Ideas for the SWF Finder service!

[LP4Life666]

I love the SWF Friend Finder. I find it to be a great way to challenge people across the country to 1v1 or 2v2 matches over WiFi and meet fellow smashers. It's been bothering me because I feel that the SWF finder does not get the love and attention it should. Sure the boards are important, but why put the SWF Finder on the back burner? Here are a few suggestions I think would benefit the service with a few basic changes.

1. Make it more noticeable. I only happened to stumble upon it by looking real hard at the Smashboards. Maybe put a link at the top of the page or something, just make sure people can SEE it and FIND it.

2. Add a chat room. This would allow people to communicate as they set up their games so we aren't forced to resort to AIM or other messenger services.

3. Allow players to revoke challenges. I've challenged more than 1 person on occasion because of slow response times, and end up having 3-4 challengers at a time. I would be lucky if 1-2 of them had AIM so I could tell them I have another challenger waiting, but it just gets really confusing. Being able to cancel a challenge would certainly help to reduce confusion.

So heres a few basic things I want to see added to the Friend Finder. Contribute your own changes or discuss mine, but please lets take action to help change this wonderful service for the better!

 

[Meta Marth]

i agree with those suggestions too. if only you could get a moderator to check out this bulletin...

 

[DiasFlac]

I hate the friend finder on this site it makes my computer lag like crazy. It'll be better to just turn it into a chat system. Which is why I usually just go to these sites.

 

[LP4Life666]

I hate the friend finder on this site it makes my computer lag like crazy. It'll be better to just turn it into a chat system. Which is why I usually just go to these sites.

It was my intention to propose solutions and changes to the existing service, instead of providing alternatives. I still think that the Friend Finder has it's advantages, but it could really use a few simple things to make it a whole lot more better and accessible. Thanks for the input though, I will definitely check out some of the sites you've provided.

 

[Sad Panda323]

Agreed. I tried the friend finder the other day for a few minutes and then said "Screw it," and went to SSBB Players. if you ask me, the lack of a chat room is unacceptable.

 

[Noodlehead]

I hate the swf finder too. Its too laggy. I think that they should add a chat room. It would help a lot.

 

[FredTHAreD]

I love the SWF Friend Finder. I find it to be a great way to challenge people across the country to 1v1 or 2v2 matches over WiFi and meet fellow smashers. It's been bothering me because I feel that the SWF finder does not get the love and attention it should. Sure the boards are important, but why put the SWF Finder on the back burner? Here are a few suggestions I think would benefit the service with a few basic changes.

1. Make it more noticeable. I only happened to stumble upon it by looking real hard at the Smashboards. Maybe put a link at the top of the page or something, just make sure people can SEE it and FIND it.

2. Add a chat room. This would allow people to communicate as they set up their games so we aren't forced to resort to AIM or other messenger services.

3. Allow players to revoke challenges. I've challenged more than 1 person on occasion because of slow response times, and end up having 3-4 challengers at a time. I would be lucky if 1-2 of them had AIM so I could tell them I have another challenger waiting, but it just gets really confusing. Being able to cancel a challenge would certainly help to reduce confusion.

So heres a few basic things I want to see added to the Friend Finder. Contribute your own changes or discuss mine, but please lets take action to help change this wonderful service for the better!

These are all great ideas for additions to the FF. Perhaps they should also add something else to narrow down the lists. Like Items and No Items players should be seperated. Also, not being able to challenge those in "Brawling" and "Online" would encourage people to pay more attention to their status in the FF. Also, maybe a notification for other players when someone goes from Seeking Brawl to Brawling, would let people know when to expect a brawl. or when to look elsewhere

 

[Kirby King]

All good ideas. I appreciate your input.

Just to correct one thing: the Friend Finder hasn't been sitting on the back burner. True, it hasn't changed much, but that's because a lot of my time the past month or two has been spent on working on the next version of the Friend Finder, which still isn't quite complete. I think it will address most of the concerns people have had, including many of those in this thread--I notice a lot of the things people have mentioned here have, in fact, already been implemented in the next version.

