FFR: The New User Perspective And New FFR Ideas

[s1rnight]

another main problem (touched on in my wordz,) is that ffr seems... almost pathologically quite *enthusiastically* set on letting u browse absolutely every page on the website from absolutely every page on the website, which feels confusing. your pages need to be properly organised, with main information up front, and subsets of said information within those bits of information. having for example, each individual aspect of "settings" be on a settings page that is just a single click will not lose any traffic

ALSO

if anyone has access to who browses where and how (pr0nskunk~) it should be very easy for you to see which pages people are most often browsing, and which pages are being browsed where, to where. if nobody is clicking "wiki news" from the top bar, that is unimportant. if *tons* of people are clicking thru tons of pages just to find a basic thing that is also on the top bar, this needs to be forefronted way more

[s1rnight]

also i'm heartily for reposting this client back on kongregate, it seems rather absurd that this hasnt been suggested until now; even ppl who do not visit the site help to popularise FFR memetically. there is really no downside there, even if the upside ranges from good to small

[YoshL]

kong makes profits

putting ffr on kong helps kong make profit and idk

[s1rnight]

oh, that; is it really a breach of non-profit? :X *we're* not making any money off of it after all

(if it was already *on* kongregate i can't rly see that being an issue, unless the "non-profit" clause is new)

[bmah]

I definitely agree with not making the Song Submission menu a thing. It certainly wasn't my idea, and I was sort of alarmed when I first saw that appear. Technically speaking, the process of submitting a file for FFR is background work; it's not a feature, and it's certainly not something that most people would care about. It's a menu that solely conveniences the few who actually contribute to FFR The Game, and the menu was probably created out of that narrow train of thought.

tl;dr the inner workings of the site should not be prominently in view...it's unprofessional and irrelevant to most users

[top]

Money money money. Always the issue.
Remember the good ol' days when we had FF7 Battle theme and that song from chrono cross? Ahhhhh
And lets not forget when ffr was tryna be like bemani style and we had user submitted (Mostly shit) Stepmania (Or R2, whatever) files.
Thats off topic tho...

Is there ANY hope that changes will be implemented this time around? Like psychoangel said, this isnt the first suggestion for a new& improved ffr.
Or will this, too, blow away like a fart in the wind?

[blanky!]

Originally Posted by psychoangel691

It's been posted in threads like these before. What you don't understand is these threads constantly happen, this isn't some revolutionary thing you've done here.

True, we've had 1500000 threads like this. But still inaction.
Why don't some of us try actually planning out the design in code before asking for it to be implemented on the site? It's easier for all of us and when the design is finished all that's needed is a yes/no approval from the higher-ups.

This sums it up nicely:

Originally Posted by Kyzentun

I don't know if people realize this, but I essentially earned my position by walking in and doing stuff. Nobody came to me to ask me to start working on stepmania. I saw stuff I wanted to fix and started doing it. So if you have some thing you think is important and the skills to carry it out, go right ahead and do it.

[.Gazelle.]

i understand this looks like raw sewage and is missing quite a bit, but what if on first visit or until opted out of, the homepage did something like this?

current layout could have a switch to simplified ver. link somewhere idk

[Figlar20k]

Originally Posted by RenegadeLucien

Let's see here...

The welcome message should probably be updated. Link to the dictionary, link to the game page, link to the standalone guide (the fact that neither of your friends even figured out there WAS a standalone at all means something is seriously wrong with how we're promoting that.)

Two, tokens. I'll agree with you that a difficulty system for skill tokens would be helpful. The problem is that very few veterans even give a crap about tokens at all (just look at how long it's taken us to change the normal tokens.)

Three, something that hasn't even been brought up: The Legacy genre.

To a new player, THESE are going to be the majority of the first files played, and we all know how CRAP these files actually are. It's probably the biggest turn-off I can think of to new players, aside from the whole "I can't find the game" thing that this thread revealed. So as much as people want to keep these files in their original state, I think it's actively hurting us to do so. I don't know if your friends had any comment on the "blue note songs", but I can't imagine it would have been favorable.

This exactly.

Why are the legacy songs still in the game? Fix or remove them. Or HIDE them really well. There are some super stinkers in the MISC section as well like "Submission rules" as well that NEED to not exist. Imagine a new player coming in and playing THAT or anything from Legacy for the first time? They would never visit this site again.

