "The Board Game". BattleTech has outgrown its boardgame roots years ago and evolved into a full-blown media franchise. Simply saying "BattleTech" should be enough.
Why is there no big honking link to BattleCorps in the fiction section?
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Definitely need to ditch "The Board Game" tagline, it is stupid imho, and get back to "A Game of Armored Combat" that so accurately describes Battletech.
Not "A Game," but "The Game of Armored Combat."
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Not "A Game," but "The Game of Armored Combat."
I'm going to throw my vote in for 'NO' on The Board Game. That particular tag line is like a broken garden gnome in the middle of a golf green.
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Errata Link: Again, a link to the relevant forum would be awesome.
I think I'm misunderstanding you. I linked to the overall Errata forum, as someone might have issues with any given product. It seems that listing all active threads would be a bit much?
[Edit: I get it now. Looks like I failed to actually include the link at some point. I had it there at one point, honest. ;) Fixed.]
Some of the text on the page is kind of awkward. For example:Just my 2 cents, but it would sound better as:
Here is all the errata issued for our products.
Also, you change voice in the last paragraph. It goes from "we" and "our" to "they".Catalyst rolls in any approved errata every time a product is reprinted.
Now you know one of many reasons editors have cause to hate me. ;)
Paul
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I vote for "BattleTech: A Game Of Armored Combat" also.
BattleTech isn't really a board game, it's a tabletop strategy game.
But it was always called "A Game Of Armored Combat" in the past, so that's what the website should say.
However, I do like the fact that you kept everyone's total number of posts from the previous iteration of the website. :)
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Sure, if that had ever been a tagline for anything BattleTech-related.
If they felt empowered enough to change it atoll … ;)
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You asked for it, so I'll give it to you straight, no chaser. Assuming that the site will be used to draw interested gamers into the BT universe, I make the following suggestions. The links need some kind of description. Also, listing them in alphabetical order hides the more useful links among more fluffy links. Moar pictures. You guys have some fantastic artwork. That Thug on the cover of The Reunification Wars is awesome. Stuff like that will pull people in. Sprinkle it around the pages, not too much, but have it available. Maybe use and expandable thumb to keep things from looking cluttered. Featuring an awesome Camo Specs mini here and there would be great too. I would like to see a brief intro piece on some of the more compelling characters and units from the fiction. Let the newbies read a brief overview of the Dragoons or the 10th Lyran Guards. Anastasius Focht and Adian Pryde are compelling characters that will draw people into the game. The same thing could be done with some of the more popular mechs.
I also agree with the general consensus on the olive branch and "the board game" stuff.
My 2¢. Keep up the good work. Crap, that is a chaser.
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I got on this morning and was initially surprised by the new look, but I really do like it. It's much more modern and cleaner than the one that the site had been using for the last several years. It doesn't feel like there is a ton of crap stuffed into it like the old one did. I disagree with some of the posters above that want some huge dynamic image on the front page, I think it would be too busy, I like nice calm websites, even when they are about a war game.
I'll echo statements about updating some of the underlying pages such as the links page.
One complaint, I'm browsing now on my Chromebook, which comes in around 12 inches, and the site looks great. On my desktop monitor though, which IIRC is around 19 inches, the deadspace on the page extended out a little far and made it look a little awkward.
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Don't like 'The Board Game' subtitle would prefer 'A Game of Armored Combat'.
Would like to see the stuff at the bottom (the IWM and other links) moved farther up the page as people have a tendency to not scroll down.
Background is a bit stark and boring. Maybe put bits of artwork from newly released products or some of the miniatures in combat like in the Total War rule book.
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Fix the password feature, I don't know about the rest of you, but I have to constantly reinput my password anytime I leave the site. Its annoying.
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Would like to see the stuff at the bottom (the IWM and other links) moved farther up the page as people have a tendency to not scroll down.
I agree with this also, I never even saw the stuff at the bottom and I thought I checked out the site pretty thoroughly. Might have something to do with a lack of coffee...
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Fix the password feature, I don't know about the rest of you, but I have to constantly reinput my password anytime I leave the site. Its annoying.
Make sure you clear out your cache. A few things were pointed wrong behind the scenes, but once that got adjusted after launch, you shouldn't be having that problem anymore.
Happened to us to, but we're all fine now.
Paul
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OK, Links page has been spruced up a fair bit. Still don't consider it done, and there's some things to fix.
But meanwhile, if anyone has some sites they think would be good for us to have on there, list the link here. If we agree, they'll go up.
Paul
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But meanwhile, if anyone has some sites they think would be good for us to have on there, list the link here. If we agree, they'll go up.
Scrap Yard Armory?
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Honestly, I think kill the links section except for business partners. It's a really outdated concept, and around here fan pages come and go very quickly.
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Scrap Yard Armory?
Dude, link (http://www.scrapyardarmory.com/) it.
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So,
my two cents (and somewhat regardless if it has been mentioned before) sorted by header on the page:
- The Boardgame ... well - the point was made
- The Game intro doesn't say anything about the actual game - the text could refer to MechCommander or MechWarrior computer games just as well. A little bit more would go a long way.
- The forum should have a link back to the page somewhere
- The blog should be linked directly in the headline menu as a category instead of a subsection of news (that would make it easier to find and since it regularly pertains to development etc. that would be more fitting than news
- I really like the books and releases
- The universe section: It would be nice to have some page breaks or at least some images in that huge text. TLDR... Also: I would remove the links to all the unfilled sections (unpublish these nodes or such) because its weird to have headlines to 90% missing content), someone who checks these empty sections will likely not come back at a later time. However if you add content later and add sections, there is new things to be seen.
- Downloads should contain ALL downloads currently available anywhere on the site (including errata etc.) the current setup is somewhat confusing
- Community play (Isnt that usually called organized play?): If you list upcoming events, make shure they are actually UPCOMING. If not, better don't list specific events. Nothing looks worse than a site listing an event thats several months in the past as upcoming, this screams: "We don't really care about this part of our page...".
- Errata: It would be nice to have those available for download in the download section and maybe a direct read option right here.
- Links: The link to the German version of the page directly links into a somewhat naked forum, while all others link to nice portals - is that deliberate?
Is the Mechforce Germany a Vendor? You list them as fan club.
None of the links after IWM actually links to Vendors.
The Virtual World link you have has nothing to do with the Battletech Pods: The places running pods currently that have Websites (mentioning Battletech) are these:
http://www.mechjock.com/ (http://www.mechjock.com/)
http://www.vgcorps.com/ (http://www.vgcorps.com/)
http://www.skynet-gaming.com/ (http://www.skynet-gaming.com/)
http://www.mechcorps.com/html/index.php (http://www.mechcorps.com/html/index.php)
http://the-airlock.com/ (http://the-airlock.com/)
http://www.facebook.com/FalloutShelterArcade/ (http://www.facebook.com/FalloutShelterArcade/)
(I think there are some in Japan, but I am not sure)
What about other fan-sites?
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Looks awesome. Would just like to see the Gallery back with all the amazing past and present covers as wallpapers.
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FYI: George just fixed it so the Home button at top links to the front page.
Paul
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Some other selected reactions:
(if I didn't quote prior posts, it's not because I'm ignoring them, the below one just had a bunch I can react to right now)
- The Game intro doesn't say anything about the actual game - the text could refer to MechCommander or MechWarrior computer games just as well. A little bit more would go a long way.
I may be misunderstanding you, but what about the second paragraph on that page?
"The BattleTech board game simulates combat between various military vehicles in the thirty-first century. The kings of the battlefield are the 30-foot-tall humanoid titans known as BattleMechs. However, a myriad of other military units bring additional fun to any game, from combat vehicles to infantry to aerospace units and more."
- Downloads should contain ALL downloads currently available anywhere on the site (including errata etc.) the current setup is somewhat confusing
We're still optimizing the setup some, but I do not concur that the best way to handle errata is to duplicate them on the Errata page. One problem of the old Downloads page was that it *did* duplicate just about everything we served, including preview material. That made it effectively unusable. The specific intent is to offer tools and material on the Downloads page that has no real good 'home' elsewhere (IE< Chaos Campaign) or that's tool that helps play (IE, the BForce counters). There's been discussion about yanking the QSR stuff, as it's served elsewhere.
Bringing that up to start discussion on that notion, not to silence it. ;)
Oh, and there's still a ton of stuff scheduled for inclusion, but we're also using the opportunity to 'refresh' some old PDFs so they have current BT and CGL logos on them.
- Links: The link to the German version of the page directly links into a somewhat naked forum, while all others link to nice portals - is that deliberate?
There's a plot to spruce up the various language sites some. As soon as there's time.
(If you run a language site, feel free to be pro-active, and feel free to reach out to me. I'll get around to send something round to you, but it may be a while)
Is the Mechforce Germany a Vendor? You list them as fan club.
None of the links after IWM actually links to Vendors.
Yeah, we need a better 'category' for that. WIP.
The Virtual World link you have has nothing to do with the Battletech Pods: The places running pods currently that have Websites (mentioning Battletech) are these:
http://www.mechjock.com/ (http://www.mechjock.com/)
DOH! Fixed.
What about other fan-sites?[/li][/list]
List some with links, we might add em. Right now all that's just the still living remnants of really ancient links, we're well behind any efforts to keep the Links section relevant and up to date with useful/cool sites, so let's grab this opportunity to fix that.
Paul
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We're still optimizing the setup some, but I do not concur that the best way to handle errata is to duplicate them on the Errata page. One problem of the old Downloads page was that it *did* duplicate just about everything we served, including preview material. That made it effectively unusable. The specific intent is to offer tools and material on the Downloads page that has no real good 'home' elsewhere (IE< Chaos Campaign) or that's tool that helps play (IE, the BForce counters). There's been discussion about yanking the QSR stuff, as it's served elsewhere.
Bringing that up to start discussion on that notion, not to silence it. ;)
I for one think you should leave the quick start rules visible in as many places as you can so new people do not get frustrated trying to find them. There is obviously a limit, but I would try to make sure they are posted everywhere someone might reasonably go to look for them.
Beyond that I would appreciate a more BT themed skin for the forums in something other than white because that gets tiring to read after a while, and I would add the following sites to the links page as they are incredibly useful resources.
The BT wiki:
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page
Solaris Skunk Werks:
http://www.solarisskunkwerks.com/
MegaMek:
http://megamek.info/
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Most points have been made.
I agree that links should only be business partners. Also, make sure the 'Community Play" only shows upcoming and current evenst as said above. Anything outdated gives a bad vibe to readers.
That's all from my end, boss.
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I for one think you should leave the quick start rules visible in as many places as you can so new people do not get frustrated trying to find them. There is obviously a limit, but I would try to make sure they are posted everywhere someone might reasonably go to look for them.
Yeah, that's our current thinking as well, hence why they're in 2 spots right now.
Beyond that I would appreciate a more BT themed skin for the forums
Yep, as indicated, it's on the list.
Paul
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The German link doesn't only link to a somewhat empty forum, it actually links to the wrong page. Battletech.info hasn't been the official website for years. The correct link would be http://www.battletech.de/
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The German link doesn't only link to a somewhat empty forum, it actually links to the wrong page. Battletech.info hasn't been the official website for years. The correct link would be http://www.battletech.de/
Fixed!
(Boy, I coulda known better)
Paul
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Hey all,
Thanks for the great set of comments...checking many of them off as quickly as we can.
There was a fair bit of feedback that the front page didn't have enough eye candy to instantly grab someone. While I want to be careful not to overload the page, I've given it a shot and added an image to the front page. A few questions I'd like answered, if any of you are up for it.
1. Does it clutter the page up too much?
2. Does it work just fine?
3. Does it work but it's actually not enough of the image; i.e. it should be a little bigger to provide more of what's going on?
4. What if that was turned into a slider gallery that cycled through a half a dozen to a dozen images every 5 to 7 seconds...would you like that better?
If there's anything else pertaining to this one important change, by all means, let me know.
Thanks!
Randall
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I think the front page looks great! however the name Battletech: The board game... hmm I know you can call it what you want but it really doesn't have a good ring too it though. The 1st box sets way back when Battletech A Game of Armored Combat was cool and eyecatching! Haven't played around with the other links to the stuff yet but will do that later.
Also Randall just got your book Paths to Glory will read it when I can got the other novels to read 1st :)
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I'll add myself to the list of people who don't like "BattleTech: The Board Game" or the olive branch
Rather than a logo, I see text that reads "Catalyst Game Labs Logo" at the top right corner.
The "Leap into Action" link is small enough that I missed it the first few times I looked at the page.
Why are all the links across the bottom of the page there twice, in different sizes?
The big blank space at the top between the BattleTech logo and the text for the CLG Logo feels like a gaping hole. Will there be something to fill it, or just an image of some sort?
The BattleTech logo with it's steel plank background looks weird surrounded by a sea of white. I'd suggest getting rid of the white background for the whole section above the yellow menu bar, and having the same background all the way across.
Glad to see the end of the pop-out boxes on the new announcemnets.
[edit]
And since Randall posted while I was typing, yes, I like the slider gallery idea.
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What if that was turned into a slider gallery that cycled through a half a dozen to a dozen images every 5 to 7 seconds...would you like that better?
Yes, I would. Also I would move it up into the dead space next to the BattleTech Header. A gallery of the full sized images would also be great.
Not a huge deal, but why did BattleTech become Battletech?
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1. Does it clutter the page up too much?
2. Does it work just fine?
3. Does it work but it's actually not enough of the image; i.e. it should be a little bigger to provide more of what's going on?
4. What if that was turned into a slider gallery that cycled through a half a dozen to a dozen images every 5 to 7 seconds...would you like that better?
1) No, It adds to the page quite nicely
2) Yep
3) Yes, make it about 30% bigger so you can show more of the scene
4) That would be sweet, maybe not ever 5 to 7 seconds, that'd be nausea inducing. Maybe every couple of minutes.
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4) Maybe every 10-15 secs - every couple minutes might be too few to ever be noticed.
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10 seconds would be amusing. ;)
Paul
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Hey all,
Thanks for the great set of comments...checking many of them off as quickly as we can.
There was a fair bit of feedback that the front page didn't have enough eye candy to instantly grab someone. While I want to be careful not to overload the page, I've given it a shot and added an image to the front page. A few questions I'd like answered, if any of you are up for it.
1. Does it clutter the page up too much?
In my opinion, no it doesn't. The only comment I would offer is maybe move the "Leap into the action" link closer to the image.
2. Does it work just fine?
Yes, but see comment about Leap into action link above.
3. Does it work but it's actually not enough of the image; i.e. it should be a little bigger to provide more of what's going on?
It works fine as it is now. I want to see what's new and exciting (the stuff in the News and Announcements box); Images and fluff are nice, but secondary. If you want to show more of the image I can think of two possibilities:
1. The image is a link that takes visitor to a page with a bigger version of the image.
2. Add a JavaScript function to the image so that when a visitor mouses over the image (or otherwise gives it focus) it expands to a larger size. (The CSS overflow property is what I'm thinking of here, not the lightboxes that are so popular and are totally inaccessible to screen readers.)
4. What if that was turned into a slider gallery that cycled through a half a dozen to a dozen images every 5 to 7 seconds...would you like that better?
As long as it's calm and you're not swapping animated GIFs, I'd be OK with this. For whatever it's worth, I've used the JFlow Plus (http://www.wordimpressed.com/demos/jFlowPlusDemo/index.html) plugin for jQuery several times to great effect. Just don't flash stuff more than 3 times a second, or you might trigger photoepileptic seizures. (It can happen.)
Actually now that I think about it a little more, you might also put the Latest Releases and Upcoming Releases on a slider/carousel. That would provide some more eye candy and add value to my visit.
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One question: What's the difference between http://bg.battletech.com/ and http://battletech.catalystgamelabs.com/? Will content from one eventually be merged into the other?
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While I'm thinking of it, I noticed something odd on the menu for the sections (universe, errata, etc.)
Firefox 7.0.1. on Windows XP.
I hover over the link and the background becomes white/light gray and the text becomes black. Good so far.
I click the link and move the pointer away from the text and the text goes back to white, leaving only the outline/drop shadow visible against the light background.
Does not occur in IE8, or IE8 in IE7 mode. Doesn't occur in Google Chrome either. (May not be worth exploring.)
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Okay, now onto the Gallery.
Obviously there is a huge backlog of material to get back up on the site, but in the mean time, here's the last 6 or so months of covers since we haven't had new wallpapers in some time.
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=29
Please ignore the book names themselves that are links...fixing that.
But in the meantime, two questions.
1. Do you like this new format? If not, what would you suggest as a better way?
2. As dozens upon dozens of images are added, we need to organize them into sub pages. How would you prefer that? By book type? By artist? Something else?
As usual, let me know if there's any other comments on the gallery.
Thanks!
Randall
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Okay, now onto the Gallery.
Obviously there is a huge backlog of material to get back up on the site, but in the mean time, here's the last 6 or so months of covers since we haven't had new wallpapers in some time.
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=29
Please ignore the book names themselves that are links...fixing that.
But in the meantime, two questions.
1. Do you like this new format? If not, what would you suggest as a better way?
2. As dozens upon dozens of images are added, we need to organize them into sub pages. How would you prefer that? By book type? By artist? Something else?
As usual, let me know if there's any other comments on the gallery.
Thanks!
Randall
I likey. I'd organize by artist. Hope y'all also put in/bring back some of the art from older stuff, e.g., the cover art from the original Warrior: En Garde gives me nostalgia for the golden age of sci-fi.
Also like the banner on the front page. Very... faction bannerish.
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....
Seriously, the smells of Battletech kneeling down to the Emperor.
....
My nomination for post of the year! [notworthy]
I'm still laughing.
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1. Do you like this new format? If not, what would you suggest as a better way?
2. As dozens upon dozens of images are added, we need to organize them into sub pages. How would you prefer that? By book type? By artist? Something else?
Can we have an option to sort or is that overdoing it?
If I might offer a specific suggestion for the front site, I threw together something that I think makes the top menu look a bit better:
(http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h251/SirBedwyr/bgbattletechmenu.jpg)
I think that looks better than just the white bar you all have there now.
If you're curious, it was all just invert, desaturate, play with layer styles.
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I don't know if anyone else is encountering this, but hotmail smartscreen seems to think that email notifications from the site are "suspicious"
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Can we have an option to sort or is that overdoing it?
If I might offer a specific suggestion for the front site, I threw together something that I think makes the top menu look a bit better:
(http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h251/SirBedwyr/bgbattletechmenu.jpg)
I think that looks better than just the white bar you all have there now.
If you're curious, it was all just invert, desaturate, play with layer styles.
No idea on the sort...I'll add that to the list of things to see if we can make them work.
And I really like your menu roll-over look...emailed it off to the web guy...we'll see if he can pull it off.
Thanks!
Randall
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Mechground: http://www.mechground.com/
Not up to date, but still useful
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Okay, now onto the Gallery.
1. Do you like this new format? If not, what would you suggest as a better way?
I approve
2. As dozens upon dozens of images are added, we need to organize them into sub pages. How would you prefer that? By book type? By artist? Something else?
Artist, book type, era and that last one especially since Battletech has been using this era organization for current and future products anyways.
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You guys fixed the image by the address bar. Looks awesome!
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Battletech is so much more than just a board game. It's a highly successful series of computer games, a clickytech game, a CCG, an animated TV show and a HUGE series of novels... that are not a game of any sort.
"Battletech: The Board Game" just plain does not cut it.
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Hey CGL.
I think you've done an amazing job, aesthetically, with the new web site. It also navigates a lot better.
One thing that I picked up when browsing a non-battletech RPG forum was that someone was complaining that they couldn't find where we sold the miniatures for our game. Of course, as an experienced Battletech'er, I knew to point them towards Ironwind Metals. They mentioned that it was "Stupid" that Battletech's web-site doesn't directly tell you where to get your miniatures.
Personally, I sort of agree, and since we've just applied our new layout (Which seems to still be being tinkered with) I would suggest that under the "Books and games" section, we included a "Miniatures" and "Decals" tab. Mind you, I would expect that when you click said links, they take you to a page that tells you that you buy from Ironwind Metals (Or Ral-Partha in the UK?), and from Fighting Pirhanna when you click on the Decals tab.
I know they're not made in-house, but as the official Battletech website (and likely to see a spike in new players with the release of Mechwarrior for PC and XBOX), I feel it might be a sound decision to at least make those components easier to find for new players.
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I don't know if anyone else is encountering this, but hotmail smartscreen seems to think that email notifications from the site are "suspicious"
Hotmail's blacklisted the forums before as (obviously) the email notifications are to bottish for its tastes. It's trying to protect you. It's for your own good, promise!
Once they decide we're spammers, we'll have to try to convince them otherwise.
Paul
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Y'know, Paul... This would have been a great opportunity to ge tme that Cheeseburger Button.
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Y'know, Paul... This would have been a great opportunity to ge tme that Cheeseburger Button.
:o
Erm. It's... On the list...?
Paul
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Well, if he gets a cheeseburger button, I want a nuke it from orbit button.
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Well, if he gets a cheeseburger button, I want a nuke it from orbit button.
Herb's cat will never get away from his keyboard!
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Battletech isn't just a board game anymore. In fact 90% of the time at Demo Events out in LA California. We run per request non hexed games. We have run two event's of hexed games. And the results were rather poor turn out. But on avg we get between 35 to 40 players in our events now at conventions . And at store 20-30 at the Firebases we run demo's.
