New Site Layout (Split #2)

[orangehairedgurl]

I just got the biggest shock of my life and my mouth literally dropped open. Now I just want to cry!

The layout looks messy, it looks too crammed full with all sorts of things! When I went to my guild page today, the whole page was messed up.

And I miss my sidebar! I find it easier to have links at the side rather than on top.

And my pets! They're too small, and their petpets look huge. It's so unnatural. I hate that expression on my acara's face right now.

[Rayen]

Wow! What's going on with the games room? That looks... wrong. Very very wrong.

I'm not thrilled with the "sidebars" anymore (they're not really sidebars anymore though are they? they're... headers and footers!) and it all seems a bit cramped, but all in all I like it. It seems slightly more mature some how.

[ant1999]

It's hideous. Just eye blindingly hideous. Even my beloved jetsam looks awful all cute and HIDEOUS. So the question is how does it look in Premium? Are they foisting this mess on paying customers or is there a way to control your own layout?

[virginangelic]

Sigh...everything I've had issues with has been discussed and I have nothing new to gripe about.

It's just...awful. Hideous is an understatement. I guess Neo has lost its identity, its soul. It's nothing more than a commercialized business site. If nothing changes by next week, I'd have to self-freeze and get on with my life.

[TheEaterofWorlds]

Am I the only person who actually likes the Jetsam redesign? o.O I mean, they've been appearing like this in the site art as early as the Gadgadsbogen puzzle, at least. I'd just been waiting for the pet art to catch up. I hope they'll release a few tailfin tattoos like the one in the pirate jetsam set.

2 odd things so far; My fire lupe Tacuma is currently headless. Also, all my pets have "ShesshouMaru likes gathering food.
When meeting others, ShesshouMaru would act very friendly. " On their lookup, but I thought at least one of them I had put 'liks to explore' or something. Maybe what I orginally put got lost at some point and went to a default.

"Coming Soon: A Mysterious Voyage Begins"
Plot + island of mutants makes me think of Island of Dr. Moreau.

Edit: If I was a programmer on the site, I'd be really sad right now. : / All these people saying horrible things about them, and how they're soul less and evi land whatnot. I'm sure they busted their humps to make this.

[orangehairedgurl]

I don't really hate the new layout. I just don't like it, and I guess I also don't like the fact that they spring it on us like this. Perhaps if they did it slowly, little by little, there wouldn't be this mass confusion going on right now.

It's nice to have a lot of content (believe me, I used to write for a website LOL) but it's just a little TOO full of content for comfort so that there's no rest for my eyes.

[ant1999]

Am I the only person who actually likes the Jetsam redesign? o.O I mean, they've been appearing like this in the site art as early as the Gadgadsbogen puzzle, at least. I'd just been waiting for the pet art to catch up.

I've been dreading it. The thing is that if you don't like cute then Jetsam's are about it for a pet unless you've got the NP for a Marquarran Garrl. Obviously if cute is your cup of tea then the new designs are fine. But if you don' like cuddly then the new images are ..... The two neofriends that were online when I was also don't like the cute factor. One's got the ruined Halloween Uni which now look's like his daughter's my little pony. The other just pounded her Lutari into oblivion out of disgust and is thinking about just abandoning her account.

Oh and is anyone else bothered about the neofriends online box? Do you really want your neofriends to know how long you have been on the site? Everytime you are on the site? Where's the privacy option there? I'm for the first time in years thinking of setting up a second account just to not upset neofriends when I want to play games and not chat. Neo has been my peaceful stress relief when I didn't necessarily want to talk to anyone and now that options been taken away as well.

[Aya]

Wow, there just isn't another word to discribe this. Wel maybe and O_O will do a good job too.

I've been a neopets player for 44 months. Pretty long in my opinion. I have been a lurker on PPT for quite a while and registered myself here around the Lost desert plot. Although I'm not a really active player I do visit neopets almost everyday.

Just like others I got the shock of my life yesterday. I have the neopets sidebar and saw that my friend had send me a neomail. Happily clicking the button to see what she wrote me I was in for a bad surprise. "Where am I?" was actually one of my first thoughts.

I can't even begin to describe how lost I am on neopets at the moment. I mean, I can't even find my inventory anymore! I don't consider myself stupid or anything but how the **** do I get to my inventory. I just spend 10 minutes trying to find it and haven't succeeded yet. It must be somewhere, but I can't find it. Maybe it is really simple but I'm lost.

The overload of information on certain pages is just overwhelming. During my education I was taught that too much information makes it harder for your users to find what they want. And I can confirm it myself. The mainpage is giving me a headache. There is literally information everywhere! It used to be crowded aswell, but now I just keep looking left, right, up and down trying to get it all in. Information overload has occurred, system shutting down now. It is nice that they are trying to structure everything a bit more by putting it in modules and all, but there is a thing called, too much on 1 page.

