Joxuu wrote:
Sorry for lengthy post. I don't usually like posting stuff like this but I done did it now.
I think it is good to discuss things and even though I do disagree with most parts you said about MOBAFire. There are a lot of things I understand of how they went wrong and that I understand the struggle of the admins, but just because there are barriers for the staff doesn't mean we cannot stay critical of what is going on. The site was great and still has a lot to it, but that doesn't mean we should always be okay with things even when we see that things could be so much better.
Anyhow, I already said most of my thoughts about it in the first post so I will only adress things that I haven't done properly yet.
Joxuu wrote:
This is basically what happens when you are in a community you care about for a long time. I think many who have been here for a longer time can relate to the fact that Mobafire was "more interesting" or "funnier" few years ago. It's a circle where old users move on and new users come in. You had these older members active and they were posting stuff you could relate or react to. Later on people feel like they have seen everything and their old friend are quitting so Mobafire becomes boring for them.
It's always harder to find "replacements" to the old friends to experience "the golden years" again. (this is kind of nasty statement to say "replacements for older friends" but I don't know how to put it in words other way). Most of the people who joined before all the changes would rather go back to the state Mobafire was few years ago because that's the more familiar one and those were the times when everyone they knew were more active. New members join, league evolves and changes are often made accordingly as years go and you kinda just have to adapt.
I can recognize this based on my 7 year experience in other community before I joined Mobafire. Now I'm the angry old guy in a corner complaining about the changes and how 2010 was the "golden year" when everyone I knew were active and posting on forums but now I don't recognize many of the current users and I've stopped visiting there. It's an old community and the game the community is based on has lost it's popularity in great amounts and I think league of legends will hit that spot sooner or later in the future years. People will find league to not be fun and move on.
It's always harder to find "replacements" to the old friends to experience "the golden years" again. (this is kind of nasty statement to say "replacements for older friends" but I don't know how to put it in words other way). Most of the people who joined before all the changes would rather go back to the state Mobafire was few years ago because that's the more familiar one and those were the times when everyone they knew were more active. New members join, league evolves and changes are often made accordingly as years go and you kinda just have to adapt.
I can recognize this based on my 7 year experience in other community before I joined Mobafire. Now I'm the angry old guy in a corner complaining about the changes and how 2010 was the "golden year" when everyone I knew were active and posting on forums but now I don't recognize many of the current users and I've stopped visiting there. It's an old community and the game the community is based on has lost it's popularity in great amounts and I think league of legends will hit that spot sooner or later in the future years. People will find league to not be fun and move on.
MOBAFire had a huge strength in the community department due to the fact that even the little guys got their publicity and that everyone could share their voice without much issues. Now these things are partially taken away for a long time now, we can see the community diminish into becoming something less active as we go and there has been no actions to solve this. These actions need to start soon.
Joxuu wrote:
I can understand the admins being less active and front page being changed too. Mobafire has grown to be a large community (+1 million registered users). Admins will always have more to do and take care of as the community grows larger so they will have less time to interact with the community. As the interaction decreases between admins and community, admins will start to feel more as just admins and not the basic grass level community (this also sounds kinda mean towards admins but I don't know how to put this in better words either but you get the idea). This of course causes displease in community and a extreme example is from the other community I was in where a update post was just released and a post straight up flaming the admins is more liked than the actual update post. In my opinion Mobafire has decent interaction with community (could be better if I'm 100% honest here) but there's always community managers communicating with the community more which is nice.
The active community has also shrunk, not increased. This should make it easier for the admins to involve themselves since there are less people to take into account.
And if the admins interaction with the community would be "decent", then the prime system and commendation systems weren't announced the way they were.
Joxuu wrote:
Changing front page and Mobafire Prime are understandable to me. Websites and companies are built to be profitable and so is Mobafire. From a business point of view, it's lot better to have ad running in front page than having a blog post tracker that isn't that popular. It would be different if it was really useful/used/wanted back to the day it was there but it wasn't that big of a deal. It was neat but it wasn't popular. Mobafire needs to pay different bills, fees and paychecks for employees and it's quite costly I'd imagine so income is needed. I won't go into MFN Prime as there's the thread in front page alread and I don't really have a opinion on it or it's benefits. It's voluntary and doesn't affect the normal user's experience or have any world changing functions. More income usually means more fancy stuff too like the inhouse RP giveaway.
It is a system that was broken ever since they decided to remove the new guides from the front page and hasn't been touched upon ever since. On a guide website, there are no more discussions about guides. How often do you actually see people talk about guides in the activity feed? (I don't count randoms praising their best buddy's guide)
This is a website where anyone can make guides and anyone can vote on them. It makes no sense at all that there is no sign or form of publicity for these new guides at this moment. There needs to be done something about it for a long time now and instead of working on these important things, the MOBAFire's staff decided to put time and energy into an almost fair system called Prime and a broken system called Commendations just to get more money. This would be fine if it was an actual fair business model that was discussed with the community beforehand but instead it isn't. Now we are just stuck with a system behind a pay wall and still no solution to the real problems.
Change is gooooood
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I'm just going to answer to some of these things myself because I'm not directly involved with MF Prime and commendations and whatever, so as unbiased as can be, and I still think some of the negative reactions to it are ridiculously overblown and unfair, and the arguments used against flawed and overexaggerated. Most of these quotes will be from what Meiyjhe and others have said as to why they think the Prime/Commend system is bad.
"Ridiculously overpriced". I agree, I think they set their prices too high to start off with. And who does that hurt? Them. Because no one will buy them. It doesn't affect the MOBAFire userbase at all if these are overpriced, either the benefits are worth the price for you or they're not. It's absolutely nothing to make a fuss about. If it were forcing you to buy them or if you were negatively affected by their introduction then I would understand, but neither is the case.
It rewards both; the website is rewarded in cash, the commended is rewarded through a month of Prime and the badge thingy on their guide. Either you think the price is worth it for the person you want to reward or you don't. If you think it is, feel free to buy it, if you don't think it's worth it, then don't. It won't affect you.
This is the first step I've ever seen MOBAFire take to try and make money directly through their users rather than through ads, so thinking they"see us more and more as a paycheck" is a huge over-reaction.
- "people pay full price for an unfinished service if they want to test it out"
There's not much to test; are the features things you're willing to pay money for or not? Do you hate sigs for some reason? Do you for some reason not use adblock and want to get rid of ads (or want to do so without taking away from MOBAFire's revenue)? Is that cool profile personalization something you want? Do you want higher stream advertisement? Do you have 10 dollars to blow on features like these?
They've released it as it is so they can test the waters: How many people are buying them? A respectable amount, or too little? If too little, what's people's problem with it? Features not good enough? Too expensive? Is the product perfect as it is or does it need some adjustment?
The best way to test this is literally to just release it. Similarly to how Riot tend to not give a **** about people saying stuff like "rito plz this nerf is too harsh" when they make PBE changes. The best way to actually determine the effectiveness of their product (the latest patch of League of Legends) is to release it and see what adjustments they need to make for the next patch, or in this case, the next set of changes to their Prime system. Pre-release feedback is good and all but the best way to judge its effectiveness is to judge its performance.
In theory this shouldn't have caused any regulars to quit the site, because if they don't want it then they're not really affected, but for some reason people are over-reacting so hard, with reasons ranging from "why did you work on this and not what we asked for?" to "greedy corrupt moneyholics, how dare you give me the option to pay for something grr". I don't think they saw this coming and I certainly didn't expect such a harsh reaction from the community while reading about it until I started reading the comments.
