What ever happened to the reorganization?

[Pervy]

That's way too exploitable, especially if a dev wants to promote the shit out of their content without putting together something that could be considered "high quality." You might be able to sell a registration limitation on multiple accounts to prevent like/dislike spamming; but, then you get that person asking friends or using bots to get them likes/dislikes going.

You base that on what?

 

[Ninja_Named_Bob]

@Pervy: You're basing your "thread promotion" idea off a popularity vote, wherein the thread with the most likes will generally get the top spot all the time. You're suggesting this on a site where registration is open iirc, where people don't need to post to give likes, and the staff is seldom focused on monitoring user activity without cause. Imagine if you set up your system. Suddenly, everyone and their dog is given a system that can be exploited, wherein the more socially-competent or even technically-competent can spam their own content to the top spot 24/7.

You want the forums to constantly crash? Cause that's how you get forums to constantly crash.

 

[wasd123333]

Thank fucking GOD thank you so much for giving us ignore threads back. Finally after so long! Hype!

 

[Pervy]

@Pervy: You're basing your "thread promotion" idea off a popularity vote, wherein the thread with the most likes will generally get the top spot all the time. You're suggesting this on a site where registration is open iirc, where people don't need to post to give likes, and the staff is seldom focused on monitoring user activity without cause. Imagine if you set up your system. Suddenly, everyone and their dog is given a system that can be exploited, wherein the more socially-competent or even technically-competent can spam their own content to the top spot 24/7.

You want the forums to constantly crash? Cause that's how you get forums to constantly crash.

How many forum communities have you lead, just out of curiosity?

 

[Ninja_Named_Bob]

How many forum communities have you lead, just out of curiosity?

Argument from Authority is a fallacy. Try again.

 

[Pervy]

Argument from Authority is a fallacy. Try again.

I'll count that as not very many, which is readily appparent in your short sighted concerns.

 

[Ninja_Named_Bob]

I'll count that as not very many, which is readily appparent in your short sighted concerns.

Okay, but where's your counter-argument? Ad homenem aren't an argument. They're evidence of an inability to produce one.

 

[DarkFire1004]

Bob does have a point in the sense that just because he hasn't lead any forums, doesn't mean his opinion can be disregarded like that. Please refrain from antagonizing one another like this in the future.

Well, that is a bit odd a concept, I mean, is this a place to share games, or a place to develope games? Basically, the main reason why a game developer actively engages in feedback discussion beyond a 'post any questions below' or somesuch is, in my experience, to get technical help or PRECISE bug reports.
This never struck me as much of a website of that kind, not to say I haven't gotten good feedback from here, to be clear, but if you want to encourage discourse with creators, I would recommend more than just penalizing those that don't offer much to talk about on their threads, you'd have to give different impulses to the forum culture.

Spoiler

You'd be correct in how you see this forum. The thing is, it was never a place for developing games. And sharing games only really applied to sharing information and discussion, not content (Translations, links to games, etc). What Slicer said was correct:

Ahhh, you see this forum's regulars (outside the H-section) used to be a much different group of people. And our H-game section mods are two of those that still remain, iirc they were pitched the job of librarians, not iron fisted dictators.

I was brought on to act as a librarian for this place. It's only because the forum got bigger and required more actual moderation than just maintenance that I've had to become less of a cataloger and more of a police.

But I still maintain that this section's true intention is first and foremost, a collection of information and discussion of H-games. That's why my opinion isn't so much to give developers a space to talk about their games, but to have these games and the collective knowledge of the members about them be stored in the archives of the forum. When these Patreon threads are made by the devs themselves, they're giving a ton of information about their game, sure, but what's the point if it's not stimulating conversation and encouraging people to participate? It has one, but not the other. This is why I'd like to let the threads continue to exist, but move them elsewhere: it's just good housekeeping.

The basic issue appears to be how you'd actually write down the rule that singles out those threads in a way which is easy for mods to enforce - simply because there are threads which actually do have discussion in them. However, now that the thread ignore function is back, it's probably a non-issue. It's not like there is a huge deluge of these threads, so ignoring them is probably the best course of action.

