Porn games, Sex chat

Hello developers and fellow chatters,

Yesterday I was showing a new girl around and it made me realize that some of the game mechanics are not very girl friendly. Since the idea should be to encourage more girls to play here (to satisfy all those horny men right? , I thought I'd share some thoughts with you on this. To be clear: it's just ideas on game mechanics, so not on the sex interactions in the rooms (which I think are already great, and there are a lot of posts about that already).

1) Every girl gets swamped, especially premium users. One very easy and user friendly way to fix this, is to let a user choose the maximum amount of people in her chat window. That way, everybody can decide for themselves. All users above the threshold will get a polite message, simple and clear.

2) The amount of text space for your introduction (the text below your avatar) is way too limited. As a girl I like to make very clear beforehand what I like and I can't simply because the number of characters you can use is too limited. Why not let the user decide? I understand the need of a limit somewhere, but make it in the order of 1000-2000 characters.

3) The gift system is a nice way to encourage girls to participate. Only thing is, when a guy is nice enough to give you one, you first have to become friends (logout - login), and then you cannot see the gift  when it is added (unless you logout - login again). Since I'm guessing (from developers point of view) these are both profile updates (to a database?), I understand why you have to in the current situation, but why not make an in-game update button for your profile? So when you click the update button, your profile will be reloaded, without you having to go through the hassle of logging out/in.

4) There's a lot to do about cold invites. Most people hate them, some people like them, but for a (new) girl they can be intimidating. Again: why not let the user decide? You can add a check option to the profile (something like "No cold invites") and when people have it checked, they cannot get any. To develop this, you could check whether the requesting person is currently in a chat session with the requested person. If not, an invite is not possible. I admit this will not solve the problem entirely - someone could say "Hello" and send you a semi-cold invite - but it's a start.

That's all for now, maybe some more ideas will come to me later. I hope it is appreciated

X Carli

Not bad Carli but...1000 characters for the description under your avatar?!?  WAY too many characters.  How much space do you think that would take up on the screen, and do you really think people are going to read all of that?  Letting people know what you like is part of the chat process and getting to know them, right?

#3 is a good idea but personally I don't see how it is a hassle to log in and out after being gifted to receive the gift.  How long does it take to do that, maybe 5 seconds?

Anyway, welcome to AChat and have fun 

Well first of all I object to the women being expected to be there for the men. 

-Seriously though one of the ideas that has been filtering around is clickable boxes for who you accept invites or chat hails from (male/female are the two that have been mentioned) it would save gay females like myself from getting cold invites from guys, and vice versa.

The problem is that part of the fun of Achat is meeting (and having sex with) new people. If they make the filters TOO tight that starts to suffer.

-The only issue with no cold invites is I've had times where I or a girlfriend got kicked off line, logged right back in, and re-invited right away. So maybe an option on each friends/lovers/spouse selection to allow cold invites? (I agree a fix would be nice though, just batting ideas around.)

-I agree that more profile text would be nice, but thousands of characters does seem excessive, especially since far too many don't seem to read it anyway.

-The profile update seems a nice idea, but the log out/in isn't THAT annoying so I would call it a low priority fix.

Welcome Carli

One notice: You must not be friends. We men can make gifts to every girl.

I prefer to make a gitft as a surprise. I don't know why, but I think a gift is a nice little surprise. So if the girl logs in the next time she will receive it - and hopefully enjoys it
And there is another point: If you wanna "use" your gift you have to login to the homepage, buy something, go to your character editor (if you already are premium; if not you have to buy a membership first). This means you and your partner have to do a break. So I think there is no problem with logout/login.


 

Thanks for the feedback people!

@bobbler: Okay, 1000 was a bit much maybe I agree with you in the sense that I would never use that much characters. I just like the idea of giving more freedom to users with respect to their own profiles. If someone wants to cramp his/her screen with text, it's their own choice

@Janine: I guess you're right. Too much restriction isn't a good idea for the spirit of meeting new people. Once you're used to how the system works, it's all pretty easy to manage. I just was a bit overwhelmed the first 2-3 times, so maybe that's still lingering in my mind. But then again, I probably should have read the nice tutorial first that you guys wrote elsewhere in this forum

@Lover: Thanks, I didn't know you don't have to be friends. Some guy probably tried to increase his popularity I guess.

P.S.: if my posts aren't in perfect English, please don't burn me. I apologize beforehand, I'm not a native speaker

X Carli

Good idea everyone.  I don't have to add my three cents because you all said what you had to say well as always.
Just want to reply to Cali's last comment.


Your English is perfect(feeling deja vu again).  No one is going to complain about any grammar mistakes you make.  We make alot ourselves.  English is my first an only language and I suck at it.  Welcome to Achat.   

Sinnnn has shamed me (and with any luck will have to discipline me)... welcome to AChat, and it's forums Carli.

Okay, I counted: the current limit on the text field is 63 characters. Maybe it could be increased to at least the size of an sms? (which Google tells me is 160 characters long)

Also, is it possible that you cannot use certain special characters in the text? I tried to add a wink to it, but then the text was empty after saving it. When I removed it, the text saved just fine.

1000 characters would more than fill up the screen but there are a number of ways to make it work. A scroll sidebar would allow the reader to scroll through the contents of your description field but scrolling through one sentence at a time can be a little disorientating. Adding an enlarge button in the corner would make the box bigger and scrolling would be easier as a result.

If someone is really interested in you then they will take the time to read a lengthy description and it can be used for a variety of purposes. E.g. You could include a background for your current role-play character. The things that turn you on (and/or off), etc.

If we're talking about such long descriptions I'd rather see them on web based profiles, linked to from the client itself. It would be nice to make this site more of a community where people can leave a different kind of presentation. We can already view our friends here, listed without any specifics, so the basic framework already seems to be present.

When you look up an individual member on this site here they do have an individual page... I see no reason that couldn't be expanded. Not to mention something like how the "shop" darkened squares open up the shop section of this site could be used to open up to those personal pages... the only problem may be memory capacity, but that's pretty cheap.

Memory sure shouldn't be a concern. The only reason this would be a problem UI wise is finding a good spot for the button/link itself. With too many additions the application might end upp cluttered.

I've had similar concerns for 4+ group sex... there is only so much room on the screen, but you bring up a very good point about cluttering up the app with buttons.

They could increase the screen resolution to compensate.

Changes could indeed be made, but the point is that there would be an eventual limit. So it could be that they also want to leave room to grow rather than implementing every idea we give them.