June 24, 2005
ATTN: B.Y.O.N.D. Development Team
Dear B.Y.O.N.D. Development Team,
I have noticed that you have recently started a special type of membership service for B.Y.O.N.D. Other things I have noticed is that you are taking away the pager service, and making pay for it. You’re also giving new privileges to the members. Why? I thought that B.Y.O.N.D. was supposed to be a free service for all. You have changed that recently.
You have taken our dreams. Build Your Own Net Dream. That’s what B.Y.O.N.D. stands for, isn’t it? Why has this changed? You have suspended our privileges. You’re making us pay your expenses. Of course, we want B.Y.O.N.D. to survive, but we don’t want to pay for the service that was once supposed to be, and always be free. Soon, we may no longer interact using the pager. It’s like taking from the poor, and giving to the rich. I’m not saying that I’m poor. I can afford to buy the membership.
I would rather stand on the side of the people who prefer that B.Y.O.N.D. stay the way that it was supposed to be in the first place. It’s not right, taking away what we had before. What you can do is to let us have our pager rights. If you take it away, you are taking away our freedom of speech. We don’t want to have to join games to talk to other people. The host wouldn’t like it. The players wouldn’t like it. The developer wouldn’t like it. I know for sure, that I wouldn’t like someone joining my game just to talk about the video game they bought at Best Buy.
So please. The least you can do to help my cause is at least keep the pager going for everybody. What you’re doing is dividing B.Y.O.N.D. into two parts. I want to talk to people. I don’t want to join a game and talk to other people. So, I put the choice on you. Do you want to go ahead with your plan and take away our freedom of speech using the pager, or do you want to change your plans, and let us talk, and keep B.Y.O.N.D. in one piece. It’s your turn.
Regards,
Cooper
Student/B.Y.O.N.D. Game Developer
ID:134936
 Jun 28 2005, 4:09 pm
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seriouly dude its a pager..... I hate the pager it bugs me i talk in chatters or MSN or AIM or in the game the only thing a pager has done for me is people paging me saying CAN I BE GM IN YOUR GAME?!?!?!?!
Seriouly if your making a fuss over this then your an idiot Dave^^ | |
I will never, ever understand this attitude as long as I live... it's what happens any time a completely free service adds any pay feature, and it reflects a total selfishness and self-centeredness on the part of the complainer.
You're saying that because they gave you a pager system that was free in the past, they now OWE you? This is how things work in your world? When somebody does you a huuuuge favor, that obligates them to keep doing it forever and ever? Wow. Remind me to NEVER do anything for you, ever. In fact, as a precaution, maybe we should all just ban you from our games. I mean, you would just feel cheated if we ever made a game and stopped hosting it... and we don't want you to feel cheated, do we? (Note that I'm not actually advocating anybody do this... I'm just giving this guy an example of where his "logic" leads to.) Are you saying that if, years and years ago when BYOND/DUNG was first made... if Dan and Tom had known for a fact back then that in summer of 2005 that they would have ended up having to add pay features in order to pay for pager bandwidth, that they should have just not bothered making it at all? Or even more so, since they could not know at what point this could have happened, they shouldn't have bothered for that reason? Is that what you're saying? Because that's what it sounds like. Be glad you got to use the pager for free for so long. Be happy. That was a bonus! The fact that the pager priveliges now cost money doesn't mean anything was stolen from you. It just means you got a present earlier. No promises have been broken. BYOND is still free. It's completely free to make games. It's completely free to play games. That's what BYOND is... you can still Build Your Own Net Dream. You can still Play Other People's Net Dreams. They can still Play Your Net Dreams. Nothing that makes BYOND into BYOND has been taken from you. Nothing. I mean, BYOND is not Page Your Own Net Friends, is it? | |
TerminatorX13 wrote:
June 24, 2005 It's BYOND, not B.Y.O.N.D. It's not like U.N.C.L.E. or something. It's spelled as BYOND all over the site. I have noticed that you have recently started a special type of membership service for B.Y.O.N.D. Other things I have noticed is that you are taking away the pager service, and making pay for it. You’re also giving new privileges to the members. Why? I thought that B.Y.O.N.D. was supposed to be a free service for all. You have changed that recently. The game engine, developing games, and the hub are still free. The pager was always ancillary to that. Most of the pager's core functionality needed to join games is still free to non-members, but only certain aspects--most notably the ability to initiate a conversation--are being limited. This is sensible and right. The pager was always