Some things that really need to be discussed....even if it's not my place.

[ArcticGalaxy]

Yes. I am finally speaking out for this. This is only a suggestion, I am not jabbing at any staff at all or trying to start anything. This is a SUGGESTION ONLY!

But I've really been noticing that FeralHeart is indeed dying. I've tried keeping hope for it and trying to defend it, but even I'm getting a bit skeptical. People are leaving left and right for many reasons. I've been noticing that more and more inappropriate people are coming out, since they know staff aren't always on anymore. It's really getting ridiculous. I know that making reports helps in a way, but I mean come on. There are never any staff online to make reports to! I know they have a life outside of FH. I understand that. But what needs to happen....there needs to be new faces.

I've heard staff say they need more people on their team. That there are never enough staff to oversee the game. But why do they not promote new ones? There are many of us that would make wonderful staff. And it would be nice for me (and others) to have someone online to make reports to. That way the game is taken care of and people feel more welcome.

Some people are beginning to question the staff, such as "Do they even do anything to help? Do they even log on? I never see them?" And that right there is an answer to that question in itself.

Staff need to understand that not all of the people that actually volunteer to be staff are just looking for power. Many of us genuinely care for this game and just want to see it succeed again, and they want to help the game achieve that. If you all are so worried about being short staffed, I would think you would appreciate it anyway.

And there are more things besides the staff issue that needs to be addressed. Registration needs to start being opened. I know the site ain't done. I know that we just need to be patient, but it's been down for months now! People are slowly going to stop watching for registration to open (they probably think the game is dead for god's sake) and it will just get emptier and emptier here. And many of us don't want that.

Please staff, just at least consider this post. I really care about this game, and I'm just another voice that needs to be heard and listened to. For the good of FH.

Thank you.

[Reaper]

I agree with you. I would hate to see the game die out where to the point there is barely no players online. I respect the moderators a lot, but hopefully they can open the registration sooner or later.  It would be great to see new faces around the community and the game. But hopefully the game won't die out despite the registration being closed.

[Hooli]

I joined this game back in November 2011, and since then have held it very near and dear to my heart. It's brought me together with so many wonderful, amazing people that I would give up the world for. It's brought me out of a dark place many times when I felt like I had no one. The people on the game showed me that yes, people do indeed care about me and that I am loved.

I'm not one to complain about anything, as I know that the staff always try their best to keep the game healthy and happy, but as Arctic said, there are some things that I do indeed think need changing. This game is like my baby, I love it so, so much, and although I do get sick of it sometimes I can never just up and leave permanently without coming back for another run. I for one do not want to see it die out like everyone is saying it is.

The staff has seemed to go a bit inactive, yes, and as was already said we understand that the staff are not robots that are supposed to dedicate their lives to the game. We know that the staff have lives outside of FeralHeart and we do respect that. Though it does not cover up the fact that we need more active staff members that are strongly willing to help this community get back to where it was before. We are told by the staff that they're always looking for people who are seen as eligible members of the community to become staff, so my question is: where are they? I've seen numerous people come and go and that are even still here today that would be wonderful staff. We understand that the staff are trying to keep power-hungry people out of the team. There are people who care about this game and want to see it come alive again as it used to be. The FeralHeart that used to have 500-600+ members on a day and that had such an amazing, wonderful community.

With that, there's problem #2: The community. We used to have such an incredibly kind community that was always willing to help those in need. There were so many helpful people on the game that always contributed to making the community a friendly, safe place for people to enjoy playing. What I've noticed, is that since the update, the community seems to have gotten not only smaller, but also more toxic. This isn't me bashing on the update at all, in fact I absolutely adore the update, but that doesn't change the fact that I've noticed the community beginning to go down hill after it was implemented. There are argument in The Grounds in the daily, and surely there are arguments daily in other maps as well. Nowadays people are going around insulting people in local for their designs, rp ideas, beliefs, and everything else. When you try to defend yourself or the person being bashed on, you'll be called disrespectful because of "freedom of speech". Nobody seems to understand that there's a difference between freedom of speech and being blatantly rude anymore, and it's frankly quite disappointing. I've expected so much more from this community and a year or two ago, it was quite possible that they've reached those expectations, but now, it's likely impossible.

I do hope that the staff read these and at least think about them. Think about ways to help better the community. Because all we really want to do is help make the game as great as it used to be.

[Kuri]

Land, Gold, Mineral oil, New players.  What do those all have in common?  They don't make them anymore.   We could make new players but i'm starting to believe the conspiracy theories. (Players that were single handedly bringing the community together again get log in issues...)

  You mention the staff not being active enough but i see them around.  More so when activity is high.

Would be nice to get new faces in here, especially seeing a certain IT server closed down in the past week i thought that'd be an opportunity to welcome some new people in if they were looking for a place to go...

P.S.  Even before the update some people were advertising in places like dA that they wanted an FH account but couldn't catch registration when it was open.   When looking for Xbox cheats a few months ago i saw someone willing to trade real money steam games for an FH account.  Some people must be desperate.  Not making this up.

