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GameFaqs must die - StrategyWiki

M

Musashi Wins!

FLAWLESS VICTOLY!
Seriously. Gamefaqs is awful. The only reason most gamers don't hate it is because of the endless amount of faqs and cheat codes, etc. Still it's presented in such an ugly fashion, all text, etc. Apparently people are really trying to offer an alternative and I hope it works. I know many gamers have done great work for their brethren over the years at GF, including some Gaffers, but time to move out of the gaming ghetto! Let us leeches of your gaming knowledge have a more pleasant browsing experience!

http://strategywiki.net/wiki/Main_Page
 
K

Kon Tiki

Banned
IMO, the forums need a HUGE cleanup. Delete every thread that is not a support request and enable search for everyone. That site has a lot of wasted potential.
 
D

Drakken

Member
Cool. This definitely has many advantages over GameFAQs; it's just that it's going to take forever to build up the # of games covered to a GameFAQs level. I hope it does well, though.

Zilch said:
Haha, they just copy and paste guides from GameFaqs: http://strategywiki.net/wiki/Zelda:_Ocarina_of_Time/Walkthrough

Yep, sounds like teh future to me.
Click to expand...

That's one problem - the Strategy Wiki will need lots of sysops / moderators to make sure people don't just copy and paste other peoples' FAQs. Since it's a wiki, anyone can edit it, and that can lead to much messiness.
 
T

typhonsentra

Banned
I find GameFAQs to be a decent site, with message boards on par with or better than most on the Internet. Don't know what the deal is with all the bitching about it here on GAF.
 
Z

Zilch

Banned
typhonsentra said:
I find GameFAQs to be a decent site, with message boards on par with or better than most on the Internet. Don't know what the deal is with all the bitching about it here on GAF.
Click to expand...

Uh...
 
O

OpinionatedCyborg

Member
A little competition never hurt anyone. And this site will present one or two advantages over Gamefaqs (pictures integrated into guides and universal editing).
 
J

Jonnyram

Member
john tv said:
GameFAQs works great for me. No need to go anywhere else.
Click to expand...
I agree, but the boards are rather hostile and poorly managed. Spoilers are quite easy to stumble across, unfortunately. There was a time when new contributions took a long time to get added, but I think that's been improved recently.
 
B

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
gamefaqs has too many things going for it.. sorry guys, this will never beat gamefaqs.

a) volume. gamefaqs is a snow-boulder and still rolling.
b) author protection. gamefaqs will go the distance to protect authors' works on there.
c) goodwill. complain about the forums all you want (they suck) but the site itself has tons of goodwill built up with the internet.
d) author pride. each author puts tons of work and pride into their faqs. now to imagine having to collaborate. and all it takes is one disagreement for someone to split off and do their own guide.

in concept the site is a novel idea, but in execution gamefaqs tears this up. maybe it will grow into something, but ripping off walkthroughs from gamefaqs sure as hell isn't the place to start.
 
M

Musashi Wins!

FLAWLESS VICTOLY!
choplifter said:
whatever....

StrategyWiki has basicly nothing right now - GameFaqs have everything
Click to expand...

yea, no shit. that's why I want people to know about it. GameFaqs has years of great strategy guides interspersed with archaic presentation and some of the worst community on the net.
 
aparisi2274

aparisi2274

Member
john tv said:
GameFAQs works great for me. No need to go anywhere else.
Click to expand...

IAWTP!!!

I use GF all the time. Never had any issues with content, and I actually like the choices... Sometimes some walkthroughs are so cluttered that you cant find what you are looking for, and then you get some that are much better than the offical hint books.
 
SantaC

SantaC

Member
It's kind of hard to stand gamefaqs white background with black text. It makes me not want to read it when I check a walktrough or other stuff.
 
M

My Arms Your Hearse

Banned
1) The Faqs section for a game is separated from the forums.

2) Don't use the forums if you don't want to, they're not necessary in any way.

3) Gamefaqs is one of the most useful sites on the internet.
 
M

Musashi Wins!

