Please feel free to post differing opinions. Im not looking for those who agree with me. Im looking for people who have a lot of thoughts surrounding the websites state.

Ive been thinking a lot about the direction the site is headed and it doesnt feel good.

I know others feel the same way, and I think its important that we all come together to voice our opinions and feelings in a public/forum-based setting. I have many opinions on a variety of important topics, and I know there are others who feel the same, or similar. I will try to keep it brief but effective. Yes I am writing from my point of view. Im not expecting everything to revolve around my opinions and what I want. Im wording it this way to not bring anyone into this without consent.

The new website.
This is the basis for everything Im going to state in this thread. Since the announcement of a new website in development I have agreed with it strongly. Where is it? The megazone. All of that work has been put into the megazone instead of giving us a functioning and cohesive website.

The megazone.
What is this? I never wanted it. From day one I have said Im not interested, Id rather have a new website. New features can come later when the site is coded properly and allows such features. The megazone is grind-y, there arent that many actual NEW features implemented, which were promised. Even if there were (and this is probably an unpopular opinion but Ill say it anyway), Id still be peeved that time was spent on new features and not a new site. The megazone has always been a distraction.

The festivals.
Ive also advocated for less time spent on festivals. Release just enough content to keep the site alive and keep the bills paid. It doesnt even need to be all-new content. Repeated items and pets will still generate revenue. There are always new players who havent obtained the old items yet. Not everything needs to be super duper rare! I would rather have repeat festival content than waste more time. The festivals are another distraction. That website needs to get done.

The Ferrikki.
Ive also never cared about this species. We dont need a new species. The artists need to spend their time perfecting the species we already have. NO THEY ARE NOT PERFECT. Look at the rune situation. It took how long to fix the white runes? And at the time of this post all of them arent even fixed yet. There are still multiple species with horrible runes (nyvenes having the worst of the bunch in my opinion).

The art.
I have a lot of complaints about the overall quality and lack of effort. When you are paid to do something do it right and dont spend your time doing something else if youre paid hourly. No, I dont know the exact situation. No, I dont really care. Why? The art should be directed to the species so that the fresh website will have fresh pet art. The pets are the main focus of this game, get them perfect. Less than perfection is not acceptable. Strive to be better, strive to be the best you, strive to put out the best possible work. Dont accept anything less.

The attitude.
I love this game because the players were listened to. I dont think that is the case anymore. No you cant please everyone, but take the time to research, take polls, ask questions. Stop rushing into things. Stop releasing incomplete content. Yes put things out in a timely manner but in the planning stages interact with us again! Stop waving off opinions like this one. Everyones input matters, the good and the bad. I still love this game and Ill be here for as long as its running but please listen again. I dont want to see this site burn.

Before waving off this thread and my opinions as a one-time thing, please wait awhile to allow others to gather the strength to post theirs as well.

TLDR; LISTEN, RESEARCH, WEBSITE PLEASE.

The Site Revamp:

Like Fox, I was also an early opponent of the Mega Zone. I feel that in the state that Sylestia has been left in for the past three years is extremely difficult to ever walk a friend through, or to honestly even want to show to a friend. It is kind of embarrassing, really. Like inviting someone over for lunch but you've got half a table and a cardboard box sat out for them as a stool. The site is half in one layout, half in the other, you have to ask them which one they're in to even tell them how to get to something. There are two battle systems to contend with, a Tutorial that I imagine is already out of date again because so many changes keep being made, a complete lack of user friendliness for newbies, and in many ways a complete disregard for their experience as newcomers with countless things that have been done over the past few years. Everything from fests that don't scale below level 10, to all of these end-game centric events like the Easter one itself, where new players are excluded from the majority of the content simply for being new.

Nothing to me is more important than getting Sylestia looking competent right now. A competent site that knows where it is going, and is worthwhile to invest in. That isn't what Sylestia looks like in the slightest, unfortunately. The Lost Grove, the result of the Mega Zone, only drives that message home further. It is another unfinished piece to add to the rest of the unfinished pieces. Sylestia, a site of a thousand unfinished huts, each of them being ignored for the next framework, all of them being rained in. We, the players, are standing in those huts, and we are being rained on. This is not something that spreads confidence. A crisp, uniform layout. A standard battling system. Actually finished and functional Accent Colors. These are the kind of long ignored problems Sylestia needed fixed. We have all been patiently standing here in the rain, waiting for one single structure to have a functional roof over it, and all four walls. And no, I don't care to see the first one be the one none of us asked for in the first place. The Megazone came last. It pushed all repairs out of the way for three long years, and now we're supposed to sit back and watch its frame get worked on while we still stand here in the rain, under the unfinished buildings we *wanted* to see finished. The things we're actually here for. The things we have been waiting ever so patiently for, while others walked away.

The Megazone:

This new building.. it is a whole lot of frantically waving your hands around and saying look look keep busy, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. There isn't anything here. It doesn't really feel any different to the rest of the battling in the site. This is Arena 2.0. Been there and done that, and Arena isn't a very popular feature I might add. These fights don't feel any different than what we already could have been doing. But there are incredibly rare theme drops you say. You only have to do something you don't want to do for a very very long time to get one! ..Yeah, i'm sorry, that isn't enticing. It is called the carrot and the stick. If there isn't really a sense of pride, achievement, reward, drive, story, anything. Then why am I doing this? I am not a hamster, in a cage. I have other forms of entertainment than a plastic wheel I spin in and go nowhere. This is all that The Grove offers us. Spin your wheels, spend your gold, have nothing to show for it in the end.

