Doghouse.1562

> @"Gaile Gray.6029" said:

> Well, at the launch of Heart of Thorns, we noticed a peculiar behavior: most players will deposit first when clearing their inventory, and then proceed to take actions like salvaging, opening chests, or, crucially, putting items on the Trading Post.

Hardly peculiar, Gaile - it's an obvious storage/inventory management strategy. Deposit all mats; then open chests, salvage, and deposit all again (iteratively if necessary). Once nothing is going into your bank, sell everything that's left that you don't actively want to keep.

Plus, irrespective of whether you open chests/salvage before or after depositing, there's a mind-set that I often find myself in - which is to accumulate "enough" of a bankable material "for my own needs" - and THE easiest, no-brains, hands-off way measure of "enough" is "once I've filled up my bank stack". It's not financially logical - I doubtless have heaps of mats in the bank that are worth good money, and that I'm unlikely to actually use - but it's a strategy that takes WAY less time than going through thinking about every single item (ESPECIALLY when new content has just launched, and what I mainly want to do is to keep my idle time to a minimum and get back out there and PLAY).

(Oddly enough - having expanded my stack size twice on one of my accounts - I even find myself wishing that I could slim the size back DOWN, for some individual items at least - some things I'd be happy to keep much in smaller quantities, rather than on a "one size has to fit all" basis. I mostly don't; I usually end up with way more, because actively managing my storage is simply too much work for me to bother more than once in a blue moon.)

> @TheSlothArmada.6709 said:

> I don't know why but the space between each post feels too close.

> You can tell when there is another post, but it doesn't feel like there is enough distinction between each one. . .

Observations, for whatever they're worth, from an ex-tester.

The problem you're seeing is that, previously, all the posted text was effectively in one long column, with separators between postings, with the other content (names, controls etc.) off to one side or the other. Scanning from one post to the next was visually simple, and it was clear where the break was. Now, all of that extra (usually, extraneous) stuff has been pulled into the same vertical real-estate, meaning that (a) it's continually necessary to visually navigate over it to find the meat of actual posts, and (b) the actual vertical real-estate occupied by post content on the screen has plummeted.

As an example of the last point. I just scrolled a little up, more or less at random, and took a look at the page (which had 4 short posts on it):

* Lines of actual post content: 10.

* Arguably-necessary separator lines: 4

* Other material (Members' names, extra separators, buttons I'm almost always going to ignore): 12

In other words, almost 50% of the screen content.

It got even more stark when I looked at actual screen use, because of the varying font sizes used, and the very generous use of white space. Basically, less than 25% of the (vertical) screen in question was actual post content - the stuff I am normally interested in reading. The rest was taken up with things getting between me and my doing that task. I REALLY don't need to see posters' names displayed on almost 50% of the screen in the biggest type of all, for example.

Things aren't so bad when posts get longer, I will admit. But that really doesn't make up for the difficulty when several short posts fall together.

Overall, as far as the main use I make of forums (which is scanning actual content) - sorry guys. I know from experience that a lot of work and pride probably went into this, but this is definitely NOT a change for the better. A spiffy new look is one thing - but not at the cost of usability. Eat humble pie, pull the member information and controls back out of line, and let the dog see the rabbit, is my own advice.