I don't wanna be a debbie downer here, but I can't help but think that (at the moment) there's not a lot that separates this site from other avatar forums - and I dunno about you guys, but it seems that there's a whole lot of those already that are struggling with low activity levels. With the current market so saturated with this kind of website, I'm of the mind that to go ahead and invest time and money in a completely new site you're gonna have to have some sort of USP. So I guess my question is - are there any plans to push this site beyond the basic things we're already familiar with from other avatar sites?
So far I appreciate the friendliness of the admin team and their good customer service skills. It's also always great to be around for the beginning of a website, but right now everything is so bare bones that I'm a little concerned about the site's longevity. Even with all the currently "in progress" features being completed (shops, market, etc.) - I can't see much of anything in the way of unique. :vanora_sweat:
Pls do me a reassure! ~
I think that Voltra will survive. Why? This post is going to be long winded...
Because the staff gets along and cares about their users. I've never seen an avatar site open up a discord and chat with us like we're the staffs equals. I've never seen staff actually respond to item suggestion threads with "Yeah, this is a great idea! I'll get on this," and then actually make it. I've never seen staff be so intune with their audience.
This is the first couple days of beta. For those of us from Alpha, it's pretty lively. There are a few items because the site is only 2 weeks old. The staff have real lives, but as soon as they come home from work and school, they work on Voltra. It's their baby. They don't want their baby to die, and a lot of us don't either.
Have hope! To be fair, you are posting at the time of day when a LOT of America is asleep. The main timezone of Voltra is CST, I believe, and it's 6:20 am as of this post, and I'm posting 6 seconds after you made this thread. xD;
Have faith hun. Voltra will grow. I think it'll take a long time for it to die out. A lot of people from Syndrone and Ernya are coming because it's similar to both, a lot of people from Gaia are coming because they are sick of the money hungry nature.
Just be patient. u v u
Because the staff gets along and cares about their users. I've never seen an avatar site open up a discord and chat with us like we're the staffs equals. I've never seen staff actually respond to item suggestion threads with "Yeah, this is a great idea! I'll get on this," and then actually make it. I've never seen staff be so intune with their audience.
This is the first couple days of beta. For those of us from Alpha, it's pretty lively. There are a few items because the site is only 2 weeks old. The staff have real lives, but as soon as they come home from work and school, they work on Voltra. It's their baby. They don't want their baby to die, and a lot of us don't either.
Have hope! To be fair, you are posting at the time of day when a LOT of America is asleep. The main timezone of Voltra is CST, I believe, and it's 6:20 am as of this post, and I'm posting 6 seconds after you made this thread. xD;
Have faith hun. Voltra will grow. I think it'll take a long time for it to die out. A lot of people from Syndrone and Ernya are coming because it's similar to both, a lot of people from Gaia are coming because they are sick of the money hungry nature.
Just be patient. u v u
@Neko: I think you've misunderstood.
Firstly, I agree with you in relation to the staff - they do appear to care a lot and have excellent communication with users. However, my issue is not with the activity levels of the site - I know it's new and I know it's a weird time to be posting! I'm also pretty confident that the site will grow - to an extent.
All I am asking is, other than customer service, what makes the website unique? I don't think that "the staff care about the website" really counts as a USP, since I wouldn't exactly expect them not to care about their creation, you know?
What I'm talking about is features and content. Does the site plan to boldly go where no avatar website has gone before, or are they gonna stick to the same tried and tested routine? And if the latter is the case then my feedback is this - there's a lot of other people that have attempted to do the "tried and tested" avatar forum before and failed - so I want to know why Voltra will be different. But I imagine this is more of a question for the admin team, who may have features in mind for the future.
Firstly, I agree with you in relation to the staff - they do appear to care a lot and have excellent communication with users. However, my issue is not with the activity levels of the site - I know it's new and I know it's a weird time to be posting! I'm also pretty confident that the site will grow - to an extent.
All I am asking is, other than customer service, what makes the website unique? I don't think that "the staff care about the website" really counts as a USP, since I wouldn't exactly expect them not to care about their creation, you know?
What I'm talking about is features and content. Does the site plan to boldly go where no avatar website has gone before, or are they gonna stick to the same tried and tested routine? And if the latter is the case then my feedback is this - there's a lot of other people that have attempted to do the "tried and tested" avatar forum before and failed - so I want to know why Voltra will be different. But I imagine this is more of a question for the admin team, who may have features in mind for the future.