a huge bandwidth draw, and it was very very widely abused. Now it will be used mainly by people willing to support it, giving them a stake in its future and in keeping it free of crap like spam and chain pages. You have taken our dreams. Build Your Own Net Dream. That’s what B.Y.O.N.D. stands for, isn’t it? Why has this changed? You have suspended our privileges. Nonsense. No one banned you from the hub or made you stop making or playing games. You'll still be able to do that after the membership is live, of which you'd be aware if you'd thoroughly read the many posts on the subject. You’re making us pay your expenses. Not exactly; we're asking some people to help pay the expenses--in return for perks--and letting most of the community abstain while still allowing them free access to almost the entire system. We're also slashing expenses by excising one of the biggest abuses of the system, a move which will also have huge positive impact on the community. Of course, we want B.Y.O.N.D. to survive, but we don’t want to pay for the service that was once supposed to be, and always be free. Then don't. You can still play the games and all that. I think you're confusing that with the pager. The pager was never supposed to be free for all time. Dantom's goal from the beginning, from which they have never changed, is that BYOND itself will always be free. This has all been covered in other posts, and I invite you to read those over again before jumping to conclusions. Soon, we may no longer interact using the pager. Bear in mind if one person in a group of friends is a member, they can page their non-member friends and get replies. All this will really do is kill off the kinds of frivolous pager use that were quite literally choking BYOND, including polykey spam, page-alls, and idiot chain pages. It’s like taking from the poor, and giving to the rich. I’m not saying that I’m poor. I can afford to buy the membership. It's more like putting the beer on a higher shelf. Right now the pager suffers many kinds of abuse that are hard to deal with, and this will almost completely go away in the new system. (I expect I may still get a page-all or two, but I'll still merrily cuss out any twit who sends me one.) I would rather stand on the side of the people who prefer that B.Y.O.N.D. stay the way that it was supposed to be in the first place. BYOND is actually closer now to the way it was supposed to be than ever. Dantom always intended it be able to support itself, but never intended something like the pager be absolutely free to everyone no matter what unto the ends of the earth amen. It’s not right, taking away what we had before. Why? Did you pay for it before? Did you speed the genie on his way who granted Tom unlimited funds with which to keep up BYOND? Did you contribute in any way to his being able to provide not just the site and the hub but the pager as well? Of course you didn't. Why do you expect something forever to be free? Dantom made that promise only of BYOND itself, not every single nook and facet of the system. What you can do is to let us have our pager rights. If you take it away, you are taking away our freedom of speech. Horsehockey. You still have the right to free speech--you just never had it on the pager or the forums. Dantom own those, and can permit or deny anything they please. BYOND is not a country where you live; it's a home you visit. If it was a country, incidentally, you'd be expected to pay taxes. We don’t want to have to join games to talk to other people. The host wouldn’t like it. The players wouldn’t like it. The developer wouldn’t like it. I know for sure, that I wouldn’t like someone joining my game just to talk about the video game they bought at Best Buy. MSN, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, and more are widely used by many in the BYOND community, and especially by the people who complain loudest about the pager going away. I can't count the number of times people have contacted me over the pager and then asked if I had MSN. So I don't get where this sense of panic comes from. It's like complaining about the curtains the neighbor put up so you can't see his TV from your bathroom, when you have 5 TVs of your own. So please. The least you can do to help my cause is at least keep the pager going for everybody. What kind of lame excuse for a cause is that? You're pleading that something remain free to you that you can not only do without, but that you can easily replace. Meanwhile you offer no kind of alternative solution to helping out BYOND. Complaining about change won't avail you; instead make yourself useful and suggest something better that's feasible. (Not that I think there's any better solution than to provide a small entry barrier to the trolls who've ruined the pager in the first place.) What you’re doing is dividing B.Y.O.N.D. into two parts. I want to talk to people. I don’t want to join a game and talk to other people. Nor do you apparently want to seek out other ways to talk to people, which is odd because everyone seems to be doing that anyway, free pager or not. This is not an either-or choice here; you have other options. Do explore them. So, I put the choice on you. Do you want to go ahead with your plan and take away our freedom of speech using the pager, or do you want to change your plans, and let us talk, and keep B.Y.O.N.D. in one piece. It’s your turn. Your freedom of speech remains, as clarified above, unchanged. Your ability to play and develop BYOND games is also unchanged. The pager too is mostly unchanged, except for a couple of aspects. Regarding those I advise you to study an important word: TANSTAAFL! Lummox JR | |
