The Current Path of FFR

[justin_ator]

That post was full of heart and love and inspiration

naw but seriously, very happy to see this all happening as well.
PS. Jae, I'm gonna hit you up on Skype to talk about this photo hunt thing.

[Xx{Midnight}xX]

Anyways just a few thoughts from me on a serious note

The Admin team still seems to be all over the place. I know you guys are doing this out of a love of the site, the people, or because you like to do what you're doing for the site, but you guys seem a wee bit scatter brained in how things should be handled.

Chart quality: I don't care if it's for the official or whatever reason: STOP LETTING SONGS IN THAT DIDN'T GO THROUGH THE JUDGMENT PROCESS. You're insulting those of us who struggled to fix their chart(s) countless times to get it in, especially when the chart is disgustingly horrible.

The mods are as scatter brained as the admins and don't seem to know how to handle things. One mod will ban for evading the filter with the nbomb for 2 weeks and another will make it a 3 day ban or ect. Pick one and stick with it please. Again, I understand you guys do this of own free will ect and I (despite how it seems) respect most of you.

Also, I'd like to see a few things be fixed. We need to update the token level ranks to look like the public ranks for the vets. I don't know why this was never done. We need to get more events going. A few ideas: Back to school simchart week, Skill Token week v2, the photo hunt, game whoring competitions.

Probably messed up a bit of my phrasing ect but I hope you'll all get my general gist.

And yes I think there are a few issues with the community, but being one of the "bad posters" in terms of "quality" to most of you, I feel like I should avoid it in general.

[VisD]

Yeah a couple more forum/site admins would be nice. I'm sure there are enough people around who could do a decent job of helping to keep things running smoothly - after this official tourney, I don't think anyone can deny the current admin team need a bit of help.

We also need more skill tokens to keep more people around, especially of the 'token chain' variety. That one gave a true sense of accomplishment with each new step, and it'd be nice to see one of those. A really long one that went all the way from, say, an FC on Lunar Landing to an FC (or better, although anything more would be a D6 req) on Eclipse (Solar) would be really sick imo - also, this doesn't mean changing all of the songs after the first to skill tokens, but rather letting each 'stage' unlock a new song.

Hell you could even have one right now with songs just about space and shit:

Trip to the Moon 1
Lunar Landing 12
Forgotten Planet 19
Solar Force 27
Moonbeam 35
Calling Mars 42
Through The Martian Hell 48
Luna Ascension 51/the brain of the moon 52/I breathe the cosmos 52
.
.(yeah i got bored)
.
Eclipse 88

The difficulty in making these token chains is just getting enough tptb to want to do it, and have the time to. That's why we need more of them.

[DN_Catastrophic]

This site definitely needs to change it's look and become more visually appealing, unless you are waiting for a 10 year anniversary thing to do that. The site is called FLASH FLASH REVOLUTION, yet the only things that are flash related on the site are the engines and chats. I mean I would expect to see the banner move when I first open the site or when I hover the mouse over a drop bar to click on a link that something interesting will happen. Maybe the page even filters into the link you just clicked. I mean didn't we have something 2 years ago where any member could write what they thought the site needed to fix, change, add or remove? I mean it's been 2 YEARS!!! That's a pretty long time and even though I'm not on here as much as I used to be, I still haven't seen anything progress aside from a few quick additions. I feel like we just wasted our time with that! I know I wrote a VERY long response when the staff gave us that opportunity. Don’t get me wrong though I know there is the new R2 engine that Velocity created; but how many other staff members are there or others with the ability to do things that can work on these different tasks, yet there isn’t anything being done about that.

The links that need to be emphasized on this site aren't, such as the link to the actual game. It's so small that I'm sure there are people that struggle to even find it at first! Why isn't it something prominent enough to make people interested to just click it and see what the game is about? I feel like this site has turned into a place where people only worry about their profiles or only feel like talking through the forums. Even though I know that people do play the game, that’s just what this place honestly feels like now.

On top of that, didn’t Velocity make an awesome MP for the Velocity engine?! I know where I can find the link to it, and I know a lot of you regulars know where to also, but I know for sure that any non-regular or anyone that wasn’t here for that doesn’t even know it exists!!! What’s up with that? I would think the link would be posted somewhere noticeable for anybody to have easy access to! But no!!! It’s vanished and been forgotten along with the thread and front page post!! I’m sure if I didn’t suggest to put a link to the R2 engine on the FFR Community section, that it would have vanished as well along with the thread it’s posted in!