Yes, true, "the more clicks necessary, the less people are willing to see it", but it's not completely relevant to this case; generally that argument refers to each individual click resulting in loading time, followed by bringing up another entirely different page than the one you were on. In this situation it's literally just 1 click = you immediately see the comment. If you actually want to read the comments on a guide, then you would uncollapse the comment to read it, not read every comment but skip the ones that require clicking. If you're not reading the comments, sure, then you won't bother clicking it, and that comment gets slightly less visibility because there's no chance of you scrolling past it and deciding to read it when the few words you read catches your eye; but I would argue that in this case it actually gives that comment more visibility, because in my case if I saw a collapsed comment I would think to myself "I wonder what this comment says that made the author want to collapse it"; the other, visible comments are the ones that don't stand out at all.
On Reddit, having to click hidden comments has NEVER deterred me from wanting to see what it said if I was going through the comments, so I think this whole argument of "limiting freedom of speech" is a huge over-reaction as well. So is the argument of "paying money to silence other users".
You know what I'll be using that collapsing system for? Collapsing any comments that I've already dealt with/answered/don't need to respond to, to more easily see what comments I haven't yet answered. The downside for me is that I don't need the comments to be collapsed for other people, just for myself, but if they want to read it, it's one load-free click away; less effort than reading just a single sentence of their comment. And other people may actually have a use for it the way it is, using it to hide small, useless comments such as "-1", "bad runes", "i like it! :D", "+1 ^_^" etc. and therefore highlighting the comments that encourage discussion and they consider more worthwhile reading for anyone that may read through their comments. If you're just collapsing comments that give negative criticism, you're often baiting people into reading them anyway, and then they're going to think "lol this guy gets so butthurt at any kind of criticism". Does that sound like something worth worrying about? I certainly don't care about some random *******'s reputation.
In your opinion. In its current state. The idea doesn't sound bad to me, just the execution, which they intend to improve on.
SLIGHTLY more noticeable, and the only way it does that is that you see the badge a guide received and silently think to yourself "someone appreciated that guide enough to spend money awarding them". Doesn't that mean the guide is pretty likely to be worth your notice if someone appreciated it that much? I realize that the reason this gives off a bad vibe is that it stinks of pay2win, but it's not, because all it does is make you slightly more likely to read the guide over any others, but it doesn't make you any more likely to upvote because it doesn't make their guide good, just more noticeable; and funnily enough that can bite them in the *** if their guide sucks and it brings them a few more downvotes than they would have otherwise received. It's not "pay2win" or anything like that because 1. They don't pay for it themselves. 2. Even if they get a friend to do it for them, there is no "win" other than the free month of Prime and badge, and 3. The little extra attention they get will only help them if their content is actually deserving of that attention, and it'll hurt them if it's not; in other words, rewarding people who genuinely got their commendment by having a really good guide that people wanted to show their appreciation for, and backfiring for people with bad guides that tried to abuse the system through a friend.
What do I, as a user uninvolved in the community that doesn't care about Rep (literally like 95% of the guide writers maybe?), gain from Rep? Nothing. What do I, as Vapora Dark, gain from Rep? Nothing, I'm already a Veteran, that's as much as I could personally want from the Rep system. In fact I'm annoyed that someone recently +Rep'd me because it changed my Rep from a clean, beautiful, ******-inducing "400" to a dirty, Trump supporting, satan worshipping "401".
What do I, as the #1 Talon guide author, get from another upvote? Nothing; I've had the top guide for years and I've stopped caring about the individual votes that I used to appreciate so much, and I'm not the only one in this boat.
I'm unlikely to get any commendations, but if I were, I would genuinely be happy that someone took it upon themselves to spend their own money thanking me for my work, and that I get some bonus features, some of which I may enjoy, some which I may not, for a month, for free.
Scouted guides are (in theory, sadly not in practice) MOBAFire's elite; these trusted MOBAFire users (ideally high Elo players/people who are verified to know their stuff about the game) highlighted these set of guides as, in their opinion (which means a lot if these users are respected and thought of as knowledgeable), some of the best guides of MOBAFire. Commendations = "thanks, I really like your guide!". They can co-exist, and they don't fill the same role at all.
"****ton of money". Again with the overexaggerating - they're just trying to increase their revenue through a system that provides small benefits to those who are willing to pay a small amount for it; those that think it worth it have the option to pay for it, those that don't are free to ignore it, as it won't hurt their MOBAFire experience at all.
Wow, increasing their revenue! That means earning more money!!! Yes, it does. And what do they do with this money? It helps them pay for rent, food, all the essentials, and generally increases their quality of life; if you think they're rich billionaires trying to squeeze even more money out of us peasants, forget it. There's absolutely nothing unethical/morally questionable about this.
And don't forget that more revenue means they can afford to invest more resources into improving the website, which may including paying staff for the time it would take them to do small things such as making new guides visible again, improving the servers (which is important enough that they're working on it right now even, and this helps them fund things like this), and any other improvements they can make to the site which you might enjoy a lot but currently haven't thought about.
You are a source of revenue. Even if you don't pay for anything, you are their revenue. You've been using the site these past 4 years presumably accepting the fact that you are contributing to their revenue, and you use it because whatever drawbacks that presents to you, are worth the benefits, and if you do somehow have a problem with the fact that using their site is giving them ad revenue, and it's not worth using their site for, then you don't use it. If the drawbacks of Prime (the paywall) aren't worth the benefits, then you don't use it. Nothing has changed in that regard.
Some things are run through the vet forum, but either way that's not important. The community aren't here to run or shape MOBAFire (beyond just the community side of things), they're just here to use it if they like it. The devs might choose to gather feedback about potential changes in small communities if they consider it in their best interests, but they have no obligation to, and there's no reason for the average MOBAFire user to be angry if they choose not to.
MOBAFire is a business, and besides blog posts becoming less visible I don't recall any changes they've made that hurts the community, and even that isn't a big enough deal that it explains whatever your current issues are with the community that weren't an issue 3 years ago.
Well hopefully with all the extra resources they'll be able to invest in the site they'll choose to/be able to address some of the issues that many people feel MOBAFire faces.
I already said why I disagree with the idea that Prime limits freedom of speech and gives unfair benefits to those whose guides are commended. The "more clicks = less people see it" argument does make a lot more sense in the case of the new guides page being both hard to find and forcing you to go out of your way to reach it; collapsed comments are nowhere near as bad on that scale, not even enough to be problematic in any way IMO.
All in all, I think most of you are being super unfair to the MOBAFire team, some of you making them out to be some kind of money-hungry, greedy people that don't care about the little people. What they've done has almost no drawbacks, and the retaliation they're getting for it is completely undeserved, mostly based on misconceptions, misunderstandings and just people generally making mountains out of mole hills.
Quoted:
a commendation system that is rediculously overpriced
"Ridiculously overpriced". I agree, I think they set their prices too high to start off with. And who does that hurt? Them. Because no one will buy them. It doesn't affect the MOBAFire userbase at all if these are overpriced, either the benefits are worth the price for you or they're not. It's absolutely nothing to make a fuss about. If it were forcing you to buy them or if you were negatively affected by their introduction then I would understand, but neither is the case.
Quoted:
which rewards the website rather than the commended
It rewards both; the website is rewarded in cash, the commended is rewarded through a month of Prime and the badge thingy on their guide. Either you think the price is worth it for the person you want to reward or you don't. If you think it is, feel free to buy it, if you don't think it's worth it, then don't. It won't affect you.
