#it even has a background n everything while every other sprite is transparent

[spamton]

hey so i unpacked all of the portraits for stardew valley in preparation for creating my own portrait mod and i went thru all of them... then I got to sam and uh

hey what the fuck is this creepypasta ass portrait 😀

[dramarising-replacement]

A Rant On How To Actually Run A Pet Sim.

DISCLAIMER: I love Flight Rising, it’s been one of, and still is a favorite game of mine. This rant is simply trying to bring light that the staff could be doing much better in running the site that they are. With recent issues such as the long ban appeal process, and that one time that Unicorn admin said “nothing is wrong with our gem paypal stuff” when everyone was CLEARLY having issues, I wanted to voice my opinion.

I’ve played a LOT of pet sims. Most recently, Flight Rising, Novilar (not really gonna talk about this one, it’s meh, it only recently started up, it’s definitely unique), and Lioden.

I’ve been on FR since 2014 and I thought it was the SHIT. Little 13 year old me was piss pants excited to keep a crapton of pretty dragons (who actually weren’t that pretty) and expand my clan into the stars!

Now I’m a bit more bitter about FR after seeing what other sites have to offer in terms of a unique experience.

RANT PART ONE: The wait for new breeds on Flight Rising.

At first, I completely understood the reasoning for why breeds took so long to come out. They had to do all the genes, color, and apparel for both genders of dragon!!

I’m not denying that FR has a wide, wide list of apparels (Upon checking the Flight rising database, it’s around 2000 pieces of apparel) I’m saying that other sites do it much better.

The site I’m comparing Flight Rising to is Lioden. Here is a small sample of some of the decor items they have on site, keep in mind that list hasn’t been updated since 2015.

ALSO! BACKGROUNDS! ANOTHER WONDERFUL THING FR DOESN’T HAVE.

My point here is that the Lioden staff drew apparel for the regular male pose, the regular female pose, 6 other female poses, and 4 cub poses.

However, this point runs dry when you realize that the mutations don’t get fitted apparel (sad trombone noise) (Lioden has mutations where occasionally, giving birth to a cub will result in a mutation, this can be anything from blindness, to the 3 primal mutations, all of which have separate linearts)

There are two types of apparel, in both Lioden and Flight rising: Universal and Fitted. 

Universal apparel on Flight rising are things like the Emblems, The Flowerfalls, the ugly crowns, something you can copypaste onto another pose. Fitted apparel is something that’s drawn SPECIFICALLY on, such as the lace apparel. On Lioden, while the primal mutations can’t wear fitted decor, they can wear universal decor.

So point for Flight Rising, right? They draw all of the apparel onto all of the breeds!

No fucking excuse for me, in the 2 years from nocturne to bogsneak, they had every chance to perfect making all of the apparel.

When Bogsneak comes out? HALF OF THE APPAREL IS FUCKING BROKEN FOR THE BREED. AND A LOT OF IT STILL ISN’T FIXED TODAY.

Bullshit to the excuse of “eeeuughg we gotta do every apparel for both dragon poses uwu” when a shit ton of the apparel doesn’t even work.

At least on Lioden, they’re honest. They say “we’re not going to be drawing fitted apparel for the mutations.”

BUT, GUESS WHAT? If you have an apparel for a mutation you want? YOU CAN DRAW IT YOURSELF. Even better? IT’S HALF THE PRICE OF A SKIN BLUEPRINT ON FLIGHT RISING.

EVEN BETTER? IF IT GETS REJECTED, YOU GET THE ITEM BACK TO GIVE IT ANOTHER SHOT!!!

Alright, so, how about markings/genes?

Well considering that Lioden has 900+ markings, I think they win just a little bit. And guess what? 

Lioden doesn’t always have all the markings for their mutations done either.

But they’re transparent!

https://static.lioden.com/images/arttutorials/mutationstatus.html

this is literally a link to their current progress with the markings.

They released two new mutations (With new, complete linearts to a total of 3) WITHIN FUCKING MONTHS OF EACH OTHER.

