Tema

Hello fellow Dreamers, Quite a few updates have been made since our last announcement from just over two weeks ago, that we wanted to go over here. Table of Contents: A message from our Community Administrators Events in the United Kingdom More changes to the Terms of Service Section 14 Changes Section 18 Changes Section 19 Changes EcchiMates Loading Bar/Client-Server Comms Bar Roleplay Advertising Changes Roleplayer Preference Changes Discord Server Changes Other Small Changes A message from our Community Administrators It has been an extraordinary few weeks, and a very busy few weeks. I’ve been enjoying my evening sitting in the voice chat on our Discord server, speaking to and interacting with people of the community, and Neptune has made an appearance a few times too. We’ve worked pretty hard the last couple of weeks, even as our nation enters a period of mourning. There are likely to be more improvements over the coming months as we enter 2023. Events in the United Kingdom This might seem weird on some “Random Roleplay Smut Site”, but both of us Community Administrators are British. We were born in England, and will likely die in England. We’re British through and through, and we make no apologies for it. So on the 8th of September 2022, we were saddened to learn of the passing of our Queen; Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Many of us felt like she was timeless, present throughout our entire lives; at least the majority of the lives of most people in this country. Our thoughts and condolences are with the Royal Family, as we mourn the loss of our longest-serving British monarch. We are indebted to her dedicated service to this country. She truly was a magnificent woman who endured much with dignity and decorum. It truly is the end of an era. More changes to the Terms of Service Do you know when you proofread something, and then you get other people to proofread it, and you all independently think that it's good so you send it up to go live for potentially hundreds if not thousands of people to read, and then - and only then - you find grammatical mistakes in it, despite going over it with a fine tooth comb? Yeah. That happened. We’ve corrected the ones we’ve noticed and we’ve actually made changes to Sections 14, 18, and 19, to clarify our stance on monetary transactions on EcchiDreams. We've also added "Not to add the other party as an EcchiMate" when it comes to NCO's, which makes sense with the new system in place. We've also changed a lot of grammatically incorrect sentences and changed most, if not all mentions of the word "User" to "Dreamer". This will not require reacceptance as most of it is stuff that was already against the rules before the update, and the NCO sub-section is agreed to upon taking out said NCO. So this announcement will suffice. Section 14 Changes We have added personal donations to the list of things that aren’t allowed, this includes - but is not limited to - things like GoFundMe links, Ko-fi or Cryptocurrency Addresses. We’ve also stated that the rule of thumb is if it asks for the money and the context is that dreamers should buy it, give to it, or donate to it, it’s not allowed. Section 18 Changes Very minor changes here. We added “Any kind of QRCode, Datamatrix, Barcode and other such things that contains anything that violates any Section of the Terms of Service.” Section 19 Changes We’ve changed this from “Commissions on Art” to “Monetary Transactions” which covers ‘Commissions on Art’ anyway. We have reaffirmed that all transactions on EcchiDreams are restricted to EcchiCredit transactions only. Content posted on any part of this site such as, but not limited to; commissions on art as well as donation services, and cryptocurrency are not allowed on this site. EcchiMates Some of you might have noticed; we’ve re-released a new system which we lost in 2015. First let's get the rumours out of the way: Yes, this is a friends system. No, it is independent of the followers system. With this comes a basic profile feature that allows you to set some new privacy settings. You can have a maximum of 300 EcchiMates. There is no difference between normal, gold, platinum members, or even staff, everyone gets 300, and that’s your lot. This number may change later down the line, but for the foreseeable future it’s capped at 300, universally. There were a few hiccups along the way such as the fact that it was sending out emails, despite being told not to, but this has since been fixed and we’ll be making improvements to it, with any luck as the feature matures and comes out of Beta. Why EcchiMates? Because in England, a friend is a mate. But “Mate” has other meanings depending on context. So it’s a bit of an innuendo too. I know, cheeky, isn’t it? But at its core it’s a friend system. Loading Bar/Client-Server Comms Bar Noticed that pink bar running across the top of the page? It’s been with us since around 2011 or so, in one form or another. It used to be a bouncing ball in the top corner but it slowly changed into the pink line that is seen today. Basically it’s your indicator when everything on the page is loaded when you navigate to a new page, or if you haven’t it shows communication between your device (Client) and EcchiDreams (Server). For a long time it’s been a pink bar regardless of which EcchiTheme you’re using but I’ve recently changed it to make it more noticeable, and have a bit more variation of colour, be a little bit thicker and to be a little bit smoother. Otherwise it still uses the same library and not much else about it has actually changed. Roleplay Advertising Changes In October 2013; we brought a little fun feature that essentially turned every link on the site into a rainbow link when you hovered over it with a mouse over it. One person (out of many) who really appreciated the Rainbow Links was Xander. This was back when >75% of our users were using laptops and desktops now it's on average less than 30%. However in 2015 with one of our biggest updates to date, we unfortunately removed it because it didn't work too well with the new system, and the fact is, today most people won't see it on their phones unless it was active all of the time... Which, yeah - no. But in that very same announcement it was also where the roleplay advertising thing started, here is how it looked back then: This obviously morphed and evolved as Roleplay Clubs became a thing. Now it's for roleplay club owners who want to advertise their club. As such it will now show an embed showing that club, which is a bit more rich than just a