moho_00 Curator Backer Posts: 6844 Registered: 6/10/2011
moho_00
# 1 - Posted on 10/13/2016 17:27:01

As I'm sure you have all seen by now, the new Profile page is live and (mostly) done. We're now in the final quarter of 2016 and with holidays, vacation, and a house move all on the horizon, I'm looking at being able to knock out one more "big" feature, on par with the new Profile page, before I call it a year.

I figured I'd see if there was anything that you all would like me to take a look at. Here's some of the larger items on my radar:

  • Revamp the Collection Page - Pretty much like what I just did with the Profile page. One of the ultimate goals for this page is to make it completely customizable, so you choose your columns and such. Maybe even let you save different "views" or something. I'm sure there's other stuff that could be included here or maybe customization isn't a huge priority, no idea. Just saying it might be time to look at a revamp, but let me know if you disagree.
  • Revamp the Stats Page - Again, just like what I did to the Profile page. This page has barely been touched since it was first built a loooong time ago. I know adding compilation support has been requested and @dhobo mentioned something about some price paid stats, so maybe this should just be rebuilt.
  • Mass Collection Edit - This is a tough one, but I'm sure we could figure it out. It might be part of revamping the Collection page, not sure.
  • Importing Steam Tags - This is a tricky one because it could significantly impact performance if I use the current API wrapper or would require a complete rewrite of how the Steam import runs (note: this isn't happening anytime soon!). I have some ideas, but it's a matter of vetting them out and then doing it.
  • Beefing Up Bounties - This isn't one big item, per se, but rather a lot of smaller things. Perhaps adding a page to browse previous bounties, see who completed them, etc. Or maybe letting you select an existing playthrough if you accept a bounty. I have a list somewhere of a bunch of stuff I planned to add...at some point.
  • Email Digests / Reports - This is something that would go out every month that would give you an update on your collection / backlog / bounty / whatever progress. Very similar to something like what Twitter and Slack do.
  • Forum Enhancements - This is another one that's really a bunch of small things, such as marking "favorite" threads, logging what's been viewed, quoting posts, etc.
  • Revamp the Feed Page - Well, this doesn't need a total revamp since it's fairly new, but I think it could be tweaked a bit now that we've all had a chance to use it. Plus I really want to add the ability to comment on posts and delete posts.
  • Performance Tuning - First off, I'm about done with Microsoft Azure since the service is highly inconsistent in speed / availability and I'm sure you all have seen it from time to time. I'd like to switch to Amazon and I think that would alleviate a lot of the issues. I could go even further and optimize a few slower pages / queries.

That's obviously a lot of stuff and I can probably only do one of those before the end of the year. I should have time to knock out a variety of smaller items as well or I could just focus solely on smaller items.

So what do YOU think should be next?

jwcooley Curator Posts: 983 Registered: 2/28/2014
jwcooley
# 2 - Posted on 10/13/2016 19:20:51

Bounties and Feed.

I definitely want something that shows past bounties along with who completed them and how much they were worth.

The feed - I'd love to see roll up items. Meaning, if I add 20 goals in a row, instead of displaying the 20, show something like 'Jwcooley completed 20 goals' with the ability to expand if you wish to see those. Same thing when adding games to your collection or wishlist. Also, i'd love the ability to pick a particular user and see only THEIR activity.

As far as beefing up bounties, I would love to see some ideas on what this could consist of...I'm all about making them more robust....and possibly increasing the points awarded based on how many complete said bounty.

Post Edited on 10/13/2016 19:27:01
Marcelloz Curator Backer Posts: 277 Registered: 9/14/2014
Marcelloz071
# 3 - Posted on 10/13/2016 19:23:45

Short answer : Collection page!

Long answer : Revamp the Collection page. This is clearly the biggest rewrite I suppose. Although it works well for me at the moment, customising the columns and creating view would add real value for me as I basically always sort and filter the list. Thankfully you already have the Quick views available but if I could my personal views it would definitely one of the most useful additions to the site.
Stats page could be extended with some extra info about your collection. Some might also be in your profile page (system stats?) but it's not that it really needs some extra stuff right now
Mass collection edit would definitely be nice. Especially with my large library it would be convenient so do things in bulk. But if I could choose between this or revamping the collection than I know the answer :)
Importing Steam Tags : Why would this increase the load dramatically? Tags are a per-game list of items; custom tags don't work (at least not for me). Mind that steam tags are misused a lot (Arma 3 a Walking Simulator??)
Beefing up Bounties: do the small things I would say.
Email Digest \ Reports. Not really interesting for me as I visit Completionator every day haha
Forum Enhancements: Do some small things but it's also fine as it is right now
Feed page: It indeed works but feels like a version 1 page (art too small or fonts too large, needs some beefing up with additional features). But better do Collection first haha
Performance tuning : I don't have so much issues with the site performance wise. It could be faster yeah but it's not dramatic. Don't know if you can deploy a version of Completionator to AWS for free?

