What's happening in here?

[Frank Munoz]

Originally Posted by dAnceguy117

From what I understand, HTML5 is vastly more compatible with mobile web browsers than Flash. Is that a motivating factor? If the intent is to turn FFR into a viable game for phones and tablets, wouldn't a mobile app make more sense? Not to mention, I think most would agree that the input style of this game isn't particularly suited to touch screens.

i agree FFR's style is not really suited for mobile play, but you know what is?
SIU
I mean, if going mobile is something we wanna do(which i do, ffr pro-chats on the go? count me in)

but instead of keeping it with the current 4 90degree angles to hit we make it into iono... 360(or 90, anything more than just 4 precise angles to make the game flow better). Meaning there would need to be a unique chart editor just for this mobile game.

This just creates another rework for a whole different engine, and that's alota work.

There are many other things to consider into this but that's only if anyone really wants to go that way.
I'm down for creating some layouts for a portable SIU, though there are most likely way better people to handle it I will probably make some anyways just for funsies.

There were other things I want to touch on, like this

Originally Posted by Synthlight

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.

But what I wanted to say was already said pretty much

Originally Posted by Crazyjayde

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.

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.

The other thing I'm thinking about now is this

Originally Posted by Synthlight

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.

Though there is discussion going on privately between synth and other moderators about the possible change into HTML5(from what i've read), was the "leadership issue" ever solved? Being that half the posts in this thread were pertaining to this, as well as communication problems which go hand-in-hand with each other, I believe it's reasonable to want to know if this is no longer a concern.
Though, from here it seems like it has been smoothed out.


@rushy: u rule

[Crazyjayde]

Originally Posted by Synthlight

I don't think we will ever remove the Flash aspect. At the very least we are looking at legacy and nostalgic reasons down the road.

FlashFlashRevolution as in gotta go fast. See? No need of rebranding when players will still be doing the same in the future. :P

Mozilla's threat on Adobe Flash has made of its support an escalating debacle and a legitimized concern for everyone. It's awesome to hear undergoing development.

Originally Posted by TheRapingDragon

There needs to be more integration between the game and the forum and ways to increase competitiveness. If people come here and they get a score on a song and are then told 'look at how close you were to others' or 'here's a link to the forum to post this awesome score' or 'how about playing this song in multiplayer?' or any number of things then it would keep them on the site and seamlessly lead them to other sections of the site.

This is a good point. It's not that there's only a need of interrelationship between the forums and the game but there's a need of continuity. Most of the exchanges are part of the forums and there's seemingly few inducement spawning from the game itself. Events are a natural response to that but they're not implemented and accessible through the engine. Think of the moments you were on FFR before your involvement on the forums and what encouraged you to be part of it. I personnally didn't for a long time as it felt like a seperate entity and still didn't feel much acclimated to it for another lapse of time.

[justin_ator]

Originally Posted by TheRapingDragon

The best thing would be to try to integrate socially with Facebook or Twitter. Have people get scores on the game then have a button that will instantly upload their status to those sites, meaning all their friends hear about FFR.

I have been advocating for this HARD for years. It's LONG overdue. We utilize the Facebook page rarely, there's no way to share your scores over Facebook (Facebook API has tons of documentation... it's fairly simple to set up the engine to use the API to send a screenshot of your score through to your profile wall...), and you can't log in to the engine using Facebook (which would also generate more sign-ups and in my opinion, help with retention of brand new members).

We are missing a HUGE platform opportunity here and always have been, and it makes me sad to have to say this same thing along with others over and over and over and over and over and over again.

I've said it a number of times already - if FFR needs someone to do Facebook media promotion, I'm more than happy to volunteer on that. Twitter updates were integrated to post when the change-log was updated, which is even better than no social media presence at all, which is what the Facebook page had for the longest time.

[PhantomPuppy]

im just patiently waiting for a version of the game that doesnt use flash player. i would totally be down for donating towards a completion of one.

[Poison-]

Another possible source of income could be Patreon. Would that work for FFR? Come up with rewards for contributing set amounts of money per month. Idk, just a suggestion.

