I do appreciate many of the subtler improvements that have been made to the site with 3.0.  The way your sidebar auto-updates when you recieve wall posts, PMs, etc. without having to refresh in particular is quite nice.

I think the reason this thread is filled mostly with criticism while little praise is given to some of the great improvements you guys have made is because:

1.  People like to bitch.

2.  Most of the improvements are, like I said, quite subtle.

Many of these improvements go a long way towards making the site a more streamlined and swifter experience, however, I must stress yet again that these improvements are outweighed by other issues as things currently stand.  Small time savers like not having to refresh to find out you've been messaged mean squat when you're clicking pages left and right anyway, and in the end the fragmented and rather convoluted layout of 3.0 means that you'll ultimately spend far more time going from page to page in an attempt to find information that was right in front of your face under 2.0 anyway.  All these little time savers are outweighed heavily by having to use four different websites to perform what used to be fairly simple tasks under the old design.

My biggest issue so far is having two entirely separate game databases, neither of which you can search through via gamrConnect DESPITE the fact that you manage your game collection entirely via gamrConnect.

In the end, VGChartz is a site dedicated to the reporting, analyzing, and discussing (via the forums) of sales numbers.  Yeah, over time we've added on news and reviews and whatnot to make the site a more fully featured gaming site, but the focus at its core has never changed.  The issue with the new site deisgn is that it breaks apart some of the site's most basic features (notably the relationship between front page sales, our database of games and their sales, and the forums), thus making the core of what made this site so unique and awesome less of a core.  It feels like there's no center to the site anymore, and the four pages feel fairly unrelated.  Having to go a to a different website from gamrConnect to find anything worth discussing on gamrConnect, for example, inhibits discussion, and it makes it seem like this isn't even VGChartz anymore.

Honestly, gamrConnect now feels like it's JUST a forum.  Yeah, it has links to the other VGChartz sites at the top, but other than that, what does it have over any other random forum?  Despite all the features like wall posts and whatnot, I could easily replace it with any other forum and browse VGChartz at the same time.  Granted, the community keeps me here, but why did that community build up?  Because they liked the forums that were a part of VGCharts.  Fully integrated into the whole.  Not tacked on at the end.  They were the VGChartz forums.

I'm sure the quitetness of the forums this past week (despite news like the Killzone 3 trailer, the MotorStorm 3 and Infamous 2 announcements, Xenoblade's release and live streaming, the Portal 2 delay, among other things) can be attributed to the redesign.  The thread about MotorStorm has been up for almost 20 hours and it hasn't even broken a page (50 posts/p)!  It's averaging 1.5 posts an hour.  Though I suppose that means we've finally managed to cut down on the number of Sony fanboys running around.  :P

I do believe reason for ban and when to return should be back on profiles, when I was banned I had no idea when I was unbanned. or at least notify us via email

how do i search for a specific thread?

where is the PS3 trophy league, why is it not a sticky?

Fuck this is frustrating

makingmusic476 I see a contradiction in your post. You apparently agree with much of the criticism, which one wouldn't find by just reading your summarized 2 points.

Apparently what you meant was that people are bitching because:

1- People like to bitch.

2- The improvements were subtle.

3- The disadvantages of VGC 3.0 are quite obvious.

Apologies if I misunderstood you.

@makingmusic476 

This thread is specifically for complaints and suggestions.