The unfinished building scenario here is not just referring to the layouts, the battling, etc. It is also chiefly referring to the pets as well. See, it is *great* that the white rune situation was finally addressed. I really don't see why it took so long. Thing is. Now this has had a saddening effect on a lot of Puff themes that didn't expect this change to ever happen. My own Puff theme has some unexpected results from this. I want very much to see those nice, color-true runes on other species now. But I know it will be a tooth pulling fight for probably 6-8 months just to see them on a second species, because getting work done on already started structures of the site is insanely difficult. Just look at the state of the Accent colors. All the while that such improvements are delayed, more and more things get effected. More and more themes are going to change drastically because things that should have been addressed long, long ago, have not been fixed.

I know this is the part where 'I'm only one person and I have all these things to get done' comes in. Yet, for all the things that are undone, work always seems to go on the newest project started. Time each week needs to be getting set aside to work on making the site not look like a motley of unfinished buildings. Finish things that have been waiting for years, not working on the newest shiny thing.

I will fully admit, that I wouldn't care one bit if the Grove was abandoned as is and never gets another thing done on it. It was a bad idea from the start that delayed what the site really needs. Direction. The Grove doesn't offer any direction. It is all about going in circles and delaying the inevitable. The site just cannot keep working like this. We have been patient people, but something has got to give. There has to be some sign that Sylestia is going to come together, and not just be a bunch of unfinished buildings, for all of its existence. But. If you really cannot make this thing fun, then please. Stop trying to force it on us, every chance you get. The Easter event, was poor form. You admit it has problems and tried to force it to play a star role in the event. Don't do this to Spring fest, please. It isn't very enjoyable. A lot of people have been expressing that, and you are basically saying in response you're not ready to fix it. You're not going to adjust Elaine at higher levels yet. You're not going to fix the we don't have access to decent purple potions. You're not going to fix the cool down, LadyM will just have to wait til she can access a shorter one by grinding.

Krin, if you're not willing to fix it yet, don't *make us* play it just to participate in events, either. I avoided Easter on Sylestia. I had several other pet sites to choose from. They all had more rewarding events going on. This is in fact a business at the end of the day, and you are competing against those other pet sites. You don't really want to strive to drive people to notice they can have fun on the other pet sites events when they're only having strict limitations, poor odds, and frustration on yours.

The Art Situation:

There is something very wrong here, and if I were you, I would be very concerned that I suddenly have to constantly pay for things to be redone because they're not being done up to the quality I know my own art team capable of. Only you know to the full extent why this is happening. I will say that there used to be someone watching the art get done, and that doesn't happen anymore. Art didn't need to get redone constantly back when that was happening. More and more the new content we see is the same thing copy pasted from one gender to the other, good looking or not, and we're told to like it that way. Every shortcut possible is being taken in the art as of late, and it really is showing. I hear a lot of general fear about what species is getting revamped next now where I used to hear excitement over it.

It used to be people couldn't wait to see their favorite species get shiny new shading, better layering, etc! Man it was exciting to think about for say a Bulbori or a Faelora. Then the Lune update happened. You said that you value our feedback, but your actions kept speaking something different. This was the real turning point on a lot of things, really. I wasn't happy with elements of the Ny'vene revamp, and there had been some trouble with the Puffs on the removal of Candy Wings, etc, but the Lune revamp reached this point where feedback just wasn't being taken on board much anymore. You would listen, but only to a point. Now people are afraid. They don't want to see their favorite species be the next you won't listen past a point on.

The Attitude:

Man Fox, ILU for being the first one to bring this up so it wasn't me. I seriously, seriously, do. Krin, it is no secret you and me are like oil and water, always have been. It is old hat by now, neither of us expect an enjoyable exchange.

Lately though, I haven't seen your exchanges with others being much more amicable. You are briskly brushing people off when they try to give feedback lately, intended or not, and it isn't going unnoticed. I have tried before to talk to you about how you gotta be careful about how you come off to people, because if you really do want this site to remain what it was, the close knit, happy place you seemed to think The Grove would rekindle, then you have to be part of that. We have effectively lost communications with one admin, and I am not going to press on that. But if you want a friendly community environment around Sylestia, I feel like you gotta know you haven't really felt like part of that lately. I'm telling it to you blunt and straight like I always do, Krin. You don't much like that about me often, but i'm trying to help you right now, because I am worried about where Sylestia is going to go on this current path.

Hm, uh, well, maybe I'm missing something here. I'll play devil's advocate for some of these things, as I don't think I agree with you on the whole.

Art Situation:
The art itself I'm just rolling along with:

I didn't like the Lunemara revamp; albeit, I didn't like Lunemaras that much to begin with. The Lunemaras lost a bit of their "mistaken for a pest species" status with the fantastical curliques, but I thought their wings looked much better. It looks like the removal of the curly butt and a possible removal of the curly nose might fix this though, so things are looking up there.

I also look forward to both the Lupora and Nytekrie revamps. The male Luporas were always missing something to me, and this update has me enthusiastic about the species again. The females lost a bit of their sassy smirk that I like so much in the current one, but the other expressions (those pups!) more than make up for it. Nytekries have always been one of those species that while I like the idea of them (I love griffins and griffin-like creatures), their art just never really spoke to me. I'm looking forward to whether the art will get me enthused in the species, and if not, it's no skin off my back, as I've been lukewarm about them already.

As far as feedback with art though:

I think the artists here have been remarkably receptive. Some of the criticisms in the Lupora art thread made me cringe, thinking of the artists who spent a lot of effort on those sketches only to be lambasted for it. I've been on the other end of that, and let me tell you, it is HARD to keep a professional face in place and do what your players want, especially if you think your art was PERFECT and all these nit-pickers just don't appreciate your artistic vision or the time spent putting it together.

And I don't think I've seen this level of devs listening to their player base in such a dedicated way before. I mean, I can remember back to when Neopets made a huge revamp to make their pets able to be put in clothing, and that art ruined a lot of the pets I once loved. There were no threads to give feedback on the new art before it took effect, no changes afterward based on players' complaints. Players had these pets they maybe had spent thousands of neopoints (that game's currency) on to get their dream pet, and all that went down the drain, without so much of the courtesy as getting a free "re-paint" like they do here--nor was selling pets ever an option in that game, so they couldn't try and get a small "refund" for their efforts like you can here as well.

