It seems that you're using an outdated browser. Some things may not work as they should (or don't work at all).
We suggest you upgrade newer and better browser like: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera

×
Community
General discussionMy Account - big changes on the horizon(779 posts)(779 posts)
(779 posts)
Pages:
1
10
12
13
14
15
16
30
40
52
This is my favourite topic
Posted May 08, 2015
high rated
[UPDATE: 15.05.2015]
We've started importing the old Private Messages into Chat. :) It's a process so you will see them gradually being added to your conversations.

[ORIGINAL]

Hi all,

Many of you probably already know this - from the various hints we dropped here and there - but for quite some time now we have been hard at work on the brand new My Account section.

Since this is a very vital part of your experience at GOG.com (basically the one place that's 100% yours), and its release day is approaching pretty fast, I wanted to give you some heads-up and a brief overview of the changes that we have in store for you. Read on! :)

New things dedicated to your games:
-- Shared user wishlist. Yes, this highly requested feature will finally make its debut along with the new My Account. With just a few clicks, you will be able to decide whether your wishlist is private (viewable only by you), shared with friends (viewable only by you and people from your friends list, which is the default setting) or shared with everyone (because why not? ;)). You will get a handy link to your wishlist that you can share wherever and with whomever you like (a GOG.com Account is not required to view a wishlist shared with everyone). :)
-- Advanced filtering. We decided that, since your collections are getting bigger and bigger with each passing day, this is the perfect time to introduce some robust filtering options to both the Library AND Wishlist. Now, finding all your RPGs with Polish localization and co-op will be… well... finally possible. ;) It’s worth noting that the filtering options are based on your collection (so if you have no games with a Polish localization, you will not see the Polish option in the language filter).
-- User tags for the Library. With the new My Account, you will be able to create your own tags (up to 50), assign them to your games and movies and later use them to even better navigate and filter your collection. You will be able to assign multiple tags to each item in your collection and doing so will be possible from both your shelf/list directly or from the game/movie details.
-- Orders history. As part of the transition into the new My Account, we are retiring the "gifts" section, but in its place we are giving you a list of ALL your past orders and ALL your gifts, including the ones that have been given to you (finally). The orders history can be tailored and adjusted to your liking with a few clicks (for example, you can change it to list gifts only).
-- Changelogs. You will be able to view game changelogs directly on the new My Account page within the game details overlay. Of course, not every game will have it, but we will be keeping the changelogs up to date for the most popular, latest titles the same way we are doing right now on the forums.
-- Better organization of the downloads list. We improved the way downloads are organized on the game/movie details overlay. It will be easier to download the correct OS and language version of our installers and see which goodies are part of which DLC.

New things dedicated to communication:
-- Friends list. Already introduced in GOG Galaxy, the friends system is making its way to the GOG.com website as part of the new My Account section.
-- Chat. Old and weary private messages are retiring and are transformed into a new, live chat system. Chat will be available from both GOG Galaxy and My Account. Don't worry, all your past conversations that were conducted via private messages will be imported and preserved in the chat (and you will now be able to continue them live!).

Smaller but notable improvements:
-- Proper game versioning. With the new My Account, we will start to display the actual game version in the downloads on the game details overlay, so you will be able to easily identify if the version you have on your computer is the latest one, or it needs updating.
-- Improved navigation. Now it will be easier to jump straight into the store page, support, and forums relevant to each item in your collection.
-- Locale settings. Change your preferred currency and website / newsletter language directly on My Account to have them stored within your profile.
-- Pagination. We brought back the much requested, tried-and-true pagination view to the new My Account. This change is dictated mostly by your convenience but also by performance / stability for accounts with bigger collections (and with better performance, we are improving your convenience at the same time:)). The default size of each page is 100 items, but we believe that with the myriad of new filtering options it won't be a problem.
-- Text titles. The new My Account will display game/movie titles in text form, both on the list and shelf views. No more deciphering the logos on small boxes! :)
-- Mobile device support. Yes, viewing My Account on your mobile device will no longer be a chore.
-- COMING SOON: Proper graphics and links for all titles. We are conducting a little clean up in this area. Pretty sooan all games should have proper graphics and links in place.
-- COMING SOON: 5 new shelf skins. We are starting with only 1 skin (the classic wood), but soon after release we will add a bunch of new styles. It's purely a visual thing, so we didn't want to focus on that before release. Since many of you requested new styles, we will be introducing them pretty soon.
-- COMING SOON: Improved searching. Soon, finding desired titles will be easier thanks to the search improvements that we'll be implementing on the new My Account. Also, as part of the solution, we will be changing the way that titles from a series are ordered (i.e. Broken Sword should always show up before Broken Sword 2).