@Dotty: Ah, okay. It is early I just woke up, so I'm sorry for misunderstanding your post.
To be frank - that's something only the admins and developers know, really. I don't think having a unique selling point is as important as getting the rest of the features up during beta launch. And if they do have things up their sleeves that's so different, I'm sure they wouldn't tell us now. xD
To be frank - that's something only the admins and developers know, really. I don't think having a unique selling point is as important as getting the rest of the features up during beta launch. And if they do have things up their sleeves that's so different, I'm sure they wouldn't tell us now. xD
sell me rigs please♥
So I saw this when I woke up and made sure I took a step back to think about this for a bit before I chimed in, because I'm familiar with the history of avatar sites and their communities, and I think this is a very good question that's being asked. So I'm going to vomit words onto this page and afterwards you can tell me if it helped any, yeah?
I think, first off, that you shouldn't ignore the importance of the staff being interactive and responsive, largely because of how many really, really good sites I've seen fail because of a lack of that. Syndrone and Terrasus, Lunae, etc, ended up dying not because they were failing as sites, but because the people at the head of the project failed their users. They were non-responsive, they couldn't be trusted, they abused the site as a cash generator and not because they wanted the site to succeed, etc. That's at least one thing you can be sure isn't a problem with Voltra. Fozzy has been actively working on this project for literally years, and even when he and Baz aren't active on the site and public discords, I'm pretty sure they're working on Voltra in the staff channels more than they're sleeping! They've got a lot planned on the site and are always working to tweak things--which is super important in the context of asking 'what makes voltra special', 'what makes voltra important and worth my time' because them being responsive means that it's up to /you/. What would make Voltra important and special and worth your time? The benefit of joining a new site, the reward you get for the risk inherent in joining a new project that may or may not succeed, is that you get to help shape it. What would make you happy? We're listening. Several items and future projects are on our to-do and in-process lists explicitly because people have spoken up already. Please don't hesitate to add to that list.
But you want to know what we're already doing that makes us worth your time, right? So here's my rundown of some things that are future projects that you'll be seeing on Voltra over the coming beta. I can't promise that this list will fit your needs--it's very possible that Voltra isn't a project that /can/ woo you over, and that's okay and that's nobody's fault. But I hope these are things that will at least help alleviate your worries and give you something to look forward to.
Some in-progress projects to look forward to:
❥Interactive Events and Lore - Voltra actually has a pretty extensive background and lore that is going to be seen in future events, items, and features. Our upcoming mini-event is going to start this off with interactive NPCs, which is a trait we expect the site to continue having, where the NPCs will have their own special interactions on the forums. This is hard to write without giving away any of the secrets just yet, since we want to introduce this stuff in context, but you can expect the ability to talk to NPCs and lore characters, a thick, indepth lore that will influence events, factions that individuals will be offered a chance to join that will result in cool items, forums, and story, etc. This might not actually be something you care about, but uh, you know, I'm pretty biased over here about how awesome this is, haha. My background as a writer is largely tabletop and roleplay based--expect to see that influence in the projects I'm working on.
❥Unique Commons - One thing you may or may not care about is one of the item design principles so far discussed is that not all cool items should be cash barriered. When things get up and running, expect to see things like very simple, plain versions of cooler items in the common shops. A quick example is that, you know, even if you can't afford whatever special LI ends up giving megaawesomeangelwings, because every site has a special LI that does, you can probably get a tiny or plain version of wings somewhere in the common shops. These are details that are still being worked out, so I can't say much more, but definitely expect robust common options when things get rolling.
❥I've already hit on this, but expect a lot of user input. There are plans, and have been for quite a while, for things like design contests where users can make exactly the item they want and the artists will make it happen. We've already had one person make an item and have it added to our lists of items to add to the shops. Community is very important to us and that's something we want to focus on. Expect votes for major decisions, input on the future of the site, etc. Even the lore is based around the idea that bonds between people are what fuels Voltra. What you want matters, and we want to make it happen. There are some things that we can't always agree with or change, hard lines we have to set for the health of the site (sorry guys, LIs have to cost money lol) but we want to do what makes people happy.
