Track this topic | Email this topic | Print this topic

Huhu,
some things at the FF 5 guides bothers me, for instance, where are the locations of the enemies from which I could learn the certain blue magic? What is the sense for looking for the monsters which use the blue spells if you would have go through THE WHOLE WALKTHROUGH to find them?
Same goes for some summons, they are listed as "[...]learned from Item XYZ, which drops from [..]", but WHERE is this certain enemy?
Same for some other spells I guess (and Items which can be stolen ofc)

I have visited this place the first time...6 years ago or so as I found it for FF6 gaming (I was 13 or 14 back then or so, and such small kids tend to be naive, and I was a bit sceptical too, but you can imagine the size of my eyes when I read about testper....xDDD - I wanted to have it but I was unsure about if it was a fake or not ^^). However, back to topic, as far as I can remember, correct me if I am wrong, even back there were the game sections which are there now, and this means, that the whole site *might* havent been updated that much.

Also, I would like to see bonus rows for the different translated names, for instance monster/spell name
|SNES name|PSX name|GBA name|
Or maybe even better, a button which switch the whole website names/content to the specific chooses plattform.

Iirc you said at a "neighbour topic", that one of the reasons that you won't introduce newer games like FF VIII (apart from that the staff doesn't like it...xP) cause of the work which needs to be done, so here is my suggestion: Enable guide editing for (registered?) users. Means, that (nearly) every one can edit those tables, add a row, change things in the walkthrough, etc. pp. Everything will get saved in a history, so vandals can get banned and the original page can be restored easily (add a "Send to mod/admin" (report) button to this pages as well). Pretty much like a wiki software, it allows the community to do changes by itself, which will do some work the staff normally would have to do. (except from the coding, but this would be ONLY in the beginning of this feature)
And this might even allows CON to get more games into the section since the content will be created FAR faster.
(Eh...CON is the ultrapluspro page for FF, really !)

So what does you, the administration thinks about?

This post has been edited by Bas on 21st July 2009 21:24

Thanks for your post, it's nice to see that people outside the staff do still care about improving the site. Allow me to respond to you point-by-point.

Quote (Bas)

some things at the FF 5 guides bothers me, for instance, where are the locations of the enemies from which I could learn the certain blue magic? What is the sense for looking for the monsters which use the blue spells if you would have go through THE WHOLE WALKTHROUGH to find them?
Same goes for some summons, they are listed as "[...]learned from Item XYZ, which drops from [..]", but WHERE is this certain enemy?
Same for some other spells I guess (and Items which can be stolen ofc)

Sure, I understand you, and let me first say that we know full well that the Final Fantasy V coverage on the site is probably the weakest of all games on the site. It's natural law that some game has to have this status; for a long time, it was Final Fantasy IV, and now it's probably V, if I really had to pick one. The suggestion you mention above would almost undoubtably be one of the upgrades we'd implement for the FF5 section.

Quote (Bas)

I have visited this place the first time...6 years ago or so as I found it for FF6 gaming... However, back to topic, as far as I can remember, correct me if I am wrong, even back there were the game sections which are there now, and this means, that the whole site *might* havent been updated that much.

No, if you were first here six years ago, and hadn't been back, you're completely wrong, sorry. We've added coverage for at least four games since then, depending on when exactly you first visited the site. Not realizing one game had been added, I can imagine, but four seems a bit like a gross oversight. That being said, we do add new content more slowly now, there's no denying that, but I've explained why that is prior to now. Additionally, we don't work only on game coverage. That's definitely important, but we care a lot about our community features as well, such as the fanart and news sections that we've completely re-done in the last twelve months, as well as adding new coverage for Chrono Trigger.

Quote (Bas)

Also, I would like to see bonus rows for the different translated names, for instance monster/spell name
|SNES name|PSX name|GBA name|
Or maybe even better, a button which switch the whole website names/content to the specific chooses plattform.

Well, there are a couple things here to point out. One is that we don't and won't cover the SNES version of FFV. The only release in English for SNES is a fan translation, and while it is quite good, we have never had the intent to cover games that were not officially released in the West. Our official policy is not to go out of our way to assist gamers in playing games that Square Enix themselves do not support. Additionally, we do not at this time cover the GBA release, as we've not assembled all the necessary information to do so (as I'll discuss more later). We also don't "halfway" cover games, so it makes no sense to stick the GBA names of items/enemies/etc. into the section as it is now without actually covering all the content in a solid manner. The final point to make is that on every game that we do cover for more than one platform (Final Fantasy I, Final Fantasy IV, Chrono Trigger), we already have a "button" that does exactly what you say. Perhaps you didn't manage to look, but it's there.

