What's up with the "premium" features?!

[Arcader18]

Hi! I used Emuparadise for about some time and today I decided to give a little help in return by paying 6 months of the premium features but in the first few minutes I encountered some drawbacks.

There are things you should totally check out!


First of all, why wouldn't you give us a "premium login" feature on the main site, like sending a request to enter a password and then logging in with our email that we used to pay for the premium service instead of the link on our inbox?

It's so inconvenient the way you manage your Premium accounts... I was using Opera, then it crashed (because I had a lot of tabs opened), I opened Chrome and when I tried to log in a message appeared saying that my account was using a lot of different IPs so I had to wait 5 minutes to log in in Chrome then everything was OK until I upload the cover for an ISO and the IPs page appeared again (which led me to re open my mailbox and use the log-in link again).

That leads to another issue... I tend to open everything in a new tab so after logging in I opened a bunch of tabs with different ISOs and the damn computer started making lots of loud and annoying noises... First I thought it was a virus but then I realized that the the new tabs had flash ads that kept repeating that loud noises! WHAT? I checked the page and I wasn't logged in as PREMIUM... So I used the log-in link again and refreshed the new tabs...

But why all this hassle and not a simple log-in feature like in the forums? That also is disapointing because It would be better if you had a record of who downloads what and who contributes with the community and the overall value of the page eg: screenshots, game information, recommended emulators etc...


Second thing is that today I downloaded a couple PSP ISOs before registering (all of them hosted @EP), then I realized that PSP ISOs were in the list of Premium Features... How is that? I download a couple of them not being Premium...

The third thing is related to other thing you list in the Premium Features... the DL speeds. The ISO I downloaded before registering was downloading @1200kb/s then I tried downloading "World Rally Championship" but max speed was 110kb/s, then I payed the premium service, clicked again the download button and the speed was exactly the same. I changed from HTTP to FTP and selected "North America" (since I'm in México) and I get to download the ISO at better speeds (around 220kb/s) but again... it wasn't that great...

Well, while the WRC ISO was downloading, I clicked the download link of "Power Stone Collection" ISO but a FTP message appeared asking me for a username and a password (which obviously I don't have) so I changed my DL options to "HTTP" again and the download was not going above 115kb/s.


So in conclusion there aren't a lot of reasons for someone to pay the Premium account. Don't get me wrong I'm totally happy of paying you in return of everything you give to the internet community (in fact this is my first time I ever pay to someone on the Internet), but there aren't good incentives for people who are new to the page and want better features.

So I suggest some things to make this a better community:

** Create weekly or bi-weekly polls, ask the community things, promote communication within the users of the site.
** Ask for people to supervise determined parts of the site eg: ask for someone who upload the cover, info and all that stuff of every ROM of a particular system without the hassle of waiting for someone to moderate the changes.
** Make some kind of log-in feature, make ranks, badges, something cool so people contribute and become more active and linked to the site and community, at least for people who pay for the Premium.
** A new, more easy to navigate-trough website would be cool. A default form of giving info of the game to the user would also be cool eg: Every ISO page has the same form to display the ISO's Name, Year, Genere, Developer, Publisher and info.

And well that is everything, those are suggestions, but at the end of the day this is your site and you decide how to run it. Anyways, at least I hope you take a look about the download issues.

I'm here for everything you need and sincere congratulations for being the site with the best content of emulation!

[MasJ]

All good suggestions. Regarding the download speeds, that's unusual. There's no difference between premium download speeds and regular except that you can multiplex your downloads to get better speeds.

I don't know why you keep getting logged out but that's an exception. Premium users, once they log in, stay logged in. No matter how many tabs they open. Switching a browser shouldn't give you an IP error unless you're using proxies. That's something a username/pass won't fix but I see the benefit of that and am working on that including the things you mentioned - badges, etc. You may have some cookie issues.

PSP ISOs are listed under premium because they were an initial premium feature and now any new ISOs are listed there and released first to premium users.

How can we make the navigation easier ? Suggestions are welcome

[kingfisher13]

Hey, I also noticed problems with downloading. I don't have a premium account, but I never get above 20 KB/s download speed when downloading ROMs from the main site. I'm currently trying to download a gamecube ROM, which is only 1.1 GB, and its gonna take 8 hours to download! That doesn't work, not only because thats ridiculous for a modern website focusing on file sharing to have such abysmal speeds, but also because I can't necessarily count on my router maintaining a connection for 8 hours without cutting off and destroying the download. I'm using Google Chrome, which is supposedly the fastest and most efficient browser for streaming and downloading. I can't use Firefox, which is a glitchy, oversized browser which hogs RAM like crazy. How do I get better speeds?
Thanks, and I really appreciate all the time and money poured into making these roms available to everybody, I just wish I could download them within a reasonable time frame. I live in the USA, and have a good internet connection, so there shouldn't be any problems in general.