I do recognize that the game originated as a board game . But it mostly a miniatures game now days. We should come up with a better title. I just like the idea of of "Battletech a game of Armour Combat. My vote is take down the board game part.
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Honestly, I hardly ever go to the home page. That said, add my votes to several of the forum issues (name, skin, full width). Also, a die roller would help boost forum participation by getting more actual AToW games running here. I know Herb (and other PTB) have vetoed that before, but I still think it's a good idea. And no, I have no appreciation for how hard that would be to implement on the back end. My point is only: would you rather have those regularly updating forum users here or on one of the sites with a die roller? If bandwidth is an issue, sure, keep sending them elsewhere.
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4. What if that was turned into a slider gallery that cycled through a half a dozen to a dozen images every 5 to 7 seconds...would you like that better?
I would say there is a lot of fantasic offical Battletech art --- I say flaunt it! I would say have a dozen or so images in a slider gallery, set to cycle through the images at ten seconds incriments. But I would also suggest changing the gallery on a regular basis (Maybe once a quarter), to keep the images fresh and to keep things from becoming too stale.
Craig
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I also just noticed all my σ's were changed to "σ"s. At first, I just thought it was an error associated with my profile, since my avatar disappeared (since re-uploaded). Did you change the forum's default font?
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So many players want to play the full terrain version of the game.
But for the players it is buried under and hard to find. This supplement is widely used. But many Agents and players have a hard time finding it. Also maybe update it a bit to not say FanPro anymore under the logo. As we are part of the Catalyst Family now. But if nothing else,plese put it up where it is easy to find. And then give an explanation of what it is .
Many of the Battletech players want to play hex less games and should be able to find it easy.
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I'm coming into this as a person whose job is evaluating webpages , so my input's focusing more on ease-of-use for someone coming in from a web search, not for the experienced player.. :P
Aesthetics/Usability
I agree that the highlighting on the top bar looks slapdash, but that's been covered elsewhere
The row of subpage links at the bottom is difficult to access and not obvious to a first-time user; you have to scroll past all the content on the front page. All of the links there could be profitably placed on the "Links" and "Downloads" pages, uncluttering the home page, or even in the top bar with the free starter pdf link (which currently blends into the background - another hazard stripe border would make it "pop" more)
The "official language sites" links should be on the top of every page, or at least the homepage - rather than requiring a non-English speaking user to find the "links" page you could add in a flag-based dropdown menu, or perhaps an "other languages" button on the main linkbar.
The Downloads section is excellent - clear, concise, and very visual. I like it. A link to the MUL download would go well here.
On that note, adding a link from "Core Rulebooks" to the BattleForce and Quick Start rules downloads would make the page less intimidating.
Also, links underneath each of the rulebooks to the respective errata downloads and the errata subforum would be very helpful.
Finally, a link to the translated Spanish Quick-start rules on the Game Intro subpage (instead of just the "downloads" page) would be helpful.
There are a couple of omitted words in the homepage sidebar.
"These dynamics have spawned a host of games, novels, toys and more."
"..the fiction that continues to grow and expand the universe forward." (As the universe moves forward?)
Nomenclature
"Community Play" is unnecessarily vague - it looks like a player locator, not the tournament information page. "Tournaments" "Upcoming Events", or the like would be clearer; links to the player locator and Demo Agents pages would be a good idea as well.
"The Board Game" gets a quick point across to a newcomer to the site.. but that impression is wrong. "This site is dedicated to all aspects of the board game, where it all began, and the fiction that continues to grow and expand the universe forward." makes it worse.
Unless you have new sites in line for the RPG, etc, the blurb should make it clear that this site is for all tabletop gaming/rules aspects of the property, and list off some of the things that the original game spawned. Evoke what the user can do with the game ("The Battletech/Mechwarrior tabletop games can take you anywhere in this vast universe - from plotting the grand strategy of one of the great Houses as they struggle for dominance over star empires, to the simple struggle of individual soldiers and Mechwarriors to survive on the front lines of those galaxy-spanning wars..")
On bg.battletech.com, there is a link in the top bar that says, "home" and another for "homepage", which many people would find confusing - the latter is an "about" page, and should be labeled as such. Granted, the site's obviously incomplete (like the Eras page), but this was really glaring.
Anecdotal
The single complaint I've heard most from people I'm trying to get into the game is, "I can't find the stuff I need to get started". Not just the Starter Box, which should be linked from the front page, but the critical components like errata and the purpose of the rules. The new site design is reducing the complaints so far - but it could do much better.
Sign off
Sorry for the huge block of text, but I really do want this page to be as good as it can possibly be :P - and the best time to change is now, while the anvil is still hot.
I hereby relenquish any and all credit, claim, or title to any of the ideas or phrasings herein contained. Go to town, guys.
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A few nitpicks:
We could really use a button on the top bar for BattleCorps. Or even just a line in the "Links" page, though the old site's sidebar link was great to have up front. Also saw the added thumbnails for the wallpapers - very nice, and something that would look good if carried over to the different product pages. Unfortunately all of the actual wallpaper links are giving me a "Cannot find server" message. I don't know if anyone else is getting that error or if it's just this version of FF acting up again (running 7.0.1, for the record). And to keep flogging the horse, changing the tagline from "A Game of Armored Combat" to just "The Board Game" is almost as bad as a film that calls itself "Brand X: The Movie." No character to it, no punch, no hint of creamy nougat in the middle; it just kind of sits there like a cup of flat pop.
But overall, this new site looks a lot better than the old one. Very nice, and please keep up the good work.
Edit:
I would say there is a lot of fantasic offical Battletech art --- I say flaunt it! I would say have a dozen or so images in a slider gallery, set to cycle through the images at ten seconds incriments. But I would also suggest changing the gallery on a regular basis (Maybe once a quarter), to keep the images fresh and to keep things from becoming too stale.
Craig
This is a good idea. Especially if you have the slider-gallery up front, and use the current gallery page as an archive for the slider images.
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Here's an extra +1 to removing the really, really terrible "The Board Game" suffix. It's really not a board game. Sometimes it's played on mapsheets. Sometimes on a tabletop. Sometimes on the nice, new, sturdy boards.
Admittedly, "CBT" was not the best abbreviation to search for on Google, but it was still leagues ahead of "BattleTech: The Board Game"!
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Here's an extra +1 to removing the really, really terrible "The Board Game" suffix. It's really not a board game. Sometimes it's played on mapsheets. Sometimes on a tabletop. Sometimes on the nice, new, sturdy boards.
Admittedly, "CBT" was not the best abbreviation to search for on Google, but it was still leagues ahead of "BattleTech: The Board Game"!
Although now we could have BattleTech: The Website and BattleTech: The Forums, etc. etc.
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Okay, now onto the Gallery.
Obviously there is a huge backlog of material to get back up on the site, but in the mean time, here's the last 6 or so months of covers since we haven't had new wallpapers in some time.
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=29
Please ignore the book names themselves that are links...fixing that.
But in the meantime, two questions.
1. Do you like this new format? If not, what would you suggest as a better way?
2. As dozens upon dozens of images are added, we need to organize them into sub pages. How would you prefer that? By book type? By artist? Something else?
As usual, let me know if there's any other comments on the gallery.
Thanks!
Randall
One problem, though.
The URLs for the big pictures link to bg.battlecorps.com... that should be bg.battletech.com... ;)
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One problem, though.
The URLs for the big pictures link to bg.battlecorps.com... that should be bg.battletech.com... ;)
They should all be fixed now?
Randall
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They should all be fixed now?
Randall
Both Final Reckoning, the 1600*1200 WoR and the 1680*1050 TRO:P are still wrong. The others are fixed
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Okay, now moving onto the product pages. Here's the first complete page: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=481
Note that Stock #s and ISBNs will be added...trying to figure out why they're not currently displaying.
Outside of that, please review and let me know if there's a better way to present various bits of information, or if there's information you feel should be shown that's currently not on the page.
Thanks!
Randall
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Both Final Reckoning, the 1600*1200 WoR and the 1680*1050 TRO:P are still wrong. The others are fixed
Fixed.
Thanks.
Randall
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Suggestion Make the drop down list in proper upper and lower case.
It is much easier to read
Getting Started
I/o
GETTING STARTED
Some of the wall paper links are broken.
*Jihad: Final Reckoning
*Wars of Reaving
•Wallpaper with dimensions of 1600×1200
*Technical Readout: Prototypes
•Wallpaper with dimensions of 1680×1050
Also the headers are hyper linked to different images. I would suggest that since you are trying to sell books that you can hyper link the Wall Papers to the Current book that uses that Image for the cover or you can just remove the hyper links from the header text.
Likes:
I think the bottom pictures and links are great.
A Cycling gallery of images every 10 seconds would be great and also feel that it should be say 12 or 18 images and then replace a couple of the images every month to keep people to look at the page for a few minutes.
Other then that it looks great guys. Keep up the great work.
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Okay, now moving onto the product pages. Here's the first complete page: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=481
Note that Stock #s and ISBNs will be added...trying to figure out why they're not currently displaying.
Outside of that, please review and let me know if there's a better way to present various bits of information, or if there's information you feel should be shown that's currently not on the page.
Thanks!
Randall
I would add the errata thread on the forums, calling the link "Errata collection for next release" or something similar.
Personally, I also prefer justified text, looks cleaner in my opinion.
None of the current products has any previews, but TRO 3085 had them, for example. How will previews look when you come around to a product that had one or more?
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I would add the errata thread on the forums, calling the link "Errata collection for next release" or something similar.
Personally, I also prefer justified text, looks cleaner in my opinion.
None of the current products has any previews, but TRO 3085 had them, for example. How will previews look when you come around to a product that had one or more?
Still working on how we'll make previews work.
Randall
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The side does not look that good using a netbook, which at the moment is my main PC.
Which only 1024 monitor width you always have two scrollbars and right/left scrolling is annoying.
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Why do all the design changes seem to maximize how much scrolling is needed? :(
And why is nothing centered?
Home
- The home page is lopsided and too wide -- making the "About BattleTech (MechWarrior)" column half as wide would help. You could also cut a similar (or lesser) width from the left side of the news blog column and put something on that side.
- The bottom-right corner is usually the last place anybody looks on a page, so that seems like an unlikely place to stick "Latest Release" and "Upcoming Release." Maybe, instead of thumbnail images, make them into banners to cycle through where the MadCat banner is now. (Then move the "About" text over to the left, and stack the five FGNY, MUL, CSO, IWM, and BC links top to bottom in the now-vacant right hand column.)
- "News and Announcements" and "BattleBlog" appear atop their respective boxes, not as hyperlinks, yet still in the same color blue that is reserved for hyperlinks. Either make them links or make them not blue. (Ditto for anywhere else this happens.)
- Why two separate news/blog boxes? The front page only displays the first three lines of an entry and the "News" tab collects it all into a single blog anyhow.
- The second "About" paragraph just re-emphasizes things that the first already said or implied -- a waste, in my opinion. I'd rather replace the whole second & third "About" paragraphs with just "Check out BattleTech.com for more ways to enjoy the BattleTech/MechWarrior universe."
- I am not a fan of the metal plating nor the yellow hazard stripes. Nor do I care for seams (http://bg.battletech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/armor-bg.png) in the menu bar.
- Y'wanna stick a customer service email address (whichever one is actually current) in here somewhere.
Game Intro
- I assume "Game Intro" is a temporary name. Perhaps rename it "New to BattleTech?" or "Getting Started" instead.
- If you want people to actually notice the "Getting Started" link, you'd better move that section ahead of "Additional Information."
- How is "Story Fiction vs. Sourcebook Fiction" worth explaining? If it is then it ought to be meshed with the "Books & Games" introductory paragraph.
Forums
- The forum rules do not refer the reader to the website's legal page, even though the legal page contains several items pertinent to forum use.
- Is the list of unseen in Rule Eight up to date? Also, that rule does not discriminate between Unseen and Reseen, so I suggest modifying the fourth line to read "This means no artwork of these 'Mechs from any FASA-branded Sourcebook, Technical Readout" etc. and add a "FanPro or Catalyst-branded images of these 'Mechs are Reseen, and may be used" exception.
News
- Remove "BattleChat" from the pull-down menu -- that category hasn't been active for years.
- Make the Blog Categories visible from all category homepages (including "News" itself), not just "News and Announcements," "BattleBlog" and "BattleChat" (the three from the pull-down menu).
- When viewing a single entry, it would be nice to have an index of other entries from the same category (much like how, when you view a single category, you've got an index of the other categories).
- Please add a title/date index to go with the "blog categories" index.
- Please center the blogs. Perhaps by placing a title/date index opposite the category index.
- Is it possible to set things up so that when a new News/Blog entry is made, a corresponding discussion thread automatically spawns in the forums?
- The product images that lead off every product announcement in "News and Announcements" make me scroll too far to get to the actual text. Either move the image to the bottom of the newspost, start text side-by-side with the image, or use a smaller image. (Could combine those last two options to fit a thumbnail into the abbreviated entries that appear in the front page newsbox and on news' category homepages.)
- I don't see what the "In Print" and "Products" categories are supposed to do (nor why the "BattleTech Primer" qualifies as both in addition to "Free"), yet I can't help but feel it'd be better to borrow "Upcoming Releases" and "Latest Releases" from the "Books & Games" pull-down.
Books & Games
- "Getting Started," "Latest Releases" and "Upcoming Releases" don't really fit with the other categories. I've already suggested moving the latter two; "Getting Started" would not go amiss under the "Game Intro" pull down.
- The main "Books & Games" page has the product thumbnails even with their section titles (rather than the first line of text). Make the section pages do that too.
- It is ridiculous for the product category pages to repeat the full text of each product's individual entry. Please add something like the attached so I can preview/ignore everything past the first screen-length of page.
Universe
- Why does the Section Navigation index pad its width by a whole inch?
- "A Brief History of the Inner Sphere" is not brief. It was cool for a fan site to vomit The Inner Sphere Sourcebook in its entirety (?) onto the web circa 2000AD, but these "Universe" pages always struck me as unnecessarily (and unevenly) long-winded.
Community Play
- Any reason this can't be converted into a News/Blog category? The front page usually announces such events already, upcoming events would always top a chronological listing ('cause they're in the future), and it would automatically archive the events.
Errata
- Any Reason this isn't under the "Books & Games" pull-down?
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I think it would be really great to include a an area ,to also promote the Full Terrain Rules as well.
Perhaps a short introduction and explanation. As well as linked:http://bg.battletech.com/downloads/CBTMiniRules_Final.pdf
It has always been hard to find for players. It would be great to have it maybe updated and easy to download. So many players also enjoy the option of being able to play the game straight as a miniatures game. As well as allowing Agents to say you can download them here.
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I like the new background on the top strip, and the "New to BattleTech" button is nice and obvious.
I'd suggest that you use the same background for both the top strip and the thin strips downthe sides of the page though - the two different images look a bit jarring.
I like the new row of links across the bottom - much better, thankyou.
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Product page - I like the layout here, especially having links to the errata with each book.
Two comments;
> I find the text "How the core rulebooks work" on the thumbnail very hard to read. It looked like "HEVY THIE OORS" to me.
> Could you add a line similar to the one between the intro paragraph and Total Warfare between the price of on product and the start of the next entry? On a quick scroll-around I kept thinking that the price was for the book below instead of the book above.
Thanks
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On the Additional Legal Information page, the Disclaimer parapgraph, the first all-caps line shows [ b]AS IS[ /b] rather than being in bold
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Hey all,
Thanks for the great set of comments...checking many of them off as quickly as we can.
There was a fair bit of feedback that the front page didn't have enough eye candy to instantly grab someone. While I want to be careful not to overload the page, I've given it a shot and added an image to the front page. A few questions I'd like answered, if any of you are up for it.
1. Does it clutter the page up too much?
2. Does it work just fine?
3. Does it work but it's actually not enough of the image; i.e. it should be a little bigger to provide more of what's going on?
4. What if that was turned into a slider gallery that cycled through a half a dozen to a dozen images every 5 to 7 seconds...would you like that better?
If there's anything else pertaining to this one important change, by all means, let me know.
Thanks!
Randall
Looking at the home page right now, I like the image, since it kind of livens up the page. I do like the idea of cycling through the images. It keeps the page from getting stagnant.
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The side does not look that good using a netbook, which at the moment is my main PC.
Which only 1024 monitor width you always have two scrollbars and right/left scrolling is annoying.
I was going to say this too. I don't maximize my web browser; I'm guessing it has about 1100-1200 pixels of width. If you're going to optimize for a fixed width, picking 1024 pixels makes sense, due to the large number of netbooks out there, but ideally one could resize their browser window and not have a horizontal scroll bar at a variety of widths. I just noticed that when I decrease my font size by two settings it fits fine, but that's probably less of an option on a netbook.
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Outside of that, please review and let me know if there's a better way to present various bits of information, or if there's information you feel should be shown that's currently not on the page.
For consistency I would put the link for the Primer of how the core rulebooks work down like the others are instead of some image they could click.
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If you could change the forum layout too it will be great. I appreciate the work you've already done to the web site. Don't give up, you're doing great job !! [rockon]
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While you are updating the product listing, make sure that you add missing .pdfs to DriveThruRPG, since there are a lot of early CGL products missing from that site (It looks to me that you started to add all products to DriveThru only from Op. Klondike onward).
For example, if I search for "Jihad Hot Spots" on DriveThruRPG, I notice that JHS:3070 and JHS:Terra are for sale, but no JHS:3072 and no JHS:3076.
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While you are updating the product listing, make sure that you add missing .pdfs to DriveThruRPG, since there are a lot of early CGL products missing from that site (It looks to me that you started to add all products to DriveThru only from Op. Klondike onward).
For example, if I search for "Jihad Hot Spots" on DriveThruRPG, I notice that JHS:3070 and JHS:Terra are for sale, but no JHS:3072 and no JHS:3076.
I believe both should be there now?
Thanks for letting us know!
Randall
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:-[ T don't even know where to begin. There was a lot of good info on the old site, not to mention all the data, lists and downloads. It's like a bad dream. Expecting the old and get this new bare site. All the links when you google are broken. What was wrong the the old site, huh?
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:-[ T don't even know where to begin. There was a lot of good info on the old site, not to mention all the data, lists and downloads. It's like a bad dream. Expecting the old and get this new bare site. All the links when you google are broken. What was wrong the the old site, huh?
I can think of a couple reasons:
1) Jason Knight, aka deathshadow, has been having medical issues, and has been having trouble, and having to rely more
and more on other site maintenance people to keep it going. He had actually turned in his resignation effective as soon
as they could get a replacement after some major site issues last year. The old site was, from what I gather, mostly
housed on his servers.
2)As much as the old site had, frankly, it looked OLD. It really was not the kind of site that would appeal to the modern,
net-raised generation, which CGL needs to be able to recruit new players. I mean, the site looked just like what it was:
A site designed in the late 90's, that had just not progressed with the graphic design times. With a new computer game
coming out in the foreseeable future, it makes sense that CGL would want to update the look.
3) Frankly, the site had not undergone a major redesign since Warner Doles ran it. A site that stays stagnant is just
not going to draw much attention. While the Battletech fandom is amazingly conservative(in the definition of: disliking
change) for a gaming fandom, sometimes change *IS* a good thing. Also, a redesign is a good way to clean out all
the old stuff that is no longer needed.
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There was a lot of good info on the old site, not to mention all the data, lists and downloads.
What kinda data, etc would you like to see that seems missing? We're still adding back content, but it doesn't hurt to mention it.
All the links when you google are broken.
Not sure I know what you mean there.
3) Frankly, the site had not undergone a major redesign since Warner Doles ran it.
You're right that the site has been rather stagnant, but credit should also be given to Jason's effort, when the site took on the Core book appearance.
Paul
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Okay we've mined a ton of your suggestions, including the shrinking the width of the page, for tweaking the front page. We're still working on turning the tiger-striped Mad Cat image into a slider bar for multiple images...but beyond that, at least for now, feeling pretty good with where the front page is at.
Feel free to provide any last comments while we continue to concentrate on other sections of the site.
Thanks!
Randall
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I believe both should be there now?
Thanks for letting us know!
Randall
Yes both have been added, thanks.
While I have no complete list of products, and hence might be missing something, these are hardcopy books I own that are still not DriveThruRPG:
- Interstellar Players 2: Jihad Conspiracies
- Masters and Minions: The StarCorps Dossiers
- The Corps: Battlecorps Anthology Vol 1
- Handbook: Major Periphery States
- Blake Ascending (Is this a print only volume? DriveThru has both its component books.)
- Jihad Secrets: The Blake Documents
- 25 Years of Art & Fiction
Still, since I have not a complete listing on what is on sale on Battlecorps at hand, I am probably missing something. Was there epub versions of Warrior trilogy and Wolves on the Border? They are at least not on DriveThru.
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Was kind of tired last night, apologies if some suggestions were not phrased as suggestions, or if some are technically impossible within the code or styles being used. Here's most of my remaining comments I didn't get to post yesterday:
The link inside the News and Announcements box, leading to the BattleBlog, is broken. (It links to bg.battlecorp instead of bg.battletech.) More importantly, hurray for BattleBlogs you can reliably link to! Man the old system was a pain.
The "official language sites" links should be on the top of every page, or at least the homepage - rather than requiring a non-English speaking user to find the "links" page you could add in a flag-based dropdown menu, or perhaps an "other languages" button on the main linkbar.
