Hi All,
we are currently working on the next version of JAST USA and we’d like to use this opportunity to get feedback from our users. This way we’ll get a better insight about what features/content/functions you’d like to see on our website.
We are of course planning on integrating obvious overdue features like instant availability of downloads and such. Please voice your suggestions in this thread. All ideas (except new licenses suggestions) are welcome!
Get. Games. Released. In. A. Timely. Manner. 
Seriously, I am quite interested in ANYTHING by Nitroplus. All the announced N+ games, I want. (I also want more, but you said ‘leave license requests out of this’.) But look at the trend. Demonbane and Saya no Uta were BOTH delayed from their ‘targeted’ dates by more than a year. Your targeted release date for Steins;Gate is this winter; I hope it does not actually mean ‘summer 2015’.
I’m also interested in Trample on Schatten. But how long has it been without a translator?
This has been a chronic problem for Jast. Whatever the problem is, please just fix it. If you don’t have enough guys to do the work, get some more. If Nitroplus doesn’t have a lot of time for your stuff, consider restructuring the terms of the deal so scripting is a milestone that triggers payments to them.
The website is a minor concern compared to the way games don’t get released. I’d recommend either shutting down the Nitroplus USA site, or giving it some serious attention. A regularly-updated project status page or thread would be nice. Take a page from the MangaGamer boards and have official ‘put your requests here’ threads, and periodically actually look at them.
? This thread is for website usability feedback and suggestions only. Thank you for posting game release concerns elsewhere.
Random game of the day / week / this moment, just the screenshot and a title. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen an ad or something for an eroge and just liked something about the look of it and that was enough to get me to seek it out. This would be in addition to the existing ‘related games’ panel. Take every opportunity to expose people to things they haven’t seen before.
Share accounts between JAST USA and JList. Let people use their JList points etc. Surely it’s gotta be easier to just combine the two stores in some way- JList at the moment has a lot more features than the JAST USA store and what JAST USA sells is a subset of what JList sells anyway.
Better per-game pages. It doesn’t have to be something full-blown, but G-Collections used to have far more in-depth descriptions of the games as well as bios for the main characters, the names of their voice actors etc. At least that much should be doable for most of these games. Of course, if you can give every game a full multi-page experience like the typical Japanese eroge gets, all the better. Come up with some sort of template you can just shove a heap of images and data into and make some choices about fonts and colours and use that to churn out multi-page websites for every game in the catalogue. This will make everything look much more polished. In general I think there’s only a few cases of games where telling people less about them makes them more likely to want to buy them.
Get rid of those silly limits for downloading DL sales games. I can’t see what they accomplish. Should be obvious from logs if an account is being abused.
Finally, I know this sounds a little bit awful, but put up the websites I recommended earlier even for games that haven’t come out yet. Even for games that are a long way off from being released. Even for games you’ve only just licensed and we’re probably not going to see until 2016.
Reach out to gamer sites / reviewers that might be tempted to talk about eroge. Get some reviews coming, and if they’re positive, shove them up on the webpages for that particular game. Maybe even send out preview copies to said reviewers?
Some things I’d like to see:
A reviews/rating system.
Better search options
Highest rated
Lowest rated
By price
ect
more tracking of the images used.
By this I mean…the Demonbane banner image had ‘Preorders Open’ on it for like 6 months after release. It’s been removed now (I think), but it shouldn’t really happen.
An incentive to actually use the JAST USA website for pre-orders.
On Jlist you get points.
On other websites that sell JAST USA games you could get discounts, freebies, whatever
On JAST USA you get nothing.
Perhaps Jlist and JAST USA could use the same user accounts and thus the point system?
In fact, take it a step further. Jlist/JAST USA/JAST Forums all using the same account.
There’s a thread on the forums with hard copy status updates but that hasn’t been updated since 2010, rather then keep that thread there integrate it into the website.
Mobile website
With phones getting more and more use in everyday lives, perhaps the website could be future proofed and a mobile version created?