Hedgemistress wrote:
I mean, you would just feel cheated if we ever made a game and stopped hosting it... and we don't want you to feel cheated, do we? Just to play devil's advocate for a moment, you've done that a lot. ;) Lummox JR still missing RetroQuest | |
Lummox JR wrote:
Regarding those I advise you to study an important word: TANSTAAFL! Heh! =D Owned. | |
TerminatorX13 wrote:
Soon, we may no longer interact using the pager. It’s like taking from the poor, and giving to the rich. I’m not saying that I’m poor. I can afford to buy the membership. I just want to mention that for those who do have some extra money, giving friends a gift membership is a great way to help out your friend and BYOND at the same time. All controversy aside, the only motivation behind membership and the like is to keep BYOND going for everyone's enjoyment. If the system could continue without needing to get some kind of income, you can be sure it would. The incredible sacrifice of so many years of effort and expense by the founders is proof that their primary motivation is providing a great service for people to enjoy, and they've avoided asking for any kind of contribution for an incredible amount of time. At some point, though, a system has to pay for itself, and now a few people can make all the difference by helping out the system that has done so much for them. Get a membership for yourself or a friend -- it really makes all the difference! | |
Why not just get AIM/YIM/MSM they are free, and alot better than the pager. The pager is slow. It took me 45 seconds just to send a pager message to myself. Plus it is one of the things that is costing all the money because of all the people who think pager spamming is a good idea.
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BYOND is and always will be free. Even in the event that we can no longer afford to maintain the hub/website, I can assure you that we'll make the software available in some capacity so that people can continue to develop and play games. I would never think of putting any restrictions on that, as I want developers to have the utmost confidence that their games will be playable down the line.
That said, you must understand that maintaining the aforementioned hub/website does have an expense, an expense that currently comes out of my personal finances. The primary purpose of the membership is to cover that expense. I am not even so concerned about the current expense; rather, I am looking down the line, when we have, say, ten times the number of users as we do now, and hence, ten times the expense. At that point, things get a bit pricey and we'd better have an outside source to cover the cost. So if we can get a solid percentage of our users to contribute a small amount, we'll always be able to cover our costs. And this will allow the BYOND community to grow. That's our Own Net Dream. We have spent a great amount of time and effort developing the membership package. We structured it logically, so that we are effectively charging for things that cost us money to maintain, such as the pager and webspace. We also attempted to keep the cost to you as low as possible (even if everyone in the community ponied up the $15 none of us would be getting rich here). I think it is a pretty fair deal, and I hope enough of you agree. | |
ahem, i understand fully that the pager messages should be put on pay but.... "Non-members will also no longer be able to see the exact locations of other people who are online."
i understand that is being taken away because it is also something that costs alot, however, if you cant see what game they are on, BYOND becomes extremely difficult to play on, alot of my friends wont or cant get instant messenger programs, i have friends who CANT use "any" instant messangers, and i know i personally couldnt use a couple of them, no idea why, they just wouldnt work, or their parents wont let them, just for a few examples, im not against their getting income to pay for byond, far from it, but sometimes we need to know where a friend who doesnt have an instant messenger is | |
Why? Why must we use the Chatters cause you Order us to?And you know what's stupid?People who want to publish there game now it's gonna be Harder cause there's 2 seperate fees Byond is full of young people that can't pay for those services and what if these young people can't use chat systems like Msn,Yahoo,Aim cause there parents won't let them? Your making us depend on something someone else to create to talk when what byond had was good this is complete BS Byond was my Favorite place until now.