I know the "it could be worse" argument isn't a good one in a debate, but, well, it really could be worse. Unfortunately, not everyone is going to agree about art directions. Some liked the curly butts of the Lunemaras, some hated it. The best you can do is make all the options available to everyone, I suppose, but even then, you'll still have trouble. If a curly butt becomes a mutation, then what about the other mutations in the same slot that will now be blocked? And so on.

You choose either to compromise, or to go with the option that seems to be most popular, and shrug your shoulders at the ones who don't like it, resigned to the fact you may just have to lose some players. Some care should be taken that you don't drive away the players that are the most gungho, in attempts to better catch an audience that might not exist, of course, but such is the life cycle of these kinds of games.

Megazone:
I kind of agree with you here. I thought the megazone was a little too grindy, and the jump in difficulty between the old zones and the megazone was too high. I would have liked to see more of a storyline, too. I loved that about the old zones, of following Jinxie around and exploring the lore of this world, even of those awful puzzles in the dungeons that made me want to bang my head on the desk, lol...they were special and added character. I felt like I was back playing one of those good old games like Baldur's Gate II or Morrowind, that was a hit because of the care taken with their plotlines...instead of one of these newer MMOs that's all about the grind and doing the same thing over and over to get one more shiny, an addictive cycle. I don't want Sylesti to go down that path, EVER. If the pretty pets brought me to this place, the storylines hooked me in and made me want to support the site. If I wanted to do another MMO grind, there's thousands of those floating around the internet already...

Putting all the new abilities behind the level 65 gate I also don't think was the best idea. You still have to grind through 60 levels pressing 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, and one of the things I was looking forward to with the megazone was finally being able to switch up my battle strategies. I'd like to see this revisited, and the new abilities spread out more evenly among the levels.

New Website:
I don't really know what this is about. All the buttons and such work on the website, which is good enough for me.

The Festivals:
I've been impressed by the amount of work that goes into these, honestly. Most websites of this size and following, you'd get maybe ONE of these festivals a year with the same amount of content put into it. Instead we get 3-4. I mean, I suppose I can see the point, that maybe Krin could stand to redirect some of the work that goes into festivals into getting other things fixed or new adventure content put out. I'm kind of ambivalent about that.

The Attitude:
On the whole, I think we're on opposite sides of this one.

I think one thing you have to keep in mind is that Krinadon is only one person, with a small dev team. When you're in that position, you have to prioritize, and that often means some things go unfixed in favor of either new things, or fixing other, bigger things that are breaking. It's like playing whack-a-mole... I have some experience with coding and making games, and it's no exaggeration that you can spend a full 8-hour day trying to stomp one little elusive bug...and that's before coming up with, coding for, and play-testing new content, along with all the customer service type stuff Krinadon does as well--fielding player questions about some of the smallest things. The day I got help from Krinadon himself when I got stuck at one point in the story...! I mean, how many administrators of other sites actually do that? That level of attention to the smallest players? What's the attitude problem in that? I don't see where you're coming from here.

There have been some design decisions that may feel a little pushed through, but again, I've been impressed with how responsive the dev team here has been to feedback in general. Don't forget that in order to fix the breeding economy problem (a problem that was also in response to players asking for a fix in this regard), Krinadon put together a post of proposed changes, and then overturned them when the playerbase screamed at it. Many other games, there would be no feedback thread, it'd just get dropped in, and maybe a few months or years down the road of constant complaining it might have gotten fixed.This site has fostered a much more community-oriented attitude in solving these problems that I can appreciate.

I think also it's worth mentioning...there's a paradox in games like this, about how things that seem really aggravating now become part of the nostalgia later, and adds to the immersion (an important but often overlooked part in any game with RPG elements). It may be a pain to grind for hours to get something special or to wrap your head around the combat mechanics, but when you finally get it, your pride and pleasure is that much greater. You can't just give things to players or make things easier for them and expect them to stick around. Human nature is that it needs to feel a little bit of challenge to keep trying at something, and to value what they have, it needs to be a little hard to obtain.

That doesn't mean make the difficulty level SO hard or the grind SO long that the newer players are left in the dust, or that you have to make this game your fulltime job to be able to play it, but...it's that old adage of we while we may know what we want, we don't necessarily know what we need, and sometimes its up to the maker of the product to throw a few different things at us and see what sticks. I see some of that in the "pushed through" content, of "just trust me, you'll like this". And hey, maybe sometimes we don't, but I am glad that they are taking those risks, rather than following the old, bland, tried and true method, or kow-towing to whining to the extent it becomes a cluster, erm, fruitcake.

Overall:
Some of the criticism you make here seems pretty broad in scope, or vague in just what is bothering you. It's difficult to make changes based on general criticisms. Maybe be more specific about what you want changed? This is also me coming in and not really knowing or understanding the story behind some of the issues here, which may make more sense to someone more heavily involved in the community.

Peace!

OK, I'm going to try to add my 2 cents here.

The staff size seems small, particularly for development. Having one person trying to do everything on the programming side seems to be a daunting task. Although it's somewhat amusing rescuing exclamation marks in the Lost Grove, it also hints at a lack of proper resources behind the scenes to get stuff cranked out at a reasonable pace. However, I believe that half-finished stuff that has basic functionality, even without the looks, is better than nothing at all. It may be an idea to hire a tester (with diamonds in my case as I now have a part-time job) that can do stuff like unit-testing on individual, small functions that do simple things, but this tester doesn't get to see things that would get them an unfair advantage over players (such as enemy AI code, or code that contains storyline details). It may also be an idea to get someone who can work on the front-end of the website and handle the HTML/CSS side of things, with some Javascript to interact with Javascript (or whatever it is) that actually controls the Sylestia game. I will once again offer my services as someone that can do either of these things, in return for diamonds (due to my personal circumstances, I can't afford to work any more paid hours a week than I do now, so I can't look for real money instead). I'm very limited in what I can do to debug Sylestia purely as a player without being allowed to work on the website itself.

