Yes, I find the green spot and red message and notifications flags adequate to alert me,
but I'm watching about 150 deviants, fortunately not all posting daily.
What is tiresome is, when I've viewed a new image, and get back (with some fiddly mouse-work)
to the 'watch' array, I have to tell it again that I want 'deviations'.
I agree, DevArt was better for displaying artists' work - and we've got problems just now really because of too many people mass-uploading too much stuff which isn't their own or particularly original or interesting (or properly credited) artwork of videos. Hopefully we'll find a way to make the Forums more artist-friendly.
And, even before Eclipse, DevArt has been much less suitable than CF for posting stories, so long as you don't mind chatter going on not all of which is relevant. As for PMs, the DevArt message system has always been, and still is, hopeless.