A row of flags also seems like another good way to fill the gap between the BattleTech logo and the Catalyst logo.
I don't like "A Game Of Armored Combat" because it breaks the fourth wall. I'd rather see something like "No Guts, No Galaxy" or "Heavy Metal Without the Hair. Or the Pants". I know it's just a game, but please, let me pretend
Although now we could have BattleTech: The Website and BattleTech: The Forums, etc. etc.
I actually like http://battletech.catalystgamelabs.com/ for its look. Just needs more of this site's content.
You mean the "board" in boardgame doesn't refer to the forum's message boards? :o :D Personally, my vote would go to "Armored Combat in the 31st Century," except that the logo only seems to fit 16 characters.
The battletech.catalystgamelabs portal does look good -- its width is ideal (thanks for slimming bg.battletech down!) and I like how the hyperlinks imitate the color of the trim. The portal and bg.battletech mostly duplicate content right now, but I suppose that a video game, movie or sovereign BattleTech ambassador to the United Nations would deserve more attention than bg.battletech could give them.
I'm finding the new website to have a lot of wasted horizontal space on a widescreen monitor. The Mad Cat blueprint background is great, but I've seen it; I'd rather have the ability to see the upcoming releases and the latest releases at a glance and click over to CamoSpecs and back to see what's new and click into the forums without a lot of scrolling around.
Yes, I'm that lazy.
I'm too lazy to pivot my neck that much while reading a website. Still, I suppose they could put alternate homepages in a pull-down beneath "Home." ...or, instead of the traditional vertical layout, they could redesign all their pages to only scroll horizontally. I saw a webcomic do that once, probably the only site I've ever seen take advantage of potential screen width.
I like the categories shown in the "Books & Game" link. I hope you'll carry that same organization to BattleCorps in the future.
I hope that the BattleShop abandons its own catalogue list and starts using bg.battletech's product directory directly. Speaking of the BattleShop: if they offer a free product, I should not have to log in to get it. :-\
Now you know one of many reasons editors have cause to hate me. ;)
BattleBlog made it sound like all the explanatory text throughout the site is just filling in until construction finishes, then y'all are going back through to revise/rewrite. Right? Or are you looking for more comments like ColBosch's and mbear's?
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http://battletech.catalystgamelabs.com/epub-novels-2/ has a misspelling.
There is an E missing in "Blood of Krensky Omnibus at BattleCorps.com"
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(In response to broken Google links)
Not sure I know what you mean there.
Paul
He means that Google still hasn't spidered the new site, and web searches are directing to (now non-existent) pages when you do a Google search. It should clear up automatically in a few weeks to a month, but as I recall there's a way to automatically trigger an audit of the site.
I appreciate the added content and crosslinking in the product pages, that was one of my major complaints. Will go through again later and provide more commentary if I can think of something.
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Yep, we're still chipping away. If a comment seems unresolved, it may not be because we are ignoring it, but because we haven't gotten there yet. Or that we missed it previously, so our feelings aren't hurt if you repeat them.
Paul
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Why was the "New to BattleTech" category abbreviated to "New to Tech?" It didn't save any words, the menu bar didn't need the room, "Tech" refers to technicians or technology or equipment whether in or out of the BT property, and if "New to BattleTech" is important enough to be in an image at the top of the page then it's important enough to write properly in the menu bar. (Plus, if anybody ever were to abbreviate BattleTech that way, it would be 'Tech with a backwards apostraphe.)
- So: revert "Tech" back to "BattleTech."
Now, both the "New to Tech" and the "Getting Started" pages tell you to first download and play the BattleTech Quickstart rules and then and only then consider the boxed set or any other product offered by the company. But: - The boxed set should be the first product that a "BattleTech: The Board Game" website tells you about.
- Experiencing the Quickstart rules can't be prerequisite to buying the Boxed Set because the Boxed Set already includes those rules.
- There are alternatives to the BattleTech Quickstart rules (BattleForce Quickstart, Terrain Rules, whatever).
- Visitors may be new to BattleTech but not new to this kind of gaming and therefore want meatier products right off the bat.
- Visitors may be interested in splat books only and not gaming at all.
- So stop presenting Quick Start as prerequisite to anything.
The "New to Tech?" page tries to get a visitor started quickly but also tries to comment on BattleTech products in general. These are contradictory goals. So: - Move all the Quickstart rules from that page to their own "Quick Start" category within that same pull-down menu. (Dunno if you ought to move the Universe.pdf to the the site's Universe page (http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=23), or what.)
- Use the "New to BattleTech" page for quick "what is BattleTech" info (keep the "BT vs. CBT" note), to direct visitors to whatever products are most relevant to their interests (e.g., bullet points above), and to address issues raised in the ol' "new and returning players" forum thread. Basically, what ColBosch (http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,12014.msg285894.html#msg285894) and ApokalypseTest (http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,12014.msg286359.html#msg286359) were saying.
- With Quick Start getting their own page it only makes sense to add a miniatures/hexless terrain page in the same pull-down menu.
Errata: I see that some of the oldest errata files indicate which printing applied any given item. If current errata don't do that (say, by starting each change with a superscript number or, if not yet incorporated into a physical printing, an asterix) then I suggest they start.
Title: If you guys really must have a tagline on the website's logo, and must have the word "game" in that tagline, then "BattleTech: Tabletop Gaming" should be about the right length.
And of course that also applies to the forums…they, and this site, have migrated to a new server with more robust support, so please let us know if you find Space Cats in the ventilation shafts.
Obviously this isn't a very high priority at the moment, but now's as good a time to ask as any:
The forums rely on a fair amount of common knowledge, which sometimes ends up being not common enough, and it'd be nice to collect it all into a permanent article. Past examples that have required stickies or official intervention include:
- Avatar size limit (sig and attachment limits already noted where appropriate)
- New & Returning player FAQ
- Admonishment to restrict in-character flames to the RP boards
- What to do if your IWM/BC order has a problem
- The limits of what writers/developers can tell you (here (http://web.archive.org/web/20100211223718/http://www.classicbattletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=56537.0))
- General admonishment and warning to play extra nice on the Catalyst Interaction boards (this (http://web.archive.org/web/20100211225559/http://www.classicbattletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=58189.0), this (http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,438.0.html) and this (http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,268.0.html))
- What all of the forum's specially colored ranks designate, how often each checks their PM inboxes (big difference between developers & moderators, for instance), and where the other special rank titles come from
- What it takes to pitch material for publication (ie, pitch what battlecorp is looking for, keep at it, get slowly entrusted with incrementally larger responsibilities)
- General admonishment to put 'Mech (et al) designs in the proper design forums (here (http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,15.0.html))
- Where faction userbars come from
- Your first ten posts (http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,20.0.html)
- The second half of this (http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,18.0.html)
To these I suggest adding:
- thread size limits
- general admonishment to title your thread productively, accurately & distinctively
- advise OP's, in order to combat thread drift, to: start an appropriately named thread to house the thread tangent; reprise all relevant discussion; then crosslink back to the drifting thread and ask people to move
- the "any given day" rule
- reminder that internet postings often lack context, both social and factual
- admonishment to live and let live with regard to:
- how fans outside your own play group like to play
- discussions whose topic or level of detail fall outside your own interest
- an acknowledgement that, outside the Official Interaction boards, "if it works for your game, whatever you want it to be" is a great reason to start discussing something and a shit-tastic reason to stop discussing it
- an acknowledgement that discussing things with other fans on these forums is not identical to discussing those things with Catalyst Game Labs
- a warning about how long it can take to get an official rules answer, and suggestion to ask other fans in the appropriate game forum
I was going to suggest a list of the slang and acronyms common to these forums, but that's more Sarna's bag.
Finally: There is a sentiment among many forumites that Catalyst feels honorbound to avoid publishing anything similar to any house rules and concepts that have been posted in the forums, and therefore fans should avoid posting any such things that would limit Catalyst; is their sentiment accurate? I find the notion hard to believe, but if it is true, I hereby request a new Fan forum to house such things.
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Logging in just to give my "thumb up" to the new website look :) [rockon]
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Okay we've mined a ton of your suggestions, including the shrinking the width of the page, for tweaking the front page. We're still working on turning the tiger-striped Mad Cat image into a slider bar for multiple images...but beyond that, at least for now, feeling pretty good with where the front page is at.
Feel free to provide any last comments while we continue to concentrate on other sections of the site.
Thanks!
Randall
I like the idea of making the image of the Timber Wolf into a slider to show off different art, although I was thinking it might be more fun and require less upkeep if you had it randomly pulling pictures out of a huge folder to keep things interesting. You would probably want the slider to link to a gallery of all the images so people could go find something specific or browse through it at their own pace, but I think it would be a fantastic way to show off all the wonderful art that has been made over the years. It would probably take more coding to get working, but once it is up and running the only upkeep it would need is occasionally adding new pictures to the back end.
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Skilato, I appreciated it to "Tech" over the weekend because there wasn't room for more initially; why "Commmunity Play" became "Community". Trying to shave every last character out of the menu bar since we shrunk the site down based on numerous suggestions. The over-all width of the menu has finally been shrunk enough it can be bumped back up to "BattleTech."
As for your suggestions on the QSR, it was not my intention to tell someone that you 'must' play the QSR before the box...however after reviewing the text I can see how that impression comes across. I'll soften that.
However, I still feel that the New To BattleTech? is the appropriate approach. If someone comes to BT.com and is showing interest in BT, you want to hand them an instant fix, not a fix that could take days to show up if they order the box set. Giving them that easy, instant fix of a glimpse of rules and universe hopefully sets the hook deeper and then allows them the time to either order the box set directly or find a local retailer, without potentially losing that drive.
But again, as I said, the Getting Started page does need to be softened so it doesn't imply you have to play the QSR...only that it's there and you can.
Thanks for all the solid suggestions.
Randall
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...However, I still feel that the New To BattleTech? is the appropriate approach. If someone comes to BT.com and is showing interest in BT, you want to hand them an instant fix, not a fix that could take days to show up if they order the box set. Giving them that easy, instant fix of a glimpse of rules and universe hopefully sets the hook deeper and then allows them the time to either order the box set directly or find a local retailer, without potentially losing that drive....
Another huge advantage the QSR download has is that it lets you try the game for free. All you need is something to use as markers and a pair of six-sided die and you are good to go. This is especially appealing to younger audiences who do not have the money on hand to just try things so the ability to try the game out at no risk makes it much easier to get started.
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...
However, I still feel that the New To BattleTech? is the appropriate approach. If someone comes to BT.com and is showing interest in BT, you want to hand them an instant fix, not a fix that could take days to show up if they order the box set. Giving them that easy, instant fix of a glimpse of rules and universe hopefully sets the hook deeper and then allows them the time to either order the box set directly or find a local retailer, without potentially losing that drive.
Randall
How about "New Players", "New Visitors", or "First Visit?". Even shorter, keeps the same punch, and makes it clear to, say, some kid's gift-buying mom (or wife :P) what the site's about and where to start..
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Gotta say, the new site keeps looking better and better. And the Gallery is awesome. [notworthy] [notworthy]
Can't wait to put the ER on my desktop! Thanks!
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I was going to comment elsewhere on the new portal, but it seems to be loading incorrectly from my Chrome browser. Maybe 1 of 3 reloads will display the page correctly.
To wit:
(http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h251/SirBedwyr/portal.jpg)
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I suggest to add a link from the Boardgame site to the main portal site.
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To add to Bedwyr's post, it looks like the "Home", "News", "Downloads", "Eras", etc. links sends you to a Go Daddy page.
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To add to Bedwyr's post, it looks like the "Home", "News", "Downloads", "Eras", etc. links sends you to a Go Daddy page.
They were all working fine for about an hour...we think it's some DNS switch-over mess-up that occurred...we're looking into it.
Randall
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To add to Bedwyr's post, it looks like the "Home", "News", "Downloads", "Eras", etc. links sends you to a Go Daddy page.
It's all fixed now.
Randall
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I suggest to add a link from the Boardgame site to the main portal site.
There's a subtle link in the third paragraph of the "About Text" on the front page...now that the site is launched, however, we'll add a more aggressive link, along with MWOnline, to the links page.
Thanks!
Randall
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I really like the slideshow on the portal. Is the text raster or actual text? That would be pretty cool at the top of the bg main page.
Also on the bg site, the "Getting Started" page incorrectly highlights "Books" instead of "new to Battletech?".
And the links page on the bg site needs a good sized link to the Mechwarrior site.
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Stop renaming products on DriveThruRPG, it will force people to rebuy if they want to get updates, since the renamed product count as a different one. [tickedoff]
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Oh, another low-priority suggestion: please add a list of included 'Mechs to the Boxed Set's product page? People ask about those all the time.
Skilato, I appreciated it to "Tech" over the weekend because there wasn't room for more initially; why "Commmunity Play" became "Community". Trying to shave every last character out of the menu bar since we shrunk the site down based on numerous suggestions. The over-all width of the menu has finally been shrunk enough it can be bumped back up to "BattleTech."
I had thought it got shortened (or perhaps reshortened) well after sufficient room had been freed up, but perhaps I misremember.
However, I still feel that the New To BattleTech? is the appropriate approach. If someone comes to BT.com and is showing interest in BT, you want to hand them an instant fix, not a fix that could take days to show up if they order the box set. Giving them that easy, instant fix of a glimpse of rules and universe hopefully sets the hook deeper and then allows them the time to either order the box set directly or find a local retailer, without potentially losing that drive.
My point is, you don't know which "instant fix" they need. What if you've got somebody with zero interest buying gifts for someone else, like Schottenjaeger suggests? Or somebody comes to the site not knowing what to be interested in? You can still guide them to the easy hook while also pointing them at the Boxed Set and the rest of the product line. Another benefit to separating Quick Start out is that, when somebody is looking for that instant fix, it's right there staring at them from the menu.
I could see this coming down to a difference of philosophy; and, at the moment, I think a bigger issue is that the pull-down menu for whichever category you're in is darkened too much.
As for your suggestions on the QSR, it was not my intention to tell someone that you 'must' play the QSR before the box...however after reviewing the text I can see how that impression comes across. I'll soften that.
<snip>
But again, as I said, the Getting Started page does need to be softened so it doesn't imply you have to play the QSR...only that it's there and you can.
You may also want to soften the wording on the "New to BattleTech?" page and the "Books" page.
Thanks for all the solid suggestions.
Sure thing. I had just finished a similar review of a friend's project, and my brain was refusing to change gears. #P
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Okay, here's the current version of the New to BattleTech? page. I believe it's got almost every suggested tweak I've seen.
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=400
Now to the Core Rulebook page to see about adding in a list of links at the time and adding in previews.
Randall
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I just got back online after a little computer glitch, so sorry if I am late to the party on this topic.....
Wow....Battletech: The Board Game.
Whenever I go to game stores and get asked what I play, I always get the impression that Battletech is looked down upon as kind of a kids game or "intro to wargames" kinda thing. Now with this new name, it kind of cements that opinion.....as if Battletech were something like Monopoly with big robots.
Just my two cents, for what it's worth.
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Okay, here's the current version of the New to BattleTech? page. I believe it's got almost every suggested tweak I've seen.
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=400
Now to the Core Rulebook page to see about adding in a list of links at the time and adding in previews.
Randall
I might be wrong, but weren't the Record Sheets from the intro box available on the old site?
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Okay, here's the current version of the New to BattleTech? page. I believe it's got almost every suggested tweak I've seen.
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=400
Now to the Core Rulebook page to see about adding in a list of links at the time and adding in previews.
Yup, that intro paragraph works for me. Hits on the same points I mentioned and avoids jargon overload.
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The "Battletech: The Board Game" really needs to go. Honestly its insulting to the game and misleading since the "board" isn't necessary to the games.
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The "Battletech: The Board Game" really needs to go. Honestly its insulting to the game and misleading since the "board" isn't necessary to the games.
Aff...it also excludes the RPG(but, then again, the RPG has always been even more of a red-headed step child then Aerotech),
and excludes those people using terrain, even if they are making their own 3d Terrain Hex maps.
I find it interesting that the one, overwhelming criticism of the site is the one getting the least comment on by TPTB. All the other tweaks
are, actually, relatively minor compared to The Name Problem.
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Okay, here's the next iteration of one of the product pages.
Got a nice quick links at the top, while I've also added a dozen page PDF preview for every product:
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=481
Thanks for the continuing feedback!
Randall
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The Starterbooks page doesn't list Starter: Fist & Falcon.
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Just curious about the ATOW GM screen as it's no longer listed under new releases or Coming soon?
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Puts on my "Simon Cowell of web design" hat... If you've ever read my analysis of peoples websites on SitePoint or Digital Point, you'll know what that means... and wow, I've not done this to a BT site since BattleCorps was launched -- and that was sent internally -- Should be fun.
1) the white text on orange is below accessibility norms making the menu hard to read. Likewise the "The board game" text -- on top of being silly as already noted, has legibility issues; I had to have someone else read it to me!
2) the use of absurdly undersized fixed metric fonts on the menu and presence of more menu elements than fit a normal horizontal menu render it useless to large font/120dpi users.
3) The crappy fixed width that isn't even 1024 friendly pretty much flushes my visiting the main part of the website from my netbook... or my tablet... or even from my normal desktop browser since while I'm on a 1920 wide display, I happen to run the browser at half width so I have room for other stuff on screen. (like IM's)
4) lose the massive images for nothing.
5) even out the paddings, for the most part everything kinda looks just slapped in there any old way.
6) the broken/nonexistant heading orders (everything's a H3?!?) makes it difficult to key/voice navigate.
7) Shouldn't the Topps logo link to Topps website and not the massive version of the logo? Of course that it's all alpha transparency .pngs shows that whoever was doing the images hasn't quite grasped what "Internet" means... or is actually gullible enough to believe that Photoshop's "save for web" actually has a clue what it's doing -- * NEWS FLASH * -- it doesn't. Blue blazes, the pathetically crippled "The GIMP" does a better job...
8 ) the presence of HTML 5 some decade before anyone has any business using it to build a website pretty well shtups most of the IE6 users; who contacted me en-masse saying "please tell me you had nothing to do with this" -- that was fun... and NO, a javascript "shiv" is NOT THE ANSWER. It's called DRAFT for a reason -- which is why it's better to stay with "RECOMMENDATION" instead... the latest real world deployable W3C Recommendations being HTML 4.01 STRICT or XHTML 1.0 STRICT. NOT that HTML 5 offers anything useful to web developers other than some 'gee ain't it neat' bullshit and bloated allegedly semantic tags to be abused; It's carefully crafted for the people who the past decade were vomiting up HTML 3.2 putting a 4 transitional doctype on it and calling themselves 'modern' -- nothing like being in transition from 1997 to 1998. So now instead of slapping a tranny on it, the sleazeball shortcut crap out sites any old way folks can give it 5 lip-service.... HTML 5, setting website development practices back a decade. (at least if you talk the parts of it that have anything to do with markup... which is probably why they slapped the gee ain't it neat new scripting and CSS3 under it's banner, without which it offers NOTHING).
9) The home page is 791k in 41 files... that is almost five times the upper limit I would allow for a single page on a website!
The file count ALONE is outright scary, but entirely typical of your off the shelf Wordpress rubbish.
Hell, you can tell it's ineptly coded by using some simple logic -- there's only 3k of plaintext on the page with seven actual CONTENT images... so 40k of markup? In other words four times as much code as should be neccessary... That it blows an unbelievable 98k on CSS and STILL has an ungodly 16k of static CSS inlined in the HTML shows that whoever built that skin needs to do the world a favor, back the **** away from the keyboard, and take up something a bit less dangerous like bocce or horseshoes.
Though again that's just turdpress taking a dump on any site it's involved in. When hardcoded outside the skinning system it shoves markup like this down your throat:
<li id="menu-item-550" class="menu-item menu-item-type-post_type menu-item-object-page current-menu-item page_item page-item-17 current_page_item menu-item-550"><a href="http://bg.battletech.com/" >Home</a></li>
It's the LAST thing that should EVER be used to build a website; I don't care how 'easy it is' to use on the back end, or that people who know nothing about making websites can use it -- it basically flushes anything built with it. (which is why to even build a halfway decent site with it you have to neuter 2/3rds of it's code base, shtupping your upgrade path... shades of phpBB2)... Wordpress, for and by people who know nothing about websites... THINK ABOUT THAT.
There's a reason Wordpress is for crappy little personal blogs and not for websites of real companies... well, on top of it being the 2008 pwnie winner for M4ss 0wnage since it has security holes big enough to cruise a McKenna class warship through and knee deep in idiotic bloated sleazy shortcuts like jQuery. As Dan used to say, the only thing you can learn from jQuery is how not to write JavaScript. (and the only thing you can learn from Dreamweaver is how not to build websites)... and Christmas on a cracker, it's not even using the minified version of jQuery?!? Bad enough having the idiotic bloated library with hordes of fat slow off the shelf scripting, but then to not even use the minified 'for deployment' versions of said scripts?!?
NOT that Wordpress can be blamed for the images -- I already helped out a bit by getting you some better optimized versions, but much of the imagery reeks of the "but I can do it in photoshop" idiocy. Lands sakes, 90% of the content area is just flat gray -- you have seven thumbnails ... what the devil is it doing with 473k of images in 19 files?!? Much less that STUPID 'new' logo which doesn't seemed designed for print (give how crappy it looks on all the products just slapped in there any old way) or web (since it doesn't fit common dimensions and is non-orthagonal) certainly doesn't help... but I've been complaining about that since FanPro introduced it, which is why you'll notice I never actually used it on the website and instead took the border thing off of it and/or ajusted it to fit/grow/tile.