I'm going to go through the points others have stated in this thread and explain what I think:
- Website revamp
I would certainly be in favour of this. The controls and UI for exploration/battles are massively inconsistent throughout the game. Even the battle UI for SBO and AT is slightly different and worse than LG, as well as having no music in SBO/AT. One thing I would NOT be in favour of is removal of existing content like the Lost Grove, which Krinadon stated would be removed. I don't see any reason why it could not be made to work with the new system, plus I think it would be a loss to what is now a major part of Sylestia, not to mention a lot of poor floofles would suddenly be homeless. In addition, removing the Lost Grove would mean the barracks, and all the time players invested in getting it up and running would go poof, and there is very little that might be more rage-inducing than having all your progress in a large part of the game removed. That's the sort of thing that could easily drive players away.

One more thing is that it needs to be clearer to players when a certain storyline choice may have a significant impact on what happens (e.g. whether a choice at this point may result in someone getting killed later on).

- Lost grove
Well, the game needed new content after finishing AT to keep the game afloat. I can agree this is a very good thing, but I really, REALLY, do not want it removed in the revamp. As a programmer, I don't see why it wouldn't be feasible with the new site.

I'm very concerned with the level of grinding it takes just to be able to survive, let alone fight through this area. Until very recently, I've been unemployed and have been able to no-life my way through the game and get into this area decently. Still, it's going to be off-putting to a lot of players, who may have money to invest in this game, but not a lot of time to do so. While it may create a market for players who have a lot of time to do powerlevelling services, it would really be better for people to want to keep investing real money into the game and seeing a return on investment, without having a middleman who does all the very tedious grinding to make pets battle ready.

When I go back to a zone like Astryl's Tranquility, the difference in difficulty and length of battles is as different as night and day, black and white etc. Here's an example. With my level 70 Light/Fire/Fire high-speed death team, I can often kill all enemies in 1 turn simply by using the basic attack on all pets (IIRC). In the lost grove, it will take at the very, very least 3 turns for the same team, and usually quite a lot more turns to kill all enemies in an encounter. In addition, I actually have to use pet abilities in a way that isn't simply spamming the 1 key, but actually thinking carefully about how to kill as quickly as possible, meaning there's also an increase in difficulty. It really isn't funny how much quicker mobs die in AT.

Basically, there's a huge difficulty spike, particularly at the beginning when your pets need to improve their moves. There's a huge spike in experience required to level up as well, which I'm fine with. What I'm NOT fine with is that the increase in experience from defeating enemies does not reflect the massive increase in difficulty of the fights. You could easily award at least 3 times the experience given just how much harder the battles are. Killing Eleane should result in instant levelling to level 75 for all pets (OK, I'm just kidding with that last part, but you get the idea :P).

- Festivals
I'd just cycle through existing content from previous festivals. No additional effort needed here, and more time to work on new stuff.

- Ferrikki.
FLOOFLES! I love them! They're a great addition to the game.

- Art
I think an idea here may be to try something that would work in programming. Lots of prototyping with constant user involvement where rough sketches are quickly drawn up, and people can comment on them. Then, more detailed sketches can be put together based on the feedback, and so on until you have a 'finished product' sketch. If people agree with that, then the sketch can be changed into a detailed drawing carefully (sorry, I suck at art, so I don't know the 'official' process) and the art change made. Simply doing work behind the scenes without user involvement doesn't strike me as good practice when it comes to making products. The Lunemara revamp is an example. I never asked for their swirly butts to be replaced with stub butts, which look a lot worse IMO.

- Attitude
I think it would be beneficial to allow someone to assist with developing certain things (maybe mainly as a tester for the actual programming stuff that isn't HTML/CSS) that do not require Krinadon to directly develop from scratch, such as website layout, and database queries for finding pets or items on broker. It may also help to solicit ideas from people in threads more often, even if this means less time actually writing code. There's not much point in writing code if it turns out it's a feature that nobody wants.

I happen to agree 100% with what is being said here by zelly and fox But i happen to have originally wanted the lost grove and the rikki. As the months went by i would boast to people who had no idea about the MZ " Its going to be awesome! just wait! It's taking so long because its going to be amazing. And theres also going to be a site revamp and holy cow it'll all be amazing you'll see! " And i continued to say that straight up until it released and i realized i had just waited 3 years for a giant grinding zone and a pet that is still being tweaked 2 months after it's official release. I still adore the rikki. But the lost grove...

and theres still no revamp in sight,infact it seems to have quietly been swept under the rug.There are people who don't even know a revamp was planned We're still stuck with an inventory system that is so screwed up that if for some reason something screws up you have to take someone at their word they owned an item I still haven't forgotten when i lost 26 pet dyes and we couldn't figure out what happened to them. We're stuck with the site in a halfway state. literally. you go from zone 1,2 to 3 and LG and its a completely different system. Why do we even have a games tab when theres literally only jinxie's jamboree and it hasn't gotten new money tiers since it was released 3+ years ago?

We have the mirror maze. We have the garden creation thing (and sand and potion and cook creation) we have winter wonderland(and beach combing) and snow wars and (though i hate it) the lucky scratch off. we had the wheel of themed that was repurposed into the black friday wheel. We also have jinxie slots. There is more than enough proof you can do some wonderful amazing magnificently fun things. I when they were relevant i sat for hours and just played with the mirror maze the wheel and the slots. I know people who legit loved the snow wars they got to rank 5 or 6. inside the dungeons we have the sliding puzzle and ,though it took me legit years to figure it out,the orb and shield puzzle.

