Thanks for chiming in but I donāt think V3 is comparable to V1 to V2. There was a necessity for it resulting it being rushed but you managed to clean up the lost data and functionality rather quickly. Meanwhile this V3 has been in development publicly for over a year and feedback is seemingly ignored* and it doesnāt run stable at all. Worse yet - you guys are ready to drop features because it came with an entirely different scope in mindā¦ which follows a pattern of bad decisions for trakt users. All that talk about making up for the VIP price increase with new features becomes a facade with V3.
Letās hope Sean can help with guidance here but the trakt that was announced by Kevin as the "new defaultā is nothing like the trakt I fell in love with. [At least you guys are now redefining the timeline for itās readinessā¦]
*i.E. I got a dev reply that recommendations shouldnāt show things you watched, etc. in February yet it still does it as of today. An area you wanted to improve on for years is set back to the stone ages by not applying a simple filterā¦ And thatās just one of many things.
May I ask how long youāve been defaulting new users to Lite? I ask because I tried to get a friend to switch from a competitor to Trakt so that we could be on the same platform. He hated it, saying how little features it had compared to competitor which confused me because Trakt was doing more. I just assumed he wanted an excuse to make me switch but this would explain a lot of things on why he only lasted a few hours on Trakt.
Personally I donāt think Lite is anywhere near being feature complete for it to be the default experience for new users
Now they even changed the rating system? My godā¦ I wonder what happened that every single thing seems to have to change to a worse alternative? This is the most ridiculous 180Ā° move I have ever seen. The devs really donāt care about ANY comment in here. Otherwise they would at least have stopped changing even more of the features. This is just insane. Can someone please remove the person responsible for this from his job? Iām usually not the type who wants people to get fired but this is just screaming for it.
I am not going to rain on how bad the new UI is, I think youāve had plenty of that.
These are the features I absolutely want and will 100% leave if theyāre not on the V3 when V2 shuts down -
Half star ratings. I do not care if the ratings are out of 10 or 5 as long as there are 10 different ratings I can choose. I donāt understand the rationale behind switching to 5 when you had a working system but if you provide half star, itās essentially the same. Or switch it back to 10. Forcing your users to simplify their ratings after using the platform for many years is a serious rug pull. I hate Goodreads for the same reason and will hate Trakt if this is not provided.
List specific Calendars - I use lists extensively and am very methodical in how I track things. I do not use the default Watchlist since I prefer my movies and TV shows in their own watchlists. I then use the calendar feature of a list which is very useful to have and your USP. Removing this means I can just switch to any provider that is free because youāve lost the uniqueness. A good UI with no functionality is just a bad UI
The ability to go to an actor or directorās page and see the movies and shows Iāve watched of that actor/director with the percentage. Sometimes I watch a particular actorās work in order and this is a very useful feature. To be completely transparent, the only reason I havenāt switched to Simkl is this feature. If they implement this, I will probably be gone despite their god awful cluttered UI.
The ability to see all the movies and shows of an actor/director and not just what is shown currently. I assume this is a bug because there is no way to scroll. If it was a design choice to show only 30 or so items, Iām not sure what to say.
Edit - I now realize thereās an empty scrollbar below each minimizable list. This is not great design. Iāll just re-iterate what other users mentioned - horizontal scrolling is not the best choice when the number of items cross 30. Iād rather you show 10 or so items, have an expand button which will just show all of the items on a new page in a grid where horizontally, 6-10 items are shown.
The ability to filter shows and movies in the History tab i.e. Only show movies or TV shows
Ability to track the exact date of a show I watch. I donāt really use scrobbling since I prefer to be more manual with my tracking. To be able to track āI watched this on X dateā is a must
The ability to keep track of rewatches or multiple watches of the same episode or same movie along with their dates. Letterboxd doesnāt really have a system for tracking re-watches and is one of the main reasons I wonāt go over there.
These are things that would be nice to have in your development cycle that I donāt consider are absolutes but probably QoL -
The ability to fade watched items in Lists. Itās something that I found really useful and already exists in V2.
The ability to choose which items you want to display on your main dashboard. Like I mentioned, my Watchlist is empty because I do not use the default Watchlist. So the Start Watching and Upcoming Schedule are useless to me. I would like the ability to remove them. Even better if I can add a custom list instead of that particular default list. This is why I use list specific calendars to keep track of upcoming releases.
