As someone who downloads, purchases, and subscribes to many creators here on EroScripts there are a few things I wish all script authors did. Here’s some constructive criticism for our scripters to improve our community.
Posters: When creating a post it’s really nice to have the title image from the video - assuming there is one - or just a clear still from the video as the thumbnail. Not a contact sheet of images. Not an animated gif. A single still image. It is less visually distracting in the list of posts. It is also an image suitable for use in xbvr or stash as the title image for a custom scene.
cc: @VladTheImplier - it would make the site performance feel faster if you didn’t show animated gifs as the title image for posts.
Paid script creators: you aren’t paying per character for file names. I realize you are scared of being banned - we’ve gone on that journey with you. But selling “XYZ123.txt” is annoying and makes it virtually impossible to match that file up to a video later. Even dropping just vowels makes it easier to interpret: CsplyXVR Ldy Ddpl.funscript - or just put it inside a ZIP or RAR.
Paid script creators: At least put the name of the script file in your post, so people with WUSHIUREGH.funscript can search and find the right scene later.
Paid script creators: Funscript files have metadata fields like “URL” and “Video URL”. Using them would really help your customers match files to the right videos after the fact. No site for selling content is likely to search these fields and look for porn references. (Also see #2 and #3!)
Paid script creators: We know scripting is time consuming to do well. Pricing is a difficult topic, but consider one of the best in the business @Realcumber is charging $3-4 for most scripts. And SLR script subscribers can get them free.
Scripters: I’m all for creative freedom, so script what you like. It does seem unfortunate when we have multiple scripts for a scene though - there’s so much great content out there that’s unscripted. Maybe the world doesn’t need 6 interpretations of the same scene, however amazing it is.
Patreon-ers: If you post, make sure to link to the specific Patreon post with the script - not just a general link to your Patreon. It is annoying to have to search your Patreon to find the matching script after the fact. You can click the title of your Patreon post to get the link.
I mostly agree with your comments, except I think that “Realcumber is charging $3-4 for most scripts” is a bit underselling it, Realcumber scripts are in the $3-6 range depending on the length/complexity of the scene, I’d say most of them are between $4-5 (closer to 4).
I think most of the paid scripts here are relatively correctly priced (at least for VR, I don’t really see the others).
Most people tell me that the site loads slower because of them but that’s not true and shows how little they know how the web actually works. The images and any static assets are loaded from a different place than the site and are loaded asyncronously (non-blocking) In addition they are served via CDN cache so they’re as fast as they can be.
If the concern is the web page responsiveness this is also not true as you can actually measure the draw rate with gifs in the page:
(with 10 GIFS playing)
There are jpgs and gifs that take a sec to load, the recurring factor is size. I could reduce the allowed size but honestly that won’t do much more than save some space on the storage server.
I did say “feel faster” - not BE faster. But you checked the stats - fair enough. I will point out it depends what device you are using. Not everyone has a top of the line PC or smartphone.
I will stand by the point that animated gifs on the “latest” and similar listing pages are visually distracting.
Is that really so common it’s a problem given the huge amount of scripts being released? I know there have been a couple scripts from more than one scripter recently, but those have been scripts for brand new videos. I guess they wanted to be first out with a script, especially if it’s a paid script since that usually boost sales.
I believe you answer your own question here. Just rename the file after purchase. Some scripters add video information the metadata of the funscript file. Open a script in a text editor and you will find it if it’s there. Adding the file name in the script release post here on ES is a good idea though.
What is the point with this feedback? The SLR subscription isn’t free and you are only allowed to download a limited number of scripts each month to keep. And if a scripter set a too high price then don’t buy it. That’s how the free market works after all.
There are a fair number of videos with multiple scripts. Moreso in the PMV space than with VR scenes.
What if I lose my original files and need to re-download?
Those limited number of SLR scripts are still free for anyone with a lifetime w/ scripts membership.
As for the free market - you’re absolutely right, which is why I’m bringing this up. There are scripters who put a huge premium on their work. I’ve suggested a benchmark they can compare against when determining the best price.
You have created a number of scripts. Calculate how many hours any one of them took you to make. How many $3-4 scripts would it take you to make minimum wage?
Paid scripters are WILDLY undervaluing their time. I understand that it’s a game of supply/demand and you may only charge what people are willing to pay, but it is crazy how cheap scripts are compared to the amount of work that goes into them.
Just pinpoint endpoints (direction change) and all endpoints set, everything else is quickly correctable. Bad endpoints are not. Its all about endpoints.
By definition a SLR subscription is not FREE and it costs EXTRA to get the subscription with scripts.
And saying that the scripts are free with a Lifetime membership is dishonest. It is literally not free, you’re just prepaying. Its the same logic as you paid to get into a buffet and now all the food is free. You still paid to get in.
With the new Video Site theme (and in my test booru) I’m very much in favor of animated thumbnails of good quality
Would be a bit better if gifs would be transcoded to animated-webp (or even avif as latest discourse doesn’t support older browsers anyways) but that’s it
After Heatmaps get online, the 2.0 of Heatmaps will have tags, user, topic url, and some more metadata added to file on download
We may make some sort of script normalizer that will allow paid scripters to get the same data from their topic (and upload the jpeg of a heatmap) so the published scripts have proper tagging and linking, and have a back-reference to the ES topic
(and finely formatted so they are easy to open in notepad and read)
I can make this tool for user usage as well so you can drop your funscript onto a topic and it’ll have stuff added and be renamed
2.3MB for a gif file is quite some data for a thumbnail when a jpeg is just 70kb. Some compression could benefit here. Or alternatively make it a setting.
(For reference, image loading times were often sub 100ms here, and even for gifs usualy was below 250ms here. The CDN part shows it does work how it should be)
But when i looked at my debug view, i also noticed a few slowdown points:
Even if the server does say the response is fast, on my side there are clearly some delays and sometimes even timeouts.
I could imagine that this is mostly based on where the server is located (im guessing us/canada), where i live in europe. For locations that are less optimaly connected these delays can add up.
Error handling is slow and gets worse the longer the delays.
CDNs being easier in what they need to handle can remain fast as even if it errors, it doesnt matter if that single call is delayed by a second.
I think something else to note with this is that RC exclusively does everything through SLR he doesn’t have to deal with a lot of the same stuff other script creators do like selling platform headaches, marketing themselves, and just generally having to manage their online storefront and all that comes with that. RC just submits to SLR and he’s done, he doesn’t even need to promote them on ES and he would still make money off of them. And this is all assuming his deal with SLR is the same as other script creators would have where they get a cut of the sales and profit from streaming, but his deal can be very different.
Basically RC can offset his individual script sale prices with revenue from SLR and spending less time on logistics. Btw, none of this is a knock on RC at all, but the reality is his situation is very different than most other creators.
If we ever get the Signatures working it’ll become a requirement
(as there’s no sense to post the link you already have in your signature so we’ll probably ask to not do that)
(yes you can just not post a link it at all in that case )
I should have used the hr line between the 2 sections. As i can see why i confused you there, making it look like i was still talking about the cdn where i wasnt. (sorry for that). Lets make it a bit more clear for you what i ment
The cdn indeed worked fine (short loading times, no visible hanging on the page anywhere). On that end i dont see any need for any changes. Even if some issues do show up, these are most of the time provider or client related, and something that you as site admin shouldnt act on.
For the errors, i worth to note that the abort was caused by the page itself and not by user interaction. And i found that part relevant enough as maybe this is actualy related towards people experiencing slowdowns, since it is related to loading the next batch of posts. I normaly would not expect a CORS error in the thread list.
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