Update on the "Reboot"

To be quite frank, this has little bearing on the fact that there was not enough transparency on what was happening, never mind not realising that perhaps dropping big news and being silent on that afterwards was a bad idea. Fortunately, Niet himself has realised the need for more transparency (and I'm truly grateful for that, this site sorely needs it). We shouldn't have to bear in mind real life events after *6 months* of no updates on the reboot, only to be told it's been shelved while a big chunk of the userbase has gone from the site. (I'm also in a long distance relationship btw and I wish people could treat me the way your post has when my partner visits me). It's all nice and well telling us to take pity on them but there are also real life people here who pay good money every day towards the site--but I haven't exactly seen people extend this sort of "uwu but they have real lives too!" attitude to other users unless its the mods. I do respect the mods et al have lives too, but sometimes the reaching people will do to defend bad decisions is ridiculous. As someone else suggested, perhaps hiring someone to relay weekly/biweekly updates would maybe help. But whatever the conclusion they arrive it for this issue is, I am willing to trust that it is the right decision. I'm also willing to come back to the site now, if only because for the first time in a while, I have faith in the mods that they are going in a direction I like, and that they are actively looking into the site and its issues. I don't wish to act like I'm only trashing the mods. They've done great things for the site obviously, we wouldn't be here without their hard work. And initially the idea of doing a reboot was pretty solid considering what has been mentioned about the maze of code this site runs on. We've also seen a lot of dedication and love put into the events and also into the new mons we get, and that can't be ignored. However, I don't want people to be telling us "patience, patience" when this sort of thing happens and to expect us to factor life elements in when said elements honestly...don't have much bearing on the site and its various issues.

Tbh, its about balancing. This site is a buisniss (it takes our money if we so choose, the mods/etc provide services) So I find it only to be expected that we are to be kept up-to-date and not in the dark but IRL life shouldn't be pushed away either. I probably make no sense but just throwing my 5 cents here- I'm happy we will hear from the mods more often, but I also respect life is a thing. Just don't use it as an excuse all the time. Some people might simply not believe it after the 4th time.

Alright, my two cents (well dollars cause this post got way longer than I thought it would) Just like other people on the site, I was iffy with the reboot at first till my boyfriend insured me it would be ok. He even showed me what mod (Belial, I think?) had said off site to the discord group chat being as this site needed a reboot badly and there would be two sites. I feel like Cynda and many others have made many great points because the first the post of the reboot was vague at best and this upset people because thought they were going to loose their progress and we as players didn't like that. Also Niet said this reboot was needed because of the coding, and after all the lag and other issues I've seen I was all for a fresh start.. provided we had the ability to keep our melans/specials. With the negative reaction that was widespread at the time of the announcement of the reboot, I had some serious mixed feelings as to if this was actually going to go off without a hitch. After all, even triple A game companies have bugs in their codes so I was pretty worried I'd end up losing many of the things I gathered over the years. Then I hear about how we aren't having any events because the team is hard at work coding the new site. Amazing, I'm so psyched, right?! Now we find out they are not and we are at square one again. Another thing that I'd like to ask is how are we still in beta? I know it's pretty common for games to be in beta for most of their life, but many sites are only in beta for about a few months to a year or two at most then their up and running smoothly. With the money players put into this site, (including the amount I put in which is far more than I planned on spending I should add) this game should be way out of beta. The vague wording you're using in your announcement doesn't help much either. 'Misjugded the situation?' 'Working on something else?' Weekly updates would be great, but after months of waiting I think we could use a few more details. I'm no coder by any means but I would feel a bit more at ease if you said something more specific like 'coding is taking longer than we thought, but we're planning x for the new site!' Giving us an idea what you're planning for the site in the future would put me at ease. At least then I know that when I put more money into this site it's going to improve the site. I've been burned by games before that took my money and ran so to speak. Now I want to be optimistic, don't get me wrong. I want to assume Niet and the mods have great plans for the site, we'll move to a better site and have all kinds of cool features and be able to host like 5000 people if needed. As it is our reboot is sheleved and now we don't know when it'll be brought back. We still have the site as is, yes. We can still hunt specials to our heart's content on a site that lags when there are over 500 people on. Since the reboot is it too much to ask for an attempt to make the site we have run a bit smoother? Another small thing that came to mind is people I've talked to mentioned we don't have down time anymore. Is that really true and if so why is that? I know it's a bit off course but it's making me wonder if all our data is being backed up. Again I'm no coder but I would think theres a reason many sites do nightly maintenance and I don't want some diasaster to wipe out months of progress. I'm not saying it will happen, but I've seen it happen on other site based games. At any rate, I do also want thank the staff for their hard work. I'm just hoping these weekly updates prove more enlightening.