❥Games - This may or may not be an interesting thing anymore, but our developer has quite a few projects in mind for stuff for users to do, starting with our Sewer system. I can't say much because I don't want Baz to hurt me, but our goal is to provide a series of interesting, changing things that users can do that will make you want to come back every day. Daily games, weekly contests, large scale site events, mini-events, etc. It's our hope that we'll eventually reach a point where there's something that makes you want to join up and be involved, even if it's just for a few minutes a day, you know?
I'm sure there's stuff I'm forgetting, and there's definitely stuff I can't talk about yet and more stuff still that's still being debated, so maybe I answered your question but also maybe I didn't. But what I want to impress the hardest is that our core design goal is to make the users happy. This isn't a cash grab or a power play or any of those other gross things that killed sites. This is a group of people who are very, very excited to be involved in a project like this, and who want user feedback and suggestions to make a community that is fully interactive, involved, friendly, etc. Hopefully we'll be successful.
I think, first off, that you shouldn't ignore the importance of the staff being interactive and responsive, largely because of how many really, really good sites I've seen fail because of a lack of that. Syndrone and Terrasus, Lunae, etc, ended up dying not because they were failing as sites, but because the people at the head of the project failed their users. They were non-responsive, they couldn't be trusted, they abused the site as a cash generator and not because they wanted the site to succeed, etc. That's at least one thing you can be sure isn't a problem with Voltra. Fozzy has been actively working on this project for literally years, and even when he and Baz aren't active on the site and public discords, I'm pretty sure they're working on Voltra in the staff channels more than they're sleeping! They've got a lot planned on the site and are always working to tweak things--which is super important in the context of asking 'what makes voltra special', 'what makes voltra important and worth my time' because them being responsive means that it's up to /you/. What would make Voltra important and special and worth your time? The benefit of joining a new site, the reward you get for the risk inherent in joining a new project that may or may not succeed, is that you get to help shape it. What would make you happy? We're listening. Several items and future projects are on our to-do and in-process lists explicitly because people have spoken up already. Please don't hesitate to add to that list.
But you want to know what we're already doing that makes us worth your time, right? So here's my rundown of some things that are future projects that you'll be seeing on Voltra over the coming beta. I can't promise that this list will fit your needs--it's very possible that Voltra isn't a project that /can/ woo you over, and that's okay and that's nobody's fault. But I hope these are things that will at least help alleviate your worries and give you something to look forward to.
Some in-progress projects to look forward to:
❥Interactive Events and Lore - Voltra actually has a pretty extensive background and lore that is going to be seen in future events, items, and features. Our upcoming mini-event is going to start this off with interactive NPCs, which is a trait we expect the site to continue having, where the NPCs will have their own special interactions on the forums. This is hard to write without giving away any of the secrets just yet, since we want to introduce this stuff in context, but you can expect the ability to talk to NPCs and lore characters, a thick, indepth lore that will influence events, factions that individuals will be offered a chance to join that will result in cool items, forums, and story, etc. This might not actually be something you care about, but uh, you know, I'm pretty biased over here about how awesome this is, haha. My background as a writer is largely tabletop and roleplay based--expect to see that influence in the projects I'm working on.
❥Unique Commons - One thing you may or may not care about is one of the item design principles so far discussed is that not all cool items should be cash barriered. When things get up and running, expect to see things like very simple, plain versions of cooler items in the common shops. A quick example is that, you know, even if you can't afford whatever special LI ends up giving megaawesomeangelwings, because every site has a special LI that does, you can probably get a tiny or plain version of wings somewhere in the common shops. These are details that are still being worked out, so I can't say much more, but definitely expect robust common options when things get rolling.
❥I've already hit on this, but expect a lot of user input. There are plans, and have been for quite a while, for things like design contests where users can make exactly the item they want and the artists will make it happen. We've already had one person make an item and have it added to our lists of items to add to the shops. Community is very important to us and that's something we want to focus on. Expect votes for major decisions, input on the future of the site, etc. Even the lore is based around the idea that bonds between people are what fuels Voltra. What you want matters, and we want to make it happen. There are some things that we can't always agree with or change, hard lines we have to set for the health of the site (sorry guys, LIs have to cost money lol) but we want to do what makes people happy.
