Is Habbo removing the zoom-out feature?

[e5]

Having good graphics and nice rooms to look at was one of the main reasons I still went on habbo. Now they just look dreadful

[Rakker]

Openletter by Rakker:


Hello Habbo,


Habbo is a game, which I've been playing for a long time. There have been a lot of updates. This is something amazing, given that a game should develop with time, so that it doesn't get outdated. That's why I support updates and the evolution of Habbo. These last months you have let a lot of users test these updates. Finally, the feedback of those who need it most (the actual 'audience') gets taken into consideration, so yet again, this has been a great improvement. Unfortunately, I cannot agree with everything that has changed, recently.


The Zooming System:


With deep regret it is not possible anymore to zoom out with the quality that we are used to, which is disastrous. This might seem a bit exaggerated, but I will elaborate on this more specifically:


"Before I took any conclusions, I have carefully read the document "Behind the Scenes", that has been provided for the forums of Habbo"


1. The old method of zooming has been the ideal phenomenon for a room builder. It brought everything into perspective, and fitted right into our screens. People could easily make screenshots, and share this on social media. Not only screenshots, but also video makers that wanted to share on YouTube for example, benefitted from this feature. For years I have been using the zooming function to share all the amazing things Habbo can offer on my YouTube channel. The people that follow me, and even those that get to know about Habbo via those video's are counting on the quality of rooms and the game, and this is something vital to show with the best aesthetics. With the new system, the rooms I want to share become very blurry and buggy. This makes it very hard for me to show all the good Habbo has to offer, and show the art I want to share with everyone on the internet.


2. The enormous differences would possibly be the biggest issue. When one makes a room zoomed in, it looks completely different zoomed out. Some furni take other formats, and could bug or align differently. Showing the bigger picture of the entire room is almost impossible this way. When we place furni, we will have to control whether it looks neat when we zoom out, constantly.


3. When we are building, we can fortunately use the stacking tile. Nonetheless, when we are building something high, the stacking tile will fall outside of our computer screens, and we can't select the bottom tile on which we have to stack on - which makes zooming out a necessity. Because everything is getting even smaller whilst zooming out with the new feature, clicking the stacking tile and small furni is very hard. It is practically impossible to build quickly, and to see the overall building quality at a glance.


There are some other problems as well, in regard to the bugging Builder's Club blocks. Habbo's that create amazing rooms with these blocks cannot work properly, which is a pity, given that this amazing new BC-exclusive feature enables more (new) people to build on an accessible level. Therefore, it is very important that this percentage of users can show their artwork properly too.


My personal opinion is that the system poses problems in the building sector of Habbo. For several hours I have been testing it, and it has been a big obstacle for me. Despite the fact that I understand that it saves 30% of your time not to make a miniature version, the pros do not outweigh the cons in this case. Therefore, I would like to ask Sulake with great respect, whether it would be possible to go back to the old system, and go back to the train that already worked. Some people preferred to see their rooms zoomed in, and some vice versa. But now we are not left with a choice, and we feel helpless. Not only can I see my YouTube channel's following decline, but also my future as a motivated builder.


To put it short, unfortunately, me, and a lot of other builders (like Jendro and Hawaii5.O) are quite disappointed when it comes to the new zooming function.


-------------------------------------------------------------


Response Sulake:


Hi rakker,

Thanks for the passionate feedback!

we are aware of the issues raised by the latest changes and are working on improving the situation. unfortunately, we are not planning on rolling back to an older version. I’ll go through your three concerns below:

1 . we will be adding a button which you can press to export a high-res 1:1 pic of the whole room to be used in videos etc. hope this solves majority of your problems

2. these are one-off cases. pls document the issues and we'll try to bug fix them

3.this is part of a complex building related UX issue. we will try to be solve this later on in 2015 as one part of a bigger improvement project focusing on making building easier and more powerful


Thanks again for writing to us and looking forward to many users loving the zoom function’s power and loving your rooms!

[Michael]

I'd rather they had 30% more time to create extra designs for features and furni than resizing silly furniture.

[Kyle]

Their response to 2nd point is ridiculous. These are not 1 off cases, everything is being displayed in a horrible way.


~~from phone

[Bloop]

Now I can't zoom out without my eyes bleeding ew.

People like rakker are complaining about how the 'new' zoomout feature ruins rooms; and I do agree. Bad, bad move, sulake.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh wait didn't notice he posted his feedback oops but yeah. Horrible!!