Of course, that the server STILL isn't sending any of the files mod_deflate/gzipped -- something that should have been set up before websites were even installed on it... well, that just takes an already massive and slow website and drags it's performance into the deepest circle of hell. First-load here takes >40 seconds and subsequent pages take >10 seconds -- that's RIDICULOUS since I'm on a 22mbps connection. That's something that should take about fifteen seconds to enable from the shell assuming Apache has been built properly, 2 minutes if it has library compatibility enabled, 20 minutes if you have to rebuild it. NONE of which even involves any downtime!
I'd love to see a "<?php phpInfo(); ?>" output from said server -- given the abysmal performance of the forums and website and lack of compressed output, I bet it doesn't even have a PHP caching accelerator installed. As it is it's been a real laugh the 501 errors ever 8 hours or so... and even better the 502 "bad gateway" errors which likely means the server is misconfigured, some stupid caching tool like "Varnish" is in there screwing things up, or something upstream of it in the data center is barfing out. (Being it's on Rackspace, I'd not be surprised -- they may be rated tier 2 but their service is tier 999,999... oh, it's still up so it counts as uptime...RIGHT)
Whoever you've had doing this (who apparently won't come out in public to play) should hang their head in shame at their ineptitude. I've not seen anything this bad since the steaming pile we know as BattleCorps...
Which was always a laugh that a project who's entire revenue stream is web based couldn't be bothered to pick up a decent web developer... Not really surprising none of the other Catalyst sites even show up on Google properly and even with a proper 301 the search mojo for "battletech" is going through the floor.
Of course, that this was a last minute no planning snap decision is where most of the real problems lay -- maybe if instead of letting me continue to pluck away on my new codebase for a month for no good reason, you had said "We're going to go ahead with something else, could you help"... But NO....
Ah well, NMFP anymore. You want to revert back to worse than when Warner was hand editing a site using HotMetal, knock yourselves out.
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Puts on my "Simon Cowell of web design" hat... If you've ever read my analysis of peoples websites on SitePoint or Digital Point, you'll know what that means... and wow, I've not done this to a BT site since BattleCorps was launched -- and that was sent internally -- Should be fun.
Lots of stuff cut for brevity
Wow. It got bitter in here all of the sudden. ;)
On another note, Randall if you could please remove the "click here" links from the pages and replace them with contextual links, that would be awesome. Click here doesn't tell me anything when I visit the page and see three, four, or five of them.
For example on the TRO page you have (boldface == link text):
Pre-filled record sheets for the various units found in the technical readouts are published separately; go here for record sheets.
I'd just re-write it so it reads:
Pre-filled record sheets for the various units found in the technical readouts are published separately.
Here are some short articles explaining why:
- Don't Click Here! - Placing Links in Context (http://buildinternet.com/2009/01/dont-click-here-placing-links-in-context/)
- Click here must die (http://www.brownbearmedia.com/blog/seo/click-here-must-die)
Thanks!
mbear
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Jason: Thanks for taking the time to post your review of the site. As with all the feedback from the community, we continue to look at ways to implement suggestions, as appropriate.
Mbear: Thanks for that solid suggestion...already started making some of those changes. If you spot some in the future that have not yet been changed, feel free to let me know.
Randall
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Aff...it also excludes the RPG(but, then again, the RPG has always been even more of a red-headed step child then Aerotech),
and excludes those people using terrain, even if they are making their own 3d Terrain Hex maps.
I find it interesting that the one, overwhelming criticism of the site is the one getting the least comment on by TPTB. All the other tweaks
are, actually, relatively minor compared to The Name Problem.
It did get a comment, the first day. Paul said something along the line of "yeah, we get it, any other comments".
http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,12014.msg285831.html#msg285831
I suspect they haven't found a solution to what they yet. They obviously had a reason they wanted "the board game" on there, and are likely trying to figure out how to resolve that. Not all problems are easily fixed.
and on general website suggestions, the preview post option didn't work for me. I clicked preview and it said "fetching preview" and after a minute or two I gave up and clicked save.
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It did get a comment, the first day. Paul said something along the line of "yeah, we get it, any other comments".
http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,12014.msg285831.html#msg285831
I suspect they haven't found a solution to what they yet. They obviously had a reason they wanted "the board game" on there, and are likely trying to figure out how to resolve that. Not all problems are easily fixed.
and on general website suggestions, the preview post option didn't work for me. I clicked preview and it said "fetching preview" and after a minute or two I gave up and clicked save.
I'm in the process right now of general a BattleBlog discussing why we chose the "board game" name.
As for the "preview post", can you clarify what you mean there? i.e. what exactly did you click on? Want to make sure it's working, but I wasn't exactly sure what you were referring to.
Thanks.
Randall
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Quote from: DarkISI on 28 October 2011, 21:31:37
Both Final Reckoning, the 1600*1200 WoR and the 1680*1050 TRO:P are still wrong. The others are fixed
Fixed.
Thanks.
Randall
The TRO:P 1680x1050 wallpaper is still pointed to Battlecorps.
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The TRO:P 1680x1050 wallpaper is still pointed to Battlecorps.
Fixed.
Thanks!
Randall
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I'm in the process right now of general a BattleBlog discussing why we chose the "board game" name.
As for the "preview post", can you clarify what you mean there? i.e. what exactly did you click on? Want to make sure it's working, but I wasn't exactly sure what you were referring to.
Thanks.
Randall
On the forum, when I'm making a post, there is a preview option so you can see what the result will look like (links and images in particular) before you post.
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I'm in the process right now of general a BattleBlog discussing why we chose the "board game" name.
And what will you do if the majority of the feed back, even following this Battleblog, is still negative?
Look at how many posts are against it. I don't like it because it is EXCLUSIVE. It excludes people who
make their own 3d terrain, including going through the extra effort to make Hexed Terrain. It Excludes
the RPG. It excludes the people who put time and effort into their miniatures(Have you ever seen someone
paint up their monopoly car? Or put extra effort into making Sorry Pieces, or even Mousetrap pieces look
cool?). It excludes people who would not think of a "board game" as a Wargame, and puts a greater obstacle
to convincing wargamers to try it out if they go look at the website. I hope, when you write this battleblog,
that you will allay my concerns, though...It is not something I am finding likely, since I cannot imagine "board game"
being inclusive of everything that is in the game.
That said, heck, there have been many things over the years I didn't like(the end of LAMs, the end of the novels, the initial
info about the Republic of the Sphere and the Dark Age), and just kept on. This is likely one of those times.
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I might be wrong, but weren't the Record Sheets from the intro box available on the old site?
Yeah, there's still more than a dozen files that are slated to be added to the Downloads section, that's WIP.
Paul
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On the forum, when I'm making a post, there is a preview option so you can see what the result will look like (links and images in particular) before you post.
Can't reproduce. Likely dumb question: have you tried clearing your cache?
Paul
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On the forum, when I'm making a post, there is a preview option so you can see what the result will look like (links and images in particular) before you post.
Ah, now I understand...digging.
Thanks.
Randall
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And what will you do if the majority of the feed back, even following this Battleblog, is still negative?
Look at how many posts are against it. I don't like it because it is EXCLUSIVE. It excludes people who
make their own 3d terrain, including going through the extra effort to make Hexed Terrain. It Excludes
the RPG. It excludes the people who put time and effort into their miniatures(Have you ever seen someone
paint up their monopoly car? Or put extra effort into making Sorry Pieces, or even Mousetrap pieces look
cool?). It excludes people who would not think of a "board game" as a Wargame, and puts a greater obstacle
to convincing wargamers to try it out if they go look at the website. I hope, when you write this battleblog,
that you will allay my concerns, though...It is not something I am finding likely, since I cannot imagine "board game"
being inclusive of everything that is in the game.
That said, heck, there have been many things over the years I didn't like(the end of LAMs, the end of the novels, the initial
info about the Republic of the Sphere and the Dark Age), and just kept on. This is likely one of those times.
If I see enough solid arguments that my reasoning was wrong, then I've no problem changing it.
Randall
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Can't reproduce. Likely dumb question: have you tried clearing your cache?
Paul
Tried it (preview) again, and this time it worked. Didn't even clear my cache. Even tried using the exact same text/links from my previous post and it still worked. Damn those gremlins.
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I agree with most of the issues with "The Board Game" subtext. IMO "The Tabletop Game" would be more appropriate.
I would like to see improvements to the events locater on catalystdemos.com . I like the way the venue/store locater works, but there is no easy way to search for events in a similar fashion (how do you find events at non-firebase venues?).
If I'm missing something, please let me know.
Also, Currently the front page (catalystdemos.com) makes people feel like they HAVE TO register to use the site. It should be more subtle. (e.g. "Register to automatically receive local event updates" instead of "Register Now".)
I deal with gaming and comic customers all day at my store and sample a wide variety of personality types. Getting players to play (and to find events) quickly should be the primary focus of catalystdemos.com. I really like the way the wizards of the coast locator is laid out.
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Wow. It got bitter in here all of the sudden. ;)
The funny part is, when it comes to reviewing websites that's damned near my form letter response I use at least four or five times a week on web development forums:
"Fixed width, undersized fixed metric fonts, illegible color contrasts, bloated code, too many images, excessively large images, with too much 'gee ain't it neat' javascript for nothing."
Been that way ever since the 'artists' and script kiddies took over the industry ruining company after companies websites... Much of the blame falling right at the feet of Adobe, Wordpress, and all the stupid "frameworks" that are out there right now like YUI, mooTools, jQuery, LESS, etc... Honestly it's nothing short of a miracle the majority of websites out there render properly or in a useful manner on anything other than a 1280x1024 or larger display with a >10mbps broadband connection these days.
Oh WAIT, THEY DON'T.
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The funny part is, when it comes to reviewing websites that's damned near my form letter response I use at least four or five times a week on web development forums:
"Fixed width, undersized fixed metric fonts, illegible color contrasts, bloated code, too many images, excessively large images, with too much 'gee ain't it neat' javascript for nothing."
Been that way ever since the 'artists' and script kiddies took over the industry ruining company after companies websites... Much of the blame falling right at the feet of Adobe, Wordpress, and all the stupid "frameworks" that are out there right now like YUI, mooTools, jQuery, LESS, etc... Honestly it's nothing short of a miracle the majority of websites out there render properly or in a useful manner on anything other than a 1280x1024 or larger display with a >10mbps broadband connection these days.
Oh WAIT, THEY DON'T.
Or maybe other people have different definition of what they want in a website. A car that can only be driven by professional drivers isn't most people's definition of a good car. Even if the car is slower, gets worse gas mileage, etc. Microsoft Word creates some hugely bloated files, but most people don't want to use a simple text editor.
Doesn't mean you aren't right, but doing those things might require other things that aren't acceptable.
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Here's another product page, now with much easier to find and click PDF preview buttons.
As always, let me know if the page needs more data and/or could present the information in a more user-friendly fashion.
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=498
Randall
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The venues section under "find a game" is way out of date. For my area, it list one store that carries no BT and another that carries only a small number of IWM minis. Also, the name of one of the stores has changed. This isn't really part of the redesign, but I am trying to spark interest in my area and this kind of thing doesn't help.
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Here's another product page, now with much easier to find and click PDF preview buttons.
As always, let me know if the page needs more data and/or could present the information in a more user-friendly fashion.
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=498
Randall
Wars of Reaving is called Technical Readout Protoypes in the overview on top and it is completely out of position.
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All links from the books page point to bg.battlecorps.com which is a dead link.
The plot book page looks pretty decent, but the layout is broken and scattered. Hotspots Terra is on the right side of the 2nd line and Wars of Reaving is on the left side of the 3rd line. And why does the hypertext below Wars of Reaving read "TRO Prototypes"?
Also I can't emphasize this enough. All sites/pages need to be able to link back. You've got three links on the forums that lead to the index. None go back to the BG.Battletech mainsite (Home was linking back there, but now it's not). I should never have to google or bookmark back to it.
Regarding "Board Game". My opinion stands with the others including StCptMara. I'll look forward to the Battleblog and the defense of the name and keep an open mind about it, but reserve the right to rebut.
Also the Getting Started page still incorrectly highlights "books" on the menu bar.
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All links from the books page point to bg.battlecorps.com which is a dead link.
The plot book page looks pretty decent, but the layout is broken and scattered. Hotspots Terra is on the right side of the 2nd line and Wars of Reaving is on the left side of the 3rd line. And why does the hypertext below Wars of Reaving read "TRO Prototypes"?
Also I can't emphasize this enough. All sites/pages need to be able to link back. You've got three links on the forums that lead to the index. None go back to the BG.Battletech mainsite (Home was linking back there, but now it's not). I should never have to google or bookmark back to it.
Regarding "Board Game". My opinion stands with the others including StCptMara. I'll look forward to the Battleblog and the defense of the name and keep an open mind about it, but reserve the right to rebut.
Also the Getting Started page still incorrectly highlights "books" on the menu bar.
All the links fixed.
Wars of Reaving fixed.
As for the broken and scattered layout, I'm not seeing it. I'm showing Blake Ascending through 3076 on the first left, with Terra/Reaving both on the left side, second line. Anyone else seeing those as jumbled?
For the forums, that's a Paul/George angle...don't want to mess with something that'll screw it all up. ;-)
Nice catch on the Getting Started/books...didn't even notice that.
And the blog is up...feel free to rebut!
Thanks.
Randall
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So 'The Board Game' is here to stay, then?
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As for the broken and scattered layout, I'm not seeing it. I'm showing Blake Ascending through 3076 on the first left, with Terra/Reaving both on the left side, second line. Anyone else seeing those as jumbled?
What browser are you using?
I'm using Firefox, but I also tested it with IE. It's broken in both.
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Okay, here's the current version of the New to BattleTech? page. I believe it's got almost every suggested tweak I've seen.
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=400
Now to the Core Rulebook page to see about adding in a list of links at the time and adding in previews.
Randall
Having a "A Time of War QSR" in the heading looks wrong when there is space for "A Time of War Quick-Start Rules".
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As for the broken and scattered layout, I'm not seeing it. I'm showing Blake Ascending through 3076 on the first left, with Terra/Reaving both on the left side, second line. Anyone else seeing those as jumbled?
Yes, I see them arrayed up as following:
First line: "Blake Ascending", "JHS:72", "Jihad Conspiracies", "JS: tBD", "JHS:76"
Second line: <empty>, <empty>, <empty>, <empty>, "JHS:Terra"
Third line: "The Wars of Reaving"
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So 'The Board Game' is here to stay, then?
All depends on the feedback I get.
Randall
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What browser are you using?
I'm using Firefox, but I also tested it with IE. It's broken in both.
Safari...thanks for that...will go digging.
Randall
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All depends on the feedback I get.
Randall
Fair enough, my man. Thanks.
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Having a "A Time of War QSR" in the heading looks wrong when there is space for "A Time of War Quick-Start Rules".
Fixed.
Randall
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All depends on the feedback I get.
Randall
Actually, I think a lot of the negative feedback is simply there, because people don't want change. The reasoning behind it is sound.
The only thing I think you forgot to take into account is the different name of the two game lines. If somebody looks for Mechwarrior on google, he doesn't end up here. He doesn't know that Mechwarrior is based on Battletech. If you want to catch the computer game fans, you need some way to lead them from the name they know to the name they don't. Currently, I don't see how that is happening.
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Any chance of updating the favicon for the forums?
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Actually, I think a lot of the negative feedback is simply there, because people don't want change. The reasoning behind it is sound.
The only thing I think you forgot to take into account is the different name of the two game lines. If somebody looks for Mechwarrior on google, he doesn't end up here. He doesn't know that Mechwarrior is based on Battletech. If you want to catch the computer game fans, you need some way to lead them from the name they know to the name they don't. Currently, I don't see how that is happening.
I hope that happens as cross promotion between Catalyst and Piranha beings next year...so more and more people are pointed towards BattleTech.com and then wondering what that "board game" link is.
It's a going to be a long haul, no matter how you look a it, before we've a sense of whether it was ultimately a success, or not.
Randall
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The reasoning in the blog is sound, although I think you could simultaneously improve visibility to the tabletop gaming crowd by replacing the artwork of a Timber Wolf with something that shows off miniatures so they will immediately know from the picture that there is more to BT than a simple board game like Monopoly.
Of course, it does make me wonder if A Time of War and AeroTech should be split off into their own sites to better show them off even if they still share forums with the main BT site. It seems to me like this could potentially help get them some more visibility, although it would need to be easier to jump back to the main portal for this to work.
I am also wondering why it is so hard to find information on AeroTech on the site. Even knowing what it is and what it is called I cannot find anything that admits it exists beyond a note that there is a trademark on the word "AeroTech". It seems to me like there should really be a way to find more information on this side of things, and a new batch of quick start rules for AeroTech would also be a good way to help people ease into that facet of the universe.
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That's because Aerotech no longer exists. What was Aerotech before has been completely folded into the standard Battletech ruleset.
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That's because Aerotech no longer exists. What was Aerotech before has been completely folded into the standard Battletech ruleset.
Ah, that would be what happens when I do not pay attention to the airborne side of things. #P
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Actually, I think a lot of the negative feedback is simply there, because people don't want change. The reasoning behind it is sound.
The only thing I think you forgot to take into account is the different name of the two game lines. If somebody looks for Mechwarrior on google, he doesn't end up here. He doesn't know that Mechwarrior is based on Battletech. If you want to catch the computer game fans, you need some way to lead them from the name they know to the name they don't. Currently, I don't see how that is happening.
Actually, as far as the SEO side of things goes, they could always make sure "Mechwarrior" shows up in the site metadata at any logical point - image tags, etc. Might at least help boost organic search results there, for whatever that's worth.
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Nice catch on the Getting Started/books...didn't even notice that.
And the blog is up...feel free to rebut!
Cool, I'll have a look. Let me know when you fix the Getting Started thing so I don't bug you about it anymore (it's still there).
Edit:
Having read it, I think my response is:
- I can jive with the reasoning behind the tagline (and was suspecting this was the reason already)
- But if one of us comes up with a better marketing tagline that better encompasses the stuff we do in our hobby *and* is clear to the average computer game player, I'd recommend that instead... if someone comes up with it and it's really cool and pithy.
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- But if one of us comes up with a better marketing tagline that better encompasses the stuff we do in our hobby *and* is clear to the average computer game player, I'd recommend that instead... if someone comes up with it and it's really cool and pithy.
How does "Battletech: The Addiction" strike you?
W :D
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A car that can only be driven by professional drivers isn't most people's definition of a good car. Even if the car is slower, gets worse gas mileage, etc. Microsoft Word creates some hugely bloated files, but most people don't want to use a simple text editor.
That would be a fine analogy, except that the people writing the website aren't the ones 'driving' it.
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I hope that happens as cross promotion between Catalyst and Piranha beings next year...so more and more people are pointed towards BattleTech.com and then wondering what that "board game" link is.
It's a going to be a long haul, no matter how you look a it, before we've a sense of whether it was ultimately a success, or not.
Randall
Sir,
You've made a persuasive argument for using "the board game" tag line on the front page. I do not, however, see why that should necessarily propagate to the forums. Especially since they include sections to talk about the other aspects of the game, "Computer/Console Games (http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/board,28.0.html)" specifically among them. Honestly, I never would have cared about the tag line except that you placed it here. You've already got my business, and I rarely go to the front page. All the advertising I need is posted here as announcements. In my opinion, the forums should remain as inclusive as possible regardless of the ad copy and branding posted on the front page.
-Daryk
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How does "Battletech: The Addiction" strike you?
W :D
100% APPROPRIATE!! O0
:D
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How does "Battletech: The Addiction" strike you?
You made me think of Simpsons: The Bloodening.
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Just read Randall's blog and my immediate reaction was: then change Battletech's name to Mechwarrior. I don't like Battletech: The Board Game, I think it does a poor job of communicating what Battletech is. The very fact that "Battletech" is a different name than "Mechwarrior" communicates that its a different product. If you're wanting to attract those Mechwarrior fans, which is a great idea and how I got into it, then have something that does just that, maybe like Battletech: A Mechwarrior Tactical Game or whatever.
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Fix the link in the image gallery to the cover of Final Reckoning (it says it can't find the server when you click it, although this morning if you clicked the actual picture for the image above it, it took you to the Final Reckoning picture).
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That would be a fine analogy, except that the people writing the website aren't the ones 'driving' it.
Yes, they are. I was refering to the slamming of wordpress and other tools that allow...what were his words, "artists" to make websites? I don't know if you've noticed, but Randall is doing a lot of work on the website. He's the driver. Wordpress is his car. To him, the ability to drive the car is worth some concessions.
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Combine them. "Battletech: The Board Game of Armored Combat (In the 31st Century)"
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Yes, they are. I was refering to the slamming of wordpress and other tools that allow...what were his words, "artists" to make websites? I don't know if you've noticed, but Randall is doing a lot of work on the website. He's the driver. Wordpress is his car. To him, the ability to drive the car is worth some concessions.
So the people viewing the site are, what, pedestrians he's running down? ::)
He's a guy manufacturing a product (website/car) for other people's use. And yeah, you're right that making that process easier may be worth some concessions. Just... remember who the end user is.