Another thing I noticed as I scrolled through this thread, I read some posts about there being different threads/stickies with information that is already given to help people understand the game more. I mean I've seen them and I know where they are, but if you want people to actually find and read these stickies (and by people I'm talking about the people that aren't regulars) you need to place these 'important' threads, or the information within them, in a place that people will know how to find. A place like the FAQ page. I mean we see people post threads all the time of them not knowing certain things or where to go and then you have a regular just link them to a thread. Why go through the trouble of doing that if you can simply put all of this information in one place that is easily accessible.

If people are going to complain about songs being too hard, there aren’t enough easy songs, there aren’t good sounding easy songs and that people only like stepping more complex songs; then just make multiple difficulties for each song!! Everyone can be happy with the song, everyone has an equal opportunity to progress as well as try a harder difficulty on a song they enjoy to play and it won’t seclude anybody from being able to play something because ‘it’s too hard’!!

I feel like even this thread is just going to turn into another ‘let’s do something to help ffr’ thread that the staff may read over or skim through, but nothing will get done and the community will have just wasted their time posting in. I probably wasted my time writing this because, again, there are so many other threads like this.

[hi19hi19]

Originally Posted by qqwref

That would be nice, sure. It's definitely a serious problem that there are no real rewards for newer players who are getting used to the game. Everyone on the forums thinks you're useless until you're mid D6, for instance. We also need something listing the best easy files for learning (e.g. ignore anything legacy or anything by Silvuh) in order to get people used to the game. Hell, even veteran players have lag issues and get intimidated by the massive songlist. That's just embarrassing.

But we've also got serious issues keeping old players happy. I'm only still here because I have a handful of friends. The moderating staff members abuse their power left and right and take constructive criticism as a personal insult, the coding/sysadmin staff members are almost completely absent and take months to get even simple stuff done (if they do it at all), and the broken judgment process constantly lets shitty files that nobody wants to play sit in the game forever. And that's not even mentioning the serious community issues that nobody seems interested in fixing. Even if we can make the game fun for beginners, the game will never go anywhere until the active players are happy with it.

lol I love this post

queef spittin' the truth and nothing but the truth all day

[Rebirth0]

This thread is making me want to get 100% back into this game and community again. Any input or help you staff bros might need, I can help. I've got plenty of ideas for events and things to fix/upgrade

[dore]

Cool stuff going on in this thread, here's an idea I have re: tutorial.

Use an achievement system for a tutorial. That way the tutorial isn't a lecture, it's an exploration. For example:

Goal: To make a player learn how to adjust speedmods
Achievement: Pass a song with three different speed settings.
The have a drop down or [?] or something for the player to click on to teach them how to do this. The player will learn the mechanics of changing the speedmod as well as be forced to experiment and find out the pros/cons of this adjustment. You could do similar things for mods, key setup, etc.

From there, you could have achievement trees for songs. Pass 3 rock songs of difficulty 40+. Pass 3 rock songs of difficulty 60+. etc.

Link the achievements to credits so that in-game goals (unlocking new songs, challenges, etc.) are linked to these achievements so there is an in-game reward for these achievements. Hell, I'd be willing to write up some achievement trees even though I don't have any experience on the implementation side, I've got a couple weeks before I start my job and have some free time.

[~Zeta~]

Could only skim through most of the posts because I can't tell how long I'll have internet. But I'm very surprised what FFR is capable of (in the very good way). Maturity +1.

Originally Posted by One Winged Angel

Plus if people are really serious about that FFR RPG and it actually becomes an official part of the game (which would be pretty sick if you ask me), I'm sure a ton of things could be done with that in terms of monthly spon cons, quests, team/clan battles...personally I'd love if this RPG takes off and gives out profile badges for each 'quest' you complete either solo or with your party.

Possibilities, possibilities..

Quoting the latest post as this sums up the other kind posts that involved our little game/idea. Don't need a massive post, haha.

Since I'm involved in this I have to at least advocate an opinion: for it.
In case the others don't post: they're for it, too.
It'd be a dream if it happened, but it's really not up to us. We even have

story lines

coming up and many other ideas tossed around. Quite frankly, I'm not even sure it's possible or if people support it. We have 121 people that are participating in it but it's kept and advertised on the forum sidepanel and our signatures. Not to mention using Google spreadsheets as the main way of data storage since it's a public access for the team (if you guys didn't know, Google spreadsheets is pretty stupid because of how much I have to fight them).

