Hacking Aftermath + Possibilities of Change

[Luna the wolf]

Before I get into this topic, I want to note that I'm aware this is an extremely sensitive topic at the moment-- and this may contain my opinions. Odd I know seeing it under "Game Opinions & Ideas" but yes these are suggestions and views--not a personal assault. I know it may sound like I'm hammering this into the ground but please read this with an objective view and do not take this analysis as something personal because it's not meant to offend anyone and I apologize if it does so.


The event that occurred bringing the server down was awful, of course, but you do have to recognize the individual motives for launching this 'attack'. It doesn't provide any sort of excuse, but there may be some bit of reason to their actions. Change is difficult, and no one will ever have a perfectly satisfied playerbase no matter how hard you try, however I do feel that some opinions have been ignored and neglected.


While it's true without the source code you may not be able to directly edit things in the game without compromise, the active community has shown that the game--while it cannot be completely 'updated' can be effectively modified! Player animations, textures, lighting, items, markings, and maps--it's almost impossible to fully enjoy the game without these modifications being provided by the community.  But this is where I believe the issue is, 'updates' are completely reliant on the playerbase to make, and while it is wonderful to see a community pitching in to make the game better this really is a fatal flaw. Because the game isn't a good standalone anymore, everyone uses different item packs, texture packs, and marking packs to improve it, causing a lot of inconsistency between players and those that aren't tech savy may struggle joining in rps because these modifications are spread everywhere with many different versions.
I'd personally like to see the staff construct a formal development team--perhaps even consisting a lot of the hardworking people already within the community producing these modifications--keeping the 'classic' FH up-to-date. Of course you couldn't pile on 80 HD textures with complex water reflections and lighting, because while those may look nice and many players may use mods like these, the 'classic' FH should still be something the general playerbase should be able to use without fear of their computer not being able to handle it. But small things, like consistently updated markings and items would keep the core game new and fresh--because FH has been stagnant of any sort of semi-development from the staff for over 3-4 years. We as the playerbase don't have the source code much like the staff but we've developed work-arounds out of our own love for the game, and I haven't seen this same strong-willed nature to try and work-around these issues to update and renew this game within the staff, and it's something I really feel needs to be addressed.


In June about two years back, the General chat was removed. Please do hear me out on this one, while it was a long time ago some conversation regarding it stirred up again in light of the recent 'hacking'. Of course it hasn't been going on in the FH forums, rather on social media like Tumblr. Many anonymous members of FH are now coming to the hackers as a last-ditch effort of bringing the feature back to the game. I can't say this is right, but I also can't completely alienate them for it either, considering all topics regarding the general chat are immediately locked and trashed and any discussion regarding the matter results in a ban. These kinds of actions are stifling the community and restricting any kind of possible resolution to the controversial issue. Just because the topic may cause users to disagree should not make it a bannable offense to talk about. If anything I strongly believe this is an issue that needs to be brought about again, re-evaluated with the player's input in mind. This is a conflict between the playerbase and the staff that has been festering over 2 whole years, and because it's still coming about now we clearly have not just 'forgotten' about it. Locking an issue away and refusing any more discussion about it only causes sour feelings toward the staff that lead to these kinds of rebellious acts that threaten the security of the game. I feel that if brought about again in a calm and collected fashion, perhaps even setting up a poll for the playerbase to vote upon may bridge the gap felt between the players and the staff. I'm sure many would be willing to sign on as mods-in-training to help assist in the extra care needed to monitor the general chat--perhaps even a specific mod role, a general chat moderator to focus on the issue at hand. This community has done so much in the forms of mods, rps, community activities and more that I believe when put to the task could step up and handle this responsibility.


While these conditions now may not be ideal, I believe it's tough situations like these that have the possibility to bring about a great change, improving and strengthening both the players as well as the game--and this is what I would like to see come out of these rough times!


Again, I'd like to say that I do not intend to offend any members of the staff and that I by no means want to 'glorify' the hackers as what they did is still wrong and I do not approve of what they did, rather I would like to see a change come out of this situation for the better of the game as a whole.