We have those wonderful things but you gave us something like a walk around bandit raid (vorkid are invading faerina shrine!). A constant grind for absolutely nothing and a gold robbery,not a gold sink because theres no reason to buy traps or potions! Its either useless(we can find better pets elsewere) or too little too late in regards to potions because for some reason we now have a 5 and 10 turn cooldown.
I don't have absol or lady M's legend for grinding. But why should anyone be entertained by something where you can sit and play around for 2 months and yet never see a single thing worth noting? My only themed was from a nest. i have seen 6 nests in 2 months. I understand things should be rare because its a permanent feature but theres no reason to keep playing to find these rare things. The only two motivations being you could possibly find a ferrikki. once or twice a week... and the ferrikki numbers i've seen is 90% no traits and 9% 1 carried and 1% 2 carried. and now you can steamroll all previous content thanks to being lvl 65+

To top that off you made it so If anyone completes stage 5 they get "rewarded" with enemies that for some people might legitimately be impossible. They certainly make things less enjoyable. Theres many people complaining about it, I happen to be one of the ones that saw someone talk about level 73 elaine and wisely have not beaten the behemoth.
It should never be smart to never want to finish something. This is seriously wrong and is extremely bad game design. If this were an actual video game at this point I'd be trying to return it and see if i could join a lawsuit for false advertising. You've gone no man's sky on us krin. Thats not good. Thats very not good. I hardly pay attention to games i have no interest in buying. I know how much of a trainwreck that 'game' was.


Back to the rikki and pet revamps in general. You have supposedly been working on the rikki alongside the grove. So why is it that it was released with traits not complete and even had the male unshadedand then 2 months later were being changed and are still changing. and 2 months later they still don't have a generator discription? Why are the lune and runes being changed months later? By not listening to feedback and procrastinating you are wasting time and money. Quality has started slipping massively and one of your artists even spends the time they're suppose to be doing art instead playing WoW and such. Do you even pay any attention to whether the time they show you is actually the time logged?? how many hundreds and hundreds of dollars have you given them to not do art?

Now instead of focusing on revamping you're tweaking old things that don't need tweaking and creating project after project and leaving it half finished. by the time you get around to revamping the pets that need to be revamped and bringing the site out of beta..you're going to need to do more pet revamping on the older ones again!

There are still lune things that were suppose to be tweaked. Theres the candy wings fiasco. Now. you are changing the lunes main body to be actually fuzzy. Which should have been done in the first place. You've changed the runes which again. should have been done in the first place. You gave everyone G3 and eye color changes which is fantastic. What about the people who had candy wings and the bell ribbon? Those turned out drastically changed too.

You've been claiming to have wanted to give lunes some extra fuzzy heads. What about the people who would want to have changed their antenea but didn't because some had a bald lune head? Your response to me in the rikki thread when i questioned why it was taking so long and that i was saving my essence until things stablized was if things changed and i didn't like them to pm you and things would be worked out. Is that seriously your plan? You're gonna handle that sort of thing on a case by case basis instead of just plugging in a partial regen and letting us decide? Yes theres people that would complain they have to fix dozens or hundreds of pets..but are you going to fix those dozens and hundreds of pets manually? I know people who have 600+ puffs and lunes because they hoard! you're gonna fix those each individually?

Now its not just your own time and money but also the site users' time and money being wasted. people pay real life money. real dollars and yen and dinero and pounds and everything else to buy enhanced and mystic essences. to buy pies and prismatic philters. To buy Mutators and themed disrupters and permanent scanners and test kits and snipsnips. I know someone who has spent 17 months and counting on a kelpari project. I myself have spent almost 3 years with the Devious bulbori because traits won't pop up like they should.

The moment you started selling stuff for real life money it ceased to be a hobby. it is a business and at this point If this were a brick and mortar store You'd be having some serious issues with staying afloat!! You cannot procrastinate to this degree! Lately you have been ignoring legitimate feedback and brushing people off and listening to the brownnosers and gushing newbies instead. Thats not good krin. any feedback is feedback that needs to at least be looked at. But people are afraid to give honest and bald feedback or have outright given up and left. I myself am worried about getting banned due to speaking out like this but it must be said. I refuse to watch things burn down.

I pay attention like a kid already on a sugar high thats been released into a candy store and after being told they get to go to disney land afterwards.I only started believing what was being said around winterfest when you launched it with 3/4 of the features missing. If I have noticed all this its a serious problem you need to address and sooner rather than later. Please for the love of everything. please start fixing things rather than placing a picture frame over the hole in the wall and trying to distract us with flowers?!

I love this site. I love the pets. Even the ones I don't have a fondness of i can appreciate. I even love the RNG breeding system that seems to think i'm its personal punching bag. I want to go back to adoring you as the best admin ever. I don't want to sit here like that comic of the dog in the burning building drinking tea/coffee and saying everything is fine. Its not fine. the building is starting to burn and you're sitting there watching it. Please. Get the fire extinguisher before its too late,put the fire out and start future proofing rather than taking an "Its good enough for right now" attitude.

Going to share my two cents here as well:

Since I've first joined and participated in festivals and the like, I've had so much fun. Getting to know people, collecting pets, collecting avatar items. Even with the grind that goes into festivals/mini-events trying to collect everything, that's cool.

When I found out about the Megazone/Lost Grove (first announcement thread posted 5 days before I joined) I was so excited to see what would come and couldn't wait. Then one year passed, another year. And finally almost 3 years later it's been released.

After the initial excitement wore off from the release, what's been released so far has been a grind fest. Like I stated early, I'm generally fine with grinding/putting in the time to dive into the content. But almost stage after stage of grinding, it gets to the point where motivation to participate is near zero and I would rather spend my time elsewhere than grinding in the Lost Grove.