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RayquazaChampion wrote:
Why? Why must we use the Chatters cause you Order us to?And you know what's stupid?People who want to publish there game now it's gonna be Harder cause there's 2 seperate fees Byond is full of young people that can't pay for those services and what if these young people can't use chat systems like Msn,Yahoo,Aim cause there parents won't let them? Your making us depend on something someone else to create to talk when what byond had was good this is complete BS Byond was my Favorite place until now. i understand what your saying, however, the things DO cost money, putting pager messages as a member feature is a GOOD idea in my oppinion, however, as i stated before, the not being able to see where friends are, that isnt. in my oppinion, that was a BAD idea, but the messages are expensive. i cant go with either group here... | |
RayquazaChampion wrote:
Why? Why must we use the Chatters cause you Order us to?And you know what's stupid?People who want to publish there game now it's gonna be Harder cause there's 2 seperate fees Byond is full of young people that can't pay for those services and what if these young people can't use chat systems like Msn,Yahoo,Aim cause there parents won't let them? Your making us depend on something someone else to create to talk when what byond had was good this is complete BS Byond was my Favorite place until now. Then go ahead and leave, if you keep on complaining do you think anything is going to change? Go find a sollution, go make your own BYOND beyond! | |
Flame Sage wrote:
RayquazaChampion wrote: flame, i agree rayquazachampion is being.. well... somewhat less than reasonable, and i know the messages cost alot, but with putting it as a member feature, that very same cost goes DOWN because of less use, so does that feature AND the location markers dissapear? | |
"...i have friends who CANT use "any" instant messangers, and i know i personally couldnt use a couple of them, no idea why, they just wouldnt work, or their parents wont let them, just for a few examples..."
understandable and regrettable that your parents won't let you use IM systems, yet see mto have no problem with the pager which is essentially the same thing, but in a more community-focused form. i would suggest two very easy to do possibilities: 1) make your own little 'IM/chatroom' system with BYOND- heck, talking to people in a game is one of the DM languages built-in abilities. it would be child's play to add on to that for your own group of friends enjoyment. 2) create your own channel in Chatters- the official chatroom system of BYOND! aside from creating your own space, you can make it public or private, invite people from other channels, and there is even an offline-messaging system for friends who are not online at that moment (think of it as an answering service.) between these two, you and your friends will have no problems at all in keeping on contact. it's fairly easy to open up two DreamSeeker windows- one for your game, and one for your private chatroom, to keep in touch with your gaming friends. all without going against parent's wishes. | |
Come on, guys, let's not turn this into another flame war. I've already closed one of these threads today.
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Well Crispy I still don't think the Pager shoulden't be thrown away I think we can atleast keep the pagers and byond members get more things than normal people and special offers.
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digitalmouse wrote:
2) create your own channel in Chatters- the official chatroom system of BYOND! aside from creating your own space, you can make it public or private, invite people from other channels, and there is even an offline-messaging system for friends who are not online at that moment (think of it as an answering service.) good idea..., but if you cant find them to invite them in.... then well... whats the point? cause they ARE taking away the ability to know where your friend is also.... i went around reading so i had information before i started posting in this thread... | |
It takes up alot of bandwith, and with the stupid people sending chain letters, and spamming, its just wasting. bandwith.
How do you expect the BYOND Team to pay for all the stuff it provides? I am sure they could, but why should they take funds from they're real lifes, into a progect for everyone else to use.
Also, think about it this way, $15 a year isn't that much. Going to the store to buy some food, or going to a movie would cost close to the same.