[Vilivikhorith]

i really feel like the lack of open registration will be the great death knell of FH - people will move on, with no one to replace them. Registration being closed seemed to serve a purpose long ago, when the amount of in-game users caused the server to be unstable, but those seem to be the times of long agoooo. perhaps it should be implemented only when average server resources exceeds a threshold of stability for some (unspecified) amount of time? but yuh, six months with it (almost) not opened at all is a bit much too long, even if it isn't entirely fixed still.

point #2 also seems indirectly related to #1 - more people in the community would mean more people to (potentially) help out! =3!

[Morgra]

First off, I apologize if some of this doesn't seem to make sense or feels unorganized. I haven't been concentrating well these past few days.

Thank you for bringing this up. I definitely feel the same way as you, and others according to the replies about these couple of issues.

1) I think we're overdue for some new staff members to be trained and put on the task at stopping some of these annoyances that seem to be happening quite a lot. People seem to think that because there aren't any staff online, that it's okay to run around breaking rule after rule. I believe that yes you need to be careful when choosing new staff due to people acting power hungry, controlling and just a bad choice overall for a staff member, but please consider that some of our greatest members on the forums here are some of your most valuable options. And I'm very proud of our staff team so far for the work they do, and I realize that they have lives outside of this game, but we need more staff members to compensate for the amount of time that you are all offline and busy. It isn't really necessary to have a huge team of staff, but at the moment, we do need more. Whether that be 2, 3, 4 or 5 more, anything at this point will be a major improvement, and infact should make it easier when you reopen registration.

2)As Arctic said about the registration, I completely agree. And yes, we have taken into consideration that Raz is still working on things and I'm sure he is dealing with some real life obstacles as well. And that is maybe contributing to the length of time that registration has been down. Not to mention the hack last year adding to the list of problems. But it has still been down for a long while. I know that there was a DeviantArt post you had all put together to explain some of the fixes being implemented, but I think an update as to the progress on the registration opening may ease some minds. Even if it's a short few words from Raz saying that he's still working on it? Like Arctic said, that is just a suggestion ^^

I really do care a lot about this community. I have been coming around a lot more than when I was younger because I really enjoy being around. Right now, i'm going through a very difficult time in my life and I've felt very alone. Even though I don't get on a personal basis with people here, this community has a way of making me feel welcome. I feel like I have the potential to make really great friends here. And I still feel like we have the potential to become the expansive community we were. I know these past months have been difficult as a lot of people have been bringing up this subject, but I really hope that you as a team discuss some of the points we've addressed. Most importantly, know that we appreciate you entirely, we just feel like we have to speak up about this, as so many people have been discussing it and it seems to be a bit of a major issue for our community right now. Thanks for taking the time to read through this.

Edit: Here is the Deviantart Post I mentioned. It lists through the fixes being made.

http://feral-heart-art.deviantart.com/journal/F-A-Q-Guide-to-the-Website-Changes-645695371

[Kuri]

First off, I apologize if some of this doesn't seem to make sense or feels unorganized. I haven't been concentrating well these past few days.

Thank you for bringing this up. I definitely feel the same way as you, and others according to the replies about these couple of issues.

1) I think we're overdue for some new staff members to be trained and put on the task at stopping some of these annoyances that seem to be happening quite a lot.

i spend way too much time here & i barely ever see anyone break the rules TBH.  i do see people get upset over petty things though.  But those things don't really matter.

[Morgra]

i spend way too much time here & i barely ever see anyone break the rules TBH.  i do see people get upset over petty things though.  But those things don't really matter.

It doesn't happen too often on the forums. And the times I've seen it ingame, the rule breaks weren't super serious, but they were still bad ones. There was one I saw a few nights ago that was being extremely inappropriate. It was important for me to bring up because people are beginning to think they can get away with whatever because of the staff not being around all the time.

[Kuri]

i spend way too much time here & i barely ever see anyone break the rules TBH.  i do see people get upset over petty things though.  But those things don't really matter.

It doesn't happen too often on the forums. And the times I've seen it ingame, the rule breaks weren't super serious, but they were still bad ones. There was one I saw a few nights ago that was being extremely inappropriate. It was important for me to bring up because people are beginning to think they can get away with whatever because of the staff not being around all the time.

Normally you just warn them and they stop.  You don't even have to look scary or use a harsh tone or anything.

[Hooli]

i spend way too much time here & i barely ever see anyone break the rules TBH.  i do see people get upset over petty things though.  But those things don't really matter.

It doesn't happen too often on the forums. And the times I've seen it ingame, the rule breaks weren't super serious, but they were still bad ones. There was one I saw a few nights ago that was being extremely inappropriate. It was important for me to bring up because people are beginning to think they can get away with whatever because of the staff not being around all the time.

Normally you just warn them and they stop.  You don't even have to look scary or use a harsh tone or anything.

This is true for some cases, though I do know of a lot of cases where the person either doesn't listen or gives an attitude about having to listen instead of just following the rules and listening when asked to stop. Which is why we seem to need more active staff, because this happens a lot of the time that staff are offline, and nobody has any staff online to turn to for any help with rulebreakers.