State of HF

[Inquisitor]

This thread is for discussing the state of HF. Please share your thoughts.

 

[tmvaegis]

There are plenty of concerns I have for its present state, but first I have to start by saying that it is completely understandable, given the circumstances that lead to where it is, now. There will probably be a lot more testing/trial and error before things start to stabilize. With that said, it's actually quite difficult to discuss how it is, since we don't know what it will look like and how it navigates. Based on what I've seen and heard, here is what I'm concerned about:

- Security. 'Nuff said. On a side note, however, it is concerning that private groups are now open to everyone, and don't require an invite.
- Layout & appearance. This could be attributed to plug-ins yet to be installed, profile pages, avatar limitations, and the obvious alien look to the forum that will ultimately take some getting used to.
- Navigation. Finding our way to different blogs, for example, is a bit of a pain.
- The Rep System. Still not quite sure how it will be implemented.

I'm sure there are many other issues I could speak of, but I'll just start with that. Again, I'm hoping most of the issues will be fixed once testing is finished. I was perfectly content with how things were, before, but obviously that older version was what exposed it to the dangers of 'others'.
Until the dust settles and all is well, I'll remain here! It's just... Depressing to go on there, to say the least.

 

[Inquisitor]

I agree with most of your points. I feel sad for Hong having to struggle with this and I hope that he'll manage to get it back to a usable state! :(

But I'm glad that we have AS! :D

 

[Dr Yoshi]

I may sound pessimistic, but I don't believe Hongfire is ever going to recover from this.

Switching to vBulletin 5.x was a very bad move. This update is notorious for being a poorly-written clusterfuck ridden with bugs and performance discrepancies, and the Interwebz are full of horror stories concerning communities that were severely impacted —and even died— from the upgrade.

And almost ironically, HF is down again while I'm drafting this post.

So, don't expect Hong to be able to fix the board and reimplement all the features we came to love : it's simply impossible with the new version of this software. And even if it was possible, I don't believe the administration team has the skills required to pull this through.

I'm going to be harsh, but when I saw them pulling down the whole board and perform a 3-months roll-back just because some script-kiddies used an exploit to gain administration privileges, I knew this would end in a massive failure. And honestly : who, in this right mind, perform two consecutive software updates on a live PRODUCTION server ? I really feel like they have no clue what they're doing in there.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm not holding my breath. I sincerely hope I'm wrong and that things will work themselves out, but anyone who used HF during the past week should have understood that it's never going to be the same.

 

[Stampar]

The way I see it it's not the layout what matters. Not even the rep system or the blog system. Those were cool features sure and we got used to them, but it's not what made HF the best H-oriented community in the first place.

As long as there're h-games big enough to gather and interest people, then I say we'll be just fine. Illusion going backrupt tomorrow with no clear substitute would be a killer. But, even if HF is mainly an Illusion community imo, there're a lot of people who are there for CM3D2, Nutaku games, indie games, etc.

I don't know how much % of total users just gather on the H-area, but it always seemed to me that it was the most important part. So I'm just talking about the H section here.

When the site first went down last week, I reached a 4chan post where some anons were saying how HF was already dead, that it was just a shadow of its former self and loling at how "they were apparently still alive". Well, turned out that post was from 2014!. I registered at HF in 2015 and I can promise it didn't look like a dead forum to any extend.

I'm positive, seeing how Honey Select is apparently breaking the illusion grief cycle, that HF will survive, and while it might lose some of its users, maybe even some of the most iconic ones, new folks will come eventually to fill that gap.

 

[pingtoryan]

HF pretty much has the monopoly on a friendly community (or rather, haven) to discuss hentai...I don't think the existing populace is going to give up that easily even if it never returns to its former glory, simply because there are near zero places with characteristics like that of HF...AS just happen to be the next best thing, but it doesn't hold the same spirit HF does. That, or I did not look hard enough.

Alas, to all thing comes an end...and to all thing comes a beginning...

 

[MegaKameha]

The new site is a pain (especially the comment feature) but with time it should get better.
But right now, HF is down again; if it lasts too long, I'm afraid it won't survive...

 

[Inquisitor]

I may sound pessimistic, but I don't believe Hongfire is ever going to recover from this.

Switching to vBulletin 5.x was a very bad move. This update is notorious for being a poorly-written clusterfuck ridden with bugs and performance discrepancies, and the Interwebz are full of horror stories concerning communities that were severely impacted —and even died— from the upgrade.

