our dear Doctor just made his first public appearance in quite a while, to post an updated Rules list here. while the changes are not sweeping, there are a few critical ones - outside links are once more unequivocally banned, for one. also in plain language is the restriction on sharing even your own information (email etc) onsite. time will tell how the rulings against trolling and harrassment play out...
One of the major changes/additions is a ceiling on pet prices in trades, restoring the original max of 10,000FD. while they have a few loopholes to close in this area, the September Update announcement thread offered a glimpse of hope for the restoration of direct member-to-member sales...while the subject was pets, hopefully items will be included as well. assuming the same tax structure as member-to-site, this would give FooPets at least as much chance to siphon "surplus" FDs out of the economy as under the site-only sales system, and probably a good deal more, giving the site tender a chance to rebalance and regain its value.
one of the issues i had with the original version of the rules is still prevalent - though in some areas they are specified as site-wide regardless of location, the stricture about image posting is obviously limited to the Forums, though it doesn't say so, and other subjects retain the same vagueness as to whether they are general or Forum-specific.
welcome back into the public eye, Ron - glad to see you! along with the recent restoration of features phased out by Rivet, this visit gives me great hope for the future.stop by and chat sometime, we miss you.
About Me
- GOLD RUSH
- Tabby Road, New Furrsey, Foo S. A.
- i am a seven-year-old virtual Cream Persian FooCat (born on Little Christmas, 1/5/10), the mascot and spokesfurson for FooBA4U, the FooPets members' cooperative service site.
i don't know...what's really going on?
ReplyDeleteFoopets new answer on FB for why the site went pay to play:
ReplyDelete" FooPets became a pay to play membership site in April 2011 in order to provide excellent service to our members:)"
Mmmkay. It wasn't cuz the site was about to go under or anything lol.
still trying to find out who is the talking head over there...compulsory pay-to-play was a Rivet innovation in pursuit of their target market of under-13's, as while they might get a subscription out of their parents, that was the ONLY income that could be expected from that source.
Deleteit proved grossly inadequate, and Rivet went toes up in early February of this year, opening the door for Ron, Scott, and Eugene to execute their rescue of the database (which they are now attempting to debug and repair).
as the "new old guys" inherited the new under-13 joins along with everyone - and everything - else, it's going to take a while to unravel the mess Rivet made, paid subs included. we are hoping to get a basic plan without FD perks (for something like $10/year) and the ability to gift subscriptions as interim measures while a way other than forced subscription is developed to keep the site solvent.
we do NOT want to open the door once again to outside investors...that is what created the original situation that stuffed Janasov and Rivet down our (and Ron and Scott's) throats in the first place. a program for members to buy shares in the FooPets company is one of the ideas on the table.
Also, sorry, wish I could have added this, but I just noticed, for any who have had doubts as to who is running the FB page, I'd say the smiley face gives it up as Traci.
ReplyDeletewell, it's a clue, anyway, lol, but they're in pretty common use...FooFB had been a sock puppet for someone since before Traci's debut - apparently it was still under Rivet control for some time after the site began to change hands. also, as i have noticed in the past, Traci has a habit of shooting from the hip instead of asking Ron for facts about how things were prior to her arrival - which was not long after the site was retaken, so there's a great deal about the history of Foo she just plain doesn't know yet. we're been tucking little historical references into the Forum threads, and they appear to be doing some good.
DeleteFYI - the Feed all is not working again. I was feeding a friends and went to the play to just check (I always do)and half were not even fed. Some were even blank and had lost some bars. I know she is busy and uses the feed all a lot. I do not go to Support. I have never gotten anything but it is being taken care of from them. So I am just sending out a warning.
ReplyDeletei use almost exclusively - and recommend to everyone - m.foo for feeding : it's nearly as fast as Insta, you can see at a glance who's tended, and there's a nice little bit of interaction with the pets that Insta lacks. i've always been a bit put off by the depersonalization of the pets that InstaCare tacitly encourages.
Deletethis is not to say that they shouldn't work on fixing something that people are paying a premium for, of course - but bear in mind that in that area Ron and Co. are fiddling with something that they had no part in coding, so they are pretty much shooting from the hip. try to bear with it while they feel their way through the code, if possible.
Just a warning. I always check and double check. But I know many busy people have been depending on the fact that Instacare was fixed quite a while ago and there has been no alerts to my knowledge there was a problem. I have noticed several of my friends who have some pets in the orange range - it looks like the are leaving. Not all their pets are low however. I just want to let spread the word.
