I’ve been visiting Cloud Party a lot and I have to agree with a lot of what you’ve said. The biggest issue for me is the camera, even more so than the avatar customization. Perhaps I feel that way now because I’ve been seeing people upload all sorts of mesh items? I dislike the default avatar so much that I wasn’t even thinking about wanting to tweak it, lol. I just figured that it’s so ugly, some genius content creator is going to create a mesh avatar for me to wear that will completely hide the default.
Going back to the camera. They REALLY need to fine-tune that, and not just for the sake of snapshots. Besides spending on clothing and accessories for their avs, fashionistas like to beautify their homes. The way the camera works when you’re placing furniture in Build mode is, frankly, vomitacious. No really, I’ve found it a little nauseating, like virtual vertigo or something.
With all that said, I just want to clarify that I’m not bashing Cloud Party. I personally like it so far because I see potential in it. I hope this doesn’t go the way of Blue Mars. The people running the Cloud Party show have been in-world a lot of the times I’ve visited, hanging around the Beginner Zone sandbox and playing with the building tools alongside other avatars, as well as listening to the random comments that pop up in the chat log (although I’m sure their forums are still their preferred method for providing feedback). (Example: I mentioned how snapshots stopped going to my Facebook album. Sam Thompson was there and asked for some info; a day later, the log in page had a message about FB photos being fixed.)
And speaking of the Beginner Zone, it’s so awesome to enter that region as the 20th avatar and still have everything rez instantly and get a solid 60 fps, ha! I love SL but the lack of lag in Cloud Party is a thing of beauty.All valid concerns that I agree with.
But I feel the reaction people will have will not be, “Ok, that sucked, what can I use instead” but “Ok, that sucked, virtual worlds are not for me.”
But because these games on Facebook are so good at getting so many to look, and spend a few dimes – they don’t need to improve it for retention. They just need you to buy a hit of their crack once, because the line out the door of people waiting to find out how much it sucks will be endless.
They might not bother with fixing these issues, as it might take them months to discover the impact of leaving these flaws as they are. And by that time some folks will have already collected their check and moved on.
you are confusing CP with SL. It’s LL that believed they didn’t have to fix anything because the suckers would always be there to shovel money into their coffers. CP appears to be not only adding things we have been asking for for about a decade, but fixed the FBPhoto issue in less than 24 hours when it was reported to them.
I can only imagine the joy the CP users must have felt, reporting a problem and having the dev team fix it. It has been many years since LL has been so attentive to my needs. *sniffs*
Thanks for this feedback Iris. I am extremely Tiktok for crypto impressed with CP so far, and imho it is already ahead of where BlueMars was and in some ways already ahead of SL. The biggest thing to consider here is that we are talking about 5 people who make it, 4 programmers and an artist. Anything that gets done is going to take a bit longer to implement than if it were a company of 100, though in some instances, like the FB photo fix, that small size is a benefit and led to a veryquick fix.
I look forward to 3 things from CP before I see it succeeding:
- Economy (with the ability to cash out, which they were not originally going to do but have since decided to include) and a decent exchange rate.
- Land/Island rentals for both residential and commercial use with lower prices than SL.
- Non-FB authentication for identity and age, thus opening up the possibility for both anonymity and adult content controlled within age-restricted areas.
On the last point, I dont think anyone wants an open orgy of adult content and the folks at CP certainly want to stay away from the bad press SL got on it. However, adult content is almost imperative for the survival of a virtual world to some degree. In the case of CP, that degree would lean more to simply adults being adults and not having to babysit a bunch of 13 year old Beiber fans than it would toward anything sexual, though some will want that ability between consenting adults also, and on your own land the choice should be available. Many businesses rely on the existent possibility of sexuality to survive, including fashion and furniture and housing; Houses are purchased by couples more often than not. Couples exist because romance and sexuality are possible. It is a necessary aspect of re/creating many types of reality and certainly fantasy. The result of having any virtual world, with or without adult content, that has human beings inside it includes human sexuality, as the people who tried to run IMVU without it found out. People find a way, so it is perhaps better to allow it via control and regulation than to attempt to ignore or repress an important part of what it means to be human.
I am very eager to see where this platform goes. At the very least, LL having some solid competition is a welcome thing. They have grown complacent through the lack of it.