Spoiler

Actually, I believe that the concern is still valid. I've said this before, but bringing the ignore function back doesn't necessarily solve the fundamental issue. Just because some individuals ignore the thread does not mean the problem is gone. From the forum's perspective, it's still there. If literally everybody just used the ignore function, there wouldn't really be a need for this conversation about reorganizing, would there?

That said, I do agree that a change in rules would be needed. I've toyed with the idea that all devs would need to PM me to let their thread be started, or at least letting me know of their existence, but it seems like too much of a hassle on the dev's part. I've also thought of just keeping a spreadsheet, but that's an enormous undertaking.

My current idea is just making sure the thread title follows a certain format, as somebody else suggested. If it's a dev-started thread intended to bring attention to their game, the title needs to reflect that somehow. That way, something like Pervy's idea:

An option could be a search-sorting algorithm, though we have an abundance of .. odd reactions, you could filter for games with a good like/dislike ratio, allowing the community to police themselfs.

Would be a lot easier to keep track of. A simple regex call through the thread list every once in a while would maintain the organization, and anything found not in compliance could be reported to the mods automatically. But the initial work of sorting the current list to their rightful spots would still be the main issue.

This would also avoid Bob's concern of exploiting the system, as the only thing the search would look for is the thread title. And if somebody is stuffing their title with crap to make it more popular (like clickbait), it'd be immediately obvious and get the can.

As an example, The format would be something like:

[RJ number] "English/Romanji Title" (Japanese Title) - *Keyword indicating it's a Patreon thread*

I don't do much web crawling programming and it's been a while since I've written a regex, so forgive me if I don't really have an actual solution as to what the algorithm would be to look through that.


Anything not following this would be easily caught. And since the vast majority of threads here are just posts for singular games, I'd suspect that anything not following this would be easy to moderate manually at that point. If it's a thread that was created before the implementation of the rule, it'd be exempt. If it's a thread about a collection of games, it'd be exempt. If it's just not following the rules, moderate it.

Automation of moderation, however, is something I'm trying to avoid, though, because I want to involve the admins as little as possible. Adding code to make my job easier makes their job harder. If things can be solved just through good organization, then I think that's the path we need to take first, before trying to create new tools. That's why I haven't brought up this conversation with any admins yet; I want to get as much community feedback and a clear path of reorganization as possible before even considering asking them to do some work.

That said, I'd love to have a tool like that.

 

[Zepheral]

Bob does have a point in the sense that just because he hasn't lead any forums, doesn't mean his opinion can be disregarded like that. Please refrain from antagonizing one another like this in the future.

Spoiler

You'd be correct in how you see this forum. The thing is, it was never a place for developing games. And sharing games only really applied to sharing information and discussion, not content (Translations, links to games, etc). What Slicer said was correct:



I was brought on to act as a librarian for this place. It's only because the forum got bigger and required more actual moderation than just maintenance that I've had to become less of a cataloger and more of a police.

But I still maintain that this section's true intention is first and foremost, a collection of information and discussion of H-games. That's why my opinion isn't so much to give developers a space to talk about their games, but to have these games and the collective knowledge of the members about them be stored in the archives of the forum. When these Patreon threads are made by the devs themselves, they're giving a ton of information about their game, sure, but what's the point if it's not stimulating conversation and encouraging people to participate? It has one, but not the other. This is why I'd like to let the threads continue to exist, but move them elsewhere: it's just good housekeeping.

Spoiler

Actually, I believe that the concern is still valid. I've said this before, but bringing the ignore function back doesn't necessarily solve the fundamental issue. Just because some individuals ignore the thread does not mean the problem is gone. From the forum's perspective, it's still there. If literally everybody just used the ignore function, there wouldn't really be a need for this conversation about reorganizing, would there?

That said, I do agree that a change in rules would be needed. I've toyed with the idea that all devs would need to PM me to let their thread be started, or at least letting me know of their existence, but it seems like too much of a hassle on the dev's part. I've also thought of just keeping a spreadsheet, but that's an enormous undertaking.

My current idea is just making sure the thread title follows a certain format, as somebody else suggested. If it's a dev-started thread intended to bring attention to their game, the title needs to reflect that somehow. That way, something like Pervy's idea:



Would be a lot easier to keep track of. A simple regex call through the thread list every once in a while would maintain the organization, and anything found not in compliance could be reported to the mods automatically. But the initial work of sorting the current list to their rightful spots would still be the main issue.

