What's happening in here?

[noname219]

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 :

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.

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.

[hi19hi19]

Re: What's happening in here?

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Funnygurl555]

Re: What's happening in here?

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.

[MinaciousGrace]

Re: What's happening in here?

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

[DossarLX ODI]

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.

[Kraezymann]

Re: What's happening in here?

Is there anything I can do to help?

[hi19hi19]

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've literally wanted to do this since like, 2012.
I offered again in the post above.

[Mister_Raccoon]

Re: What's happening in here?

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.

[Mister_Raccoon]

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?

[Synthlight]

Re: What's happening in here?

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.

[Mister_Raccoon]

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.

[_Zenith_]

Re: What's happening in here?

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

[dAnceguy117]

Re: What's happening in here?

Is there anything I can do to help?

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.

[One Winged Angel]

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.

[M0nkeyz]

Re: What's happening in here?

isn't it possible to get this game running on newgrounds or armorgames? Or isn't that possible with the permissions?