dhobo Curator Backer Posts: 1965 Registered: 1/5/2015
darwinsocialism
# 4 - Posted on 10/13/2016 22:46:05

Listed in order of preference:

  • Forum Enhancements - This seems like it would hopefully be one of the easier and less stressful tasks to implement since it can be done piecemeal while providing some nice benefits for everyone.
  • Revamp the Collection Page - Some fields are far more important to me than others, so being able to tune that page to show what's important to me would be incredible. I'd love to see a third layout option that's more "list" like, extremely minimalistic as far as graphics, etc... Would be awesome for doing large-scale collection maintenance/updating, especially if combined with the custom columns.
  • Mass Collection Edit - See above and below.
  • Performance Tuning - Ties in with the mass edit stuff, but I've noticed that doing a lot of single edits becomes tiresome more quickly due to the wait times after doing any edits. Otherwise, site performance is perfectly fine for everything else.
  • Revamp the Feed Page - Now that our personal feed stuff is on the profile page, I only visit the feed page to see what people on my friends list are up to. I think mainly it just needs some formatting help to make each entry less "bulky" so you can read through a lot of feed updates without having to scroll so soon. Also what jwcooley suggested about grouping items together would be awesome, if at all possible. Would keep people from getting spammed by my 200+ goal updates. :P
  • Beefing Up Bounties - Making an already awesome feature more robust? Sounds great to me!
  • Revamp the Stats Page - I don't use it often, so I don't consider it a huge priority.
  • Email Digests / Reports - I know some of us would find these neat, but maybe not enough to make it high up on the priority list.
  • Importing Steam Tags - Seems like a messy job. Especially taking into account merging it with the existing tagging ability here on completionator.

As always, if you want some suggestions for any re-designs/layouts you're planning, let me know!

Post Edited on 10/13/2016 22:49:03
Marcus Curator Backer Posts: 311 Registered: 10/16/2014
# 5 - Posted on 10/14/2016 4:07:53

I don't really mind what happens first, I'm just happy to see any way that Completionator evolves next XD. If I had to choose, I'd be looking for mass collection edit the most, as that's a feature I'm currently lamenting the lack of.

Just wanted to pop in here and say that Steam is apparently going to have a major overhaul soon (at least according to Steam Dev Days). As such, may be smart to wait on things related to their API until whatever happens, well, happens.

Drymonema Curator Backer Posts: 395 Registered: 5/31/2016
drymonema
# 6 - Posted on 10/14/2016 13:27:26

Just as Marcus said, I'm happy to see any and all evolution of Completionator. Seriously the work you do on this site is amazing, and if it's alive and well, any changes you choose to make show this is still a passion project :)

That being said, Forum Enhancements gets my vote ;)

DOBERMAN_AX Posts: 245 Registered: 6/28/2016
# 7 - Posted on 10/14/2016 21:54:42

As well as basically all aforementioned requests, I would like to recommend a few of my own:

  • Visual Display of Goal Lists for Users - We've all definitely seem to be getting the most out of goals, and with the new Profile layout, it's pretty easy to see and track what goals have been completed by users. However, I still would really like to be able to view an entire list of a user's goals (with this in mind it could be possible to "compare" or at least "share" goal lists).
  • Built-in Timer for Playthroughs - We've already touched on this, but just a nice reminder. Preferably on the Playthroughs page is where it will make sense to be.
  • Eliminating the "seconds" portion of the Now Playing section - Again, this has been discussed, but just another reminder.
  • Fixing that weird email updates glitch - Again, you already know about it. I would like to be able to receive updates!

That's about it from me. Not too much to add here. I've been noticing the small changes while revisiting today, excellent stuff! Can't wait for this big release!