[Hooli]

These are some really interesting ideas, to say the least. I can't say that I disagree with anything here, but I would like to get a bit of my own word in, if I may.

The game could use updates, yes, we all know this, we've all heard it a million times and we all secretly hope that one day the staff team will find the source code so they can update this game and bring it to its full, wonderful potential. Though I have to argue a bit that having so many versions of FeralHeart isn't really a bad thing. The animations, textures, lighting, items, markings, maps, presets, etc all allow FeralHeart players to bring one of the most important elements into play: creativity. Not having the source code has allowed the more imaginative players on the game to bring their ideas to life, and I think myself and a ton of others appreciate that. It wouldn't exactly be a bad thing if the staff team updated the game, that's not at all what I'm trying to get at here, I'm just saying that because we have no source code the idea of making custom items, markings, textures, animations, etc has come to life.

Now, onto the topic of General. This topic annoys me a lot, I have to admit. Gets my gears grinding whenever someone brings it up, though a little part of me, deep, deep down inside wishes the chat was back myself. I'm not gonna be one to complain, though. I know why the chat was removed in the first place and it was a pretty good reason. To say it bluntly, people abused it. I'm not saying that if the chat did come back people would start abusing it right away again, I'm just saying - why take that chance? I mean- sure. It would help out advertising a ton, but I think we've all gotten pretty accustomed to using movie clips as a means to advertise over the past 2 or so years. A lot of the 'bad' part of the community, if I will, left a while ago, which most people think is one of the reasons we should bring the chat back. Though something else they don't know is that a lot of the 'bad' part of the community is still here. I guarantee you somewhere down the line someone will end up abusing that chat again, and it'll get worse, and worse, and worse, and worse. Just like it did the first time General was removed.

Sorry if I went on rambling and didn't really make any sense in some of these parts, I probably ended up repeating myself a few times as well, but these two topics really perked my interest, I felt the need to reply.

[Luna the wolf]

...

I really appreciate the input! Of course I'd love to believe that the community has grown a lot better over the past two years I can still see where the concern lies.  The playerbase has been amazing in creating all these modifications, and this is certainly one of the most adaptable and creative communities there is. Of course, I'll always still hope for these sorts of changes, but it really are the complications like the crisis now and the lost source code that get people to look at things from different angles and overcome them and that's something that will always remain. Thanks for reading through my text-wall there, and I'm glad it was of interest!

[AbyssalRadiance]

Let me say a few things on your entire post: You wrote very maturely and technically, which is a rare thing to see on this site. Thank you for actually being an adult about this. However, some things need to be said.
For starters, barely any of this topic had anything to do with the hacking event, and was more of a pleading with the staff to make changes to things, like so many have asked in the past.
Very little of the updates topic has to do with the hackers' motives. Those hackers were nothing but immature, lowlife, insecure little attention-seeking trolls. They had nothing better to do than make a spectacle of themselves and enjoy their little power-trip. They brought Cereal Soup and Moonrise in to cause a war because they were bored and thought it'd be funny to frame those innocent games. The hacking event had very little, if anything, to do with players wanting updates and changes.

Second, yes, without the coding of the game, very little can be changed. The only reason it's so easy to make maps and presets is because at the end of the day, they are simple files. If you look at how every player map and preset is installed, it's beyond easy. What is actually built into the game is pretty much permanent and many base files really truly can't be changed. Things like animations and other character stuff truly cannot ever be edited without Kovu or his code due to HOW the animations and other such things are to be programmed into a game. It's not as simple as throwing the animation file or skeleton files into folders...there needs to be MAT files, CFGs and other things that tell each file and each component what to do, when, how, and in what amount or intervals. Without the source, none of the proposed edits you suggested can 100% work.
HOWEVER, BEFORE YOU GET ON ME FOR THIS, I must give you props for your enthusiasm and passion. I am in college for media arts and animation and I do a lot of work with game design students and classes. It's good to see people passionate about stuff like this, showing how much they care but in a GOOD positive way with real suggestions, which is contrary to the usual people just crying about the game being "boring", with no knowledge of what they're saying. Good on you <3

