FFR: The New User Perspective And New FFR Ideas

[Xenorosth]

It is damned clear that this place ain't as active as it used to be. With easy tokens having 10,000, 20,000, even 190,000 gets, it's damned clear that this site has not grown. I can understand why people are leaving. They don't know the site exists. They thought it was immediately shut down 2009. That is what killed this place into being a remnant of what it used to be. Even saying that 1 million of the users were bots/dupes, that means that we still have less than 0.001 percent of people active on the sight at any given time. I haven't seen 750 users active since I was on 3 years ago.

So I decided to do this. I decided to take it upon myself to ask two of my friends to "try" this website. Not only to just play the game, but to also the actual website. And the results were... startling. The organization is bad, and it only takes simple fixes. I don't know if the staff have access to make new web pages, but these wouldn't be hard at all to make. I, someone who only knows the bare minimum, could probably figure out how to make most of these changes onto the website, because I'm aware that it is not easy to make massive overhauls. It's hard to simply "revamp" a site out of no where. There needs to be funding for it, and so on. However, from a new user perspective, here is what I found out. Simple things that could be changed to simply make the user experience better.

So. Ready for Overly exaggerated section titles? No? Well I don't care, lets get into it.

Point one: WHERE DA FAQ IS DEH GAME?!

So. Immediately, for a new person, this may be THE most damning thing. When I first show them www.flashflashrevolution.com the two people I used as testers did this: Play FFR-> Song List. Then they clicked the song and went. "What?" The drop down is confusing. One of them eventually figured out that you have to actually click "Play FFR" instead of look through the drop down. When I pointed it out, the person said "That's stupid. There should be a big button that simply says "Play FFR" nice and big." Conveniently, I thought of a place HERE (Hyperlinked because big picture). Now, obviously, it doesn't have to be, but it should be obvious where to go to play the game. Like, brain dead. Like. PRESS THIS RED BUTTON brain dead. Obviously, people aren't going to stick around if they can't find the game, and while us vets take it for granted, we're used to it. We've lived in this place longer than a high school drop out lives in their mom's basement, so of course it's easy for us to find.

Point Two: WTF IS A FC?!?!

So HERE (again large picture) is the automated message that Prawnskunk puts out that immediately on account make. Now, there is good news and bad news. These messages were found right away. The bad news is that there is little to no actual information on the website in these automatic messages. When I showed my profile, one person knew what a FC was, the other didn't. Neither knew what the tier points or AAA bar was. They wouldn't know what a SDG, or anything. This dictionary here is a start. But this needs to get to new users. How? Why not through the automated message?

Here are some other things that could and probably should be introduced, since all we touch are forums in this intro post.

• Skill Tokens
• Normal Tokens (soon to be revamped I hope!)
• FFR Events Forum
• Tier Points
• Leaderboards

The two people didn't even know tokens were a thing until I mentioned them. That is horrid. Token achievements is the one thing that drew me over to here from stepmania. It gave the sense of game progression, something that many other popular games lack. It was the SELLING point. These take up the most part of a profile. If you have all of them people, especially the new ones, think you're a fuckin' boss. That is the gold chain in the mudda fuckin' hood yo. Even spit a challenge in their face. Give 'em their first token. Pass Free Space. Flaunt what you got. First impressions matter, and this isn't just a forum. It's a game. The entirety of it. Show off your features, because right now, new people can't even find 'em.

Point Three: I DUNNO WHAT TOKEN TO DO!!!!

Here I will be blunt. The organization of the tokens right now suck. It is ass. Ass. So much ass. I asked each user which token would you want to, and both of them said "I don't know". I asked, "Well, what kind of achievement would you go for?" and the reply was simple. And easy one. Then I asked which ones are easy. They struggled to find them, and they went by the number of people who have beaten them. Logically it is sound, after all. Pity it took them both five minutes to figure out how to do it.

Then I explained that there are even "token chains", so certain tokens they couldn't even start on until they beat that song.

Here are logs that some it up as simple as possible.

[3:52]Xenorosth: Can you tell if any of the tokens have flow?
[3:53]Xenorosth: IE, unlock one to get the next challenge?
[3:55]Charkol: Flow as in one --> next?
[3:55]Charkol: As a user, I really, really wouldn't want to figure it out if it's not laid out for me.
[3:55]Charkol: I'd much rather like to be able to sort the tokens by song, especially if I'm trying to Achievement-complete a specific song.

