So- I’ve been here for about one month and a half now, and I thought it’d be nice to say what I thought of fuwan until now.
I’ll begin with the “main” focus (I really don’t like the term “main” here, still I couldn’t find any better one) which is VN distribution.
If we’re only talking about numbers, fuwanovel certainly has less VNs than you can find on other places- I myself have about 10-20 VNs on my pc which you can’t find here. However, whenever I can I try to download stuff from here- This is most probably due to the fact that while I’m certainly a VN fan, I’m also a noob with computers, and often installing patches, extra stories and such lead to mistakes which I can’t quite understand.
I think it’s incredibly good that you guys usually put pre-patched stuff, which helps quite a lot some people who don’t have knowledge about pcs in general. While I can use daemon tools and I don’t end up having beginner mistakes (problem with locale, files set to read-only, etc.) It still proves hard to me to install patches with confusing instructions and mostly sloppy and hard to understand writing.
I’ll go straight to my impressions on tech support now- And I have to say I had errors with stuff from fuwanovel 3 times until now- And all of them weren’t common errors. Yet in all of the three times, in less than 5 hours I got a solution. (Thanks Zakamutt, Mephisto, Kendjin and Luch for helping by the way). This really left a good impression, as I already had to experience waiting for days for help with errors and often not even getting it, leading me to delete the VN from my pc without even reading it. Overall, I have a great impression on fuwan help with VN issues until now.
I don’t have much to say about fuwanovel’s position on copyright in general- I couldn’t agree more with it. While I could argue about why here, you guys already did such a great job in defending your position that I really have nothing to say- It’d be pretty much a repetition of arguments I’ve heard from other members, so I really won’t bother.
I’ll say a bit about the people as well- to me this is undoubtedly the best point of fuwan until now. People are actually friendly towards each other, and I don’t have to constantly worry about getting crap whenever I say something. It’s a sad truth, but in most places I’ve seen that talk about visual novels (or arguably, internet in general) have a really bad atmosphere. People seem to love hating, and that bothers me to no end. I usually don’t feel like I can say “I like this” without getting poisonous feedback from a great number of people- And having people who like the same things answering them in a poisonous way as well.
You can definitely argue about fuwanovel being small- I’ve only really talked with 10-20 members, and these talks mostly happened on the IRC, and I can say that compared to most VN related sites, fuwan doesn’t seem to have all that much activity- However, I can also say that even if there aren’t much people talking at all, the benefits of having no haters are certainly worth it. And even non-serious, silly stuff like a cup noodles thread can get surprisingly enjoying if there’s no one trying to ruin the fun.
I’ve found myself laughing at nonsensical conversations with members I didn’t knew all that well (My first line to solidbatman was something amongst the lines of “You shall be my imouto from now on!” since he greeted me with “welcome back, onii-chan”) without having to worry about being treated in a bad manner by people there. I could probably keep talking by hours about the IRC interactions I had- like the nicknaming trend I created, kuu and ryouuuuu-sempai unparalled Osu skills, the yuri story I’m making about fuwanovel (actually, thanks for the feedback. The next chapter is probably coming out this week), Archer (Kendjin) grief with frodo’s death and a lot more I’m not going to write here.
This also applies to serious conversations. Even when talking about polemic stuff, people are always nice and respectful towards each other, which I personally think it’s great. Even when someone makes a mistake, there’s just and educated warning with no bad intentions explaining the error. This is the biggest reason of my activity on the forums, since if I ever screw up, I’m sure I won’t get a load of insults from everyone.
This is also why I can believe that whenever I talk to a member I’m yet to know, I’m going to have an amiable chat, instead of hatred spam. And also the reason I encourage every other newcomer like me to try and talk to people here. You’ll definitely not regret it XD
Gah, I somehow feel like I’m making propaganda now. Uuuh… That’s not my intention, though…
Anyway! This is my honest impression of fuwanovel until now. While it may be incomplete, it touches on every major point I wanted to talk about- And I can say that I’m really glad of taking part on the forums now
I seriously hope fuwan grows, and that it never loses its friendly atmosphere. I really like the forums now, and seeing people work hard for spreading Visual Novels is really a pleasure. I also hope someday I can take part of this as well.
Thanks for all the members that showed me how fun it can be to be part of this.