❥Games - This may or may not be an interesting thing anymore, but our developer has quite a few projects in mind for stuff for users to do, starting with our Sewer system. I can't say much because I don't want Baz to hurt me, but our goal is to provide a series of interesting, changing things that users can do that will make you want to come back every day. Daily games, weekly contests, large scale site events, mini-events, etc. It's our hope that we'll eventually reach a point where there's something that makes you want to join up and be involved, even if it's just for a few minutes a day, you know?
I'm sure there's stuff I'm forgetting, and there's definitely stuff I can't talk about yet and more stuff still that's still being debated, so maybe I answered your question but also maybe I didn't. But what I want to impress the hardest is that our core design goal is to make the users happy. This isn't a cash grab or a power play or any of those other gross things that killed sites. This is a group of people who are very, very excited to be involved in a project like this, and who want user feedback and suggestions to make a community that is fully interactive, involved, friendly, etc. Hopefully we'll be successful.
@Slytherclaw: That's pretty much the answer I was looking for. I think there have been a few previous sites that opened as this one is now and then stopped doing much beyond releasing new items, kinda like they were resting on what they made as a short-term money maker, as oppose to seeing it as a long-term investment and project - so it's really great to hear that Voltra has actual plans for the future. So I guess my only feedback from that would be that I think you guys should (if you aren't planning to already) work towards making the things you just told me known to more people, or make it information that is more readily available? Obviously the site is brand new and there's so much unfinished but honestly my first thought was "oh great, its another one of those sites - I give it a year tops". Considering what you just told me, I think it'd be a huge shame if people gave up early on thinking the same thing. Or maybe its just the whole "once bitten, twice shy" thing that has led me to be so pessimistic about it, but I'd really convinced myself that "this feature is under construction" could be directly translated to "we aint never gonna finish this shit but we'll definitely have 'fundraisers' to pretend we're gonna finish it". :vanora_sweat: I think it's an attitude that may be worth addressing somehow (maybe through future marketing or opinion polls?) though - since I can't be the only one with a weird jaded attitude towards new avatar forum projects.
But anyway, I'm digressing. Thanks for taking the time to write all that, it's really appreciated and I wish you guys the best of luck. :vanora_smile:
But anyway, I'm digressing. Thanks for taking the time to write all that, it's really appreciated and I wish you guys the best of luck. :vanora_smile:
@Dotty: To address part of your question, I think Sly made a good point addressing the fact that Baz and Fozzy (and all the people working on Voltra) actually care about this project and the users. In some of the ernya groups on facebook, people were a bit worried if Voltra was going to be another one of those "scammy" avatar sites that had you donate a ton and then just shut down, etc. but Baz and Fozzy are so active in both the forums and discord that I believe in them and everyone here that they can make Voltra succeed and work.
Ernya did well for a good amount of years and I believe it would have lasted longer if the admins didn't royally screw up everything, but I digress.
I believe in Voltra and I'm sure most people who come to a new avatar site have to believe it will succeed or why would they even sign up, y'know?
Ernya did well for a good amount of years and I believe it would have lasted longer if the admins didn't royally screw up everything, but I digress.
I believe in Voltra and I'm sure most people who come to a new avatar site have to believe it will succeed or why would they even sign up, y'know?
art by: blinkini (idk why i never put this here 3 years ago)
@Dotty: I know where you are coming from with this. I was on those sites too, and was made staff, even admin. >.> I also asked a bunch of questions, and I am confident to say, this site isn't like those ones that took our money and ran away.
@Panda: I think that its probably a good idea for this site to actively encourage questions and welcome criticism. Purely because they can face it head on and reassure people, instead of brushing it under the carpet and not addressing doubts?
moderator here. i can understand your doubts, us staff know what's coming to the site and we're excited for it. you guys are kinda just chilling until it comes out. there's a lot of activity here which is great, lots of users from sites looking for a new home. there's a reason they picked us instead of somewhere else. there are a lot of sites out there but one thing we have is really cute items. that is what draws people to an avatar site, right? i mean, i know it's why i like this site. the main reason other sites have failed was due to staff incompetence. i don't think we have to worry about that here. this site has been in the works for three years now. the staff are confident so we hope that you can trust us and be confident too.
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Having you as a Voltie would be awesome.