Quoted:
makes it seem that staff sees the average MOBAFire user more and more as a paycheck rather than as a part of the community.
This is the first step I've ever seen MOBAFire take to try and make money directly through their users rather than through ads, so thinking they"see us more and more as a paycheck" is a huge over-reaction.
- "people pay full price for an unfinished service if they want to test it out"
There's not much to test; are the features things you're willing to pay money for or not? Do you hate sigs for some reason? Do you for some reason not use adblock and want to get rid of ads (or want to do so without taking away from MOBAFire's revenue)? Is that cool profile personalization something you want? Do you want higher stream advertisement? Do you have 10 dollars to blow on features like these?
They've released it as it is so they can test the waters: How many people are buying them? A respectable amount, or too little? If too little, what's people's problem with it? Features not good enough? Too expensive? Is the product perfect as it is or does it need some adjustment?
The best way to test this is literally to just release it. Similarly to how Riot tend to not give a **** about people saying stuff like "rito plz this nerf is too harsh" when they make PBE changes. The best way to actually determine the effectiveness of their product (the latest patch of League of Legends) is to release it and see what adjustments they need to make for the next patch, or in this case, the next set of changes to their Prime system. Pre-release feedback is good and all but the best way to judge its effectiveness is to judge its performance.
Quoted:
Once the community of MOBAFire is satisfied, then more regulars will stay more often on the website, giving more adrevenue and MOBAFire prime revenue.
In theory this shouldn't have caused any regulars to quit the site, because if they don't want it then they're not really affected, but for some reason people are over-reacting so hard, with reasons ranging from "why did you work on this and not what we asked for?" to "greedy corrupt moneyholics, how dare you give me the option to pay for something grr". I don't think they saw this coming and I certainly didn't expect such a harsh reaction from the community while reading about it until I started reading the comments.
Quoted:
The hiding of comments, however, goes against the concept of freedom that the website has to offer (it is one click away from being made visible, but it is still one click away)
Yes, true, "the more clicks necessary, the less people are willing to see it", but it's not completely relevant to this case; generally that argument refers to each individual click resulting in loading time, followed by bringing up another entirely different page than the one you were on. In this situation it's literally just 1 click = you immediately see the comment. If you actually want to read the comments on a guide, then you would uncollapse the comment to read it, not read every comment but skip the ones that require clicking. If you're not reading the comments, sure, then you won't bother clicking it, and that comment gets slightly less visibility because there's no chance of you scrolling past it and deciding to read it when the few words you read catches your eye; but I would argue that in this case it actually gives that comment more visibility, because in my case if I saw a collapsed comment I would think to myself "I wonder what this comment says that made the author want to collapse it"; the other, visible comments are the ones that don't stand out at all.
On Reddit, having to click hidden comments has NEVER deterred me from wanting to see what it said if I was going through the comments, so I think this whole argument of "limiting freedom of speech" is a huge over-reaction as well. So is the argument of "paying money to silence other users".
You know what I'll be using that collapsing system for? Collapsing any comments that I've already dealt with/answered/don't need to respond to, to more easily see what comments I haven't yet answered. The downside for me is that I don't need the comments to be collapsed for other people, just for myself, but if they want to read it, it's one load-free click away; less effort than reading just a single sentence of their comment. And other people may actually have a use for it the way it is, using it to hide small, useless comments such as "-1", "bad runes", "i like it! :D", "+1 ^_^" etc. and therefore highlighting the comments that encourage discussion and they consider more worthwhile reading for anyone that may read through their comments. If you're just collapsing comments that give negative criticism, you're often baiting people into reading them anyway, and then they're going to think "lol this guy gets so butthurt at any kind of criticism". Does that sound like something worth worrying about? I certainly don't care about some random *******'s reputation.
Quoted:
The commend system is one of the worst systems MOBAFire has made.
In your opinion. In its current state. The idea doesn't sound bad to me, just the execution, which they intend to improve on.
Quoted:
It makes guide writers more noticable when other people spend money on MOBAFire.
SLIGHTLY more noticeable, and the only way it does that is that you see the badge a guide received and silently think to yourself "someone appreciated that guide enough to spend money awarding them". Doesn't that mean the guide is pretty likely to be worth your notice if someone appreciated it that much? I realize that the reason this gives off a bad vibe is that it stinks of pay2win, but it's not, because all it does is make you slightly more likely to read the guide over any others, but it doesn't make you any more likely to upvote because it doesn't make their guide good, just more noticeable; and funnily enough that can bite them in the *** if their guide sucks and it brings them a few more downvotes than they would have otherwise received. It's not "pay2win" or anything like that because 1. They don't pay for it themselves. 2. Even if they get a friend to do it for them, there is no "win" other than the free month of Prime and badge, and 3. The little extra attention they get will only help them if their content is actually deserving of that attention, and it'll hurt them if it's not; in other words, rewarding people who genuinely got their commendment by having a really good guide that people wanted to show their appreciation for, and backfiring for people with bad guides that tried to abuse the system through a friend.
Quoted:
First of all, there is already a perfectly fine voting system and +rep system."
What do I, as a user uninvolved in the community that doesn't care about Rep (literally like 95% of the guide writers maybe?), gain from Rep? Nothing. What do I, as Vapora Dark, gain from Rep? Nothing, I'm already a Veteran, that's as much as I could personally want from the Rep system. In fact I'm annoyed that someone recently +Rep'd me because it changed my Rep from a clean, beautiful, ******-inducing "400" to a dirty, Trump supporting, satan worshipping "401".
What do I, as the #1 Talon guide author, get from another upvote? Nothing; I've had the top guide for years and I've stopped caring about the individual votes that I used to appreciate so much, and I'm not the only one in this boat.
I'm unlikely to get any commendations, but if I were, I would genuinely be happy that someone took it upon themselves to spend their own money thanking me for my work, and that I get some bonus features, some of which I may enjoy, some which I may not, for a month, for free.
Quoted:
Not only that, there is a system that would be perfect for this that is absolutely free and has a whole set of users for it: Scout points.
Scouted guides are (in theory, sadly not in practice) MOBAFire's elite; these trusted MOBAFire users (ideally high Elo players/people who are verified to know their stuff about the game) highlighted these set of guides as, in their opinion (which means a lot if these users are respected and thought of as knowledgeable), some of the best guides of MOBAFire. Commendations = "thanks, I really like your guide!". They can co-exist, and they don't fill the same role at all.
Quoted:
The commend system has no benefits to the website at all other than just trying to get a ****ton of money.
"****ton of money". Again with the overexaggerating - they're just trying to increase their revenue through a system that provides small benefits to those who are willing to pay a small amount for it; those that think it worth it have the option to pay for it, those that don't are free to ignore it, as it won't hurt their MOBAFire experience at all.
Wow, increasing their revenue! That means earning more money!!! Yes, it does. And what do they do with this money? It helps them pay for rent, food, all the essentials, and generally increases their quality of life; if you think they're rich billionaires trying to squeeze even more money out of us peasants, forget it. There's absolutely nothing unethical/morally questionable about this.
And don't forget that more revenue means they can afford to invest more resources into improving the website, which may including paying staff for the time it would take them to do small things such as making new guides visible again, improving the servers (which is important enough that they're working on it right now even, and this helps them fund things like this), and any other improvements they can make to the site which you might enjoy a lot but currently haven't thought about.
Quoted:
The main problem Bee's post addresses is the fact that mobafire is treating the community like a source of revenue.