And almost ironically, HF is down again while I'm drafting this post.

So, don't expect Hong to be able to fix the board and reimplement all the features we came to love : it's simply impossible with the new version of this software. And even if it was possible, I don't believe the administration team has the skills required to pull this through.

I'm going to be harsh, but when I saw them pulling down the whole board and perform a 3-months roll-back just because some script-kiddies used an exploit to gain administration privileges, I knew this would end in a massive failure. And honestly : who, in this right mind, perform two consecutive software updates on a live PRODUCTION server ? I really feel like they have no clue what they're doing in there.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm not holding my breath. I sincerely hope I'm wrong and that things will work themselves out, but anyone who used HF during the past week should have understood that it's never going to be the same.

Thanks for sharing your insight. I was not aware that vBulletin 5.x was bad, but I think that Hong chose to upgrade to hopefully make the site more resilient. However when I view my subscribed threads and pm's I get a headache and think it must be just temporary. It's not really usable as it is now IMO.

 

[gekigami]

I for one think the commenting feature is simply very subjective.

I actually like it, as it makes threads more organized.

Say you have a thread about various problems regarding a particular game, right?

What if there's three problems being discussed at once? You end up with one problem, a reply to an earlier problem, a new problem...
It becomes a TL;DR scenario VERY quickly when you have to read a gigantic post to find out it doesn't relate to the part of the conversation you were invested in.

By having comments, you have mini-threads inside the thread , in a manner of speaking.
It permits you to be able to say "Oh, all these sub-posts are replies to this particular post. Let's read the post that's got the comments. Ok, doesn't relate to my problem, comments won't either. Moving on."

It's really just more effective when you have scenarios like these.






Now then, while I've been on HF since 2010,
I've only been an active user of the forum since the end of 2015.

The problems I'm seeing so far have to do with the download links that were hosted by HF to begin with.
Those ones are completely gone.
So are pictures and thumbnails that were previously used in old posts. (This means you can no longer see previews of old mods, ect.)

+rep is gone.
While this change doesn't HUGELY matter, it's still a bummer to see it gone. It was a great system for simply knowing whether to trust or not to trust.
It was also admittedly mildly addicting





Even through all that, I actually don't feel like leaving Hongfire.
The people are generally cool and very accepting.
It is also a great haven for learning, ergo the problem:

Everything is already there. Moving from Hongfire would mean moving everything on Hongfire here.
Some users that were there in the past are no longer there to carry these things over, or to update their dead MegaUpload links.

The biggest problem I see here, honestly, is not Hongfire. It's a division in a community of like-minded people.




By the way, as it stands, Hongfire goes back up pretty quick now, which leads me to think if it goes down now, it's only for minor updates to make everything work as well as possible

 

[mraka]

Since Hongfire is all laggy again, I came back here and just stumbled into this thread and while I can go along with some of the stuff said here (new design, some lack in features) I dont think that this is the biggest problem for HF at the moment. Its more on the part of the people, who (like me) do not post that much anymore and who may become a little less enthusiastic with the years. (but I'm only talking about the Hentai-Stuff, that are the only boards I visit)

I came to Hongfire around the time of Raplay and Schoolmate and finally joined in 2008 and at that time I checked the board like 5 times a day and on times of big releases I lurked in the board for hours (still were a student at this days and had lot of time) and the weeks after for the mods and patches.
But with time first the downloads had to dissappear and later the games became less interesting (not only because they got worse in quality, but also because I already had seen so much). And not only for me, because Mods and Patches got less too, so the only thing that was left is discussion and information about upcoming releases and with that HF still is number one. Just compare the threads about the latest games (CM3D, Honey Select) with the ones here at AS. It's a few hundred pages against ten. So no alternative for HF in sight till now. But question is, how long classic Boards like this in general will continue to exist. I'm in a lot of different boards about a lot of stuff and none of them is growing. The more specialised and nerdy the topics the more stable they are, but in the end they all suffer from a lack of new and enthusiastic members.

 

[Capt Jam]

For me, the biggest problem ALL sites like HF and AS have, is the members themselves. People who share their works for free, do it for one principal reason, recognition. If you want traffic, you need communication. Members post their work: pics, mods, characters and also comments and opinions. If everyone just read all that and takes the works without showing some feedback, some form of appreciation, people stop sharing. Modders loose interest in creating without people who are interested in their work. You can just watch how many persons downloaded your stuff at first, but it get boring real fast.