[Eazy-E]

People complain about every single change. I like the new change, love it.

[dbgtz]

Openletter by Rakker:


Hello Habbo,


Habbo is a game, which I've been playing for a long time. There have been a lot of updates. This is something amazing, given that a game should develop with time, so that it doesn't get outdated. That's why I support updates and the evolution of Habbo. These last months you have let a lot of users test these updates. Finally, the feedback of those who need it most (the actual 'audience') gets taken into consideration, so yet again, this has been a great improvement. Unfortunately, I cannot agree with everything that has changed, recently.


The Zooming System:


With deep regret it is not possible anymore to zoom out with the quality that we are used to, which is disastrous. This might seem a bit exaggerated, but I will elaborate on this more specifically:


"Before I took any conclusions, I have carefully read the document "Behind the Scenes", that has been provided for the forums of Habbo"


1. The old method of zooming has been the ideal phenomenon for a room builder. It brought everything into perspective, and fitted right into our screens. People could easily make screenshots, and share this on social media. Not only screenshots, but also video makers that wanted to share on YouTube for example, benefitted from this feature. For years I have been using the zooming function to share all the amazing things Habbo can offer on my YouTube channel. The people that follow me, and even those that get to know about Habbo via those video's are counting on the quality of rooms and the game, and this is something vital to show with the best aesthetics. With the new system, the rooms I want to share become very blurry and buggy. This makes it very hard for me to show all the good Habbo has to offer, and show the art I want to share with everyone on the internet.


2. The enormous differences would possibly be the biggest issue. When one makes a room zoomed in, it looks completely different zoomed out. Some furni take other formats, and could bug or align differently. Showing the bigger picture of the entire room is almost impossible this way. When we place furni, we will have to control whether it looks neat when we zoom out, constantly.


3. When we are building, we can fortunately use the stacking tile. Nonetheless, when we are building something high, the stacking tile will fall outside of our computer screens, and we can't select the bottom tile on which we have to stack on - which makes zooming out a necessity. Because everything is getting even smaller whilst zooming out with the new feature, clicking the stacking tile and small furni is very hard. It is practically impossible to build quickly, and to see the overall building quality at a glance.


There are some other problems as well, in regard to the bugging Builder's Club blocks. Habbo's that create amazing rooms with these blocks cannot work properly, which is a pity, given that this amazing new BC-exclusive feature enables more (new) people to build on an accessible level. Therefore, it is very important that this percentage of users can show their artwork properly too.


My personal opinion is that the system poses problems in the building sector of Habbo. For several hours I have been testing it, and it has been a big obstacle for me. Despite the fact that I understand that it saves 30% of your time not to make a miniature version, the pros do not outweigh the cons in this case. Therefore, I would like to ask Sulake with great respect, whether it would be possible to go back to the old system, and go back to the train that already worked. Some people preferred to see their rooms zoomed in, and some vice versa. But now we are not left with a choice, and we feel helpless. Not only can I see my YouTube channel's following decline, but also my future as a motivated builder.


To put it short, unfortunately, me, and a lot of other builders (like Jendro and Hawaii5.O) are quite disappointed when it comes to the new zooming function.


-------------------------------------------------------------


Response Sulake:


Hi rakker,

Thanks for the passionate feedback!

we are aware of the issues raised by the latest changes and are working on improving the situation. unfortunately, we are not planning on rolling back to an older version. I’ll go through your three concerns below:

1 . we will be adding a button which you can press to export a high-res 1:1 pic of the whole room to be used in videos etc. hope this solves majority of your problems

2. these are one-off cases. pls document the issues and we'll try to bug fix them

3.this is part of a complex building related UX issue. we will try to be solve this later on in 2015 as one part of a bigger improvement project focusing on making building easier and more powerful


Thanks again for writing to us and looking forward to many users loving the zoom function’s power and loving your rooms!

At point number 2, surely because it's zooming out an image it's a perfect resize? Some small furniture used to be bigger than they should have been so I don't see how #2 works.

[DJ_Shadow]

2. these are one-off cases. pls document the issues and we'll try to bug fix them

Sulake and developers,

I have taken the liberty to document some of the fundamental flaws with the new way rooms are rendered when zooming out. Please remember, I am writing from a viewpoint of someone without a retina display. So someone with a superior monitor will experience zooming out in an entirely differently way.


1) Petal Patches and everything else.