FLIGHT RISING TOOK TWO YEARS TO RELEASE ONE BREED WITH HALF THE SHIT BEING BROKEN FOR IT! 

IT’S FINE IF YOU TAKE A LONG TIME TO RELEASE SOMETHING, JUST DON’T SHOVE THAT “We’re perfecting everything” BULLSHIT DOWN OUR THROATS. And if I recall, some of the genes were broken as well on bogs but lol let’s not get into that.

Some of the comparisons might seem a bit odd since the two pet sims I’m comparing have completely different systems/art styles, but I’m just saying that if they were honest about taking so much time releasing a half broken breed, it shines a light on how shoddy their site management is. Hire more artists, artists that don’t leave a good chunk of the apparel glitched.

And now, for the second part of this absurdly long rant.

PART TWO: THE STAFF.

On Flight Rising, the staff is often solid and machine like, half of the updates feel fucking soulless because they’re all formatted the same way. Aside from the ‘ask the team’ segments, which barely fucking happen anymore, we rarely interact with the staff.

Maybe not for other people, but for me SPECIFICALLY this makes it really hard to sympathize with the FR staff (particularly I’m referring to the admins with this). They feel distant, and a lot of the times they respond to comments (particularly backlash and criticism) is to be snarky. While this would be funny normally, when you literally never interact with your audience, don’t listen to them, and don’t RESPOND to them, when you act like a snarky shit it’s gonna make you look condescending.

Again, on Lioden, the admins, frequently, FREQUENTLY come into the chat to mingle with the players. While there they answer questions, share experiences, and are genuinely pleasant to be around, it makes you feel a lot more sympathy for them when shit goes down the drain.

Back to the custom decor/apparel again, there was a forum post where people would post their in progress pictures, and one of the admins would respond with how to improve/ change it. When staff goes out of their way to do something they don’t have to it makes a really big impression on the player base.

For those of you holding on still, god bless you, have a kitten.

PART THREE: USER INTERACTION 

So, one of Flight Rising’s biggest flops is how they interact with users, and how users interact with them.

The three big separate issues here are mainly:

Ban appeals.

User suggestions.

And helping users.

The ban appeals, or really contacting staff about fucking anything is a ridiculous process. We’ve heard the stories on here about how long some users have been waiting for someone to address the issue, let alone solve it. 

I shouldn’t even need to compare this to anything, in my opinion the wait times are just stupid. If I can walk to FR headquarters in wherever the hell they are faster then they can respond to an issue online? THAT’S BAD.

User suggestions are rarely implemented or looked at, and if they are implemented, we have no fucking clue. It doesn’t matter how much support a topic gets, the staff rarely ever listens.

Back to Lioden, almost WEEKLY people are credited for new suggestions that are implemented into the game, and while the changes are noticeable, it’s gradual enough to that it doesn’t feel jarring. It’s fucking awesome!

Also on Lioden, there’s a 'support/no support’ button that you can click to easily, quantifiably see what users want and don’t want.

Lastly, helping users.

FR staff follows HARD RULES, there is no room for improvement. Accidentally exalt a dragon? You’re fucked. A lot of FR’s rules boil down to 'we won’t help you if you mess up’ which, if you think about it, is what incites a lot of begging onsite (oh no i accidentally transmuted my light sprite some1 pls help ;n;)

On Lioden, if you make an honest mistake, they will help you

I’m not saying that Lioden is better than Flight Rising, all I’m saying is that Flight Rising has a lot of improvement it could be doing; Giving us transparency, honesty, treating us like people instead of a cashgrab.

A lot of these problems would be fixed by one thing:

Better communication.

I wouldn’t mind if Bogsneak took two years if instead of saying “We need to do EVERYTHING on this breed” and releasing it half broken, they instead said “It isn’t a priority for us right now” and actually taken their time.

I wouldn’t mind the cut/paste updates if the staff weren’t so distant.

And the user interaction could be a lot better, if Flight Rising acted less like a company, and more like a person.

Not to say that structure is bad, everything has to, and will have rules.

But if Flight Rising cared a little more, or ACTED like it, it would make the site magnitudes better.