Ability to adjust card size on lists, history tab etc. It would be nice to be able to increase the size of the poster card. This feature did not exist on V2 but it would be nice to have
The option of adding an item as āwatchedā without specifying a date. For shows that I remember I watched but donāt know when, this is a fantastic addition. I only recently saw this in Trakt v2 which means it must have been a new feature. I really love this and would suck to not have this in V3. A popup when checking an item as watched that shows ātrack on releaseā, ātrack on specific dayā, ātrack nowā, ātrack with no dateā is perfect. Pretty much how it is on V2.
I like the new UI. Thereās a lot going on with the simplifcation and itās well done. But simplification of UI doesnāt have to mean simplification of features. I understand this is just a test and you guys released this as a beta to guage feedback. I also understand that it is being built from the ground up where implementing new things will take time.
I am lenient enough because the pricing change affected me in a positive way since it included regional pricing update that made it cheaper for me rather than going up. Hence, I will stay loyal to Trakt since it is a great product. But there are very specific use-cases I use the product for and V3 seems to have taken away most of them. As long as V2 has these features, i will continue paying but when V2 is shut down and V3 doesnāt have the features, I will most likely quit.
Thank you for listening to feedback. Happy to hear your thoughts, workarounds for certain things etc.
Be able to mark something as watched at release time (actually time of release, not with added airtime to it)
Be able to mark something as watched at a specified time
Be able to view a calendar of what aired in last few days and what is coming up, coming up is there but past isnt, so i can easily mark as watched things i have missed
Nice to have would be a change of colour scheme for the new version (not just light/dark), the new look looks like an Ios app, and is far to bright for me to use (could be due to lots of empty space), the current website doesnt have this issue
Seems like it. And honestly, I tentatively have gained respect for the devs here. There were a lot of regressions in functionality with the new version, but I trust that theyāll continue to work on polishing it and switching over when itās up to scratch.
As a SWE I get being excited for a new rewritten app, itās just good that theyāve admitted their mistake unlike some devs (cough cough Plex) and am looking forward to the update once they can bring back some missing features (not being able to watch something in the past was killing me).
Iām currently doing a thing where I watch a movie from every country in the world, and the ability to filter search results and the movie discovery by country and by streaming service has been essential to that but I canāt find a way to replicate that in the new version
The biggest fuck is only 5 stars. I can never change to this rating. I donāt give up my 15 year proven system because of trakt. Iād rather switch back to Excel. I also miss the filters.
@kcador ā¦ You are being hurtfully tone deaf in how you communicate with the customers that pay you money.
Why is there no switch to functional (what you are calling āclassicā) in the new Android app? Why was I forced to uninstall, disable beta, and reinstall, instead of just switching to the only version of the product I pay for that works?..
And another thing. You say that you are all real people, and that supposedly a client has said something that doesnāt meet your communication standards. Fair.
Do you understand that we, the paying VIP users, are people too? This entire thread is you effectively telling us that our concerns - i.e., the fact that the interface we are used to (which is A COMPLETELY SUFFICIENT REASON TO RETAIN IT FOREVER, BY THE WAY, EVEN IF BY YOUR OWN ESTIMATE ITāS WORSE IN SOME MANNER), is going away - and in response you are just telling us about the retention of new users between app versions. So they matter. Great.
Do we? What in this thread has indicated to us that we matter to you as a company? Not just as numbers, but as actual people who care enough to post in this forum, for example? I donāt see anyone supporting the new design here. And yet those that had it forced on them and stuck around are people, and we areā¦ what? Numbers? Cows to milk until we finally drop?
I completely agree. Also he has never gotten back to me what the counter numbers are in regards to customersā¦
I also think itās really telling that there are supposedly 1000 new customers a month but not a single one of them left a positive comment in here that he likes the app or doesnāt understand what the negativity is about.
Either those thousands of new customers are all bots or they really donāt care about the app/service enough to add valuable thoughts on it in here. Which will proof problematic when we VIPs are all gone because they then just donāt have any clue what customers want - which isnāt really different from now I guess since they just donāt listen to us, but hey at least they get feedback they donāt want
This is all so stupid. In the meantime S**** is getting new customers daily because they actually listen to the feedback and are implementing new features people are asking for on a weekly to monthly basis. And the big player L********* is adding TV Shows at some point since itās in development for ages now. Theyāre slow but they also listen to their customers feedback. And when that happens Trakt is going down fast imo.
