$1500??? What???
IF their value would be around $15,000, then $1,500 would be a normal price to charge for a digital product.
Going by physical vs ebook prices on Amazon, surely they should be charging $30,000?
What does the scouter say about his kanji level?..its over 9000+
I get your point of view, it is legitimate.
When I say we could check beforehand, I was thinking about the discord server where you can ask pretty much any question, as I did before buying, and they were very transparent and reactive. However, I do agree that their monthly updates lack transparency, and that they give a lot of insider info in discord that they don’t give in the updates, which is both unprofessional and risky in terms of communication, imo.
Developing a new platform is not an iterative work, unlike just writing lessons. Sometimes you have to overhaul everything to have a proper foundation on which to build on. This is the case with NS, and that sort of stuff can take time, and that amount of time can hardly be predicted. Their only mistake in my eyes is to promise any deadline, but then again corona did not help them meet those.
Most of the staff is obviously very young, and I’m just witnessing them do basic mistakes that I’ve seen done time and time again by even veterans (in the gaming industry for example), that’s why I don’t judge them too harshly. Still, they got our money in their hands, so they’re accountable. I understand anyone being upset, but my experience tells me the delays were predictable, and patience is key, for those who can afford it.
You are on the wrong part on the internet for complaining about anoother site when tofugu has two japanese learning progras which noth are vaporware Textfugu which was promised always uppdated has instruction for an very old version of anki empty pages woth promised content and if yoi uses the next pages atrows in the text you miss a deck. Then we haveEtoEto which beeing coming soon at least so long i has been a member at wanikani.
True, but at least both TextFugu and EtoEto are affordable…
It’s a pity TextFugu has closed registration…
Textfugu was afforable. Thanks to the possibilty to uppgrade to lifetime after you paid the equal amount to lifetime. The price of EtoEto is still unknown. It could be high because of all free lifetime account they have given away to textfugu lifetime subscribers. Nativesharks travel lessions has more content than the fugu section on EtoEto.
Let me be clear that I’m not saying the people behind NativShark set out to scam a bunch of people by pretending that they’re working on the project but actually aren’t. I don’t believe that they’re running away with all of our money.
My declining lack of faith in them is a result of NativShark missing their March and April deadlines, and subsequently commenting in the discord something to the effect of, “it’s probably only a few weeks away”, only to be told at the end of May that “a few weeks” actually meant 8-10+ weeks from May, which is closer to “a few months” than “a couple of weeks”, if you ask me. In going through the NihongoShark course content, it became clear to me that Niko is a pretty good teacher; he writes in-depth, funny and enlightening grammar lessons. There is no doubt in my mind that if NativShark is able to reach a level where it can ship its basic course content, the lessons will be of high quality.
In January, the answer to a lot of skepticism about NativShark was the existence and quality of NihongoShark’s content. This proved that the team behind NativShark was a legitimate business that had been around for several years, and that they have the ability to teach Japanese.
What it was not evidence of, however, is their ability to fulfill any of the lofty goals and ambitions that they repeatedly assured me and everyone else who asked questions in the discord they could achieve. As you say, writing lessons and developing a web-based platform are two very different things. I trust NativShark to be able to write lessons, but I have very little faith in them being able to complete NativShark, at least in a timely manner, and probably not with all of the features that they discussed in the discord community at the end of January.
I accept that delays can and will happen, even with the best team, the best environment, and the best planning. When it was announced that Phase 1 would not be released in March, I was accepting. After all, a global pandemic was reaching fever pitch, and three key members of the team had gotten sick. That really can’t be helped. When they missed their April deadline, I was worried, but still had faith in their ability to fulfil their promises, but the update did reveal that the development team didn’t have the best planning, given that they had to completely refactor the code for their platform because they couldn’t get it to work with/didn’t have enough experience with event-sourcing (whatever that means, I’m not a programmer, and I don’t work in IT).
When the May update was released a few days ago, is when I lost whatever faith I had left in the NativShark team. Or, more precisely, throughout May, I slowly lost faith and enthusiasm in NativShark as I started noticing all these little things, in addition to the big things. Like the fact that the unreleased lessons of Phase 1 still say “Apr 2020”, or that all of their updates are written on Medium instead of their own platform, or that, as you say, their primary method of communicating with their customers is through their discord community.