This would also avoid Bob's concern of exploiting the system, as the only thing the search would look for is the thread title. And if somebody is stuffing their title with crap to make it more popular (like clickbait), it'd be immediately obvious and get the can.

As an example, The format would be something like:

[RJ number] "English/Romanji Title" (Japanese Title) - *Keyword indicating it's a Patreon thread*

I don't do much web crawling programming and it's been a while since I've written a regex, so forgive me if I don't really have an actual solution as to what the algorithm would be to look through that.


Anything not following this would be easily caught. And since the vast majority of threads here are just posts for singular games, I'd suspect that anything not following this would be easy to moderate manually at that point. If it's a thread that was created before the implementation of the rule, it'd be exempt. If it's a thread about a collection of games, it'd be exempt. If it's just not following the rules, moderate it.

Automation of moderation, however, is something I'm trying to avoid, though, because I want to involve the admins as little as possible. Adding code to make my job easier makes their job harder. If things can be solved just through good organization, then I think that's the path we need to take first, before trying to create new tools. That's why I haven't brought up this conversation with any admins yet; I want to get as much community feedback and a clear path of reorganization as possible before even considering asking them to do some work.

That said, I'd love to have a tool like that.

Darkfire don't worry to much about it. These two have argue with each other since day one, like rivals or a married couple. I forgot which.

 

[Pervy]

Bob does have a point in the sense that just because he hasn't lead any forums, doesn't mean his opinion can be disregarded like that. Please refrain from antagonizing one another like this in the future.

He is free to share any opinion he has, the problem comes when he begins framing his opinion as factual accurate predictions of the future and takes his disagreement to a needlessly personal approach, I was merely responding in kind;

You want the forums to constantly crash? Cause that's how you get forums to constantly crash.

Anyway, such things aside and back to the discussion, I certainly don't have the mood to argue on.

But I still maintain that this section's true intention is first and foremost, a collection of information and discussion of H-games. That's why my opinion isn't so much to give developers a space to talk about their games, but to have these games and the collective knowledge of the members about them be stored in the archives of the forum. When these Patreon threads are made by the devs themselves, they're giving a ton of information about their game, sure, but what's the point if it's not stimulating conversation and encouraging people to participate? It has one, but not the other. This is why I'd like to let the threads continue to exist, but move them elsewhere: it's just good housekeeping.

So basically the matter at hand is less about improving the discussion and more about, well, basically seperating the active and inactive topics first things first.

So, Regex calls aside, you could also do a tracking for how much discussion is happening in a topic,.. I know new posts get bumped, but a beefed up version of that, for example it's rather easy to check if the same person posts in their own thread repeatedly to bump it, a policy that while not forbidden is at least frowned upon here as well.

If you wanted to get crazy you could even run through a counter, simply see if someone says 'bump support me on patreon!' or if there's discourse about what people liked and want to see more/less of in the game.

------
Beyond that back to the discourse encouragement, well, if you want ULMF to be more about discussion about H-Games, why not make topics, just like this one, that actively encourage discussions, for example, the community can only profit from a better understanding of games and their features, I know that I've been viewing certain things about games differently, ever since I understood how different they are in programming.

Some things people want to see in games are not there because they are near impossibilities in programming, some things are not there because few programmers realize there's a demand for them (for example, skip-buttons come to mind for me. ^^), so yeah, I think discussion is a very positive thing, but could be supported further by being encouraged not just in individual game-threads, but through more topics actively dedicated to the matter.

I personally still think that giving a more encouraging area for game developing is quite important as well, after all, they are the providers of the content you wish to discuss.

 

[Ninja_Named_Bob]

Darkfire don't worry to much about it. These two have argue with each other since day one, like rivals or a married couple. I forgot which.

I mean, Slicer and I used to beef, too. I guess the main difference is, Slicer generally makes a strong argument, even if I do mock him at times for it.

Spoiler

He is free to share any opinion he has, the problem comes when he begins framing his opinion as factual accurate predictions of the future and takes his disagreement to a needlessly personal approach, I was merely responding in kind

How was I being personal? I provided a position to counter your suggestion. If you want to take offense, go ahead. It doesn't disprove my point or anything. It's just you being offended that I made a good point you couldn't counter.

