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The Caves of Narshe has expanded again, this time offering one of the most complete and innovative Final Fantasy Tactics sections available on the net.  I could write all about the different sections that are available in the new section, but it's probably best for you to check it out for yourself.

http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/fft/

The CoN staff is extremely proud of this section, and we'd like to ask you to post your comments and reactions to it right here, as well as beginning discussion in the newly-opened FFT section.  Enjoy!

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

Nice!  It'll be useful when I give FFT another shot.

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"So in the end
I will be-what I will be
No loyal friend
Was ever there for me"
-Gollum's Song, Emiliana Torrini

LoL Well I saw this coming for a long time.

Quote (MorgueN @ 30 Apr 2003, 18:56)

LoL Well I saw this coming for a long time.

Oh? How long is that, praytell?

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

I knew the Forum page looked different somehow...I'd expect a great increase in traffic from it. Moreso than FF5 anyways.


Now all you need is FF7. I would be (very) greatly satisfied with an FF7 section.  



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The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

that's awesome,I love FFT      

Since almost everyone on chat was playing FFT. Hmm raises a few eyebrows.

Rats, you spotted the secret!  Ah well, cat's out of the bag now: we'll be covering Unreal Tournament and Starcraft next.

Quote (Rangers51 @ 30 Apr 2003, 17:55)

Quote (MorgueN @ 30 Apr 2003, 18:56) LoL Well I saw this coming for a long time. Oh? How long is that, praytell?

Prolly as long as we've had ta hear ya yap about the game in chat.

Surprised it didn't happen earlier actually.

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Arts

Farts

Twarts

Like when the FF5 section launched, the FFT section will be most helpful when I actually get around to playing the game.

I won't say it was necessarily "obvious", but I saw this coming too



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"When I turn the page
The corner bends into the perfect dog ear
As if the words knew I'd need them again
But at the time, I didn't see it."

~"This Ain't a Surfin' Movie" - Minus the Bear

So how far are we going to expand? All the SNES and PS1 FFs only or all the Final Fantasies?

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"I had to write four novels before they let me write comic books."
-Brad Meltzer

Starcraft eh? Nice, I definitely didnt see that coming. My UT doesn't work anymore, and i installed it from someone else's game. Oh well.

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The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

Similar to FF5 being uploaded onto the site. We saw all this fan art then were told CoN takes fan art from all games then doesn't have the section. Thats how I figured it out.

Quote (Tiddles the Cat @ 1 May 2003, 04:29)

Rats, you spotted the secret!  Ah well, cat's out of the bag now: we'll be covering Unreal Tournament and Starcraft next.

I thought we had decided on preemptive coverage of Starcraft 2.    



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"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle

I don't know. I think that when you cover everything, you start to lose your charecter. Were it my site (and its not, so do what you think is best, of course. Really goes without saying, if you think about it. Anyway, this comment is getting much to big, so here comes the end parenthesis) then I would have kept it to just FFIV and FFVI, as these games seem to both have the same feel to them. Its this feel which you have captured so well in this site. (However, I can't speak for FFV).

But, yah, that's what I feel about it.
I must say, though, the FFT section lives up to the quality of the rest of the site.

[/rant]

Quote (Tiddles the Cat @ 1 May 2003, 04:29)

Rats, you spotted the secret!  Ah well, cat's out of the bag now: we'll be covering Unreal Tournament and Starcraft next.

omgomgomgomg tiddelz wen r we strtin dis??//!!11  i luv sc nd ut cuz i mak eevery1 lok liek noobs lol

Anyway, this is great.  FFT is probably one of my favorite games of all time.  Very cool.  Yes.

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I find your lack of faith disturbing...

RUSHES ARE FOR PROFESSIONAL PLAYERS ONLY, KAPPA.

Iain: I think your point must be lost on me, I'm sorry. I just don't get how the character and tone of the site can be harmed by expansion. We're still the same people creating the site, no? Are you concerned that a larger site would increase the number of people coming here on a daily basis, and would ruin the integrity of a small, tightly-knit community? If that's the case, I'd feel compelled to remind you that you haven't been here too long yourself.

I'd be happy to discuss any concerns you have further. Feel free to shoot me a PM.

