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08-21-2015, 11:01 AM | #1 | |
FFR Veteran
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What's happening in here?
10/10/2015 Update: DossarLX ODI
I feel like this thread has run its course and efficiently delivered a wake-up call. Check the Weekly Batch Update Thread for updates on the Batch and Temporary Web Development Team. There will also be What's Happenin' front page posts which are planned to be bi-weekly according to psychoangel691. Front Page Posts will be utilized much more now. Thanks for all your patience. The original post can be seen in the spoiler below. - Dossar
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Last edited by DossarLX ODI; 10-10-2015 at 09:04 AM.. |
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08-21-2015, 11:18 AM | #2 |
Retired Staff
All the things
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Re: What's happening in here?
Nobody wanted to have an official with old files, I asked and the community didn't want it. So I can do nothing with that until the batch situation is sorted out.
P.S. AJ was never an admin
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Last edited by psychoangel691; 08-21-2015 at 11:18 AM.. |
08-21-2015, 11:24 AM | #3 |
Accuracy Player
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: Connecticut
Age: 28
Posts: 4,628
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Re: What's happening in here?
Fiffer is generally dying, however staff still does it's job as best as it can, and with somewhat decreasing manpower (due to real life reasons like school starting soon or already starting for some).
I cannot speak for the Event Staff, but there should be an Official Tournament this year as a poll and thread were made directly for the files being used in the Official Tournament which would verify that an OT is going to happen this year. Even though some Staff Actions aren't public, they are still doing something, ya know? Scores are still janky and I agree, however there iirc is no easy distinguish-able signs that a score was rated or not (except for the 99s). It's a problem that the dev team is probably tackling as best as they can even if no public movement has been made (apparently and I would assume devs have testing ground now). Batch I cannot say anything about because it's one thing I definitely do not know so someone can answer that accordingly, but the additions of judges should help with the process even if it's just a slight shift in help. Most of Staff are aware of its issues, and where it may seem beneficial to bring them to light, I'm sure it is a redundant statement to say "What's up with Staff and why is fiffer dying". It is apparent that some staff parameters are understaffed, but staff is entirely volunteer, which means that when real life conditions happen then they have to be attended to which can cause a lapse in staff activity. It's an ever-growing topic, however I'm not that worried.
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Last edited by _Zenith_; 08-21-2015 at 11:25 AM.. |
08-21-2015, 07:16 PM | #4 |
=/
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Long Island
Age: 34
Posts: 685
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Re: What's happening in here?
At first we actually made good progress on the batch when the new judges (myself, Gradiant, DarkZtar and Lurker) were added to the team. But around late July to early August things just fell apart. I don't think there's been any actual progress in two weeks.
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08-21-2015, 11:29 AM | #5 |
lol happy
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: DESTINY
Age: 33
Posts: 12,193
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Re: What's happening in here?
Honestly this site is being held down by red tape at this point. Every time anything gets suggested, you have to cross verify the changes with 3 other people and check the 13 year old rules and make sure nobody is ~offended~ and all that shit. The amount of potentially beneficial actions and events I've seen get stuffed because "da rules" or "needs to be judged!!! (9 month wait)" or "but muh levelranks" is starting to get old. If it's not clear by now to people in charge that things need to just happen quickly, then the site is going to die.
You know it's bad when I want Tass to come back. EDIT- This is not to say I've personally been a huge part of the solution. I'm too pessimistic about the site at this point. I'm torn between having seen how incredibly inefficient the site setup is and how difficult it is for meaningful change to happen, with the fact I love the game and the *most* of the community.
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Last edited by hi19hi19; 08-21-2015 at 11:36 AM.. |
08-21-2015, 12:14 PM | #6 |
Rhythm game specialist.
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Re: What's happening in here?
HeZe: flattering, but I was never an administrator for reasons that I'll never come to terms with agreeing with. Maybe it was because of the fact that I had too much of a straight-forward and direct attitude towards people when they failed to get shit done the way that it was supposed to. I came back to the forums on my account for the first time in over a month after hearing about this thread, because you know what - I'm no longer on staff and I've finally moved on from this community to a different one. I finally feel like I can be as honest as I can while not giving two shits about the feelings and emotions about the others on the top levels on staff.