ReplyDeletenot good...i'l see if i can stick a pin in the Announcements people (though i'm pretty sure i saw something mentioned about problems with it in one of the two most recent ones), but not everyone checks the Forums, either...if the care levels are at two different colors, it looks like they're using InstaAll and it's not kicking in properly.
Deletefor those who DO use it, may i suggest doublechecking in m.foo mode afterwards? you can see in seconds whether or not all pets were indeed cared for.
Not sure where to put this but here goes:
ReplyDelete1) I discovered how poorly InstaCare was working and am now using mobile--the happy/smiley face bar is going down - is this normal?
2) I have definitely decided Foo is not worth $40/6 mo. We are not getting what we have been paying for...I am staying the course but will pay the minimum required until they decide to get their **%# together. So much of the fun has been taken away from the most delightful game I have ever played.
Looking forward to the Halloween Fun FooBA4U has planned for us. Way to goooo!
no, the Care bars should behave just like they do anywhere else...mine were as of yesterday (or at least they stayed full green where they were) - may be a glitch, i'll look into it.
ReplyDeletei pay the minimum myself, and am trying to get a "basic" package without FD perks that will run $10 a year or so instituted. they do seem to be making an effort to restore original features/functions as they find them buried in the code-scramble they inherited.
Trick or Treating is in full swing - you can access the instruction page form the post above this, or via AnJellicle's profile on Born2CanaanCatHaven or Gold Rush on FooBA4U. enjoy!
So I have to say that I now fully understand the people I thought to be "whiners and complainers" back from the Rivet days. And I am putting out an "I'm sorry" to all of you for not getting it then.
ReplyDeleteBut I have to wonder about some of these people. Ron has had the site since March, and I gotta say, I'm not impressed. It would seem though that these people have far more patience for Ron than for Rivet.
Yes, they cut the Footax and reopened Foomart, bravo. But the problem I have with that is they didn't do it until a new site emerged to bring competition. That site being Cyska, and so far they are wasting Foo lol. They only have 2 people and yet they're pumping out new cats, fixing things, and adding things constantly. They listen to their customers. They implement things that players suggest, sometimes in less than 24 hours.
I no longer have my age old patience with Foo. I think they're dusting off old stuff just to make us happy. Instead of fixing the issues. How many people are complaining right now about Instacare All? And if they took on a new coder, than really, shame on them. 5 people on Foo to Cyska's 2, and none of them worth a fart in the wind. Favoritism is worse even now then when Rivet ran things, and caring for pets sucks, especially for those with a ton of pets and multiple accounts. As for that Big Surprise, wow. Why even announce it if you're not sure about it? Bad judgement call there.
Personally, my huge surprise will be if they ever got Instacare All to work again. I don't see it happening.
i can't say for a fact, but i rather think that given his druthers, Ron would have kept the site offline until he (or someone) could completely rewrite the code. they rushed it online before they even had legal title (to their OWN sourcecode, ironically) out of consideration for members worried about their pets. in my book, that buys them a LOT of patience. they didn't HAVE to do it the hard way...but they thought of people's feelings about the pets before their own convenience.
ReplyDeletefor example, InstaCare was a Rivet innovation, and they had to reverse-engineer just to understand how the (already buggy) program worked before even trying to make any progress. as far as the Big Surprise, my guess is discovering the original FooMart coding snippet made them think that the key to either member-to-member pet sales, member item shops, and/or open fostering was nearby. sadly, it seems it wasn't, or is so entangled in the Rivet overwrite that it is taking much longer than anticipated.
i have heard of Cyska in passing but am not really familiar with it, and don't know how it compares, complexity-wise, to Foo...can anyone give me a link to take a look?
Canaan, if you want to be able to explore the site, go to http://www.facebook.com/CyskaSiberians and ask Cyska for an invitation. She just needs to know that you are not a troll and not under 13, because I gather they had a lot of trouble from foo trolls when they were open to all. I find it very sad that people have been so damaged by foo that they can find nothing better to do than to go to another online pet site, one that is just starting to bloom, and poop all over it.
DeleteI am not a member so cannot send you an invitation; I am leery of trying any online game after the disastrous foopets experience. But I have seen some of the animations there, and they are amazing. The site is about the breeding of Siberian cats, I am told that they will eventually have siberian dogs also, but they are taking it slowly and carefully and so far it is just the cats. They are trying to make it realistic, and it seems are succeeding well. Statistics for pets there will be meaningful because the breeding for breed-improvement is going to be a central and important aspect of the game.