I checked it on my iPhone and to get any use out of the website I had to really zoom in and just it felt…like it took too long to do anything. Since i’m sure there’s people out there who use their phones to place orders on the website, I figured it was worth mentioning.
Game sales/top seller/top X sellers/Game of the day
Always handy, might bring more attention to some of the lesser known titles in the catalog.
More information on the game pages
Character Bio’s (with images)
Reviewer quotes
Links to video clips (eg opening song/video)
They feel really…bland and boring right now. If your concerned with the space (as in making the pages too long) you could always put them in tabs. Perhaps something like:
Summery
Characters
Sample CG
Video’s
Reviews
All ages website
Considering JASTUSA.com sells 5 all ages titles (6 if you count the yet-to-be-released Steins;Gate), perhaps an all ages website should be looked into?
For pre-order games, a status indicator would be nice. This game is in scripting, debugging, editing, etc. Just something to remind customers who have already have, or might intend to pre-order, that the games are being worked on. Nothing huge even, just a little blurb on the bottom. Could even be a simple copy/paste from the twitter account.
I would like to see more game related resources to be added on the site.
Take Yumina for example. There is a wealth of information on the JP wiki which are not very obvious to the English-only audience (ie: different weapon growths).
While other games may not be as complicated, Such a section can also include a flowchart/walk through of sort (I am sure a lot of people end up digging online for one at some point of time).
While jast like their tweeting, the company does feel kind of dead between releases. A regularly updated blog to keep everyone in the know of what is going on would be nice.
Mention the slow release thing may sound like beating a dead horse, but I think it is reasonable (and good for the company) that customers have expectations.
This may sound really stupid, but maybe this is a good time to reconsider the name. I know people who live outside of america who believe they cannot purchase stuff from an american site (which is partially true! Since I doubt Amazon.com ships to the Amazon river in Brazil).
I’d like to be greeted by a virtual visual novel host or hostess, that can show me around the site; tailoring my JAST USA experience to what I might be interested in. And it would be nice if the host or hostess could introduce me to a girl representing each game JAST USA has available.
Then you get to hear from the girl, maybe assisted by the host or hostess; your questions answered (multiple choice probably), and why you should pick her game.
Of course, you should always have the option to just browse the site on your own.
On your own, instead of just screenshots; each game page should have active animated flash video showcasing eye-catch material that might hook the browser; as if they were walking down an aisle in a store selling TVs with a demo running.
It might be nice if the user could scroll through the various game pages, in a more “organic” fashion of some sort. You -never- want the user to face a blank page, even during loading transition. When loading the next page, there should be a way to stay on a master page that slides to the next page, while actually never changing pages. Still, there needs to be a way to automatically generate a key/update the url to the page you are on, if you hit bookmark/favorite; without changing pages…
And every game page, SHOULD have music or sound that can be turned on (when entering the site, it is turned off; but when you turn it on and adjust the volume, it should stay the same the entire time you are on the site; for a session’s worth of time.)
You want to have each game page draw in all the senses possible. In a professional store’s manner.
And lastly, there should be an EXIT page. It’s the one thing websites are generally missing, in my opinion. Instead of just closing the site, there should be a “I’m ready to leave.” button, that sums up what you’ve seen; what you might have missed, and generally thanks the customer, to hopefully leave a favorable impression. Of course, it shouldn’t be mandatory, or auto-redirect.
Oh… and if there was paid LIVE staff. Then during LIVE hours, it would be nice if each area of the site has its own chat; that would allow customers to talk to each other, if they wish. The chat should be localized to each section however, and would only be active while the LIVE staff is around, so that they can monitor the chat for any troublemakers. And of course, they should be available at a help section, for customer questions.
Further ideas :
Pre-caching the site option? Not sure how to determine an automatic default option that is best suited for the user. Don’t want to waste bandwidth, but don’t want to make them wait either. Hmm…
3D viewing of each physical product. Allowing you to see what it looks like on all sides, and what is inside the box.