Many anonymous members of FH are now coming to the hackers as a last-ditch effort of bringing the feature back to the game. I can't say this is right, but I also can't completely alienate them for it either, considering all topics regarding the general chat are immediately locked and trashed and any discussion regarding the matter results in a ban. These kinds of actions are stifling the community and restricting any kind of possible resolution to the controversial issue. Just because the topic may cause users to disagree should not make it a bannable offense to talk about. If anything I strongly believe this is an issue that needs to be brought about again, re-evaluated with the player's input in mind. This is a conflict between the playerbase and the staff that has been festering over 2 whole years, and because it's still coming about now we clearly have not just 'forgotten' about it. Locking an issue away and refusing any more discussion about it only causes sour feelings toward the staff that lead to these kinds of rebellious acts that threaten the security of the game.

Lastly, about General...I'm afraid I might be a bit stern here, but please don't think I'm being mean.
I don't see the big deal about General chat. I have played nearly every IT server out there and never once have I cared about General. Sure, it worked in those games, but no one ever used it. There was no reason to. Everyone interacted properly and had no need for it. If needed, they whispered or used Party.
I understand that General was best for RP advertisement and speaking across the map, but as Hooli mentioned, people abused this. The major thing was that no one would do anything. Literally, anything. People would sit in one area, anywhere, and talk there. No one interacted or actually bothered to walk around and PLAY the game, since they had General. That, and people used it for buttloads of spam and other unnecessary filler stuff.
The harsher part of things is this...
1) For players to try and have the hackers give them something the staff wont is extremely disrespectful.
2) Yes, the hackers SHOULD be alienated, after their identities are revealed and they are punished. There is no excuse for what they did, especially with how they acted through Tumblr. They don't deserve any pity.
3) The staff do what they do because they must. Some may think it's unreasonable but they have their reasons. As stated above, General was removed for many reasons and what's done is done. Banning would be excessive but people are only banned for extreme actions against the rules; aka, if someone was spamming or causing insane drama over the topic of General, that makes sense. If they simply asked why General was removed, then a ban would be fairly harsh. Regardless, the staff refuse talk of General because it's over and done with. It happened, it lived its life, and it's over. I'm sorry to say but the only people making it a problem are the players. The staff did what they felt was necessary, and the players simply cannot accept it. I understand how some may miss it. Some are mature about it, like Hooli, and some rage about it, which is not necessary.
4) To continue with point #3: "Causes sour feelings toward staff that lead to these kinds of rebellious acts that threaten the security of the game"...I'm sorry but if things like losing General, and the staff refusing talk of it for obvious reasons is enough for people to HATE the staff and want to kill the game, then they can just get out right now. I'm sorry, this is the harshest thing I'm going to say but people need to get over it. General is gone, it's not coming back and there is seriously zero reason for people to still harbor a grudge or annoyance about it. This is such a minor thing it's not even funny. Harping on the issue does nothing to help it, and if this General thing was part of the hackers' reasoning to hate the staff then good lord they are pathetic. As I said, I understand how everyone can be disappointed...but to be enraged and "sour" about it is too much. It needs to be moved on from, that's it.

[LordSuragaha]

First I want to thank you Luna for being so mature and polite about how you brought about this topic. Same to those who replied here.

Sadly the real big issue here is the lack of the source code. The fact that we staff know what we want to do for you all and we know what the community deserves but have our hands tied back because of our lack of the source code. It's not that we don't want users to be able to share their feedback to directly influence the game but why ask users to judge features that are broken and shouldn't be implemented in the first place.

The other sad bit is that these "hackers" and many other troublesome users spread terrible rumors and lies about the staff team. Contrary to what they say, we care immensely for this community. We want to continue keeping Feral Heart as a fun place for you all but we also want to keep things fresh. It's why we work so hard at the official events and other activities. We never have given up on trying to deliver the best content to you all while working to refine what has been. Reality is though that without a source code Feral Heart is a stagnant thing and there is only so much we staff can do to keep improving upon it.