You are a source of revenue. Even if you don't pay for anything, you are their revenue. You've been using the site these past 4 years presumably accepting the fact that you are contributing to their revenue, and you use it because whatever drawbacks that presents to you, are worth the benefits, and if you do somehow have a problem with the fact that using their site is giving them ad revenue, and it's not worth using their site for, then you don't use it. If the drawbacks of Prime (the paywall) aren't worth the benefits, then you don't use it. Nothing has changed in that regard.
Quoted:
That there is hardly any communication going on before things get implemented.
Some things are run through the vet forum, but either way that's not important. The community aren't here to run or shape MOBAFire (beyond just the community side of things), they're just here to use it if they like it. The devs might choose to gather feedback about potential changes in small communities if they consider it in their best interests, but they have no obligation to, and there's no reason for the average MOBAFire user to be angry if they choose not to.
Quoted:
He was sad that members were leaving because mobafire has become more of a business than a fun community to be in.
MOBAFire is a business, and besides blog posts becoming less visible I don't recall any changes they've made that hurts the community, and even that isn't a big enough deal that it explains whatever your current issues are with the community that weren't an issue 3 years ago.
Quoted:
I think you are misunderstanding with what my problems are with the website. The problem here is that MOBAFire isn't adressing the issues that the website is actually facing, rather than me being unsatisfied with the current community.
Well hopefully with all the extra resources they'll be able to invest in the site they'll choose to/be able to address some of the issues that many people feel MOBAFire faces.
Quoted:
Except that MFN Prime does affect the normal user experience, as it limits people's freedom of speech by the hiding of comments and it promotes guide visibility for those who have others spend money on them. I think you are underestemating how much of an impact it has to have things a click away, such as with hiding comments or having the new guides no longer on the front page.
I already said why I disagree with the idea that Prime limits freedom of speech and gives unfair benefits to those whose guides are commended. The "more clicks = less people see it" argument does make a lot more sense in the case of the new guides page being both hard to find and forcing you to go out of your way to reach it; collapsed comments are nowhere near as bad on that scale, not even enough to be problematic in any way IMO.
All in all, I think most of you are being super unfair to the MOBAFire team, some of you making them out to be some kind of money-hungry, greedy people that don't care about the little people. What they've done has almost no drawbacks, and the retaliation they're getting for it is completely undeserved, mostly based on misconceptions, misunderstandings and just people generally making mountains out of mole hills.
I agree with most of what Vapora said and with his reasoning. Do disagree with the hide comments thing because I think it's unfair for my browsing to be affected by someone else's browsing, it may look ok to unwind 1-2 posts every page or so, but if someone uses it to, like he said, hide what he's seen it becomes obnoxious for other users.
I'd also like to remind people that Mobafire distributes monthly RP prizes to inhouse players and, as far as I remember, none of us has directly payed them anything for these prizes.
I would suggest Mobafire itself to change their line of thought towards Prime pricing, however: I don't think it's super pricey, but I don't think you're pricing to your target audience. Mobafire's members are - like league's members - mostly pre-employment students or people who don't have amazing revenue to start with. I'd suggest you made something like a base-price that was lower and allow people to donate more if they wanted to. There's a website that does this with their fonts: you can get them real cheap but without commercial licence, and you can donate more so as to unlock other features. You could set a low price to unlock 1 feature at the person's choice, with more and more options as they gave more.
I just think that the current price will not get you many interested parties or people who will be able to pay for it even if they wanted these features.
I'd also like to remind people that Mobafire distributes monthly RP prizes to inhouse players and, as far as I remember, none of us has directly payed them anything for these prizes.
I would suggest Mobafire itself to change their line of thought towards Prime pricing, however: I don't think it's super pricey, but I don't think you're pricing to your target audience. Mobafire's members are - like league's members - mostly pre-employment students or people who don't have amazing revenue to start with. I'd suggest you made something like a base-price that was lower and allow people to donate more if they wanted to. There's a website that does this with their fonts: you can get them real cheap but without commercial licence, and you can donate more so as to unlock other features. You could set a low price to unlock 1 feature at the person's choice, with more and more options as they gave more.
I just think that the current price will not get you many interested parties or people who will be able to pay for it even if they wanted these features.
FalseoGod wrote:
I agree with most of what Vapora said and with his reasoning. Do disagree with the hide comments thing because I think it's unfair for my browsing to be affected by someone else's browsing, it may look ok to unwind 1-2 posts every page or so, but if someone uses it to, like he said, hide what he's seen it becomes obnoxious for other users.
Yeah that's actually my only issue with the collapsing thing, like I would want to use it for the thing I said, just making handling/responding to comments on my guide easier, but eventually after a year using it like that, "just one click per comment" becomes 400+ clicks (if someone for some reason wants to read all my comments, which I know I've done a few times with other people's guides out of curiosity).
I would personally prefer it if collapsing my guide's comments only affected my own reading experience, but there arguments for and against both methods (maybe it could be possible to implement both depending on author's choice further down the line), and I don't think the concerns people currently have with it are anything worth worrying about.
As for the price subject, maybe consider making the free month of Prime every 2-5 (whatever number seems most suitable, in my mind I was thinking 3) commendations. I think it was Mowen that mentioned they were kind of forced to making Commendation prices high because of the fact that they give a month of free Prime each, so reducing it to every certain number of Commendations a user receives allows you to lower the price of the commendations as 1 commendation != a whole month of prime. I think most people wouldn't care as much about giving the other person a free month of Prime anyway, the main thing is giving them that shiny badge that makes them stand out, similarly to how people giving Reddit gold, rather than doing so so the receiver can have the benefits of Reddit Gold, does it to give the receiver that gold icon on their comment that says "this comment was so great, someone paid money to show their appreciation".
Mobafire is given life by its' users. The users shape the content of the website and also cause of all the traffic that occurs on mobafire. The users are what gives mobafire money. The users ARE a source of revenue and MOBAfire IS a business. This was always the case, but not always was MOBAfire handled strictly like a business, which was a reason many people liked it here.
It felt like home, like a giant family, like a derpy place where you could be understood, could ask for advice and all from familiar people. Time passed, the business expanded, the professional staff became more or less segregated from the MOBAfire community and focused on the sister sites. The community began to fall apart due to lack of involvement, features were implemented that didn't really aid MOBAfire in any real way. New guides were hit badly. The interaction between the staff and community became reduced to simple " :) " conversations with no meaning other than 'notification' value. Now, we have a system that doesn't solve any problems that were going on for ages on mobafire but is catered to get more money from the users who haven't gotten anything that they want in a long long time. Now, I'd understand if users beta tested this. If they REQUESTED this. But no, instead of listening to the community, the staff decided to work on their own agenda.
Just because I'm a source of money for this website doesn't mean I'm not allowed to have a voice. I want my voice to be heard. If I've been a loyal 'customer' who kept adblock off for mobafire just so he could support it, I want my opinion to be heard about any new feature. I want devs to communicate about things they spend time and energy on so it's in line with the wants of the community, at least to some extent.
As for the whole RP thing, yes it is appreciated. But to be honest, I couldn't care less about it. The times I played inhouses I just felt like spending time with the mobafire peeps I saw around the forum. If money is used as a motivator for people to play inhouses, then doesn't that defeat the purpose entirely?
Slug through a few games every week with people you don't enjoy playing with for a chance to get RP. Huzzah!