Quote (Bas)

Iirc you said at a "neighbour topic", that one of the reasons that you won't introduce newer games like FF VIII (apart from that the staff doesn't like it...xP) cause of the work which needs to be done, so here is my suggestion: Enable guide editing for (registered?) users. Means, that (nearly) every one can edit those tables, add a row, change things in the walkthrough, etc. pp. Everything will get saved in a history, so vandals can get banned and the original page can be restored easily (add a "Send to mod/admin" (report) button to this pages as well). Pretty much like a wiki software, it allows the community to do changes by itself, which will do some work the staff normally would have to do. (except from the coding, but this would be ONLY in the beginning of this feature)
And this might even allows CON to get more games into the section since the content will be created FAR  faster.

Well, sure, the coding would be only in the beginning. But do you have any realization as to how robust that coding would have to be? Trust me, with the size of our development team, it would take several times longer to develop what you are suggesting and integrate it into the current site than it would to develop coverage for any three new games that we might want to cover using our current methodology (my estimate would be on the order of years, not months). And at the end of the day, we'd be nothing more than a Wiki. Not only has that been done, it's also not what we want to do with this site. More (and faster) coverage doesn't necessarily mean better, and if we allow all of the 4000+ members of the site to touch the content any time they feel like it, I believe it would gravely injure the unique personality and voice that we try very hard to maintain. In short, we prefer to do our quality control before we publish content, not after; while there's absolutely a place for wiki-style content out there, I don't believe it's here.

I do understand the desire to put new coverage out there faster, believe me. However, I don't see any compelling reason to deviate from the way we've done things for years, as the result of the way we've done things has been that we've put out some ridiculously good content. Shifting that paradigm at this point in the site's lifespan does not seem to carry a lot of return on investment, but we're thrilled to continue working on the site under the current setup for the foreseeable future.

--------------------

"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

No, if you were first here six years ago, and hadn't been back, you're completely wrong, sorry

Eh, I was 12 or 13 back then, so...?
lol ^^

Quote

Well, there are a couple things here to point out. One is that we don't and won't cover the SNES version of FFV. The only release in English for SNES is a fan translation, and while it is quite good, we have never had the intent to cover games that were not officially released in the West. Our official policy is not to go out of our way to assist gamers in playing games that Square Enix themselves do not support.

Eh - Who says that you have to stay with the original intention?
I personally believe that the FF5 fan translation is WIDELY spreaded, so this could be an improvement for CoN, as well it might attract new users to this site.
Also, you might want to take into consideration to cover fan made games, such as Final Fantasy: Endless Nova (haven't played it personally, though, but iirc it got some really nice ratings at abandonia or heart of the underdogs or so...?)
If they are good enough, there shouldn't be a line drawn between official and unofficial games I believe.

Btw, I later saw the button about the translations at CT, may I ask if CT got ever released officially at the SNES to america/europe?

Quote

Well, sure, the coding would be only in the beginning. But do you have any realization as to how robust that coding would have to be?

No, that is why I asked ^^

I am not sure about it since I am not very familiar with wikis, but do there might be one which could cover those thing?
Means we can keep the style, and maybe, decide by your own, every change has to be approved by a moderator or so?
(I might do a research for this, if you are interested in)

Quote (Bas)

Eh, I was 12 or 13 back then, so...?

Yeah, it happens. Just didn't want you to come away thinking that we just don't do work on the site.

Quote (Bas)

Eh - Who says that you have to stay with the original intention?
I personally believe that the FF5 fan translation is WIDELY spreaded, so this could be an improvement for CoN, as well it might attract new users to this site.

I have to disagree with you there; that translation has been around for what, almost a decade? I'm pretty sure you're the first person to have ever asked to have it covered. It's definitely been spread around the internet over all those years, and there probably are still people who play it. However, now that there are two official, legal, and above-board releases for the game in North America, it seems like a waste of time to cover a version that is unofficial, of questionable legality (given the fact that the translation requires patching a ROM), and by all rights probably should be less-played now than the other versions. Covering Final Fantasy XIII would bring new users into the site, too - but it doesn't fit with our plans or goals for the site.

We can also change our plans and goals, as you say, but I'm not seeing a compelling reason to do so come from your suggestion. Nobody says we have to stay true to the original intention, and over the years, we definitely have not - first we covered a second game (when the intention was to cover one game). Then we covered a Playstation game, and it was even a game outside the numbered series (when the intention was to cover games originally released for SNES and older). And, just a few months ago, we started covering classic Square games that had nothing to do with Final Fantasy - surely you get the idea. Just because we aren't changing the intentions of the site to match what you think they should be doesn't mean we're stuck in our ways.