picture. It also means that people looking to advertise don't have to do as much work to make an image that fit our rigid specifications. All you need now is a club (That complies to the advertising Terms and Conditions) and more EcchiCredits than you know what to do with, and you can apply for it. In memory of @Xander this link is now a rainbow link, and you don't need to hover over it to get it to flash. It will just do it, with any luck (I've not tested this outside of Chrome). Roleplayer Preference Changes There have been a few minor updates to the roleplayer preferences section. Such as: People are now physically limited to one roleplay preference. If you try to submit more than one; you will get an error. There is now the option of a “Might”/”Maybe” field, which shows up as a yellow-ish orange in the preferences. (Thanks @Sinful Vampire, for this suggestion.) A rainbow link of your preferences, if you have one put on your profile, will appear next to your posts across the forums of the site. Discord Server Changes We’ve made a few tweaks to the Discord Server which is a place to socialise and talk in real time to other Dreamers from the site. Please note that it is not a roleplay server. Despite the fact that our Discord Server is protected by the same Terms of Service as the site, Discord has a few extra rules that we don’t have. Which meant that our server was technically in violation of Discords Terms of Service/Community Guidelines. This has been rectified. As such we’ve made a new channel called “#important-information” which outlines the extra rules on that server. We’ve also added a channel to counter “#memes-and-shitposting”. The new channel is for wholesome (completely SFW/SFW-ish) memes and stuff. A brief snap poll was announced on the server for the name of the channel and @Neptune's suggestion won by an absolute landslide. The new channel is called “#wholesome-shit”. No, I’m not kidding. We’ve added icons to the channel names. EcchiVoice Text Channel (The voice channels, text channel) has been removed as voice channels now have this built in. If you can’t see it - update your app. Our server, at the time of writing, is currently Level 2, thanks to the generosity of our Discord Boosters: @Mini Magi, @Azalyn, @Sinful Vampire and @Moon Hound Hati. Please note that of course we appreciate those that donate their boosts to the server, it’s not mandatory, and we don’t see a penny of it. It’s purely a Discord thing, but it still means a lot to us that you'd donate your boosts for the betterment of our Discord Server for others to enjoy. Thank you to those who have boosted the server! We might be holding a competition to come up with a server banner and invite page images at a later date. The prize pool is sitting at 20,000 EcchiCredits; this could go up (but won’t go down) when the actual competition is announced. Other Small Changes There have been a number of small changes too: We’ve added an Achievement/Award for people who have boosted our Discord Server. As a trial run, we’ve set out the default theme to the Dark EcchiTheme, and renamed the previous default to “Light EcchiTheme.” 86% of Dreamers who have logged in over the last six months have switched to the dark theme. I’d say that message was loud and clear. People prefer the dark theme. If you don't, the option is there to switch back to the light theme. The search box has changed a bit now. It now includes a drop down of the area you want to search in, within the box itself. Image Source: はちお (hachio81) This article wasn't really planned and for this one I was just looking at landscapes on Pixiv for something unrelated and I found this, and thought that it looked extremely beautiful, especially with the summer we've just had. It's a very beautiful and colourful image, it conveys a sernie, tranquil peace that is both neutral and unoffensive. It's very detailed too, and it kind of makes me wonder if it's a real place and the artist took inspiration and if I can visit there. Looks like it'd make a lovely holiday spot and the water looks inviting enough to lounge around in. I think the artist did every well with this picture, and I like some of their other artwork too and it's also as incredible as this one. I highly recommend checking them out!

Hello fellow Dreamers, I know I said this in the last announcement, but it bears repeating as I have made the same mistake… again. I am so very sorry that the last announcement was way back in April of 2020 (over two years ago!) I assure you - again - that this wasn’t intentional, at least mostly. We’ve still not gone anywhere either, so there is a plus. We’re still busy as ever. The only thing that I have done a better job of compared to the last announcement is trying harder to keep everyone in the loop, which I’ve done via Status updates. This announcement will cover: A message from our Community Administrators Terms of Service Changes Correcting the Record Previously Announced New Features So what new features are there? Achievements System Live EcchiTexts The EcchiDreams App! The Future of EcchiDreams Fixes A message from our Community Administrators In 2020 we stated that we understood the community’s concern regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, and we even shared those concerns. We were going through some truly unprecedented times which we’re still feeling the effects of, and are only just starting to feel the consequences and the ramifications of. Two years ago, we said “It is extremely important right now, in a time where we must remain apart, that we must come together in spirit. Now more than ever, we need to bring comfort and love to help and support each other.