My Top 5 Problems with Launchbox that have not been addressed for over a year...

[frednobel303]

this is a post full of frustration, but as a paying user i think this feedback should be read by the devs. i don't know how work is decided at this company but aside from a bigbox redesign (finally a clock!) most of the effort i've seen put in was towards cosmetics or non-critical features and not addressing the major issues i have with the app. 

1- remove the license info in the top right. it has no value or utility and almost made me dox myself on stream. to me, the fact that this is not addressed yet, despite others complaining, makes me worry about where the efforts in developement are made

2- importing games is a nightmare! the wizard has too many steps, and takes too long.. this stuff should be one click! "never ask me again" type of thing.. why ask over and over again which images to download? emumovies settings? i purchase and add games to it constantly, and this 12 step wizard is a mess that needs to addressed

3- app is SLOOOOWWW to start and SLOOOOWW to exit.. 7zip stuff going on and it's waaay too long when you have a lot of roms. 

4- browsing/scrolling is SLOOWWWW.. screen updates are choppy when you scroll.. these days you can load up most apps with thousands of items and images and scroll smoothly without issues. 

5- feature parity for big box: i never use big box! why? i can't sort it like the main app. i set my playlists to sort by platform, or date played.. but none of this works in big box. clicked "include this playlist in platforms"? it won't work in big box. 

bonus 6 - cant set ASCENDING and DESCENDING on playlists, it uses the "current" one in the app

after more than a year since my purchase of launchbox, i've come to both love it and hate it... launchbox is in a good place since it's the best front end out there, but these issues make me think that it could change very quickly... i may be blunt, it's hard to write when you're frustrated, but i stand by this feedback and can provide more info if needed.
 

[Jason Carr]

14 minutes ago, frednobel303 said:

this is a post full of frustration, but as a paying user i think this feedback should be read by the devs. i don't know how work is decided at this company but aside from a bigbox redesign (finally a clock!) most of the effort i've seen put in was towards cosmetics or non-critical features and not addressing the major issues i have with the app. 

1- remove the license info in the top right. it has no value or utility and almost made me dox myself on stream. to me, the fact that this is not addressed yet, despite others complaining, makes me worry about where the efforts in developement are made

2- importing games is a nightmare! the wizard has too many steps, and takes too long.. this stuff should be one click! "never ask me again" type of thing.. why ask over and over again which images to download? emumovies settings? i purchase and add games to it constantly, and this 12 step wizard is a mess that needs to addressed

3- app is SLOOOOWWW to start and SLOOOOWW to exit.. 7zip stuff going on and it's waaay too long when you have a lot of roms. 

4- browsing/scrolling is SLOOWWWW.. screen updates are choppy when you scroll.. these days you can load up most apps with thousands of items and images and scroll smoothly without issues. 

5- feature parity for big box: i never use big box! why? i can't sort it like the main app. i set my playlists to sort by platform, or date played.. but none of this works in big box. clicked "include this playlist in platforms"? it won't work in big box. 

bonus 6 - cant set ASCENDING and DESCENDING on playlists, it uses the "current" one in the app

after more than a year since my purchase of launchbox, i've come to both love it and hate it... launchbox is in a good place since it's the best front end out there, but these issues make me think that it could change very quickly... i may be blunt, it's hard to write when you're frustrated, but i stand by this feedback and can provide more info if needed.
 

All noted. Changes that are made are mostly the changes that are voted the highest on the polls.

[frednobel303]

thanks for reading i was looking for those polls, but i haven't found them.. 

[frednobel303]

Quote

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

All noted. Changes that are made are mostly the changes that are voted the highest on the polls.

are you referring to the votes on bitbucket?

that's one thing, and it's great that it provides feedback, but I hope that's not the only way development is prioritized..  

[Lordmonkus]

No.

Once all the features from that poll are implemented there will be a new community poll to determine the next cycle of features and updates.

[Drybonz]

15 hours ago, frednobel303 said:

i don't know how work is decided at this company but aside from a bigbox redesign (finally a clock!) most of the effort i've seen put in was towards cosmetics or non-critical features and not addressing the major issues i have with the app. 

I agree with a lot of this.  I also have a love-hate relationship with Launchbox.  My main complaint has always been the social-media-style "like" voting on what features and improvements will be added, and person-to-person discussion about what makes sense and would really improve the program generally go out the window.  I can't tell you how many times I've seen people's input dismissed on these forums with the same comment "vote on it".  I was told that Big Box pays the bills and that is why it gets the attention.

I tend not to say much about any of this because it's just ignored, but I happened to read your post and tend to agree with a lot of it.  I would like to see more organizational and functional improvement suggestions get some attention, but they never will through the voting system.  This is proven over the years.