Iām not 100% whatās going on, but on the new Trakt website itās showing that there are 4 episodes of The Amazing World of Gumball thatās listed as unwatched. However when I click on the episode it shows that Iāve already watched it
Then when I check on the old Trakt website, it doesnāt show these episodes as unwatched at all.
Honestly, I just donāt like the āLiteā experience. It is too āLiteā. Iāve tried using it a bunch of times over the past year and always switch back within an hour. Today, I am trying to use it to remind myself why, and it doesnāt even load unless I use incognito.
Anyway, my overwhelming impression was āliteā was for mobile, and āclassicā was for web.
Here are my observations:
The clickable elements are too small
It takes more clicks to achieve the same result on āliteā as it did on āclassicā. For example, on āclassicā I can see ratings, lists and library buttons on the homepage. On āliteā this is not there
I cannot find my āprogressā tab and/or work out how to drop a show.
I randomly have films and TV shows showing in ācontinue watchingā on āliteā that do not show on āclassicā. These include films that I have finished that now show as, for example, 4 minutes remaining. It also includes TV shows that I have completed and all episodes are marked as watched. Why?!
It now takes a lot longer to reach the important content on series pages - e.g. I have to scroll a long way to reach the list of seasons and episodes. Why are Extras first?
Where is the calendar? āUpcoming Scheduleā doesnāt tell me when things are actually on.
How do I remove a play?
Why is there no longer a count of plays when something has been watched multiple times?
Where is my history page?
How do I reorder/sort and filter my lists? I want my watchlist to exclude shows that arenāt out yet, and be ordered by total running time.
Where are my stats?
etc. etc.
There are far too many major changes to usability to roll this out as the default experience. It is far less user friendly or intuitive. As the name āliteā suggests, this is a stripped-down experience, focused on a limited number of activities. It is NOT a replacement for āclassicā. Thatās how it should be, and therefore ALWAYS an option, not a planned requirement.
I could almost have written this myself. I myself havenāt explored the Lite/New version yet, but as I read through this post it was like a horror show of one after another saying to myself, āTHATāS NOT IN THE NEW VERSION?!!ā Pretty much this whole list are things that will likely be dealbreakers for me if it comes to it. I hope it doesnāt. Change design if you must, sure, but do it without removing features.
I was already sitting on the fence about whether Iād keep VIP next year when Iām up for renewal, so if Trakt ends up a super simple tracker thatās missing things that I value about it, then I feel like why wouldnāt I just use a spreadsheet for free?
Desktop-user and longātime supporter and VIP (7 years). I appreciate Trakt and the team, which is why I keep supporting it. I was shocked when v3 was temporarily activated and relieved when v2 returnedāI assumed it was a glitch. Seeing v3 become the default was disheartening, and Iām worried classic.trakt.tv might stop working, as I really love it and it provides everything I personally need, and I appreciated all the little iterative improvements over the years.
Requests:
Let us choose our default (v2 Classic or v3/LITE/pre-beta)
Let us chose 5/10 rating options and breakdowns
Fix horizontal scrolling issues
Guarantee complete data export at any time
Provide clear timelines and advance notice before any deprecation
Show how respectful feedback is being incorporated
While I appreciate the continued development of the backend to make it more stable and future-oriented, I donāt really feel that the needs of power users (on desktop) are being taken seriously with the UI changes. It may be confirmation bias, but it feels like you are imposing your vision on your users with little empathy for those who do not want a light variant (though they have nothing against an alternative for those who do). Setting v3 as the default instead of an option underscores a lack of empathy for this.
Especially with the simultaneous price increase, it leaves a very bitter taste, and one wonders if what they wanted to supportānot because of pro features, but on principleāreally deserves the support if thatās the direction being aimed for.
I really appreciate what you guys are trying to do and all the hard work that obviously went into Lite. I feel like itās for sure on its way to becoming something great and a huge improvement from classic, but it was released entirely prematurely. Iām going back to classic!