“ As a whole, on the most part you all did! We had a few bumps in the road… More than a few. But we all worked past it and made it through. Neptune and I want to thank you all for this, sincerely. Keep being awesome. We hope that this announcement, or newsletter, finds you all well (considering the circumstances right now) and we will try to make these more common. Regretfully, some of you lost family members during the recent events, and it wasn’t necessarily from COVID-19, but the pandemic still affected those of us who lost friends, close-friends, lovers and family. For you; we offer our sincerest condolences and we are terribly sorry for your loss. We know all too well how this could affect your life, as we were also affected by it. In addition; It's with heavy heart to announce, that I have been made aware of two Dreamer’s who have passed away. One of them has requested privacy and for us to just quietly deactivate that account. We will respect their wishes. But the other Dreamer was @Xander, who passed away on the 26th of January 2021 because of COVID-19. He was someone who wasn’t quite as public, but still engaged and interacted with his close circle of friends via EcchiTexts. I have spoken to his sister over the phone and she has allowed me to memorialise his profile. We are saddened by their losses and our thoughts go out to the families of the two individuals who were a part of this community in very different ways. I’m sure I speak for the entire community when I say: May you both rest in peace. Terms of Service Changes You may already be aware of this, but we've pretty much completely overhauled our Terms of Service. However I've covered this in a separate article that you can view here: This includes a new feature under our Terms of Service called 'No Contact Orders' (NCO's) which helps victims of harassment from a specific form of unwanted contact, and it's well worth a read, even if it's a little boring. Correcting the Record On the topic of the Terms of Service, I can’t speak for the other staff members, but I have had some insane interactions with people on EcchiDreams in regards to the Terms of Service. Worse yet, I have had people melting down and going into a fit of utter hysterics (for lack of lack a better term) in EcchiTexts and even in the EcchiDreams Discord over a perceived notion that they will be outright banned for the slightest of infractions. Many take this as a zero sum game and then start going absolutely ballistic; thinking if they’re going to get banned for their comment anyway, they might as well go all out. I have no idea where this is coming from and frankly it’s patently absurd behaviour that I wouldn't expect from adolescents, let alone adults. We have a solid and refined Terms of Service and we can only take action against your account under those Terms of Service. The Terms of Service are deliberately written to be as unambiguous as possible, a lot of sites make their rules extremely vague and open to interpretation - we do not. Also I’d directly challenge any notion that we’d ban your account for simply telling me something like “I don’t like the way X works” or “I think your site sucks” or for breaking a minor rule. This is not how we work. Every action we take against another account is open and transparent to all staff, and we all know that all actions have to actually be actionable under the Terms of Service. There’s even precedents set so we know what is heavy handed and what is lenient. Under my administration; no staff has ever banned or even warned someone just because we don’t like them. The idea that we do is utterly absurd and unfounded. There has to be a ToS violation and evidence of that ToS violation and even then, there are avenues of appeal and redress. No staff member is above the minimum standards required for evidence: not even me. All ban reasons are a matter of public record within their profile under “Ban Reason” in the sidebar. They point to the specific Terms of Service violation, as well as a brief summary of the rules violated. Another problem that’s become quite commonplace is people who are very angry at us for enforcing our Terms of Service on the people that they’re role playing with. I don’t see how this is our fault, and I suggest that people take a step back and strongly reconsider their actions. We don’t ban for no reason. We’re not allowed under our Staff Policy Agreement to ban for arbitrary reasons. Each ban can be scrutinised by any of the staff, it doesn’t matter who made the ban and what their rank is. Even then, for some things we opt for a more informative approach rather than punitive. Take for example Section 18 violations; when someone posts loli or shota in the gallery, we delete the content and then send them a message to tell them that this kind of content isn’t acceptable here, and help them avoid getting in trouble with it in the future. There are many who can attest to this. We also paradoxically have the opposite problem. Dreamers who aren’t violating the Terms of Service that everyone else wants to see banned. Again; unless they violate the Terms of Service - we will not do anything of the sort. We do not ban people we dislike, and we certainly don't ban unpopular people - just because they're unpopular and maybe because they're an asshole. Even if they make a single minor infraction, we won't take that as an excuse to ban them into the ground. It's heavy handed and goes against our core principles for moderation. I hope this puts this to bed. I quite frankly find this situation, as I have said many times already, utterly absurd, completely baseless and frankly ridiculous. I have my EcchiTexts open to anyone who has questions, I listen to feedback, I help people, I do everything I can to be there and open to all Dreamers. I think all the staff do. We will happily listen to rational, calmly put feedback. None of our staff - including myself - however, should be expected to take hysterical abuse spammed over and over again, just because you don’t like the way things are done here. If you are that upset with the Terms of Service that you can’t agree to them, you’re well within your rights to deactivate your account and leave. We’re not going to force you to stay, and we’re not going to sit here and take rabid abuse either. In these situations we will just simply ignore you or tell you that the conversation is over. If it - like it has done in the past - enters the region of violating ToS (Such as Section 20, Sub-Section 2: Abuse Towards Staff Members or Section 10: Harassment) then it will be dealt with accordingly as if it was any other Dreamer. Previously Announced New Features Unfortunately in the last update announcement made back in 2020, I detailed three upcoming features that still have not been implemented. These were “Profile Items”, “Profile Enhancements” and “Roll the Dice!”