Would you use old.giantbomb.com if available?

Nah I don't think that's very helpful.

Move on from here and refine and improve what we have.

Nope.

I would while intermittently checking the state of the new site. This of course is impossible because of the way the new site is made they can’t just push content to both the same way or something, but the new design is a real mess from a usability standpoint.

There are things I really like about the redesign and some things I really miss about the old design.

That being said, it makes far more sense to iterate from here than maintain a pre-redesign site too. For all the flaws of the redesign, it's not like the old site was perfect either.

I like the new website. Everything I use the website for is better on the new site.

Yes. I've not wanted to use a new site less than I have with Giant Bomb.

No. The new website has some kinks to work out, but progress is progress. You'll get used to it soon enough.

The current redesign is going to be like every other redesign on every other website. We are going to struggle with it for a little while, but in six months to a year, we aren't even going to remember what the old site looked like.

Nah. GB Turbo extension does enough to make the redesign alright.

Absolutely. The more I use the new site the more I dislike it. As I've said in another thread, if it wasn't for premium content I'd never use the site because of the redesign.

No. I didn't mind the re-design from the get-go, but at this point, as someone mentioned above, I barely remember the old site. This is just fine, for me.

Yes. I would rather use the older version with it's issues than use this new version with the new issues and the older issues.

How old are we talking? Like "Whiskey Media With Achievements" old?

@dochaus: NOW we’re talking...

Nah.

No, I don't care enough. I would however take a smallerthumbnails.giantbomb.com. Just keep the same layout but fit more on screen with smaller images and I'm 80% there.

Also please add more old shows like random PC game to the shows page.

I would use the old forums and wiki (the ones where I could use the light theme) and the rest of the site as it is now. Basically any part of the site where I'm gonna be reading I need to not have the current dark theme cause I can't read the bright white text here for more than a few minutes without a headache or eye pain. (Thankfully the design team has said they're working on contrast/style fixes for this stuff)

I put yes, because 2/3 of the site is inaccessible for me as of now.

The new design is growing on me, and Wayback Machine is a thing.

I'm not sure what features of the old site I should feel the absence of. Anyone got a list?

Yes, reading this text really hurts my eyes. Give us a light theme and i'm all good though.

I honestly don't even remember what the old site looked like, and honestly have no real issues with the new site. A few fixes and changes but I am sure that the design guys are working away at it.

The redesigned site is a massive improvement.

I miss the bit of red in names and links and such, and Old Bomby but otherwise this seems fine. I used the black theme so it wasn't all that much of a change for me on the forums side. I usually just go to the videos page to look up stuff there so the front page is fine for me.

Honestly? Yeah . . . I kinda would.

The ambition of remaking the site is cool and all, but it's clear the new version went out the door way too quickly with too much focus on the aesthetics rather than actual functionality. So many of my issues seem like the product of simply not putting enough thought into how users interact with the site. While a lot of those issues can be addressed, the list is pretty long from where I sit. I really don't have much appetite to use kludgy workarounds for months while a massive backlog gets slowly worked through.

The old site had it's issues too, but they were known old issues. I'd rather use the old site and have the new one launch when it's actually ready for primetime.

Yes. The new design seems extremely haphazard to me, and changed more than it needed to for no functional benefit. I mean, here is what I see as I scroll down the page, in order:

1. Huge image taking up 75% of the entire screen, half the time showing a podcast
2. A few newest(?) videos, selected mysteriously
3. A store ad and GB Infinite link, okay fine
4. Another GB Infinite link, for some reason
5. Newest videos, again
6. "Continue watching," a neat idea, but most of which are 95% complete videos I stopped because I was obviously finished with them
7. Newest Quick Looks, a 50% overlap with the two other "new video" bars
8. Popular videos, yet again a 75% overlap with "Latest Videos," 50% overlap with "Quick Looks"
9. "Shows" bar, which seems like it should go at the bottom somewhere, it doesn't seem like it needs "promoting" per se
(Also, since the shows are sorted by newest addition, it's quadruply-redundant with the other "newest videos" categories)
10. "This Day in Giant Bomb History, which is actually the one new thing I unequivocally like
11. Community section and staff tweets, with the community section seeming like it will dry up and die over time by no longer having forums on the front page at all

6 of those 11 things are partially or fully redundant. Also, no upfront access to the wiki, even on individual quick look pages. And every category row is a "click to scroll" bar, which I hate.