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One thing I will say regarding DeathShadows criticism:
Honestly: the site loads pretty fast for me. Loads about the same as the old website, in fact.
Then again, my computers are both about a year old or so..
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It doesn't load as fast for me as the old website did, but it's still faster than other prominent boardgame sites.
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Combine them. "Battletech: The Board Game of Armored Combat (In the 31st Century)"
"Battletech: The addictive 31st century Board Game of Armored Combat (and nukes[/i
Fixed it for ya. :D
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Just curious where the ATOW GM screen is hiding in the product section
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So the people viewing the site are, what, pedestrians he's running down? ::)
He's a guy manufacturing a product (website/car) for other people's use. And yeah, you're right that making that process easier may be worth some concessions. Just... remember who the end user is.
Isn't that what this thread is all about...and the constant tweaks we're taking into account? ;-) Hoping to make you guys co-pilots...something not really possible before in tweaking the site.
Randall
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What browser are you using?
I'm using Firefox, but I also tested it with IE. It's broken in both.
That should be fixed now?
Randall
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Fix the link in the image gallery to the cover of Final Reckoning (it says it can't find the server when you click it, although this morning if you clicked the actual picture for the image above it, it took you to the Final Reckoning picture).
Should be fixed.
Randall
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Combine them. "Battletech: The Board Game of Armored Combat (In the 31st Century)"
I second this suggestion.
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Perhaps instead of the Timber Wolf (or in addition to) we can have some Hunchback and Atlas art? Add a little cross-platform identification.
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Perhaps instead of the Timber Wolf (or in addition to) we can have some Hunchback and Atlas art? Add a little cross-platform identification.
Just as with BattleTech.com, the top graphic of this site will be turned into an image slide show...just need to get there.
Thanks.
Randall
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After reading the BattleBlog I'll support the term "The Board Game" as long as this is only used for the webpage because just like Classic Battletech I don't what to see this on any sourcebook.
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Just as with BattleTech.com, the top graphic of this site will be turned into an image slide show...just need to get there.
Thanks.
Randall
As I mentioned before, I think you should make sure there are miniatures clearly visible in the slideshow and portal art to make it clear to the wargaming crowd that BattleTech is more than just a boardgame. I think just that choice of pictures should help to take care of any image problems the name gives without sacrificing clarity to the far larger video game market.
Also, what do you think of my idea of separating A Time of War into its own portal to make it a little bit more visible as a separate product line? I think it could help give the RPG some much needed attention and bring in people from the video game community who want to have more out of 'Mech rollplaying because they can already do 'Mech combat through the computer.
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How bout' Battletech:The paper map game :D.But my son says,Battletech:Wargame of the future,,,,gotta' lov handing down the Mecha crazy that addictied me back in the 80's 8)
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After reading the BattleBlog I'll support the term "The Board Game" as long as this is only used for the webpage because just like Classic Battletech I don't what to see this on any sourcebook.
+1
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To put it quite simply, the fact that almost every post here says they don't like "The Board Game" title should tell you all you need to know in that regard. Players, and I count myself among them, don't want this game to be regarded as a board game. You even put up a blog post trying to defend it. Board games don't have campaigns. Board games don't have faction and player guidebooks. Board games don't have four large rulebooks dedicated to advanced rules and options. Board games don't have software dedicated to building and customizing the board game's parts.
Does there have to be a reasoned answer to change your mind that the title doesn't work, or will the fact that the vast majority of your fanbase doesn't like it be enough?
I'm put off even looking at it. It was the very first thing I noticed coming back here, and the instant reaction was a negative one.
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The "vast majority" of the fanbase is far more than the handful of people who have posted here, or who even visit the forums.
I say keep "The Board Game." I waffled on it earlier, but I think it'll work even better than Randall expects. It's accurate and it's easy to understand.
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I have to say the term "the Board Game" is very lame.
It was the first thing I saw when I opened the web page. It is not cool, and adds nothing to product differentiation. The distinction is already drawn by the different names "mechwarrior" and "battletech".
As it adds nothing to the game, and there is a serious amount of negative feedback, why bother adding it.
BTW, I don't play board games, I play Battletech.
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The "vast majority" of the fanbase is far more than the handful of people who have posted here, or who even visit the forums.
I say keep "The Board Game." I waffled on it earlier, but I think it'll work even better than Randall expects. It's accurate and it's easy to understand.
That "Handful" is TEN PAGES of mostly Negative comments about the new title. While some are repeats from a few posters, most of the comments are new. And they're still running about 99% Negative. Also, "The Board Game", as has been explained repeatedly, is neither "Accurate" nor "Easy to understand".
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That "Handful" is TEN PAGES of mostly Negative comments about the new title. While some are repeats from a few posters, most of the comments are new. And they're still running about 99% Negative. Also, "The Board Game", as has been explained repeatedly, is neither "Accurate" nor "Easy to understand".
It's still a cruddy sample and not <edit>necessarily</edit> statistically significant.
Added that because I'll concede there is a large majority of negative responses. But I think Randall's efforts in addressing the negative response is far more appropriate than a ready, fire, aim response such as might be seen by amateurs like Netflix.
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It's still a cruddy sample and not <edit>necessarily</edit> statistically significant.
I'm guessing "cruddy" is pertaining to the sample itself, rather than the people involved? :D
And while it may not be "statistically significant" Overall/Worldwide, for this site in particular, it's Pretty Significant. Of the people that have bothered to post about it, it's nearly all been in the negative.
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Thanks to Patrick's hard work, we'd found go cool expanded Era pages, including suggestions for sourcebooks to BC fiction to read. Simply go to the New To BattleTech? link in the header, then go to the BattleTech Eras page and a second tier of dropdown menus will appear.
Patrick's hard at work adding in the novels, and of course starting to link everything where we can.
But take a look and let us know your thoughts.
Thanks!
Randall
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okay now that is cool, I've still not organized any of the Battlecorps stories I need to read. This is useful.
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Randall, thanks for the good comprehensive explanation in the BattleBlog. I still don't like "BattleTech:The Board Game" but I accept your reasoning, and I hope it works for the franchise.
I'd like to second BigDuke66's request that we don't see books branded with with it.
Also, I like the big slidshow at the top of the www.battletech.com site. It gives a great intro to the universe. I'd like to see something similar on the bg.battletech.com site, maybe showing shots of the game being played with the basic box set, painted minis on hexmaps, and minis on terrain as some of the frames. That way it gives a clear view of what it meant by "board game" and some of the other ways it can be played.
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Randall, thanks for the good comprehensive explanation in the BattleBlog. I still don't like "BattleTech:The Board Game" but I accept your reasoning, and I hope it works for the franchise.
I'd like to second BigDuke66's request that we don't see books branded with with it.
Also, I like the big slidshow at the top of the www.battletech.com site. It gives a great intro to the universe. I'd like to see something similar on the bg.battletech.com site, maybe showing shots of the game being played with the basic box set, painted minis on hexmaps, and minis on terrain as some of the frames. That way it gives a clear view of what it meant by "board game" and some of the other ways it can be played.
No, that sub branding will never appear on any books or in print.
As for the slide show, yup, plan on doing that for our site, and it'll include mini shots...just need to get there.
Thanks!
Randall
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I would also like to suggest that you get the www.mechwarrior.com domain name, since it seems to be free, and pointing it at the battletech.com site, so people who know the MechWarrior name from the PC game /Dark Age go straight to the current portal.
(Right now, a Google for "MechWarrior" take you to wikipedia as first port of call.)
[edit] A deeper check tells me mechwarrior.com is registered, just that there's no website on it at the moment. [/edit]
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No, that sub branding will never appear on any books or in print.
Thankyou [notworthy] [notworthy] [notworthy]
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I would also like to suggest that you get the www.mechwarrior.com domain name, since it seems to be free, and pointing it at the battletech.com site, so people who know the MechWarrior name from the PC game /Dark Age go straight to the current portal.
(Right now, a Google for "MechWarrior" take you to wikipedia as first port of call.)
[edit] A deeper check tells me mechwarrior.com is registered, just that there's no website on it at the moment. [/edit]
I know several companies that would kill to have it...it's owned by MS and they're not letting anyone have it currently.
Randall
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Hmmm..... "doesn't play well with others" huh?
Yeah, once I started digging deeper I found MS had it.
When I first punched www.mechwarrior.com into a browser and got a search results page I was hoping for a moment that it had come free.
My guess as to the top three companies plotting murder right now would be CGL, MekTek and Piranha Games then... :)
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Operation Klondike doesn't look to be in any of the reading recommends for the era pages
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Hmmm..... "doesn't play well with others" huh?
Yeah, once I started digging deeper I found MS had it.
When I first punched www.mechwarrior.com into a browser and got a search results page I was hoping for a moment that it had come free.
My guess as to the top three companies plotting murder right now would be CGL, MekTek and Piranha Games then... :)
;-)
Randall
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Operation Klondike doesn't look to be in any of the reading recommends for the era pages
Why, I don't know what you're talking about. I see it right there, plain as day. ;)
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Why, I don't know what you're talking about. I see it right there, plain as day. ;)
Perhaps Era Report: Golden Century as well?
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Perhaps Era Report: Golden Century as well?
I seem to vaguely remember a second Era Digest, but damned if I can remember its name nor the hack who wrote it.
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I seem to vaguely remember a second Era Digest, but damned if I can remember its name nor the hack who wrote it.
Yeah, that one is already posted.
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No, that sub branding will never appear on any books or in print.
...
One small victory. Now, how about the forums? Just plain "BattleTech" seems most appropriate here.
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I'll admit that probably 4 out of 10 people I know have heard of MechWarrior while probably 0 out of 10 have heard of Battletech, at which point I'd explain the connection. If CGL is trying to bridge the connection between Battletech and Mechwarrior, I could understand (yet still cringe at) calling the webside "Battletech: the Mechwarrior Board Game." I'm not sure how "Battletech: The Board Game" really gets us there. Truth be told, when the revamped RPG came out, I was really REALLY hoping it would pick up the original "MechWarrior" name. C'est la
vie guerre, I reckon.
But I'll reiterate what's already been said: the day CGL starts printing "Battletech: The Board Game" on the books, then the brand has really jumped the diamond shark. So thank you for assuring us that such a sub-branding will not happen.
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"The Mechwarrior Board Game" sounds really better for it trying to build connections between us and MWO.
If its just a matter of distinguishing us from MWO we can sett anything in like "BattleTech: Yes BattleTech not Mechwarrior Online!".
But at the end this game offers so much more than any addition to the name could describe, so is there anything better as simply "BattleTech"?
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I think the best connection would be "MechWarrior: Battletech Online."
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Dear Randall.
With strong respect of all the hard work you do for the BattleTech fans and community. I'd like to repeat. The Term board game is riddled with strong reactions. There is and has been already a strong divide in that part of the hobby. In the board game domain you are stepping into a wide variety of loyalties. You have Euro vs Ameri trash gaming. Board gamer lingo. There is the divide between them already. Now you enter in with a problem. I belong to a few board gamer clubs. Over the majority of them would be a little territorial. They view nowadays "Battletech" not as a board game but a Miniatures game.
Especially with so many people playing in my area non hexed games. In fact the truth to be fair the game is a hybrid. To say Battletech hasn't roots in board gaming originally isn't fair as well. The game is many things to many people. It is much more then just a board game. I ask and wish you to continue to reevaluate the title.
I personally have had recently over the last year many converts from other miniatures games systems (40K) . They never knew that the game can be richly enjoyed without hexes . Uses of full terrain and such enriches the game beyond.
Randall I know you have so much on your plate. But please continue to reconsider a more encompassing title other then "The Board game" . Also can you please consider putting on the main page a link or for players searching for the CBTMINI rules the link.
I get tons of requests from players as an Agent . It would be great to just say go here etc.
Link to the full terrain miniatures rules: http://bg.battletech.com/downloads/CBTMiniRules_Final.pdf
Again thank you for all you do on behalf of the BT family and fans.
Much respect
Christopher.
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Yeah, that one is already posted.
Just a picture of it, as far as I can tell.
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I'm finding it difficult to identify where I should put things like custom house rules. The Ground Combat Section is about 'as it is found in Total Warfare...' which is discouraging. And, when I go into that area, it's dominated by fight night rundowns, and seems more discussion for official rules, even though I've seen threads dedicated toward houserule suggestions before.
Some of the subforum titles seem misleading, and it isn't to uncommon to see a 'thread moved' tag somewhere in another subforum.
So, is it possible to clean up the subforum titles and clarify their function?
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I'd suggest Fan Articles for things like house rules.
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Cool. Now. Imagine I'm here for the first time, burgeoning with ideas and am trying to find a place to post them...
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Cool. Now. Imagine I'm here for the first time, burgeoning with ideas and am trying to find a place to post them...
If I were new here and trying to find a place for all the ideas I'm burgeoning with, I'd read the board descriptions and figure somewhere in Fan Boards would be the appropriate place since I'm a fan. If I was really undecided, I'd ask one of those red 'Mech guys who seem to run the place.
Or I'd just shrug and post it in General Discussion, figuring that "anything and everything Battletech related" pretty much covers it and if really it should go somewhere else, someone in charge will let me know.
Not seeing much of a problem here, to be honest.
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Anything that gets game out of the title as I now can't access the site from work
Battletech used to be classed as shopping but since the maintenance its classed as gaming
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To the PTBs:
I remain unconvinced that “BattleTech: The Board Game” is a sound title. ‘The Board Game’ sounds camp, like the developers are lampooning themselves, the game and the existing fans.
Yes, it was time for ‘classic’ to be dropped from the title, but that doesn’t mean you had to add anything else. BattleTech, plain and simple, works. The add-on for the new MechWarrior game makes sense. There have been many stand-alone MechWarrior computer games. Tagging the new one as MechWarrior Online makes sense. It is the latest in a long line of differentiated games.
I know many people who play board games... any of the Avalon Hill stuff for example. What they enjoy are the linear plots, card based goals and generally a lack of need for a GM. You grab a character/prop, select your cards and boom, you’re playing. Not so with BattleTech. I honestly don’t believe that this name change will help.
So, issues.
Marketing. I understand this. Many products put a fresh new face on things to try and boost sales. I applaud this. However, the board game does not scream new and fresh to me. It seems tired and lazy and designed to try and cash in on an existing fad. You want a tagline that grabs people’s attention.
Clarity. The Board Game does not help this. As many have stated, BattleTech can be played without a board and involves a level of detail rarely seen in conventional board games.
“I’ve always been a big believer that pushing all aspects of BattleTech (whether it’s the miniatures, the table-top, computer games, fiction, miniatures cases, t-shirts, you name it) helps BattleTech as a whole”
Pushing all aspects of BattleTech is commendable. However, will we see them constantly listed as BattleTech: The Miniature, BattleTech: The Computer Game, BattleTech: The T-Shirt, etc., etc. Because that’s the impression I’m getting from this. I’d also note that nowhere in those aspects do you call it a board game. In fact you more often refer to it as a table top game. If you MUST have a tag, use that ‘the Table Top Game.’ It gets the point across without misinforming people.
Trying to make Battletech.com a portal site to encompass everything BattleTech is a good idea... but then subtitling that portal as the board game defeats that purpose, does it not? BattleTech Hub, BattleTech/MechWarrior Hub, something along those lines more accurately conveys what you seem to saying you want.
A portal site should have branches, choices, at least two in this case. When arriving at the “Portal” it should provide you with options for ‘The Board Game’ (if you must) and MWO. I would also recommend having a link to Battletech.com on MWO’s website.
Now, I don’t expect my opinion to change anything. I’m not the one making money off of this property after all. However, I feel it is important for you to know that there are disgruntled fans out there.
I say these things as a helpful criticism. I love the BattleTech universe, in any of its iterations. It is richly detailed with a sense of history and depth sorely lacking in many other games out there.
Respectfully,
Alan
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Pushing all aspects of BattleTech is commendable. However, will we see them constantly listed as BattleTech: The Miniature, BattleTech: The Computer Game, BattleTech: The T-Shirt, etc., etc. Because that’s the impression I’m getting from this.
What exactly gives you that impression? Nothing Randall has said about this whole thing has even so much as hinted in that direction. The only thing even remotely like that has been people making jokes in this (and other) threads. It's a groundless fear.
Trying to make Battletech.com a portal site to encompass everything BattleTech is a good idea... but then subtitling that portal as the board game defeats that purpose, does it not?
The portal is not subtitled as the board game.
http://www.battletech.com is the portal site.
http://bg.battletech.com is the board game site.
A portal site should have branches, choices, at least two in this case. When arriving at the “Portal” it should provide you with options for ‘The Board Game’ (if you must) and MWO.
It does. As well as options for ePub novels, BattleCorps and Virtual World BattleTech cockpits.
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Roosterboy,
Thank you for the links. Now that I've seen the "front" front page, the second layer "Board Game" site makes even more sense. I still maintain the forums should remain "BattleTech", and now see they should be linked at the top page level. That said, the text on the www.battletech.com page needs some light editing. Every where else, including at the top of that page, "board game" is two words. In the body of text on that page, it's used as "boardgame" twice.
-Daryk
EDIT: And seriously, does "pagelines.com" require you give them all that real estate at the bottom of the page? If you must link to them, I'd minimize the amount of space given.
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The portal is not subtitled as the board game.
http://www.battletech.com is the portal site.
http://bg.battletech.com is the board game site.
I think the problem here is there is no way to get back to the portal from the individual sites. There needs to be a link somewhere on every branch that is clearly labeled "Back to the BattleTech portal" which would honestly do more to bring players in from MechWarrior Online than any tinkering with the tagline could ever do because there is currently no way to easily connect BattleTech with MechWarrior from that site.
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I miss the individual product pages that old ClassicBattletech.com every rotating show case whats coming out and what became suddenly available. I'm not crazy about the list style.
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Main website needs a search box, so if someone wanted to find "Demo Team," they can just do a search rather than try to figure out under which subheading it would be.
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Though I fairly like the new page, I think its organization could be improved, taking examples on homepages like these :
http://www.onisep.fr/ (http://www.onisep.fr/)
http://www.opera-bordeaux.com/ (http://www.opera-bordeaux.com/)
I think that the Clan Wolf Timby banner under the site's header is somewhat useless, and should be removed. It serves no true purpose IMO and occupies valuable space.
I'd rather that space, as well as the warning stripes bordered one just below, be allocated to important news, such as latest releases, and always include a picture (for instance, cover art of a new book). Coming releases could stay where they are, but could be extended and take also the place formerly occupied by new releases.
I'd put the Battleblog just under the coming releases, and the About Battletech / MW in its place under the new releases.
The remainder of the page is just fine, perhaps a search engine for the site could be included? Good works over all, it was a needed change.
Any news on when we'll get the new skins? (http://r25.imgfast.net/users/2514/70/37/40/smiles/sifflote.jpg)
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On the "Eras" page, the Star League era is listed as 2005-2780. Shouln't that be 2500-2780?
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On the "Eras" page, the Star League era is listed as 2005-2780. Shouln't that be 2500-2780?
Nope.
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On the "Eras" page, the Star League era is listed as 2005-2780. Shouln't that be 2500-2780?
Actually, no. "Star League" also includes the pre-spaceflight, early spaceflight, Terran Alliance, and Age of War periods. However, since most of that time was spent before 'Mechs, they're just rolled into "Star League."
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BattleMech Technology page;
On the bullet point lists of subcomponents, there are no spaces between the bullet title and the following text.
Example: LASERSA Laser damages its target by[snip]
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Actually, no. "Star League" also includes the pre-spaceflight, early spaceflight, Terran Alliance, and Age of War periods. However, since most of that time was spent before 'Mechs, they're just rolled into "Star League."
Thanks. I didn't realise that.
(goes to look again)
OK. I had only gone to the general "Eras" page, and hadn't seen that the ear-specific page had sub-eras defined explaining this.
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Great Houses page.
The title line "Great Houses" has an underline appear on mouseover, as though it is a link of some sort, but cannot be clicked on.
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Actually, no. "Star League" also includes the pre-spaceflight, early spaceflight, Terran Alliance, and Age of War periods. However, since most of that time was spent before 'Mechs, they're just rolled into "Star League."
Considering all of that, it should probably be marked significantly earlier than 2005. SSW lists its pre-spaceflight gear as having an introduction date of 1950 which seems fine to me, although the point where BT canon diverges from reality would also be a good date to use.
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Considering all of that, it should probably be marked significantly earlier than 2005. SSW lists its pre-spaceflight gear as having an introduction date of 1950 which seems fine to me, although the point where BT canon diverges from reality would also be a good date to use.
2005 is the first year on the timeline, marking when Crippen Station goes into orbit. That's when the Era is considered to have begun.
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I'd like to be the first to say "Thank you!" for dropping "The Board Game" from the title. [applause] O0
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BRAVO!
IMHO that was one of the biggest marketing blunders since "New" Coke or "Qwikster".
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BRAVO!
IMHO that was one of the biggest marketing blunders since "New" Coke or "Qwikster".
Still on the main page, but it is now "The Board Game of Armored Combat"...which is better.
But, yes, it being off the forums is very good.
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I think that the Clan Wolf Timby banner under the site's header is somewhat useless, and should be removed. It serves no true purpose IMO and occupies valuable space.
Perhaps because you know what BattleTech is. I think an image (or series of images) is great for pointing out what the game is about. (Giant stompy robots).