KovuLKD walked out on the community and left us with nothing to sustain ourselves. The staff have been working as hard as they can to keep livelihood in a relatively dead game. For a game that hasn't had an update since 2011, has no source code, and a limited but loyal staff team I think we've managed quite a bit.

So many of the issues we encounter when discussing Feral Heart all come back down to the same conclusion.

The lack of a source code hinders Feral Heart's progress.

The general chat was never optimized. It wasn't built in a way that would allow it to work harmlessly and seamlessly with the game. General in itself was a broken feature. Yes there is no denial that it had its fun aspects but overall it only was more hassle than it is worth. We staff did everything prior to give general a chance and we heavily debated it amongst each other. I guarantee you that no one wanted to remove it but we came to the consensus that its removal would be for the best. General chat was not removed out of some whim or because staff didn't want to moderate it or because we want to see the world burn. No. After careful deliberation we did what had to be done in KovuLKD's absence without the source code. Had we had the source code things could have worked out better for everyone.

It always saddens me that players take out their frustrations on the staff for the lacking of the game. It's not our fault that the game is in this broken and not updated state. We staff are simply users who loved the game as much as you all and saw potential in it enough to want to keep it alive even in its creator's absence. We adopted the abandoned brain child in all its flaws and tried to build upon it to make up for its obvious lackings. We took up FH into our care because we love the game and we accepted all the probability of good and bad that would come from our decision.

In all the mess that bad people try to stir and in all the complaining of what Feral Heart lacks, people have failed to see what really is had. So many have forgotten the friendship, unity, fun, and creativity that the world of Feral Heart was meant to embody. Feral Heart isn't lacking just because there is no source code but it is lacking because everyone has forgotten why we came here to begin with. The community makes the game...

I wish to elaborate more but it's late where I am and I wish to rest. Maybe I'll get back to this tomorrow.

[PrettyReckless]

I also want to firstly thank you for yhis mature post. It was very nice to read.
I'm sure we'd all like to see a change in Feral-Heart. An update would be great. However it's not as easy as just to update it. There's a lot of things that needs to be done and discussed.
The staff team has also, in my eyes, been very unlucky and lost several staffers along the way, and a lot to work at as it is.
We cannot forget that they've got lives outside of FH too, becaude I think most people do forget this. School, work and families are all things that take up a lot of time.

I remember the removal of general chat very well. Mainly because it was removed on my birthday. My first reaction was "Wow, it's so quiet. Peaceful. No fighting." Because that was what General chat was for. Chatter and bickering.

I've known about the lack of the source code since late-ish 2012, yet I've never understood how it stops people from playing the game. The community itself is a big part of the game, and it saddens me to know that many do not realize this.
The game is still getting modified, by users as you know.
Perhaps in the future there will be time and a possibility for the staff to work on their version, we don't know yet.

I must admit I agree with Abyssal. This chat does have little suggestion regarding the event itself. But you do bring up fair points, however nothing that hasn't been discussed before.

We need to be patient. Even if the staff decided to head in and make an update themselves, it'd take time.

[AbyssalRadiance]

It always saddens me that players take out their frustrations on the staff for the lacking of the game. It's not our fault that the game is in this broken and not updated state. We staff are simply users who loved the game as much as you all and saw potential in it enough to want to keep it alive even in its creator's absence. We adopted the abandoned brain child in all its flaws and tried to build upon it to make up for its obvious lackings. We took up FH into our care because we love the game and we accepted all the probability of good and bad that would come from our decision.

In all the mess that bad people try to stir and in all the complaining of what Feral Heart lacks, people have failed to see what really is had. So many have forgotten the friendship, unity, fun, and creativity that the world of Feral Heart was meant to embody. Feral Heart isn't lacking just because there is no source code but it is lacking because everyone has forgotten why we came here to begin with. The community makes the game...

