Knowledge Base Contest Finished
Posted by Admin-Mat on 24 Oct 2016, 8:56 pm
After encountering a number of hurdles, the Knowledge Base Contest has been finalized and we are thrilled to have a new batch of player-written entries in our new Knowledge Base. We thank all of the members who participated in the contest, and congratulate the winners! There are some grand prize winners (who received the Spiny Mouse) we would like to invite to contact us for their PayPal prizes.
Second, the moderation team had a meeting and have made some additional changes to the rules and infractions. Most important is that moderators have noticed a need for different infraction point levels for sexual content violations. We now have three levels of infractions to address different levels of violations so that players who make a sexual comment aren't immediately permanently banned for violating the rule, and instead the punishment better fits the infraction. We also split the "exploitation" infraction into two, the new one being a lesser infraction, per moderator suggestion.
We have also introduced some new rules, which you can review on the rule page:
- Don't post frightening or sickening content. Frightening content is defined as graphic real life photographs or photo-realistic artwork indistinguishable from a photograph depicting violence toward humans or animals. Please note this rule isn't intended to police Painties, and exists because of issues with players posting graphic photographs in the forums to disturb others.
- Players may not use the reports function to file false reports about others. Players may not file multiple reports on the same issue, or contact multiple moderators, to have another moderator review the report when a report has already been resolved. Escalation of a report may only be done by contacting Admin-Deinmaar. This rule was added because we have had instances of players reporting others multiple times to get them in trouble despite no rule-breaking behavior having occurred (a form of harassment, unfortunately).
We have also clarified a handful of rules:
- Don't sell, or attempt to sell, your account, items, villagers, or any other Furvilla content (this does not include Painties) for real money. We have clarified this includes attempting to sell account contents.
- Doxxing is defined as posting the personal information of others, including their real name, address, location, IP address, school, real life photographs, or anything that may compromise their privacy. This is not allowed. Previously, this rule stated that posting personal information of Furvilla members is not allowed, and this clarifies a person does not have to be a Furvilla member to be protected under this rule.
Last, here are a couple of general updates:
- The Paintie Team is currently interviewing a new potential Paintie moderator. We are looking forward to potentially adding this new person to the team and are working toward training them for the opening.
- We will be testing the Protection Quotient feature (that was turned off in early beta testing) soon. Please make sure your warriors are prepared for testing as we will be turning it on and adjusting factors as necessary.
- The majority of the features that have been released in the last couple of weeks (such as the Giving Tree and Quests) are not complete yet. While you are welcome to play around with them in the meantime, we will not be formally announcing them until the features are complete with all of their art and rewards. The Quest feature, for instance, will likely be getting its rewards in late November after the Plush feature has been complete.
- We have heard a lot of your criticism regarding the changes we have made the last couple of days. While we understand your concern, we feel that your goals and ours are unfortunately not aligning. Our goal is to ensure a healthy economy for the game and fixing supply issues that have cropped up in the course of beta testing. We are studying the economy of the game and ensuring that any problems in supply and demand are addressed prior to the game opening (and there have been many, as you may have observed from most materials having no value except to sell back). While we know that our decisions have not been popular among the beta testers, we feel they are important for the health and longevity of the game when it releases, and the ability of the players, upon the game's release, to be able to enjoy their game experience. Please remember your job as beta testers is to test features and help us simulate the game's economy post-release so we can identify supply and demand issues, and not to play the game as if it were already released.
When considering future changes we make, please do not consider how it affects you as a beta tester. Please think as if you were a new player in the released game economy, and whether these changes will allow you to make money off the items you collect and craft by ensuring they require time and effort to achieve. The purpose of restrictive changes in the game's design is to ensure that supply isn't wildly outstripping demand. Players will not be able to sell their items if every player is capable of making them in excess.
Thank you!
People wouldn't be as upset if you hadn't removed the villager cap completely in the first place, and then left it like that for months. I understand your reasoning and I know what you're trying to do, but it's going to have a shockwave of consequences because of that choice.
I'm glad we're finally getting a news post and that you're listening to us, though.
" When considering future changes we make, please do not consider how it affects you as a beta tester. " then what is the point of the beta if beta testers can't tell how they feel about the game?
If we, beta testers, find an update hard to deal with, imagine how it will be fornew players who have no ressources and no idea how the game plays. And if they find it too hard, those new players will leave and never come back.
A lot of the feedback you get wouldn't be so rude if you TALKED with your userbase more often and WARNED them before those changes happen rather than just throw it in their face like " here you go, have fun; we did the right thing for "us" without asking our playerbase". Please learn to communicate with the users, they will give you good feedback if you ask them, don't throw random update to their face without asking and then wonder why they are mad or leaving the site all together.