I get it takes time to put out and code in everything, but like others have stated, I would love to finally have news that Sylestia is moving forward in getting out of beta and the site being revamped into a cohesive site.

"-And most importantly, a Seamless, Polished, Sylestia. No more mixing of layouts. No more "work in progress" pages. No more "yea we plan on doing that" responses. Everything we've wanted to do will be done all at once and released all at once."

A direct quote from Krin from an announcement made 3 years ago.

For the future, like others have pointed out, festivals can be scaled back a little. Just the past year, we got new maps for all seasons. Almost or over 100 different avatar items per festival. New themed and new exclusive themed. Sure, new themed are one of the main incentives for festivals, but things like the avatar items can be cycled or just cut back on a little. We don't have to have so many items just for that one festival.


Long story short, I really do love Sylestia, but I find that love waning. All I can say is that there have been great suggestions in this thread so far about what could be done to get the site moving along and flourish. One of the big things that I loved is the close admin to playerbase interaction; taking suggestions in hand and implementing things to the site. It feels like it's moved on and headed away from that.

And one last thing, use the polling feature more often please. Though recently with the lunemara change, it would be more helpful if there was some kind of differentiation between just a simple "Yes" or "No". Even something like having options of

"How satisfied are you with this change?"
Very satisfied
Satisfied
Somewhat satisfied
Dissatisfied

and using a survey kind of method would give a better idea for feedback.


Again all of this is my own opinion, I do not mean to fight or argue with anyone else, just stating what I think.

Hoo boy, Krinadon.

I was just going to quietly fade away into the shadows for a while, but I can't not pour my heart out a little bit over the state of the site I've spent three or four years playing. I'm with Zelly, Fre, Fox, and Sea on most of these issues but I'll lay bare some of the details that give me the most trouble.

The Lost Grove:

This honestly seems like an exercise in futility and tedium. Like to collect stuff? Nope. stingy item caps, very quietly updated and not changed back despite *numerous* complaints from /the people that play the most/. It's not really a good idea to ever discourage people from playing, much less punish the most dedicated. You can justify and sugar coat it and twiiiist it all you like, but it's still a punishment. A barrier. A sore point for people like me that like to play for hours at a time. If only a handful of people could reach such heights in item collecting, what was wrong with leaving the limit at 9,999? Not like suddenly everyone would be able to get everything, only those that had put in an absurd amount of time. What I'm gathering from this sneaky-code-change is that my time is no longer worth putting into the grove, since I won't get anything out of it after a point I've already reached.


Festivals:
These have been getting more stingy over time. Like other have said in this thread, not everything has to be super mega rare. You pay for art to be done on 100+ items each festival only for few lucky people to enjoy it. You are wasting real money for the sake of preserving fake rarity.

Speaking of stinginess, about the Easter festival. You created a mechanic that decreases the chance of finding already-rare egg items the more you obtain. Please never do this again!! This goes back to my earlier statements about it never being a good idea to punish people for playing. If we want to put in the time, we should be able to reap rewards /fairly/. Personally it put me off participation entirely. The least I can say is that you were honest about it. I don't know why more people aren't bringing it up, you've essentially decreased the value of our time, and that's terrible! Time is the most precious thing we have. I'm sorry you felt this restriction was necessary.

The Art:
From what I've heard you put a lot of trust in your artists, and let them operate unsupervised. It might be a good idea to at least watch sometimes, just to be sure they're on track. I don't remember there being many issues with earlier revamps (Qitari and Draeyl for example).

The Attitude:
I see the many negative-feedback posts getting ignored, brushed off, dismissed with a "sure, we're working on it for the future we promise". I hope that you do take this thread to heart, though. There may be people that think the same way but just leave without posting anything.

We're trying to help. This is the wakeup call.

There isnt much else I can say that hasnt already been said here or elsewhere, but here goes. (I coudl also probably go on for days on this)

The New Site/Megazone
I will admit, at first, I was kinda excited for megazone. New content is usually exciting. That was...3? years ago, when it was first announced. As the years passed by, my excitement dwindled drastically, to the point where I was literally just thinking "can we just skip this and move on to the site revamp? That'd be /done/ by now." And sure enough, my expectations that the zone could never live up to the 3 years of hype put onto it were true. As zelly said, we are still sitting here standing in the rain, and still spinning in that endless hamster wheel. If something like this is going to take this much time to get out (see: Krin still doesnt know when the next stage is going to start at the time of me writing this up, despite all requirements having been met on our end) we could very well have the entire new site up and finished.

One of the excuses we seem to be getting a lot of is "this zone allows us to test new things!" ok. Tell me. What is "new"? What, in this zone, isnt something we've had before just modified slightly? Thats not new. Thats putting a fresh coat of paint on a car dent. Dents still there, but oh look the paint looks new at least! I can understand wanting to try out new things before putting them in what is supposed to be a complete non-beta site but...atm it just sounds like another excuse, when there is really nothing "new" to show for it. It feels like a skeleton of a feature. For taking 3 years to release, where is the content? What took 3 years? Most of the "new" stuff was incomplete upon release. Time seems to be being put into things that honestly just...dont really matter that much. Megazone, fests, etc. Time ahs been put into things like the proficiency revamp and stuff like that, which...well...they woudlve been fixed a long time ago if the site revamp had been started. this thing that is "supposed to distract" us while you revamp the site is honestly becoming more of a distraction to the /admin/ than the users.