I would do anything and everything I could to get it to happen. Even if I have to learn something. I wouldn't put hours of fun and talking for no use. Hell, one of the main purposes I thought of this was to spark interest in FFR. It seems like it did for some for how little we could provide so if we had a grand scale of things, who knows.

Maybe another time or in the future. But FFR comes first before this.

Go FFR.

[Rebirth0]

We should do an event or a contest regarding a new FFR.

We could split into groups of 3 - 5 and work together within our groups to develop or write a story for the FFR game and submit them to the website. The admins or whoever check out all of the entries and vote on which is the best (or even have the public vote on it), and the winning group should have their names included in the credits or something. No monetary rewards or anything else, just the honor of their names being included in "development" of the game

[Xiz]

[justin_ator]

Originally Posted by dore

Cool stuff going on in this thread, here's an idea I have re: tutorial.

Use an achievement system for a tutorial. That way the tutorial isn't a lecture, it's an exploration. For example:

Goal: To make a player learn how to adjust speedmods
Achievement: Pass a song with three different speed settings.
The have a drop down or [?] or something for the player to click on to teach them how to do this. The player will learn the mechanics of changing the speedmod as well as be forced to experiment and find out the pros/cons of this adjustment. You could do similar things for mods, key setup, etc.

From there, you could have achievement trees for songs. Pass 3 rock songs of difficulty 40+. Pass 3 rock songs of difficulty 60+. etc.

Link the achievements to credits so that in-game goals (unlocking new songs, challenges, etc.) are linked to these achievements so there is an in-game reward for these achievements. Hell, I'd be willing to write up some achievement trees even though I don't have any experience on the implementation side, I've got a couple weeks before I start my job and have some free time.

This is actually a VERY good idea, in my opinion. It's a way for newer folks to have a guided experience in learning FFR's options. It'd be like a quest/task thing, even. Link it to credits, and add a button in next to quality and songlist with a checklist of things they can do to earn a few credits.. things like experimenting with speedmods, changing key setups, etc. Trying different genres and difficulties.

[stavie33]

k so now people are saying the same things I've been saying for 2 years now but no one liked me so no one paid attention to me then, they just thought anything beyond being happy with AAA's was dumb and too mainstream. So pretty much I agree if we want to expand there is SO much we can do with the site and the game.

[awein999]

Dev is back and Bix is helping out in development? I didn't even click this thread because I assumed it was just another drama infested hundreds of post bore fest. What a nice surprise

PS: qq for President of the United States of Amurica.

[stavie33]

Alright so to actually contribute now here were my old ideas for FFR I had a while ago, could probably come up with new ones and sorry if these were already stated in this thread I didn't read every post here but:

Rank Badges: Define some ranks based on stats/achievements in game and based on where you stand rank wise you have a badge representing how 'good' you are at the game. Good will not be purely 'can I AAA everything' but more of a ladder system encouraging people to try and move up. It can be like getting a certain number of FC's one a certain difficulty/certain number of AAA's overall, SDG's (since the new engine records them) or just passing stuff like VC's etc. It should have multiple requirements and have a pretty large ladder and amount of badges so beginners will be encouraged to push for the next rank but not feel an overwhelming gap, and each rank should consist of requirements that are not hard for beginners to work towards.

Ex. if FFR elite were rank, and it represents reaching comfortable VC level, have it be like: Have 1 VC AAA, 10 VC SDG's, 1 FMO FC, have 50 total AAA's, 200 total FC's, etc. It would start early on, with second level something like just passing a certain amount of songs and having maybe 5 FC's or something. Idk but I think you get what I'm saying. And have really cool badges.

On top of that we should have some achievements in general, and acquiring those achievements could also be a requirement for some of those ranks. As in have unlocked X Y and Z achievements as well. Achievements can be by song and should give CREDITS upon achieving, the amount based on the difficulty of the achievement, thus helping accelerate new players a bit who feel overwhelmed about 150,000 credit secret songs. I know quite a few who feel it takes forever to work up that many credits. It does if you aren't FC'ing stuff early on so this may help.

