Who is the new target market Memrise is trying to offer the service too, preschoolers?
Kids and teenagers want tools that work too, and need to see progress in their learning as well. Gamification needs to serve a purpose, not become the priority. Especially the teenagers, at least those who actually care about things like education, usually crave being treated more like adults. Not like babies.
And adults, those are the people with actually some money on our hands. Improve the Pro functions (a proper search function, a way to bookmark courses instead of having to either start them all immediately or never find them again, ability to download at least my created courses as a spreadshet, and so on), so that they actually offer something I want, and I’ll pay too. Ziggy is actually making me less likely to ever pay.
I am not stopping to use Memrise because of this change, but I am now very reluctant to recommend it to people I know in real life. I don’t like the idea that they would judge my personal taste based on the first impression of the site (childish design combined with questionable quality of some of the promoted official courses).
Really, am I now supposed to tell people “hey, I think this website could help you, it is awesome. Just please, don’t let the childish design scare you away, it really is useful.” ?
I don’t like ziggy, I want the old stuff back because now I don’t even know how my points I have; I only know how many points are left to get to the next level. Ziggy is really childish and I want the old badges and ranks back because they actually motivate me to learn and work harder whereas this ridiculous Ziggy thing makes me want to stop using Memrise
When I first saw Ziggy, I thought it was a new option that I accidentally clicked on. Please at least give us the option of choosing whether to have Ziggy or the old ranks. Majority of the people who use Memrise are adults and I’m sure they don’t want a stupid alien as they’re avatar. Look at all the comments on this post- they are all negative. And there are thousands of others who have the same views as us and want the old ranks back. I am not a child and wasn’t this site originally targeted at teenagers and adults? Not five year olds?
Please change it back or at least give us the option of changing it back.
It might help if we tag everyone on this forum. That’s what we did when they removed community mems, and after… what? A week? They decided to address it.
I don’t think that they will address it here, because they don’t care about the web site or these forums.
You can see that they’re only interested in the app, because if you look at the latest user reviews in the Google Play Store, you’ll see that they respond immediately and repeatedly to the negative reviews that people post about the new Ziggy character, whereas on the forum, they ignore complaints about Ziggy completely.
Perhaps it’s my unfamiliarity with the Google Play Store because I see only a few less then 5 star reviews, which don’t mention Ziggy, and only one reply by Memrise the last few days.
But, disgruntled users, perhaps then rate the app in the Google Play Store and the Apple Store?
Thanks for taking the time to make the polls, @Arete_Hime.
I can’t do much more than echo what other users have said here at this point. I liked the old dignified yet silly ranks a whole lot more than these cartoony characters that look like that came right out of a show targeted toward preschoolers. I spent a long time crawling up to the rank of Memperor, and got to enjoy it for a couple of weeks. Now I’m…Level 16. Which one sounds more impressive? lol
What irritates me more though is that they removed the badges without any heads up. While I was not thrilled about the announcement for Ziggy last month, I was at least happy to see that the staff actually saw fit to give us a heads up on it, as that’s been one of my biggest gripes with how Memrise does things; just ‘surprising us’ with their updates. I’m disappointed that they snuck out the badges in the process, after saying ‘more coming soon!’ for so long.
As far as the new level system goes, (and despite my wishing it weren’t so, I’m doubtful that it’s going anywhere) I think something that should be considered is making intermediate levels between each ‘evolution’. In other words, it doesn’t ‘evolve’ every level. It would be unreasonable to expect a hundred different forms to be designed, but it also seems silly to me to have such a small range of levels. (I’m an RPG nerd; I know what I’m talking about here. :P) Taking Pokemon as an example, which I’m guessing served as inspiration here, Pokemon don’t evolve every level, but instead level up with changes to just their stats and skills, then only evolve once certain levels have been reached.
Just a suggestion; I’m honestly going to feel detached from ‘Ziggy’ either way, as it’s simply not something that’s relevant to me. But please, please…move Ziggy off to the side somewhere. Having it photobomb everyone’s avatars is downright obnoxious.
Anybody know how we can turn this silly ziggy creature off? This really detracts from the whole Memrise idea. If ziggy and the new ranking system remains, at least give us a compromise of not showing it. Any human can reply. Verstehen Sie?
Pretty much what everyone said. I’m still gonna go for streaks to please myself but this was a big mistake. I really hope that they bring back the mem-badges and streak badges.
I don’t hate Ziggy as a design, he’s pretty cute, but he should be a website mascot or some kind of AI assistant that motivates you, not an unexplained graphic plastered everywhere.
Ugh! After all these “years” of working toward 50,000,000, I would’ve had the next rank by Christmas. Is it possible that Memrise works on a search engine for courses that works better vs the stuff that is just fun to work on like cartoons. Years ago there was a super way to find classes with three search options but now all we have is a cute little ziggy to show for improvements. Guess you all will flash mob another train station or hop on the Memrise bus and hit the road versus what really counts. Those of us that build cases in the past remember the fun of making a course that folks liked to use. That kind of went away when our course become so deeply buried that they never show under the newer search engine. I apologize for the negativity, you are still my favorite way to learn, but the priorities of Memrise seem a little off.
I’m in a similar position to you @heikkiss having achieved Memporer a little while way; except my next level will be 17. In my mind I had set my next goal as Overlord. I’ve missed my run - it’s Levels 17 and 18 for me.
My thoughts entirely. I use Memrise with students aged 13-16 and they will probably just cringe. They don’t need gimmicks. It’s just completely irrelevant.
Point taken Arete Hime. I’ve rated “operation Ziggy” in the Play Store. And thank you for creating the polls, it should provide an additional source of valuable information for the Memrise team. I believe this material on the forum is not just a waste of time and energy but a chance for them to bring genuine improvements to the program.
No. Nobody from Memrise responded, and the message they want to send is that we are not worth responding to.
Their deliberate decision not to respond is a loud and clear non-verbal display of dominance and control. The co-founders both have graduate degrees in psychology, and they know exactly what message ignoring their customers’ pleas on the forum sends, and it’s precisely the message they want to send to us.