. The reasons are: Profile Items: Image Licensing; I want to use images that I would need to purchase a licence for and I would like the images to be uniform (as in not radically different from one image to the next). The system is installed, it is in place and ready to be used. But unfortunately I don’t have any suitable images that I can use, and places that allow me to easily purchase a licence for these images don’t really have anything that I’d make full use of here on EcchiDreams. So whilst this project has been put on hold for now; it’s something that can be done here. It’s also incredibly basic. Profile Enhancements: I still haven’t been able to find a way of doing this in a format that I am happy with, and anything I’ve been able to draw up doesn’t work under the limitations of the IPS Framework. Roll the Dice!: Never worked as intended, the RNG system was utterly broken. Let me explain. I did these tests using the same conditions for each. Ten tests of 1,000,000 (one million) rolls of a D20 dice over five days for a ten million rolls total. I was expecting an average of 10.5; I know I wasn’t going to get exactly 10.5 but I knew it had to be as close to 10.5 as possible. Both tests were done on the exact same computer, under a Linux Operating System. The EcchiDreams version rolled an average of 7.8999148 which is a massive deviation of -2.6000852 from the expected average of 10.50. It also took a very long while to simulate these rolls on an Intel Core i7 8700K processor. The other project that I’m working on which rolled an average of 10.4999328 which is -0.0000672 deviation from the expected average of 10.50, under the exact same conditions. It took next to no time to simulate these rolls on an Intel Core i7 8700K Processor. So use that then, job done! Right?! Well, no. Our server is not set up to run C#. EcchiDreams uses PHP the other project will be in C#. I’ve shelved it for EcchiDreams and I will be implementing it on the other project that I am working on; that I will talk about at the end of this newsletter (See EcchiDreams in the Future). So what new features are there? We did however release some new features over the last two years, and let's talk a little about them shall we? Achievements System The Achievements System was introduced last year in an IPS Update and it didn’t exactly launch without an incident. It also required everything to be re-indexed and rescanned so that the achievements could be retroactively applied which took days. But it’s been working away ever since and has really become part of the community. We’re looking at expanding it in future, with more things to get achievements over so be on the lookout for that. We have tried to implement this before back in 2015, they were called “Awards” and “Badges” but the system never worked properly, and was developed by a third-party developer who has since gone on to other projects and so it was never updated nor maintained and never worked properly for us after the Invision Update. This is a core IPS feature, meaning you’ve probably seen it on other forums running Invision Power Software. In the interests of being completely open and transparent about this system; here is the list of achievements as of this update: Great Support: No set goal, yet (Manually Awarded) Helpful: No set goal, yet (Manually Awarded) Superstar: No set goal, yet (Manually Awarded) Great Content: Given out to people who's content is so good that it ends up on the homepage (under Our Picks, Manually Awarded) First Post: Made your first post on EcchiDreams Conversation Starter: Made your first topic on EcchiDreams Collaborator: Made ten posts on EcchiDreams Reacting Well: You have received five reactions Problem Solver: You have provided ten answers which were selected as the best Well Followed: You have at least ten followers Dedicated: You have signed in (or been on the forums) for seven consecutive days Week One Done: You have been registered for at least a week One Month Later: You have been registered for at least a month One Year In: You have been registered for at least a year Very Popular: You have received one hundred reactions Posting Machine: You have posted five hundred replies to any given topic. A badge is "Rare" if less than 5% of the community has that badge. There is a level up mechanic with ranks as well, but at this time I'm not going to go into that other than you can't earn more than 50 points per day. I might consider adding more to this later down the line, as a possibility. I might not, but the option is there and this is an IPS core feature, so it'll be interesting to see if this matures over time into a bigger feature or if that's it and the rest is left up to us. There is some customisability to it, but not a lot, which is a shame. Live EcchiTexts As mentioned here (Status) Implemented on Desktop versions of the site by default, Live EcchiTexts replaces the EcchiChat System. If you've been around long enough to remember EcchiChat, a live instant messenger at the bottom right hand corner of the site then you'll be delighted to know that this will hopefully be replacing it going forward. In 2020 we removed EcchiChat from the site because of how heavy it was on server resources, often causing problems for everyone because it'd stop people from using the site when the server inevitably shat itself. If you also remember we had record breaking numbers of people online everyday (250 at one point, if I remember correctly) so it was hardly surprising. Over a million messages were sent back and forth between people in a single month and I had two options - hide it off the page and let people go to a specific link for it, or fork out hundreds of dollars per month just to keep it running and upgrade the server to prevent it from shitting itself. It was a tough decision but considering the site was - and still is - completely non-profit, not even donations, it had to go. Earlier this year it was quietly retired completely, and I attempted to replace it with this back on the 28th May 2022. People were... How do I say it nicely? Less than amused by how buggy it was, and how it invades the navbar at the bottom of the site on mobiles. Which was totally fair feedback, and completely warranted. If you're one of them and you're reading this I can safely say you are not the only ones who complained, people did it on Discord, on the statuses here on EcchiDreams and even in my EcchiText inbox. The feedback was universal and loud and clear. "Give us the option to enable/disable it on mobile!" Well. Now you have that option. Mobile users won't see it by default, unless you go to Account Settings > Live EcchiTexts and enable it there. Desktop users can choose to disable it there too, and it will remember these details for your account. The third party-developer and I have also fixed the bugs that plagued the original. And I am happy to say that it is now in a releasable format. Play around with it, if you don't want it, disable it. If you do want it, enable it. If you find any problems let me know and I will listen to feedback. EcchiChat was never perfect, it was never part of the system, as such if you