Here's the first step: stop being offended of what you're doing wrong, own up to it, and fix the problem rather than cowering away in your hidden little staff bubbles. Everyone is human, everyone makes mistakes, and everyone gets tired of what they're doing on occasion. Let it out and work towards fixing things, and if it becomes too much to handle, then find someone who you feel is as passionate about it as you are. Right now, the administrative team is absolutely fucking useless. You guys can sit here and preach that things are being done on the back, but you guys NEVER offer any sort of transparency. How the hell are people supposed to believe that anything is getting done when you guys are too inconsiderate to even provide any sort of reasonable updates about what is and isn't getting done? I'm sorry, but I have absolutely no understanding as to why half of the administration team is even on the team in the first place when they're providing absolutely no useful contribution to the site. Users upon users both in the community and out of it are saying that the site is dying, and that's because absolutely nothing is moving. Have the administrators ever thought to maybe come together and make a weekly update about the progress that's going on? Are there updates to the site coming in the future? Is the game being worked on? Is there anything being done to bring the site back to life? No? I didn't think so. If there is, why haven't you shown anyone? Staff seems like a massive circle-jerk at the top levels (p.s. I've had this thought even while I was on staff) at this point. I can direct this part to someone on the administration; to my knowledge, it was Zageron but it might not be anymore: when I was on staff, there was a so-called "community manager" that was supposed to be overseeing the community and everything contained within it. Who has that job? Why are they NOT doing what they are supposed to? A community manager that is resting as an administrator is not just looking after the user community contained within the forums, they are looking after the ENTIRE COMMUNITY AS A WHOLE, including the staff members, to make sure that things are getting done in the interests of the community. If people who are in their respective teams are having issues with getting things done for whatever reason, that's completely fine - people have their issues and sometimes things get in the way. If said people are continuously making excuses and not helping in the progression and growth of the community. With another thread like this popping up, it's very obvious that the current team situation isn't working and the person who is overseeing things isn't doing a good job. And I absolutely do not want to hear a bullshit excuse about how you tried to transition people to Slack and others didn't keep up with it -- using Slack was a dumb idea in the first place and if people weren't keeping up with it, you should have forced them to have some activity if they wanted to keep their staff position... or you know, not been so fixated on trying to gather people on a different medium and instead actually use the Skype staff chat properly by incorporating all various staff members, since you know, according to that previous staff chat, the judges and events teams that help keep the game alive and interesting for users don't matter at all. But hey, what do I know? The simfiling team is complete and utter fucking shambles right now. Now, with all due respect, I do have some blame to take here because I didn't resolve this situation, but the activity of those who have the simfile judge title is absolutely pathetic. The lack of committed judges is a big reason why FFR is in trouble right now -- the file releases have had to slow for the purpose of saving files for the presumably soon to come official tournament, but very little has gotten done with the addition of a new team. The structural issue on the game management side that I hoped to resolve by doubling the staff for one area of the site ended up falling flat because the transition was simply too rough at the start, and it's gotten to a point where it's probably much harder to even want to work on things because the previously mentioned lack of staff. I have no doubt in my mind that the task of game management can be done properly, but it needs to be pushed WAY harder than it is now, without question. There are two very capable users who are able to do a lot more than they have, and they need to step in and do what they were told to do. They can only do so with a competent team below them. If it were my way, I would remove the simfile judge title from a huge majority of the judges because they have done jack shit for whatever reason/excuses they have. At the very least, the Events team has TRIED to keep things going with TCG, but even their activity levels have gotten reduced a ton themselves and not enough is being done to engage with all of the users. One of the things that I can say that is extremely frustrating with the Events management (and I had to deal with this myself) is that they have to rely on the administration team for occasional things rather than being self-sufficient, which is an annoying problem in the first place. Right now, the two biggest attractors of users are simfiles and events. Events engage users, simfiles engage users. Both are being stifled for various reasons. I agree with hi19 in this point: the site's staff have a LOT LESS to worry about than giving a shit about the trivial bullshit of "level ranks this" and "old rules that" and yadayadayada. Changes need to be made, or this site is going to completely crumble and there will be nothing left. As shitty as this sounds for the userbase, radical changes will probably be the only way to get things back together. And for the first time in a long time, I can actually agree: I wish Tass was here too. I was not the biggest fan of Tass, but after being on staff and evaluating how things were done then and how they are now, there's one thing that I can commend Tass for: he knew how to keep EVERYONE flying right. |
08-21-2015, 12:36 PM | #7 | |
lol happy
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: DESTINY
Age: 33
Posts: 12,193
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Re: What's happening in here?
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The KING of being useless and having no transparency is Synthlight himself. Where has that fucker been? Makes a huge "coming back" announcement. THEN DISAPPEARS AGAIN. I'm not going to have any faith in this site again until he shows his face. For real. EDIT- I'm aware that the top-level admins have the access they need to the site. That doesn't change the fact Synth is completely MIA for other important business-related stuff. What if I get a big label that would give permission contingent on contacting the company owner? OOPS OUT OF LUCK
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Last edited by hi19hi19; 08-21-2015 at 12:41 PM.. |
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08-21-2015, 12:42 PM | #8 | |
Rhythm game specialist.
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Re: What's happening in here?
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if you have something specific you want to tell him that's fine, though. edit: way to beat me to my point you fucker Last edited by TC_Halogen; 08-21-2015 at 12:42 PM.. |
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08-21-2015, 12:44 PM | #9 |
Retired Staff
All the things
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Re: What's happening in here?
Staff has contact with Synth though, all they have to do is shoot a text to him. I've talked to him through text a few times. Yes he's not a huge presence on the site anymore, but things can still get done without him.
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08-21-2015, 12:46 PM | #10 | |
lol happy
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: DESTINY
Age: 33
Posts: 12,193
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Re: What's happening in here?
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That is good to hear though. Sadly that last part of the statement doesn't seem to be happening.
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Last edited by hi19hi19; 08-21-2015 at 12:50 PM.. |
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08-21-2015, 04:08 PM | #11 | |
Anime Avatars ( ◜◡^)っ✂╰⋃╯
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Squat Rack
Age: 34
Posts: 10,837
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Re: What's happening in here?
