Old 08-23-2015, 01:38 AM   #221
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Feel free to correct me if you think I am wrong here but you guys seem WAY tooo focused on the smallest possible demographic here and because of that you are over complicating everything. You are taking the 80/20 business rule and have squeezed that into a 99/1 rule. 99% of your planning and effort appeals to 1% of the general visitors of the site. Continuing to obsess over song ratings, steps and selections has absolutely nothing to do with the health of the site. It's like being rich and thinking that if we only had more yacht races, more people would come to a polluted beach. In the process you are making a shitload of work for yourselves with a constantly diminishing return. Based upon what I am seeing, this is elitism and feels like a private club.

Would you guys disagree? I don't mean to sound so harsh but what kind of effort has gone into making new visitors or players comfortable? Are there specific examples? If I come to this site new to the game, new to the community. Why would I stay? If everyone that volunteers spent their time welcoming new visitors or drawing them to the site, it would be way more beneficial than everything else going on.

Everything else needs to be put on the backburner. Through this we can significantly drop all the overhead. The more I learn about what is going on, the clearer it is that this is self sabotage in many ways.

Both of my kids (one of them in highschool now) look at this site in confusion and want nothing to do with it. That's an important queue and we should be doing everything we can to change that.
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Old 08-23-2015, 02:04 AM   #222
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Originally Posted by hi19hi19 View Post
I wish I had the heart to explain how utterly laughable FFR's legal standing is. The amount of ways and number of people who could sue this site or forcibly get content removed is astronomical.
(Take this for what it is.. discussion and not an argument.)

You tend to have a tremendous amount of criticism and gloom talk or mention of a "full business plan" in tow but you don't seem providing that plan or to be providing solutions. I think you are ignoring the fact that this site was up against far superior code with Stepmania not to mention hordes of commercial console releases but somehow flourished without paid employees for many many years before going commercial and many afterwards. Success is possible down either of these paths. My last post in this thread touches on what I believe to be a serious misconception on what is important. It warrants serious consideration. If you are serious about helping, then talk to me about helping. I would love to be part of that discussion.

If you doubt my credentials for thinking this way, consider that I sat in NY and turned down a $5mil offer for FFR. That I convinced Konami to let us use specific songs from DDR and fed them all kinds of ideas for their own projects. That I sat at every major record label in the country and convinced them to open their libraries to us. Beyond that I moved on and joined a new company which I brought to Inc500 status.. I continued this success by again moving to another company which I am helping to restructure and finding tremendous success as their COO.

Also, if artists that we sought permission from properly would like to get content removed, so be it. They would submit a DMCA to get the ball rolling or just flat out ask. It would be utterly foolish on their part but it's not going to break the game or the site. Think about why Thirdstyle (the site) isn't doing well. You are still missing the larger picture if you think think the number of songs holds the site back.
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Old 08-23-2015, 02:13 AM   #223
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Default Re: What's happening in here?

The batch is part of what generates new content for the site and impacts its inner workings as well as the interaction between staff and the community - all problems that have said needs to be tackled in this discussion. This type of judgment process should alleviate efforts given by the staff in the long term. Not to mention rewarding the whole playerbase for their active gameplay and gives a sense of it mutating. This is a tangible suggestion that doesn't need much manpower and can be done with already developed/implemented tools. Could be done even without integration.

Tackling it head on isn't going to make much difference for a community that's been dwindling to their own devices between each years. Most of us reach and push for the same ambition you have, but the reality is for the recent years we've been feeling just like your kids.

Edit: "Focusing on the smallest possible demographic" doesn't hold a lick of sense. Our strategy is basically expanding the batch process to a larger demographic. "[...] what kind of effort has gone into making new visitors or players comfortable?" is also going to get Velocity on your bad side. Think of raw scoring implementation: the event that rallied the whole site into an unrecorded score hunting extravaganza? The lobby and the forum interface even? That kind of shut down thinking is unnecessary.