[Xenorosth]

Originally Posted by Figlar20k

This exactly.

Why are the legacy songs still in the game? Fix or remove them. Or HIDE them really well. There are some super stinkers in the MISC section as well like "Submission rules" as well that NEED to not exist. Imagine a new player coming in and playing THAT or anything from Legacy for the first time? They would never visit this site again.

The owner wants us to keep the Legacy songs. :P Staff's not allowed to move 'em

[top]

Originally Posted by Figlar20k

This exactly.

Why are the legacy songs still in the game? Fix or remove them. Or HIDE them really well. There are some super stinkers in the MISC section as well like "Submission rules" as well that NEED to not exist. Imagine a new player coming in and playing THAT or anything from Legacy for the first time? They would never visit this site again.

Yeah right. Us og's remember the pain. Back when those files were all we HAD. Get over it scrublord!!!

[HeZe]

The major problems (having read the flood of messages sent earlier):

1. I've introduced FFR to MANY people, and most of them don't find it amusing. Some might create an account and play for a week or two. One played for about a year, but quit due to the lagging issue. SO, for normal gamers FFR doesn't quite hit it like it does to us.
solution: FFR needs more content, not more to FIFFER THE GAME but actually more games, but here we come to the second issue:

2. FFR doesn't have enough of active staff. Having a handful of staff to do a shitload of unpaid work makes the site run slowly, WAY too slowly (even though it seems to be way faster now than it used to). An overhaul to FIFFER THE GAME code is impossible..?

3. FFR is not being marketed efficiently. Having a fb-page or other useless social media pages (I apologize, I'm not a social media user) are just pages, not ads. How do people find these if they are not actively searching? On the other hand, I have no idea how to do this differently. Altough putting FFR to kongregate or newgrounds sounds good.

MY SUGGESTION OF PLAY BUTTON







SUGGESTIONWouldn't it be cool if the profile chat was also next to the ACTUAL GAME WINDOW? There could also be a couple of channels instead of like 1. (Like one for EMG rivalry, one for D1 etc)

EDIT: By the way, not everybody is interested of the tokens. Everything not game related to me is waste of time. I used tips how to get the damn tokens because I just wanted to play them. Antiskilling tokens suck ass, but they are okay because there aren't too many and I know there are people who like them. (But I do love the secret songs, there should be way more of them)

As a side note of game terminology, I still haven't got any idea of some of the terms because they aren't ALL written somewhere

[psychoangel691]

Originally Posted by .Gazelle.

i understand this looks like raw sewage and is missing quite a bit, but what if on first visit or until opted out of, the homepage did something like this?

current layout could have a switch to simplified ver. link somewhere idk

This is what I was saying before with a splash page, there's really no reason at all for it to not be put in.

Originally Posted by Xenorosth

The owner wants us to keep the Legacy songs. :P Staff's not allowed to move 'em

Have you personally talked to the owner? Stop spreading things you can't actually confirm. You sat there in PMs giving me an attitude about how he was the reason the new site design couldn't be implemented and that you heard it from "two staff members" one of which you wouldn't even name, lol. Only to be disproven shortly after. The last thing this site needs is more rumors going around. So why don't you leave it to the actual staff to answer site related questions. Making suggestions is one thing, but don't spread information that could easily be false.

[Coolboyrulez0]

wasnt there going to be a bootstrap site update?
the website, for the most part, is super unintuitive and looks dated.

[psychoangel691]

Originally Posted by Coolboyrulez0

wasnt there going to be a bootstrap site update?
the website, for the most part, is super unintuitive and looks dated.

There was definitely something that was going on in terms of mobile design of the site, I just don't recall now if it was specifically bootstrap (I think it was but I can't 100% confirm that).

Development has been the biggest area that has lacked communication, even within it's own staff. I've asked Max to make a thread to address what happened to these old projects that the community does know about. That way it's clarified what actually happened with the projects and if there's any plan to try to continue them. I think at this point it should be clarified to the community what the current plan of action is, what is being done to improve the site currently and any information on any projects that people were expecting. I'm going to speculate that most of them were dropped because people up and left from the dev team, but again just speculating.

