http://www.bomberman-online.us/en/misc/survey/?sid=hc2474f03f022304h6-r

The survey has ended, click the link to see the results.

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"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they're not entitled to their own facts."

To make things clear we're only talking about new BOJ right... cause I very much haven't played that, and will answer accordingly.

Been kindof busy, though I downloaded it and created an account, I'll prolly download it again sooner or later. But for now, bionic commando... that and me and a few friends play various super-bomberman games on a semi regular basis, so its not like I'm in withdrawal right now. That and I'm still the best player in my town due to playing old BMOJ... so I don't really feel the need to practice either.

After you click in the optional question about pro-skills you can't deselect all of them (atleast in firefox on OSX), I chose the programmer one as its somewhat applicable. That said my understanding isn't yet of a professional level... so I wouldn't call it deep. Its more of a "I've finished 2 years of CS school that's not game focused, have worked on independent projects and such, but haven't done any online code". I would've probably selected none of them if I could've actually deselected.

As for micro currency I'm not really opposed to it. The thing is though with a game, especially like bomberman if the cash crap unbalances the game in any way whatsoever I won't be playing for very long.

Yes we're talking about the new Bomberman Online Japan, the old one was just called Bomberman Online. I've noticed that BOJ has a few slightly un-balanced cash items, but most people never use them so it's not bad.

I added a none option for the question that you had trouble with, this for anyone else who has trouble de-selecting. I made the survey theme back in late july, and just got around now to doing the questions- there's quite a bit of work involved in making a survey. I wanted to host it on the .us domain that I have, but I ran in to a few problems with it so I'll just cloak it from there for now.

I like reading what bomberman fans opinions are for these things, normally you only hear people mention something here and there about what they think of certain things. Since I'm currently developing a bomberman game on the side of my main project, I feel that this will help me make it more atuned to how the players want it to be- thus one of the main reason's that I made this survey. I'll release an overall % result list once the survey ends, I'll be reading over every survey submit from everyone who fills it out- only the multiple choice questions will be in the result list.

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"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they're not entitled to their own facts."

The survey has ended, it only received a mere 13 responses- I've updated the first post with the results link. Half of the responses came from people that I asked to take it that I knew online, if I didn't ask them the survey wouldn't have even gotten 10 responses.

I've decided that I won't be taking my bomberman game online do to this, and I'll just finish the engine for it. Because there's clearly a major lack of interest in bomberman outside of japan, and taking it online would just be a waste of time when I could be working on something else.

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"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they're not entitled to their own facts."

Oh no! Come on now, there's no need for that. I know for a fact that online Bomberman games can gain a great non-Japanese fanbase. A game made with the Byond engine gained a fan base that got really upset whenever the game went offline and got quite irate if it had been gone for too long. Eventually the developer ended it, it's been a while so I can't remember why exactly, but while it was up people loved it. He even went so far as to make it so everyone could host their own server, and each server appeared on a central hub which was all he had to host.

Although, most of the players were immature asswipes, but that's besides the point.

By the way, I like the new Online/Offline tag. And the new smilies.

Well this decision is also based off of the fact that BOJ is considered to be a failure, which is what I based the game that I'm working on off of. I also have my main project that I need to get back to, I've already gained of a lot of experience by working on the bomberman project the last half a year. From what I've been reading by the japanese users on the blog considering it to be a failure, and saying that they stopped playing. And also the few amount of people that are playing the game, hudson isn't doing good on it- even though I liked the game personally. So from the few amount of responses that I got for the survey, even though I sent an e-mail out for it to all users on this board and posted it elsewhere- it's really just the final push to show me what to expect from the game if I continued it to online.

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"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they're not entitled to their own facts."

Personally, I didn't like Hudson's Bomberman Online much at all. The only good thing about it to me was the introduction of panel attack and hyper bomb or whatever. Those were interesting. See, this other game I was talking about had an in-game shop where you could buy helmets, body suits, arms, legs, and hats, and even customize the color (such as the helmet color, skin color, glove/boot color, etc). So it was less of a "compete to try to up your rank while every time you lose it just goes back down again" and more of a "compete to try to earn money to buy more unlocks and then new unlocks are added so it never really ends."

And don't watch Hudson too much. We all know how much they've slipped up recently, and even in the past. They could do so much better. And fans like you have the capability of doing what they never think to do.

If your main project meant more to you in the first place, then by all means go ahead and proceed with it, but don't completely can your Bomberman project.

BOJ = Bomberman Online Japan (2008)
BMO or BO = Bomberman Online (2002)

I myself didn't like the old bomberman online after awhile either, it was good back in the day 5 years ago though- however maybe it was only good because I was younger. I think that they did a good job with bomberman online japan, except for how they reset the ranks every month now- they need to get around to adding some new modes.

But another point is that I wouldn't be getting much out of the bomberman project by taking it online except more coding experience and knowledge, this which I can just get from working on something else. I've of course thought of all sorts of stuff like a story mode and such, but the time that it would take to do is far too long- and not worth my time. The bomberman game started as just testing out coding bomberman style movement real quick, and then I ended up taking it a lot farther. While it was a very good experience to program it and it helped me progress my skills in every area, apart from finishing the engine- making it online would take too much time. I also wouldn't want to release the server for it, which may have needed to be programmed in another language anyway for speed reasons- which I wasn't up for. The bomberman game is copyright infringement on hudson, while my main project is something original that I plan to take far and am capable of selling given the time it takes to program and release- I have a good sense for quality and can create professional quality work now. Just because I'm stopping the bomberman game once I'm done the engine, doesn't mean that I'm tossing it away. I could always do something with it some day, that's why I'm finishing the engine- also because I want to finish coding it though.

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"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they're not entitled to their own facts."

I guess I can see your point, whatever you need to do is fine. Of course, you can always come back later and make your own characters and name and whatnot for a Bomberman-style game if you want to profit off of it.