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Old 08-23-2015, 02:19 AM   #224
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Most of us reach and push for the same ambition you have, but the reality is for the recent years we've been feeling just like your kids.
Yeah, I agree. I think this all comes back to a leadership issue. It's sort of this floating raft and we are just kind of finding what we can at sea to eat. This is a great chance for us to all be vocal and real. We know how to crack that coconut when we get to the island, we just have to figure out how to get there.
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Old 08-23-2015, 02:37 AM   #225
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Then Synth, I think if you could provide input on what/how issues can be prioritized, it would gladly relieve everyone as well as the state of the discussion.

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Old 08-23-2015, 02:48 AM   #226
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Default Re: What's happening in here?

You've said something important Synthlight in the very first point you've made in this thread that needs a bit more attention I believe :
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1) The site grew immensely from somewhere around 2005 until 2008. It grew so much that when the commercial aspect went away, everyone was left with a tremendous amount of custom code and a very large site in general. This meant that any sort of management required a large team. As we know, large volunteer teams are notoriously difficult to organize.
I think this is one of the reasons why there hasn't been much improvement over the years. Trying to implement new features or enhancements (such as the FFR Global Leaderboards) has been made so complex because of all the small details that need to be taken into account. Huge parts of the code should be rewritten entirely, and it has been mentioned in a thread soon after the scores purge when Fission was willing to help out but it didn't work out.

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Originally Posted by Synthlight View Post
Would you guys disagree? I don't mean to sound so harsh but what kind of effort has gone into making new visitors or players comfortable? Are there specific examples? If I come to this site new to the game, new to the community. Why would I stay? If everyone that volunteers spent their time welcoming new visitors or drawing them to the site, it would be way more beneficial than everything else going on.
I can give you a few examples I know for making the site more attractive to new users, missing some :
- Reviving the Facebook page
- Rewriting parts of the website and making it more mobile friendly
- There has been discussions to move to HTML5 (not even speaking of the many talks to develop an app for Android or iOS)

Sure enough, we need new users and make promotion for the website as much as we can, but it goes hand in hand with development if we want to retain users.

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Old 08-23-2015, 02:55 AM   #227
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Originally Posted by Synthlight View Post
Would you guys disagree? I don't mean to sound so harsh but what kind of effort has gone into making new visitors or players comfortable? Are there specific examples? If I come to this site new to the game, new to the community. Why would I stay? If everyone that volunteers spent their time welcoming new visitors or drawing them to the site, it would be way more beneficial than everything else going on.

Everything else needs to be put on the backburner. Through this we can significantly drop all the overhead. The more I learn about what is going on, the clearer it is that this is self sabotage in many ways.

Both of my kids (one of them in highschool now) look at this site in confusion and want nothing to do with it. That's an important queue and we should be doing everything we can to change that.
I was brought on as UX developer because I have a lot of insights as to why people have trouble starting the game and integrating themselves into the community.
The site's layout is shit. The game's interface is shit. I watch new player streams- they know it, and they're turned off from the game. Everyone here knows it.
You can't even search in game by artist. That's something very important to new players, too. It's embarrassing.
I proposed a tutorial. I proposed a new homepage layout that would more easily lead people to the game and the forums.
I have wireframes that detail a much improved layout that would help these problems.

Sadly, the main person who was developing the engine quit.

So the answer is, fuck all has gone into improving the in-game new player experience BECAUSE WE HAVE NO CODERS.
You know how you get coders? Yeah you can wait for the occasional passionate guy who works for free.
But the sure-fire way? You pay them.

This brings me to the following unfortunate truth:

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Originally Posted by Synthlight View Post
Feel free to correct me if you think I am wrong here but you guys seem WAY tooo focused on the smallest possible demographic here and because of that you are over complicating everything. You are taking the 80/20 business rule and have squeezed that into a 99/1 rule. 99% of your planning and effort appeals to 1% of the general visitors of the site. Continuing to obsess over song ratings, steps and selections has absolutely nothing to do with the health of the site. It's like being rich and thinking that if we only had more yacht races, more people would come to a polluted beach. In the process you are making a shitload of work for yourselves with a constantly diminishing return. Based upon what I am seeing, this is elitism and feels like a private club.
Look at the people who have posted in this thread. The majority of posts are from D5, D6, and D7 players.
If you are wondering why most people are caring about the 1%, it's because the 1% is all this site has left.
I'm not excusing this, only explaining it.
It's obvious that it's not healthy for the site. It is, however, probably preferable to no activity at all.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Synthlight View Post
I think you are ignoring the fact that this site was up against far superior code with Stepmania not to mention hordes of commercial console releases but somehow flourished without paid employees for many many years before going commercial and many afterwards. Success is possible down either of these paths.
I realize FFR flourished for years with volunteers. I also realize it's not flourishing now.

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Originally Posted by Synthlight View Post
Also, if artists that we sought permission from properly would like to get content removed, so be it. They would submit a DMCA to get the ball rolling or just flat out ask. It would be utterly foolish on their part but it's not going to break the game or the site. Think about why Thirdstyle (the site) isn't doing well. You are still missing the larger picture if you think think the number of songs holds the site back.
When I'm talking about legal issues, I mean:
What would you do, hypothetically, if Velocity said to take down all the code he worked on from the site?
I sure as hell never signed a contract when I was brought on as a developer.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Synthlight View Post
If you are serious about helping, then talk to me about helping. I would love to be part of that discussion.
I'd be glad to discuss this further with you. I've been meaning to for years.
Contact me on Skype (beegfeesh19) or PM me and suggest something else. Whatever works best for you, just not public forums please.
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Old 08-23-2015, 03:02 AM   #228
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Synthlight View Post
Feel free to correct me if you think I am wrong here but you guys seem WAY tooo focused on the smallest possible demographic here and because of that you are over complicating everything. You are taking the 80/20 business rule and have squeezed that into a 99/1 rule. 99% of your planning and effort appeals to 1% of the general visitors of the site. Continuing to obsess over song ratings, steps and selections has absolutely nothing to do with the health of the site. It's like being rich and thinking that if we only had more yacht races, more people would come to a polluted beach. In the process you are making a shitload of work for yourselves with a constantly diminishing return. Based upon what I am seeing, this is elitism and feels like a private club.

Would you guys disagree? I don't mean to sound so harsh but what kind of effort has gone into making new visitors or players comfortable? Are there specific examples? If I come to this site new to the game, new to the community. Why would I stay? If everyone that volunteers spent their time welcoming new visitors or drawing them to the site, it would be way more beneficial than everything else going on.

Everything else needs to be put on the backburner. Through this we can significantly drop all the overhead. The more I learn about what is going on, the clearer it is that this is self sabotage in many ways.

Both of my kids (one of them in highschool now) look at this site in confusion and want nothing to do with it. That's an important queue and we should be doing everything we can to change that.
I'm unable to comment on the rest of this thread because it's a little over my head, but I think I can comment on this.

FFR's ridiculously hard to get people into because, as Synthilight said, it's geared towards the active community. In order to see FFR grow, you need to be able to cater to those not only new to FFR but also new to rhythm games in general.

I know that people new to rhythm gaming want to play to songs they know before warming up to the site and trying other ones, but let's face it, most of the songs in game are unidentifiable to what I'm assuming FFR's target audience should be. Perhaps it would be a good idea to make popular files easier to find? That would attract newbies who would otherwise not stick around because they picked a few songs that they were unfamiliar with.

Also Multiplayer was an amazing idea and is the second thing a newbie will look for, and it's dead.

Oh yeah, and when I first started playing this game what enticed me was how much I could play without downloading anything. It's convenient.