Having said that, I like some of the ideas people have had to include pictures of actual gameplay would be great. An initial picture like current that just evokes cool giant stompy robots, the moving through images of intro box set being played (perhaps with text saying to learn more about battletech and linking to the new to battletech? page), followed by 3d hex play (with notes about some other location on site) and then hexless play (with another link)?
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I like the timby art one of the best timber wolf action pictures though it would be cool if it cycled through many
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Still on the main page, but it is now "The Board Game of Armored Combat"...which is better.
But, yes, it being off the forums is very good.
Holy crap, I'm influential!
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Yes, that's a tagline I can live with.
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It was a longer day than usual at work, but it seems I can still be the second to say "Thank you, gentlemen" for dropping "The Board Game" from the forums. I think you made the right choice, and I support it whole heartedly.
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I like the timby art one of the best timber wolf action pictures though it would be cool if it cycled through many
Brutal Punch!
the new TRO covers(especially the 3055! I love that Berserker!)
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A comment on a non-tagline related front...
The images of the Madcat on the main page looks great, but as prime website real estate, I would suggest making it into one of those animated boxes, where it would fade from the madcat into whatever announcements or bulletins you want to draw the customer to, with a link to it if you click on it. I hope I'm describing it well enough, you see it on websites all the time...military.com is one example, but I prefer the ones that will automatically fade from one to another, with the small boxes in the lower corner that let you click between them.
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A comment on a non-tagline related front...
The images of the Madcat on the main page looks great, but as prime website real estate, I would suggest making it into one of those animated boxes, where it would fade from the madcat into whatever announcements or bulletins you want to draw the customer to, with a link to it if you click on it. I hope I'm describing it well enough, you see it on websites all the time...military.com is one example, but I prefer the ones that will automatically fade from one to another, with the small boxes in the lower corner that let you click between them.
Like the one that is on the website http://www.battletech.com/?
I believe it is in the works to place that photo slide show on www.bg.battletech.com as well.
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Isn't that what this thread is all about...and the constant tweaks we're taking into account? ;-) Hoping to make you guys co-pilots...something not really possible before in tweaking the site.
Death Race it is! :)
The "Eras" pages seem to be replacing some of the "Universe" content. Unless "Universe" is getting parted out and slowly added to the "New to BattleTech?" menu, "Eras" should probably stay with the rest of the "Universe."
Idle thought: replace the subtitle with headings for "boardgame," "miniatures game," "RPG" plus whatever else seems appropriate and have each heading link to a central page for that aspect of Catalyst's product line.
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I recommend putting "The Board Game of Armored Combat" in Battletech New Italic font.
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Like the one that is on the website http://www.battletech.com/?
Yes that's *exactly* what I was thinking...hadn't seen that site though.
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Yes that's *exactly* what I was thinking...hadn't seen that site though.
That is supposed to be the main portal. The problem with it is that last I checked there is no way to get back to it without editing the URL so there are good odds visitors will not even know it exists. This is especially problematic for getting the video game players because they will not know to look for the BattleTech name unless they see a link saying something about going to the portal to experience more of the MechWarrior/BattleTech universe.
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A comment on a non-tagline related front...
The images of the Madcat on the main page looks great, but as prime website real estate, I would suggest making it into one of those animated boxes, where it would fade from the madcat into whatever announcements or bulletins you want to draw the customer to, with a link to it if you click on it. I hope I'm describing it well enough, you see it on websites all the time...military.com is one example, but I prefer the ones that will automatically fade from one to another, with the small boxes in the lower corner that let you click between them.
Done...and I'm adding more to the rotation.
Randall
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Death Race it is! :)
The "Eras" pages seem to be replacing some of the "Universe" content. Unless "Universe" is getting parted out and slowly added to the "New to BattleTech?" menu, "Eras" should probably stay with the rest of the "Universe."
The Universe pages are getting a serious work over...some great work by Paul. Hopefully we'll have a first page to show off in the next day or so for some feedback.
Randall
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That is supposed to be the main portal. The problem with it is that last I checked there is no way to get back to it without editing the URL so there are good odds visitors will not even know it exists. This is especially problematic for getting the video game players because they will not know to look for the BattleTech name unless they see a link saying something about going to the portal to experience more of the MechWarrior/BattleTech universe.
Right side of the main page, there's now a "Dive Into The Universe Beyond The board Game!" graphic that links to the portal site.
Randall
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The Universe pages are getting a serious work over...some great work by Paul.
While my work is, indeed, great, Randall meant to say Patrick up there. =)
Paul
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Brutal Punch!
the new TRO covers(especially the 3055! I love that Berserker!)
Funny...before I read your quote I'd already sliced out that cover for use in the slider....
Randall
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Done...and I'm adding more to the rotation.
Randall
Well I'll be damned! The rotating pics look great...way to show off that great artwork and minis!
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Done...and I'm adding more to the rotation.
Randall
That looks fantastic. I especially like the fact that it starts on the minis so new people will have some idea what the game looks like and then jumps right to artwork to show off that side of things.
Right side of the main page, there's now a "Dive Into The Universe Beyond The board Game!" graphic that links to the portal site.
Randall
That looks like a good place for that link. It is not something that urgently needs attention so it is fine to have it a little ways down the page, but it is still very obvious so people will not miss it when they are looking for more information.
I did notice that the MechWarrior Online site has not yet followed suit, but I doubt it will be too hard to get them to follow suit. It looks to me like there is plenty of space for it in the bar on the right side of the page, and the picture you selected would work well with that site as well after a quick change from board game to video game.
The only remaining thought I have is that it might make sense to split A Time of War off into its own branch from the portal because I think it qualifies as "diving into the universe beyond the board game" because it is an RPG about characters in the universe rather than a pure combat game like BattleTech.
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That looks fantastic. I especially like the fact that it starts on the minis so new people will have some idea what the game looks like and then jumps right to artwork to show off that side of things.
That looks like a good place for that link. It is not something that urgently needs attention so it is fine to have it a little ways down the page, but it is still very obvious so people will not miss it when they are looking for more information.
I did notice that the MechWarrior Online site has not yet followed suit, but I doubt it will be too hard to get them to follow suit. It looks to me like there is plenty of space for it in the bar on the right side of the page, and the picture you selected would work well with that site as well after a quick change from board game to video game.
The only remaining thought I have is that it might make sense to split A Time of War off into its own branch from the portal because I think it qualifies as "diving into the universe beyond the board game" because it is an RPG about characters in the universe rather than a pure combat game like BattleTech.
As I mentioned in the thread discussing the naming of the site, computer games can be interesting to deal with...I've no doubt we'll get there...just need to be patient.
The only reason I would disagree on the AToW comment, is that just as with aerospace (thought not nearly as much, of course), we've tired hard to mesh that with the board game. Yes, there is a separate QSR, but all of that hopefully leads them to the How The Core Rulebook PDF and shows a prospective RPG player that they absolutely can just grab AToW and run and have fun...but it's all meshed together and allows players to moved between the board game and the RPG as much as a group desires.
Thanks for the continued feedback!
Randall
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The scrolling banner looks frelling awesome!
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Just gotta say.....the pic of the Legacy on the "Getting Started" page is incredible.
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http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=1631
You need to be consistent about what gets links. Is it the title, items under the title, or both? Here "Battlecorps Fiction" is linked but "Sourcebooks" is not while the individual "Reunification War" is linked and none of the other individual items are.
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=175
I keep bugging you guys about this one, but you see how on this page "books" is highlighted? It should be "new to Battletech?" that's highlighted.
Wait. Links has a 404 error. Either way, is there a back-link to www.battletech.com portal? If not there needs to be.
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http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=1631
You need to be consistent about what gets links. Is it the title, items under the title, or both? Here "Battlecorps Fiction" is linked but "Sourcebooks" is not while the individual "Reunification War" is linked and none of the other individual items are.
Because those pages are still a work in progress and no one has gone through to add a link the the Era Digest yet. Be patient.
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Because those pages are still a work in progress and no one has gone through to add a link the the Era Digest yet. Be patient.
Ah. Then you may summarily ignore my comments. It's often hard to tell what's done and is just a typo or oopsy, what's semi-in-progress, and what's not done at all.
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http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=1631
You need to be consistent about what gets links. Is it the title, items under the title, or both? Here "Battlecorps Fiction" is linked but "Sourcebooks" is not while the individual "Reunification War" is linked and none of the other individual items are.
Yup, need to be consistent...however, in that instance it's simply a case of propagation cycles. i.e. the Reunification War page was done when this was done, but the Era Digest wasn't, so it wasn't linked at the time...once all epubs are finished getting pages (just about there), we'll go back through and link all those.
Additionally, note that there's no place to link "Sourcebooks", since that's a generic term for any product and so could be anything under the son, while the BC fiction we can't link to individual stories, so instead we link the title to the website to let people know where they can sign up to read the specific-mentioned fiction.
mmm...thinking I need to add a short explanation page in the main Eras page about such things.
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=175
I keep bugging you guys about this one, but you see how on this page "books" is highlighted? It should be "new to Battletech?" that's highlighted.
[/quote]
For some reason I don't understand, it's simply not fixing itself...working on it...thanks.
Randall
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On most pages the sidebar is on the right. On the Universe pages the sidebar is on the left. Perhaps it could be swapped to be consistent with the other pages?
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Yeah, universe has barely been touched since the initial import.
Let me give a crude overview of what's done so you don't feel as if you're wasting your time. The comments are really helpful in getting us to find errors, but I'm sure us constantly saying "We didn't get there yet!" doesn't motivate... =)
Home page:
Effectively done. We may do some tweaks, and there's a plan for the background image, but that affects all pages. Another thing we want to do is the international sites as little flags kind of like how they were done before.
New?:
Getting Started: Pretty much done. I see what you mean with the books link in the menu being highlighted. Consider it on the list.
Eras: Patrick's kicking some butt on that. I've added some links, we'll need to go back and add back more once all the products are in. (Soon)
Forums:
Done-ish, though we're chipping away at the skin.
News:
Done
Books:
Mostly Randall's hard work here, and mostly done. (Just in time for some new product to come down the pipeline) We have a few moe E-pubs to put up, such as the recordsheet books and Turning Points.
There's an odd thing going on with the sidebar menu on the Books pages, that's on the list.
Universe:
Basically untouched since the initial import. Patrick's got some awesome plans there, loking forward to see that go live. Should also reduce overlap with the info in Eras.
Downloads:
Little has happened since my initial work there, in some part because of deadlines, distractions, and needing to get certain PDFs to become available. IE, the Mini Rules, they've got CBT logos, and that won't do. Should eventually have some 20-odd files on there, possibly more as books come out.
Community:
The revamped website to keep track of official events, especially the WWEs and the Con events. We've made a few changes on our end to help make that page relevant, such as locking out when we make changes. Specifically, no changes within 30 days of the first Convention on the list. We'll lock in the rules until after the last Con is over. We also want it to be one of the man spots to go for our WWEs. And we want the rules for more of our events to be available there. So keep an eye on that.
Errata:
A fair bit more to go there. We're tweaking our process a bit as a consequence.
We'll probably provide the errata for out-of-print books there as well (on its own page) but that's not a priority issue. We'll focus on current CGL books first.
Links:
404s. What the? Well, it needs a fair bit of work regardless. Keep the link suggestions coming, we'll actually review all of those for inclusion.
Gallery:
We just got started there. Expect a LOT more to get added. And linked back to the relevant products.
So, if I failed to explain or list something in the above, it's my own fault, but meanwhile, comment away!
Paul
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As I mentioned in the thread discussing the naming of the site, computer games can be interesting to deal with...I've no doubt we'll get there...just need to be patient.
I figured that was the case because you are not designing that site. Sometimes it takes some effort to get other people to do what they need to do, but I am sure you will get there soon enough.
The only reason I would disagree on the AToW comment, is that just as with aerospace (thought not nearly as much, of course), we've tired hard to mesh that with the board game. Yes, there is a separate QSR, but all of that hopefully leads them to the How The Core Rulebook PDF and shows a prospective RPG player that they absolutely can just grab AToW and run and have fun...but it's all meshed together and allows players to moved between the board game and the RPG as much as a group desires.
Thanks for the continued feedback!
Randall
That makes sense, however if you wanted to unify the two products more I think it would help to switch AToW so things modify TNs rather than rolls so it is the same as in BattleTech. It might also be a good idea to make a new heading labeled "RPG" on the top of the main page because it is currently not immediately obvious that there is an RPG at all which could discourage people looking for it. The group I especially see this happening to is players from MechWarrior Online who want to add more RPG elements to work in parallel with the video game because they will come to the BattleTech website, realize it is a board game, and leave to make up something for themselves.
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Wow just saw the 'recommended reading section', that's really great. I'm not a subscriber to Battlecorps yet, I've still got 20+ of the paper back novels to work through, but that list of all the stories from the Jihad, for example, was exactly what I've been looking for.
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but that list of all the stories from the Jihad, for example, was exactly what I've been looking for.
Be aware that those lists are not meant to be comprehensive. There were a lot more stories from most of the eras that I didn't include because the lists would have been too unwieldy if I had.
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I want a way to unsubscribe from threads.
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That's rather out of our league, code wise. You'd have to find a SMF mod that allows that functionality, and then we'd have to consider adding it, which isn't always a good idea in case they coded it poorly, or it introduces a vulnerability or incompatibility. Now or later.
Paul
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That's rather out of our league, code wise. You'd have to find a SMF mod that allows that functionality, and then we'd have to consider adding it, which isn't always a good idea in case they coded it poorly, or it introduces a vulnerability or incompatibility. Now or later.
Paul
That's actually pretty easy, since it is already possible:
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That's actually pretty easy, since it is already possible:
Well, derp. For some reason my brain decided to interpret that as the frequent request to not see certain threads on the 'Show new replies" function.
I have no excuses beyond poor lineage and upbringing.
Paul
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Paul had the right idea. The lack of communication is on my end. I do want to remove threads from my "Show New Replies" page. Just because I post once to a thread doesn't mean I want to see new developments ad infinitum.
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Paul had the right idea. The lack of communication is on my end. I do want to remove threads from my "Show New Replies" page. Just because I post once to a thread doesn't mean I want to see new developments ad infinitum.
I feel you, but see also above on the issue of getting that resolved. Unless the SMF team adds it to their base builds, I'd prefer to not add 'cosmetic' mods.
Maybe that's too cautious. We'll look in to it. (Presuming a mod even exists; I haven't looked)
Paul
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Thanks Paul.
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I feel you, but see also above on the issue of getting that resolved. Unless the SMF team adds it to their base builds, I'd prefer to not add 'cosmetic' mods.
Maybe that's too cautious. We'll look in to it. (Presuming a mod even exists; I haven't looked)
FYI I did find one, but no idea on the quality.
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FYI I did find one, but no idea on the quality.
Link me in a PM, we'll review.
Paul
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I'd like to ask that you include at least one photo of the game being played with map boards instead of terrain the the image slideshow on the main page. Since you want to illustrate the "board game" and all that... :)
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I'd like to ask that you include at least one photo of the game being played with map boards instead of terrain the the image slideshow on the main page. Since you want to illustrate the "board game" and all that... :)
Was having so much fun going back through 5 years of Gen Con dioramas that bit slipped right by me.
I've finally reached a point where the website is far enough along I'm cutting back to an hourish a day only on website work...after 2.5 weeks of sun up to sun down, I've got other things I've got to get back to. ;-)
So...first thing tomorrow I'll be digging for those photos to sprinkle some in.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Randall
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Bringing up a topic that is dear to me.
Our Demo Team has had a rather large success using the full terrain conversion rules.
In fact at the conventions and stores we attend. I'd say 90% at least in our Los Angeles and orange County and San Diego area. We are getting a ton of former G.W. 40K converts too BattleTech. The number one request we get after they get their copy of "Total WarFare" is where to download the Full Terrain rules addition. In the links or Downloads area. Can we please have them added to the website.
It would be a really great thing to just tell them they are easy to find. Perhaps a simple paragraph as well explaining what they are as well.
Again here's the direct link for people here as well.
http://bg.battletech.com/downloads/CBTMiniRules_Final.pdf
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Done...and I'm adding more to the rotation.
Randall
There has been a several times now that I have seen an Image pop up and I have wanted to know where it came from. I would love to have the image be a click-able link to the matching product page.
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Fonts in CSS files:
Currently you have this:
font-family: Arial,"Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,sans-serif;
The problem is that anyone who has Helvetica Neue won't see it, because Arial is listed first. If you instead reverse the order of the fonts so they read:
font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Helvetica, Arial,sans-serif;
Those who have Helvetica Neue will see that, then Helvetica, then Arial.
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http://bg.battletech.com/downloads/CBTMiniRules_Final.pdf
As I've said before, we're working on that. The existing version is not valid as it has old logos.
On top of that, we're looking at a way to upgrade it.
Paul
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Bringing up a topic that is dear to me.
Our Demo Team has had a rather large success using the full terrain conversion rules.
In fact at the conventions and stores we attend. I'd say 90% at least in our Los Angeles and orange County and San Diego area. We are getting a ton of former G.W. 40K converts too BattleTech. The number one request we get after they get their copy of "Total WarFare" is where to download the Full Terrain rules addition. In the links or Downloads area. Can we please have them added to the website.
It would be a really great thing to just tell them they are easy to find. Perhaps a simple paragraph as well explaining what they are as well.
Again here's the direct link for people here as well.
http://bg.battletech.com/downloads/CBTMiniRules_Final.pdf
As Paul said, we're working on that...in fact, we're looking at upgrading that angle far more than it's ever been done be fore...just takes a little time.
Randall
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There has been a several times now that I have seen an Image pop up and I have wanted to know where it came from. I would love to have the image be a click-able link to the matching product page.
Huh...um...not even sure if I can do that...I'll look into that.
Randall
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Huh...um...not even sure if I can do that...I'll look into that.
Randall
That could be problematic where art is in multiple products. Or is from previous art for a product.
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Sweet thank you. I look forward to seeing it with revised logos.
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And for the first of the new faction pages: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=1913
For the longest time I've felt we could do far better than the previous website's wall-o-words. Thanks to Patrick's great work, we've a new and fresh presentation of a holistic slice of all that makes a faction cool and interesting, in hopefully a relatively un-intimidating presentation. Additionally, like the Era pages, it provides numerous direct product links allowing players to find a faction they like and an immediate path to more details.
Note we're in the process of generating 3075 maps to go with the 3075 dates of this entry (it'll replace the 3067 map once it's ready); we'll eventually be adding a cartography section after all the faction pages are done which will have several maps through the eras for each faction.
Finally, as out-of-print or soon-will-have-a-street-date products are added to the catalog, those links will be connected as well.
So there ya go...please review and let us know what you think...Patrick's already begun work on the next faction page.
Thanks!
Randall
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The faction page looks great. My one suggestion would be to try having the detail map pop up in an overlay on the faction page, rather than going to a new page.
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And for the first of the new faction pages: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=1913
Wow, that looks great! Really well done!
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It would be great, if there would be an index on top, so I can jump directly to a topic inside the faction page.
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The faction page looks great. My one suggestion would be to try having the detail map pop up in an overlay on the faction page, rather than going to a new page.
That's next on my list.
It would be great, if there would be an index on top, so I can jump directly to a topic inside the faction page.
I'll see what I can do.
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And for the first of the new faction pages: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=1913
This is Awesome. And the Confederation is first as it should be.
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Next section to look at: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=504
None of the sub-pages have product showing yet...we're still wrapping up the e-pubs catalog, so getting the very long-tail out-of-print catalog all up and running is likely going to be the stuff of weeks of chipping away at it.
Nevertheless, providing the structure here so you can see how we're trying to present it as logically as possible so it's relatively easy to understand where hundreds of books plug in and what is in print, out of print, out of stock and so on.
As always, suggestions appreciated if you think of an improvement.
Thanks!
Randall
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Next section to look at: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=504
None of the sub-pages have product showing yet...we're still wrapping up the e-pubs catalog, so getting the very long-tail out-of-print catalog all up and running is likely going to be the stuff of weeks of chipping away at it.
Nevertheless, providing the structure here so you can see how we're trying to present it as logically as possible so it's relatively easy to understand where hundreds of books plug in and what is in print, out of print, out of stock and so on.
As always, suggestions appreciated if you think of an improvement.
Thanks!
Randall
Looks good to me so far. Very honest ad copy providing reasons to buy the old stuff without twisting the customers' arms.
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I agree with ColBosch. I admire the frankness.
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Lyran Alliance (http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=1923) page is up, for those who are interested. I'll probably get the Combine and FedSuns pages up tonight also, just got to take care of the art.
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Lyran Alliance (http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=1923) page is up, for those who are interested. I'll probably get the Combine and FedSuns pages up tonight also, just got to take care of the art.
The faction pages are looking great, and I am also very happy to finally have a new theme for the forums.
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The new skin is nice! would it possible to tone the white center down a bit?
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I'm really digging the new product layout that explains what's out of print and what's current!
Hey on the mechwarrior page, what book is this from? I've never seen it. ???
(http://bg.battletech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/wimpy_lostech150.png)
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Hey on the mechwarrior page, what book is this from? I've never seen it. ???
That's from the color pages in the original Field Manual: Mercenaries. It depicts a couple of members of Wilson's Hussars.
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Ah I see, thanks!
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Lyran Alliance (http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=1923) page is up, for those who are interested. I'll probably get the Combine and FedSuns pages up tonight also, just got to take care of the art.