FLAWLESS VICTOLY!
I'm not arguing against the usefulness of gfaqs. I'm arguing that the same usefulness could be far, far better presented at this stage of the INTERNET.

Zilch said:
You must have a hell of a time reading books.
Click to expand...

It's not the same thing at all. Hence some of the issues with digital, portable text readers over the years.
 
W

Wario64

works for Gamestop (lol)
Kon Tiki said:
IMO, the forums need a HUGE cleanup. Delete every thread that is not a support request and enable search for everyone. That site has a lot of wasted potential.
Click to expand...

What happened to the search function? I noticed that it isnt there recently, is it only for elite Gfaqs members or something? My rank is pretty high on there
 
M

My Arms Your Hearse

Banned
With the exception of a very few games, if you have mastered "control+f" gamefaqs is perfectly adequate. Maybe you /really/ really can't stand the presentation... oh well?
 
K

Kon Tiki

Banned
Wario64 said:
What happened to the search function? I noticed that it isnt there recently, is it only for elite Gfaqs members or something? My rank is pretty high on there
Click to expand...
I am not sure. I know you needed a ranking for it before. Forcing people to post to enable seach just leads to multiple topics on one game issue. It is silly, really.
 
The Faceless Master

The Faceless Master

Member
yeah the most bizarre thing about GF is the search function isn't avialable to n00bz...

i mean they're the ones who need it the most!

as far as the site goes, i don't really see any reason to complain about, except for quite a bit of the forum posting population there... and even then, it hasn't really ever been much of a problem for me...
 
J

Jugendstil

Member
As a resource, Gamefaqs is pretty much unbeatable. As a community, it sucks. The way the forums work is ridiculous and migraine enducing, but the logistics of maintaining and moderating them must be a nightmare. It'd be great if someone could come up with a better way of going about it, but how? Search features for all users would be key.
 
P

Prospero

Member
GameFAQs' plaintext guides are perfect--simply Ctrl-F to get to the bit you need. The guides as presented on StrategyWiki have a prettier interface (at least taking the sample Ocarina of Time guide as an example), but GameFAQs beats it for ease of use.

As for the boards, I found them useful for specific hardcore console games (Disgaea, Super Monkey Ball on Expert, etc.) Other than that there's too much noise in their signal.
 
B

Borys

Banned
I used it 10000000 of times and never ever went on the Message Boards.

Just:
www.gamefaqs.com ---> search for a title ---> click on the title ---> pick the biggest FAQ possible (usually the one > 400 kB).

Super easy, zero trolls.

I couldn't care less about the Boards.
 
R

rastex

Banned
If you'll allow me some self-promotion...

ProductWiki can handle strategy guides just fine and would be a better repository for this content. I see far too many small wikis that start up around a niche market with 3 or 4 major contributors and they try to recruit a lot, but it's A LOT of work, and after 3 months end up dying off. Wikipedia is so great because the breadth of the topic is so diverse that it attracts a large number of users AND contributors. This is what we'd like for ProductWiki to aggregate all of these niche wikis in the consumer space (gaming strategy included) to hit the critical mass of contributors that a successful wiki needs.
 
S

slayn

needs to show more effort.
gamefaqs is perfect the way it is. Why do you need pretty pictures and dazzling presentation for a faq? That just makes it slower and more cluttered.

I don't need all that nor do I want to even see it when I start searching through a faq to see what room/area I missed or what can still be unlocked.

I just want to be presented with the information as quickly as possible so I can be on my way.
 
C

ccbfan

Member
The gamefaqs communities isn't all bad.

The smaller communities like FFT, SD3, ect are great.

It's just the major forums where its horrendous.

Especially the NNG and the message board for all the major consoles and games. Geezzalmost every topic is a troll and 90 percent of the people there are sickenly bias.

Also if I was to go post something like. "Square-Enix announces FFXIII for the Revolution" with no evidenece or link at least 10 percent of the people will still believe it. Heck some people there still believe Square-enix is gonna make another Gamecube game from that PE rumor.

