esixfiddy's blog: "Word of Esix"

NOTE: If you were redirected here from my SB or PM, please read the whole thing.   If after doing so you have a smart retort to SB or PM my way, then you've missed the point and you may be bounced from fubar briefly as a form of "free bar etiquette correction".

I work on a ton of things here:  

1) Programming (features/bug fixes) -- more specifically: fuMafia, lounges, forums, new levels, etc, etc, etc...  Pretty much any new feature or one that needs tweaking I'll have some involvement with.

2) Abuse/Spam Prevention

3) A bunch of other things

4) Documenting and dealing with chronic TOS violators

What I don't do:

1) Handle support questions or ANY direct inquiries for ANY of the above in response to direct shouts or PMs.

Why?

Because, my attention is focused *after* a due process which escalates the highest priority items to my attention.   Also I monitor a number of aggregate sources to find and correct things that are going on with fubar.

Here's a dialog that I've had a hundred times in the last five years:

You: "Can you help me with ____________" (putting it nicely, removing expletives)

Me: Sorry I don't do support.    You can try options A/B/C or D to try and get this solved.

You: I already did that [insert optional rude comment about how things are run].

Things go down-hill from there... because you're in the wrong department if you're inquiring with me directly.   

So in order to spare myself of the monotony of this conversation after five years of having it, I'm making this blog to link people when they SB/PM me.  For those legitimately looking for a way to solve their problem, on the chance you have not tried to get help elsewhere try:

1) The Support Lounge -- http://fubar.com/l/support

2) PM to fubar Support, wait 72hrs.   If a week goes by remind them again -- http://fubar.com/privmsg.php?u=60228

3) Send an email to support@fubar.com, include your user id #, a *brief* *articulate* explanation of what's going on.  Do not sound entitled or hostile for best results.

4) Read the fubar bible -- http://fubar.com/bible.php

5) Contact a bouncer directly -- http://fubar.com/help.php

6) If those do not work -- Sorry, but not my department.

Hey Thanatos and all concerned players,

I'm going to address your blog because I respect that you took the time to make a place for this and that you care about your point of view and that a lot of people are passionate on this subject.

First of all I have to say, there's a very common misconception regarding fuMafia and it's that people complain and that, in turn, causes unfavorable changes.  I actually monitor about a zillion statistics on the game (more than one person alone really should be although I think we'll be getting more in-house resources soon) and first and foremost I'll say that I have had a growing problem with the way in which scrubs were used and have weighed this decision carefully for a while before making the call.

They were making plenty of revenue even in spite of the free ones from platinum mastery because even those players bought extra slots.  Also scrubs gave the game another dimension of trading and bartering.

But hands down, they were not intended for this use.  Point blank there are not enough paying players for us to separate much of anything because the people that spend would be in a very small game (or ranking system) by themselves and the critical mass to make the game action occur on a daily basis within that group would not carry enough momentum.  Also, this being a company, the resources that I have to justify on a weekly basis that can be put towards fuMafia as opposed to other parts of the site (I've been extremely busy with the new profile and fSB page work) would end up with a REALLY awesome pay version of the game that, say, 200-300 players would enjoy -- not enough people for the efforts that go into this entire project that I do here.  And then we'd have a low rent budget version of the game that several thousands of people would play initially but it would get as much attention and the game as a whole would fall apart.

You'll notice the official blogs turned into a black hole on this subject.  This is because the comments are by and large extremely negative and you guys gotta realize even when you're mad, making fortune-teller type statements about "lots of people are going to stop playing" is mostly just annoying and mis-information.  From the daily numbers I can tell you that is not true at all.

I can also tell you that from the daily numbers the scrubbing change has definitely made the game less money but I do this for the long term future of the game. 

The whole point of experience and leveling is *in itself* how the blingers and non-blingers are supposed to be separated.  If you wan't to play at a slower pace with all that we give you for free then you are supposed to level slower and have the safety that comes with such. 

On the contrary, if you want to use favors then you can do things faster but were supposed to accept the leveling that came with this act.

I understand now the game has imbalance because of the scrubbing up until now but all that can be done here within reason is to plug the hole and realize that it's for the greater good.  To address that I'll simply say that _everyone_ will level eventually with the addition of new missions and such, assuming that they continue to play.

To hang back in levels and (for some of you) to beat on lesser developed players at that same level is a short circuit of the entire game as it stands.

Less than a topic of debate I post this to give a glimpse of what the logic is behind things and to leave people with less assumptions along the lines of what/why.

I hope that helps.  I'll try to read followups but this is probably all that I'm going to be able to add here (respond in Thanatos' blog to keep in one place for best results @ http://fubar.com/bling-ranking-on-fumafia/b339683-1144924

UPDATE 7/7/09 - Requirement has been changed from Top Weekly Score in one of the first 5, to Top Daily Score in *any* game.  This is not retro-active to previous scoring, so go get your top dailies and level up!

UPDATE: If you are not in the below list of user ids and you also qualified to level up to 33 -- please bear with us.  We'll be re-examining the gaming requirement to decide if (and how) this should change, given the reliability of the company that hosts the scores for us.  That's all that can be done for now!  Continue to play as you will, but know the risk might be that your score isn't 100% gauranteed to be recorded and nothing will likely change with this situation until some time on Monday.