So please don't think I dislike it "just because it's different!" I think they ripped off Netflix too broadly, in ways that didn't make any useful sense, rather than taking inspiration where appropriate and making a better site overall.

I also acknowledge there is no going back, only improving on what is now here - however, I guess if I want to pretend I can always use qlcrew.com.

...

This probably turned out longer than it needed to be. Sorry.

Nah. 95% of my usage is clicking on "forums", "latest videos", or checking the schedule. That hasn't changed a whole lot.

I'd still much prefer a light option, but I can live with this while they work on improving contrast.

Its not a big deal

I only really visit the site on my phone, and to be honest, it doesn’t seem that different. I don’t look at the wiki or use some of the other features and I always had the dark theme anyway.

I like the “This day on Giant Bomb” addition, but I’m not really seeing any of the other big changes people are excited or upset about.

No. What a weird idea. Show me a website that looks the same as it did five years ago and I’ll almost definitely say it’s a bad website.

This isn’t just a website, it’s a business whose business is being a website. That’s some serious Yogi Berra shit, but genuinely their goal has to be to stay on top of a constantly changing content-consuming landscape. On top of that, i honestly think it’s actually better if you want to take advantage of their main output: videos. The organization changes alone make the whole upgrade worthwhile.

I hope the folks who did all the work on the new site don’t read the forums. People put a lot of time and effort into this and others piss all over it because it’s different.

Yes, but hopefully not for too long. A number of problems with the new site are being worked out, but it's still really rough as it stands. And some things, like the eye-straining dark site, don't seem like they'll be fixed at all.

Seriously. I feel really bad when people ask disingenuous questions like these that reflect on people's work in a very passive-aggressive manner. It's honestly almost cowardly. I'd rather see someone posting a straight up complaint thread hating on the new website than something like this.

Much love to the design team. The redesign has some clear ideas on where it's going, and that's the important part. Iteration will get it polished eventually.

I can't see myself ever using the On This Day thing. Any old content I already have downloaded on a hard drive somewhere. Granted watching it on the site is easier, but I've not used it yet...

This is the first site redesign I've had problems with. I know other people use the site differently, but for me, functionality has been taken away without anything new being added, besides the This Day In Giant Bomb thing. Just navigating the site can still be difficult and confusing, even when I've been doing it every day. These aren't problems any other redesign has had. There was that one that took away trivia and stuff, but that made sense. This doesn't make sense to me.

I agree that I think functionality has taken a backseat to aesthetics, but I also know that every time something is different I won't like it as much at first, so hopefully it is just refined over time.

Before this last redesign? No, the new site is a massive improvement.

If it was to the 2008 version of the site? Sure, for nostalgia. It would make me extremely happy.

Not that I enjoy putting anyone down, but I've seen this sentiment shared a few times and am wondering what do you think is the massive improvement in this version over the last one? Because as others have stated here I find the site a lot less user friendly with a lot of redundant information and a lot of info getting obscured or straight up missing. How is it an improvement that when viewing a video you don't even see the title of the video and you don't get the link to the Wiki, which is supposed to be one of the main selling points of the site. At the same time the things that weren't great before like a lot of the aspects of forums are still the same, except now the forums are a little worse to read with the same color tones used throughout and for those that can't stand the dark version it is straight up unusable for longer periods of time.

Once again I don't want to be mean, and I don't want to put down the design team or undermine anyone, but how is the site better for you personally, because I really am curious which aspects of it you think are better? Maybe I'm just not seeing it.

A lot of people (including me) have very specific problems with the new design. The front page is a straight up fucking mess full of redundant carousels and a huge banner of the latest video that somehow still conveys less information than they used to. This isn't about 'oh it's different', I've been following this site since 2009 and have seen all the changes since. All have been 'oh this is different, I'll have to get used to it', but this is the only one where I've actually had problems finding what I want and navigating through content.