I’m singling out this particular piece of furniture because not only does it appear terribly pixelated when zoomed out (alike everything else, including avatars), half of it actually appears black (see image). But it only appears like this for people without a retina display. I could go on without end picking bugged examples, also with animations such as the water flow with the ’Greep Carp’ (a typo you still have not fixed after 4 YEARS) is somewhat jumpy.

2) Room Designs.

I picked up on this one fairly recently. Whenever you zoom out of a large room (V7 room sizes +) notice how it is almost like you can see how the room was designed. There are visible lines on the floor that were not present previously. I do not know whether they appear for users with a retina display, but it I suspect that they don’t. This error occurs regardless of what flooring is applied.

I am led to believe that these are inherent problems you can’t just simply fix. As this error is mostly likely brought about by using a lower resolution screen. By implementing this rendering update you are hereby discriminating against anyone who doesn’t have a computer which was made a year or so ago. Judging by what I have read on this forum and from others in the Hotel, there is a severe majority of us who don’t and have pretty unanimously reported a significant degradation of their user experience.



How will you fix this?

You simply won’t, will you? I'm probably wasting my breath here, but I've included some of possible solutions in case you are vaguely interested in doing something about this:


Solution 1) Editing the ACTUAL furniture images to make them compatible with the new zoomed out mode (since there is nothing you can do about our individual pixel densities).

Reason why this won’t happen: Firstly I don’t see how this would actually work. Though if it did, not only will this take perhaps thousands of hours of your time to make the furniture compatible; not to mention the opposition it would get. It would be much more time-effective to continue the tried and tested system we are used to.


Solution 2) Have every user upgrade to a £2,000 mac to ‘enjoy’ a slightly worse user experience or put up with the new status quo. I'd imagine this to be the preferred option for Sulake. Requires minimal effort on their part.

Reason why this won’t happen: Wake up Sulake. You have tirelessly orientated your game around a young audience to the extent of banning gambling. If you are to believe that every 13+ year old out there (existing Habbo user or a potential customer) has / can afford a retina display computer then you are misguided. I can see new users coming on being vastly disconcerted with the unprofessional graphics, no matter how many new pieces of furniture you churn out instead. They will probably go play another game that prides itself on it’s graphics and actually listens to their community, instead of pretending to.

Oh, by the way. I should point out that the scaling code takes your monitors pixel density into account. So if you have one of those high pixel density monitors (retina macs for example) you’re in for a treat! I’ll leave that to you to figure out though!

Surely you mean, if you don’t have one of those high pixel density monitors tough luck?


Solution 3) Sulake restores the original sprites and the old way of rendering. Everything is back to how it was from Mobiles Disco in 1999 to present.

Reason why this won’t happen: By cutting out the time they spend on properly drawing graphics to an acceptable standard, they are going to increase the rate at which they produce more furniture and clothes. Contrary to belief this is not entirely to do with lowering their operating costs, as their designers are still working for (as I imagine to be) the same amount of time to produce more furniture in lieu of the extra graphics. (Basically Habbo is a sell out).


Your new christmas ad campaign featuring ‘Sam Ta’ might draw some more users in, but by poorly rendering the graphics you are deliberately hindering unofficial advertisers, such as Rakker, that give you FREE publicity on social media such as Youtube and Twitter. In an attempt to quell their concerns you have issued the following statement:

1 . we will be adding a button which you can press to export a high-res 1:1 pic of the whole room to be used in videos etc. hope this solves majority of your problems

Let me remind you that the purpose of zooming out is so we can fit larger rooms in the average screen size. Exporting larger rooms in a 1:1 image will not solve this problem, and zooming out of that image will distort quality in a similar fashion. You have given us the option to export a static image, however this does not solve the problem with trying to RECORD rooms on video (Rakker).

Sulake, you are out of touch and have your priorities in the wrong order. This is a seemingly unavoidable problem for the average user and if you do not address this situation you will be blatantly disregarding a significant proportion of your customers. Please reconsider this decision.

Thanks again for writing to us and looking forward to many users loving the zoom function’s power and loving your rooms!

Name them, Sulake. Then tell us what percentage have retina displays? What percentage is that of total active users?

[Rakker]

UPDATE:



BEFORE:



AFTER:

Show Hide

Show Hide

Request send to sulake:


BEFORE <> AFTER

If you create a system where we can place furniture directly on the stack tile we have solved the biggest problem.
We would no longer need to search the tile on the floor for placing furni

Moving the room, and you can stack.. without zooming or something.

[Samantha]

It just looks blurry lol.