I think I have been plenty patient. And I don’t think my criticism is unfair, either. I’m not spamming their discord demanding a refund, or posting on /r/learnjapanese about how “NativShark is incompetent” and trying to incite a witch hunt or anything of the sort. I’m simply posting my opinion on a thread that is about whether you should purchase a subscription for NativShark on a platform that is actually complete and does fulfil its promises that I use every day. And my opinion is still, no, don’t do it. I don’t understand why people are still purchasing monthly subscriptions, and it boggles my mind that someone would pay $1500USD for a platform that has routinely failed to meet their self-imposed deadlines or fulfil any of their basic promises, or even just for the NihongoShark content, as I think that’s an extreme overvaluation even in comparison to the grammar education you could get with Imabi, or the Genki series + Tobira, for example.
I will continue to be patient, of course. There’s nothing else I can do. And I don’t think it’s fair of me to demand a refund given that, at least from their perspective, I’ve gotten a product worth $999 for 25% of the price. If there is something NativShark did right, it was offering all of NihongoShark’s content bundled with NativShark. If nothing else, I got something out of my investment, though I’m hoping that’s not going to be the end of it.
I don’t think that Tofugu failing to develop and release EtoEto in a timely manner with a wealth of content, or breaking their promise to keep TextFugu up-to-date makes it hypocritical of me to report NativShark also breaking their promises.
Yea, that was roughly my point. The thing is, whatever they do we’ll still be happy to use it when it’s ready, and we got a good deal back then, I think it’s worth the wait. I agree that 1500 is way overpriced. I wouldn’t recommend anyone paying 1500 now (even later), nor to start a monthly sub until they have proven themselves. Early lifetimers like us are in a different position, but I’m feeling like waiting it out optimistically.
Sorry for those who have purchased and are still waiting. I am pretty sure they will deliver eventually.
For me, I couldn’t even get through their homepage. It is nearly unusable on mobile. Indecipherable, really.
JLPT sensei released a grammar book collection for $5 on his patreon page. It includes 4 books, each have hundred of pages of explanations, and (mostly) example sentences.
It is very similar to the old NS pdfs, without audio.
I’m in similar situation as SemilunarLiri. Instead of waiting, or paying monthly for other online services,
this is a one time payment to review grammar up to N2. Sensei started publishing these since March, months after Nativshark announced their platform.
What was the deal? How much was it before?
@POLLantron Refer to this post by TobiasW I’m replying to (not sure how to quote). It looks like the lifetime deal was 250 back in January. ばかばかしい.
In their most recent blog post, they announce that it’s going to be “launch ready” in July or August. But looking at what’s left, it just says final checks everywhere. Really? Especially since they’re supposed to be agile, how come they haven’t launched yet? I call bs on this.
To me, it looks like they simply just hid everything under the rug of
Finalizing the student-facing experience
When you look at the things that covers, it looks like they don’t have any front end at all at the moment. So, there’s that.
I purchased in… February? Feels like so long ago… I’ve been posting their updates on Twitter. I’ve been studying for 20(!) years and have tried almost everything. I passed N2 on 4th try and have failed N1 3x. JLPT isn’t my ultimate goal, just wanted to get better at the language (live/work off and on there), and NS promises of a post-N1 curriculum got me very excited. Slowly losing patience, but have taken advantage of the quarantine time to really dig into RTK. I’m at first Pages of RTKV3, and it’s daunting, but in the meantime it’s a great challenge.
#DailyJapanStudies via #Nativshark:
June 2020 — End of Month Update: “…we now have a much clearer view of what it will actually take to release the core experience. We’re looking at July or August as being launch ready.”
- Caleb Andersen, CEO
They released the Phase 1 content and improved the design of the website.
I got an email from them today. Seems like a lot of content but it’s a lot of filler too. I just browsed around the phase 1. Not all that appealing to me. Plus where is all those beautiful designs they had from the preview?