I don't even wanna start on my pets. I have a plushie shoyru, mutant grarrl and a blue Lutari.
My shoyru was my very first pet and I still love them the most. When I got a fountain faerie quest long ago I was thrilled, I had always wanted a plushie because they look so cuddly and cute. For the Shoyru I still have the choice whether I want to convert him to the new look or keep the old one. Curious as I am I decided to check out the newer look. The newer version of the shoyru looks like a bad plushie I would give to my neighbour kids because it looks bad.
I can't really put my finger on it, but the new version just looks bad. No way I'm ever converting him!

The mutant grarrl is my current labpet. All I can say now is that he looks like he has escaped from a Spongebob cartoon. I know, Spongebob doesn’t have any dragons, but still. Luckily he’s my labpet and will hopefully change pretty soon (if it will be for the good, let’s just hope so)

And then the Lutari. What can I say that hasn’t already been said by others. I was so happy when my pet got zapped into a Lutari. And to make me even more happy he got the right color too, blue. I have always loved blue and getting this zap was the thing that made my day. After a hefty discussion with myself I decided to keep the Lutari and make my other pet into my labpet. Mind you, the Lutari has some nice BD stats and I really wanted to keep zapping him for better stats so that I could battle stronger enemies for the avatars I could get. I was even thinking about using my stock of saved up codestones for training.
Now my Lutari looks all wrong. I mean, put some golden chains on him, give him a bad boy look and he might start screaming things like the rappers do in these days videoclips. I think everyone will know what I mean. The Lutari used to be a cute pet, with those big eyes that just asked to be petted. Somehow it reminded me of a cat that rolls onto it’s back to have it’s belly rubbed. Now I looks like it’s going to tell me to get lost because it’s too cool for me now. And what is with it standing on 2 legs all of a sudden. Why has it been humanized?

And the neofriend thing on the side? Why the hell is it telling me I must be lonely! That you very much for telling me such depressing things. I have 2 neofriends, only one of them plays the site. I don’t care whether they visit the site or not. I don’t even wanna know when my friend last visited the site, What am I, Big Brother??!!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not someone who’s against change. I do feel that things have to move forward to stay alive. With the last plot I had the idea that TNT was finally remembering the older users. The plot was a little darker and the potionmaking was a big challenge. But now, it seems that the older users have definitely been shoved aside. The kiddystyle has been shoved down our throats and it seems we have the choice of swallowing or chocking on it.

I might not have been on the site since the very beginning but I have been here a long time. I’ve seen the changes coming and accepted most of them without much thought. But this one, I don’t know yet. The change is just soooo big and all at once. If they had changed it gradually I might have gotten used to it along they way. But now, throwing it in my face like this? For me neopets has been going downhill a little lately. I am an avatar collector and am quite proud of the 218 I have. But for the last months no avatars have been released. All the news ever gave me was more items in the stores, more sponsor games and more things I didn’t really care much about.
I’m feeling sad and a lost at the moment. Where did my neopets go? I will be watching the site to see what changes will be made in this beta version but if it stays this way I might be leaving cause right now, it lost it’s appeal to me.
Sorry for the long rant, but I just had to get it out of my system

[ria]

Okay, well when I first opened up my IE, with Neo as one of my homepages, my first reaction was "hey woowwww, an awesome new layout! about time!" but then, upon actually trying to do things, and looking at all the hideous hideous pet revamps (i swear, this is even worse than my gorgeous Llamameah becoming the uuuuugly Gnorbu and the adorable Lutari being limited edition) I've now immediately switched sides. I'm with the rest of PPT in saying I absolutely hate it. I hardly bother with neo anymore, i'm too busy with school to bother with playing stupid games and restocking (i'd much rather play proper video games anyhow) but I still feel the need to see the new pets and updates, and while my first thought was "wow, maybe this'll make me want to actually play neo again!" then I started using it and am thinking my active-ness is going to drop even more now!

I HATE the new modules, everything looks cramped, i don't mind the topbar, but on all the pet lookups, and the sidebar there's waaaaay to much information. Before when i'd see a pet or user lookup I'd be more interested in their pets' backstories and any art they'd drawn themselves (i love custom designs very much, they're so much more personal) than in how many fights they'd won or lost in the battledome, or how many jobs they'd done, or how good they were at fishing, that was the sort of stuff that was easily skimmed over, that way if you didn't bother with any of those things, no one thought any less of you. Now its like "oh look, you haven't won any battledome fights, you've never done any jobs and you suck at fishing.. how.. nice..." Not to mention the stupid "your pet likes [gathering food] when meeting others your pet would [act friendly]" that was the same ridiculous things with the stuuuuuuuupid options that didn't count for anything and are now staring us all in the face.

Everything is too in your face. All your accomplishments, or lack there-of, are shown with huge icons and seperated so that all a person can do is break you down into how many stamps, sidebars and avatars you've collected, and not how interesting and witty your self-introduction, and they look at your pets and stare at how well they can fish, how many jobs they've done and how many battles they've won, rather than any personality, or custom designs you've drawn. Its like the fact that me as a player, and my 'pets' have been reduced to nothing more than boring stats that are shoved in anyone who cares' face. And the NEOFRIENDS dear goodness, i have a few randoms from rl who never even play neo and are now in their own happy little module, and featuring on my userpage. Whyyyyyyyy?!