As there is a massive "achievement whoring" community in gaming, I think that these should have a bit more ease of use attached. Solutions? Make a few subcategories of tokens. Show are these tokens in chains? How hard are they? How many people have done it?

In my opinion, there should not only be an ability to sort out these tokens by difficulty, which are easy, which are hardest, ect. There also should be something to show how many tokens you have on the page, and there should be a way to filter out the ones you have finished to see the ones you haven't done yet. Or vice versa if you want to stroke your own ego. Categories should be: Easy, Medium, Hard, Insane. Perhaps even sort out the PA accuracy ones from the anti PA ones.

******************************************************************

From here on out, while there are many more minor things that bugged them, those were the top major flaws. Here, I'm going to be stating a few suggestions that may, or many not be possible. So. Here we go. And yes. More exaggerated bitchy titles.

Suggestion one: I WANT MY OLD FRIENDS BACK

A lot of people left. A lot. Some were duplicate accounts, some weren't. But how many people came back after the crash? How many even remember this place? Well, it's time to remind them. I suggest sending an email to every account on FFR to acknowledge that this place still exists. I don't know how hard that will be, but simply put, I think even if it's a 0.01% return of users, that still will double community size.

Suggestion two: FFR ISN'T THE ONLY PLACE

I'm not going to lie. I didn't find FFR by googling online dance dance revolution. I learned about it on a site known as kongregate, a site with a MASSIVE amount of games. Placing your games here would generate a lot of exposure.

So why not spread the game? I know it's not done. Hell it is done HERE under a false name. I'm fairly sure they're hijacking it and trying to call it their own. But that's another thing.

Since the game was down, Kongregate has taken their version off. I suggest the staff, or someone, put the new R^3 engine.

Suggestion three: WE WANNA HELP TOO

Make a donation button. It's as simple as that. This place gains no funds. It's non profit. Not only is it non profit. It's debt inducing. You'd be surprised that if there was a simple small donation area that you guys could get funding for some of the real upgrades. We all know that this site needs updates. Badly. So let us, the community, make our community better, or even just lessen the burden on the great people who make the site. Make a terms of agreement when they donate, and it is as simple as that.

For now I am done. This is what I, personally think about users leaving, and secondly, how two people who have no previous relation to this site view it. However, I have more ideas, including an entire reformatting of how tokens are displayed on the token page. An admin can contact me for details about a set up, and a rough draft of it if they are interested.

[SKG_Scintill]

tl;dr

[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.

[XelNya]

I do like the concept of having a donation button (But of course ffr has to stay non profit due to how permissions work, does that count as long as it goes towards the site only?)

(That reminds me, I need to buy a shirt...)

[Xenorosth]

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.

With the current system, it'd be very hard to remove songs. Tokens are attached to some of them. They'd have to be remade/replaced. This was one hour of basic sight navigation. As I said, this is just a start.

Also SCG, you're a noodle.

Originally Posted by XelNya

I do like the concept of having a donation button (But of course ffr has to stay non profit due to how permissions work, does that count as long as it goes towards the site only?)

(That reminds me, I need to buy a shirt...)

The donations would have to stay for the sight only, and to help cover costs.

[XelNya]

I think Legacy is fine as it is, my only complaint is that they count in level ranks. Though I wouldn't be opposed to changing the genre name to be like "BNS" or something that indicates they're maybe not the place to start.

But that's kinda why the wheel starts on dance one could argue.

Like there's a bunch of small common sense changes we could make to the site I think, and luckily dev team's actually been doin' a few of 'em actually. (Props guys.)

We cleaned up and reorganize the forum.

Tokens are at least getting a partial rework.

The event's team is doing some pretty cool events lately too.

(Not to mention #OfficialHype <3)

What I WISH we could do is get a popular youtuber to spread the game around.

[TC_Halogen]

I'll personally address this entire post when I get home later today, but I can tell that you're not the most well-informed regarding some of the workings of the site based off of some explanations.

[Xenorosth]

Originally Posted by TC_Halogen

I'll personally address this entire post when I get home later today, but I can tell that you're not the most well-informed regarding some of the workings of the site based off of some explanations.

I'll admit. I'm not. These are, just as said, suggestions, and what new people view the sight like. I thought it'd be productive to put out there.