Quote (Bas)

Also, you might want to take into consideration to cover fan made games... If they are good enough, there shouldn't be a line drawn between official and unofficial games I believe.

I respect that you believe that. I don't. There are some fangames out there that are quite impressive, I'm sure. The scene itself has never really grabbed my attention, but I've heard enough over the years to know that people continue to try interesting things. There are a lot of issues with fangames, though, in terms of covering them on this site. I can sum most everything up though, by saying again what I said yesterday: we prefer to cover games that are official and supported by Square Enix. If you consider the myriad differences between a Square Enix game and a fangame, even the best fangame ever made, you should be able to understand our choice even if you don't agree with it.

Quote (Bas)

Btw, I later saw the button about the translations at CT, may I ask if CT got ever released officially at the SNES to america/europe?

You may of course ask. Of course, had you continued to read that page you were on, you would have also noticed that we list the release dates for each game on the game's homepage at CoN; Chrono Trigger was released for SNES in North America in 1995. I'm not sure that's relevant to any point you're trying to make, but there you have it.

Quote (Bas)

I am not sure about it since I am not very familiar with wikis, but do there might be one which could cover those thing?
Means we can keep the style, and maybe, decide by your own, every change has to be approved by a moderator or so?
(I might do a research for this, if you are interested in)

Yes, there is a Final Fantasy Wiki already. I don't spend much time there myself, but I would imagine they probably have information on more games than we do. They also link to us as a "highly recommended" site, and though I'm sure they'd be loath to admit it, at least some of their data is probably based on what we've published over the years.

I think there are two points that you're possibly missing about my dismissal of moving CoN to a Wiki model. First is that we already moderate all of the content. We already have our members help with developing new content; fourteen different people worked on the Chrono Trigger section, and only half of them were staff. Eighteen worked on the latest FF4 section, with under half being staff. No, people aren't adding content in real-time, and so our development takes a little bit longer. But it's also a more coherent collection of data when we do release it, and we can verify that all the content we want to add has been added, or if not, what we can do (and when) to get it on the site. While that may make you think we're not flexible, I actually feel that wikis are too flexible a lot of the time. If I have to choose between those two things, I choose the former, because it works better for me and my staff.

Changing things to a wiki model wouldn't make less work for me and the staff. All it would do would create a lot of work to get it going, and even more to make it work exactly how I would want it to work. And then instead of doing most of the work to add a new game over a concentrated matter of weeks or months, it would be done a few minutes each day, maybe. And I simply don't like doing it that way.


--------------------

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

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Eh - I don't want to promise anything, but I am going to re-play FF V - Any chance that I might get special permissions which would allow me to edit and complete the FF V guide?
(I mean, I could understand if you disagree, cause I am (quite) new to the community and you don't know me that well, but I would try to keep the guide familiar to the other game guides (shouldn't be such an issue))

We can't give you direct access to our data unfortunately. There's no way to update it without a great deal of technical knowledge of how our internal systems work - there's no Wiki-like front end even for the staff. If you want to collect information and feed it back to us, we can take that on board for future updates, but bear in mind that we do already have some data collected that hasn't made it onto the site yet, so you may be duplicating things we know.

Eh, it seems (for me) that most of the work would be updating the FF V section itself, not collecting the data (or minor fixes at descriptions).
But one thing I would like to see is a strategy/job combo guide or something like that.
The location for the monsters can be added fairly easy by getting through the walkthrough level by level, and add the location to the monsters mentioned there. (Of course there are still some exceptions, for instance, world-mode enemies....)

This post has been edited by Bas on 26th July 2009 14:48

Which Blue Magic spells are you looking for? I can guide you to find them. Also, which monsters are you looking for as well?

--------------------

Yep, I'm here.

Eh, I am through with the game by now, got all blue magic except one.
All things solved, though, I am going to help with updating the FF V DB (already talked over with Tiddles and Rangers about this)

Quote (Bas @ 26th July 2009 16:08)

Eh, I am through with the game by now, got all blue magic except one.
All things solved, though, I am going to help with updating the FF V DB (already talked over with Tiddles and Rangers about this)

Which Blue Magic have you missed? Another question, where you able to get the 100% of Treasures?

Also, a list of rare steals (and rare drops) would help... I could contribute with that. Those rare steals are not just the Hiryuu Lance and the Nimbus Katana... there are some others as well...

This post has been edited by edgemty on 26th July 2009 16:13

--------------------

Yep, I'm here.

Eh, can't recall, I would have to check which blue magic it was, but it wasn't such an important spell.
If you also want to help I might can setup a FTP account at my server for this puporse and create a TXT file - Then we are able to edit and complete our both fixes with winscp quite easy.