Just because MOBAfire is a business and I'm a source of money doesn't mean I'm supposed to get treated like some barking dog whose voice holds no merit. Sure, the site CAN do that - and it's fine to do so, but if the site has really set on that kind of mentality, then I'd at least like to know so I can reconsider where I spend my 10 minute daily browsing because at this point, it's the only thing I've been doing here.
tl;dr I'm not asking for changes, I just want an answer.
It felt like home, like a giant family, like a derpy place where you could be understood, could ask for advice and all from familiar people. Time passed, the business expanded, the professional staff became more or less segregated from the MOBAfire community and focused on the sister sites. The community began to fall apart due to lack of involvement, features were implemented that didn't really aid MOBAfire in any real way. New guides were hit badly. The interaction between the staff and community became reduced to simple " :) " conversations with no meaning other than 'notification' value. Now, we have a system that doesn't solve any problems that were going on for ages on mobafire but is catered to get more money from the users who haven't gotten anything that they want in a long long time. Now, I'd understand if users beta tested this. If they REQUESTED this. But no, instead of listening to the community, the staff decided to work on their own agenda.
Just because I'm a source of money for this website doesn't mean I'm not allowed to have a voice. I want my voice to be heard. If I've been a loyal 'customer' who kept adblock off for mobafire just so he could support it, I want my opinion to be heard about any new feature. I want devs to communicate about things they spend time and energy on so it's in line with the wants of the community, at least to some extent.
As for the whole RP thing, yes it is appreciated. But to be honest, I couldn't care less about it. The times I played inhouses I just felt like spending time with the mobafire peeps I saw around the forum. If money is used as a motivator for people to play inhouses, then doesn't that defeat the purpose entirely?
Slug through a few games every week with people you don't enjoy playing with for a chance to get RP. Huzzah!
Just because MOBAfire is a business and I'm a source of money doesn't mean I'm supposed to get treated like some barking dog whose voice holds no merit. Sure, the site CAN do that - and it's fine to do so, but if the site has really set on that kind of mentality, then I'd at least like to know so I can reconsider where I spend my 10 minute daily browsing because at this point, it's the only thing I've been doing here.
tl;dr I'm not asking for changes, I just want an answer.
Sorry for the delay. I feel like your post can be separated into a few different sections, so I'll mark those clearly in my response (and of course quote the relevant parts of your post for each one). Note that I won't be covering inhouses as I don't feel that's something we as admins can just go ahead and fix; we've had numerous discussions about this topic with Referees before, yet some issues remain until this day due to the difference in mindset between players.
Here's what I will be tackling:
First off, I should note I'm a little confused about your comments in regards to admin attention:
Who exactly are you talking about here, and what can we do to fix that? In my eyes, going from 1 Community Manager (Mowen) to 2 (PsiGuard and I) should result in the exact opposite of what you're describing, even if it's sad to see Mowen have less time to post on the forums now.
Before I respond to any of the quotes regarding Prime and its features, I want to point out that I fully understand why the introduction of a system like this may seem scary - in fact, my initial response to Mowen when I was told about this was basically "Mowen, we need to talk", because I felt it was necessary to point out that this shouldn't negatively influence the experience of free users. Luckily, it quickly became clear to me that the devs agreed with me on that.
With that said, you also raise a few concerns, so let's go by those one by one:
Commendations allow users to gift a month of Prime to creators of fantastic content. There's upvotes for good content, and then commendations for exceptional content. It's completely up to the user to decide what kind of content warrants a commendation since it's their cash to spend. If you don't want to buy commendations, that's totally up to you. It's just there as an option to support the MOBAFire and show your appreciation for the best content the site has to offer.
We're going to keep an eye on this feature and see how it affects user experience. We're not completely opposed to changing it, but we'd also like to see how it's used before we take any action on it. Falseo and Vapora made a couple of good points about this (a few comments above me) and we'll be sure to keep those in mind.
This would indeed be a very big problem if commendations were designed to boost guide ratings, but they're not. The best way to find success as an author on MOBAFire is, and always will be, to write a great guide. Commendations aren't a fast-track to success for guide authors, they're just a way for users to say thank-you and reward content creators with Prime while supporting the site at the same time.
This quote is relevant to both section 2 and 3, but I just want to mention that I'll get back to scouting in a bit, not here.
Before talking a little bit about what (else?) you guys consider to be "core issues", let's address a few things which have been brought up several times by now:
The feedback in regards to these topics was not ignored, but we decided against it. Given the confusion in this thread it seems like we haven't been clear about the reason why, so I'll do my best to clarify that now.
The landing page of MOBAFire is primarily geared towards people visiting the site for the first time. Before the changes to the front page, MOBAFire looked pretty cluttered with a lot of content that people just didn't need to see. I realize that the easy access and exposure for New Guides and Blogs are something that several regulars miss from those days, but it doesn't fit with the purpose of the front page. Instead, that real estate is given to stuff like the free week champions, featured guides, news and the activity feed - stuff that's important for users to see.
For blogs specifically, we realise that they offer a great platform for a lot of you guys to share random, often personal stories which don't really have a place in the forums, but that doesn't necessarily make it good content to display to every user of the site. On top of that, from my days moderating the site when the blogs were still there I can tell you that most of my days started with me having to remove several blogs for containing commercial or general spam ("Hi, just testing! ^_^"), and while certain measures helped resolve this to some degree (minimum number of characters for it to show on the front page for example) we ultimately decided it'd be better to leave them out entirely.
For those of you that would like to browse new guides, we specifically made a separate option for it in the Builds & Guides drop-down menu.
With all that said, the fact that you guys continuously bring it up has led to us talking about this again, and we are investigating alternatives that will help regulars find the content they're looking for without compromising the front page. This is obviously a bit of a recent development, so I can't make too many promises just yet, but I'm hoping that we'll be able to resolve this in a way where everyone's happy in the end.
As for your comment, Vynertje, yes, the number of new guides being released is lower nowadays than it once was, but that is something which has developed gradually over the course of several months/years (for the record, these numbers are now stable, just not as high as in the early days when more new players were sharing their ideas). The only spikes (upwards) shown when looking at the data for this are related to the start of a new season / guide contest, otherwise the numbers barely vary; as such, I doubt the removal of the new guides tab had much of an effect on this at all.
Speaking of which (looking back at Meiyjhe), I also don't see how the removal of it turned the system into something "broken" considering a very low percentage of MOBAFire visitors actually used the new guides tab. I get that - as one of its users - it may feel that way to you, but I can assure you that the effect of its removal is not as big as you seem to believe.
Whenever I talk about this topic, I feel it is important to point out that the Scout system was launched originally when MOBAFire was plagued with invincible "top-rated guides" that no one could compete with. Part of the reason the Scout system was useful in the beginning was that these newer, less popular guides weren't getting the attention they needed. With the new voting system, it's much easier for guides to find their rightful place in the rankings and for outdated guides to fall from the top spot. This makes the Scout system, if not obsolete, at least a lot less impactful than it used to be.
Now I know you may be thinking: "Ok that's great, but we knew that much ages ago. Has it simply been ignored since then? I mean, surely given the time you've had to do something about that it should've been possible to come up with something by now, right?"
The answer, without a doubt, is "yes". If we at any point had made scouting a top priority and stated we would no longer work on anything else until that was fixed, there would probably have been a different scout system by now (or maybe it would even be gone entirely, who knows).
Given that we did not, the heart of the issue in the time we have spent on it since then is that we haven't seen a suggestion which we believe would fix the current system entirely (and keep it sustainable for years to come). I know that some of you in the past have expressed that you felt the system would be fixed with some minor changes (most of you will know we've had some lengthy discussions about this), but in our eyes those changes were either ones that don't work for MOBAFire (enforcing a minimum rank for example) or just weren't good enough to begin with. Keep in mind that the time and effort of devs doesn't come into play until after we come up with a solution for this which we fully support.
