I think I did have it before, but it seems to be worse now

Alas the bug of login form covered by Flash element in the homepage is still there. I repeated the experiment disabling Adlock Plus and things got even worse, the left Flash element now is dead and white, but still covers the login form. An ad banner covered the top of HW sales bar chart that shortly after became dead and white too. On the right, another ad partially covers the ad that killed the bar chart:

@ioi: But I still don't understand the placement. Why put the most popular stories on the left, and the recent headlines in the middle? Doesn't it make sense to emphasize the most popular stories?

I feel like the page is too busy now. It' hard to read because the page pretty much looks like a page of small tiny text..... everything seems more crammed like you are trying to fit absolutely everything into one page and it's harder to read.

Also, where did the game search go? it used to be on the home page?

Something I really liked about the old site was they showed you new replies for the forum topics you responded too. This one doesn't unfortunately.

I miss the more simple and older version to vgchartz.

This one is much harder on my eyes.

i just noticed that if you type in dinosaur planet to the search bar thing than starfox adventures pop up. that is pure awesome!!!! good job guys

I found the game search function after a while. It's on the top right corner of the page (to the right of the VGChartz logo).

But the news system was working great the way it was. I understand what you're saying, but I don't see the reason to have the recent headlines featuring so prominently vs the most popular stories.

The main page has less information than before (i.e. no personal hot topics, no site search, fewer visible charts), while appearing more cluttered and overwhelming than before. The stuff is just too packed together, many people are pointing that out (even ones who aren't new to the site).

PS: On another note, the server seems a bit unstable. I often have to refresh to get pages to work.

The trophies issue is being dealt with and hopefully will be implimented soon.

However, in my opinion, it is better to submit 1 trophy, then hit the back button. All the text and selections stay in place, and you can submit another trophy. The reason hitting back is better, is because I don't have to select the trophy type or achievement value every single time, especially if I'm working on 20 bronze trophies in a row. But with the upgrades we have planned, you'll be albe to submit multiple trophies at once, or do what I described above.

@ioi: I see, I didn't know that manual bumping was happening before. Maybe some changes to the story popularity algorithm could fix that (giving a bonus to recent stories or something like that), but I'm speculating of course. I can imagine it's hard to have an automatic system for that aspect.

I think what makes the page overwhelming is especially the amount and placement of boxes placed together, especially the ones with lots of text.

For example, sales information can be found in columns 2 and 3, news can be found in columns 1 and 2 (and one is labeled "stories", the other one "headlines"), community stuff can be found in columns 2 and 3. Not much logic in this placement.

I understand the desire to include the main features of the site in the main page, my feeling is just that it's not very organized.

@ioi: This is how I saw the previous site:

- My stuff was on the left (links to check my private messages, profile, and the list of forum threads I participated on)
- The latest content was in the middle column (news and reviews first, then the forum threads). Everything either chronologically or by popularity in this column.
- The right column was for extra info (much like the one in the current site, no complaints here).

In the new site, "my stuff" is not immediately accessible in the homepage. The news/reviews content is split between two colums. It just seems like accomplishing less with more.

I don't know if what I feel about the site is just due to the change. But I'm curious as to what goes through the mind of someone opening the site for the first time. There's just so much packed together that it might be quite overwhelming.

EDIT - I read your addition about the number of pages. That makes sense, but given the number of people saying there's too much content packed together, it could be interesting to do a survey on that, or otherwise evaluate the reaction to this design.