Also anyone know why I can't start topics.
 
X

Xrenity

Member
Borys said:
I used it 10000000 of times and never ever went on the Message Boards.

Just:
www.gamefaqs.com ---> search for a title ---> click on the title ---> pick the biggest FAQ possible (usually the one > 400 kB).

Super easy, zero trolls.

I couldn't care less about the Boards.
Click to expand...
QFT

Although some times the boards CAN help when there's no FAQ yet.
 
F

fennec fox

ferrets ferrets ferrets ferrets FERRETS!!!
rastex said:
If you'll allow me some self-promotion...

ProductWiki can handle strategy guides just fine and would be a better repository for this content.
Click to expand...
In what way? As far as I can tell it's basically an epinions clone. Why would I go there in search of game help?
This is what we'd like for ProductWiki to aggregate all of these niche wikis in the consumer space (gaming strategy included) to hit the critical mass of contributors that a successful wiki needs.
Click to expand...
Haha, you've been attending too many marketing meetings. Aggregate? Critical mass?

As for the Strategywiki haters... well, let's hear your tune in 5 years when strategywiki has screenshot and map-laden faqs for all the major games and gamefaqs is still stuck with enormous text files written by 13-year-olds and filled with terrible writing, unnecessary attempts at humor, and extraneous crap nobody cares about. Assuming the wiki takes off, that is. Not that any do.

(In other words, I could see strategywiki as the next generation of game-help sites, but that's assuming it gains momentum.)
 
M

Mayor McCheese

Member
Wiki is perfect for this type of shit. I've found errors or vague descriptions in FAQs that I'd like to correct or embellish. This will allow that.
 
F

fennec fox

ferrets ferrets ferrets ferrets FERRETS!!!
demi said:
Nobody is going to go out of their way to make maps for this site

Here, you want maps?

http://www.vgmaps.com/

Voila
Click to expand...
Yeah, except that site's a bitch both to browse and search. Whoever designed that site thinks half-megabyte index files you have to reload over and over again is good HTML practice.
 
K

krypt0nian

Banned
I don't go to Gfaqs for the community. I go for the info, and that they have.

Not sure that a wiki format can ever be useful for this audience, as the gaming community has too many idiots that will change things to be be ha ha funny. Maybe they'll have enough checks and balances to prevent this.
 
S

slayn

needs to show more effort.
except that gamefaqs has maps and charts etc.

the fire emblem charts I used from gamefaqs were quite nice.
 
R

rastex

Banned
fennec fox said:
In what way? As far as I can tell it's basically an epinions clone. Why would I go there in search of game help?
Click to expand...

Because it's a wiki and everything on the site is editable, even the product categories and properties. And you can write articles, upload screenshots, etc and attach them through tagging to the applicable categories. So what does that mean for strategy guides? Well go to the game in question and start an article that is a strategy guide for said game. You can upload pictures, and use those pictures in the wiki text if you so incline. Epinions can't do that. Do we also want consumer opinions and information on the site? Of course. That's the whole point, we want the site to be a one-stop shop for ALL product information. Just like wikipedia is for academic information.



As for the Strategywiki haters... well, let's hear your tune in 5 years when strategywiki has screenshot and map-laden faqs for all the major games and gamefaqs is still stuck with enormous text files written by 13-year-olds and filled with terrible writing, unnecessary attempts at humor, and extraneous crap nobody cares about. Assuming the wiki takes off, that is. Not that any do.

(In other words, I could see strategywiki as the next generation of game-help sites, but that's assuming it gains momentum.)
Click to expand...

Wait, is it going to be Strategywiki that takes off? Or strategema.net? Or how about GamingWiki? Or how about the strategy guide gaming wiki on WikiCities? This distributedness is exactly what I was referring to in my original post. Everybody's spreading their efforts trying to do the SAME thing, but it'll end up making them all fail. Gaming might be a big enough domain that ONE gaming wiki can survive and be self-sufficient, but like I said there is USE and VALUE in having all product information in one place, like wikipedia.
 
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