I want to end this part of my post by quickly talking about where we stand now. Instead of spending more time on trying to fix the current system, Psiguard, Mowen and I have recently shifted our attention to a possible rework of the system which all three of us think looks promising.
We hope to share this idea for the Scout system in the near future, so stay tuned on this one.
Now, let's shift back to what I originally made this chapter for...
Sorry if I'm blunt, but I hardly believe that the quoted lines above are referring only to whether or not the blogs and/or new guides tab are on the front page. So my question is: what exactly are you referring to when mentioning "core issues"?
From my own experience working behind the scenes, any issues which are related to server stability (think of the issues with traffic at the start of S6 or the 500 error messages which we're looking into now) & the ability to save & publish guides are tackled immediately, but beyond that - as tasks become less urgent - it obviously gets a bit more complicated. Now we have to determine just how cool and/or necessary certain prospective features are (from multiple viewpoints, which includes the business side), how much time it would cost to implement them and - not to forget - how these tasks rank not only on MF itself but also in relation to other websites (typically, as activity on certain sites increases due to something like the start of a new season, so does dev activity). It's not an easy task, and it is clear from your feedback that asking you guys about these kind of issues (to determine whether our minds align) is definitely something we should be doing more often.
Which brings me to my last point, which - as said - is that the message is clear and we will be doing our best to communicate with you guys about upcoming features more often. I assume that by now most of you will have read Mowen's post in the other thread, in which she mentioned that the devs' plan was to release MOBAFire Prime as a surprise, providing extra features for those wanted it. And to be fair, that could well have been a positive surprise if none of you had any issues with the actual features and/or if we had collectively done a better job communicating in the past.
But that's not the case, and I don't want to be making any excuses for myself. As someone who knows exactly what it feels like for something like this to happen (from a community member point of view), I'm sorry we left you guys feeling like you're in the dark. We do care about your thoughts, ideas and responses to new features like this and I will do my utmost to make sure we do a better job of communicating in the future.
I know that - just like everyone else - we definitely make mistakes and I thank you for voicing your concerns. Hopefully my post at least cleared a few things up. I look forward to reading your response :)
Here's what I will be tackling:
- Quick question about admin attention
- MFN: Prime and its current features
- MOBAFire's "Core Issues"
- 3.5 Scouting
- Community feedback / asking for opinions before changes are made
1. Quick question about admin attention
First off, I should note I'm a little confused about your comments in regards to admin attention:
Meiyjhe wrote:
The admins and moderators were ACTUAL parts of the community, helping each other out, showing a little love here and there and telling when things go too far in a diplomatic manner.
Meiyjhe wrote:
There was a dilution of attention give from the admins
...
the admins are less active in the community
...
the admins are less active in the community
Who exactly are you talking about here, and what can we do to fix that? In my eyes, going from 1 Community Manager (Mowen) to 2 (PsiGuard and I) should result in the exact opposite of what you're describing, even if it's sad to see Mowen have less time to post on the forums now.
2. MFN: Prime and its current features
Before I respond to any of the quotes regarding Prime and its features, I want to point out that I fully understand why the introduction of a system like this may seem scary - in fact, my initial response to Mowen when I was told about this was basically "Mowen, we need to talk", because I felt it was necessary to point out that this shouldn't negatively influence the experience of free users. Luckily, it quickly became clear to me that the devs agreed with me on that.
With that said, you also raise a few concerns, so let's go by those one by one:
Meiyjhe wrote:
a focus on creating profit
...
The commend system has no benefits to the website at all other than just trying to get a ****ton of money.
...
The commend system has no benefits to the website at all other than just trying to get a ****ton of money.
Commendations allow users to gift a month of Prime to creators of fantastic content. There's upvotes for good content, and then commendations for exceptional content. It's completely up to the user to decide what kind of content warrants a commendation since it's their cash to spend. If you don't want to buy commendations, that's totally up to you. It's just there as an option to support the MOBAFire and show your appreciation for the best content the site has to offer.
Meiyjhe wrote:
The hiding of comments, however, goes against the concept of freedom that the website has to offer (it is one click away from being made visible, but it is still one click away)
We're going to keep an eye on this feature and see how it affects user experience. We're not completely opposed to changing it, but we'd also like to see how it's used before we take any action on it. Falseo and Vapora made a couple of good points about this (a few comments above me) and we'll be sure to keep those in mind.
Meiyjhe wrote:
The commend system is one of the worst systems MOBAFire has made. It makes guide writers more noticable when other people spend money on MOBAFire. There are so many things wrong with this.
This would indeed be a very big problem if commendations were designed to boost guide ratings, but they're not. The best way to find success as an author on MOBAFire is, and always will be, to write a great guide. Commendations aren't a fast-track to success for guide authors, they're just a way for users to say thank-you and reward content creators with Prime while supporting the site at the same time.
Meiyjhe wrote:
Not only that, there is a system that would be perfect for this that is absolutely free and has a whole set of users for it: Scout points. Why create an entire different system for creating visibility for guides which people can only access when spending a ****ton of money?
This quote is relevant to both section 2 and 3, but I just want to mention that I'll get back to scouting in a bit, not here.
3. MOBAFire's "Core Issues"
Before talking a little bit about what (else?) you guys consider to be "core issues", let's address a few things which have been brought up several times by now:
Meiyjhe wrote:
Bring the blogs back to the front page, bring the new guides tab back to the front page
Meiyjhe wrote:
With all the things that could improve with the front page (blogs still not there whereas the space where it used to be is still empty, new guides not on the front page either), the scout system, the increase of troubles within inhouses and most importantly the reduction of community bonding, all these things that were mentioned time and time again were ignored and instead MOBAFire created a donation system with rewards.
The feedback in regards to these topics was not ignored, but we decided against it. Given the confusion in this thread it seems like we haven't been clear about the reason why, so I'll do my best to clarify that now.
The landing page of MOBAFire is primarily geared towards people visiting the site for the first time. Before the changes to the front page, MOBAFire looked pretty cluttered with a lot of content that people just didn't need to see. I realize that the easy access and exposure for New Guides and Blogs are something that several regulars miss from those days, but it doesn't fit with the purpose of the front page. Instead, that real estate is given to stuff like the free week champions, featured guides, news and the activity feed - stuff that's important for users to see.
For blogs specifically, we realise that they offer a great platform for a lot of you guys to share random, often personal stories which don't really have a place in the forums, but that doesn't necessarily make it good content to display to every user of the site. On top of that, from my days moderating the site when the blogs were still there I can tell you that most of my days started with me having to remove several blogs for containing commercial or general spam ("Hi, just testing! ^_^"), and while certain measures helped resolve this to some degree (minimum number of characters for it to show on the front page for example) we ultimately decided it'd be better to leave them out entirely.
For those of you that would like to browse new guides, we specifically made a separate option for it in the Builds & Guides drop-down menu.
With all that said, the fact that you guys continuously bring it up has led to us talking about this again, and we are investigating alternatives that will help regulars find the content they're looking for without compromising the front page. This is obviously a bit of a recent development, so I can't make too many promises just yet, but I'm hoping that we'll be able to resolve this in a way where everyone's happy in the end.