Some guys at HF tried some Chinese sites. The appreciations and feedbacks there, are plenty from what I've herd. THAT'S, IMO how you can save those forums. But I'm afraid it will never get better. We seems to be trapped in a circle of lurking. I too, seems to go there. Nobody gives comments, you loose interest in sharing and you start taking without saying anything...

 

[gekigami]

For me, the biggest problem ALL sites like HF and AS have, is the members themselves. People who share their works for free, do it for one principal reason, recognition. If you want traffic, you need communication. Members post their work: pics, mods, characters and also comments and opinions. If everyone just read all that and takes the works without showing some feedback, some form of appreciation, people stop sharing. Modders loose interest in creating without people who are interested in their work. You can just watch how many persons downloaded your stuff at first, but it get boring real fast.

Some guys at HF tried some Chinese sites. The appreciations and feedbacks there, are plenty from what I've herd. THAT'S, IMO how you can save those forums. But I'm afraid it will never get better. We seems to be trapped in a circle of lurking. I too, seems to go there. Nobody gives comments, you loose interest in sharing and you start taking without saying anything...

Actually, I used to lurk quite a bit.

In my case, lurking came first, and later on I started being active, when I gained the knowledge I needed to do anything.

I've now made 4 mods, and am still working on more.


Appreciation goes much further than you'd ever think.
It's not because a person doesn't say "thank you" that they don't appreciate your work.

In fact, considering the traits of people that browse these community sites, it's no wonder saying "thank you" isn't the norm.

In my case, the reason I didn't say anything is that I figured it was obvious that I appreciated it, and didn't feel saying "thank you" was needed. In fact, I thought it would be redundant.
I decided that action spoke much better than words.

 

[Capt Jam]

@ GeekyGami: I started like you, lurking, then sharing. I do understand the fact that a "thank you" is not always necessary. I think it's more feedbacks then thanks that are needed for me and many other modder. When an hundred downloads are made of your mod and the only comment you receive is "how to install?" when you actually took the time to add a "read me" file, it's a little disappointing. After ten mods, it's get frustrating. After five years you're "a little" bored...

For me, the important part was always the exchange. Ideas, concepts, 3D creations, textures, always in respect of the sharer giving her or him the appropriated credit. That was always the greatest part of modding for me. With that collective work, we could all go a lot further then when we were alone. Without that, the creative drive is a lot smaller.

In the end, for me, the fun is just that exchanging, while respecting the others work. I did that a lot with others and it was great. Today I see my mods I spent weeks working on, shared on other sites, we no mention of me. Make me sad. I know the net is devouring everything without mercy, but when you share for free, you hope for a little more then being "rob"...

 

[tmvaegis]

The biggest blow was the hacker attack. Yes, it was in a bit of a decline, but there's no doubt that things got MUCH worse after that.

 

[gekigami]

@Capt Ham

Unfortunately, the last issue you mentioned happens anywhere you go on the internet.

Some sites basically SCREAM of stolen stuff, to the point of "stolen work" becoming their reputation.
*Cough* 9Gag *Cough*

Sites like Deviantart are rampant with art-theft. I've actually seen one of my works used as a background for some propaganda article;
http://www.rebelcircus.com/blog/reasons-stop-choking-chicken/ I don't think the person making this realized that the person who made the artwork enjoyed choking the chicken enough to actually modify games made for choking the chicken..

Now, of course, there's also the matter that many people are simply too lazy to look into who made what, whilst others merely don't care enough to look.

You'll notice many people skip the credits of videogames and movies, either by getting out of the cinema, or force-closing the console, or terminating the game's process.

If anybody absolutely wants to know who made something, they'll look into it. If said people ask the post-maker if he'd made it, half of said post-makers will reply with proper crediting.
The other half will say that they made it (when they didn't.) Most of the time said posters get called out by regulars.

I think the problem here, is that not everybody in our community has their skeletons out of the closet, being willing to call out on stolen work, but then again, surprisingly, I saw a modification of a game by Pochi.lix.jp floating about on SWFCHAN, made by some guy on Patreon.
People called it out straight away, you can see it in the archives relating to the .SWF file.

Best thing you can do is call out on it, and in severe cases, sue.


As for the creative drive and its purpose, ideas don't get shared as often because of the issues mentioned above.
Same for concepts.

