Hi Zenner,

Thanks!  Welcome back, and I'm glad you're enjoying the recent changes.

This is a very good question.  The simple answer is, your observation of "mobile plastered onto desktop" is correct.  It is also intentional, but temporary.

Here's the long answer:

The guiding principle in the redesign was/is that mobile always takes priority for any design decision.  It sounds a little extreme, but consider that what we had for years was essentially the other way around: the old mobile design was a low quality hacky copy of what desktop had to offer.

So with the new design we inverted this.  Now the game looks much better on mobile but is kind of awkward on desktop.  The frustration you are experiencing is what most mobile users had experienced for awhile, and is a likely reason why we don't have higher traffic % from mobile devices.

Obviously, we don't want to alienate desktop users either, but I have to prioritize my work somehow and it makes better business sense to cater to mobile users first.  The primary reason for this is simply numbers: there is more traffic gained by targeting mobile users who can play all day wherever they are compared to a smaller group that is playing from their actual computer.

The other reason is that the new design is a precursor to the eventual native mobile app.  I'm not a designer by trade, and I have no budget to hire one, so any learnings I can take away from this process are extremely valuable.  This means I get more bang for my buck (in terms of feedback) by focusing on the mobile experience over the desktop one, at least at first.

From a more practical perspective, focusing on mobile first forces design choices that we otherwise wouldn't have to consider if we were allowed the full desktop width.  Being so severely constrained by screen space means we have to be super picky about what warrants being shown.  It's really tough work, but the end result will be a design that is consistent across all devices and most of all, efficient.  You'd be rightly skeptical of this by the current state of things, but trust me I have a large list of improvements to get to, and that's not even considering the fantastic feedback players such as yourself have been providing.

If we focused on desktop first we wouldn't have to make these tough decisions, and we'd have at best a passable desktop site with a hindered mobile experience, which is what we had before.  We don't have to settle for that; we can have a single unified design that looks great on any device.  In order to do that though, we have to break the site's old design conventions and start from scratch.

The end goal is that it is not mobile vs desktop, but rather a layout that satisfies both.  We'll get there, but it will take time.

I'm optimistic.  Again, the feedback you guys have been providing is awesome, so much kudos for taking the time.

see this thread: https://imperialconflict.com/forum/view … ?id=202227

It used to work this way for sub-navs, but some players complained that they had to then click twice to get to the primary page.  For empire, for example, if it triggered a dropdown then they could no longer get to Empire Overview in a single click from any other page.

There is a solution coming along that fixes both of these problems: it's a split button in where you can do a dropdown by clicking an icon, but still click the main face of the button do just go to the page directly.  It should fix the issue you describe, but there are a few things ahead of it still.

The new map is still pending some missing functionality from the old map.  It'll catch up over time.

I want to give feedback, and am tempted to try the new game interface but am not willing to sell my soul to the devil by agreeing to the rules.

As for forum interface, it is messed up - when imputing text  margin is too far left and so can't navigate text box properly.  Text doesn't show on left or right  completely.

Also, once I move cursor to try to edit, can no longer type.  Have to click submit and then edit to fix post.

I had to submit post and then click edit post a good 20 times in order to write all of this.

Over the course of writing this post, it seems I can now move cursor and still type.  Maybe it was an intermittent bug?  Wait, just now had the same problem, tried moving cursor and then could no longer type so it is still buggy...

Writing this was so incredibly annoying due to bugginess that I don't think I will want to participate on forum much if at all. It took me far longer to write this than it should have - a good 30 minutes longer, wasting my time X(.

Using iPhone 4s btw.

Here is another bug i found.

My personal empire news is giving me the incorrect week/year that events occurred. It is saying all events happened the time i logged in.  (the correct times are shown when i switch to the old format)