As for your comment, Vynertje, yes, the number of new guides being released is lower nowadays than it once was, but that is something which has developed gradually over the course of several months/years (for the record, these numbers are now stable, just not as high as in the early days when more new players were sharing their ideas). The only spikes (upwards) shown when looking at the data for this are related to the start of a new season / guide contest, otherwise the numbers barely vary; as such, I doubt the removal of the new guides tab had much of an effect on this at all.
Speaking of which (looking back at Meiyjhe), I also don't see how the removal of it turned the system into something "broken" considering a very low percentage of MOBAFire visitors actually used the new guides tab. I get that - as one of its users - it may feel that way to you, but I can assure you that the effect of its removal is not as big as you seem to believe.
3.5 Scouting
Whenever I talk about this topic, I feel it is important to point out that the Scout system was launched originally when MOBAFire was plagued with invincible "top-rated guides" that no one could compete with. Part of the reason the Scout system was useful in the beginning was that these newer, less popular guides weren't getting the attention they needed. With the new voting system, it's much easier for guides to find their rightful place in the rankings and for outdated guides to fall from the top spot. This makes the Scout system, if not obsolete, at least a lot less impactful than it used to be.
Now I know you may be thinking: "Ok that's great, but we knew that much ages ago. Has it simply been ignored since then? I mean, surely given the time you've had to do something about that it should've been possible to come up with something by now, right?"
The answer, without a doubt, is "yes". If we at any point had made scouting a top priority and stated we would no longer work on anything else until that was fixed, there would probably have been a different scout system by now (or maybe it would even be gone entirely, who knows).
Given that we did not, the heart of the issue in the time we have spent on it since then is that we haven't seen a suggestion which we believe would fix the current system entirely (and keep it sustainable for years to come). I know that some of you in the past have expressed that you felt the system would be fixed with some minor changes (most of you will know we've had some lengthy discussions about this), but in our eyes those changes were either ones that don't work for MOBAFire (enforcing a minimum rank for example) or just weren't good enough to begin with. Keep in mind that the time and effort of devs doesn't come into play until after we come up with a solution for this which we fully support.
I want to end this part of my post by quickly talking about where we stand now. Instead of spending more time on trying to fix the current system, Psiguard, Mowen and I have recently shifted our attention to a possible rework of the system which all three of us think looks promising.
We hope to share this idea for the Scout system in the near future, so stay tuned on this one.
Now, let's shift back to what I originally made this chapter for...
Meiyjhe wrote:
The problems that the site was ACTUALLY facing
...
MOBAFire has gone into a very different direction than what it needed to go into for a while now
...
instead of addressing the core issue the website has
...
MOBAFire has gone into a very different direction than what it needed to go into for a while now
...
instead of addressing the core issue the website has
Sorry if I'm blunt, but I hardly believe that the quoted lines above are referring only to whether or not the blogs and/or new guides tab are on the front page. So my question is: what exactly are you referring to when mentioning "core issues"?
From my own experience working behind the scenes, any issues which are related to server stability (think of the issues with traffic at the start of S6 or the 500 error messages which we're looking into now) & the ability to save & publish guides are tackled immediately, but beyond that - as tasks become less urgent - it obviously gets a bit more complicated. Now we have to determine just how cool and/or necessary certain prospective features are (from multiple viewpoints, which includes the business side), how much time it would cost to implement them and - not to forget - how these tasks rank not only on MF itself but also in relation to other websites (typically, as activity on certain sites increases due to something like the start of a new season, so does dev activity). It's not an easy task, and it is clear from your feedback that asking you guys about these kind of issues (to determine whether our minds align) is definitely something we should be doing more often.
4. Community feedback / asking for opinions before changes are made
Meiyjhe wrote:
So in conclusion, please communicate ideas more often.
Which brings me to my last point, which - as said - is that the message is clear and we will be doing our best to communicate with you guys about upcoming features more often. I assume that by now most of you will have read Mowen's post in the other thread, in which she mentioned that the devs' plan was to release MOBAFire Prime as a surprise, providing extra features for those wanted it. And to be fair, that could well have been a positive surprise if none of you had any issues with the actual features and/or if we had collectively done a better job communicating in the past.
But that's not the case, and I don't want to be making any excuses for myself. As someone who knows exactly what it feels like for something like this to happen (from a community member point of view), I'm sorry we left you guys feeling like you're in the dark. We do care about your thoughts, ideas and responses to new features like this and I will do my utmost to make sure we do a better job of communicating in the future.
I know that - just like everyone else - we definitely make mistakes and I thank you for voicing your concerns. Hopefully my post at least cleared a few things up. I look forward to reading your response :)
XeresAce wrote:
Mobafire is given life by its' users. The users shape the content of the website and also cause of all the traffic that occurs on mobafire. The users are what gives mobafire money. The users ARE a source of revenue and MOBAfire IS a business. This was always the case, but not always was MOBAfire handled strictly like a business, which was a reason many people liked it here.
It felt like home, like a giant family, like a derpy place where you could be understood, could ask for advice and all from familiar people. Time passed, the business expanded, the professional staff became more or less segregated from the MOBAfire community and focused on the sister sites. The community began to fall apart due to lack of involvement, features were implemented that didn't really aid MOBAfire in any real way. New guides were hit badly. The interaction between the staff and community became reduced to simple " :) " conversations with no meaning other than 'notification' value. Now, we have a system that doesn't solve any problems that were going on for ages on mobafire but is catered to get more money from the users who haven't gotten anything that they want in a long long time. Now, I'd understand if users beta tested this. If they REQUESTED this. But no, instead of listening to the community, the staff decided to work on their own agenda.
Just because I'm a source of money for this website doesn't mean I'm not allowed to have a voice. I want my voice to be heard. If I've been a loyal 'customer' who kept adblock off for mobafire just so he could support it, I want my opinion to be heard about any new feature. I want devs to communicate about things they spend time and energy on so it's in line with the wants of the community, at least to some extent.
As for the whole RP thing, yes it is appreciated. But to be honest, I couldn't care less about it. The times I played inhouses I just felt like spending time with the mobafire peeps I saw around the forum. If money is used as a motivator for people to play inhouses, then doesn't that defeat the purpose entirely?
Slug through a few games every week with people you don't enjoy playing with for a chance to get RP. Huzzah!
Just because MOBAfire is a business and I'm a source of money doesn't mean I'm supposed to get treated like some barking dog whose voice holds no merit. Sure, the site CAN do that - and it's fine to do so, but if the site has really set on that kind of mentality, then I'd at least like to know so I can reconsider where I spend my 10 minute daily browsing because at this point, it's the only thing I've been doing here.
It felt like home, like a giant family, like a derpy place where you could be understood, could ask for advice and all from familiar people. Time passed, the business expanded, the professional staff became more or less segregated from the MOBAfire community and focused on the sister sites. The community began to fall apart due to lack of involvement, features were implemented that didn't really aid MOBAfire in any real way. New guides were hit badly. The interaction between the staff and community became reduced to simple " :) " conversations with no meaning other than 'notification' value. Now, we have a system that doesn't solve any problems that were going on for ages on mobafire but is catered to get more money from the users who haven't gotten anything that they want in a long long time. Now, I'd understand if users beta tested this. If they REQUESTED this. But no, instead of listening to the community, the staff decided to work on their own agenda.
Just because I'm a source of money for this website doesn't mean I'm not allowed to have a voice. I want my voice to be heard. If I've been a loyal 'customer' who kept adblock off for mobafire just so he could support it, I want my opinion to be heard about any new feature. I want devs to communicate about things they spend time and energy on so it's in line with the wants of the community, at least to some extent.