3d creations are much harder to replicate, and I can vouch to say that there are still plenty of people helping with modelling techniques and all that on HF.
Even if they were no longer there, there is still a whole lot of useful information to be found by browsing the forums.
Helps with preventing repetitive questions like the "how to install?" mentioned previously. Some people just don't understand software & internet interfaces very well
(I'll freely admit I more than once have asked a previously asked question, but most of the time, it was because the previous explanation was hard to understand in and of itself.)

Considering the part of modding you enjoyed most, I think you'd enjoy the dynamic surrounding the Open Source/Linux community, if you hadn't delved into that ball of wax quite yet.


@tmvaegis

Eh, I only became active on HF recently (It was before the hacker attack though)
I saw how things were, and I saw how things were after the attack.

I have to say, before & after are pretty much the same, activity-wise.


As for the site stability, however, I completely agree with you. Pretty sure the site had gone down after a strike surrounding the uploading and downloading of software illegaly at some point,
and had come back with that portion removed, but really, the meat of HF is the modding community. I think that AS and HS kind of complement each other, in a way, AS being the more "Social fun & games" and HF being all "We're playing poker. With lots of cash."

Probably not the best example, but yeah


Apologies for any incoherences in this post, took some time to put my thoughts together.
Please do point them out as they go, this IS in the debates subcategory, after all.

 

[HandJobber]

For me, the biggest problem ALL sites like HF and AS have, is the members themselves. People who share their works for free, do it for one principal reason, recognition. If you want traffic, you need communication. Members post their work: pics, mods, characters and also comments and opinions. If everyone just read all that and takes the works without showing some feedback, some form of appreciation, people stop sharing. Modders loose interest in creating without people who are interested in their work. You can just watch how many persons downloaded your stuff at first, but it get boring real fast.

Well this reminds me on someone who stopped with modding and left for around one month HF.
You know from whom I talk.
I can remember that he made an great Duke Nukem mod. I never expected with that, that someone was made the Duke for an hentai game.
He posted also some funny pictures, inspired from the original DN games.
But no comments was posted for his work.
Later he made an very fantastic mod from Katt (Breath of Fire 2). But he got just an very low feedback of 2 or 3 comments. The same was for Cheetara from the Thundercats too. For her he got also nearly no reply.
That was one reason, why he was later so upset.
I know he told me via e-mail, that he was planned to create also the cos from the new Cheetara. But he leaves it. In his self-made video clip, you can see also an Darth Vader mod, which he also never finished, cause the lost of enthusiasm of modding.
The final reason to leave HF was, that no nearly no one payed attention to his funny stories.
Just only one gave him some feedback, for his work.
In the end, he removed also all his mods.

 

[mraka]

Yeah, but its also a little childish to go all sissy just because you dont get the attention you desire. And then get all drama and make a big "I'm leaving thread" and deleting all the work... Maybe some people (even when there work is great) doing stuff for the wrong reasons.

But of course its more encouraging when you get good feedback and you can see that your work is cherished. But it is not only the mods or models, this kind of games (illusion) dont get as much attention anymore in general.
I can remeber how I spend hours modding all the good Clothes and Models into Schoolmate until I had all my fav. Anime-Charas in it. It was so new and exciting and just wow... Today I downloaded but not even played the last Illusion-Games (Secrosphere, Honey Select) and I get the feeling I'm not the only one who get a little fed up with everything.

 

[gekigami]

To be frank, whilst Illusion games have always been popular, they never were big modding juggernaughts.

I mean, you got at LEAST an uncensor, maybe a re-texture, but the only ones I remember having lots of mods were Artificial Girl 2/3 and some of the older Sexy Beach games.
They were kind of hard to understand, modding-wise, so I had never been able to apply mods from the forums to them

The games that seemed to be extremely popular when it came to mods were 3d Custom Girl, and later on Custom Maid 3d.

I remember having an all-in-one mod patch for SchoolMate, but it wasn't as substancial as I wished it could've been.


I wish @HomeMate had gotten more attention, that was the first Illusion game I saw that used a manual H system, and I loved the shit out of it

I can't say I understand why everybody jumps the bandwagon to the newest "bestest" thing every time though.
I mean, isn't Honey Select technically just PPD with a different story, and gameplay akin to Sexy Beach 3?

What is it that everybody's looking for in the newer games that wasn't there in another title previously?