[gold stinger]

Originally Posted by Xenorosth

Even saying that 1 million of the users were bots/dupes, that means that we still have less than 0.001 percent of people active on the sight at any given time. I haven't seen 750 users active since I was on 3 years ago.

Just going to say that's not necessarily how websites work. You will very rarely if at all see a website with more than 0.01% of it's total users online at the same time. Many people make an account, play for a week and then forget it, or just make an account and don't even bother playing because of a forum thing from a google search for example, and thinking making an account will give them permissions to view certain forums.

a good example of an analogy like that is League of Legends. 5,000,000 concurrent players online, ~90,000,000 active monthly, and 100's of millions of uncounted, inactive accounts. You take numbers scaled to our current activity or even better, like 5,000,000 / 500,000,000 reasonably, it's 0.01%.

If you wanted FlashFlashRevolution to match those numbers, you would need ~19,507 (1,950,698 * 0.01) active users at any given time, and I'm pretty sure that FFR has been absolutely nowhere near that number in its entire history.

[gold stinger]

Also pretty sure the selling point of FlashFlashRevolution was to have multiplayer and leaderboards of scores of which people can compare their skill to. Not tokens afaik.

[Xenorosth]

Originally Posted by gold stinger

Just going to say that's not necessarily how websites work. You will very rarely if at all see a website with more than 0.01% of it's total users online at the same time. Many people make an account, play for a week and then forget it, or just make an account and don't even bother playing because of a forum thing from a google search for example, and thinking making an account will give them permissions to view certain forums.

a good example of an analogy like that is League of Legends. 5,000,000 concurrent players online, ~90,000,000 active monthly, and 100's of millions of uncounted accounts. You take numbers scaled to our current activity or even better, like 5,000,000 / 500,000,000 reasonably, it's 0.01%.

Assuming we have 950,000 bots, dupes? 500/1,000,000 is 0.0005, and that is FAR less than 0.01. By a significant margin. If we only had 500,000 accounts? That's still not right. 0.001. That's still 10 times less retention.

[RenegadeLucien]

Originally Posted by gold stinger

5,000,000 / 500,000,000 reasonably, it's 0.01%.

That's 1%, not 0.01%.

Not saying we have to compete with League though, considering it is the most popular PC game like, ever.

[gold stinger]

m'bad, was attempting to do fast math and still suck apparently.

correct math is ~195 (@0.0001%), which is the boost in people viewing this website when we accomplished getting stepmania into ADGQ. That sure helped activity (sike it didn't not really but hey, it did slow this website down to a crawl because there were many people viewing the website)

Your first suggestion, you could probably fix yourself if you wanted other friends that you know of to play the game. Get the game out by word in what FFR can't. I'm pretty sure FFR can't considering some staff members don't have access to certain e-mail accounts regarding FFR, like the official 'Contact Us' e-mail / Forum Administrator e-mail account. Afaik only Synthlight has access to it. He's MIA.

Kongregate would get us a lot of exposure yeah, but 2 issues with that: First is in-game song permissions. In which some song permissions for the game were only obtained on the basis that FFR would be the only people with access to the content, and secondly it would increase site traffic at Kongregate, not necessarily FFR, which was the imposed plan yeah?

Also the hijack link has been there for literal ages. It just ports to the webpage lol.

Third suggestion, we can't make the game for-profit, again, because some in-game song permissions were obtained on the basis that FFR is not making a profit off of it. Even with donations, it's a very iffy line and the donation raising that happened more recently was in favor for the tournament happening and not the actual game.

[Hakulyte]

I guess something could be done about making "Play FFR" easier to see/find.

As for FCs, the FAQ used to be part of the drop down menu on the site. I don't believe it's intended that it's no longer here. (I'm not talking about FFR Wiki) It does contain information that will lead you to the Picture Dictionary you linked.

As for the tokens, if you go here or here, you'll notice that tokens have "X Users have found token Y!" or "X number of people have unlocked skill token #Y". It can be used as an indicator of how hard it is.

Considering we will only have skill tokens in the future most likely, I think it would make sense to try to categorize them by difficulty to unlock.

I'd say we do need to centralize information to some extend.

I personally think we should have something along the lines of..

"New to FFR? Read this! Check these links!" etc.

