Pink Poogle Toy Forum

I don't see how the colors are too bright. Course, I never understand when posters think colors are too bright unless it's a really garish fluorescent thing like the Disco pets. I agree that the layout is a bit cartoonish. I'd actually kinda like a black and white type theme.

How can the Lenny Conundrum, which sometimes contains high school and college level math, be in the For Kids section

I don't think I'll ever get used to the look of the Games Master, though. And this's coming from someone who absolutely adores every Blumaroo in existence.

Whew! Comments and a bug report all in one. First, the bug report: The "Back to the games room" button needs to be moved down a line or two, because the mouseover info pops up all mixed with the link. Image below. I think this is important because we're not used to the new images, and we actually need to be able to SEE the mouseover text.

http://www.thedrehers.net/games_room_mo ... roblem.jpg

Ok, now the comments: First of all... I like the look! The new "folder" shaped, brightly colored (yay, not just yellow) borders complement your style. The medallions are pretty, though I'm not sure what they signify, if anything. I love being able to rate games! Being able to see my all time high score along with this month's, right on the game page without going to my game scores, is nice, as is being able to see others' high scores. Definitely a great step!! The expandable descriptions on the individual game pages are nice, too.

However, I have a couple complaints. Most of them have to do with poor and "mystery meat" navigation. In fact, almost everything I'm about to mention is a cardinal sin on http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com, a great web design instruction manual for corporate sites, where your customers have a specific goal in mind.

First of all, this page: http://www.neopets.com/games/arcade.phtml .... You don't even have a link to all the different game categories! If I want to play a game, you have now added a click for me. I click "games" and if I don't have a game name to type in, I am forced to go either to action (the category of the featured game) or to the new releases. Why can't you put all the categories on the front page?! That is so aggravating! *tears out hair* If you read my normal customer service submissions you will know I am normally not emotional when submitting, but I think this was a TERRIBLE design flaw and I'm shocked it passed the approval process!!!

Secondly, I couldn't figure out how to get to a different category of game, besides to type in the url replacing "action" with "puzzle"..."luck"... oh wait, that didn't work either, because the names got changed! I finally had to type in the name of a luck game, and then click on its little icon.

So if I want to browse a category of games, I have to click games --> type in game name from that category, assuming I know one --> click the "game type" icon in that game's description... OR click games --> hope that when scrolling through the category that comes up, there will be a game that also sits in the category I WANT --> look at every game until I can find one and click it.

Navigation should be SIMPLIFIED, made to happen in the fewest clicks possible without gumming up your main page.

Now for the icons.
1. They are ALL the same color, even when they signify different things.
2. You are getting much more generic on the pictures. I particularly dislike the "My high scores" button.
3. You don't have mouseover descriptions on most of them, so the only way to know what that icon means is to look at the status bar - if you are web savvy enough to know how to do that.
4. The Puzzle games icon looks like a Teletubby. The Little Kids games icon looks like aliens dancing. The Luck icon looks... like a REALLY funky die. In all three, the proportions are weird.
6. I would NOT have thought of little kids seeing that icon. I suppose a pacifier icon would be a little offensive, huh? But still....

Next, you have a dropdown for what size the game will show on my screen, but nowhere does it actually SAY what the dropdown will do. This is also awkward because the dropdown is directly above the medallion and looks like it might be related somehow... but isn't.

Also, the NP ratio listing is missing, so if we were interested in making fast NP... we wouldn't know where to go.

Finally, as long as you are working on stuff, I wonder whether code could be written that would average out the high scores of everyone that has played a particular game, and assign "Beginner/Novice/Amateur/Expert/Master/Grand Master" status based upon that (comparison to others). It might stress out the already deranged code Myncis but since you have already admitted that your evaluation of what is an "easy" or "hard" game may not match what the general public thinks - by allowing us to rate them ourselves.

Oh, and I'd like to point out that I have been on pinkpt.com forums and not a single person has said that the google thing ON WEBPAGES is a good idea. EVERYONE hates it, even those of us who are totally loyal and addicted to Google. Having it in the sidebar is one thing, but putting it on the pages messes those pages up and it's just plain unnecessary! If I want google, 1. I could download their toolbar, 2. I could just open it in another window, which would prevent me from leaving neopets to view googled pages in the window I started in.
One person on pinkpt pointed out, "The google thing really makes me angry too. I think it was you, Meer, who said "If I wanted to search Google, I'd go to Google!" I know it's all about the money...I'm sure Google is paying them to have a Google search function on the site...but what's the point? I love Google search and I'm there all the time, but what in the world would I search for on Neopets (or any site that has the Google search link) that I'd need to search Google for?" Good point! And since you have "Ask.com" search in YOUR toolbar... what is UP with putting google on the site? Are you sure you didn't violate any agreements or something?

The layout sucks as well, it takes forever to load.