 

[ryofuhousen]

Honestly I still love the site and community, always my first stop to find info about Eroge and Hentai... yeah but maybe I don't really like the new looks but what can I say...

what I thought first is about the security of the site, from what I learned from admin message about changing password and rollback... and as of the HF become laggy again I had a bad feeling the site got attacked again :( I don't know how forum site works but I think it's the most crucial...

 

[gekigami]

If it's a DDOS, it's pretty shoddy. I mean, I can still access the site somewhat, just not for extended periods of time.

Couldn't be overloaded by eastern-orientals trying to get a glimpse at what foreigners've been up to... Right?
That's just a stereotype, right?

 

[pingtoryan]

I could even make it into Hentai Game section, AKA the place where most of the traffic is, for a short while before going down again. The first page of forum loads somewhat reliably and shows the current pop.

...somewhat unlikely to be DDoS...more like traffic explosion, gotta wait for a few days until people give up...

 

[Capt Jam]

...
I wish @HomeMate had gotten more attention, that was the first Illusion game I saw that used a manual H system, and I loved the shit out of it

I can't say I understand why everybody jumps the bandwagon to the newest "bestest" thing every time though.
I mean, isn't Honey Select technically just PPD with a different story, and gameplay akin to Sexy Beach 3?

What is it that everybody's looking for in the newer games that wasn't there in another title previously?

SexyBeach3 and AG3 were my first h-game love. HomeMate2 came after, story was fun, but I never tried the first.

I don't follow new game for one simple reason, I love to freely create with those game. That's why I'm still using AG3. Not because it's the best, but because it was the most wildly modded h-game to my knowledge. With all the tools available, I can create sooo much. The new games are interesting for those who get quickly tired of that "new" and those who want to say they know more then anyone. In the middle, guys like me might try it for fun.

In the end, the most fun I have is be creation and sharing... I don't seems to find it anymore those days...

 

[tmvaegis]

SexyBeach3 and AG3 were my first h-game love. HomeMate2 came after, story was fun, but I never tried the first.

I don't follow new game for one simple reason, I love to freely create with those game. That's why I'm still using AG3. Not because it's the best, but because it was the most wildly modded h-game to my knowledge. With all the tools available, I can create sooo much. The new games are interesting for those who get quickly tired of that "new" and those who want to say they know more then anyone. In the middle, guys like me might try it for fun.

In the end, the most fun I have is be creation and sharing... I don't seems to find it anymore those days...

I'm a creator at heart, too, CJ, though I think you knew that. ;) That's why I am enthralled by the character creator for Honey-Select, as Illusion girls have never looked better!

 

[Capt Jam]

I'm a creator at heart, too, CJ, though I think you knew that. ;) That's why I am enthralled by the character creator for Honey-Select, as Illusion girls have never looked better!

I know, I know TMV... Sorry, I forgot for a moment, how much joy I have looking and reading all your work and more in the HF group. I'm in a bad time. Not being able to "connect" with other modders made me feel nostalgic. I complained in another thread about "lurkers" and the loneliness of modding. But in the end, I forgot (for a brief moment) how much great person I had the change to share creative passion with. My friend, you're definitively among the best!

I'm still modding AG3 because I'm lazy and (getting) old. New games won't support my need of creation because I don't wish learning everything again ...for now.

See you my friend.

Cheers

 

[tmvaegis]

I know, I know TMV... Sorry, I forgot for a moment, how much joy I have looking and reading all your work and more in the HF group. I'm in a bad time. Not being able to "connect" with other modders made me feel nostalgic. I complained in another thread about "lurkers" and the loneliness of modding. But in the end, I forgot (for a brief moment) how much great person I had the change to share creative passion with. My friend, you're definitively among the best!

I'm still modding AG3 because I'm lazy and (getting) old. New games won't support my need of creation because I don't wish learning everything again ...for now.

See you my friend.

Cheers

Do remember, CJ, that it's friendly, helpful creators like you that made me want to contribute more and more in my early stages of joining HF. I'll admit, I did feel pretty sad leaving the AG3 community, but I had my reasons, and one of them was (unfortunately) irritation with two particular members. That's all in the past, though. Mostly, I just felt like moving on to something new. I understand your reasons for not wanting to do the same, but wouldn't it be exciting to try something new? I'd be curious to see what you could come up with in something like HS!

Take care, buddy, and talk again, sometime! :)