blocked someone on it, it didn't block them from sending you EcchiTexts. Likewise, if you ignored someone on EcchiDreams, it didn't block them on EcchiChat. It looked out of place and didn't fit with the core features, theme or really - anything - with the site. This however; does. It's properly and tightly integrated. It also gives you a feature that you don't get in the EcchiTexts. Indications if your message was delivered, read or not read, and if it doesn't have a tick; then you were not the last sender of the message. The EcchiDreams App! As mentioned here (Status) A number of you wanted EcchiDreams as an app, and on the 29th of September 2021 it became a thing! Well, sort of. Only under Windows, Android and maybe Linux. You may have been told by your browser already (Especially if you're on Google Chrome) that you can install EcchiDreams as an app. It's essentially still your web browser; but otherwise it's what it is. I believe the technical name for it is Progressive Web Application (PWA). Anyway, once installed as an app, you can go to your notification settings (Here: https://ecchidreams.com/notifications/options/) where at the bottom you will see "Push" (If your browser supports it) a setting to enable push notifications. This means notifications will be pushed to your device as and when you get them. This will not work on Apple devices because... Well, Apple. Take it up with them, as it's 100% their problem. I am told that this might change soon, but I’m not sure. I have an iPhone as a developer phone so I will be able to check, with some luck. The Future of EcchiDreams I can’t really talk about the future of EcchiDreams; without first painting a picture of the current situation. Please bear with me here. EcchiDreams currently runs on a piece of software called Invision Power Suite (IPS) from the folks over at Invision. Despite my many complaints, the software is extremely good at doing what it does, and it’s a fairly modern looking suite that is quite feature rich and relatively very secure. However… In order to get the software to do what we want it to do, to do what we need it to do, we have to customise and modify it in ways it simply wasn’t designed for. In the past being able to modify things to add features and functionality to the site was fairly easy, and the needs of our dreamers were met as best as possible by using third-party modifications available through their marketplace that we’d sink shit loads of money into, and then take those modifications and often times customise them even further, again, often using these things for things that they were not designed for. Over the last few years it’s gotten harder and harder to do this, and the costs to make it happen are starting to get to the point where they’re spiralling radically out of control. For example: Someone wanted $250 (USD) an hour to modernise and make our Roleplayer Preferences better, surpassing the quality and functionality of quite a few of our competing sites, and there was no telling how many hours they’d need to sink into it. I get that these people have families to provide for -- and I don’t begrudge them that at all! But then to have the cheek to want to sell it to others on the market place where IPS take a percentage and they get the rest, instead of developing it exclusively for the person who paid for it, was a very bitter pill to swallow. I kindly rejected that offer, of course. In addition updates from IPS seem to - at least at one point, seem to absolutely break everything, and how long will it be until the developer can develop and update to that modification? If they even do it all. And how much will that cost me? If that didn’t look bad enough; there has been in the last few years an exodus of good third-party developers from IPS, a few of them who have done modifications that we use, that get taken over by other third party developers (if we’re lucky), or are completely abandoned. One third-party developer, who, bless him, took over a good chunk of modifications that another developer sold him already had like 80 or 90 different modifications of his own that he had been either making on his own, or took over from other people. Updates from this developer are understandably slow, and this slows down our update processes. Again, I’m not trying to bad mouth anyone here. I think this situation that we are all in, is not optimal, to say the least and we’re making do with it. I love the IPS software, I really like a lot of the third-party developers and I am extremely appreciative of their hard work. The time they put into their apps, the speed that a few of them respond to bug issues, it’s downright first class. But I have other issues and concerns that for professionalism's sake, I won’t go into in this announcement. What a lot of people, I feel, tend to forget is that EcchiDreams is run on a shoestring budget. It’s free for everyone - we take no money from our users, we don’t even beg for donations and we don't plaster every little space with adverts. Premium Memberships are earnt with EcchiCredits. Money made through advertising immediately gets spent on advertising our site. On the most part I’m okay with this, but I have licensing fees, domain costs, server costs, and now on top of that, over 40 modifications that require renewal fees if I want updates for them. It’s becoming a problem. Those issues aside, I now come to the meat and potatoes of the issue. What we want to use this software for isn’t what the software is designed to do. We are hitting limits in what we can modify more and more frequently. Bitch-basic features like an actual blocking system that has some goddamn teeth for example. If I sound frustrated at this, it’s because I am. I have been using this system for well over a decade now. I know how it works, to quite a considerable degree. I am comfortable with it, I don’t want to change it… But I’m being pushed into a situation where I have to. Which is why on March 26th 2021, I softly announced that I was teamed up with a developer outside of the IPS Ecosystem to write a completely custom job that is built and developed by us so that we can cease our dependence on IPS and their third-party developers and become self-reliant. I stated: This was then followed up on April, 29th 2021 with: Well, since October, my brother-in-law and I have been working hard in making the third Alpha release. I’m going to be very cautious about what will and won’t be possible, at this time because I don’t want to build a ridiculous amount of hype so I will say right now to keep