Alathon wrote:

Which aspects are confusing, and why?

I explained this earlier, just not in the post you replied to. The website is confusing because it barely mentions that BYOND is a game development program and it doesn't explain what features BYOND provides. The installer doesn't mention this stuff at all either. To most people it'll come across as a site/program for playing games. People might realize there's a "creation" aspect to BYOND but there's hardly any information about how that works - what needs to be done to create a game? What stuff does BYOND handle for you? What do you need to be able to do?

Where would you suggest they put an explanation of what BYOND provides?

In place of http://www.byond.com/developer/ The front pages of the website should assume the viewer is a potential user, not a current user. Current users know where to go on the site and they don't mind digging deeper into things. Potential users won't know to dig deep to find what they're looking for, they'll expect it up front.

But highlighting problems for the umpteenth time, in a manner which doesn't necessarily help Tom understand why something is a problem, doesn't help.

Here's how helping people usually goes:

A: That page doesn't look right.
B: Yeah, I don't like it either. Any ideas on how to fix it?
A: The colors don't look right, there's not enough contrast.
B: Hmm, ok. I'll give that a shot.

On BYOND, it hardly ever goes that way. Either the staff never responds to that initial statement or they get defensive and claim that BYOND is wonderful and there's no problem. If they're not going to respond or won't admit there's a problem, I'd be wasting a lot of time writing up a solution. We can try phrasing our advice a million different ways but it's just impossible to be helpful when people aren't open to receiving help. Thanks for trying though.

Forum_account, the only way I can really explain the issue with your attitude is this;

Please say more things, with less words.
Also, please solve more problems, rather than creating new ones.

Well, on the positive side, I think the new forum system is the best thing that has ever happened to the BYOND website so far!

However, I think we can continue in that direction. Just because you go by the philosophy that there is always room for improvement shouldn't mean that you are a negative person. I can see how it might be interpreted that way though, if your statements have only one side to them. If all you do is point out problems, then yes, that would be negative, but if you present a solution to each of those problems in an unbiased way, then that should be perfectly neutral. In the end it will all pay off though when the solution finally outweighs the negativity.

Now how about this. We could try and make our own designs for the pages to show you how much better it could look, and then you could implement something if you see it as a considerable improvement compared to the existing one. Seriously, we could make mockups of these pages instead of dwelling in our own negativity. It could save a lot of time if the community helped with the design, and we would all be more happy about it. Now that wouldn't be a negative idea would it?

Tom wrote:

As far as your attitude, you ARE negative

There's inherently a negative aspect to looking for ways to improve something (you have to look for the flaws). I can't help that but it doesn't mean I've got a negative attitude. Looking for ways to improve something is, overall, a positive activity.

there is no reason to manufacture problems that don't even exist or make things seem a lot worse than they really are

These problems exist. They're often made to seem worse than they are for two reasons.

1. People are too close to see the problem to notice it or they've been overlooking it for a long time. The problem isn't obvious to them so you've got to show how bad the problem is. For example, BYOND users got used to the low quality of games that they've lost perspective on what makes a game good - if you've got an original sounding title people will be excited, when it should really take more than that to get people interested in a game.

2. The staff doesn't respond or denies there's a problem. When the community says "here's a problem" and the staff says "that's not a problem", what do you expect will happen? The more the staff overlooks a problem, the more people will mention it. It happened with the moderator staff, it often happens with feature requests, and it's happening here.

Maybe you think I'm being defensive but, honestly, to me the problem is clearly more on bringing in traffic than keeping users who visit the site.

It's really the same problem. BYOND doesn't come across as a serious game development program so people tend to not use it, not blog about it, and not tell their friends about it. For BYOND to be treated like a legitimate game development tool then you've just got to make it be a legitimate game development tool. The solution to this problem will certainly increase the site's traffic, but increasing the site's traffic alone isn't necessarily going to solve this problem.

Deathguard wrote:

Also, please solve more problems, rather than creating new ones.

I'm not sure what that means. I don't think I've ever created new problems, I've just pointed out ones that already exist.

tenkuu wrote:

Super Saiyan X wrote:

It's also kind of sad when BYOND's only "good", known, and advertised game (ignoring Space Station 13's popularity and reputation outside of BYOND) is just based on concepts from games from the 1980s...and that's pretty much what the name of the game implies. If all BYOND is known to do is to recreate the style of games from 20 years ago...I don't think that'll interest or attract anyone.

Good for Silk since he's making the money off of it and not you. This post just reeks of SilkWizard jealously from the usual crowd.

And seriously, what game these days doesn't have ideas taken from some other source? There are no original ideas anymore, so you need to take existing concepts and repackage them in ways you think people will embrace.

That leads me into my main point. It doesn't matter what kind of feature set BYOND has, if the people using it can't come up with an idea and execute into a complete game that people want to play. Knock Silk all you want, but at least he knows how to draw attention to his work.

Why are you insulted by my post? There is no jealousy. I couldn't care less if Silk is making money off of NEStalgia. I'm not here to make money. My post was just saying that if BYOND's main attraction is reproducing games from 20+ years ago, we should probably do something better than what we're already doing, I don't know, maybe make something akin to modern gaming?

Super Saiyan X wrote:

My post was just saying that if BYOND's main attraction is reproducing games from 20+ years ago, we should probably do something better than what we're already doing, I don't know, maybe make something akin to modern gaming?

The most popular games being played today are those that take concepts from non-computing or very early-computing and add multiplayer to them. This is because they put a modern twist on something that every generation can relate to. This happens to also be something BYOND does pretty well. There really is no reason that someone can't make a moderately successful BYOND game with the tools we have today. SilkWizard is just one of the very few trying. We're doing what we can to provide a better infrastructure to encourage it further.

Tom wrote:

You presumably support this system, so go out and market one of your games.

^ THIS. I'm still waiting for Tiny Heroes to be released.

I think the 'Create' pane's linking kind of misses the beat. It takes you to a page full of libraries. This is wonderful for someone who already kind of 'gets' programming, but not so great for someone who doesn't know what programming is yet - showing them a bunch of libraries means nothing to them.

Perhaps we could put a large pane or banner at the top of that page, linking to the list of useful guides and references?

I definitely agree with that. The lack of quality games hurts BYOND more than a sub-par home page could. What makes it worse is that the few quality games we have are hardly played(save for NEStalgia). Take Decadence for example; Great, polished game but nobody ever plays it. Perhaps you guys could host a contest for a free membership or some sort of BYOND paraphernalia(granted the old store has leftovers) in which the goal was to create a polished game? One hosted by "the man" would likely get more headway than an off-the-wall contest held by members of the community.

Just shooting ideas, here.

I don't think you'll get many more games made with the "members only hub" thing. People in the BYOND community make games for people in the BYOND community. Very few people even care about "global recognition" or "money". They just want a popular game on the website, and they don't care about much else.

Then again, you have to consider that the members made the better games anyway. It's a toss-up, but it's a thought.

It goes back to that lack of new blood issue too.