Suggestions For F95zone website...

Trexsins

Newbie
Feb 27, 2021
38
36
The developers aren't always involved, some games do have the play time taken from the VNDB page.
I know some games already has that individually. I just wanted to suggest them to add that as a general feature so that whomever uploads a game can also add the playtime of it. I think it will be very helpful for us.
 

anne O'nymous

I'm not grumpy, I'm just coded that way.
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Respected User
Jun 10, 2017
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I think it will be very helpful for us.
Who is "us" ?

Half the members aren't native English speakers. Many will struggle more while reading than other, making the play time being longer for them, especially in regard of fast reader native English speakers.
Many players aren't this good with mini-games, once again needing more time than others ; said others who will perhaps just skip them all when it's possible.
And what about games with free roaming ? Those who'll want to be sure that they miss nothing will need more time than those who care so few that they have their nose deep on a walkthrough.
And obviously, there's those who'll take the time to appreciate the CGs, as well as those who just want to fap and will fast forward any none lewd scenes. Talking about faping, what about those who will regularly stop to beat the meat ?
And what about multi-route games, or harem games letting you choose what characters you'll pursue and what characters you'll just ignore. What route, or set of characters, should be used for the measurment ?


So, tell me, what profile should be used to measure the time needed to play the game ? What kind of "us" have to be helped by adding the play time, and what kind of "us" have to be fooled by being given a play time that will not at all correspond to theirs ? There's near to 5 millions members now, and you can only please less than 10% of them, who will you choice ?
 

Trexsins

Newbie
Feb 27, 2021
38
36
Who is "us" ?

Half the members aren't native English speakers. Many will struggle more while reading than other, making the play time being longer for them, especially in regard of fast reader native English speakers.
Many players aren't this good with mini-games, once again needing more time than others ; said others who will perhaps just skip them all when it's possible.
And what about games with free roaming ? Those who'll want to be sure that they miss nothing will need more time than those who care so few that they have their nose deep on a walkthrough.
And obviously, there's those who'll take the time to appreciate the CGs, as well as those who just want to fap and will fast forward any none lewd scenes. Talking about faping, what about those who will regularly stop to beat the meat ?
And what about multi-route games, or harem games letting you choose what characters you'll pursue and what characters you'll just ignore. What route, or set of characters, should be used for the measurment ?


So, tell me, what profile should be used to measure the time needed to play the game ? What kind of "us" have to be helped by adding the play time, and what kind of "us" have to be fooled by being given a play time that will not at all correspond to theirs ? There's near to 5 millions members now, and you can only please less than 10% of them, who will you choice ?
Well many of the game uploaded here has length of the playtime mentioned and many of the devs adds the playtime in the changelog. So it's no really a impossible thing to calculate a estimated playtime . And adding playtime will defiantly help everyone because it also let's us know how much content there is. And I think everyone regardless of their style of playing wants to know how much content is there in the game before downloading it.
 
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Trexsins

Newbie
Feb 27, 2021
38
36
It being a actual requirement has been formally requested a few times and rejected.
I mean they could leave an option to add playtime. Not everyone has to add playtime if they can't. But it will encourage some uploaders or devs to add it if the website has already has an option.
 

Doorknob22

Super Moderator
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Nov 3, 2017
2,392
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1. As a developer I have no idea what's the playtime of my own game. It's very rare (i.e. never happens) that I play it from start to finish in normal playing pace. Remember that we release the games in updates, not in one piece. Even updates are written in internal pieces, again, making it hard for us to estimate the update's length.
2. There is a core of truth in your request and I will suggest that reviewers when submitting a review will have the option in a dedicated field to estimate the playtime. Future players read the estimations and make up their own minds based on several estimations.
 

Rafster

Bear chaser
Game Developer
Mar 23, 2019
2,099
4,087
I'm not even sure of how much playtime is currently in my game. My tests from the beginning were +2 hours, but then again I'm a fan of grinding and reading everything. Using the cheat menu, or just skipping to the choices may shorten that time to half.
 

Arikania

Active Member
Feb 10, 2023
952
394
There should be more options among the searches, such as options to search for a and b, next to a or b.

The site desparately needs options to exclude tags from searches.

In its current state, I often need to use bing or duckduckgo to find games here, and using the site's search gives me way too many irrelevant hits.
 
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Count Morado

Devoted Member
Respected User
Jan 21, 2022
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There should be more options among the searches, such as options to search for a and b, next to a or b.

The site desparately needs options to exclude tags from searches.

In its current state, I often need to use bing or duckduckgo to find games here, and using the site's search gives me way too many irrelevant hits.
Yes, currently I believe the site defaults to "AND" boolean search for words - there isn't an "OR" option. That said - if you are looking for "OR" - you could do 2 separate searches (or more, depending upon the number of terms you are considering). Yes it takes a bit longer, I understand - but honestly, many already spend a lot of time on this site, what's a couple more minutes?

As for the exclude tag option - that is already available.
The Latest Updates page:
1680062701039.png

The search page:
1680062734998.png
 

Count Morado

Devoted Member
Respected User
Jan 21, 2022
8,336
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Someone recently pointed out that Without tags is pretty much useless.

Using Tags also has issues...
Your first link:

To be pedantic - anne didn't say that "Without tags is pretty much useless," instead saying "anything that need more thoughts, or imply more than few answer, will give wrong or partial results." Which is somewhat vague, in itself, as well.​
To that end - I just did a test and found that using 1 tag and 2 without tags in both the Latest Updates and the Advanced Search for game threads --- the total number of results matched at 1686 to 1686.​

As for your personal experience in the second link, I ended up with similar problems with you.

However, I don't think it's a problem with the search terms or the tags, separately - because searching using one or the other parameter seems to work fine. It's using them in conjunction where it becomes an issue.

If someone is simply using the tags and without tags options to search for possible games --- not using search terms in conjunction, things appear ok.

If someone is simply looking for all the words they list in a search terms box --- not any of the words, but all, things appear ok.

So I agree in part, and disagree in another. In the end, I go back to the thrust of my previous comment: "Yes it takes a bit longer, I understand - but honestly, many already spend a lot of time on this site, what's a couple more minutes?"
 

baloneysammich

Active Member
Jun 3, 2017
994
1,532
anne didn't say that "Without tags is pretty much useless,"
No, I did. :ROFLMAO: The "someone" I was referring to was the OP. I tried to do what they seemed to intend, and saw the result they described.

And with due respect to anne (ie. a lot), I'm often not 100% sure I understand them.

To that end - I just did a test and found that using 1 tag and 2 without tags in both the Latest Updates and the Advanced Search for game threads --- the total number of results matched at 1686 to 1686.
Cool, so it's not useless, just has a weird bug that Without tags doesn't work properly unless used with Tags I guess.
 

FookU2

Engaged Member
Jan 23, 2018
3,201
2,391
I can run through a game in 5 minutes, but another game with the same amount of dialogue and same amount of scenes will take me hours. And everyone plays differently, reads at different speeds, thinks things through more or less time, before making choices, etc, etc. For open world, some people will just walk around and mess around some, and take more time. There is no definitive play time for most games...unless they're just kinetic VNs or non-Kinetic that have really only a couple choices, and everyone is gonna pick the same choice regardless and even those rely on reading speed and or the amount each person skips. If it got rejected, that's why. It shouldn't be a requirement cause it would never be accurate for everyone.