Of course the full list of changes and improvements is much longer, but highlights should give you a nice overview of what is coming. Hope you like it already, and that you will love it when we release it in just a few days. :)

Lastly, I wanted to point out the two important things that all of you should keep in mind:
-- The change is mandatory. We love freedom of choice, and we love giving it to you whenever it's possible, but unfortunately in this case it's not possible. Maintaining two, completely separate products dedicated to the same things would negatively impact both of them on all fronts. Performance, scalability, our ability to improve and expand them, but most importantly your convenience - as some of the new features were not possible to implement on the old My Account - would all be impacted.
-- Manual sorting is no more. We have decided to skip this functionality because it was beyond our reach to deliver the quality we wanted to. We decided it would be better if we were focused on the numerous other options requested by you.

Hope all of this gives you a clear vision what to expect in the coming days. Also please rest assured that we already have plans on how to develop the My Account section in the near and distant future: what to add, what should be changed a bit, etc., but we are always open to your feedback - so jump in and share your opinion. :)

Take care,
Chamb & The Website Team
Post edited May 15, 2015 by Chamb
Posted May 09, 2015
high rated
Hi all,

Thanks for all the feeback and keep it coming! We are carefully reading every post in this topic and making some notes (but please understand we cannot respond to each of you ;)).

As for the chat replacing PMs - which seems to be to most hot topic - here are few more details:
-- By default you will be able chat with everyone on GOG.com - they don't have to be your friends.
-- You will be able to change you default privacy settings to "friends only" or block it completely.
-- You will be able to start conversation the same way you did with PMs - by finding specific user on GOG.com. Previously it was limited only to the forums, but with the new My Account we will be extending that to product reviews, community wishlist, GOGmixes (basically to every place user avatar and name appears on GOG.com).
-- You can chat with multiple people at the same time, but each conversation is 1:1. There are no rooms and/or group conversations.
-- The new chat interface look a lot like the PMs, so it will feel pretty familiar.
Post edited May 09, 2015 by Chamb
Posted May 09, 2015
avatar
Gearmos: If you remove manual sorting, fix at least alphabetical sorting. Thanks.
avatar
mrkgnao: From the OP:
"Also, as part of the solution, we will be changing the way that titles from a series are ordered (i.e. Broken Sword should always show up before Broken Sword 2)."

Not necessarily exactly what you ask for, but might be.
But It's a start. Thanks.
Posted May 09, 2015
avatar
Leroux: please at least add an option to jump directly to page X, instead of just offering a "Next" button, otherwise this is no improvement but a hassle.
Pretty sure this is already implemented, as it is in the catalogue and in galaxy. At the bottom of the page, you will find something like:
< [1] of 11 >
You can type a number in the box ([1] in the example above) to jump directly to that page.
Posted May 09, 2015
avatar
johnnygoging: What permission status does the shared wishlist default to? I'm guessing it wouldn't be everyone, but am not so confident it wouldn't be friends. Make private the default, at least in the early goings.
avatar
mrkgnao: See answer in the text you quoted.
ah thank you.
Posted May 09, 2015
avatar
Leroux: Sounds good, apart from three (quite serious) drawbacks:

- The pagination: I'm with skeletonbow on this one; if it's necessary to use pagination at all instead of displaying the full shelf, please at least add an option to jump directly to page X, instead of just offering a "Next" button, otherwise this is no improvement but a hassle.
I agree with that, It's not unreasonable to jump to a 'page' in your displayed items --however, you have to consider the filters applied. However, knowing how many items per page and how many pages you have as well as letting you choose a page would be cool.

avatar
Leroux: - The manual sorting: This is a huge letdown and not that respectful towards people who've spent much time and care to manually sort their huge collection (while dealing with the system's insufficiencies), only to realize now it was all for naught. Hopefully it's going to be offset a bit by the new option to create tags, but it still seems like a big step back in terms of customization instead of an improvement. Personally, I'd have prefered an option for creating categories, different sections on the shelf, but we'll see.
This seems to be a big one with others' I've seen as well. Not sure why I didn't go for manual sorting, but I thought that Alphabetical was the one I found most useful and the keyword 'filter' search narrowed down any game. Now, if I had the ability to choose 'genre' or other filters to make the shelf a bit more organized, that would be neat too. Maybe even "date of release".