As for thos ethat I've been able to find logs for -- level 32 fubar users that have been trying hard to place in the weekly top scores, sorry for the mishap but we've manually run through all scoring from 12am PST through right now and here is the list of users that have obtained weekly high scores.

You will be leveled in the order that you scored, if:

1) your user id is in this list with an asterisk next to it

2) you are currently level 32 and have met your other level 33 requirements

AUDITING GAME: Pyramid Solitaire
** new high score: 19500 by 2126156 on 2009-07-05 00:00:40
** new high score: 20100 by 901716 on 2009-07-05 00:14:52 (*)
** new high score: 20500 by 1545588 on 2009-07-05 00:39:43
** new high score: 21000 by 2456844 on 2009-07-05 01:17:53
** new high score: 21100 by 236682 on 2009-07-05 02:20:52
** new high score: 22000 by 1876537 on 2009-07-05 02:48:03 (*)
** new high score: 24000 by 2082817 on 2009-07-05 04:39:29 (*)

AUDITING GAME: Poker Patience
** new high score: 177 by 317752 on 2009-07-05 00:02:13 (*)
** new high score: 242 by 1544385 on 2009-07-05 00:30:52
** new high score: 270 by 652786 on 2009-07-05 06:12:38

AUDITING GAME: Bricks Breaking 2
** new high score: 27900 by 2982744 on 2009-07-05 00:03:00
** new high score: 35810 by 1990603 on 2009-07-05 00:04:07 (*)
** new high score: 38310 by 570728 on 2009-07-05 00:09:03
** new high score: 40500 by 3264889 on 2009-07-05 00:15:25
** new high score: 61610 by 2599687 on 2009-07-05 00:19:44 (*)
** new high score: 149610 by 1607252 on 2009-07-05 07:57:07 (*)

AUDITING GAME: DropSum
** new high score: 103966 by 3296313 on 2009-07-05 00:00:01
** new high score: 166383 by 117825 on 2009-07-05 00:00:25 (*)
** new high score: 250742 by 1716225 on 2009-07-05 01:39:15
** new high score: 301527 by 2386947 on 2009-07-05 02:39:39 (*)
** new high score: 447607 by 476303 on 2009-07-05 06:02:26
** new high score: 481127 by 1893678 on 2009-07-05 06:23:43 (*)
** new high score: 1090660 by 3175273 on 2009-07-05 07:23:12

AUDITING GAME: ConFusebox 2
** new high score: 1198 by 1280881 on 2009-07-05 00:08:50 (*)
** new high score: 1526 by 424096 on 2009-07-05 00:34:24 (*)
** new high score: 2307 by 1989702 on 2009-07-05 01:33:23
** new high score: 2351 by 3113930 on 2009-07-05 03:03:03
** new high score: 17377 by 228384 on 2009-07-05 03:22:44

Okay so we just put out a new lounge change that allows you much better access over what each one of your mods is able to do:

This page can be found by navigating to your "edit lounge" page and then clicking "manage lounge staff":

Please respond here with comments, feedback, bugs, and other issues regarding lounge mods.

Note:  If you previously had lounge co-owners, you'll want to go into this settings page and set their 'staff' and/or  'settings' permissions to YES as for what you desire your co-owners to be able to do.

thanks,

-eric

If you run a lounge here on fubar you will be interested to know that we've given you more options for your lounge privacy.  Previously we offered only public and private (member & invite only) modes of lounge privacy. 

We now offer the following options:

1) public - everyone may view or enter your lounge

2) users must be logged in to enter (view) lounge (no more ghosting your lounge by logged out users!)

3) users must have salute to enter lounge - help keep your lounge free of fakes

4) members & invite only - Only subscribed members and newly invited people may enter

5) Staff & Invite only - Only staff and invited members may join, even subscribed members may not

Please let me know if you have any questions of comments on the new functionality OR other lounge ideas

thanks,

-eric650

For the present moment, you are allowed to switch sides if you have a large enough sum of fuBucks.

You'll find the link here to do so.

This way we'll hopefully be able to add some really kick ass features without a lot of people worried that one side has it so much better and all you level 28+ people can get full benefits of having made it this far.

Questions, comments, specifial ability ideas?

So I happen to be behind the Angel Pimpout ability here on the fu..

I've been linked to a couple bulletins and a mum where some users are really upset over the *recipient* limitation being set to 3 and I thought that I would take a second and address it to let you guys know that your concerns aren't fallling on deaf ears.

The limitation isn't to stick it to you guys.  The fact is you have to consider that there is a finite amount of room in our online user bar up there.  Every 5 minutes we swap out pimped users and you can probably do some math and figure out how many pimpouts are possible in a day.

With an increasing number of people reaching level 28 and choosing Angel I thought limiting the recipients would be the least arguable short term solution to this problem.

The other solution being that we make the pimpout time less than 5 minutes  OR we can let the approximate wait time back up to well over an hour during prime time.

Your thoughts on Pimpouts?

-eric