[Izzy]

I'd subscrube to an FFR patreon if it helped everyone continue developing the site. I don't even play ffr anymore, but it would be nice to see things happen.

[shenjoku]

Originally Posted by Izzy

I'd subscrube to an FFR patreon if it helped everyone continue developing the site. I don't even play ffr anymore, but it would be nice to see things happen.

^ Ditto on this.

[Rapta]

Originally Posted by shenjoku

^ Ditto on this.

I would as well.

Frank Munoz

ffr pro-chats on the go

YESS

[Reincarnate]

Maybe I am just too cynical, but I see threads like this every year or so, and it's always the same stuff that gets brought up. People focus too much on the minutiae and not enough on what would actually fix things overall.

[Rapta]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

Maybe I am just too cynical, but I see threads like this every year or so, and it's always the same stuff that gets brought up. People focus too much on the minutia and not enough on what would actually fix things overall.

Actually it's different stuff this time

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by Rapta

Actually it's different stuff this time

"We need competent staff / we need more communication / we need more transparency / we need coders / we need a site overhaul / etc" -- these have all been brought up plenty of times over the years. What am I missing?

[Poison-]

Maybe I'm just being optimistic but it seems like there's a better chance of stuff actually happening this time

[rushyrulz]

Originally Posted by Frank Munoz

I do really want a voting system implemented for every chart. So instead of only having "FFR's TOP PLAYED SONGS" it will have "HIGHEST RATED SONGS" as well. And we can also use it in-game to sort charts from low-high ratings. But that would mean more work to do for our coders.

I suggested this to Zag in like April as part of a meeting. He wrote it down but idk if he's working on it or really anything at all that's going on.

[Crazyjayde]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

"We need competent staff / we need more communication / we need more transparency / we need coders / we need a site overhaul / etc" -- these have all been brought up plenty of times over the years. What am I missing?

Actual breakthrough.

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by Crazyjayde

Actual breakthrough.

In what form?

[Crazyjayde]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

In what form?

Actual discussion with head staff - meaning admins are concerted and actively working towards changes.

[MrGiggles]

we got synth to post for the first time in nearly a year

two years if you dont count wishing alioth a happy birthday (lol) and the "complain about tgb being closed" joke thread

edit: fun fact: synthlight has posted more in this thread than he has sitewide in the last five years combined

[hi19hi19]

Originally Posted by justin_ator

I have been advocating for this HARD for years. It's LONG overdue. We utilize the Facebook page rarely, there's no way to share your scores over Facebook (Facebook API has tons of documentation... it's fairly simple to set up the engine to use the API to send a screenshot of your score through to your profile wall...), and you can't log in to the engine using Facebook (which would also generate more sign-ups and in my opinion, help with retention of brand new members).

We are missing a HUGE platform opportunity here and always have been, and it makes me sad to have to say this same thing along with others over and over and over and over and over and over again.

I've said it a number of times already - if FFR needs someone to do Facebook media promotion, I'm more than happy to volunteer on that. Twitter updates were integrated to post when the change-log was updated, which is even better than no social media presence at all, which is what the Facebook page had for the longest time.

This is really important.

[XelNya]

Originally Posted by Frank Munoz

i agree FFR's style is not really suited for mobile play

I highly disagree and this is why:

This game studio literally got people to pay for a free game and people to buy the dlc songs

or how about their other game cytus:

which had "the million project" go on, and they reached their goal I might add.

I agree SIU would be a great mobile game with changes and stuff, I feel that's not even a debate. But FFR could be made into a mobile game fine. Just tbh I think we'd have to tone overall difficulty down / maybe add holds or what are those notes in sm where you have to press them semi rapidly.

btw yeah rayark is awesome and if ffr delved into a mobile game there's a lot we can learn from them. Just sayin' it CAN be done.

[XelNya]

Originally Posted by hi19hi19

This is really important.

Also HEAVILY agreed.

And tbh if the site wanted two people to handle it I could probably assist as well.