And the pet revamps, I didn't mind my pets during the customisation beta, but my pets were never overly fancy to begin with. I have on my main and side accounts, a red cybunny, red ixi, shadow ruki, silver eyrie, disco kougra, blue xweetok, mutant xweetok and faerie grundo. And all of their revamps are actually half decent, but now I'm seeing some gorgeous pets in fancier more expensive colours like plushie, royal, grey, maraquan, etc being reduced to the same boring pose, limitations and style of the ordinary pets. I haven't been able to find a customised update of the Maraquan Gelert, but at this stage I really don't ever want to see it, cause the Maraquan Gelert is my dream pet I figured with my slow slow playing it'd take me at least 5 years to get enough to transform my ruki, but without the unique pose and style of the original art I fell in love with, now i really will have no reason to actually play on neo at all.

This really boils down to the same problem the Llamameeah faced. TNT didn't seem to realise that we. voted. for. the. LLAMAMEEAH. NOT the gnorbu, and not anything else, if I'd wanted the overly cartoony bearded pet with a stupid name, I would have voted for it, not for the Llamameeah. Because that was the pet that I wanted, it was small, it was cute, and adorable, and perfect. When they revamped it, they turned it on its head, shook it in a pile of dung, dirt, leaves, and snot, and then stuck a bow on it and called it beautiful, and its just not the same. For pets which cost soooooo many neopoints, and which have their own unique gorgeous art style, simplifying it to look like any other old red, blue, green or yellow version just isn't the same. And breaking up pets that wear clothes just irks me, the reason my Eyrie (who wears essentially the same clothes as the Pirate Eyrie) is Silver, not Pirate, apart from the money, is that I despise the shade of blue-grey and certain accessories used in the Pirate Eyrie's design. When we were fiddling with customisation, and I was able to give my Eyrie its pirate shirt (which I'd always based off the Pirate Lupe's which now looks absolutely HIDEOUS btw), spotted bandana (though mine was always plain red) and earring, and it was the gorgeous custom version I'd always wanted him to be. But now i'll just have to go back to putting up custom pictures, cause in order to get those pirate accessories, it'd cost me a hell of a lot and i'd be stuck with an ugly colour.

Anyways, I've just been ranting on things that have probably already been said, if anyone wants to quote me on this in any angry letters to TNT feel free, i'm too lazy to write my own, as I'll simply loose interest in neo if they don't sort themselves out, and i don't think its my duty to make them realise that they've killed the site for me, i mean, they're just a greedy business, what's one less customer who never buys any of their stuff anyway?

[ant1999]

Any of the shops still has the old bar at the top which will take you to the Inventory. My first instinct was to go and check out my guild which was how I found it.

And Big Brother yep that's exactly it. We are having information about ourselves and other players shared around the site when no one's even asked for our agreement. We can select do not display for our user look ups but with this new box there's no permission asked.

[Azzie]

*Takes a deep breath*

sigh, i hate having everything crammed into one page, it gives me a headache. And i think i've lost the way to the neopian stock market.

I thank neopets for working hard to make it all snazzy, but this is way too over the top. I prefer a simpler layout with not so many graphics and things shoved into every page. my poor head.

[orangehairedgurl]

I also miss the personal tone of the old news page. You know, when they would insert some funny line or comment within the announcements and stuff like that. It kinda made me feel special, like TNT was actually talking to me. And I liked reading the news simply from top to bottom.

Now all those boxes feel so impersonal to me.

EDIT: Has anyone tried having a random event happen with the new layout? I'm just curious about WHERE it would appear...I wonder if it's still going to be at the top of the page?

I was refreshing a few seconds ago and this tiny grey square poppped up just under my acara (in its box to the left side) and it said "BEHIND YOU! Just kiddin'."

It was just a little weird...and seriously if you're not paying attention you wouldn't be able to see it at all!

[Azzie]

had one with the robot on fire, its basically below the my account etc bar.

btw, i was reading the last thread, i think someone suggested writing in and letting them know exactly what features we like and dislike about the site. That seems like a good idea.

3. I will go visit the PPT Gallery after viewing this thread. - some rules are for breaking

[Moonlight Flower]

Has anyone tried having a random event happen with the new layout? I'm just curious about WHERE it would appear...I wonder if it's still going to be at the top of the page?

I didn't think to screenshot it, but at the top of the page, just under the navigation menu.

Also, the only thing I'm REALLY disappointed with is all the redraw pets... I changed my Royalboy Draik over because I like the new draiks better, but I'm not changing my Faerie Kougra yet. >>; If ever.

[Troggy7]

One thing that gets me though;

Its a SIDEbar, not a topbar.