Micah
We've come to a spot that I've been dreading a bit, and that's the Items tab. Why dreading? Well, I don't really know what to do with it. It's not where I want it to be, but getting it there would require us to ignore other parts of the site.
It's not just a question of what we can/can't do to improve the items tab, instead it's a question of what *else* could we spend that time on? A perfect example are the DSTs. They have a lot of potential, but they need to be improved. If forced to choose, I would much rather spend time on improving the DSTs (which a lot of people use) as opposed to the Items tab. Characters are the core of RPGs and also Obsidian Portal. Items...not so much. Plenty of games do just fine without items at all.
We could just leave it as it is, but during user testing it became clear to me that leaving in things that are less-than-awesome is a good way to confuse and irritate users, especially new ones. The less polished features are like land mines. Experienced users know where they are and avoid them, but new users step on them and instantly get a bad first impression about the site. If that happens enough, they decide the site sucks and never come back.
The best solution is to make everything awesome, but reality dictates that we only have so much time, so we have to choose what we will focus on. The next best solution is to remove and/or better hide the land mines to prevent people from stepping on them.
My current plan is this:
* We make the Items page match the new design, but don't really mess with it all that much.
* For existing campaigns with items, they have the items tab in the new design.
* For existing campaigns without items, and for new campaigns, they don't have the items tab enabled. It's an option you can turn on in the advanced settings section, but is disabled by default.
Some have asked if they can choose which tabs are enabled, and we may go that route as well, but I'm not sure yet. It's on our nice-to-have list that we're hoping to get to once we have time.
Some day in the future, hopefully we can revisit the items feature and work it to where it needs to be to match the rest of the site, but for now I don't want to ignore it and allow it to remain as a land mine that people are stepping on.
Also, I'm posting this here because I feel like you all (the inner-circle of the KS backers and OP community) can handle this and understand what I'm trying to say. I'm not really planning on announcing this yet to the community-at-large because I'm still trying to figure out how to phrase it. Most people probably think the reforging is about adding tons of new features, not necessarily hiding existing ones. But, what we're really trying to do is refine and sharpen the existing site so it's always a delight to interact with. Sometimes that requires making some hard choices. I'm glad that I can feel confident in posting this to all of you in that you'll understand what the goals are and how we're going to achieve them.
Comments
Of course, there are other things I'd like to see in the Items tab if we could get them, but I agree with you - it can wait until other things are finished.
So yes, we will probably migrate some of the new quick filtering for the items, but not give it any special treatment beyond that.
Just trying to help out.
I've only just begun to use the Items tab for stuff in my campaign, and I could really see them going either way at this point: more like a wiki or more like a character page. However, in light of what has been done with the Character page thus far in that video, it seems like it would be simple enough to just use that same style for the Items tab. Perhaps that would be the best option for the time.
I personally dislike the idea of getting rid of features or hiding them; I think some moderators would never think to check the advanced options and find the hidden items tab.
~Mae
CotM Selection Committee
Haven't you just replaced the item type dropdown with a player character checkbox?
Wouldn't both these items be in the same table in your database?
If you really wanted you could obfuscate this by having your "character" page only show records with "PC" or "NPC" as their type and have the "items" page only show records with whatever other types you want to include.
While I don't mind digging around and learning how to customize pages with CSS, I have been introducing some friends to Portal site and they are beginning to create campaigns. In their case, they just want stuff to work and make logical sense. Logs, Wikis, Characters, Items, and Maps. Obviously I am not searching every game on here and maybe the minority use the Items Tab. But perhaps some don't use it just because it doesn't work as well as everything else and isn't integrated. So to consider 'hiding' it doesn't really solve the problem of people who might actually want to use if it functioned better.
I also understand that from digging through old forums and history of site that it had one type of intention and it has grown to be another. But that should speak for what a lot of people want out of the site perhaps. Anyways, I do like what I am seeing although since I heavily modify a good chunk of my campaign CSS it is a bit jarring to see some portions work and others not :)
To put it another way, like you say, a lot of new people start playing with Obsidian Portal and choose what they do or don't want to use out of it. Every new person clicks on the items tab and thinks, "Hmm, this looks kind of unfinished." We're tired of that being the first impression. Instead of having X great features and Y so-so features, we'd rather just have X great features. We want to play to our strengths.
Hopefully one day we'll get a chance to re-focus on the items and build something that's truly useful, but I can't just keep saying that and doing nothing in the short term.
Will the item (and character) images will appear on the sort pages once the reforging is complete? Or is it an issue with my browser (firefox)?
I like the current plan as denoted in the OP. I think as a new user, I wouldn't miss the items tab, and putting in an option to enable it seems sufficient. It could be mentioned in one of the tutorials for new users if there is worry that it might be too hard to find that option. But as an existing member, I would miss it if it were taken away.