I feel like I had more on my mind when I started writing this, but I'm blanking now. Ah well.
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Old 08-23-2015, 05:56 AM   #229
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This was never a competition
it isn't?

osumania coddles newer players, has a vastly superior social infrastructure in place, and gives users brain-dead options for playing charts for whatever shitty anime op they want to

stepmania obviously goes the extreme opposite direction in the userbase the community appeals/doesn't give a fuck about appealing to

the point being:

FFR does not occupy any niche which another platform does not do better, so why would anyone play FFR?
news flash this is a fucking competition.

and my 3 posts on the batch subject were supposed to go like this:

mina: why do you guys do a batch whats the point
ffr: huh lets think about it ok what does the batch do for us, oh wait, we can do all of the things the batch does except remove the batch part because holding up the entire fucking process because you've arbitrarily decided that dozens of files must be reviewed and judged together before anything can move forward is idiotic

i mean either that or i have a complete misconception of what the batch is or what it does and that means it's even more inefficient and stupid than i had previously thought

anyway it's not my job to fix this site and if i cared about trying to appeal to a community to siphon off a player base the first place i would go is osumania

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Old 08-23-2015, 09:08 AM   #230
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Default Re: What's happening in here?

Synthlight and hi19hi19:

It would be a much better idea to take a business plan discussion somewhere else other than public forums. I feel like you're both constantly putting each other in defensive positions instead of having a constructive discussion.

Mina:

When I said competition I was trying to say I was not putting you in a defensive position. The posts you made were vague and gave off a tone assuming that I already had determined the batch system to stay in its current state when that isn't the case. I can't read your mind.

Take the idea noname mentioned similar to an osu approach. Both pros and cons were discussed to see how this could be an alternative to the current batch system. Essentially you could have just mentioned what other rhythm game sites do and some of the results. I now have more ideas about changing the judgment process and these will be discussed with the GM Team.
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oh boy, it's STIFF, I'll stretch before I sit down at the computer so not I'm not as STIFF next time I step a file

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Old 08-23-2015, 11:43 AM   #231
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Default Re: What's happening in here?

Is there anything I can do to help?
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Old 08-23-2015, 11:45 AM   #232
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DossarLX ODI View Post
Synthlight and hi19hi19:

It would be a much better idea to take a business plan discussion somewhere else other than public forums.
I've literally wanted to do this since like, 2012.
I offered again in the post above.
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Old 08-23-2015, 11:49 AM   #233
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Originally Posted by -JiZ53- View Post
Everybody, stop complaining and make me moderator. Also, synth, i think it is time we brought back the downvote.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

Oh wait, you were serious.
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Old 08-23-2015, 11:59 AM   #234
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Default Re: What's happening in here?

Damn. And here I thought with Synth poking his head in we might get a constructive conversation. But nah, it's just more talking to a wall with hi19.

What can we do to make this site more appealing to others? The genre and the people who enjoy it are "niche" enough as it is. I think we just need fresh eyes examining the issues here and the blessing from the folks with the keys to the site to get it done.

There are a lot of people who care enough to pitch in. Quit assigning blame or talking about what won't work and put us to work on ideas that have a decent shot. Give us a game plan. I've already offered to contribute money and time. So what's the effin hold up?
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Old 08-23-2015, 12:16 PM   #235
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FYI that hi19, Velocity, Zag a few others and myself are going to have a conversation this afternoon over (most likely) skype. I am looking forward to it.
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Old 08-23-2015, 12:22 PM   #236
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Default Re: What's happening in here?

Good!
Like it's been said over and over, you guys have got support. Don't be afraid to ask.
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Old 08-23-2015, 12:23 PM   #237
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FYI that hi19, Velocity, Zag a few others and myself are going to have a conversation this afternoon over (most likely) skype. I am looking forward to it.
This is good news
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Old 08-23-2015, 12:29 PM   #238
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Is there anything I can do to help?
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Originally Posted by Mister_Raccoon View Post
Like it's been said over and over, you guys have got support. Don't be afraid to ask.
Y'all might want to contact site staff privately and communicate your interest. I'm thinking you'd likely have better luck getting a response that way.
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Old 08-23-2015, 12:37 PM   #239
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Default Re: What's happening in here?

I've deleted four essays I've wanted to post in here under the impression that they ultimately wouldn't have produced any useful results.

Just posting to say I'm glad a discussion is going to take place.
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Old 08-23-2015, 12:58 PM   #240
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isn't it possible to get this game running on newgrounds or armorgames? Or isn't that possible with the permissions?
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