Flight Rising Discussion

[quote name="SystemsReady" date="2015-01-01 22:39:59"][quote name="bakurabox" date="2015-01-01 21:37:27"]@Clocks To be honest there are points where I'm very, [i]very[/i] tempted to point the admins in the direction of Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged's official IRC chat. I'm a mod there, and about 80% of the people in that chat are programmers, site/server owners, etc and nearly all of the regular users either work in IT or are learning it. The people who own/rent the servers for the site are friends of mine after years of being in the chat with them, and I'm fairly welly known/friendly with most of the chat and a lot of the programmers in there would be willing to help or point the admins in the right direction to getting the site actually going the way it should be if asked. :l I know Magick/Face are usually willing to host sites like this on the servers as well though I don't know if they're still accepting new sites at the moment. But ARG servers are pretty big to my knowledge and I suspect that server strain wouldn't be much of an issue for FR there? YGOTAS had a lot of users last time I was on and the site rarely if ever went down unless one of the admins did something silly.[/quote] I'm a PHP/SQL programmer with experience in data wrangling and web design, but...maaaan I have two jobs and will be having a full-time courseload over the spring semester, and I know the site probably can't pay for another programmer, so I've been biting my tongue about going "I could maybe do something". :|[/quote] Yeah, aha. I know one or two of my computer friends (as I refer to all my programming friends, apparently) would be willing to consult for free and maybe code one or two things, but with the cost of living or having their own jobs most of them would need at least some payment for their work or don't have time at all which seems to be a common theme when it comes to these things. I gave a vague description of how the event works to one of them just to get an opinion from the perspective of someone who does IT/coding for a living and isn't biased for or against the event, and I quote "ouch" and "sounds broken to me" in regards to NoTN. /shrugs a bit He'd probably offer a more constructive unbiased opinion of the event if he was able to see gathering/coli grinding in action though and not just screenshots and a vague description that I tried to keep neutral. But since he isn't a user all he can get are descriptions given by people who actually play FR.

@bakurabox I don't think the issue is the availability of programmers, it's really their refusal to hire any, or to work on FR themselves. They've contracted plenty of artists out (to do apparel or genes - osiem being one of the newer ones as far as I can tell - they did the smoke gene and have been doing items around the site since) but no one's bothered to find a replacement coder.

Admittedly coders are a lot more expensive, but it doesn't seem fair to me if Akiri OR Thrage are getting paid for 'programming' when it's obvious they're not doing any, or doing a tiny thing once a month. They're still site owners and can be paid as shareholders, but they should be removed from the position and hire someone full time if they can't handle it. This isn't some small hobby started with friends anymore.

I actually rather enjoy the fact that there is some stability in the way that festivals are handled really. Ya, ok so it's the "same idea or concept" every time, but to Me Personally, I prefer that. it you change every little thing every time there are complaints, or if you add in a new large thing every month or so, then the site might not feel the same or get too confusing after a while, of there might be too much stuff that it might be overwhelming. I think thepace that the admins are moving for the site right now is adequate, new site, new things every now and then. They cannot keep everyone happy, they know that, but they also know that they cannot appeal to every complaint or suggestion.

@Maelice Heh, thanks. To be fair, I think they know that they have transparency/communication issues... or they should, in any case. That's a common theme for them. I honestly think this site would be amazing if 1) they just sucked it up and started handling PR better - ie actually communicating with the userbase and 2) they got a coder on-board that actually views this as their full-time priority (whether that means Akiri refocusing on the site or them hiring someone else).

Usually people start arguing with me about the programming on the site so I'll just go over the common counterarguments here:

• Akiri was in a super bad accident! - yes, he was. Last january. And it was awful, and I'm glad he's recovering. But it's been a year since then, and in any case, if he was laid low, I honestly think they should have at least contracted a temporary coder so that we didn't have to wait a year for site updates to get done.
• It's not Akiri's first job! - yes, I know! And that's his choice, obviously. I just think if they want the site to grow (and don't we all?) then they are going to have to suck it up and get someone actually coding eventually. And if he or Thrage are getting paid beyond their ownership/shareholder profits, ie. for programming work... then, well, I just haven't seen much of it.
• They're doing behind-the-scenes work! - mm, maybe. I mean, I'm sure they are, but they're actually contracting to another company (LightSky) for a lot of that kind of administrative work as far as I can tell. And in any case, there are bugs on the site that are over a year old (first turn coli bug, not to mention all the others) and plenty of small-but-quality-of-life UI changes that could have been made throughout this time, but haven't been. It's obvious no one is really working on front-end stuff to present to the users.

And yes, this site gets a ton of updates - artistic updates. As Maelice has said, that's fine, but that puts us in a limbo state. Who's to say a new pet site won't crop up that has not only amazing art but active coders at some point? I can't say 100% if I would stay with FR if that were the case.

I hit the point where I got three eggs via strange chest drops almost a week ago, and I stopped grinding for a scroll.

This event isn't fun, because the Scroll drop rate is miniscule while the egg drop rate isn't.

This event is a distillation of many of the baffling and frustrating features of the site all rolled into one, so of course certain players are getting frustrated.

I've finally got an egg!
1204 chests and I got my first noc egg ;3;