So basically the matter at hand is less about improving the discussion and more about, well, basically seperating the active and inactive topics first things first.

It's always been about re-organizing the porn side of the forum. People have pitched ideas and either debated the merits, or argued the "what-ifs." Darkfire has actually compiled a list of things that people want a page before this one, if you're interested in getting "up to speed" on the discussion.

So, Regex calls aside, you could also do a tracking for how much discussion is happening in a topic,.. I know new posts get bumped, but a beefed up version of that, for example it's rather easy to check if the same person posts in their own thread repeatedly to bump it, a policy that while not forbidden is at least frowned upon here as well.

I think we've already got a rule about posts needing to be constructive, if nothing else. If someone just keeps posting "bump" to keep the thread at the top, or stuff like "great game!" without any real way for someone to follow that up with discussion, one could argue about the merits of that potentially being considered spam. Part of it is, Darkfire and Toxic are only two people on a forum with hundreds of users. Even if the h-anything sections are slow, you're still gonna get people missing things.

Beyond that back to the discourse encouragement, well, if you want ULMF to be more about discussion about H-Games, why not make topics, just like this one, that actively encourage discussions, for example, the community can only profit from a better understanding of games and their features, I know that I've been viewing certain things about games differently, ever since I understood how different they are in programming.

If you're talking about a thread to educate people on the in's and out's of a game, it's not really a matter of "do people want it?" so much as a "would people even care?" question. You could even argue that if such a thread existed, it would need to be stickied and referred to constantly by developers in their ops, or just in response to any "under the hood" questions they may receive. Most people don't care about how the car runs, just that it runs. Only people like you, or Zeph, or even Darkfire would care only because it's relevant to your interests.

If you're talking general threads for each game's special features, devs are on their own. It's generally a given that a dev knows enough about their own game that they can discuss the inner workings with anyone who is interested. Basically, the forums have the issue of "if you build it, they probably won't come unless it's relevant to their interests." Double entendre intended.

Some things people want to see in games are not there because they are near impossibilities in programming, some things are not there because few programmers realize there's a demand for them (for example, skip-buttons come to mind for me. ^^), so yeah, I think discussion is a very positive thing, but could be supported further by being encouraged not just in individual game-threads, but through more topics actively dedicated to the matter.

That sounds less like "please educate me on how things work" thing and more a "people don't understand how it works, please educate" situation. As above, it comes down to whether someone wants to learn about it or not. Making a sticky that people may/may not be read by your average user is a ton of work, and it might end up pointless because, again, who is going to care enough to educate themselves?

I personally still think that giving a more encouraging area for game developing is quite important as well, after all, they are the providers of the content you wish to discuss.

The forums in general tend to be on the more positive side, from what I've seen. I'm not sure what you might be suggesting with "more encouraging", since, from my perspective, it sounds like you're suggesting we just blindly praise developers and eat their feces. If I'm wrong, I apologize. However, you're from a certain other forum that I also frequented in the past, and you know how the whole "encourage devs" thing went. This forum isn't for the devs, but the people who want to share content they've found. Devs just happen to be an added bonus.

If a developer wants people to "encourage" them by only posting positive comments and such, then this probably isn't the forum for them. Some people are assholes even when they only intend to help, and others can criticize without being harsh. As long as the user isn't being inflammatory, I don't see why anyone ought to be obligated to "encourage" anyone or anything. The world doesn't stop moving and ask if you're alright when your feelings get hurt. It's a cruel, indifferent cunt, and we all gotta learn how to deal with it.

 

[Pervy]

You mistake indifference for inability. I shall discuss with you indepth the moment I feel you condone yourself maturely enough and present an interesting enough point. So far, all you do is define yourself by contrarianism and it is rather unproductive.

Anyway, let's not disrupt the core discussion any further. My suggestions are simply that, suggestions, more from the perspective of a game developer than a player these days, but also having some technical know-how about forums along the way.
I may be biased, but I do think it wise for a community that wants to gather around Hentai games to make an effort to be welcoming to the creators of the same and thus, be extra-thoughtful with taking any moves that could alienate them... even if not all creators might deserve such consideration.