Foo could learn from them, as in fact they have learned from foo's mistakes; the influx of trolls brought foo and its horrendous errors to their attention, but I believe that they would have done well in the customer care area anyway. They pay attention to customer concerns and actually take time to respond in a meaningful fashion, despite the fact that only two people work there. The coder has a "proper" job and does coding for the site on his spare time, and the animator deals with other site issues and is out of work, so they are running on a shoestring. However, they have a happy and growing user-base which is paying for extras so as to keep the site running. It is free to play, and you can get stuff for the in-game coins, but you need to pay for extra cats and suchlike.
The game may not YET be as complex as foo, but it does look as if they are aiming for some pretty deep complexity. They are building carefully though, from the ground up. What I find interesting is that, even with so little in place at first, they have been keeping a loyal and growing set of customers happy.
I rather think that Ron and co would have done better to take the site offline while they worked on it, and re-release it as the site that they want it to be. I am sure that many foo-players who are currently turning their backs on the place would have been more than willing to have beta-tested a new version of foopets. Players might have lost their much-loved pets, but it would have done Ron etc no harm to have produced a wee offline version of the game as per Superpokepets.
i received an invitation to join Cyska a while back (someone who knew me emailed it), but i haven't heard anything back since i asked for more information. it will be nice to have a FooLike alternative (in terms of concept), especially for those unable to access Foo.
Deletethey have clearly planned their growth with care - a very good thing for which i commend them. one of the reasons i believe Foo has had the problems it has is it (a) attempted to start up full-blown, and (b) focused on growing too much too fast to pay attention to the responses to change. plus there has always been WAY too much separation in attitude between Admin and membership...and that problem sadly persists.
i also agree that in the long run waiting until the bulk of the everyday operations were running smoothly would have been a better approach, but after the PetTales crash (Foo was still Rivet at that time), there was such rampant panic that Ron must have decided half a loaf was better than none, and overestimated his and/or his staff's capacities. i'm not certain that either he or Scott are actually coders personally (at least on the level required here), and i'm pretty sure Eugene isn't.
I'm sorry but at the moment Cyska is a closed site. I wish I could get you a sneak peak but...well there were a lot of issues when the site was open to all, and I think the Admin want to be sure that those issues won't recur before they open it up to new members again. I can let you know when that happens though. :)
ReplyDeleteWow now honest and simple advice is being called "finger pointing" by whoever is running the FB page. It's enough to make me just sick to death of whoever is running the show there. If advice is going to be ignored because someone is so childish as to get their feelings hurt over stupid sh**, then we're all screwed.
ReplyDeleteI think Miss Sophie needs to take a chill pill. http://www.foopets.com/topics/show/2397786?forum_id=34&page=4&post_count=75 Really? As if the whole "end of the world" business is not kind of a well known theory by now? Are we really supposed to cater to the one possible person that will be freaked out by this. Also, just for kicks, I'd like to point out the SlimShadysBaby was suspended for saying "freaking". This was a week ago or something. But look here: http://www.foopets.com/topics/show/2397519?forum_id=34&page=4#posts-57417251 Az and Rose both say it and no one says "boo". We need a clear cut set of rules here. If "freaking" is considered bad language, than "crap", "darn", all of the stuff we use IN PLACE of actually cursing should fall into that category. If that happens, what is next? Can't we PLEASE have a place where it's not okay one day and suspendable the next? Can't we please have an adult forum where we can poke fun at the end of the world without miss sunshine coming in to say it's inappropriate? I am SO tired of the site catering to kids who shouldn't even be in the forums. Not old enough to understand what "not for sale" means? Then not old enough to message people. Not old enough to have a mature discussion without freaking out? Not old enough for the forums. I wish they would restrict the forums and messaging to 13+ at the very least. If you're below, screw a parent's consent because how many parents in this day and age even monitor their children?
ReplyDeletewe have been campaigning for age-specialized Forum divisions for some time now...strictly speaking, it would be best for both us AND the under-13's if they had a SITE of their own, tailored to their needs as the retrofit of Foo cannot be - but regrettably that horse left the barn some time ago. at least group forums would channel interactions appropriately.
ReplyDeletewhile we're at it, do you realise that Foo has some of the most primitive Forum coding in the annals of Virtual Adoptables? the package is obviously designed strictly for roleplay...the one thing they are fighting so hard against. what on earth FOR? put it up on a registration-only forum - maybe even with an entry fee - and bleed off some of the drama occurring on the main sute, for pity's sake. RP is ABOUT drama, and those jonesing for it are running wild...probably prompting ambassador paranoia and overreaction.
I agree. I was anti-RP for a long time, but hell, just give it back. Kids need a daily soap opera to feel normal. Make them pay a little extra for it if they want it so badly, maybe then Foo would be able to hire a new tech.
ReplyDelete