Hereās my big list of feedback:
UI
I think text is just too small and low-contrast. E.g. I can barely read/scan/differentiate season and episode numbers.
The lack of any meaningful margins makes the UI overwhelming to look at and read through.
These horizontal ācarouselsā are harder to swipe/scroll through and visually track than vertical lists.
The new landing page for each show is really confusing. For instance:
The poster image is overwhelmingly huge.
I certainly donāt want the entire seriesā description blurred just because I have Hide Spoilers on.
The thing Iām most often looking for is really hard to spot and make sense of: a list of the seasons. I miss the classic dedicated pages for each season, but if youāre going to combine it into the main show page, it should be more prominent, and episodes should be more of a āsub-levelā of the visual hierarchy beneath the seasons.
Again, the Season and Episode numbers are just too obscure when looking at the list of episodes.
I love the quick new way to filter between Movies and Shows. Super slick. Itās almost ironic that itās not a part of the broader Filters features, yet itās perfectly implemented just as you did.
āFiltersā shouldnāt be in the sidebar ā it makes you think itās another page, which doesnāt make sense. Maybe it could be a separate bubble next to the Media/Shows/Movies blob (but not connected to that group) since those are also filters, just broad scale ones.
I wish the sidebar included the main āWatchlistā separate from custom Lists, plus Ratings, History, Favorites, and Library (if itās actually used).
If youāre trying to keep the sidebar simple, maybe let the user decide by making it customizable. I much prefer quick access to all those useful pages without having to hunt around for them.
You know the little icon on each title under the poster that denotes that you watched it or have it in one of your lists? Multiple icons should be able to show up next to each other, and there should be a distinct icon for each thing:
Exists in Watchlist (existing bookmark icon)
Exists in any other of your custom lists (the Lists icon in the sidebar)
Exists in your Favorites (a heart icon)
Has been watched (existing bold checkmark)
Features I really miss
Ć/10 rating system ā please, please bring this back. It was literally one of my favorite things about Trakt.
Custom list orders and list sorting.
Ability to customize which spoilers to hide or not. I definitely want to hide them, but lists become super incoherent and kind of useless with all the titles blurred.
Also, clicking on blurred text should reveal it ā it does for a couple things, but not for others (like blurred titles).
The Progress page. That was the perfect high-level view of all the shows Iāve watched and how far Iāve gotten in each. (Thatās also another thing to add to the sidebar.)
Iām missing one of my four custom lists. I can access it in Classic but not Lite.
Settings > Advanced doesnāt work in Safari (just infinite loading).
The āspinā isnāt complicated. āFair enoughā just means āthatās a fair take,ā not āI wholeheartedly agree with you.ā (edit: nor just āI agree with youā or āI think youāre rightā). Itās possible to understand someoneās side without agreeing with them.
More importantly, this place called the internet is crazy fodder for the most unproductive form of communication between all of us. I donāt think even small hostility and rofl emojis are going to change Kevinās mind. I think that will backfire and make him want to accommodate less.
Hereās hoping they do take all the feedback to heart, though. @kcador a toggle switch to get back to Classic from Lite would probably go a long way. And maybe a splash screen explanation of the situation for all the users who suddenly see a completely different interface and wonder where all their favorite features went.
Looks like you guys finally managed to fix the crashing bug I had. Going by PRs by just not requesting the full movie history details at onceā¦
Now that the site actually loads I would be curious to hear how this roadmap is gonna work out? Youāve gotten a lot of feedback in here, are you tracking this? The dedicated āliteā section was recently just plain closedā¦ despite gathering unresolved feedback too. Development is still very random, from adding in confetti SFX when you rate 5 stars, redesigning small design elements or deciding to overwrite the default list order display set by users instead of likeā¦ just adding those list features back inā¦ Should we just hang back until Sean has gotten back to us about the āfullā desktop design?
Sadly Iām also seeing some concerning moves there. Like a problem report about the actor page not showing any credits getting closed as ānot plannedā as only showing them when signed in is the intended way. There are also āguardā mentions on plenty of pages as to only serve āauthenticatedā users. Why would you want to close down meta data from visitors? This is still very much in spirit of those shitty websites where they want you to sign up in an app before you really know what youāre getting and not what the āfullā trakt was.