I mean...if garth is busy...and that's impacting the amount of information/clarification/etc we're getting....why did this happen now? Why couldn't it wait until a time where everyone (or at least ONE person) was online and had time to explain things and answer questions as they came in? Yes, I understand Garth is busy right now, and don't blame him for being so for something so important! But....this hasn't been the case for the entirety of the last 6 months, has it? Could this not have waited until after he was done? If we have to wait for an indeterminate amount of time to get the Full Story, why was this brought up to begin with? And yes, I understand this was a difficult decision for Niet to make as well but...again...why now? If he isn't /done/ formulating his thoughts and explanations to make a proper announcement clearly explaining things...why this? There were no time limits in play here. He could have waited weeks, months to post this announcement to give him enough time to formulate his thoughts, and we wouldn't be missing or expecting anything. We've already been waiting 6 months, with no expectation of any announcement coming, Niet/Garth weren't rushed to make this announcement. They had plenty of time to type out and explain things fully instead of being so vague and telling us to wait for further information. I really, really feel like they are the ones who should have waited until they were ready to give the information, instead of repeating this cycle of big, vague announcements followed by radio silence. And as always, I'm never saying this as a way of saying OOHHH THEY'RE HORRIBLE PEOPLE AND AWFUL FOR DOING THIS, not at all. I'm just saying, from my perspective, this was poorly planned out, and could have been postponed until the """"full"""" announcement was ready....Just like the reboot announcement itself, haha. And again, transparency is good. Information is good. Frequent updates are good. I am glad that we got an update. Just, I hope in the future, the updates will be less vague and that we aren't told to wait for the information, because the information is there to begin with. edit: of course, this is all from my perspective as a user with no contact w/ mods or niet or garth themselves. I know I don't have the full story. I would like to have more of the story so it makes sense to me, and to other users who don't have insight on the situation. Please don't take this as me saying "There is no excuse for this" but rather "Why? Is there a reason why this is happening like this?" because I don't know! ;<; And would like to know!

Maybe I should make myself clear, but my comment is regarding the reboot being shelved, not the last six months. There will be more information given regarding this announcement. I have nothing to say regarding the last six months that hasn't already been said in regards to it, as it's not my place to say. I'm not a developer or an admin. So no, it's not a drive for pity. I'm saying sit tight for a few more days, or however long for them to write something up so *those* questions can be answered regarding the issue with the reboot. This is why I mentioned Garthic being on holiday, or that it's going to take Niet a bit to gather everything together to fully explain the situation. Anyway, that's all I know. Hopefully, this is a lot clearer now.

I've got a free hot minute right now so I'll throw something up while I have the time to do so! I saw a question about why the site is still in "Beta" - that would be because Perpetual beta (wiki page) is indeed a thing, and the site fit the criteria for it. The reason for the coming change is that we've not really pushed out any new features, the main things focused on are sprites and the general releasing of new lines, some such colour updates (which I do want to discuss with staff when I'm back home - for reference, since it's pertinent to the conversation, I get home on the 17th, early morning. I don't expect to be fully functional until the following day) and mostly quality of life updates / changes to mechanics already in place. Just to note, in case it's a concern, bringing the site out of Beta doesn't mean much beyond "we consider this to be an acceptable point to say 'it's something we feel comfortable 'releasing' ". There'll still be releases of Fakemon, events, etc. - effectively, what we've decided is the best course of action is to, I guess, take on a bigger workload. For us, at least - not for those who are working so graciously alongside us as we struggle to figure out what, I'll be real, is a minefield. In part, of our own creating - that's something I feel should be readily and *strongly* acknowledged. I know this reply in and of itself doesn't answer some questions that have been posed, but I want to be clear in saying that was not the intention of this post. When the next update comes along, the aim will be to go through this thread and answer those queries - while we have engaged actively in threads in the past, in hindsight, it has led to a lot of repeat questions, repeat answers and not much in the way of understanding, and that's the core issue I think we need to work on. Using an on-going thread where the information given is in-between pages and posts can leave some missing the information, at which point, people are no longer on the same page, which I think has been a somewhat ongoing problem. It certainly is one way to handle it, but I don't think it is a particularly effective one looking back at it. I think if we maintain relatively frequent updates (even if they're short) and answer the queries from the last updates on those new updates, then when they are read each person will be on the same page. The information will no longer be hidden in 'this thread', on 'this page', in 'this post'. I want to finish this off by just saying that we are reading and considering the suggestions put forth by those who have voiced both their concerns, and general thoughts on the matter - we are utilising what is said to offer further consideration as to how we may open up avenues of communication in the coming future, which we aim to 'start' shortly after I get home. I'm not certain how to close this out right now as I'm nursing a bit of a headache. I'm going to lay down for now, I hope you all have a lovely morning/afternoon/evening/night.

Good to hear Niet! Yhanks for all the hard work.

I know this isn't exactly an urgent or huge concern, but are there any plans to offer an alternative to obtaining sweethearts in spite of no Valentine's event due to the reboot taking precedence previously? I don't think my stash will last a whole other year, and I don't imagine I'm the only one...

Oh heck same. I can't continue my kinaster hunt without sweethearts and I was looking forward to Valentine's to get some back. And before someone says buy them from the market. The market is overpriced as usually happens before the Valentine's event restocked everyone. I'd assume that there is a lot of people who have been waiting for Valentine's to roll around to both spoil their friends and get sweethearts themselves.

Yeah, buying them off the market is definitely no band-aid for no new supply happening; they'll be driven up to rather ridiculous prices as they're consumed, and no new ones being created onsite. ^^'