Neo_Angelo

Customer
VBAvatars hasn't had an update in forever, its such a good mod and could be made so much better but its been neglected for other mods that are frankly pointless in my opinion (Re-direct banned users for example). I'm just wondering if you guys have any plans on updating/upgrading any of the old mods instead of releasing small mods which seem to be less important (well some at least).
 
Redirect Banned Users was coded by a different dev than who coded vBAvatars. Some people may have no use for vBAvatars, but have a use for some of the other mods that was released.
 
I'm fully aware of who has developed which mod, all im saying is that some of the mods haven't had an update in a very long time and could use some new life added to them. I mean vBAvatars to me is only half its potential currently. vbActivity hasn't had many updates recently and theres a lot of potential for that to be even better.

You have like the power 4 or 5 mods that could be well worth investing some time updating which would bring you much more sales than trying to bring out mods willy nilly that just seem small in comparison. Surely its better to have a few Fantastic mods than many mediocre mods? You guys do a fantastic job with your works and i'm in no way trying to put you guys down, but imagine the workload your gunna have to undertake to manage all these new "little" mods, it'll leave you no time to focus on your big hitters like vBanalytics, vBOptimise, vBAvatars, vBactivity, vBshout and vBshop.
 
No offence intended but your interpretation of what our "big" mods are and what mods are useless aren't necessarily accurate :)

vBAvatars for instance was not one of our better selling mods and it tends to require a lot more work to update than other mods due to the artwork etc required.

Generally we will update mods based on their popularity and on how many requests etc are outstanding, as well as various market forces, schedule openings etc.

All of the mods you mentioned for updates are handled by Fillip, while all the small mods you criticise have been made by other coders - even if we followed your advice and didn't release those, the mods you refer to wouldn't see any extra development time.

With all due respect we make the decisions we do because the way we do things work. Everyone has their ideas of how we could be doing things better or making more money, the funny thing is no one else IS doing it better than us or more successfully than us :)

The general lack of updates recently has been due to the release of vB5 - roughly 18 weeks of development time that would usually have been spent updating mods has been spent porting them instead. As our library gets transferred over this will become less of an issue and the usual update schedule will resume.

Regards,
 
vBAvatars for instance was not one of our better selling mods and it tends to require a lot more work to update than other mods due to the artwork etc required.

No offence intended here but....update it to allow import/export then hey presto! your community can release their own artwork which removes workload (i have done so already) maybe then it would see a bit more increase in sales as there would be freelancers who would support it and more choice from the default set it comes with which may increase interest in it (adding import/export feature surely is only a small feature addon which i suppose could have a big impact but obviously you know your business more than i do).

With all due respect we make the decisions we do because the way we do things work. Everyone has their ideas of how we could be doing things better or making more money, the funny thing is no one else IS doing it better than us or more successfully than us

No disrespect here either but the reason people share their idea's here is to try and help you succeed even more, No one has done anything similar because no one needs to, you have the whole addon market at your fingertips because people respect your ways of working, the mods you release and the support you give, no one can really rival that which is why your community want you to just keep getting better and better, and thats because (and i wont speak for the entire community here) We/I want to see you succeed and continue to grow.

My posts are in no way trying to say you should stop doing the "Pointless mods" (not useless as some people obviously may find a use for them) i'm just enquiring as to why your older mods haven't seen any love and you answered my question in your post (albeit in a way that makes me feel small and insignificant) but an answer none the less.
 
Last edited:
I agree with neo, it seem's you guy's want to handle all the mod's yourself without any communal help at all. Don't underestimate your customers! You should allow some kind of customer depot of changes or modifications to your mods where people can go to share graphics and imports. I ain't just talking in a forum area, i am talking about a easier to access area that people that buy your mod's can easily find.

I also couldn't agree more with expanding older mod's, there are some that seem not to be finished "Forumon" comes to mind and there is much potential to forumon but it seem's you guy's have built it and just left it alone which brought your rep to where you want it. I understand time and priorities which are working against you, but the cost you are charging for your mod's seem to point out that all of them should be primed to be the best it can be, instead of just used to get your service in the open.

I am sorry to be blunt, but i tend to speak my mind on thing's as to me i put alot of money into your mod's and alot of them i am happy with, there are just some that do need some more work put into them.
 
I agree with neo, it seem's you guy's want to handle all the mod's yourself without any communal help at all. Don't underestimate your customers! You should allow some kind of customer depot of changes or modifications to your mods where people can go to share graphics and imports. I ain't just talking in a forum area, i am talking about a easier to access area that people that buy your mod's can easily find.

I also couldn't agree more with expanding older mod's, there are some that seem not to be finished "Forumon" comes to mind and there is much potential to forumon but it seem's you guy's have built it and just left it alone which brought your rep to where you want it. I understand time and priorities which are working against you, but the cost you are charging for your mod's seem to point out that all of them should be primed to be the best it can be, instead of just used to get your service in the open.

I am sorry to be blunt, but i tend to speak my mind on thing's as to me i put alot of money into your mod's and alot of them i am happy with, there are just some that do need some more work put into them.

We had a push a while ago for community content using vBDownloads where we asked for people to submit things etc - no one really did. It's a good idea in theory but in practicality it doesn't really work out. If there was more sharing going on already on the forums for instance we'd be more inclined to try it again. Basically if people show there is demand for that area we'll try it again, but since it fell flat last time we're not going to spend time etc setting it up without knowing in advance there will be a decent group of people making use of it.

Regarding Forumon the issue with it is any update for it will take a SIGNIFICANT amount of time - more than any other mod. We're talking months of development time. What this means is that while other mods gets little updates taking a week or two here or there, we're "saving up" development time for a Forumon update so we can do it properly - it's not being left, it WILL be updated in a big way in future :)

There aren't really any other mods in a similar situation to forumon, they've all been updated reasonably regularly with the exception of a couple of very unpopular mods that haven't really had much in the way of feature requests.

Regards,
 
Last edited:
One of the biggest reasons my hands aren't going into my pockets to buy DB-Tech mods currently is because all the mods i own have either:

1. Not been updated in a long time or i feel are incomplete
2. The updates that have happened add features i couldn't care less about (obviously others do)
3. The newer mods have absolutly no use to me at all (again i'm not saying they are bad/useless, none fit the bill for what i'm looking for)

This kinda leaves me a little isolated as a customer as i would quite happily spend money updating my liscenses to lifetime if i had the 100% garantee that the mods i'd purchased had additions and features that either myself or the other customers had asked for, at present all the mods i own (vBshop, vBavatars, vBshout, vBactivity and vBdownloads) haven't seen those needs met. Sure i understand you work a business and that you manage mods to meet demand vs timescales and man power, i manage my own team at my place of work. however you'd perhaps be suprised that the spending power of those customers you've froze out might actually be higher than those that fit the mass majority of people who purchase your mods.

I found this out recently by a course i went on that completely switched my mindset, sure catering for the masses is obviously a massive target and gets you the money you want, but i found out that in my line of business (Food Retail) that customers you'd least expect have the most buying power who are actually the minority.

Just to throw it out there i found that the masses (EG normal hetrosexual, non disabled customers) had around 35% buying power to those who are disabled who have 70% buying power and gay/lesbian people had 11%. So building things to accomodate those disabled people meant that you unlock that 70% buying power just for investing time in what seemed like an insignificant or pointless exersize to include them as they were a minority.

Just saying that although you probably don't appreciate or care for a business lesson from me or that you even need one as you know your market well enough, maybe just think about the customers you are isolating who for what you know may spend more money, the point is while you haven't accomodated for those people their money is not being put into your pockets.
 
Back
Top