Adam Steiner's bio just kind of ends:
When Archon Peter fell to an assassin’s attack, Adam was his chosen successor and the one-time media star found himself
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Will there be a Fractured Worlds League..er..House Marik page?
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hope so,,,
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Will there be a Fractured Worlds League..er..House Marik page?
Nope, gonna leave that one out. Nobody cares about them so why bother?
Of course there's gonna be a FWL page. Come on.
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Don't be bitter,,,,re-concider
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Lose that new javascripted image rotator - now the main page is pushing 3 megabytes, which unless you're on the great lakes backbone with broadband now adds up to a minute and a half page-load ... You end up on the wrong side of the Appalachian network split or overseas *shudder*... The home page of a website really shouldn't break about 140k, especially when delivering less than 4k of plaintext. The home page at launch was already almost a megabyte, adding more fat bloated images and more javascript should have been the LAST thing anyone would think was a good idea.
I'm also noticing the markup, scripts and CSS are still not being served compressed -- something that should take about half a minute to set up from the command line for most of it, and one simple setup option in WordPress.
(http://www.cutcodedown.com/btbg/bg.size.png)
At some point it looks like someone ripped out ALL the heading tags, which it had at launch. The lack of headings is an accessibility train wreck and hearkens back to 1997; last I checked this is 2011.
(http://www.cutcodedown.com/btbg/bt.bg.outline.png)
But that goes hand in hand with the massive static inlined css, massive static inlined scripting, general site building techniques a decade and a half out of date, the broken dropdown menu (javascript doing CSS' job), and phantom anchors doing the ID tag's job.
As a code analysis tool I'm in the process of writing shows:
(http://www.cutcodedown.com/btbg/bt.failRating.png)
Basically that's saying it has too many anchors, and that there's no excuse for the HTML to be much more than 16k... where it's using 75k.
As to "The board game" --- is the new computer game called BattleTech? Are there any plans for ANYTHING else to be called BattleTech? I mean, apart from the mediocre and long defunct card game, and the disastrously bad animation from a decade and a half ago -- what other products even use the BattleTech name?
As such, why does it even need the tagline? If I were to go with a tagline it might be something more descriptive like "The origin of the MechWarrior Universe" or "The Inspiration for the MechWarrior games"... toned down from my original idea of "Where all those silly MechWarrior spinoffs came from".
... and the orange on dark grey for the tag line is still a muddy blurry illegible mess... but that goes with the whole header structure where it feels like things are just thrown into it any old way.
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Deathshadow, how does the "front" front page score on your tool? I dropped my objection to the "board game" tag line when I discovered that site was a second layer under www.battletech.com.
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Deathshadow, how does the "front" front page score on your tool? I dropped my objection to the "board game" tag line when I discovered that site was a second layer under www.battletech.com.
About the same -- the tool analyzes the code and when it's 38k of HTML to deliver 2.6 of plaintext and five content images...
Of course the use of dynamic fonts inside the fixed height image rotator results in a broken layout here, and the MASSIVE images used to build it have absolutely nothing to do with designing for web deployment, and reek of the exact same sort of problems Warner had a decade ago trying to make the official site.
Three to four MEGABYTES of images is not how you build a website; doesn't matter how pretty it is, it ends up ultimately useless for 50%+ of the audience... like all the people who still live in places where 768kbps broadband is a pipedream... or people who just happen to live on the wrong side of a mountain range from the server; necessitating the data traveling the entire way around the globe just to go a thousand miles as the bird flies.
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Thanks for looking. Hopefully TPTB will be able to act on your advice. I still remember the days of pre-broadband, and 3-4MB is definitely too much for those without.
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Loads in 14 seconds and I'm sitting in Germany, absolute OK.
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The # of visuals will not be reduced. The art sells the game faster than any words can.
Although there do seem to be opportunities to reduce file size, which'll be pursued. (I see one badguy of an image of 700-some KB in particular)
Fortunately, it looks like dial-up users are almost extinct among the users of this site, based on the providers that hit the front page.
Paul
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The # of visuals will not be reduced. The art sells the game faster than any words can.
Although there do seem to be opportunities to reduce file size, which'll be pursued. (I see one badguy of an image of 700-some KB in particular)
Fortunately, it looks like dial-up users are almost extinct among the users of this site, based on the providers that hit the front page.
Paul
Wait....there are still dial-up users? Where are they? The middle of the Alaskan wilderness?
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It doesn't log quite *that* much. ;)
The 700kb beastie has been replaced. Additional improvements on the list for both sites, I think all images may be pushed back down below 100k each. Just a matter of getting to them.
Paul
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Little tip, run them through something that isn't inept at saving images like "The Gimp". Adobe wouldn't know an optimized jpeg or png from the hole in it's DVD.
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Little tip, run them through something that isn't inept at saving images like "The Gimp". Adobe wouldn't know an optimized jpeg or png from the hole in it's DVD.
Yeah, that tends to be how I've managed improvements. The real barrier is time, but we'll churn through it. You'll note the 700k image got put in its place... ;)
Paul
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I have an idea
The most annoying thing in Battletech is to calculate to hit numbers. as you know, it's pretty easy to remember the move of 2 or 3 mechs but, when there's 8 unit on the field it's something almost impossible. Now, i imagine a new player having it's way in a game like that. :-[
Some guys here have very good idea to prevent that problem by adding movement dice beside each unit (again, i'm sure you know it).
Last week, i've introduce battletech to one guy and reintroduce it to three other guys who haven't play since more than 10 years. They remember well how boring it was to always asking others what's the move their mech have made each turn an how long this game take to play. But i successfully bring them for a trying game. In this game, we have use the movement dice and the game gone very well. All of them have really enjoy the game and they ask me to organize another one shortly. It's definitely a success ! Even with movement dice, we barely finish the game before the end of our weekly game session. I know that movement dice (or any other techniques like box-o-death, etc..) is not official but we have to admit that it greatly the playability of the game. So, i think it could be useful for new players to have access to such kind of playing technique without having to ask in the forum. Perhaps you could add a section in the website that explain those kind of playing techniques...
It's just my two cents. ^-^
hope it would help ! ::)
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All of them have really enjoy the game and they ask me to organize another one shortly. It's definitely a success !
Nice work!
Have you pondered joining the CDT?
I know that movement dice (or any other techniques like box-o-death, etc..) is not official
Actually, I think Randall put movement dice in TacOps. Yeah, page 27-28.
Perhaps you could add a section in the website that explain those kind of playing techniques...
Good idea, I like it.
Paul
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Nice work!
Have you pondered joining the CDT?
Actually, I think Randall put movement dice in TacOps. Yeah, page 27-28.
Good idea, I like it.
Paul
You're right, Movement dice is include in TacOps. Must i've check it before... :-[
Excuse my ignorance but, what is CDT ??? ???
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You're right, Movement dice is include in TacOps. Must i've check it before... :-[
No worries.
Excuse my ignorance but, what is CDT ??? ???
Catalyst Demo Teams.
www.catalystdemos.com
Basically doing what you're already doing anyway. ;)
Paul
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I do like the idea of making a "Tips and Tricks" section on the site to share good ideas like the box o' death, and it would be very easy to set up a submission thread on the forums for people to enter their ideas. You could further cut down work by asking for a full write up and giving credit to advertize the strong community which seems like a win all around to me.
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...but... We hate you all. Why would we do that?! ;)
We'll look at it. =)
Paul
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I have a suggestion, (which I hope hasn't already been mentioned.) But on the rebranded pages, where news/blogs are listed is there some way we could get the 'Date' or 'Time of Posting' there as well. That way we know whether something is recent news or not? Some of us can't visit the site as often as we used to, and t's hard to remember.
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Okay, been hard at work on various things. Obviously this site continues to be a work in progress, but had some good work the last week or so.
First, I just updated the Downloads page: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=27
Not only getting back up a fair amount of the material that was previously available, but hopefully providing some better explanation of what the PDFs are used full, with a lot of great links.
Second, here's the Technical Readout page: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=485
Yes, TRO3055 is there, no, no links...soon...very soon. ;-)
For me, that page represents all that's good about all the work put into moving to this new website and all your patience as we continue to refine the pages.
Each TRO entry has a nice, wide ranging PDF preview, with links to the print RS (with their own previews), the Unabridged PDF (with there own preview), some eye candy from CSO (with links back to those pages), MUL links (sorted by TRO), and so on. A level of being able to show a holistic slice of all that is super cool and all the tools at player's finger tips that's light-years ahead of anything we were able to do on the old site.
Anyways, feel free to check things out and provide your feedback...thanks!
Randall
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In related news, thanks to some help from Nic Jansma, we've been able to make the sites more efficient. Also some grunt work to get the images properly reduced have brought both sites' frontpage down to "only" a meg each. (Which beats 4-5 megs) The end result should be substantially improved performance.
We're not quite done on the efficiency side of things, that'll stay WIP.
Paul
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Okay, been hard at work on various things. Obviously this site continues to be a work in progress, but had some good work the last week or so.
First, I just updated the Downloads page: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=27
Not only getting back up a fair amount of the material that was previously available, but hopefully providing some better explanation of what the PDFs are used full, with a lot of great links.
"A Time of War QSR" should be expanded to "A Time of War Quick-Start Rules" since there is space for it.
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"A Time of War QSR" should be expanded to "A Time of War Quick-Start Rules" since there is space for it.
Fixed. Also fixed the image titles.
Still need to optimize those images, WIP.
[Edit:] OK, got all of those down as well.
Paul
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On the Epub Novels page the text reads, "From the moment Decision at Thunder Rift published in 1986 novels, have consistently proven the best way..."
I believe you want the comma between 1986 and novels. "From the moment Decision at Thunder Rift published in 1986, novels have consistently proven the best way..."
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Nice catch! Also fixed some other typo's.
Paul
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The Universe pages are getting a serious work over...some great work by Paul. Hopefully we'll have a first page to show off in the next day or so for some feedback.
Randall
Just wanted to say that the individual era pages (and, for similar reasons, the faction pages) are an incredibly welcome improvement over the equivalent pages from the old site. It's a little odd that the TR:Upgrades are in prior eras when they're all thoroughly Jihad books, but I understand why they are where they are.
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I hope TRO:3067 comes soon, alot of the early Jihad era 'Mechs and those rolled on the Field Manual: Updates is from this TRO. Having them available or at least their Record Sheets in some form for average player starting out would be a good thing.
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On the TROs page, under TRO 3058, the picture of the Shadowcat Omnimech is labelled as being a Shadow Hawk Omnimech
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Whoops. Fixed.
Paul
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On the Battletech board game page, under the "Community" heading, in the "Rules" section: All of the rules take me to a big ol' 404.
Also, one of the rulesets is called "The Prefect Score Tournament." I'm not saying it's wrong, but is it supposed to be "prefect" or "perfect?"
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Also, one of the rulesets is called "The Prefect Score Tournament." I'm not saying it's wrong, but is it supposed to be "prefect" or "perfect?"
Prefect.
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On the Battletech board game page, under the "Community" heading, in the "Rules" section: All of the rules take me to a big ol' 404.
Que?
Weird, I need to get that fixed.
Also, one of the rulesets is called "The Prefect Score Tournament." I'm not saying it's wrong, but is it supposed to be "prefect" or "perfect?"
Yeah, that's a pun. The setup is that you take 1 Prefect 'Mech against your opponent in a series of matches where you keep swapping who is OPFOR for the other guy's Prefect. Each scenario is scored, highest score wins that slot.
Paul
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I hope TRO:3067 comes soon, alot of the early Jihad era 'Mechs and those rolled on the Field Manual: Updates is from this TRO. Having them available or at least their Record Sheets in some form for average player starting out would be a good thing.
Record Sheets: 3039 Unabridged and Record Sheets: 3055 Upgrade Unabridged were just released in corrected/upgraded form. Hopefully in December we'll release a corrected/upgraded PDF for Record Sheets: 3075 (now including battle armor and aerospace fighters), as well as the first full "TW-style" PDF books of Record Sheets: 3050 Upgrade Unabridged, Clan and Record Sheets: 3050 Upgrade Unabridged, Inner Sphere.
The very next record sheet book to be worked on will be Record Sheets: 3067 Unabridged. Additionally, next Spring will also see the print publication of a Catalyst-branded reprint of Technical Readout: 3067, along with a print Record Sheets book; i.e. exactly what just happened with 3055 will happen with 3067, getting that TRO back into circulation and fully supported (including Quick-Strike record sheets).
Thanks!
Randall
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Thank you for the reply, Mr. Bills! Its very good hear were finally getting the '67 and other units back and corrected!
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Record Sheets: 3039 Unabridged and Record Sheets: 3055 Upgrade Unabridged were just released in corrected/upgraded form. Hopefully in December we'll release a corrected/upgraded PDF for Record Sheets: 3075 (now including battle armor and aerospace fighters), as well as the first full "TW-style" PDF books of Record Sheets: 3050 Upgrade Unabridged, Clan and Record Sheets: 3050 Upgrade Unabridged, Inner Sphere.
(bolded relevant part for emphasis)
I notice you list Battle armour and Aerospace, but do not list Protomechs...are those still not going to be included?
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(bolded relevant part for emphasis)
I notice you list Battle armour and Aerospace, but do not list Protomechs...are those still not going to be included?
Missed those...yeah, they should be in there as well...it's just Large Craft we're still struggling to produce sheets for correctly.
Randall
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Okay I admit to shirking the building of this page for a few weeks...needed a break from the initial month sprint to build the page...and well, there's almost 40 extent epubs to add to this page...not to mention the full breadth of them once we get them all published.
Anyways, here's the current look of the Fiction (E-pub) page: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=3166
We plan on creating a sub page that actually lists all the epub fiction chronologically...just haven't gotten there yet.
Anyways, feel free to let me know how it reads, if there's any additional details and/or better organization you can think of...and I'll keep spending a bit of time each day to flesh this page fully out.
Thanks!
Randall
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Looks good. How about putting the release date of the book/e-pub so that we can see when things are new?
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The Quick-Strike: Technical Readout 3050: Unit Cards (http://bg.battletech.com/?wpsc-product=2880-2) have a price of $0.00, when it should probably be the $5.99 like the rest!
On that note, I will be buying all of the Quick-Strike Unit Cards at the beginning of the year! :)
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The Quick-Strike: Technical Readout 3050: Unit Cards (http://bg.battletech.com/?wpsc-product=2880-2) have a price of $0.00, when it should probably be the $5.99 like the rest!
On that note, I will be buying all of the Quick-Strike Unit Cards at the beginning of the year! :)
Strange...not sure what happened there, but it's fixed...thanks, and awesome to hear!
Randall
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Looks good. How about putting the release date of the book/e-pub so that we can see when things are new?
The Latest Release page is kept very much up to date and includes the last several months of releases: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=728
Thanks.
Randall
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The links from the thumbnails in the gallery page are not working correctly. I clicked on the Tac Ops wallpaper thumbnail and it took me to the product page for Total Warfare.
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Doh! Fixed.
Paul
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MASSIVE update to this page. Added in an easy to short text chronological sub-page, with links, clarified that all epubs come with zip of .epub/.mobi and the page now includes almost ever last BT epub we currently have available:
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=3166
As always, feel free to comment.
Randall
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MASSIVE update to this page. Added in an easy to short text chronological sub-page, with links, clarified that all epubs come with zip of .epub/.mobi and the page now includes almost ever last BT epub we currently have available:
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=3166
As always, feel free to comment.
Randall
That looks very nice, although I was wondering if there were any plans to make large bundle deals to quickly pick up lots of material. I see some of the series are available as a discount package, but I think it would be nice to have a single giant package with everything once all the novels make it into e-book form along with some other large packages containing large subdivisions of the entire body of material. I know I would like to get everything on that list once I have more income, and I am sure there would be other new fans in the future that decide to get the older novels as a single discounted bulk purchase.
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That looks very nice, although I was wondering if there were any plans to make large bundle deals to quickly pick up lots of material. I see some of the series are available as a discount package, but I think it would be nice to have a single giant package with everything once all the novels make it into e-book form along with some other large packages containing large subdivisions of the entire body of material. I know I would like to get everything on that list once I have more income, and I am sure there would be other new fans in the future that decide to get the older novels as a single discounted bulk purchase.
Yup we'll be adding in further compilation purchases as we go forward.
Randall
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Because we're even crazier, I thought it appropriate to slide in an "Iconic Military Units" section onto each Faction page. Provides more flavor for a faction, while nicely pushing players to TROs, CSO and ultimately IWM. Thanks to several different people, House Davion is done: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=1919#units
Check it out and let us know what you think while we keep pushing forward to add such iconic units to the other factions, as well as continuing to add additional faction pages.
Thanks!
Randall
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Nice but what about unit logos for that page?
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Nice but what about unit logos for that page?
Not sure I understand?
Randall
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You have listed in that page the following units:
Second Davion Guards
Crucis Lancers
Twenty-second Avalon Hussars
yet there's no logo for any of them
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There are logos for all three of those on the page.
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IE 8 hates me enough not to show the goodness and Firefox just giggles as it produces the images.
Apparently I'm fracking blind. Carry on fellows!
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IE 8 hates me enough not to show the goodness and Firefox just giggles as it produces the images.
Apparently I'm fracking blind. Carry on fellows!
Firefox rocks...IE 8....isn't that already out-dated? Isn't it up to IE 27 or something?(Yes..that is a joke..
I think IE is actually at 9 or 10)
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Not if you're on Windows XP. IE9 won't run on that version.
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Hey guys,
A significantly re-cast/organized "New To BattleTech?" page: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=400
I've got some eye candy I want to add...and I'm contemplating adding in an epub to the fiction section, but those are slight polishes to the over-all page as is.
Feel free to comment!
Randall
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A significantly re-cast/organized "New To BattleTech?" page: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=400
Waits for it to load... waits for it to load.... waits for it to load... gives up on trying it in my primary browser and let's FF load it in the background while I go get some coffee...
1.7 megabytes and a request time on the first page of almost two seconds could have something to do with it -- total load time of > 24 seconds is just outright painful almost ENTIRELY because of the long request responses. (each file > 2 seconds each, no multiconnect past 4 files?) Which means...
I've got some eye candy I want to add...
Is the LAST thing that page needs. Welcome to all the problems Warner's site used to have, and why we had to throw it away and neuter it. Doesn't matter how pretty the site is, if it takes forever to load nobody is going to care. The RIDICULOUS file sizes certainly aren't helping matters (again, photoshop wouldn't know an optimized png or jpeg from the hole in it's DVD)
The greatest offender being:
http://bg.battletech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/BattleTechQuick-Start-Rules_Cover.jpg
625k for a THUMBNAIL? Yer kidding me, right? (also, is it supposed to be that DARK, or is that overdraw from someone using the wrong tool to resize it)... I mean even this massive image (too large for practical web deployment)
http://bg.battletech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/New-To-BattleTech-Page-Art.jpg
Is less than half the filesize (297k) while still twice the upper limit the entire PAGE should be allowed to reach. I mean, it's not bad enough you've got wordpress pissing all over itself with 164k of javascript and 95k of CSS for christmas only knows what... since, well... it's wordpress... but to further exacerbate the already bloated site with images too large for web deployment; no offense, but way to flush any hope of a web presence down the toilet.
Oh, and I'm still getting 502 errors about seven or eight times a day... so... server not holding up well under the load? (or is that a malfunctioning switch at your host upstream?). I imagine that 2.5x system load average and never dipping below 1.0 is holding up so well.... what with HTTPD/PHP sucking down four or five times as much CPU as mySQL is during normal load? (I have my ways...)
You'd think table_cache, key_buffer_Size and query_cache_size were all set too large starving PHP of RAM. (the lack of a caching accellerator like APC certainly can't be helping either).
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Yeah, I'll go over and optimize those images. Just haven't gotten around it yet.
You'll notice both the front page and the portal page clock in around a meg or so. Which we're quite comfy with.
Paul
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You'll notice both the front page and the portal page clock in around a meg or so. Which we're quite comfy with.
Wow... a meg... do I even need to say it?!? If that's your idea of comfy... well, kiss your web presence goodbye. What's the bounce rate look like with that monstrosity? About the same as all the fly-by-night artsy pages that companies can't figure out why they don't have visitors on?
That's eight times the upper limit I would EVER consider allow the home page on a site to reach, and sixteen times the ideal... uselessly large and slow (as evidenced by the long ping times, long handshake times, and 20 second plus load times) to the point that again, it doesn't matter how pretty it is if nobody wants to wait for it to finish loading.
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Well, it's becoming a bit circular, but as has been pointed out to you before, art sells.
Check around to a couple of companies you'd consider a competitor to CGL to see how they do.
As far as website size goes, a meg seems a very common frontpage size these days. And with a proper setup, it's not all that bad.
But I doubt I'll ever convince you, and you will definitely not convince us. Sorry.
Paul
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Fixed the images. Tis but half a meg now. Loads in about 5 seconds.
And yes, a server upgrade is planned as well.
Paul
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As Paul mentioned, we've squished image sizes down for faster load times, meanwhile I've tightened and focused the text on the New To BattleTech? page to spin a new person more quickly down his rabbit hole of choice: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=400
I've also taken the Getting Started page and split it into what will eventually become three stepping stone pages that provide a nice, easy path to follow even further down their rabbit hole chosen on the New to BattleTech? page:
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=175
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=3498
I'll generate a "Getting Started: As a Roleplaying Game" page tomorrow, but after 10-ish hours of website works and announcements, done for the day.
