Okay, well when I first opened up my IE, with Neo as one of my homepages, my first reaction was "hey woowwww, an awesome new layout! about time!" but then, upon actually trying to do things, and looking at all the hideous hideous pet revamps (i swear, this is even worse than my gorgeous Llamameah becoming the uuuuugly Gnorbu and the adorable Lutari being limited edition) I've now immediately switched sides. I'm with the rest of PPT in saying I absolutely hate it. I hardly bother with neo anymore, i'm too busy with school to bother with playing stupid games and restocking (i'd much rather play proper video games anyhow) but I still feel the need to see the new pets and updates, and while my first thought was "wow, maybe this'll make me want to actually play neo again!" then I started using it and am thinking my active-ness is going to drop even more now!
I HATE the new modules, everything looks cramped, i don't mind the topbar, but on all the pet lookups, and the sidebar there's waaaaay to much information. Before when i'd see a pet or user lookup I'd be more interested in their pets' backstories and any art they'd drawn themselves (i love custom designs very much, they're so much more personal) than in how many fights they'd won or lost in the battledome, or how many jobs they'd done, or how good they were at fishing, that was the sort of stuff that was easily skimmed over, that way if you didn't bother with any of those things, no one thought any less of you. Now its like "oh look, you haven't won any battledome fights, you've never done any jobs and you suck at fishing.. how.. nice..." Not to mention the stupid "your pet likes [gathering food] when meeting others your pet would [act friendly]" that was the same ridiculous things with the stuuuuuuuupid options that didn't count for anything and are now staring us all in the face.
Everything is too in your face. All your accomplishments, or lack there-of, are shown with huge icons and seperated so that all a person can do is break you down into how many stamps, sidebars and avatars you've collected, and not how interesting and witty your self-introduction, and they look at your pets and stare at how well they can fish, how many jobs they've done and how many battles they've won, rather than any personality, or custom designs you've drawn. Its like the fact that me as a player, and my 'pets' have been reduced to nothing more than boring stats that are shoved in anyone who cares' face. And the NEOFRIENDS dear goodness, i have a few randoms from rl who never even play neo and are now in their own happy little module, and featuring on my userpage. Whyyyyyyyy?!
And the pet revamps, I didn't mind my pets during the customisation beta, but my pets were never overly fancy to begin with. I have on my main and side accounts, a red cybunny, red ixi, shadow ruki, silver eyrie, disco kougra, blue xweetok, mutant xweetok and faerie grundo. And all of their revamps are actually half decent, but now I'm seeing some gorgeous pets in fancier more expensive colours like plushie, royal, grey, maraquan, etc being reduced to the same boring pose, limitations and style of the ordinary pets. I haven't been able to find a customised update of the Maraquan Gelert, but at this stage I really don't ever want to see it, cause the Maraquan Gelert is my dream pet I figured with my slow slow playing it'd take me at least 5 years to get enough to transform my ruki, but without the unique pose and style of the original art I fell in love with, now i really will have no reason to actually play on neo at all.
This really boils down to the same problem the Llamameeah faced. TNT didn't seem to realise that we. voted. for. the. LLAMAMEEAH. NOT the gnorbu, and not anything else, if I'd wanted the overly cartoony bearded pet with a stupid name, I would have voted for it, not for the Llamameeah. Because that was the pet that I wanted, it was small, it was cute, and adorable, and perfect. When they revamped it, they turned it on its head, shook it in a pile of dung, dirt, leaves, and snot, and then stuck a bow on it and called it beautiful, and its just not the same. For pets which cost soooooo many neopoints, and which have their own unique gorgeous art style, simplifying it to look like any other old red, blue, green or yellow version just isn't the same. And breaking up pets that wear clothes just irks me, the reason my Eyrie (who wears essentially the same clothes as the Pirate Eyrie) is Silver, not Pirate, apart from the money, is that I despise the shade of blue-grey and certain accessories used in the Pirate Eyrie's design. When we were fiddling with customisation, and I was able to give my Eyrie its pirate shirt (which I'd always based off the Pirate Lupe's which now looks absolutely HIDEOUS btw), spotted bandana (though mine was always plain red) and earring, and it was the gorgeous custom version I'd always wanted him to be. But now i'll just have to go back to putting up custom pictures, cause in order to get those pirate accessories, it'd cost me a hell of a lot and i'd be stuck with an ugly colour.
Anyways, I've just been ranting on things that have probably already been said, if anyone wants to quote me on this in any angry letters to TNT feel free, i'm too lazy to write my own, as I'll simply loose interest in neo if they don't sort themselves out, and i don't think its my duty to make them realise that they've killed the site for me, i mean, they're just a greedy business, what's one less customer who never buys any of their stuff anyway?
Last edited by ria on Fri Apr 27, 2007 9:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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