One thing about chat: I agree that having the ability to talk to potential opponents is important, and you can expect something to help that in the next version of the Friend Finder. But I don't think that a large group chat is really needed by the Friend Finder; the goal of the FF is to make it easy to find potential opponents and fight them, and wading through an enormous crowd of people asking for matches in one giant conversation doesn't do this as effectively (IMO) as a list of people who are online and some basic information about their battle preferences.

Of course, you're welcome to disagree, and I expect some of you will. That's why I invite you to check out our IRC channel (#smashboards on irc.globalgamers.net), which we will be featuring more prominently on the site along with a few other hidden goodies (the Friend Finder and Stage Browser being among them). All in the name of making online Brawl as easy as can be, I assure you.

 

[Meta Marth]

well that's great that fixes are being made and i agree with the part about not having big chat rooms b/c all it would cause is delays.

 

[LP4Life666]

All good ideas. I appreciate your input.

Just to correct one thing: the Friend Finder hasn't been sitting on the back burner. True, it hasn't changed much, but that's because a lot of my time the past month or two has been spent on working on the next version of the Friend Finder, which still isn't quite complete. I think it will address most of the concerns people have had, including many of those in this thread--I notice a lot of the things people have mentioned here have, in fact, already been implemented in the next version.

One thing about chat: I agree that having the ability to talk to potential opponents is important, and you can expect something to help that in the next version of the Friend Finder. But I don't think that a large group chat is really needed by the Friend Finder; the goal of the FF is to make it easy to find potential opponents and fight them, and wading through an enormous crowd of people asking for matches in one giant conversation doesn't do this as effectively (IMO) as a list of people who are online and some basic information about their battle preferences.

Of course, you're welcome to disagree, and I expect some of you will. That's why I invite you to check out our IRC channel (#smashboards on irc.globalgamers.net), which we will be featuring more prominently on the site along with a few other hidden goodies (the Friend Finder and Stage Browser being among them). All in the name of making online Brawl as easy as can be, I assure you.

This is great news! (yay!) I did not realize that a new version of friend finder is already in the works, but I'm glad to hear that some of the issues we've been experiencing will be alleviated in the next version. I do agree that a large chat room is not exactly an ideal matchmaking system, but my suggestion was to add a chat room ALONG with the current system. That way, we could have the benefits of both. The most important change, for me at least, is that people need to be able to FIND the friend finder (lol). This would also attract more people to join in on the online brawls.

Thanks for the feedback. You just made my boring internship a lot less boring.

Edit: Yeah, I'm posting from work. Sue me.

 

[Esoteric]

I'm posting from work too, oh snap.

Good suggestions and it's awesome to see they're being addressed. I noticed that when using the FF and trying to browse the forums at the same time causes the forums to lag for me. Anyone else have that issue? It's only with this site, nothing else is slow to load if I have the FF open.

 

[Meta Marth]

you know, now that you mention it, this site is laggy too, but not everything else.

 

[petey_did_it]

yeah finding the friend finder was hard for me, i just found it today and i have been looking for ppl to play over wifi for months. i only happened to come across it when i bored enough to the online section to brawl, which i never do. making a link/notice on the home page would definitly help get teh message out there that this exists and it would definitly raise the number of users on the friend finder.

 

[kenkowtow]

I biggest problem with the FF is lag. Sometimes my status doesn't change until (realistically) 3 minutes. I hope this is somehow fixed in the next version.

Also, I am somewhat bothered by how many people did not change their room into 2v2/1v1/etc. It bugged me that I could not see my opponent and their comments, just a note.


Everything else is either already addressed or not much of an issue to me.

 

[chic]

Friend finder is a very cool feature! It doesn't get the attention it deserves!!!