 

[Ninja_Named_Bob]

You mistake indifference for inability. I shall discuss with you indepth the moment I feel you condone yourself maturely enough and present an interesting enough point. So far, all you do is define yourself by contrarianism and it is rather unproductive.

I've provided you reasons why your ideas might not work. Your job, if you wish to contribute, is to present a counter-argument as to why you believe they would. You have failed to do so, so far.

Anyway, let's not disrupt the core discussion any further. My suggestions are simply that, suggestions, more from the perspective of a game developer than a player these days, but also having some technical know-how about forums along the way.

Nobody is being disruptive. I've provided a position to oppose your ideas only on the basis of provoking a reasoned back and forth on their merits and how we would implement them. And a suggestion isn't immune to criticism, either. In fact, you could argue that it's very open to people respectively disagreeing or *gasp* debating their merits. And, as you claim to be a developer, you should be more-than aware of how indifferent most players are to the technical know-how to a game. You may be passionate about that stuff, but most people aren't.

I may be biased, but I do think it wise for a community that wants to gather around Hentai games to make an effort to be welcoming to the creators of the same and thus, be extra-thoughtful with taking any moves that could alienate them... even if not all creators might deserve such consideration.

Okay, so, here's the thing. You're asking the staff make it a rule to be extra-courteous towards developers because they might be "a bit more sensitive" than the average person. See, there are two issues with that. First, you're asking the staff enforce a very biased position of censorship and punish people for presenting criticisms and expressing views on x content. I shouldn't have to even explain to you why this is wrong, but I'll give you 3 reasons, anyways.

1) It's unfair to the users.
2) It creates an unsustainable "hugbox" due to the nature of the forums.
3) People are more likely to either leave or fuck with the forums, thus causing further issues.

The second reason is, developers need to be able to engage other users on an equal playing field. If they are given a favorable position just to spare their feelings, they may become arrogant and deluded about the quality of their content. Suddenly, we have a bunch of developers who can't script/program for shit; a bunch of artists who can't draw; and a bunch of writers who can't even string together a coherent sentence flooding the forums. The hentai section is already a barely-tolerable cesspool as it stands, and that's even with Toxic and Darkfire managing them as effectively as they can.

As much merit as your "be nice to devs" idea might have, I'm gonna personally oppose it on the grounds of it being a bad idea in practice.

 

[Stiltzkinator]

As an example, The format would be something like:

[RJ number] "English/Romanji Title" (Japanese Title) - *Keyword indicating it's a Patreon thread*

I do very much like the idea of having a relatively defined format for thread titles. Things like "Game looks good", "Please help!!", and "New 3D game" are obviously awful titles, but having only translations of titles, which are often bad machine translations at that (what is "Ridge shota" supposed to mean?), are equally frustrating, because how is someone supposed to search for that to see if the thread exists? I see your suggested format includes whatever the Japanese title is, which I agree should be standard, because that ensures a simple copy/paste will find the thread.

As for other topics

Spoiler

Regarding patreon topics, except that I wish we could keep discussion of patreon as a model away from talk about them games themselves. I know that's a thin line for some situations, but it's utterly painful to try and follow a game only to find there's been two or more entire pages of discussion about patreon itself and nothing about the game. One thing I will add is that a creator plugging their patreon page, only for everything on their patreon to be locked behind pledges, strikes me as not quite rude, but obtuse. I feel that if you can't generate interest in getting people to subscribe to your patreon with what you show publicly, then operating a thread on a public forum is just pledge begging. This only applies to any cases where the entire patreon is walled off, I'm not saying that patreon devs should post everything they do publicly for free. In other words...

As far as creators posting topics for their own games, I think the important thing is that the poster at least make an effort to get conversation going without the post just serving as an advertising redirect. There's been a lot of people who post a topic for a game they're supposedly making, or have even completed, but information on the game itself is utterly lacking, so there's not much to talk about until a brave soul wants to dive into the mystery game and try to figure out what it even is.

From the perspective of someone who is working on the first game to be released and with no plans to use patreon (for now, at least), I think an informative post to bring the game to people's attention is as fine a starting point as any, whether made by the creator or someone else. A thread that opens with "We made a game, head here to buy it!" and not much else, less so.