In other events, I hope you all can enjoy the section now as much as we have had building it. It's certainly rekindled my love for the game, and Neal has blown through it at least twice since we started, right? The section isn't quite done yet, we'll be adding to it as we can. Enjoy.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Josh, I think he's talking about the latter and I hafta admit, I kinda agree with him, and I have been around for a fair bit, so you'll have to toss that counter point out da window.

I guess from a personal standpoint, I think expanding into the 32-bit FF games means you lose that 'classic RPG' aspect.  Personally, I'd like a more old school feel to this place.  But that's superficial, so it's rather pointless.  Just thought I'd let ya know anyhow.

What I'm worried about is the speed of your expansion.  You've gone through five incarnations of the CoN, and in the space of the last two, you've added three new games to the site, all of 'em almost one after the other.  Kinda makes me wonder how you can title the website after a location in only one of those games.  The point is that if you expand too fast, the quality of the site suffers cause your constantly rushing to add this new material without smoothing out the stuph you already have.  I've noticed a lot more posts in the errors/troubleshoot than I used to.

Okay, so that's my take on the subject.  Go at it however ya like.

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Arts

Farts

Twarts

Quote (Narratorway @ 1 May 2003, 22:16)

Quote

Josh, I think he's talking about the latter and I hafta admit, I kinda agree with him, and I have been around for a fair bit, so you'll have to toss that counter point out da window.

Well, most of the staff has been around since the beginning, so I'm bringing the counterpoint back.  I personally think the expansion is the best thing we've ever done.  No other Final Fantasy game that we've covered this far has given us the potential to cover so much, and no other Final Fantasy site has ever covered it to the extent that we have.

Quote

I guess from a personal standpoint, I think expanding into the 32-bit FF games means you lose that 'classic RPG' aspect.  Personally, I'd like a more old school feel to this place.  But that's superficial, so it's rather pointless.  Just thought I'd let ya know anyhow.

You lose a lot when you focus too much on the old school vs. new school argument when choosing games.  If you try to focus and say you only like old school games, you're not going to concentrate on what the "new school" games have to offer.  I may be biased in that FFT is my favorite game, but with that same token, it may be because I look at each game's merits in making my decision, rather than when the game was released.  I take the games for what they are, not based on the day they went into stores or what team of developers made it (whichever factors more into your definition of the "school" the game is in).

Quote

What I'm worried about is the speed of your expansion.  You've gone through five incarnations of the CoN, and in the space of the last two, you've added three new games to the site, all of 'em almost one after the other.

But if we're going to expand, which is inevitable if we want to stay competitive with the other top Final Fantasy sites, how would you want us to go about it?  We're actually, believe it or not, not expanding as fast as we could be.  While we've been working our butts off trying to get the FFT section ready for the launch of the public, we've been working on it for a LONG TIME, trying to get everything done and done perfectly.  Plus, keep in mind that the five incarnations of CoN began in July 1997, nearly six years ago.  Six years for five version of a site is NOT rushed.

Though the goal of the site is not to be the "best Final Fantasy site" out there, we want to be a place that offers viable information with a well-done layout and a strong community, and that's exactly what we've done.  It's actually really reassuring to see these posts because it means people care about what's happening to the site and don't automatically agree with what happens to it (Not to say that all the people that praise us aren't appreciated. )

Quote

Kinda makes me wonder how you can title the website after a location in only one of those games.

It's to keep the nostalgia feel of the site.  For those of us that have been here since the beginning, it's very nice to remember what it has been.  CoNHistory is a good way to feel that nostalgia in case people haven't been here.

Quote

The point is that if you expand too fast, the quality of the site suffers cause your constantly rushing to add this new material without smoothing out the stuph you already have.  I've noticed a lot more posts in the errors/troubleshoot than I used to.

Show me a game information site that doesn't have any errors, and I can guarantee you that DarkPaladin will find five right off the bat.


Keep in mind that this isn't directly responding to or trying to shoot you down in particular, NP, this is to clear the air on the expansion of CoN in general.  Feel free to respond right back to what I've said, anybody.  Everyone's entitled to their opinion, and as I said before in the post, it's really great to see that people are exercising that right, and that the site really matters to them.