All this said, LaunchBox really has a lot going for it, which is why I purchased it, and I certainly do love a lot of things about it.

[Jason Carr]

2 hours ago, Drybonz said:

I agree with a lot of this.  I also have a love-hate relationship with Launchbox.  My main complaint has always been the social-media-style "like" voting on what features and improvements will be added, and person-to-person discussion about what makes sense and would really improve the program generally go out the window.  I can't tell you how many times I've seen people's input dismissed on these forums with the same comment "vote on it".  I was told that Big Box pays the bills and that is why it gets the attention.

I tend not to say much about any of this because it's just ignored, but I happened to read your post and tend to agree with a lot of it.  I would like to see more organizational and functional improvement suggestions get some attention, but they never will through the voting system.  This is proven over the years.

All this said, LaunchBox really has a lot going for it, which is why I purchased it, and I certainly do love a lot of things about it.

It's worth noting that this release, which apparently is being complained about here, focused only on LaunchBox itself, and not Big Box.

[Lordmonkus]

2 hours ago, Drybonz said:

My main complaint has always been the social-media-style "like" voting on what features and improvements will be added, and person-to-person discussion about what makes sense and would really improve the program generally go out the window.

The problem with this though is who's opinion do you give weight to when it comes to what features to implement or work on ? For example, if you weighted my opinion heavily because I have been around here for years now then you certainly would not see many of the features in LB/BB that are currently there because I do not care about them but many people really love those features and I am in the minority.

2 hours ago, Drybonz said:

I can't tell you how many times I've seen people's input dismissed on these forums with the same comment "vote on it". 

No ones opinions get dismissed but the system in place is to do the community polls to determine what gets the focus over the next while, how ever long that takes to get through the poll results. The bit bucket list and voting is the best way to get stuff on the poll, simply posting on the forums and hoping that Jason just adds it immediately because someone believes their idea is the best and most important is not only the wrong way to go about it but selfish.

2 hours ago, Drybonz said:

I was told that Big Box pays the bills and that is why it gets the attention.

This is simply not true, see Jasons post above.

2 hours ago, Drybonz said:

I would like to see more organizational and functional improvement suggestions get some attention, but they never will through the voting system.  This is proven over the years.

So do you suggest Jason ignores what the majority of the community wants and just focuses on what a select few people want ?  If so who determines who decides what gets worked on ? Does your opinion only matter because it is most important to you ?

See the issue here ?

[Drybonz]

17 minutes ago, Lordmonkus said:

So do you suggest Jason ignores what the majority of the community wants and just focuses on what a select few people want ?  If so who determines who decides what gets worked on ? Does your opinion only matter because it is most important to you ?

My suggestion would be to do it like most other companies (most do not use a voting system for features/improvements) and interact with your customers, gather ideas and make informed, intelligent decisions, as developers, about what would make the product better.  The voting system doesn't do this and doesn't allow that kind of interaction.

Guys, listen... I know that anything I say about this you are just going to argue.  I get it.  I didn't bring it up to start a fight.  I'm perfectly willing to just agree to disagree.

[Jason Carr]

23 minutes ago, Drybonz said:

My suggestion would be to do it like most other companies (most do not use a voting system for features/improvements) and interact with your customers, gather ideas and make informed, intelligent decisions, as developers, about what would make the product better.  The voting system doesn't do this and doesn't allow that kind of interaction.

Guys, listen... I know that anything I say about this you are just going to argue.  I get it.  I didn't bring it up to start a fight.  I'm perfectly willing to just agree to disagree.

This is ultimately what we do. To some extent, we do realize that the community is not always right. We've seen that time and time again, where we end up implementing a feature that nobody uses, because it looked good on paper, but people didn't realize that they weren't actually going to use it. So, yes, I get where you're coming from here.

We used to make polls that had like 40+ items on them and just threw all the ideas on the wall and let the community vote on all of them, but we've changed the polls now because of the above realization. So now we're putting out much smaller polls, and we're considering all of the following when deciding what items to actually put on the poll:

• How many votes on Bitbucket
• Whether it's well defined or not
• How difficult the implementation will be
• Our own thoughts as to whether users will actually use it or not
• Whether it comes up on the forums regularly or not

I'm sure there's more that goes into those considerations, but that's the gist. Even still, people's opinions will always vary, and we do have to focus on the majority most of the time, because the majority makes the most users happy. But at this point we also know that literally no matter what we do and no matter how we do it, some people will be unhappy. And we have to be okay with that.

