The RPS Feedback Thread

BillButNotBen 2020-12-27 01:46:55 UTC #1551

FYI: The front page of the site is devoid of articles and just showing:
“Not Found
Sorry, but we ain’t got whatever it is you’re looking for.”

Merry Christmas! hug

Rath 2021-01-13 21:02:34 UTC #1552

Just for the record, when RPS posted their review of AC: Valhalla and it caused some controversy, I reported a tweet by some presumably American agitator calling for violence against the RPS team a few days later, back in early November.

Twitter have just now sent me an alert to indicate that they have removed the offending tweet. Took them long enough, but they got there in the end.

Grizzly 2021-01-14 14:55:05 UTC #1553

… Dare I ask what offended people so much about that review?

LTK 2021-01-14 15:09:35 UTC #1554

I believe it was this:

But you know what? For fans of the series it’s really entertaining. It might not set the world on fire, but you can set some virtual bits on fire yourself if you want. I think running towards an abbey with terrible purpose, yelling “KILL CHRIST! AND BURN HIS HOUSE DOWN!”, is the energy a lot of people want right now. I dunno how well that would play in Texas, though.

Grizzly 2021-01-14 15:14:38 UTC #1555

I suppose it didn’t play that well in Texas then hmm… I have to say I haven’t followed the discourse around Valhalla much (Except that excellent article that someone posted in the advent calendar comments), but I’m surprised RPS would get flak for that and not the game itself.

Sarfrin 2021-01-14 18:27:10 UTC #1556

I think there’s a little contingent of alt right gamergater types that lurk around RPS keeping an eye out for things they can complain about. They seem to show up very quickly in the comments of any article that has a vaguely left wing tone.

alms 2021-01-14 22:02:54 UTC #1557

Not surprising, for many years there have been social media meeting points used to organize brigading, bombing, running interference, and so on.

Some are public, others less so.

BillButNotBen 2021-01-14 23:51:30 UTC #1558

I think some people assumed it was Alice’s line, not the game’s.

Plus, I think RPS did tweet out that quote as their twitter review link, so I imagine some on twitter only saw that and didn’t even read the review for context.

BillButNotBen 2021-01-19 23:11:23 UTC #1559

If I try and login and comment I get a message:

Your IP (34.242.*.) has been flagged for potential security violations. Find out more…

The ‘Find out more’ link goes to jetpack dot com.

Weirdly, as far as I can tell, that’s not even close to my actual ip address. It appears to be an amazon aws server in Ireland.
So I wonder if it’s a configuration issue on your end rather than something terrible that I’ve done.

Can everyone else log in to comment?

@Graham

Kiril 2021-01-20 00:28:41 UTC #1560

I can not, same error as you with the same IP

BillButNotBen 2021-01-20 01:49:09 UTC #1561

Some people can clearly comment, as there are a couple of comments on the most recent article. Though I guess they might have already been logged in.

Skalpadda 2021-01-20 07:45:46 UTC #1562

I remain logged in and can comment.

BillButNotBen 2021-01-20 09:48:04 UTC #1563

I’m back on my home PC now and I’m already logged in and so can comment.

It’ll be a while before I’m back on the previous PC and can see if that’s still blocked.

BillButNotBen 2021-01-21 08:55:37 UTC #1564

Seems to be working ok today.

Sarfrin 2021-01-26 14:36:27 UTC #1565

The new site isn’t letting me login to comment. It has sped up though.

ETA The password reset link isn’t working but I have finally managed to get in. I had to try and create a new account to find out which email address I’d used then use it with my old password (I’d logged in via username before).

Godwhacker 2021-01-26 18:39:10 UTC #1566

So, the new site is a bit pants on mobile. Articles render fine, but comments are painful, at least on mobile

Aside from having to click two options to get the site back to the “correct” view (switch to latest posts, sort comments by oldest first) this is what “What Are You Playing This Weekend?” is going to look like on Saturday:

The rest of the design I’m agnostic about- do what you’ve got to do guys- but it’d be nice to get the comments section looking less mad sooner rather than later

Sarfrin 2021-01-26 21:04:57 UTC #1567

This is what comments look like on my mobile (chrome on Android).

Godwhacker 2021-01-26 22:17:51 UTC #1568

It’s the the replies that are the issue- once they’re more than 3 deep they’re unreadable

Vandelay 2021-01-26 22:44:13 UTC #1569

Mine seems to be showing up okay on Chrome and Via. It is a bit squished in for messages with multiple replies, with only about 3-4 words a line at the narrowest point, but nothing is being cut off as it looks in your image.

Initial impressions are that I do prefer the old layout. This feels a little jumbled at the moment, particularly so on mobile. I can understand Graham’s reasonings behind the change, but I can’t yet see it as anything but a downgrade for those of us that want to look at most articles. For my use, the Latest Section is all that I need and I have to scroll quite a ways down the page to get to that. At the very least, I think that section should be right at the top or just below the featured articles. I would also say that the featured articles section is too large and that all of those articles should be visible without a scroll on a 1080p desktop display. Ideally, you should even be able to see some of, if not all, of the next section.

If I had my way, I would just have the Latest Section and nothing else. I do quite like the tiled format that is on the new front page though and don’t mind that being used, rather than the never-ending scroll of before.

BillButNotBen 2021-01-26 23:53:18 UTC #1570

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/latest ?

I like it so far, on desktop. I haven’t tried it on mobile.

Random thoughts based on only 3 minutes with the front page:

Not quite clear what the top section is, and whether there’s any difference between the left side and the right side of it.
I assume it’s selected articles, which is fine. I would make it a bit shorter though.
It’d also be cool if there were little text links after items in this section to go to jump down to more similar items. Eg: After a selected Feature there could be a small “more features” link that would jump down the page to the Features section.

Personally, I’d also move Feature up above almost everything else. Maybe after Reviews, or at least after Supporter’s Articles. I’d also rename it featureS with an S.

I think with the new layout it’s going to be important how articles are classified, otherwise they’re going to end up in the wrong place. For example, imho ‘Have you played?’ shouldn’t be in the Features section. Also, Hardware reviews and news shouldn’t be in the features section (unless it’s actually a more in depth article about a hardware topic, rather than a specific product).
I’m not even sure that regular game Reviews should be in the Features section, but that one is less clear.

I’m now going to go and read all the comments on the post about the new design, which I’m sure will all be constructive and positive and not at all all furious rants about how it has ruined RPS.
Luckily I was living in a cave the last 5 times RPS redesigned their page, and every time every other site redesigned their pages.

[edit 1]:
For desktop comments, having ‘collapse all’ actually hide all the comments seems to make it pretty useless. It just gives a list of usernames.
Usually for comments, a ‘collapse all’ option will collapse all the replies, but leave the root comments visible. It’d also be useful to see the number of replies on collapsed comments. Eg: “5 replies”.

PS/ Site is going pretty slow for me, but I assume that’s teething troubles and/or a wave of comments.
PPS/ ~~I now need to remember what email address I used to sign up to the RPS comments, as I always used the username before~~ That was easier than I expected!