One thing I looked forward to in terms of MZ(as much as i could look forward to anything in that place), was the addition of the tasks. Ok, great, something to actually do in this boring grind-zone. Except...no. Tasks require you to have /already made/ the barracks. Oh, but the /prizes/?
Yeah. Those are materials. To build the barracks. That you've already built. I..cannot be the only one who seems something wrong with this, right? Ye, there is a gold reward as well. However, that gold reward is minuscule. To put that in perspective: The daily tasks reward 4k. That is the cost of a /single/ green potion from the trading post. Which is the cheapest thing available there. The weekly tasks reward 12k, which is the cost of a single blue trap. That meas that if you complete all tasks in one building a week, you could get:
-If you want the most numerical items: 10 green elixirs or 7 and 2 green traps
-If you want the most quality: 1 blue revive and 1 blue potion.
Thats not a lot of reward for a weeks worth of tasks. The real "prize" is the mats. I have received maybe...1? mat that i actually needed, and i only had 2 of the buildings done until just this morning. All the rest have been literal junk, that i cannot even use. Thats not worth my time. Why should I bother? Give e a reason to bother. Because right now, that is severely lacking, be it in storyline or actual content itself. Our only "reason" to grind is to...well...keep grinding. We have to get tot he next zone stage by grinding, but oh look...that next stage is grinding as well. To move on. To grind more. (case in point, just today I completed the weekly task of buying things with 40 traps/bottles, and my reward was...pure lunar water. I couldnt even remember what that was used for, because i havent needed it in so long. Why did I just waste 40 bottles/traps for 12k gold, the equivalent of not even 8 of those 40 items i bought?)


The attitude:
Its been feeling more and more lately that ok...yeah. You listen to our feedback. But then the feedback is never /acted/ on. And then some things feel like a direct shove to the face. For example, multiple people mention that Eleane in TLG is an obnoxiously difficult battle (to the point you basically cannot win unless you use more potions than all the tasks in a week could buy you. Its not a fun or enjoyable battle. at all. ITs like pulling all the teeth out of my head and replacing them with shards of glass.) but then...its a task now. To defeat her. Basically a "oh you cant do this? Welp. Now you have to in order to get the rewards for this task!" So i guess that is a task that a large portion of people arent going to be able to complete. Thats...so much fun. To be singled out like that.

And things liek the artwork. Lunes have been "complete" for how many months now, and yeah...it felt like you were taking feedback on them and considering options. However long ago that was. How many of those things you mentioned would be fixed /have/ actually/ been fixed? How much of that feedback was actually acted on? Things like puff runes. This thread was posted basically right when puffs revamp came out. Look at those dates. Thread was posted in January 2017, it took /3 months/ to even get a reply. When did these things finally get fixed? April 5th. of 2018. Thats over an /entire year/. Over that year, new themed were created around these white runes. I regenned pet designs around these whiter runes, or even avoided them completely. Yeah, we got color regens on them, but honestly...theres no telling how many of my pets i regenned before this change took effect that i would have used runes on instead had they looked like they do now. 1 year translates to hundreds of puffs. Even if you said "just tell me which ones to change" im not going through 100s of puffs, 90% of which i do not even remember if they had been regenned or not. That same issue happened with candy wings, how that trait was /completely left out/ when puffs were revamped. In addition to not having that entire mut in there, any puff that /had/ the old candy wings was given Fairy Wings unless they were eligible for a regen from /another/ trait. Candy/fairy wings did not warrant a regen despite being /not even the same trait anymore/. And things like this have been increasing more and more, with little to no interest in fixing the problem. When interest is shown for fixing these things, we can have no confidence its ever going to be /done./ (and not to mention several species /still have/ those white runes, who have been around much longer.)

The Art
The art lately has been...yeah. If you aren't happy with it the first time, why is it not fixed before being released? I feel like a majority of the time new things are released and as soon as someone voices a complaint we get "yeah im not happy with it either, likely going to have it redone." If you are commissioning artwork to be done, why isnt it being done the way you are paying to have it done? Then we get traits nobody likes, and then those get changed, and that affects players pretty drastically. People create pets with a trait that later gets changed, potentiality to soemthign they no longer like, or may avoid creating a pet with a certain trait that eventually ends up being done better. I know ive wasted several dozen disruptions taking off traits i didnt like, only for those traits to be changed to soemthign desirable later on. (again: puff runes) Thats money out of my pocket. Why should i keep spending money on things that keep changing without notice? The puff revamp is a good example since that was a species i really cared about, and also about he time when artwork took a nosedive. The lienart was great. I was super excited for them to be released. And then they were, and all the traits are like 5 steps down from the original art. So. great. we have lovely puff lineart with...nothing to put on them. Then after that, pretty much everything after has had some of the most negative or mixed feedback i've ever seen on this site. Lunes are a complete disaster. Revamps are supposed to improve opinions on species, not destroy the love for even the /fans/ of that species. Something is going on here, either the artwork isnt being monitored like it should be or just a pure "we dont care anymore". But on a pet site, you want people attracted to your pets. And the artwork lately /isn/t attractive.

And thats just the pets. How many more avi robes are we going to get? We've gotten the exact same robe for every fest now, and it keeps being advertised as "i know you are going to love this new avi item!" No. I wasnt even interested in the first iteration of baggy robe. And thats all we get anymore. Baggy robes and other...robe-type iterations. It feels like all the work goes into iteration 5000 of Baggy Robe and the everything else gets rushed and thrown to the wayside. There are so many nice thigns being put into item design contests, but instead we get...baggy robe iteration 5000. (You think im joking here)

Which brings me to:

The Playstyle
Sylstia has been venturing further and further into forcing you into a certain playstyle. One of the huge drawing points for so many people has been the ability to choose how you want to play the game. There were many people who did not complete the storyline but were still active players, purely because they decided to focus instead on things like breeding etc. They were able to enjoy the game in their own way. But that is...no logner the case anymore. There is only one playstyle now. battle. Grind hard. Spend endless hours to receive nothing. What do the breeders get? What do the avi collectors get? Themed collectors? Casual players?