expectations grounded. Most of this software is being coded by two people from the ground up. We’re usually extremely busy working away at it every weekend (our spare time). Alpha 3 of this will see some significant changes. We’ve already implemented a basic messaging system for it, as well as implementing a lot of the Account Settings functionality. It also already supports 40 different languages (Although user content isn’t translated, obviously) which is far more than EcchiDreams supports right now… Although the translations used Google’s API - so it’s a work in progress. The site will be built for both mobile phones and computers, as well as everything in between. We know that there are a niché amount of people who use certain modern games consoles to access EcchiDreams; and I’m not sure if we’ll be able to support that, but we’ll try. (No promises). We’ve worked on a number of core features already such as character profiles. Character’s can have their own profiles that will look like typical user profiles but be marked with “Character Profile” in their actual profiles. This is somewhat what we wanted to do here on EcchiDreams but it never worked properly. This will allow you to enter out information specific to that character. All roleplays would be created through the specially crafted roleplay manager; including private roleplays that would traditionally be done over EcchiTexts here. The messenger system is not really going to be designed or built for this, it would be built and designed for discussing plots and what nots, and then taking it to a private roleplay in the manager where you can invite as many or as few people as you like. The Roleplay Management suite is a lot like the clubs featured here on EcchiDreams. You can essentially create your own universe and have different collections of stories in them and if you don’t want to put some time in hand-crafting your own roleplay section there will be an option to create a lite roleplay. The more fuller feature should in the end allow roleplay owners (Gamemasters) to make their own user groups and assign roles and permissions and then assign users to those roles. Basically a fully customisable permission set. With some sensible defaults, so if you’re happy with those defaults you won’t need to worry about it at all. We’re both working on image handling at the moment for avatars, profile banners, and so on. It’s being worked on in C# and of course our plans have only gotten bigger. As for if EcchiDreams will run on it or become it; at the moment it’s still too early to say, but it could go either way. But at the moment it’s looking very much like it’s happening. We do want a tighter integration of Roleplayer Preferences with the user’s profile, in that your preferences will be displayed on your profile for all (who have permissions) to see. Later down the line we hope to make this completely searchable, so you can find the roleplayer you want rather than have to search through each preference sheet one by one to figure out if that person is right for you or not. Progress is happening and again, if you’re a Gold Member or Platinum Member and you’re interested in being a part of a very early build of the future for EcchiDreams please send me an EcchiText, and I will surely consider you. I appreciate that it might not be as well polished as EcchiDreams is (It’s still in early Alpha) and it may not be after release. But over time we hope to continually polish it, refine it and update it. Fixes Finally solved the resetting premium membership problem Whichever bugs have been fixed in IPS updates (spoiler: lots) Theme Issues (CSS/JS not loading sometimes) Server Configuration related Issues (Such as EcchiDreams wasn't serving pages on the H2 protocol, and just defaulting to HTTP1.1) iPhone specific page rendering issues Misspellings in the Mood System Unable to change avatar from profile (UI overlapped the buttons) Various other minor bugs that would fill this list out excessively Additional Bulletins: Problems with Microsoft Based Email and EcchiDreams EcchiDreams now requires signin with Email Address, instead of Username The death knell for the EcchiChat Bar (The old one) Image Source: ハリケーン (Hurricane) When I started writing this it was spring, and when it was posted, it was summer. This picture reminded me of both. The artist makes excellent use of colour, the water looks and feels like it should be cold, yet the surrounding areas look and feel warm, and it summed up the first sentence for me very nicely. The amazing use of light and shadow gives the picture a surprising amount of depth and you can almost feel that this is not just a ‘thing’ that they do, but a labour of love. They seem to specialise in background illustrations and say that they aim for a “background that conveys the actual atmosphere” and I’d say they do the job well done here. I personally think that they are underrated. Why not give them a follow on Pixiv?

We have made wide-sweeping changes of the Terms of Service, to the point that you may have been asked to re-accept the new Terms of Service when coming onto the site today. The majority of these changes have been to clarify certain things, to change some of the language to be less vague or fixed nonsensical, grammatically incorrect sentences. But there have been a number of substantive changes as well that take effect as of today. In an effort to be transparent about the changes that have taken place; I will lay down what they are here and explain about why these changes have been made. If something you posted in the past is in violation of the Terms of Service in the present; you will not be punished for it. The reason being is that we do not retroactively punish people for something that does become a rule that wasn’t when it was posted. We find this expressly unfair and instead will hide it, let the person who posted it know what’s happened and then ask if they’d like us to delete it, or send it back to them. These changes to the Terms of Service are some of the biggest since the start of my Administration back in 2011, over a decade ago. For a start, officially, sub-sections are now no longer going to be called "Paragraphs", they're sub-sections. Here are the full list of changes: Sections with Minimal Changes Sections with Substantial Changes Section 10 - Harassment Section 12 - Member Conduct Section 14 - Spam Section 18 - Gallery and Media Uploaded or Posted to EcchiDreams NCO (No Contact Orders) Sections with Minimal Changes There has been minimal changes here to fix the grammar and spelling