- Standalone Guide / FFR The Game
- Credit Shop / Credits needed for Secret Songs / Purchased / Gambling Hall
- Daily Statistics / Others stats / Song list etc.
- Leaderboards
- Skill Tokens page / Token levelranks
- General basic things to know like updating your levelranks by checking them. / AAA|FC|TPs / using R^3 to its full potential, knowing about velocity/legacy. MP / replays etc.
- Profile editing
- Playing StepMania / Making songs / Song Submission etc.
- Using Forums / Forum overview / rules / sections etc.
- Other things e.g: compare_tool & other less known links.

Yeah, as you can see there's plenty of things to mention and get in details about. Actually, a good part of these are in the FAQ, I guess it's more about finding what can be quickly useful and not said already.

[Xenorosth]

Originally Posted by gold stinger

m'bad, was attempting to do fast math and still suck apparently.

correct math is ~195 (@0.0001%), which is the boost in people viewing this website when we accomplished getting stepmania into ADGQ. That sure helped activity (sike it didn't not really)

Your first suggestion, you could probably fix yourself if you wanted other friends that you know of to play the game. Get the game out by word in what FFR can't. I'm pretty sure FFR can't considering some staff members don't have access to certain e-mail accounts regarding FFR, like the official 'Contact Us' e-mail / Forum Administrator e-mail account. Afaik only Synthlight has access to it. He's MIA.

Kongregate would get us a lot of exposure yeah, but 2 issues with that: First is in-game song permissions. In which some song permissions for the game were only obtained on the basis that FFR would be the only people with access to the content, and secondly it would increase site traffic at Kongregate, not necessarily FFR, which was the imposed plan yeah?

Also the hijack link has been there for literal ages. It just ports to the webpage lol.

Third suggestion, we can't make the game for-profit, again, because some in-game song permissions were obtained on the basis that FFR is not making a profit off of it. Even with donations, it's a very iffy line and the donation raising that happened more recently was in favor for the tournament happening and not the actual game.

Well someone has to have the email. And no, I can't. The people that have left I know are well out of reach. Plus I can't reach the scale that my main idea can.

Second, while it may increase the total of people going to Kongregate, it'll also increase the amount of gameplay of the game massively. Trust me, the people who are here will not randomly go to Kongregate. Plus if you want to make an account, you have to go in through the FFR website. It would be a traffic increase in total. Simple. Copywrite issues wouldn't happen either, because there is still no "for profit" aspect here. Half of the songs where made when FFR was on Kongregate regardless.

Third, the suggestions that I have made would not be donating to the actual user's out of pocket expenses. It wouldn't be "for profit". It would be "for the website", or "for the engine", which are both independent of any music relations.

As for Hakulyte, dead on except one thing. You can't just go by view count now. Clearly with people down, less people are getting the new tokens, which makes them "look" harder. In fact massively harder. Like. Hard as FUCK. 100,000 gets vs 200? Holleh molleh.

[RenegadeLucien]

Well, FFR USED to be on Kong, hosted by Tass. It was a separate build, with only like 8 songs, no speedmods, no score recording, and plastered all over it was "For more features, flashflashrevolution.com." It was taken down years ago, though.

I don't know if it helped with exposure. I'd assume it did, at least to some extent.

[gold stinger]

Originally Posted by Xenorosth

Third, the suggestions that I have made would not be donating to the actual user's out of pocket expenses. It wouldn't be "for profit". It would be "for the website", or "for the engine", which are both independent of any music relations.

That's not how permission clauses work

If the website is making a clear profit from donations it's technically for profit.

This is how streamers on twitch make money they get donations it's for profit

This is how people playing music in the subways make money they get donations it's for profit

This is how people beg on the streets for people to give them money they get donations they do it for a profit

People that work on FFR can try to sidestep the matter, but it doesn't stop the scary reality that it might cross a label permission or other permission and they want a profit of it and will sue over it or pull their content from the game over it.

[Xenorosth]

Originally Posted by gold stinger

If the website is making a clear profit from donations it's technically for profit.

Damn straight they do. Because guess what. We aren't profiting. We're using it to buy other technologies to upgrade the forum boards. Upgrading costs. Staying in the times costs. The website is dated as fuck dude. WE aren't going to profit at all. FFR already causes us to be in the HOLE.

[gold stinger]

Originally Posted by Xenorosth

Well someone has to have the email.

Also prepare to get blasted but I am 99.9% sure that absolutely no one besides Synthlight has access to that e-mail because I remember addressing it awhile ago and that's what I was told.

[Xenorosth]

Anyway, off to work. Will reply after. Or during.