As for the whole RP thing, yes it is appreciated. But to be honest, I couldn't care less about it. The times I played inhouses I just felt like spending time with the mobafire peeps I saw around the forum. If money is used as a motivator for people to play inhouses, then doesn't that defeat the purpose entirely?
Slug through a few games every week with people you don't enjoy playing with for a chance to get RP. Huzzah!
Just because MOBAfire is a business and I'm a source of money doesn't mean I'm supposed to get treated like some barking dog whose voice holds no merit. Sure, the site CAN do that - and it's fine to do so, but if the site has really set on that kind of mentality, then I'd at least like to know so I can reconsider where I spend my 10 minute daily browsing because at this point, it's the only thing I've been doing here.
The mobafire staff doesn't really interact with the general userbase as much because there are more users every day and therefore, there are more things to do. They simply do not have the time to talk all day with everyone on here(and I wouldn't blame them in any way if they decide not to visit the site in their free time, you get tired from pretty much anything if you do it for 8 hours every day).
If they would be as active as they used to be, there would be a lot more stuff like today's error 500 incident(and prohably not as easy to fix) and the features we would be asking for would take even longer than they do right now. I obviously don't have any way of knwoing, but I am fairly sure that pretty much everything posted on this site gets read by at least one staff member.
I see where you are coming from with your points about getting no updates though. I think the question we as a community need to ask ourselves is if we want to accept something along the lines of say, half an hour per day per red person of community interaction. This would obviously also mean that everything would take longer to develop(I don't know what exactly every staff member is doing so I will just use this word). We also need to keep in mind that it is quite likely that the staff prohably made such a decision so our influence is limited but I think that we should be able to make something happen if we decide that the trade-off is worth it.
I'd also say something about MF prime, but vapora pretty much summed it up.
mastrer1000 wrote:
If they would be as active as they used to be, there would be a lot more stuff like today's error 500 incident(and prohably not as easy to fix) and the features we would be asking for would take even longer than they do right now. I obviously don't have any way of knwoing, but I am fairly sure that pretty much everything posted on this site gets read by at least one staff member.
Just wanted to chime in here that Matt started posting on that thread because he didn't realize people wanted technical updates of this sort previously. Matt is pretty much fixing / maintaining / updating the servers ALL THE TIME he just didn't think people cared for the details (basically, it's either working or it's not situation). So that's why he started posting more there. :)
I would also like to say that updates like bug fixes, server updates, and little quality of life changes have been going through but we haven't been doing a great job of keeping change notes... Psiguard was doing a good job with that on the MOBAFire Reports but we have dropped the ball a bit on posting those changes...
We intend to make a post in the news this week with change notes for things that got updated with the Prime update (but wasn't Prime related) and the few updates that have gone out since then.
So yeah... TL;DR you are right that we care and are checking up on the site, we just don't always have time to make a post to keep people up to date. >.< We'll try to do better!
Thanks to GrandMasterD for my sig!
There is a lot to read here. I mainly want to comment on the whole inhouses thing an i'll admit i didn't read everything in the thread. I read the first page, some of the second then just started writing this so idk how much has been addressed.
It seems to me that all the rage and stuff that happens related to inhouses is a mostly EU thing. NA doesn't have many inhouses and while we do get our cases of toxicity and people who just get pissed off it always feels like that when i'm skimming over the games that EU played (sometimes out of curosity to see what sort of random builds i could try, thats how i got the aatrox builds i use in my aatrox games) there is someone mad about something that happened in it. What i want to know is is there something wrong with inhouses in the minds of the eu players that they can't just play a game with each other and have a good time? I just don't understand why it's such a big problem.
As far as balance goes i think someone has to realize that it just isn't going to work. It usually takes too long and isn't worth it. (**** the whole google docs system) As much as we sometimes joke about it I think the fatelblade's psiguard approved™ method is probably one of the better ways of doing it. It's pretty quick and just kinda eyeballs everyone's ranks. it's not really any better or worse than that whole mess of a google docs system and it avoids a horrible imbalance that would amount to some kind of plat/dia vs silvers game.
That said, you can balance all you want based on skill level and ranking but that still won't account for main roles, picks/counterpicks, a diamond vs a bronze in lane, etc. As soon as that happens you effectively throw balance out the window. Even if you do somewhat account for this then what happens when the diamond vs silver matchup goes in favor of the silver? then what happens? I remember an inhouse game that happened where i had to lane against a diamond level guy in mid, i don't remember who it was. He picked katarina and i thought about a few things, i ended up picking ap malphite a) because i do weird **** sometimes, b) because the matchup is good, and won the lane. I remember there was a comment about balance sometime that day. Really at the point that that kind of thing happens balance can be thrown out the window. Counter picks happen, it will change what happens in a matchup and sometimes no amount of balancing skill levels will help the situation. Do i think any less of the diamond guy for this game? no, he's probably still far better than i am. do i think i should be placed higher than i am? no, i still suck at this game and i can attribute that to a counter pick and perhaps he was having a bad day or something, a fluke if you will.
Should we still balance a game? yes, it keeps us from having all diamonds on one team and all bronze on the other. Should we let balance control the game and spend an hour balancing with that stupid google docs system that doesn't really accomplish anything, all while people grow impatient and leave forcing us to rebalance with new people? no.
"Balance is a fool's master" - Zed
It seems to me that all the rage and stuff that happens related to inhouses is a mostly EU thing. NA doesn't have many inhouses and while we do get our cases of toxicity and people who just get pissed off it always feels like that when i'm skimming over the games that EU played (sometimes out of curosity to see what sort of random builds i could try, thats how i got the aatrox builds i use in my aatrox games) there is someone mad about something that happened in it. What i want to know is is there something wrong with inhouses in the minds of the eu players that they can't just play a game with each other and have a good time? I just don't understand why it's such a big problem.
As far as balance goes i think someone has to realize that it just isn't going to work. It usually takes too long and isn't worth it. (**** the whole google docs system) As much as we sometimes joke about it I think the fatelblade's psiguard approved™ method is probably one of the better ways of doing it. It's pretty quick and just kinda eyeballs everyone's ranks. it's not really any better or worse than that whole mess of a google docs system and it avoids a horrible imbalance that would amount to some kind of plat/dia vs silvers game.
That said, you can balance all you want based on skill level and ranking but that still won't account for main roles, picks/counterpicks, a diamond vs a bronze in lane, etc. As soon as that happens you effectively throw balance out the window. Even if you do somewhat account for this then what happens when the diamond vs silver matchup goes in favor of the silver? then what happens? I remember an inhouse game that happened where i had to lane against a diamond level guy in mid, i don't remember who it was. He picked katarina and i thought about a few things, i ended up picking ap malphite a) because i do weird **** sometimes, b) because the matchup is good, and won the lane. I remember there was a comment about balance sometime that day. Really at the point that that kind of thing happens balance can be thrown out the window. Counter picks happen, it will change what happens in a matchup and sometimes no amount of balancing skill levels will help the situation. Do i think any less of the diamond guy for this game? no, he's probably still far better than i am. do i think i should be placed higher than i am? no, i still suck at this game and i can attribute that to a counter pick and perhaps he was having a bad day or something, a fluke if you will.
Should we still balance a game? yes, it keeps us from having all diamonds on one team and all bronze on the other. Should we let balance control the game and spend an hour balancing with that stupid google docs system that doesn't really accomplish anything, all while people grow impatient and leave forcing us to rebalance with new people? no.
"Balance is a fool's master" -
Zed
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Thanks to Jovy for the sig!