Feral Heart

I also personally hate people coming up to me like : Do you wanna join my pack? You dont get the information you get  in advertisments

Also this, actually XD damn, I seem to keep finding new points I want to make.
Anyone who's been in Bonfire for any period of time while a typical group is recruiting will probably have an experience like this. You'll just be sitting there when suddenly a new group and friend request pop up out of the blue. "Ugh, another random group request?" you might think. "Well alright, let's at least look at the group and leader's bio to see if I might actually like it.", and so you do. But, due to the simple fact that many of the Bonfire residents don't bother with bios, you have no way of finding out more about the group unless you whisper the leader. Who may or may not understand you unless you speak fluent text language. In the end you deny both requests, and time has been wasted for everyone involved.

Now, I know that not every single person in the game is the same, but it remains a fact that General was a good, direct way of providing some rudimentary info about your group. And yes, it would help a lot if every group leader took the time to fill in the group bio, but sometimes it's filled with map links or they just can't be bothered. It's quicker to have it announced for all the map to see at once, rather than having to explain it to everyone who asks.

For the record, I'm still against the removal of the chat, though I have seen some really good points from both sides.

The one idea that keeps coming up to bug me, however, is the idea that removing Gen-chat will get rid of trolls, drama, arguments, etc. Every single chat in the game would have to be removed before just the arguments and drama stopped, and even then sparkle-trolls would still be around. Bad behavior isn't going to suddenly decrease because a chat was removed (in fact, I think it's gone up in the past week. Dunno.) Even if or when General has been gone for quite a long time, people are still going to find ways to make everyone around them miserable. It's an inevitability that doesn't go away just because General has.

This. It's a major point to take into consideration when making a final decision about General. Since it's been down, I really have seen a rise in people saying inappropriate things all over Local. When Fluorite fails to entertain me(which is all the time now), I tend to go to Bonfire. And since you can hear everyone in Local, it seems like as soon as I'm in there I have to say "Hey [insert name here], watch your language please!))" at least four times every time I go. On the whole I'm against the removal of General, but I've gone into the basic points I wanted to make in earlier posts so I won't do it again. But this is a serious problem, I've begun to ask myself if half the players are actually aware that swearing isn't allowed in the game. Just something to consider, especially since the mods can't be everywhere in-game to take down every little troll. There are only so many of you, after all.

Bear in mind that I'm not out to bash anyone here. But surely, most people have a pretty good idea of how the game would work if General was removed permanently now. I appreciate that this was a test, and that the point was to see the results, but have we not achieved that yet? We know now that advertising is very awkward and Fluorite feels like a ghost town. We know that a very large number of people are unhappy about it, and great amounts of conflict have arisen, further driving apart an already shaky community. Before the poll was closed down(thanks by the way, for removing our only method of giving factual statements about the numbers involved), 54 people voted that they desperately want General back and another 28 expressed that they weren't really ok with it, which made up 80.4% of the votes. I know, not every single active player voted on that poll, but those were some telling figures nonetheless.
I know someone will probably come raging back at me and call me an impatient, uneducated and ungrateful little upstart, but I think this "test" has successfully shown some results. And now we'd like the heart of our game back.

Right. My last post was a bit of a heat-of-the-moment rage, so I'd like to come back now and perhaps articulate my opinion a bit better. I know, everything I'm going to say here has probably been said by fifteen different people already and at least half will have said it better. But I'll be damned if I'm not chucking my two cents in.


I can see why some people may have felt the need to get rid of General: trolls, spammers, inappropriate conversations and the like certainly were a bit of a problem. But you know what? That's why the mods are there. To keep unruly players in check with that all-commanding red text and sparingly given words of warning when the occasion required it. I can't help but wonder if this was partly a way to avoid hard work, pretty much the only in-game work that was ever necessary. Also, reporting was definitely an option if no mods stepped in, which I've gladly done on more occasions than I can count. The trolls, spammers, and inappropriate conversations haven't gone away, not at all. Only now they're in less public chats where they can't always be seen by the right people and shut down. To me, that seems like creating a problem rather than solving it.

In terms of advertising: it's just...it can't be done properly. General gave RP leaders a place to state some info about their group, and invite in anyone who chose to read the chat. But with Local ads and movies, advertising has become a primitive and somewhat clumsy activity, a rather painful one to watch and even worse to try and participate in. About a week ago I created a group, whipped up a nice little map and got everything set up. I was so excited to go and grab some members and make some new friends, when suddenly this happened. The character I use to lead the group is one of my current favourites so I often go on him anyway, but it just ends up saddening me when every now and then I think "Oh, I should advertise for some members!- oh wait...I can't. Goodbye group".
The kind of long, descriptive ads that once graced General seem useless and out of place in Local. You spend all that time typing out a concise, informative ad and then it only gets seen by seven people. Movies are worse by far however, with their extremely limited text space and tendency not to work for so many players.

Life on FH now: whenever I log on, I feel like I've entered a ghost town or some quarantined city with no means of communication to the outside world. There's this giant, oppressive emptiness that just takes all the life from the game. Yeah, so it forces people to go and look for each other, but why was that necessary? What was wrong with sitting comfortably in a nice spot and participating in a good old bit of General chat? I, like many others on here, was one of those people who didn't enjoy the crowded spots where all you could see was nametag after nametag. I loved nothing better than finding a quiet spot to watch the sky or spectate a random RP while I had a good time on General. Now that's gone, because apparently there was something wrong with staying in one spot that you enjoyed.

And most importantly, about the execution of this change: I didn't hear a peep about this until I wandered confusedly into the forum, and found this topic after an eerily quiet day in Fluorite. There was no little notice on the login screen, no "monthly update" forum topic as it has been mentioned by other people here, no warning whatsoever. I wouldn't be half as frustrated as I am if you had told us what was happening before it happened. Heck, would it be so hard to put up a poll and ask us our opinions before you go wrenching out such an important part of the game? Lots of people have said it before, and I'm going to back them up. This game has really lost its sense of community in the recent past, and this didn't help that one bit. You say that other people's opinions were asked, but who? Were they players who loved General and used it every day, or were they mods who looked at the green chat and saw nothing but a mild inconvenience to be swept under the carpet? I really don't understand what possible reason you could have come up with to justify ripping away one of the best parts of the game. Now advertising is awkward as hell to say the least, and I feel completely alienated from everyone in-game as no doubt others do too.

I suggest that either General should be brought back immediately, or a poll should be placed somewhere very obvious on the forum for every player to give their view and the situation be taken from there. Not that my thoughts matter though. Or any player's. Oh, of course not. Because it's not like anyone who hated General that much couldn't oh, I dunno, mute it.
But nevermind that, I'm going to stop now before I start really digging into some people.

~Ax

A good, long-living role-play witch is literate, with No wolf-speak. (not literate for me).

Tears of joy at this comment.

Also, being in Fluorite General at 8pm(which is some mad hour of the morning for most players) and having the loveliest conversations about head shark plushies. All the secrets of the world are revealed in those conversations, and so many people miss them. And I love that fact. *evil face*