The last thing I have to mention is perhaps some kind of tag or keyword indicating if a game has a demo available? Could help sift thruogh some of the project teases that never actually produce anything playable.

 

[satoshi1]

Anyways moving back on topic. What is the top priority atm? What matters the most to the community and the moderators?

 

[Ninja_Named_Bob]

Spoilered because tl;dr

Spoiler

People keep throwing about these fallacies as if this was a professional discussion podium.

First of all, going 'THIS IS A FALLACY, I WIN' is in itself, a fallacy, The fallacies Fallacy, Ninja displays this to an egregious extend.

Except you didn't add anything to the discussion outside of ad hominem and fallacies. You can't backpedal to "oh, but this is what I actually meant!" if you don't elaborate on the context given. You were slinging mud. End of story.

Second of all, yes, in theory you could construct 'I have more experience in this than you' as an authoritative argument or as an attack seeking to discredit Ninja's credibility.., but the problem is, the argument from authority can be used not as fallacy, but as a strong argument for ones cause. I make an argument of experience, the fact that you ask me to acknowleges that./

It doesn't work that way, actually. You, personally, have to provide corroborative evidence of your own, based on your own experience in confirmed scenarios in which the claim you make is upheld by the standard which disarms my position. You can't just ad hominem and say "oh, I guess cause you don't know x or never did x, you don't know." That's arrogant pretension.

You'll also notice that, unlike you, I've made every effort to avoid ad hominem in each of my rebuttals and focused solely on the substance of your arguments themselves. You, meanwhile, haven't actually constructively attacked my position until now. Let's see you retain some credibility, yes?

Their basic argument is that my suggestion can be abused and lead to crashes.

Not crashes. I'm not gonna stoop to your level and attack your reading comprehension, but the basic argument for each of your ideas was taking them to their logical extremes.

The strongest argument against the first part of this concern is simply the youtube algorithm. Which had abuse, had clickbait, but now got rid of all of that, and rewards watchtime.

That's true, to a degree. It favored content producers who put out more videos weekly vs those who produced quality content. The new system doesn't actually favor anyone in particular, but is rife with abuses, regardless. H3H3 has touched upon how the new system is still shit and even brought it up in a podcast or two.

From that we learn that any algorithm system can be finetuned to reward what which most benefits the desired outcome.

To a degree. An automated system can still be exploited. Far better to go with the system that requires people put in work and which the staff can manually control the flow of content.

All we'd need for that, is an algorithm that rewards multiple different people posting posts with a lettercount of at least X. As for the criticism of multi-accounts.. that'd violate forum policy and is easily enough checked for.

First point, that's a ridiculous amount of work and also punishes developers who leave a small bump in their thread when content is updated. First issue is, how many words are sufficient for the system to decide "that's good enough to put the thread back to the top."? Second issue is, you then have developers spamming threads with bugfixes and release notes. While this does produce a string of observable information for users to record, it's also a bit ridiculous. Changing the first post for each new version is already busywork for most devs.

Second point, proxies exist. Go ask @super_slicer or @Yoshiiki how easy it is to get a proxy nowadays. Hell, there are companies that sell them by the dozen.

Even so, an artificial discussion on a game would still be a discussion on a game, so anyone putting in that much effort, let 'em have it, I say.

Because artificially-hyping your audience and misleading them for patreon bucks are acceptable business practices, amirite? Mr "I could never find a cheap artist to produce cg and it's a lot of work to script it anyways please ignore all those rpgmaker games with cg."

For the second part of what Ninja stated.. he asserted crashes. That is a positive assertion, burden of proof is on him.

You must be registered to see the links

Not how that works. I asserted that it can happen. I am establishing a hypothetical. You produced one nuanced, even circumstantial situation which actually supported my position, and still does, in its own way. You basically gave the prosecution a revolver and said "I'm an idiot for wasting your time, kindly execute me now."

*Do note that I do not intend to pursue this argument further, it's getting wearysome, I'm ignoring Ninja because I do not feel like they offer positive input on the matter.

