Miiverse. You all know it, you may or may not love it. In today’s article, I’m going to talk about what I like about Miiverse, what I don’t really like, and what just plain disgusts me.
Author’s note: This article was written before the Miiverse update of 3/19/14, so I won’t be covering any of the changes in that update. Luckily, nothing in this article mentions something they changed! As far as the update goes though, I really like the changes I see! Still no Wara Wara update though.
The Good
Alright, let’s first state that my overall thoughts on Miiverse are that it’s a great service with a lot to offer. One of the main things I love is how it gives me a place to talk about my favorite games and experiences in communities of people who also share these experiences.
I’ve tried sharing Miiverse posts on Facebook, but they get no attention. However, on Miiverse itself, I get a lot more attention. This is because it’s shared with people who play the same games as I am. It’s a community by gamers, for gamers. I post about getting a cloudy moonshard on Facebook, nobody gets it. I post it in the Monster Hunter community, and I’m instantly congratulated.
Another great thing is its screenshot ability. Not only does it make it super easy to share specific moments that I might not be able to describe by itself. You’ve all seen my posts at the end of my articles. You can go on Miiverse on a PC and view the image in a new tab, allowing you to download it and use it for whatever. They took that feature away for a bit, and now it’s back. So at least they’re aware of how useful a feature it is.
My last good thing to say about it is the existence of a follow feature, as opposed to needing to friend everyone on your activity feed. This way my friend list doesn’t have to get filled with people I don’t know, but I can still have an active activity feed. It seems like such a basic feature since it has been implemented since the beginning of the service, but I could just as easily see it the other way around.
The Bad
My biggest complaint with the service is the way it handles messages. The only way to read your messages is if you go into the Wii U app and check them. There is no notification aside from the Miiverse icon flashing, which happens even if you just get a “yeah”. Â I’d at least like the home button to flash or something. Maybe a separate messaging app tied to Wii U Chat that works with games and apps in the background. I’d still like Wii U Chat to work with other apps in the background. As it stands, it’s essentially useless.
Another thing I don’t like is actually something they updated, and this one might be a bit more controversial. I mean, it was a big enough problem for them to update and change it, so I guess some people didn’t like it. But I miss being notified when somebody comments on a post I commented on, regardless of whether or not they’re the orignal poster. It just kills many potential conversations. Maybe it’d be better if you could tag people in comments, that way if someone in the thread wants to directly talk to you, they can.
My final complaint has to do with the WaraWara plaza. Why can I not have the games and apps shown be chosen by me? Could they at least be my favorite communities? Half the things on my plaza aren’t even games. They’re apps I give little to no attention to. The YouTube community has some great art, but I really don’t care. The app itself is awful. The Zelda and Smash communities can go too. I want to see posts from the games I play, not the communities that I don’t even use. They sort of had a “recommended” community thing pop up once or twice, so something may be in the works. As for right now, this needs fixing.
The Ugly
Smash Bros. community. Do you know about the Smash Bros Miiverse community? I kid you not, I saw someone literally begging Sakurai to put his original character in the game. WHAT?! Like, seriously… WHAT?! NO! Get out of here with your character! And people are still requesting ridiculous characters to be added. Like freaking Goku. I have seen countless requests for the DragonBall main character. HOW?! How do people seriously think these things will get in? I… I can’t even keep writing about this. Just go to this tumblr called “Please Sakurai” to see the horror. Please be aware that most of that content will make your brain hurt.
Another ugly thing that I’m sure we’ve all been exposed to is “Yeah begging”. This is where people make posts specifically to generate arbitrary miiverse points called “Yeahs”. Nintendo tried to remedy this by changing the count on your profile to show how many yeahs you’ve given as opposed to how many you’ve received. This has helped a little, but there are still many stupid posts asking for yeahs, or having “contests” where the reward is someone will go and yeah 20 of your posts. I commented on one of those posts telling them not to yeah me, and that I just wanted to take part in the contest. Not even 2 minutes later, and I had 20 notifications, all from one person. That needs to stop. It’s not cute, it’s not funny.
This section might as well have been called “Zorpix hates kids on the internet.” In all honesty, most of these are from kids who don’t know any better, and I probably would have done the same crap at my age if I had this technology. I shouldn’t be too hard on them. But still, if you’re begging a game developer to put your original character in Smash Bros., you’re gonna have a bad time.
My imaginary friends I had as a kid would’ve whooped your imaginary friends though.
I hope you liked my Miiverse analysis! Did I miss anything? Let me know!
Zorpix and Miiverse
In honor of this special Miiverse article, I’m going to do this section a bit differently today. I present to you the main reason I fell in love with Miiverse. Sorry if the image is a tad large, but I wanted to make sure you could read it all! I did not draw anything in these pictures, it was all done with by my friend and some other guy replying to our post.
Post Text: Horses are superior to humans!
New Super Mario Bros U.
Honestly, this is my favorite Miiverse interaction to date. Have you had any cool conversations like this? Post it below if you have!
Wrapping up
Thank you very much for reading this article, and I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any suggestions for next week’s topic, any questions about the content I wrote, or just wanna say hey, feel free to sound off below! If you really feel inclined, you can mosey on over to my Twitter, Facebook, or Miiverse account. Please don’t feel offended if I don’t respond to friend requests on the Wii U, as I reserve that for people I actually know in real life. I’ll gladly follow back though!
Have a great Spring Break everyone! If you already had it, hope it was great! If yours isn’t for a while yet, hang in there!
