I’ve had to take a few days to mull over these changes because this feels like such a sharp left turn from everything we’ve seen thus far.
It appears to me that the idea of “let’s visualize the rewards!” really caught on after that little infographic got plugged in on the landing page. Maybe it caught on a little TOO much? I get it, making it visual with a little text blurb eliminates all the walls of text…but some of these look like an Instagram collage that is equally if not even more overwhelming visually.
The one thing about the recent changes that I felt actually worked, despite the backlash from a lot of people, was that it was a very straightforward and simplistic view of things. These options here look like a visual obstacle course to me. It’s a minefield of information, information that creators are going to have to bend over backwards to make work for them.
This process has been so drawn out, and each iteration requires new adjustments from creators, some adjustments much more convoluted than others depending on what they’re creating and how they present to their patrons.
If the reward boxes do not roll out with complete customization, it’s going to leave some creators wearing clown shoes without even realizing it. All of these changes heavily favor visual content creators, with these thumbnail sized boxes. Writers, podcasters, etc. are going to be left with…?
These changes are exhausting. I want to believe they’ll work out great in the end, but every time we see a light at the end of the tunnel it’s actually a new “better” iteration of the changes that were already a hard sell. I appreciate all the hard work from you and the team, and will try to remain hopeful.
P.S. Why is the banner at the top such a difficult thing to work around? Patreon just gave us the ability to change our brand colors, right? To try and make our pages feel more like OUR PAGES, so that potential patrons arriving recognize the brand and that trust is there. The banner is very much a part of that. It’s our biggest way to fly our flag on Patreon. It’s our Big Neon Sign. Like the golden arches for McDonalds. Brand recognition is really really really important. It should be at the top and covering/moving/minimizing it shouldn’t even be part of the discussion. What boggles my mind is that we already went through this? These discussions were already had? And the conclusion was “move the icon out of the way and let the banner speak for itself”, I thought? This might seem really nitpicky or like I’m whining, I just don’t understand how after all the feedback, all the changes before the landing page even became a thing, how it still comes to this. Which in turn makes me feel doubtful about basically everything, because if we can’t nail down the philosophy of creator’s having their banners, in the proper dimensions, uncovered by other widgets and information…then what reasonable expectation can there be that anything we’ve said anywhere else actually matters and is being taken into account?