[Okay maybe these suggestions can be saved for JAST INTERNATIONAL 2021…]
@all ages site idea
If JAST USA will continue to be the name for ALL of their brands, then maybe have one of those slightly annoying, birthday checkers when you first enter the site. That way it will automatically tailor the site to your age. Though, how do you deal with accidently incorrectly input age, while preventing the user from dealing with reinputting their age in the future…
How about a link to JAST’s twitter page?
It would be extremely helpful if you could create a section for all released patches or under each game description put a link to them for the appropriate games. For example if i clicked on Steins gate, under the summary, at the bottom of the page there would be a link to the released patches saying what each one does. That way if someone misses any of the news posts on the homepage they can still know that the game has released patches they can get. Sorry if i worded that awkwardly.
All i want really, is that the visual novels i have bought, should be tied to my account. So i can just log in, and see a list of what i have bought.
Roght now it is impossible to keep track of my purchases, unless i go digging through old emails. And i might even have lost some of those mails.
well actually it looks like what i posted about is already on the site, wups.
And sorry for double post, could not edit.
I hate how when you click on a photo it automatically downloads to your comp. I just want to see the image, no need to download it.
Also, would love just specific data stuff, like release dates of even past titles, and staff info for the games.
Would it be possible to reprint more physical editions of little my maid, please?
Omalli already mentioned this, but placing all patches in a single easy-to-locate spot would be really great from both an organizational and a customer-service standpoint. You could put the various DRM-remover patches in the same place. I’d also second Lipp’s request for a more clear-cut, obvious indication of availability status in terms of distinguishing physical copies, download-only, or ones where you get to choose. Might even make that a sorting option!
I would also love for it to be easier to locate and visit individual game sites; you have some really cool ones out there that obviously took a lot of work and are great advertisements in their own right (ex. Yumina, My Girlfriend is the President, etc.). Don’t make them so hard to find! You could either have those linked directly from their product description in the store, or place them under a single umbrella elsewhere on the site.
Create a space for fan content! I’m sure there are people out there creating character artwork, soundtrack remixes, and informative play-through videos or strategy guides based on JAST games… You could have people send it to you for moderation, and if it’s good, post it to the fan section. This would also liven up the site between releases; as others mentioned, things are quiet around here in the interim periods.
And my last suggestion is really, really subjective and might even be controversial, but I’ll throw it out there anyway. What about creating a three-tier ratings system for “ecchi-tude” in the store section? My thought is that it could separate your titles into all ages (MILD), games with some erotic content but where that isn’t the whole point (MEDIUM), and eroge where sex is the be-all-end-all (HOT/SPICY). Yes, rating games like salsa probably sounds bizarre from an expert perspective, but for newcomers to visual novel / dating sim / eroge stuff, I honestly think it could be useful and save people some sifting through material they aren’t interested in.
Hey guys,
thanks for all the awesome feedback so far and details provided along with your ideas.
Here’s a list of what’s being integrated in the new version of the site:
General
Game pages will feature, when available
Thing we want to improve/add based on your feedback
As far as user generated content, we are very open to the idea, but we want to get the bases right in the first place. Once we’re up and running, we’ll investigate again, meanwhile keep suggesting things you’d like to see on the site! Thanks again!
This all sounds excellent.
Unless it’s an quantitative scale based on the proportion of ero content, this sort of thing is super subjective. Erogamescape has a similar thing through people voting how good the eroge was as ‘okaz’, but titles I really liked the H scenes in rarely did all that well on that meter and the titles that did well were typically things too horrifying for me (ahegao on the front, awful H scene animations, stuff like that). It is of course a good idea to make it clear to people whether this is a hundred H-scene title or a story-centric title with three scenes.
So is a relaunch expected sometime this year? Just curious since it’s been a few months since the last update so I wasn’t sure if this is still in the works or not.