[Lordmonkus]

Ok but you didn't answer my question.
Who do you listen to specifically ?
Also it's not like Jason has a whole public relations team to go out and talk to people, its just him and 2 other devs and some volunteer unpaid moderators.
You don't like the poll, we like the poll. Who is right and who is wrong ?

The bitbucket page is there to gather ideas and for people to vote on what the community feels is most important to them and then Jason goes through it and decides if something suggested and voted for is viable for him to implement or not. It is not just an automatic "well the community said to do this so we are doing this" type of thing.

At the end of the day what you are suggesting is already done it's just some public PR person out there on twitter or discord putting on a fake smile interacting with people.

[Drybonz]

5 minutes ago, Lordmonkus said:

Also it's not like Jason has a whole public relations team to go out and talk to people, its just him and 2 other devs and some volunteer unpaid moderators.
You don't like the poll, we like the poll. Who is right and who is wrong ?

You have a whole forum with people offering ideas.  All the ideas are right here.  I've already said... I get it.  You like the poll.  You will argue with anything I say... I'm not interested in arguing with you.  I've already said I'm willing to just disagree.  I don't want to fight with you.

[Lordmonkus]

The forums are a terrible way to make suggestions. It's a mess and topics get lost especially when it takes a year or so to do everything from the previous poll. And no one has the time to go through the forums digging for posts. The bitbucket page is the best way to keep it clean and easy to find stuff.

6 minutes ago, Drybonz said:

You will argue with anything I say... I'm not interested in arguing with you.  I've already said I'm willing to just disagree.  I don't want to fight with you.

No, I get it, you don't want to argue, you just want to state why you are right and we are wrong and don't want us to give you reasons for why we think we are right.

[Drybonz]

12 minutes ago, Lordmonkus said:

you just want to state why you are right

I said twice, I agree to disagree, which means no one is right.  I will also add, that over the years, I have noticed that any criticism brings out a very adversarial attitude on these forums.  I wish that wasn't the case.

Edited February 28, 2023 by Drybonz

[Lordmonkus]

You're taking it as adversarial only because you don't want to listen to any discussion as to why your suggestions aren't what is done.

If us voicing our opinion is adversarial, arguing or fighting that is a "you" issue.

I guess we aren't allowed to voice our opinion, only yours is allowed.

[TinyTsuruta]

I share some of these thoughts, and will offer some other perspective. Launchbox is not perfect but the dev team listens. That is a lot more than other FE's. Even at that, about six months ago, my biggest point of frustration led to me migrating to RetroBat (in specific, if I have paid for a lifetime license, though it never wins polls, not being able to run Big Box windowed drives me nuts). I spent a couple weeks migrating everything to RetroBat. It has it's pros and cons as well, but I do know a lot of the community has moved to it. I love that I can run RetroBat windowed and that there are full screen FE filters (scanlines, phosphor, etc.) that can easily be switched on and off. That said, if you think importing and scraping Launchbox is too complex, never try RetroBat. Or CoinOps anything where scraping and adding games automatically does not exist). I must confess I find many of the more advanced RetroBat themes more appealing than anything in LB/BB, but there are so many other headaches, and things break every update. 

At any rate, after a few months, I moved back to Launchbox. Stuff always works once I set it up to my liking. That "to my liking bit" is not really feasible if you customize everything with other frontends (or want to mess with RocketLauncher/HyperSpin, which, just no, especially not in 2023). Do I wish I could run Bigbox windowed? Yes, and I have tried many hacky solutions, none to my liking. I run LB with ShaderGlass (look into integrating something like this into LBBB please).

The speed complaint is one I get, but I found a fresh reinstall and cleaning up my media helped a ton. Running from an SSD also helps.  

I would gladly pay more for windowed mode in BB and some sort of front end shaders for LB. I must confess that I am finding LB/BB a bit dated looking at this point (even the 3D box models- wrong direction IMO), but I also know Jason and co. will read this and someday, maybe these features will come to fruition even if not poll winners.

I too wish the polls weren't so heavily relied on. Users often don't know what they want or need (I don't say this to be pompous- I have a graduate degree in HCI, am a digital accessibility consultant by trade, blah blah blah). You are asking the choir for their suggestions, often at the expense of new users (Seriously- a quick tour of Facebook groups indicate folks far preferring RetroBat and CoinOps these days). 

At the end of the day, LB/BB is awesome but it could be better. I would love to see some research done as to why some users have moved elsewhere ad making some changes in that regard rather than relying on polls of users that participate in these forums (most people in 2023 can't be bothered to go to forums outside of social media/discord). 

 

 

Edited March 2, 2023 by TinyTsuruta