[rushyrulz]

Originally Posted by HeZe

3. FFR is not being marketed efficiently. Having a fb-page or other useless social media pages (I apologize, I'm not a social media user) are just pages, not ads. How do people find these if they are not actively searching? On the other hand, I have no idea how to do this differently. Altough putting FFR to kongregate or newgrounds sounds good.

Unfortunately, efficient marketing costs money, which we don't have and can't get.

[Figlar20k]

Originally Posted by top

Yeah right. Us og's remember the pain. Back when those files were all we HAD. Get over it scrublord!!!

You realize I've been a member for over 10 years right Before speed mods. You don't know the true pain

Also the lag seriously turns me personally off the game. I can't imagine for a new player who comes here for the first time and their only experience is a lagfest especially when you try to turn anything to fullscreen.

Is there really absolutely no way to remove the lag issues? Seems crazy in this day and age that it's still such a serious problem for some people (me included)

[TC_Halogen]

Originally Posted by Figlar20k

Is there really absolutely no way to remove the lag issues? Seems crazy in this day and age that it's still such a serious problem for some people (me included)

This is unfortunately a biproduct of the way the engine is built - people's experiences with running Flash are well... it's an understatement to say beyond inconsistent. Like you, I've been around for over 10 years as well; I remember back at the start of my competitive days during the 4th official, I was able to use a Flash 8 projector and run the legacy engine just fine. Now, I'm using a computer that is substantially more powerful and I swear, I get differing results all the time. One day, Flash runs fantastic for me, no issues -- the next, it runs terribly and it's an endless frustration. I'd be willing to bet that the issues could be alleviated if I ran the game on Linux, but... I shouldn't have to do that.

It's also unfortunately one that will not disappear until the game is rebuilt on a new platform. I do recall something that one of the devs was working on as a test, and I think it revolved around HTML5? Also, a very basic implementation of a usable/interactive engine was also programmed on SMleaderboards as a chart viewer (where you can tap along to stuff as if you were playing it) by Wafles. So, it's not to say that it can't be done -- it's a matter of creating the new platform, then linking all of the content to it; actually, it goes beyond that, because all of the files are converted in frames for Flash and well, that would go out the window.

There's a lot to think about for the creation of something like this...

[Xenorosth]

Originally Posted by TC_Halogen

This is unfortunately a biproduct of the way the engine is built - people's experiences with running Flash are well... it's an understatement to say beyond inconsistent. Like you, I've been around for over 10 years as well; I remember back at the start of my competitive days during the 4th official, I was able to use a Flash 8 projector and run the legacy engine just fine. Now, I'm using a computer that is substantially more powerful and I swear, I get differing results all the time. One day, Flash runs fantastic for me, no issues -- the next, it runs terribly and it's an endless frustration. I'd be willing to bet that the issues could be alleviated if I ran the game on Linux, but... I shouldn't have to do that.

It's also unfortunately one that will not disappear until the game is rebuilt on a new platform. I do recall something that one of the devs was working on as a test, and I think it revolved around HTML5? Also, a very basic implementation of a usable/interactive engine was also programmed on SMleaderboards as a chart viewer (where you can tap along to stuff as if you were playing it) by Wafles. So, it's not to say that it can't be done -- it's a matter of creating the new platform, then linking all of the content to it; actually, it goes beyond that, because all of the files are converted in frames for Flash and well, that would go out the window.

There's a lot to think about for the creation of something like this...

This will take a LONG, time, but I'm looking into making an FFR Engine design in Unity. Currently, this is a solo thing, and it's an experiment to see what unity is capable of. If anyone wants to take this project seriously, let me know, but I can't guarantee anything for now.

[TC_Halogen]

Originally Posted by Xenorosth

This will take a LONG, time, but I'm looking into making an FFR Engine design in Unity. Currently, this is a solo thing, and it's an experiment to see what unity is capable of. If anyone wants to take this project seriously, let me know, but I can't guarantee anything for now.

"Let you know?" >__>;

It's good that you're thinking about it, but when you're doing something from scratch, it's hard to take anything seriously until there's at least some sort of actual schematic for both the design and/or the (flow of) programming. Anyone can conceive the idea of wanting to build an engine on a platform.

It's also worth asking if Unity is the best choice for something like this in the first place. This is something that experienced FFR developers and/or developers who do things for other reasons might be able to elaborate on.