LITERALLY
ALL OF THIS
RIGHT HERE.
I could not have said these bits any better myself. I find it HORRIBLY awful that FH staff have such an awful reputation just because of some bitter, immature players. FH staff is known in other IT games with a very bad rep and it's for poor reasons. I have never seen an adult player say bad things - just the immature ones.
I also agree majorly on the game aspects Lord speaks of here. As an animation student, working slightly in games as well, there is much more to a game than how it looks. Sure, a game can have great features but if it's gameplay is poor, it's hard to make up for it..in this case, FH's gameplay IS the COMMUNITY...and if the community continues down the dark path of immaturity and disrespect some players have shown, the game will lose credibility. Making a game, a movie, a show..anything creative targeted toward an audience takes the visuals, the background work, and most of all the PSYCHOLOGY of the demographics. Just as Lord says, the community makes this game.
I love everything Lord said here, holy bby jeezus

[Redlinelies]

It truly has been mentioned several times before, but the case seems like it's time to mention it again even though others has been very straight forward with the replies so far.

First and foremost it need to be understood and seen that the only reasons general discussion threads ends up locked or moved away is simply because there's so many that cannot be mature about the matter but also it being a never ending cycle where it's one of two options, staff just letting go and putting general back in, or users accepting that this is what FH is since there's no good middle ground. Sura already mentioned why this chat was moved away which is the hard but rough truth why it eventually had to be taken away. A bad design that never were properly tested or made for the environment we get in the game and never got the chance to "become" better, it took some of the basics from the older IT game but the game doesn't even function the same and how users will interact. As also mentioned earlier we'd probably be able to have a general chat if there was a possibility to adapt it to the game, rather than taking it plain off but then we come into the whole source code yadda yadda again.

It has never been a banable offense to talk about general rather a banable offense when users start talking bad about the staff team, harassing, or insisting on ignoring warnings to not nudge about a matter due to the nature of how it turns. This is a horror story made just to "try" to prove a point of how evil staff is in the whole matter when it's all about trying rhyme and reason and some users must accept this. Unless the game can be modified in such a way so a general chat would be able to be used more responsibly there's no reason to make the game and community go through all of it again. The chat itself, the game itself, the players themselves had almost 3 years to show what general could be but it was abused in such a badly manner.

Some people sat and joked around in it, some people sat and advertised in it, some people tried to keep things at bay in it, and some people tried to cause havoc, but there were also some of us who sat there and actually had to monitor it, we had to warn users, kick users and even ban them for various reasons that are all too many to even go into. There has been points in time where some of your staff sat for almost full days just trying their hardest to take care of the game as it was and when they did so they were told to pretty much "leave our general chat alone, you're ruining it", a statement that came in many ways and forms, now however the times where this general chat was left alone for more than a few hours, sometimes minutes it always had something popping up, drama, fights, blackmailing, spamming, anything your unhappy place can come up with, all on a big wide scale that dragged more people into it the further it went. When all these bad things went down, who were to blame? Was it the game creator, or maybe the game? Maybe it could also be "we" the players, the community? Nope, no way. "It's the staffs fault! They don't do their job", while we had active staff that almost took turns as a freaking job to sit and just watch the chat to be told they're trash for doing what they're doing, didn't matter if they were trying to be soft or direct, giving several warnings or not.

General chat was around for a long time, and it had different kind of staff monitoring it, around different times where people have been more or less available, times where users have been able to shape the chat more or less to what they wanted, and it always ended up sour due to how the game down to the core function with this chat and how the users "want" to use it. The game and how people play it need to change drastically before a general chat as we know it could be present. Some people can handle general chat, many however rather not, and only see the fun while some must sit there and clean.

The amount of staff was honestly not the problem even though it's an easy thing for users to point out, and just starting to randomly MIT people that "could" be "Okay" mods is not a solution. That seems like a way to bring the game down on two fronts asking me trying to re-build a staff here in FeralHeart. It always seems to be about finding an excuse as of why general chat didn't work and a reason to bring it back(though this is not directed at OP in any way just what appears to be the case).

There's a lot to say about this but I have to cut it short and fly off the computer for now and the whole section about modifications as official downloads is something that I'd have to diddle up post about later if possible. Thanks for the concerns.