I'm sure there is a way to do something to save 'custom' sorting, but with this new change in how it works, they would have to spend more time and resources on a project which gets "tossed in the wind" and makes no money.
Posted May 09, 2015
avatar
mrkgnao: Pretty sure this is already implemented, as it is in the catalogue and in galaxy. At the bottom of the page, you will find something like:
< [1] of 11 >
You can type a number in the box ([1] in the example above) to jump directly to that page.
Hm, I'll have to check again the next time I use Galaxy. If that's the case, I guess I overlooked that there's a field you can type in, just expecting to see numbered links at the bottom of the page.



avatar
JDelekto: I'm sure there is a way to do something to save 'custom' sorting, but with this new change in how it works, they would have to spend more time and resources on a project which gets "tossed in the wind" and makes no money.
I can understand why they scrap manual sorting, but personally I'm not in favor of their decision and that they do it without polling the community first. There are essentially two competing system here, the "shelf" illusion vs. the filtering system, and GOG chose the latter, while I prefer the former. The latter is more modern and less OCD, while the former is more charming IMO. With the new filtering system, the idea of a virtual "shelf" is more or less redundant. I have to admit though, that for the majority of users the filtering system is probably more useful. It's the difference between just finding what you're looking for or seeing everything neatly organized in your shelf, practical vs. aesthethical (that's implying that the new filtering really works well enough to be practical). For me it's not that important either, since I've given up on GOG's roundabout manual sorting a long time ago and used an independent shelf tool to manage my collection. I guess I just hoped that one day they would improve manual sorting and now I wish I hadn't spend so much time on using a function that GOG does not believe in.
Post edited May 09, 2015 by Leroux
Posted May 09, 2015
low rated
avatar
Leroux: Hm, I'll have to check again the next time I use Galaxy. If that's the case, I guess I overlooked that there's a field you can type in, just expecting to see numbered links at the bottom of the page.



I can understand why they scrap manual sorting, but personally I'm not in favor of their decision and that they do it without polling the community first. There are essentially two competing system here, the "shelf" illusion vs. the filtering system, and GOG chose the latter, while I prefer the former. The latter is more modern and less OCD, while the former is more charming IMO. With the new filtering system, the idea of a virtual "shelf" is more or less redundant. I have to admit though, that for the majority of users the filtering system is probably more useful. It's the difference between just finding what you're looking for or seeing everything neatly organized in your shelf, practical vs. aesthethical (that's implying that the new filtering really works well enough to be practical). For me it's not that important either, since I've given up on GOG's roundabout manual sorting a long time ago and used an independent shelf tool to manage my collection. I guess I just hoped that one day they would improve manual sorting and now I wish I hadn't spend so much time on using a function that GOG does not believe in.
Well, I came from smelly ape world a long time ago, one of the monkeys with sticks that happened to hit the right keys on the keyboard to make things change in this world. Then things change; the orangutans saw it was really cool, but could change society, so they all adopted the change, The Chimpanzees were a bit more reserved, more pragmatic in their approach. The Gorillas, they would trample all over you unless you knew a high-profile chimp.

I guess one day I just was one who combed their hair, put on a clean shirt, pulled up their pants, put on some under-arm deodorant, and shaved.
avatar
mrkgnao: Pretty sure this is already implemented, as it is in the catalogue and in galaxy. At the bottom of the page, you will find something like:
< [1] of 11 >
You can type a number in the box ([1] in the example above) to jump directly to that page.
avatar
Leroux: Hm, I'll have to check again the next time I use Galaxy. If that's the case, I guess I overlooked that there's a field you can type in, just expecting to see numbered links at the bottom of the page.

avatar
JDelekto: I'm sure there is a way to do something to save 'custom' sorting, but with this new change in how it works, they would have to spend more time and resources on a project which gets "tossed in the wind" and makes no money.
avatar
Leroux: I can understand why they scrap manual sorting, but personally I'm not in favor of their decision and that they do it without polling the community first. There are essentially two competing system here, the "shelf" illusion vs. the filtering system, and GOG chose the latter, while I prefer the former. The latter is more modern and less OCD, while the former is more charming IMO. With the new filtering system, the idea of a virtual "shelf" is more or less redundant. I have to admit though, that for the majority of users the filtering system is probably more useful. It's the difference between just finding what you're looking for or seeing everything neatly organized in your shelf, practical vs. aesthethical (that's implying that the new filtering really works well enough to be practical). For me it's not that important either, since I've given up on GOG's roundabout manual sorting a long time ago and used an independent shelf tool to manage my collection. I guess I just hoped that one day they would improve manual sorting and now I wish I hadn't spend so much time on using a function that GOG does not believe in.
I did mention custom filters.
Post edited May 09, 2015 by JDelekto
Posted May 09, 2015
avatar
JDelekto:
I'm afraid you lost me there. ;)
Posted May 09, 2015
avatar
Chamb: -- COMING SOON: Improved searching.
While you're at it can you improve the forum searching too? Thanks.