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I proposed this to Dossar earlier in the week and it looks like this is probably going to come to fruition. It's very obvious that activity on the site has plummeted and many users have migrated to Stepmania, o!m, or other gaming sites. Largely due to lack of updates but I think another reason is that FFR becomes very tedious to play after passing a certain threshold in skill. Files that are accepted pretty much have to be guaranteed to have AAAs or they're deemed 'too hard' and rejected. A good proportion of players enjoy Stepmania more than FFR simply because there's a much higher difficulty ceiling and thus they can set specific score goals that aren't simply AAAs, which is what FFR has been focused on for the most part. The difficulty spectrum is going to be expanding from 1-120. I've been working on exactly how the current difficulties will be restructured but the goal is to have significantly more files in the old '13' difficulty level (FSO, currently 93+ in game...for reference: RATO will probably be sitting around 110-113 on this new scale). I believe a sort of mental restructuring where FFR is taken from a game solely focusing on AAAs and expanding the spectrum to include more files of a much higher level will increase activity across all divisions (we all know that even D1 players will mash through DP/RATO from time to time just due to the sheer absurdity in difficulty, and they still find it fun). The exact details for how we're going to go about with these releases have yet to be finalized among GMs given the current backlog of files, but ultimately the goal is to have a 'tru hard pain' event release, with additional files reserved for the future tournament to get rid of AAA or die meme bullshit. No idea what's going on with the devs but I'm hoping that they finalize the transition to raw scoring and all the messed up rank stuff that happened during score migration sometime soon, I know many players (including myself) have been less motivated to play because of that. Last edited by One Winged Angel; 08-21-2015 at 04:37 PM.. |
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08-21-2015, 04:17 PM | #12 |
soleil ardent
Join Date: May 2007
Location: New York
Age: 27
Posts: 6,513
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Re: What's happening in here?
FFR used to be like a second home for me.
There is a much smaller drive to be on this site now, and even less so to play the game. I do love playing and I've recently been trying to get back into this/stepmania, but in the end it'll come down to whether or not forums become relevant again. I'm not going to play this game only to have no one to (want to) talk to about it. I want to be here, and I want to play still, but I need a reason to be here. OWA bless that post
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08-21-2015, 06:51 PM | #13 | |
T-Force's Rival
Join Date: Dec 2010
Age: 27
Posts: 1,865
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Re: What's happening in here?
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08-21-2015, 07:23 PM | #14 | |||
FFR Wiki Admin
Wiki Administrator
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Re: What's happening in here?
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08-21-2015, 07:30 PM | #15 | |
Batch Manager
Game Manager, Song Release Coordinator
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: USA
Age: 29
Posts: 14,871
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Re: What's happening in here?
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I have no issue with providing weekly updates on the batch similar to a format like I showed in my earlier post about what is To Do, In Progress, and Done. I feel like if dev adopted this kind of structure, they would have a much better idea of who is assigned a development task and provide better estimates of how long something will take -- it will also allow the definition of a task to be made clear so the team knows it's done. For posts regarding hurting feelings, remember that it's important to provide a sense of direction when giving feedback. There is nothing wrong with having genuine concerns.
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Last edited by DossarLX ODI; 08-21-2015 at 07:31 PM.. |
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08-21-2015, 12:12 PM | #16 |
Batch Manager
Game Manager, Song Release Coordinator
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: USA
Age: 29
Posts: 14,871
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Re: What's happening in here?
There isn't anything offensive about change. The GM Team has been discussing issues with the batch for the past several days, and tonight we can provide a detailed response about what's been happening and some of the next steps forward. However when it comes to dev that is outside the scope of the GMs and the dev team itself will have to give updates on their end.
I've been on this site for a decade and it's been an archive of rhythm gaming history and a home for me. I feel your pain too and these issues are actively discussed between the GM staff -- I can't say how it is for the other groups though. |
08-21-2015, 12:31 PM | #17 |
Snivy! Dohoho!
Join Date: Mar 2006
Age: 33
Posts: 6,161
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Re: What's happening in here?
Lets migrate FFR to osu! or something.
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08-21-2015, 12:43 PM | #18 |
Rhythm game specialist.
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Re: What's happening in here?
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08-21-2015, 12:36 PM | #19 |
Snivy! Dohoho!
Join Date: Mar 2006
Age: 33
Posts: 6,161
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Re: What's happening in here?
Oh, btw, Halogeeeeeeen, what community are you a part of now?
I think my new home is GameFAQS, lmao. Well, one specific area of GameFAQS, but I gets to be my forum crazy self there as well so it's all gooood. |
08-21-2015, 05:28 PM | #20 | |
Signature Extraordinare~~
Song Submission & Events Manager
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Re: What's happening in here?
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So that's where I've been hanging out as of recently. As for games though, I got involved in some World of Warcraft private servers & the in-browser game Hacker Experience, although Hacker Experience is kind of suffering for the same reasons FFR is right now. Last edited by gold stinger; 08-21-2015 at 05:36 PM.. |
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