There a bad elements to the new the design that should be changed. This isn't people shitting on the site engineers, I'm sure designing a new front-end is hard, but that doesn't excuse mistakes when they've been made. The front page needs to be sorted to better convey information to PC users, and there is a strong argument to bring back the white design of the site, even if this is a hassle. I've never used the white version, so I didn't see what the issue was until people pointed out there is not an insignificant proportion of people who struggle to read white-on-black writing on screens. At that point it's not a 'oh it's different' thing or 'I don't like it' thing, it's a 'I can't use the website now without getting a headache' thing.

But hey, I guess those people are just 'being pissy'.

The new logo is also a fucking travesty.

@inkerman: I largely agree with what you've said, but I am okay with the new logo. My complaint with the logo is that the "i" looks naked without something above it.

Honestly I think video navigation is worse but... that might just be me. I don't like how obsessed the design is with the "shows" concept. And I really don't like the carousel design either and don't like that they got rid of embiggen but what can you do? It seems like this design was being pushed pretty hard.

Honestly its caused me to only come to the site for live streams most anything else if its not a premium feature I'll watch offsite these days on Youtube.

@inkerman: what’s weirder is how it was launched. It very much mirrors what Jeff said about Fallout 76 last week - they ran the beta of the site and it was pretty broken and looked very early in the design process and you thought, well they’ll continue working on it and then a week or two later it’s suddenly live with barely anything changed.

I also would like to reiterate your point that people aren’t being pissy and it’s not a case of just getting used to it. There are fundamental flaws that NEED to be re-designed unless they want to start the cycle of putting bandaids over glaring issues from day one.

Yes because right now the new site does not work at all on my TV, where I used to watch all the premium content. Also on my laptop the audio is always out of sync on chrome, so right now I'm only watching on youtube =/

only for the forums

@the_nubster: It's the character I don't like. I like the mischievous, crazy old one.

Can we use the old.old.old.giantbomb.com?

...stupid jokes aside, if I could stick to the site as it was a few months ago, I would without a second glance. I said that this site redesign wouldn't make me visit the site less but it actually kinda has. I have visited the site less and less since the changeover.

@inkerman:The new site is better because it makes their content easier to consume. Normally I would use Youtube or podcast apps to get the latest from them, but now I find it easier to just go straight here and get their stuff this way; which is probably what they intended to happen.

I agree that the Wiki being put in the background and forgotten is a bad thing, but that's not a change that happened last week; that happened like half a decade ago. The Wiki was one of the best things about Giantbomb and made it really unique in 2008, and I adored contributing to it endlessly. But Giantbomb was not able to foster its website very well, I feel; as the community died down and the content in the wiki slowed and became thinner which each passing year. And that's because GB didn't really promote it or fostered it. If you look at the 2008 version of the site you could see the Wiki was a big thing for the site, and even later versions had "world’s largest editable video game database" as part of it's header. But gradually it was dropped as an aspect of the site.

This new site is an improvement in its core function of delivering Giantbomb content. If you wanted more Wiki stuff, I would join you in begging for more, but that's a problem with redesigns from earlier in the decade, not November.

@willy105: I agree completely on the wiki feeling more and more feeling lost and forgotten. I have sunk many, many hours in to it, but since this re-design I have not done a whole lot. The credits and releases editing seem to have mostly broke in a way that makes them impossible or a chore. I notice that even the biggest games have mostly empty pages now days. Back when I started pages were filled out super fast, especially the real big games.

Nah, I'm pretty much used to it now myself and I like the new features enough to miss them if I went back. I do hope they put the forum stuff back on the bottom of the homepage though. Never engaged with the wiki personally so it doesn't affect me (and I don't know much about the changes tbh) but I hope they improve it for those that want that too. Other than that I'm content enough.

Massive front page redundancy, initial space taken up by huge banner image taking the whole screen, minimalising any useful information you could have gleaned at a glance; basically requiring extra scrolling every time; categories I will never use and can't hide; top menu to extremely top level 3 categories, instead of well showing actual categories themselves for video and audio; everything requires more clicks to get to; mobile podcasts pages are a pain; video's autoplaying when idon't want them to.

I literally have a bookmark of the old bombast premium page saved on the down low on my mobile because it takes me 1 click to download a podcast instead of 3 and not dealing with the awful UI that insists starting to play it instead of opening up options; it still gets auto updated and I keep praying no one will notice and I can just keep using it.

So, ye ... ye I would.

At least with the way it is currently.