(Archived Post)
We've worked hard to re-launch the JAST USA website with a totally modern new website that allows for easy browsing of all our games on any desktop or mobile Internet device, allows for immediate downloading of games when you purchase them (a hugely popular feature), and also includes other new features.
There was a good thread on our old JAST USA forums about requested site features and general feedback, and we're happy for everyone's comments. If you have new feedback for us, either about the site or about things you'd like to see us improve on, please let us know here.
New forum UI is terrible. Giant gobs of wasted space and the text is crushed into itty bitty windows. And I really really hate tiled layouts for articles / topics.
And it doesn’t look like you can edit your posts, either. I find it hard to believe that the new forum software can’t handle it; maybe they just need to tweak some configuration?
Also, you can apparently attach files now. Testing …
Main website / shop – I’m very happy with these, period. Looks much neater, and I appreciate some of the little details like the release dates on the games and the vastly-improved search system. And of course, instant download is lovely.
New forums – Like Nandemonai, I’m a bit more ambivalent about the new forums… but it is brand-spankin’ new, so I’m sure many things will improve through trial and error. One very small, easily-adjustable request: the entirety of the center area is too white. Make the borders around the text boxes a slightly darker color, please.
Other – The number one thing I was hoping to see from the website reboot but haven’t so far is a single, centralized location for downloading software patches to your physical edition games. The “blog” setup of the old website always made these cumbersome to find since (for an older game) you might have to scroll back through three years’ of news to locate it. The individual game websites you set up for many of your titles (Girlfriend is the President, Yumina, etc.) helped with this, but the vast majority of those individual game sites got thrown out with the bathwater with the website revamp. My minimum request is a single-spot place to get patches to fix bugs and remove V-Mate from old physical editions. If you’re feeling super-awesome and really want to go the extra mile, you could grow this into a more broadly-defined “Downloads” section where you could offer some of the freebies once associated with the individual game sites, like wallpapers, banners, playable demos, etc.
Anyway, that’s my two cents worth!
@jacksprat1
We recently got this page up with a list of all the patches available for the older games. We'll try to get something a little better put together for this spring.
Okay, testing confirms: You can delete posts (using the trash icon that appears next to your posts while logged in), but you cannot edit them. Since I accidentally deleted the wrong comment, reposting it below …
That list of patches has a typo in it - “Moero 2” is misspelled as “Mero 2”.
This BBS uses an interface that's more like blog comments than an actual forum. It's missing important features from the old forums, standard features that most discussion boards have, such as advanced search options and the ability to browse posts by a specific user. This layout seems more like a blog comments section than a discussion board for fans. If you want people to actually post here, you should use a layout that people are already comfortable with.
@Nicholas: Cool! That's a good start. It looks like a pretty complete list of the DRM removers. Quite a few games also had patches that addressed issues other than DRM, such as translation errors in the text (Family Project), compatibility with the newest versions of Windows (My Girlfriend is the President), gameplay crashes (Yumina the Ethereal), and so forth. Please remember to include those things as you expand that section. Gracias!
And to add to Nandemonai's comment, the inability to edit posts is going to lead to extra clutter and/or lazy posts that aren't proofread. Like this one. The ability to edit posts is a standard forum feature, one that is often omitted from blogs (to prevent trolling). This pretty much reinforces my point that this BBS system is better suited to a blog than a forum.
Also, I can't see my post immediately after posting it. This is irritating.
Also, the text window takes up the middle of my widescreen, leaving the sides empty. On the front page, this space could easily be used for other features such as "latest topics", freeing up the middle of the screen for larger heading displays instead of truncating everything.
I meant "popular topics", not "latest topics".
Even VNDB lets you edit posts, and their BBS is about as spartan as it gets.
@Dark_Shiki
We're looking into and edit feature. We agree, it's a pretty important feature.
We've updated the design of the forums, hopefully making it easier to use.
I see colored outlines around the text boxes, and there seems to be better contrast between the text boxes and background, improving readability. I can't spot any other differences.
For pages with multiple topics, there needs to be a way to get to the last page without clicking the topic, navigating to the bottom of page 1, then clicking the desired page number.
*For topics with multiple pages
@Dark_Shiki
There is a way to go to the last page quickly.