Really? Your position is "I'm ignoring x because my opinion overrules the necessity for me to substantiate my position with an actual argument."? Well, if our opinions beat facts and our feelings overrule legitimate discourse, your arguments lack substance, your ideas are garbage, you're an arrogant, entitled hack who thinks he's the salt of the earth because he produced a mediocre rpgmaker game and then demanded money for it, and you got banned from another forum for this same behavior and, rather than learn from that experience, posted a

You must be registered to see the links

and then told everyone to jump ship to ulmf because of it. Your contributions to this thread have been detracting from the subject, providing two ideas that were easily opposed, and then shit-slinging into a "I'm better than you, ergo I don't have to rebut your argument."

Kindly leave this thread if you're not actually going to contribute.

Anyways moving back on topic. What is the top priority atm? What matters the most to the community and the moderators?

That's what this thread is about. Top priority would probably be putting request threads, helpful tools, technical support, and such into their own section. That would require a revising of the rules before it's fully implemented, which might be the actual priority.

-snip-

=Only focusing on the spoilered stuff=

Spoiler

Patreon topics have died down last I checked. It's not even on most people's radar nowadays, except when a dev doesn't update and still takes money for basically nothing. As for pledge-whoring, it's a more a common practice with devs who are just starting out, or people with an established reputation who know what the community is like when you give them access to content. Some devs also don't want Joe Public to know there isn't a new update because most people assume no update=dev is lazy. In a lot of cases, it's more the dev is having trouble with some shit and wants to avoid the drama. Honestly, it's a double-edged sword.

Your second (third?) point is pretty accurate, actually. Most developers nowadays just want you to know they're making a game, this is its names, and also give me patreon money. There's also cases where devs like [redacted and the redacted] devs ask the staff to close their threads when the discussion isn't outright positive, and users devolve into slinging shit at the devs and their supporters due to lack of actual content. The common theme among devs that I've noticed is them wanting to do something "unique" or "inventive" and then when they realize the engine they're using is too restrictive to do that thing they promised, they panic and scrap the project and start over. This causes delays because now you have to re-script everything into an engine you may not be familiar with. In the case of [redacted and the redacted], they switched the program they're using for models. Not an issue if you're familiar, which they are not.

A demo should be a given by way of common sense. If you're a developer, common sense says have a demo ready to generate maximum hype, and don't just slap together a bare-bones "tech demo" either.

 

[Yoshiiki]

*Looks at the thread* Why did you even @ me? If someone wants to learn about proxy/vpn, I will link them to google anyway. Now I am going to throw some shit around.

Your second (third?) point is pretty accurate, actually. Most developers nowadays just want you to know they're making a game, this is its names, and also give me patreon money.
There's also cases where devs like [redacted and the redacted] devs ask the staff to close their threads when the discussion isn't outright positive, and users devolve into slinging shit at the devs and their supporters due to lack of actual content.

Redacted? What are you, youtube? Either point finger or use some generalization. Also, running away from negative feedback - dev is either a scammer or mentally weak, which lowers hopes of project being finished.

The common theme among devs that I've noticed is them wanting to do something "unique" or "inventive" and then when they realize the engine they're using is too restrictive to do that thing they promised, they panic and scrap the project and start over.

Correct. I had similar issue with artstyle, but I decided to "fuck it", fixes like that can come after game is done. Same for the engine, partially why I switched to rpgm mv (though, very early in development process) and while I would personally go for unity right now, I am too deep in the project to do that. Not a korean mmo server to do rollbacks.

This causes delays because now you have to re-script everything into an engine you may not be familiar with. In the case of [redacted and the redacted], they switched the program they're using for models. Not an issue if you're familiar, which they are not.

Again, if you are pointing fingers as a warning, point them... Shit, tell me so I can point it, because no fucks given as that "redacted" is annoying.

Don't @ me.

 

[satoshi1]

I don't think someone @ you. I still get messages from threads that I posted in from well over a year ago.

 

[Stiltzkinator]

In fairness, naming a specific entity here risks centering the discussion on them and derailing the topic, so I approve of not specifying, though there are other ways to generalize it without being so suggestive.

And now to loop back to one tiny thing I forgot to mention before.

If it's a thread about a collection of games, it'd be exempt.