Actually, I think these changes are a good step forward. I'm only complaining not to be left out of the crowd. :P
Posted May 09, 2015
avatar
Leroux: I'm afraid you lost me there. ;)
I think I lost myself there in the moment as well.
Posted May 09, 2015
I'd arranged my games in release date order. I handled the series as one. So TellTale Sam & Max games are not among 200x, but next to Sam & Max Hit The Road. I would be glad if there was an option two group series titles together.
Posted May 09, 2015
Think they must scrap "friends" too:) well it's broken the forum!
Posted May 09, 2015
So I see posts about how "Chat" will be friends only. Did I miss that in the OP?
I did read that PM history will be migrated and can be continued...

So is there an assumption I'm PMing only "friends" today? I sometimes find PM most useful to de-escalate conflicts...
Or will people you PM'd in the past be automatically added as friends? That would be ironic...

Or actually, where is the "there, there" about only being able to "chat" with friends? Is it an assumption that "chat" in My Account will work similarly to "Chat" in Galaxy Beta? If so I'd say that assumption has a high chance of becoming reality, which is worrying.

So, if this is confirmed, I'd much prefer an open messaging back channel, where folks would further be given the option to ignore or block other users. A more selective version of the "I don't want to be PMd at all" setting of today.


On My Shelf and manual sorting... I can understand the decision. I think it's, well, slightly out of touch and maybe a tad self-serving...

The personalization appeal of having YOUR shelf, ordered in your way is far from being properly replaced with better filtering and tagging. What is happening here is privileging search functionalities over individualization functionalities.

In a way we will all have the same shelf (well... one of 5 skins...) with the games in the same order... so instead of a Library Shelf which reinforces the concept of ownership: these are your games, you own them DRM free, no one can take them from you, display them as you will... it's a tiny step in the opposite direction.

Sometimes I think GOG does not understand its core market demographic... I mean they are expanding, want to expand, sure... but still. Maintaining some investment in such functionality seems to me an obvious better choice to increase customer loyalty and attachment. And it's not like the two models are incompatible... better search did not need to be prioritized instead of personalization. One sorting option based on Database column User#, where User # is defined by the User for each game, with drag and drop even... tadah... Oh well, I'm sure the new Library will be SO different to Steam's now...

Anyone know if there's a wishlist to get Manual Sorting back already? I'd be interested how many cared about this.


On a brighter note, it does seem like there is a huge number of improvements and additional functionalities on the way. Great to see those spelled out.
Posted May 09, 2015
avatar
Ganni1987: Can you also please provide MD5 checksums for the file downloads? Some games, especially the Linux tarballs are very large (Witcher 2 being 20GB alone) and would be more reassuring to know everything was downloaded correctly.

Humble Bundle had this feature for a long time and I would really like to see it here :-)

Thanks
avatar
cogadh: I gotta ask, is this really that much of a problem these days? I mean, I remember needing this (a lot) back when all we had was unreliable dial-up internet, but since the advent of things like broadband/robust home networking, self-verifying installers and better download management within browsers... I seriously can't remember the last time a download went corrupt on me.

Just so we are clear, I am in know way suggesting that GOG not offer this (if people want, why not), I'm just curious as to whether it is necessary, or simply an over abundance of caution.
I haven't had any myself issues lately, but in the past I've had quite a few and remained cautious since then. There have also been a few threads here of which the problem was due to a corrupted file.

I think it would help some people a bit when setup errors occur.
Post edited May 09, 2015 by Ganni1987
Posted May 09, 2015
high rated
Gonna be honest, I don't like that you're taking away my manual sorting. That thing did a much better job of keeping my games in alphabetical order than your own a-z sorting method did. A 100 item limit per page? Sounds like you're forcing Galaxy's library page on us.
Posted May 09, 2015
avatar
gibbeynator: Gonna be honest, I don't like that you're taking away my manual sorting. That thing did a much better job of keeping my games in alphabetical order than your own a-z sorting method did. A 100 item limit per page? Sounds like you're forcing Galaxy's library page on us.
They said "default" size, which suggests there will be some options. It's unclear if you'll be able to turn if off, however.
Pages:
1
10
12
13
14
15
16
30
40
52
This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionMy Account - big changes on the horizon(779 posts)(779 posts)
(779 posts)