The shop should have more stuff. Credits just sit around now and do nothing once you have enough for all the secret songs. I think we should upgrade the game graphically and the interface itself (as people have said in this thread). If so (and having better characters or a purpose) you could make it so you can buy characters, arrow skins, backgrounds/layouts, maybe new background menu music. You know, like the shop's in DDR and Guitar Hero. Give credits more than just secret and purchased songs. Expand the shop.


The other idea I thought would be great for new players (and even maybe some pros) is have a practice category in FFR where there are files that only focus on a certain patterns, stream, JS, runningmen, trills, jacks, bursts, etc. They would be short and it would make it so noobie's can practice annoying stuff like runningmen without having to sit through long songs for one that's too hard for them. I remember specifically when I was starting out the ONLY way to get runningman practice if you weren't good enough for FMO/FGO files was with Classical Insanity, because it UNLOCKED Viennacore, so you had to go that or Uber Rave v2, which was obnoxious and limited. I'm not sure if these songs should count towards average rank (like skill tokens do, I'd prefer they not) but we can have practice files that help people get a pattern down. There should be multiple files per patter of increasing BPM and difficulty, and the further difficulties should be unlocked by mastering the earlier ones.

As in for stream, we can have a file that starts with 100BPM 16th stream, then one with 150BPM, then 200BPM, then 250BPM. You could make the 150 speed up towards the end to 180 or something but you get my point. It's gradual so beginners can work on honing a specific skill but not feel overwhelmed by having to play files too hard for them to work on it (like with jacks eww jacks). The sub genre should be called 'practice' or something.

+1 support for tutorials and tutorial achievements.
+1 support for achievements in general, like skill tokens, but should award credits instead, maybe some give a song and they should be relatively doable and NOT support anti PA etc. but support progress through the game, or certain things on certain songs

I also like the idea of having achievements per difficulty, encouraging mass playing. These should have large payouts. Stuff like per difficulty:
10's novice: pass all 10's
10's apprentice: get 'C' or better all 10's
10's transcendent: FC all 10's
10's master: Get below 50 goods on all 10's
10's Guru: SDG all 10's
10's God: AAA all 10's

something like that maybe to encourage playing through all the files but actually getting something out of it instead of just 'I should AAA all of these for my avrank'

[Pseudo Enigma]

+1 to the shop, but it's already been semi-considered already. Remember Blackweb? Around that time this idea was really, really popular. We made a bunch of skins for that which never got used or anything. Maybe it will pop up, but whatever. Maybe we should have a monthly skinning contest (maybe not that exact set of words..) and the winner gets a handful of credits and their skin in the game. Or even just the skin, since that's enough to make any gfx proud.

[Reincarnate]

We should immediately reinstate the Punch Tass page and Gambling Hall to help suck out some credits from this here economy. 8D

teeheehee

[00Razor00]

Originally Posted by Pseudo Enigma

+1 to the shop, but it's already been semi-considered already. Remember Blackweb? Around that time this idea was really, really popular. We made a bunch of skins for that which never got used or anything. Maybe it will pop up, but whatever. Maybe we should have a monthly skinning contest (maybe not that exact set of words..) and the winner gets a handful of credits and their skin in the game. Or even just the skin, since that's enough to make any gfx proud.

too bad BW doesn't exist anymore.

also +1 for Gambling Hall, plz

[ichliebekase]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

We should immediately reinstate the Punch Tass page

+1, and even see if it could be a "punch the admin/mod" page so you can punch whomever on staff you want :3

[Pseudo Enigma]

Originally Posted by 00Razor00

too bad BW doesn't exist anymore.

also +1 for Gambling Hall, plz

if I saw correctly, R^3 is Blackwebb. I think Velocity was just practicing on R^2 for the real thing. Anyway that's not important.

[justin_ator]

Originally Posted by Pseudo Enigma

if I saw correctly, R^3 is Blackwebb. I think Velocity was just practicing on R^2 for the real thing. Anyway that's not important.

What are you even talking about lmao.

Blackwebb was intended to be a new interface for the different parts of the site. While R^3 does have different site aspects (Friends list, multiplayer, stats, etc) it's not really where they were going with blackwebb. Jesse is right, Blackwebb was totally shelved and/or thrown out aside from a few ideas. The current R^3 layout is based on one of the designs created for the blackwebb skinning contest, however.