As always, thanks for the great feedback!
Randall
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From the moment Decision at Thunder Rift published in 1986, novels have consistently proven the best way to convey the fantastic stories that have kept fans coming back to the BattleTech/MechWarrior universe for three decades.
I thought Sword and Dagger was the first? ???
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I thought Sword and Dagger was the first? ???
April 1987, Thunder Rift was June 1986.
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Yup we'll be adding in further compilation purchases as we go forward.
Randall
Sweet, I am looking forward to it.
Hey guys,
A significantly re-cast/organized "New To BattleTech?" page: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=400
I've got some eye candy I want to add...and I'm contemplating adding in an epub to the fiction section, but those are slight polishes to the over-all page as is.
Feel free to comment!
Randall
That looks great to me, however I would add a link to the BattleCorps Fiction Sampler (http://www.battletech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/BattleCorps-Fiction-Sampler.pdf) to the fiction section because it is a wonderful compilation of free stories that would work well to help build interest in potential new players.
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Well, Randall's got it here:
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=3498
Paul
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Well, Randall's got it here:
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=3498
Paul
Hm, that is linked farther down the page which is good, but I think it would be a little bit more obvious if you moved the link to that page up into the main section so there is a more obvious continuity of thought there.
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Hm, that is linked farther down the page which is good, but I think it would be a little bit more obvious if you moved the link to that page up into the main section so there is a more obvious continuity of thought there.
I'm not exactly sure what you're suggesting for some reason. If you could rephrase exactly what you're looking for, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks.
Randall
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Initial Ghost Bear Dominion, Clan Jade Falcon and Clan Wolfe faction pages added: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=205 Still need to add there maps and Iconic Units, but I continue to be extremely pleased with how the Universe portion of the website is turning out.
Randall
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For those ebook people (I am one of them) - would it be possible to get the Battlecorps Sampler in an ebook format?
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I'm not exactly sure what you're suggesting for some reason. If you could rephrase exactly what you're looking for, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks.
Randall
You currently have the link down at the bottom of the page, but I think it would be better if you moved it to the end of the section titled "2. As A Reader Of Fiction". I was thinking of placing it immediately after the Universe Guide PDF and before the RPG setting so people read through the section, decide they want to learn more about the fiction, and see a link to do so right there. Another way to look at it would be to merge the section titled "Getting Started" into the previous sections for more continuity of thought between the pages.
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You currently have the link down at the bottom of the page, but I think it would be better if you moved it to the end of the section titled "2. As A Reader Of Fiction". I was thinking of placing it immediately after the Universe Guide PDF and before the RPG setting so people read through the section, decide they want to learn more about the fiction, and see a link to do so right there. Another way to look at it would be to merge the section titled "Getting Started" into the previous sections for more continuity of thought between the pages.
Okay, I see what you mean now...mmm...I'll think on that.
Thanks!
Randall
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Whoohoo! Omega is in the Bear's page! O0
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You know what would be REALLY cool for the faction pages? Some little IC quote that sums up the faction in
one, simple sentence.
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You know what would be REALLY cool for the faction pages? Some little IC quote that sums up the faction in
one, simple sentence.
Capellan: We got your back.
Federated: We do it because it's (our) right.
Lyran: We own it already, thanks.
Free Worlds: Excuse us one moment.
Kurita: Everybody wants us a piece of us.
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Okay, I see what you mean now...mmm...I'll think on that.
Thanks!
Randall
Happy to help as always.
You know what would be REALLY cool for the faction pages? Some little IC quote that sums up the faction in
one, simple sentence.
That would be good. There have been a number of great quotes about the various factions over the years that would work perfectly, and it would be fun for players because the older players would get to try to figure out where they came from and the new players would see them in a novel or something and remember seeing it on the site.
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Maybe have a video how to section. Quick strike in action possibly.
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Maybe have a video how to section. Quick strike in action possibly.
We'd absolutely love to do a few "universe" and "how-to" videos...but those are well down on the list as it's simply beyond our ability currently. But it is things we're looking at.
Thanks.
Randall
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Any new Wallpapers on the way, like say, the cover of FM3085?
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Yes. That would be very, very awesome.
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Any new Wallpapers on the way, like say, the cover of FM3085?
Beyond these? http://www.battletech.com/gallery/
;-)
Hoping to have new ones up in the next week or two.
Randall
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Yes. That's an excellent start.
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Can we get some wallpapers scaled for multiple monitors? Around 4800 x 1400?
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?
You think 4800x1400 is a common resolution?
There are plans to provide a few more resolution options, but that's moving slowly.
Paul
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Beyond these? http://www.battletech.com/gallery/
;-)
Hoping to have new ones up in the next week or two.
Randall
As Moonsword said, it's a good start. ;) I'm hoping for the 3085 cover
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I believe I almost tripled the number of wallpapers available, including a lot of never-before-done images as wallpapers...and the requested Field Manual: 3085: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=29
Over the next few days we'll do the usual tweaking of the image sizes to ensure the page loads quick, as well as adding in a sidebar of navigation links since the page is starting to become a little unwieldy...and there's still a ton of wallpapers to add.
Thanks!
Randall
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Any chance of getting those wallpapers in less large sizes? Not all of us have the big screen monitors.......
Craig
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For those needing alternative resolutions, while those and especially those you want aren't up yet, I can't recommend paint.net enough. It'll do all you need to crop and resize images that are already uploaded to your taste and your needs. It's donationware, uses layers, and just works for most of your needs.
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Yeah, resizing them down at the same aspect ratio is a piece of cake on most any system.
Sizing up is "impossible", in the sense of it being impossible to add information, so resizing up looks hideous.
Paul
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Okay for now I'm pretty happy where these are at.
1. Tweaked the New To BattleTech? page to better integrate the "Getting Started" page links: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=400
2. Tweaked the "Getting started: As a Board Game..." page to include small hyper links for all the product to ease navigation of the page: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=175
3. Added the full "Getting Started: As A Roleplaying Game..." page: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=3809
As always, let me know if you've any feedback.
Thanks!
Randall
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Okay for now I'm pretty happy where these are at.
1. Tweaked the New To BattleTech? page to better integrate the "Getting Started" page links: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=400
2. Tweaked the "Getting started: As a Board Game..." page to include small hyper links for all the product to ease navigation of the page: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=175
3. Added the full "Getting Started: As A Roleplaying Game..." page: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=3809
As always, let me know if you've any feedback.
Thanks!
Randall
That looks great to me. My only little complaint is that it looks a little bit odd for the reader of fiction section to be longer than the other two sections so I think it might help if the "Story Fiction vs. Sourcebook Fiction" paragraph was moved into the fiction page. Of course, that might make the main getting started page harder to figure out for new people, but I am personally inclined to favor a brief initial description on the front end and leave the more in-depth explanation for the detailed page. Alternatively, you could go the other way and add a brief introductory paragraph in front of the PDFs for the board game and RPG sections which would balance things out at the cost of making the page harder to quickly skim through.
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Yeah, resizing them down at the same aspect ratio is a piece of cake on most any system.
Sizing up is "impossible", in the sense of it being impossible to add information, so resizing up looks hideous.
Paul
If it's just for wallpaper, you can get away with scaling images up to 10-15% without getting too much distortion. Past that and it starts looking funky though.
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If it's just for wallpaper, you can get away with scaling images up to 10-15% without getting too much distortion. Past that and it starts looking funky though.
Might be the software I use (crap) but I've never liked the results.
Paul
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Might be the software I use (crap) but I've never liked the results.
Could be the algorithm. I'm a die-hard photoshop user but whatever.
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I believe I almost tripled the number of wallpapers available, including a lot of never-before-done images as wallpapers...and the requested Field Manual: 3085: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=29
Over the next few days we'll do the usual tweaking of the image sizes to ensure the page loads quick, as well as adding in a sidebar of navigation links since the page is starting to become a little unwieldy...and there's still a ton of wallpapers to add.
Thanks!
Randall
This is awesome. I'm not using any of them yet but come 26 December, when I take my current Christmas wallpaper down, I'll be putting one up on my desktop.
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We'd absolutely love to do a few "universe" and "how-to" videos...but those are well down on the list as it's simply beyond our ability currently. But it is things we're looking at.
It's a shame that the idea of instructional videos are low on the priority list. A friend of Mine that I got into BattleTech plays several other table-top miniatures including Infinity (which I had never heard of). He and a friend of his invited Me over to play Infinity with them one night and while they were setting the table up, I watched the tutorial videos on the Infinity website. I was pretty much ready to go for the first time.
It made things SO easy for Me to play the game for the first time and I IMMEDIATELY asked Myself why there aren't videos like that on the Catalyst site. Not only would it help new players, but I think everyone would be able to benefit from it.
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3. Added the full "Getting Started: As A Roleplaying Game..." page: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=3809
The link to the Quick-Start Rules is broken. There's no "s" in download for the correct address.
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Yeah, some jerk changed that on me. ;)
Fixed. Still need to optimize the various and sundry images.
Minor request: because you quoted the link to the Getting Started page, it took me a bit to figure out you meant the links on New To. That's more my problem than yours, but given who you're dealing with, I'd appreciate any accommodations made with regards to my dim wit.
It's a shame that the idea of instructional videos are low on the priority list.
There's no dispute with regards to the usefulness of such, there's just the matter of available resources. The Infinity videos you refer to are good, but require resources and skills CGL doesn't currently have.
Paul
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I'll keep that in mind next time.
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snip......
There's no dispute with regards to the usefulness of such, there's just the matter of available resources. The Infinity videos you refer to are good, but require resources and skills CGL doesn't currently have.
Paul
Couldn't a contest be done through battlecorps for the best instructional view for set scenario? Say how to play the intro rules for Total Warfare. Or just start with mechs, and the vechicles, and so on.
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?
You think 4800x1400 is a common resolution?
There are plans to provide a few more resolution options, but that's moving slowly.
Paul
Around that size. I'm trying to fit wallpaper across three monitors. 1400x1050 each (so 4200 x 1050).
I manage for now though.
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There's no dispute with regards to the usefulness of such, there's just the matter of available resources. The Infinity videos you refer to are good, but require resources and skills CGL doesn't currently have.
What about drawing from the pool of knowledge and creative talent of the demo agents?
I would imagine that at least one of them is adept at both LAM rules (for example) and video editing. Why not allow people to make submissions, and have somebody at CGL look at it and say, "Nope, this one's not quite right, so We're not putting on the site. But THIS one is dead on, so it makes the cut; let's put it up there!"?
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Couldn't a contest be done through battlecorps for the best instructional view for set scenario? Say how to play the intro rules for Total Warfare. Or just start with mechs, and the vechicles, and so on.
They don't do contests on BattleCorps anymore....too much logistical headache.
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Around that size. I'm trying to fit wallpaper across three monitors. 1400x1050 each (so 4200 x 1050).
That'd require source art at roughly that 4:1 aspect ratio. The closest thing ever done like that is the box/TW wrap around. And that's unlikely to be common.
Paul
[Edit: fixed typo]
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That'd require source art at roughly that aspect 4:1 ratio. The closest thing ever done like that is the box/TW wrap around. And that's unlikely to be common.
Paul
I understand. Thanks Paul!
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They don't do contests on BattleCorps anymore....too much logistical headache.
They're running a contest over there right now...... ???
Craig
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They're running a contest over there right now...... ???
Craig
Really..funny..after the last contest(Record Sheets: Unique Fighters) ran into trouble, they said they weren't doing anymore contests.
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It's a painting/diorama contest. It has to be based on one of the stories in their entire collection.
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Really..funny..after the last contest(Record Sheets: Unique Fighters) ran into trouble, they said they weren't doing anymore contests.
Yeah. Design contests.
Paul
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Just a small note, on the books page(http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=49) the second sentence (The latest releases can be found here, while upcoming releases can be found here.) has also 2 links in it, the one for the upcoming releases is wrong:
http://bg.battlecorps.com/?page_id=474
correct one is:
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=474
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Whoops, fixed, thanks!
Paul
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Any chance we could get the release dates for the products listed on the "Latest Releases" page?
Would help to see what was added since the last look into it.
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I agree with Big D,,,,Be nice to know. ;D
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Will the Open Tournament Rules 3.0 be available on the website, anytime soon?
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Any chance we could get the release dates for the products listed on the "Latest Releases" page?
Would help to see what was added since the last look into it.
Added it. Still chasing down a bit of info here and there, but most have dates.
For the print stuff, I'll add street dates too, once they're announced.
Paul
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Added it. Still chasing down a bit of info here and there, but most have dates.
For the print stuff, I'll add street dates too, once they're announced.
Paul
Yea thanks! O0
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Any chance we will be able to get the old downloads, like the INN Archive and the complete record sheets
for Tech Manual back soon?
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That's planned, but there's no timeline on that right now.
Paul
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Just a heads up... New faction in the Universe section!
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Please say it's Clan Spaniel.
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Is possible to have on the new release webpage links to product that just came out? I'm finding i have to got the message board new release section to get straight line to it. The old webpage had dedicated page to new products with links when they became available which i found was easier to get to it. Maybe easier for newbie who isn't on the forums.
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Is possible to have on the new release webpage links to product that just came out? I'm finding i have to got the message board new release section to get straight line to it. The old webpage had dedicated page to new products with links when they became available which i found was easier to get to it. Maybe easier for newbie who isn't on the forums.
You mean this page: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=728
It includes the latest releases, the titles and covers are links to the specific pages for each book, and there's even details on the exact date something was made live?
Not sure what else you're looking for?
Thanks.
Randall
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You mean this page: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=728
It includes the latest releases, the titles and covers are links to the specific pages for each book, and there's even details on the exact date something was made live?
Not sure what else you're looking for?
Thanks.
Randall
Yes, I didn't notice the link with the colors being similar. Its my fault to the type print. Thank you to pointing them out. :-[
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You mean this page: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=728
It includes the latest releases, the titles and covers are links to the specific pages for each book, and there's even details on the exact date something was made live?
Not sure what else you're looking for?
Thanks.
Randall
It would be really nice if that also included the Print Street Dates.
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It would be really nice if that also included the Print Street Dates.
Done: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=728
Also note that Street Dates are not announced until we have the book in the Warehouse, so it's usually a month and more from when the PDF/Pre-order becomes available that we finally get a Street Date...hence I just announced 2 BT Street Dates, so now we can fold them into the Latest Releases; but I had forgotten to put in the Street Dates for Final Reckoning and the GM Screen, which I had.
Thanks!
randall
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All the ePub books seem to be unavailable for purchase at both BattleCorps and DriveThruRPG.
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http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,15507.msg356785.html#msg356785
That explains a bit about what's going on.
Paul
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http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,15507.msg356785.html#msg356785
That explains a bit about what's going on.
Paul
Oh, thanks, I must have missed that when I went looking to see what happened
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More for the Battleshop side of things and mostly just slight improvements.
1. As best as I can determine there is no "Contact Customer Support" option on the Battleshop at all. Indeed doing searches for it I can only come up with the e-mail address provided for box set mini replacement on these boards.
2. I'd love an improvement to the description of hard copy items to include print run information.
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1. As best as I can determine there is no "Contact Customer Support" option on the Battleshop at all. Indeed doing searches for it I can only come up with the e-mail address provided for box set mini replacement on these boards.
There is a "contact us" link at the bottom of every page that gives a BattleShop customer service email address.
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Ah there it is. Still though it could stand to be better placed and much more prominent because being where I have to scroll for it and mixed in with all those other items makes it obviously way too easily missed.
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Ah there it is. Still though it could stand to be better placed and much more prominent because being where I have to scroll for it and mixed in with all those other items makes it obviously way too easily missed.
The absurdly undersized fixed metric fonts, illegible use of color contrasts, and 'little stripe' fixed width layout, alongside things like the lack of clear paddings and too short line-heights make it hard to find anything useful of that nature on said site. As I've said for almost a decade, it suffers badly from "WCAG, what's that?" and a complete lack of professional web development work -- instead just grabbing some off the shelf solution and shoe-horning it into an inaccessible skin.
... no matter how 'pretty' it is. Pretty and useless is still useless.
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I'd like for there to be a MW4RPG topic and also an InterStellar Operations topic that we players can provide input as to what rules we want in these rulebooks.
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There's a thread in this forum about IO and an entire forum devoted to roleplaying, including the fourth BT RPG, A Time of War.
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There's a thread in this forum about IO and an entire forum devoted to roleplaying, including the fourth BT RPG, A Time of War.
Do you mean the IO thread that Herb just locked?
Also, I may be reading this incorrectly, but it looks to me like AishaPrince may have been asking about a rules questions forums, although questions about that could probably be dumped into the general rules questions forum just fine unless there are really enough IO questions to justify a separate sub-forum.
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Can we have a mobile device friendly version of the BT forum please?
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Do you mean the IO thread that Herb just locked?
My precognition skills are limited.
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Can we have a mobile device friendly version of the BT forum please?
You might try this:
http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?wap2
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Cheers O0
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My precognition skills are limited.
Well, if that is the case then why are we keeping you around? :D
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Well, if that is the case then why are we keeping you around? :D
Because his Post-cognition skills are excellent?
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Keep the con listings up to date on the web site
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Hey,
I am quite sure that somewhere on the old or new forums, I read a statement that making the forums available for Tapatalk users with their tablets and phones is not going to happen, because of security issues. Is this still like this, or has something changed for that it might be secure now?
Cheers
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The issue is that it requires a mod or plug in. Which we're pretty uninterested in doing if we can help it.
Paul
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Okay, thanks for the info!
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I would like to see a way for people to log in and personalize a background and manu references based on the different Eras, like Succession wars, or the recently finished Jihad Era.
The background would be from the Era you chose, and the menus of books would be limited to the Era's relevance. You would log in with your Forum log in. (if that's possible)
Also an accurate Star Map showed for logged in members Era's Choice. Showing what Factions did exist and their very in-general Territory lines.
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While that'd be cool, those kinds of functionality are well beyond what we can pull off.
You can find a lot of the info you're asking about manually here though:
http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=1354
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In France (and I suppose in many countries) it's hard to find players. A map with all users on the forum and a way to find "near" players could be great. :)
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In France (and I suppose in many countries) it's hard to find players. A map with all users on the forum and a way to find "near" players could be great. :)
That or some kind of listing of gaming groups, events, and other locations looking for new players with a location search. It might be possible to cut down some of the work on this by taking advantage of Google Maps, however I have never really done anything with that so I cannot say for sure.
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Just go here and sign up as a player to find people near you.
http://www.catalystdemos.com
No map, but the same info.
Meanwhile, just because someone's on thw forum doesn't mean they want to be contacted. =)
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The website needs a search engine, by area and by type of search, for finding: opponents, clubs, stores, conventions, etc.
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Again, to the extent we have that, it's on the catalystdemos.com website.
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Except you can't contact anyone registered there. Tried to a while back. Was trying to get an area wide group started again. Gave me a list of users in my area but no way to send a game invite. :(
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My only website suggestion would be to include the out of print PDF scans into the out of print section. Given that many of the old TROs are available on the battleshop, previews and descriptions would make for easy discovery on the main page.
Thanks!
Stinger
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Forum Post spell check should be fixed so Mechs ; and a lot of proper names for nations
ect . Combat Vehicles ( Vees ) and other common use words are not constantly targeted
as misspelt words . It would save a lot of time on site.
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With most applications that have spell check, you have the option to add those words to your dictionary by right clicking...
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With most applications that have spell check, you have the option to add those words to your dictionary by right clicking...
He's referring to the spellcheck function integral to the forums, which pulls off a database on the server. You'll note the 'Spell Check' button next to Preview when you're about to post.
Editing that guy is tricky.
The alternative is using a spellcheck on your own system, so you never care about the forum's option.
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I'm curious. Is there any plans to update the Forums to have a more 'battletech' feel? We have been using this layout since the forum crash, what 3 years back?
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Profile > Look and Layout, click 'Change' behind whatever theme you currently have on.
Have fun.
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Thanks, I never would have looked if you hadn't told me. I like the Battletech theme. :)
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Thanks, I never would have looked if you hadn't told me. I like the Battletech theme. :)
Thankew! IIRC that was a joint effort of Skyhigh and Fastjack from the SR forums.
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Out of interest has it ever been considered to link or host BattleTech PaperCrafts?
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Nope, didn't even know about it until you mentioned it just now. Slap together a PM or email with the suggestion and link(s) if you'd be so kind.
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I know this thread has been dead for a while, but it seemed like the proper place to bring this up:
On the main battletech.com site, in the "About BattleTech (MechWarrior)" section, the text has the following sentence:
"These dynamics have spawned a host games, novels, toys and more."
I'm thinking it should read "a host of games," ? A small thing, I know, but I never noticed it until now.
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I know this thread has been dead for a while, but it seemed like the proper place to bring this up:
On the main battletech.com site, in the "About BattleTech (MechWarrior)" section, the text has the following sentence:
"These dynamics have spawned a host games, novels, toys and more."
I'm thinking it should read "a host of games," ? A small thing, I know, but I never noticed it until now.
BattleTroops, Solaris VII(which was kind of its own ruleset), BattleSpace, 4 different RPGs,
Mechwarrior Dark Age/Age of Destruction, the MechAssault xbox games, MultiPlayer BattleTech,
the Mechwarrior series of computer games...
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Oh, I wasn't questioning their existence, just the spelling of the sentence.