Spoiler

Collection means that the OP is referencing a collection of existing games and identifies them, rather than asking for the userbase to compile a list of games that fit their wants, right? Because the latter keeps popping up a few times a month at least it seems, which is not only annoying as it is, but often these users don't even specify which games they have played.

I get that people who play a game they really enjoy might want to find more like it, and I also think there's no problem with having a place for that. However, I don't think the main H-games section is that place. At the very least, they may be better housed in a different section. The other thing is that these threads tend to be really subjective, as half the time the OP isn't specific about what they liked when they ask for 'games like this one', and the other half of the time, the ones who respond aren't completely clear on what is meant by the terms and such. I don't know what the best solution is for that one, though. A wiki for h-games where helpful categorical tags are defined and used to filter various aspects of games? Sounds like a dream once it exists, but a nightmare to bring into existence. I do think there's something to be said for categorizing, especially as there's a specific set of features people tend to either seek or avoid in games (BF, CR, GOR, NTR, Male/Female Protag, TS/Genderbender, and so on). While this may look like DLsite's tags, I personally feel that some of DLsite's tags are superfluous ("Large Breasts" tag comes to mind), and that they tend to leave out some helpful ones. Again, I don't know what the ideal realistic solution is. I personally just do my own research, but being able to quickly sort categories for games with "Female Protagonist+CR" could lead me to games I've overlooked but might enjoy. Is it the forum's place to make that possible? I don't know that it is, but until such a thing exists somewhere, this is where people will probably turn to for it.

 

[Yoshiiki]

I don't think someone @ you. I still get messages from threads that I posted in from well over a year ago.

Bob did, both me and slicer, but he either edited his post or I was so exhausted I was seeing things. Well, since I was summoned, here I am now.

In fairness, naming a specific entity here risks centering the discussion on them and derailing the topic, so I approve of not specifying, though there are other ways to generalize it without being so suggestive.

Nope, name them anyway as an example. Point fingers, if it will derail topic, it only will be as long as others bother to engage.

And now to loop back to one tiny thing I forgot to mention before.

Spoiler

Collection means that the OP is referencing a collection of existing games and identifies them, rather than asking for the userbase to compile a list of games that fit their wants, right? Because the latter keeps popping up a few times a month at least it seems, which is not only annoying as it is, but often these users don't even specify which games they have played.

I get that people who play a game they really enjoy might want to find more like it, and I also think there's no problem with having a place for that. However, I don't think the main H-games section is that place. At the very least, they may be better housed in a different section. The other thing is that these threads tend to be really subjective, as half the time the OP isn't specific about what they liked when they ask for 'games like this one', and the other half of the time, the ones who respond aren't completely clear on what is meant by the terms and such. I don't know what the best solution is for that one, though. A wiki for h-games where helpful categorical tags are defined and used to filter various aspects of games? Sounds like a dream once it exists, but a nightmare to bring into existence. I do think there's something to be said for categorizing, especially as there's a specific set of features people tend to either seek or avoid in games (BF, CR, GOR, NTR, Male/Female Protag, TS/Genderbender, and so on). While this may look like DLsite's tags, I personally feel that some of DLsite's tags are superfluous ("Large Breasts" tag comes to mind), and that they tend to leave out some helpful ones. Again, I don't know what the ideal realistic solution is. I personally just do my own research, but being able to quickly sort categories for games with "Female Protagonist+CR" could lead me to games I've overlooked but might enjoy. Is it the forum's place to make that possible? I don't know that it is, but until such a thing exists somewhere, this is where people will probably turn to for it.

Great, I am glad you realized people are fucking lazy. They could easily spend time to go through all threads and open new tabs to ones that might interest them.
Shit, fucking DL site has a god damn tags, both for Japanese and English sites. Go to DL page of game you want, translate whole page, click tag - it will search all Japanese shit.
If I can go through 10 pages of "translation" section, so can Timmy. And yes, some tags are shit and added wrong. Well, happens.
You want corruption? Search for female protagonist and filter everything, then you will create a list of your own. How does that help? You have a fucking list, someone asks for something in "game find thread", you compare it with what you have and either share or don't. But if someone doesn't even want to check - well, shit, too bad you are younger generation that got used to google and can't do shit if they need to do something on their own.
*keeps rambling because just woke up and angry because it's fucking steel melting point outside*