across the entire Terms of Service, the following contain minimal changes, such as what has already been discussed and more, if there is no additional information, then it was just a spelling/grammar thing: Section 1 - Acceptance of Terms Sub-Section 1 - Disclaimer Section 2 - Content Notice Section 3 - Registration Requirements, which also contains updates to the ways in which we allow registrations via Single Sign On options. We’ve dropped Facebook and Twitter, kept Google and added Steam. Sub-Section 1 - Date of Birth Sub-Section 2 - Email Address, reaffirmed that we don’t accept Disposable Emails anymore. Sub-Section 3 - Display Name, we have also added “impersonating staff to socially engineer or phish other Dreamers will result in a ban.” Section 4 - Privacy and Disclosure of Information Section 7 - Premium Membership. Clarifications have been made that basically reaffirms that even premium members are bound by the Terms of Service. Section 9 - Duplicate Accounting. Makes it clear that we have an automatic system in place. Section 11 - Bugs and Exploits of the Fortums and its Applications, literally had the same section repeated directly under it. We decided two paragraphs that say the exact thing is perhaps a bit much and have just decided to keep one paragraph. Section 13 - Plagiarism Section 17 - EcchiDreams Roleplay Sub-Section 1 - Club Roleplays Sub-Section 2 - Private Roleplays Sub-Section 3 - Roleplayer Preferences Section 19 - Commissions on Art, has been also strengthened and clarified. Section 20 - Other Sub-Section 1 - EcchiCredits Sub-Section 3 - Unverified and Inactive Accounts Section 21 - Account Termination, clarifications done across the board. Section 22 Sub-Section 1 - Infraction Appeals Sections with Substantial Changes These are the following sections of the Terms of Service that contain a lot of changes, or changes that need to be explained in further detail. Section 10 - Harassment Harassment is one of our more serious rules in the Terms of Service. Despite the fact that it is extremely rare for someone to be reported for harassment, when it does happen the majority of the reports are generally unfounded or don’t even come anywhere near close to our definition of harassment. Balancing this section of the Terms of Service was extremely important from the beginning, and we have received strong criticism for this in the past. I am personally not prepared to cede any ground, however. It is important that we continue striking a balance between protecting Dreamers from genuine harassment and protecting Dreamers from false accusations. To be clear here; I am not saying that harassment is acceptable, of course it isn’t. To this end we’ve added the word “Deliberately” to the definition, which was implied from the beginning, but it is now stated categorically. We’ve also fundamentally re-written the section for clarification, and injected a clause in the evidence policy that specifies what we’ve strengthened in Section 12, spoken about below. We have reaffirmed that we will not treat evidence as evidence if we can’t verify that it’s evidence to begin with. This is not to make the bar of what is and isn’t harassment higher, but so we can have actual verifiable proof in our hands. We have also introduced a new paragraph to Section 10 (Sub-Section 5) which should protect both parties in a case as well. It’s called NCO, or “No Contact Order” which will be spoken about in the next part. Section 12 - Member Conduct We have strengthened this section to include the following line: The reason we’ve added this there is to emphasise the point, really. We’ve had a few reports over the years where people have added other people to Discord and the like, where these conversations have devolved into something nasty that would most certainly break Terms of Service here. These people would report these conversations that happened outside of EcchiDreams to us, either to let us know it happened, or to ask for them to be banned. We obviously can’t do that, so this reaffirms that, and basically says “We don’t recommend it, but if you do it, it’s at your own risk, not ours.” Kind of thing. We have also removed “EcchiChat” references as this is no longer a service or feature we provide. Section 14 - Spam Whilst the changes here have been minimal, the kind of changes that have happened here are substantial. Under the old Terms of Service posting a link to your F-List preferences which to be fair, is better than what we have, was prohibited, and landed people in hot water. Instead, now, context matters. This has been added: We’ve changed it so that the reason this rule was put in can still be protected, but those that aren’t doing that, will also be protected. This rule has been around since the beginning, and I know why it exists, and we have had people who have come to EcchiDreams, give out their link to roleplay somewhere else and never come back to the site, effectively using this site to advertise on. To that end this has been added: So this kind of behaviour (Register and immediately post something like “Hey! Come and roleplay with me here [Link to Another Site or Discord]”) will be treated as spam in the future. We’re all up for giving a little leniency, to give an inch as it were, we’d ask that this doesn’t get abused. To be clear. If you want to include your F-List preferences in your preferences here on EcchiDreams to show a better list, you can. What isn’t okay, is coming here solely to find roleplayers to roleplay with on other platforms. Find them on that platform, this isn’t the place for it. Section 18 - Gallery and Media Uploaded or Posted to EcchiDreams For many of you, Section 18 of the Terms of Service is the absolute bane of your existence, and it rightfully has this reputation. But the problem is that we have to obey the law, and this, coupled with genuine enforcement of it, keeps us within the confines of the law where the servers are located. It is a legal issue, not an us being anal - issue. We’ve reaffirmed what the purpose of the gallery (https://ecchidreams.com/gallery) is for, as well as enshrined into the Terms of Service that GIFs are not allowed within that section of the site and this may apply to clubs later down the line. We have also defined what we consider to be “Nudity”, “Minors” and “Sexual Situations” for clarity purposes. Definitions: Nudity: Not wearing clothing, or sensitive areas (female nipples and/or male or female genitalia) being visible through or around any clothing being worn. Sexual Situation: A character is considered as being in a "sexual situation" if they are clearly having sexual intercourse or are exposed to it in some way either directly or indirectly, or that there is some kind of sexual activity being performed. A Minor: Someone who is under 18 years of age (IE; is not an adult). Please keep in mind that a 1000 year-old woman who looks like a child still appears to depict a minor and a character who is canonically underage but is "aged up" in the image is still treated as a minor, neither of which are permissible under the Terms of Service. This would mean that you also can’t use a picture that is of a sexual nature, or has any nudity in it for a character who is under the age of 18, as per your character profile. NCO (No Contact Orders) An NCO, or “No Contact Order” is a new part of our suite of tools to primarily help people who might be starting to receive harassment or are receiving harassment but are currently being “Block Shielded” which is blocking the user and then harassing them from behind the block. This is still a new thing, and I have no doubt that the bugs of it aren't completely ironed out, but it is something we’re committed to work on as hard as we can to make it work. An NCO is a directive to not contact or communicate with another Dreamer on the site that can only be issued and enforced by a member of staff, under specific circumstances. These are typically between two parties (Two people) and would require the consent of at least one of the people involved. However, once a ‘No Contact’ issue is ordered it applies to both parties equally. An NCO cannot be issued towards a member of Staff, as there are other internal policies that deal with exactly this, not that I actually anticipate that ever happening. They also cannot be issued towards someone of whom you’ve never had any communication, or had any communication with recently (Within a month), just because “You don’t like them”. If you feel “extremely uncomfortable” to the point that you’re feeling “distressed” by another Dreamer, which you have already told to cease contacting you, you can talk to a member of staff or file a report (Which needs to follow the evidence policy, under Section 10). After this point, an NCO could be issued, to both parties requiring only the consent of one party to issue that NCO. An NCO issued by a member of staff has the same power as a typical Section 10 in which further contact will be treated as a Section 10 Violation. To prevent ‘shield-bullying’ and ‘entrapment’ the person requesting the NCO is also bound by the very same NCO to not contact the accused. It is generally recommended to just completely avoid each other, entirely, and make use of the blocking/ignore features on the site in addition to it. So how does this work? Well let's say “Dreamer A” is receiving undue messages from “Dreamer B”. Dreamer B has been asked once already by Dreamer A to stop messaging them, but Dreamer B is continuing, but the stuff they’re saying is disturbing Dreamer A causing great anxiety or distress. Or Dreamer A has been blocked by Dreamer B and Dreamer B is abusing the block/ignore system and are harassing them from behind the block, (Block Shielding*) so that Dreamer A can’t ask them to stop and thus they’re unable to proceed with the route of reporting a Section 10 violation. Dreamer A can report this as harassment and staff will contact them to talk about implementing an NCO. If agreed; the NCO will be applied, and both parties will be messaged separately about this. If Dreamer B continues immediately, another report can be filed and they will be suspended for a week. If they sign up for another account to continue the harassment, they will have bigger problems to worry about. If they continue the harassment after the suspension, another report can be sent off and this time the ban will be permanent. If there is a long length of time between the communication, for example; the NCO is applied today, and six months time, or a years time, that person contacts Dreamer A again, Dreamer A just sends a report to us, and we’ll remind them that they have an active NCO between the two parties. If the contact doesn’t stop, we will resume down the path of the previous paragraph. If however Dreamer A starts harassing Dreamer B, they will find themselves on that path as well. Same if they try to goad Dreamer B into violating the NCO. It’s not a perfect system, no system is. But under the limitations of the Block/Ignore system and the restrictions of what Section 10 actually is; this is the best we can think of. Currently there is only one NCO that is active right now. Both parties are bound by this ‘contract’ if you will, to not contact each other. Now someone might ask; “What if Dreamer B comments on something posted by Dreamer A? Does that violate the No Contact Order?” And the short answer is; “It depends.” For example; Let's say Dreamer A puts up a topic, “Which is your favourite Pokémon?” and Dreamer B replies to it like everyone else does, with “Magikarp because he’s so cute and …” then this isn’t a violation of the NCO, nor is it even harassment, it’s someone, a “Dreamer of the Public” if you will who is replying to a public topic. However… If they say “Magikarp because like you Dreamer A, it’s completely useless” then this would be a violation of the NCO as that is contact with the Dreamer. * Block Shielding is defined as; using the ignore system to prevent another Dreamer from sending you an EcchiText. This is done by sending them an EcchiText then blocking them via the Ignore system, so that they can’t reply then removing the block to send them an EcchiText before reblocking them again, usually by having the ignore interface open in another tab that can allow for quick selection. This would prevent the person receiving it from telling them to stop contacting them, or make it extremely difficult to do so. This is known as blockshielding, and yes, this has actually happened. I’m not sure if this is an EcchiDreams unique phenomenon or if it's something that happens elsewhere. Image Source: ハンカチ (Handkerchief) I needed a relatively suitable image for this article and originally looked at stock images, but decided - nah. I found this image on Pixiv and at first I thought it was a photo of a real library. But upon closer look - I don't think it is. The level of detail, the lighting and reflections is absolutely stunning! I think it might be a 3D Render, or some kind of hybrid, I don't actually know. It is exceptionally well done and looking at their other artwork, I highly recommend giving them a look and a follow!