I personally have never been much for themed pets. So during fests, I have always spent all my time grinding for avi items. That was more rewarding to me than mindlessly wandering around battling for the battle boards or collecting things to make themed pets out of (minus puffs). Thats how i had fun. Where are the avi items int he MZ? Not only that during fests, they are getting harder and harder to obtain. I used to be able to get everything i wanted over the span of a fest. What i didnt get via RNG rolls i could easily swap for. Not anymore. The only reason I am able to even get half of what i want is because I am friends with some of the heavier grinders who are willing to toss me their extras. I have 2 tabs and a row dedicated to avi items from past fests. I can probably count the amount of items from the past year in those tabs on one hand. You dont get extras anymore. There is nothing to trade. It is dog eat dog. Its either you get them yourself, or hope that you can find someone out there who doesnt like an item before someone else snatches it up. (And thats hoping you can afford it. Which means youve now invested time AND hard earned money int one thing that previously, you could get using either or)

Not only that, while I dont personally collect themeds, many many people do. Thats a lot harder now, too. I have used about 4? perfumes since the TLG opened. I have not seen a single wild themed. (not including eggs, which i also havent seen in like a month anyway) I've had one person spend several million buying the perfumes off of me (as at that point i sold them since I dont care for these ugly TLG themeds anyway. Better off selling the perfumes) Shortly afterwords I looked to see how many they had gotten, since they bought around 20 or so off of me iirc, and they had very few themeds to show for it. So...if youw ant to collect themeds, you better have a very large pocket. Either you will have to spend hundreds of dollars in irl funds for the perfumes, or millions of gold. Oh, but the game isnt pay to win. Supposedly.

Breeders have also been tossed to the wayside. They are so forgotten and ignored, I cant even think of much to say in regards to how poorly theyve been treated. Ive basically ceased breeding all together. Why bother? Its a petsite but it certainly isnt about the pets anymore. Its all about the battling.



Sylestia is a business. As a business, you want people to be spending time on your site, rather than others, right? Well. Give us a reason to spend time on your site.

Okay gonna put in my thoughts here too.

I both disagree and agree with much of what Fox, Zelly, and Frelioan said.

The New website
I was actually unaware this was a thing until a friend mentioned it offhandedly. When they did I was like huh? That's a thing? It seems to have been swept aside. as I dug in I actually got really excited by the idea. I think it would be great to get Sylestia out of the Beta version and into a full game. There are many setups and design choices that I feel are overcomplicated. I mean each zone has a different battle mechanic for crying out loud!

The MZ
I was originally excited for it and couldn't wait to explore! When I first saw it I thought it was great and amazing. However I soon realized it's just a grind zone. I don't think this was smart. as mentioned before there are tons of MMO's out there just like that. What originally drew me to sylestia was the storyline. I want to see more of that and be able to progress by tasks sure but not ones that require me to kill 10,000 enemies or something.

The Festivals
This is where I disagree with Fox, Zelly, and Fre. I think you've done a great job on the fests. It's great to see that there is new content everytime. I mean so many other sites don't have that. They just rehash items and it gets boring overtime. Most others only have 1 a year too, you give us 4-6! I don't think that previous festivals are much of a problem either. I mean between black friday sales and the previous festival chests I get tons of previous fest items.

The Ferikki
I do have a bit of a problem with this species. First off I love the art don't get me wrong. I love the idea and I love the look of them however I feel that when you say that something is coming out at a certain time it should come out. If you needed more time I can totally understand that. Just set a later deadline. I think it's best to get something out when it's at its best. If it's not there yet then don't release it until it's ready and will make you proud.

The art
I feel like the art isn't being paid enough attention too. Yes, we had the revamps and more species are being revamped all the time, however, some of these species might have looked better the way they were before The lunes are exactly that. I think you had a great Idea going but you strayed away from that. Keep the designs just upgrade them but the concepts are the same. Also, the traits should definitely be paid attention too. When you revamp you should revamp it all. The puff problem with the traits. I won't be able to remember which ones I revamped or not! I don't have designs for any of them and that doesn't seem fair in any way to breeders and even battlers alike.

The attitude
On this, I greatly disagree with Fox, Zelly, and Fre. I find the attitude here great. I remember being a new player and I got so much help from everyone! You helped me out yourself Krin I mean I got stuck on this one part and you took time out to help. So many other games would never do that. Already you let us view stuff and ask if this is okay or not. We get a say in things. And I respect that. it's what I love about sylestia.

However.

I feel like newbies don't get a fair chance. I mean the easter egg hunt, for example. my brother never really liked the battling portion of sylestia he is a breeder. But he was so excited about the easter egg hunt yet he could do practically none of it because he wasn't a battler. I think you're making your players conform to a certain type of gameplay and that's not fair at all. The great thing about sylestia is that there is something for everyone. You can be a forum kid, a breeder, a battler or a mix and that's totally okay. I feel like perhaps new players should get a bit more of a chance, it's not their fault they're new! I also feel you shouldn't force people into a type of gameplay.


Conclusion
I understand that you are a small team and you're doing your best. I respect that so much however I think you're focusing on certain things too much. You have given us a ton of things and that's great but maybe focus on making the things we DO have better. Make it easier to use and understand, improve it and that's just as good as getting something new. These are just my thoughts but hopefully they help you on your decisions of where to take Sylestia.

~Grapejuice

My dudes im mostly in agreement
and holy hecky i just got here
But i have done my reading in all of the past news and it looks like it took a super unexpected and sudden turn - one that nobody wanted.
This megazone thing, i cant play it, i just cant. I cant LEAVE the umbra forest for the next section without getting a headache on how annoyed i am with how its all set up and how stark of a change it is. I was hoping it was just me being annoyed by it, coming from a technical collage where we all sit around and grunt about it all day, but if it's a lot of older players then something needs to be done. you guys need to be heard.

edit: also they need more staff, sweet muffins thats insane. even if it's low pay like, they need more people in on this.