Post Edited on 10/16/2016 9:58:25
moho_00 Curator Backer Posts: 6844 Registered: 6/10/2011
moho_00
# 8 - Posted on 10/15/2016 11:36:23

Thanks for all the feedback! Based on what I'm hearing, I think my plan is to focus on smaller items for the rest of the year while also preparing the Collection page revamp. My goal would then be to actually start development on it once I get back to it in 2017, so probably the middle of January. I think it needs a bit of time to work out since it's such a frequently used page and already has a ton of functionality and it's going to get some more :D

@dhobo - Your design help is always welcome! If you're up for it again, we should have a brainstorming session / thread to get all of the ideas out there and see where we get.

dhobo Curator Backer Posts: 1965 Registered: 1/5/2015
darwinsocialism
# 9 - Posted on 10/15/2016 14:38:53

You betcha, just get the ball rolling and set a date/start a thread when you're ready to start tackling that monster and I'll jump in.

Zaidel Posts: 116 Registered: 9/11/2016
Z41D3L
# 10 - Posted on 10/15/2016 20:12:12

I'm just happy to see how much you've improved the already awesome website in the short period of time I've been using it! :D

Marcelloz Curator Backer Posts: 277 Registered: 9/14/2014
Marcelloz071
# 11 - Posted on 10/15/2016 21:33:31

Overall improvement sounds also very good to me. Already saw some nice new stuff so keep it coming. Every week a feast of new features ;-)

Post Edited on 10/15/2016 21:33:44
Cliff Posts: 44 Registered: 10/21/2016
cliff_hunter
# 12 - Posted on 10/22/2016 1:10:22

This site is great!

A couple things I'd like to see...
- iOS App
- Ability to upload personal pictures. This obviously would take server space, so instead maybe just include as app feature and use local device storage for photos. I prefer this to having to fool with checkboxes and drop down lists for what's included and condition. Just snap a few pics I can reference later!

Zaidel Posts: 116 Registered: 9/11/2016
Z41D3L
# 13 - Posted on 10/27/2016 19:41:56

Here are a few more ideas:

  • Ability to comment posts in your feed
  • Ability to order your wish list numerically as you please and to display it like your collection (I think it's called shelf display mode) to be able to see which games you want the most in order and to be able to see more games at once respectively.
  • Ability to subscribe to threads, articles and stacks (already told you about this :p)
  • Fixing the YT link /user/ ---> /channel/
  • Adding a category for Bounties in the left side like articles and stacks (maybe with a treasure icon?)
  • Ability to rate games with half starts (and 0 stars) (I think a lot of people might dislike this feature but I would love it)
  • Ability to see the number of forum post on someone's profile
  • Fixing the Mercenary Guild so that people without avaliable missions don't appear as having available ones (already told you about this one too)
  • Formating Help Feature should include more stuff (how to post images, change font size, etc.)
  • Show friend status (online/offline) on your friend list from your profile page
Post Edited on 10/27/2016 20:39:59
WLCD Posts: 6 Registered: 12/12/2016
wlcd
# 14 - Posted on 12/13/2016 10:38:56

Heyya, great work ! I already told all my collectors friends to join !

The features are great and exactly what I've been looking for so far.

However I have two small issues :

  • Prices only in USD (for us europeans it's a little bit confusing)
  • Date formatting is in US format also, it would be nice to be able to choose in the profile. (YYYY-MM-DD or DD-MM-YYYY), I don't know if it would mean modifying the date picker as well.

Finally, do you plan on doing localization ? I could do french provided that you have the strings in separate files :)

Let me know,

Cheers.

moho_00 Curator Backer Posts: 6844 Registered: 6/10/2011
moho_00
# 15 - Posted on 12/13/2016 12:48:50

@WLCD - Hello and welcome! I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the site so far

Regarding your feedback, I do plan on addressing those two issues at some point in the future. The price one is a little tricky since the pricing data is pulled from VGPC, which only supports NTSC-U games. However, if you're speaking more to the amount paid value, I'm planning on making the currency it displays in to be customizable. Essentially, it will just change the "$" to whatever symbol corresponds to your selection.

As for the date formatting, I'd really like to change that, but it's surprisingly not an easy fix...at least not when I looked into it before. I don't even remember what plugin I'm using at this point, so it probably just requires some more research since it's a fairly common thing.

Localization isn't something that's on my radar screen just yet, but I will keep that in mind if we get to that point, thanks!

WLCD Posts: 6 Registered: 12/12/2016
wlcd
# 16 - Posted on 12/22/2016 13:26:52

Hey moho_00 I was indeed speaking of the amount paid value ;)

I spotted someting interesting in the achievement page, I got the importer and super importer achievements, that's ok, but it's a little to easy since most of my games are EU :D

Maybe the sites need a setting in the users profile to set the default region in order to dynamically modify the achievements and maybe some other features, that I don't know yet :)