The other thing that really makes this impossible to deal with is that it's not a 24 hour cooldown period, like it is for every other throttle in the game, it's a 24 hour waiting period, which means you have to plan for what you're going to be wanting to do tomorrow.
For a casual game, that's an insane level of bookkeeping.
You really haven't doen anything to restrict minimaxers. In the "worker" thread in the forums there have been several people telling me how, if I was interested in "minimaxing" animal handlers, I could work around all the recent changes. And if minimaxing the rules was my goal, I'd be happy to do that.
I'm a casual gamer and roleplayer. Most of the people who are going to be spending money on the site are going to be "casuals", because minimaxers are all about *not* spending money. Adding extra hoops for "casuals" to jump through doesn't seem in the game's best interests.
Ruby You can subscribe to the change log by going to Account Settings > Notifications, and there's an option to enable Change Log Notifications. Hope that helps!
Replacing the hourly caps with this 10 villager thing doesn't seem like it will do anything to balance the economy when now people can 10 explorers or warriors if they wanted. That actually seems like it will mess up the economy far more. There's still no cap to animal breeding either, so an AH villager with a large number of stables is going to breed just as many animals as multiple villagers with fewer stables, so it has absolutely no effect on that in the long run, other than maybe making players need to build/buy more stables. And you can't just dismiss if a large number of your beta testers is unhappy with a feature. They are supposed to give you feedback about features. And there was never any communication beforehand about this and it was a very unpleasant surprise.
PS how do you even 'subscribe' to the change log? I don't see the option to anywhere. Plus if this is supposed to be a major hub of communication, it needs to be more easily accessed than one tiny button on the news page.
Honestly I like the 10 working villagers thing and I find it is simpler than having to calculate a bunch of different numbers for different caps of a bunch of professions. This was what I had in mind from the start when the villager cap was removed: a small set of working villagers, and the rest are collections of art and characters.
However, please don't talk down to us(me?) like your beta userbase doesn't know how a pet site economy works. All changes I have suggested have been in favor of a more stable economy, and many threads I have read have also been healthy in their criticism. At this point, what we need is communication. If something isn't working, state what it is and why. Tell us what you are going to change. Give us a chance to compare and make suggestions. We aren't out to destroy the economy of the site- we all want to benefit from it. But the more you treat people like they are being greedy or childish, the less constructive criticism you will have along beta players overall.
I'm going to echo what a lot of others have said: honestly, there needs to be more communication like this--especially explaining BEFOREHAND about any changes. If you're wanting beta testers, the beta testers should be allowed to know what's coming up...so we have time to adjust. Otherwise you get the outcry you got.
COMMUNICATION IS KEY. And we really NEED that. It's simple to say "well you should subscribe to the changelog". Yeah, even those of us subscribed to the changelog? It's vague. It doesn't tell us the hows and whys like this post did. This is what we need more of--EXPLAIN the changes. Get us much more INVOLVED in the process.
I have been slightly vociferous and more quiet on-site over the changes and I think that I am entitled to at least provide constructive criticism over the things that have transpired of late.
Yes, the staff can do as they please to make the site more to the designs and intents that they originally envisioned for the site. I will not argue this point. However, there are points I WILL argue in regards to the treatment of the userbase.
You can NOT expect the users, as Beta Testers first and foremost to understand every intention behind the changes. That is where COMMUNiCATION comes in play. If it was the intent for Beta Testers to act as though they are New Players then sorry, but placing the site in a CLOSED BETA was not a smart move. It only proves to create a vacuum chamber in which once everything reaches a saturation point, stagnation will settle into the system. This is NOT where you gain the entitlement to treat your Beta Testers as though they are not playing the game correctly.
Also, like every single other pet game out there, there needs to be COMMUNICATION when changes are going to be made. You can't expect the userbase to accept something they haven't even been made aware of if you don't TELL THEM what is going to happen. You can't expect players who have been playing on the site, which is OPEN SAND BOX in design mind you, to automatically know HOW you want them to play on the site.
See what all of the above points include? Communication. No, being Beta Testers does NOT mean the userbase doesn't deserve to know what you're going to be doing. No, being Beta Testers does NOT mean you can implement features/restrictions/etc on a whim. No, being Beta Testers does NOT mean ignoring the criticism that the userbase has provided over the past poorly thought out implementations. And yes, they were VERY poorly thought out in implementation.
Communication, communication, communication. Without this very vital key the entire premise of opening the site on December 1st will be as nothing. There are already a lot of people on other sites who do not want to participate in Furvilla based on its negative reputation alone. And that's not even touching the very poorly thought-out rules regarding forum topics and subject matter.
I've been around since the second day of this site's registration for Closed Beta. I've seen the changes and honestly? I wouldn't recommend this site to anyone with how rapidly this site has deteriorated in quality as well as the staff's behaviour towards the userbase.