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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

I think it's great that the CoN is expanding.  I've only been surfing around this site for a few months, but it's already one of my favorites.  Great people, great games, and great coverage and layout.    Good job, people!

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~Status Report~

* Completed... Dragon's Head
* Completed... Soldiers of the Empire: Disciples (release pending)
* In Progress/Undecided... Of Love and Betrayal
* Planning/Assembly... Where it all Began

Also, remember that a lot of the errors that have been reported recently actually refer to our original FF4 and FF6 content.  Well, alright, it's mostly FF4, which, in my opinion, is probably our weakest field, having had to negotiate naming issues across three popular versions of the game.

It's also worth remembering that Errors/Troubleshooting didn't exist until CoN5.    Plus, error reporting has increased as site usage has increased.  There were quite a few errors in the last days of CoN4 that were never reported or, if they were, didn't get fixed (largely relating to having changed hosts, in fact).

It wasn't that we didn't fix them because we were lazy, nor because we were already busy on CoN5 (though we were).  The framework of CoN4 made updating a pain in many unpleasant places, especially as it pretty much required R51 to be the man to do it, as the rest of us didn't have his master templates.  It was an update bottleneck, you might say.

I think it's fair to say that the CoN5 system is one of our biggest reasons for more rapid recent expansion.  It's not really visible to end users, but the internal workings (and the layout, to an extent) of the site now make it much more easily expandable than it ever used to be, allowing more staff to work concurrently on a section of content.  And for the most part, with this system, we're all working on aspects of the site that we enjoy doing, so we like to go in and get it done.

That said, I feel I must emphasise that we don't feel we're rushing to add new bits.  Any special folk who were lucky enough to see near-final CoN5 layouts before it launched may remember that the top "tab bar" contained a link to an FF5 section even then.  There's also been an FF5 forum here since that time, that's been closed.  FFTactics has been in development almost as long.  The most rushed part of the site is really the FF4 section, still, considering the name sync problems I mentioned, and the hurry were in to slip CoN5 out on the site's fifth birthday.

I guess you can't always please everyone.  I'm sorry that regular visitors such as yourselves are concerned by the additions, but all  I can do is try and assure you that we're not rushing nor taking anything lightly, and the community discussion areas of the site will continue to be run in the fashion to which you've become accustomed.

If you do find errors, please do drop them in the forum, and we'll see what we can do.  We're going to be especially focussed on cleaning up the content we have for some time now.

Quote (Narratorway @ 2 May 2003, 00:16)

What I'm worried about is the speed of your expansion.  You've gone through five incarnations of the CoN, and in the space of the last two, you've added three new games to the site, all of 'em almost one after the other.  Kinda makes me wonder how you can title the website after a location in only one of those games.  The point is that if you expand too fast, the quality of the site suffers cause your constantly rushing to add this new material without smoothing out the stuph you already have.  I've noticed a lot more posts in the errors/troubleshoot than I used to.

Tiddles and Neal have really pretty much said all there is to say in regards to your post. I'm very happy that this debate has taken place, though. It's an honour to have people taking such detailed and even passionate stances on the future of the site. It's things like this that make me want the site to have a long, strong future.

Anyway, the only thing I can say is that the FF4 section is a bit bollocksed up, but aside from that, I don't think we really have any issues that any site doesn't experience. In fact, most of our errors are caused by our moron host breaking things. But, anyway, we intend to spend some time on it in the near future, as we look back over everything and make changes and improvements. There are no games currently slated to debut on the site.

I see no reason to change the name of the site, really. If anything, it helps keep the focus on the fact that we started out old school, and we still have the old games in our hearts. Add that to the fact that everyone knows us by this name already, and the name just continues to work. But thanks much for the concern!

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Quote (Neal @ 2 May 2003, 00:33)

You lose a lot when you focus too much on the old school vs. new school argument when choosing games.  If you try to focus and say you only like old school games, you're not going to concentrate on what the "new school" games have to offer.  I may be biased in that FFT is my favorite game, but with that same token, it may be because I look at each game's merits in making my decision, rather than when the game was released.  I take the games for what they are, not based on the day they went into stores or what team of developers made it (whichever factors more into your definition of the "school" the game is in).

I agree with that 100%.

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The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"