BC Discussion & Feedback

I agree. In the past, I figured unique events like Community Night could differentiate us from the crowd. I suppose it could still work since I haven't put much effort into doing that, but it's not very likely. Thing is, what exactly can we do that hasn't been done? We could try specializing in a type of battling (casual? older generations? heavily modded/modified metagame? Battle Subway?). We tried making our metagame, and that was a disaster. We might be most successful with casual battling since PC isn't very competitive. Then there's the battle wiki we had a year or two back, but I can't say whether the admins would agree to reviving it. Then there's the fact that PC isn't geared towards battling to begin with, but if Serebii and Pok?Beach are successful, I guess we can be.

What's up, y'all?

I think Vrai is pretty much right. I always saw PC's niche as being a "warmer Smogon" - less competitive, more community-oriented, etc. When I think back to when PC "worked," it was pretty much that. On the flipside, the battling scene can't be so casual as to hardly exist, which is basically what ended up happening except for a few people. And the community kind of fell apart too. So nothing was left. Frown!

Anyway, best of luck guys. I think the forum recovering will take awhile no matter what initiative ultimately ends up coming into play. Over time, it can work. PC's core strengths still exist. So there's that.

My only other point is that as much as I like talking it out in threads like this, I think at some point you just have to stop thinking and start doing. Not like the two are mutually exclusive, but building a community and battling again is very much something that happens from just doing the things this forum is for - battling (first and foremost) and socializing!

Best of luck, guys.

I think it might be a good idea to try, though it's not really like there are a lot of people here right noww. I'm currently learning NU and maybe having a "nonstandard" tier as our main might help differentiate us from other sites like, if you want OU go to smogon but if you want NU try PC? Idk it might be worth a shot to try focusing on it.

I don't see how focusing on NU makes us any different from Smogon. They have a larger community that plays the tier, owns the tier, and therefore makes it easier to make a difference on the metagame (helping decide bans, starting trends, etc.) if one participates there. The same applies to using any of Smogon's BW tiers. Unless we come up with something that makes us different from Smogon's NU community, I don't see this working any better than the way we are now.

Maybe it wasn't our similarities to Smogon that doomed us but rather the absolute stagnation in both thought and action of our battling community? To me, Smogon isn't a real threat to our userbase as long as PC is fairly vibrant. After all, once you make friends here and get acclimated to the culture and accepted into the community, why leave? What does PC not have that Smogon does? Their ladder is necessary but little else is.

Of course, PC's battling community isn't vibrant at all anymore. Or at least it wasn't when I left. Which I think is more of the problem than Smogon's superpower status, something that wasn't even a problem until PC became so unbearable that I think people leaving was inevitable whether Smogon has been there as a competitor or not. I think focusing on just making PC fun again is the best policy. Not active, fun. And just rebuild what once existed.

edit: (brought this up because I feel like not doing things because "that doesn't make us distinct from smogon" is a very narrow approach)

I mean, I think it's a worth a try especially since most of our battlers play NU, but it doesn't give new users a reason to join us instead of Smogon. However, I don't think we should force ourselves to try something we don't want to do simply to make us unique. I suppose the best option for us in the end is to simply use the forum: post discussions, help new users with their teams, create fun events, etc. Maybe we can revisit this later?

Oh, and forgot to reply to server business. Petie hasn't had a chance to get the server up again. I might attempt to make one myself for the time being, but node.js (program required for making a PS server) refuses to work. Or I could remake the PO server, but my router has such strict security settings I'm not sure if it'll allow others to connect.

Wolflare said:

I mean, I think it's a worth a try especially since most of our battlers play NU, but it doesn't give new users a reason to join us instead of Smogon. However, I don't think we should force ourselves to try something we don't want to do simply to make us unique. I suppose the best option for us in the end is to simply use the forum: post discussions, help new users with their teams, create fun events, etc. Maybe we can revisit this later?

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Is that really how things work? I feel like the forum someone joins is pretty random to begin with and it's more a matter of making it interesting and fun so people want to stick around.

I agree with the rest though. I don't think the issue of fun is something to revisit though as it is of the utmost importance. I can only speak for myself, but I left because nothing happened and...it just wasn't fun!

Anyway, I'll stop intruding in this thread. Good luck everyone!

Is that really how things work? I feel like the forum someone joins is pretty random to begin with and it's more a matter of making it interesting and fun so people want to stick around.

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Yeah, that's true.

I agree with the rest though. I don't think the issue of fun is something to revisit though as it is of the utmost importance. I can only speak for myself, but I left because nothing happened and...it just wasn't fun!

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I meant revisit on how to make BC distinct from other battle forums. I think the obvious choice for making this place fun again is reviving the NU Discussion and perhaps spark some life in it, ya? Most people play NU, and everyone's opinions on OU is very...polarized. Before I do anything though, I have to learn how to play NU first.

Anyway, I'm working on getting a PO server that we can use before Petie gets the PS server up again. I'll let you guys know once I get the server working (if that happens). No luck.

Anti said:

Maybe it wasn't our similarities to Smogon that doomed us but rather the absolute stagnation in both thought and action of our battling community? To me, Smogon isn't a real threat to our userbase as long as PC is fairly vibrant. After all, once you make friends here and get acclimated to the culture and accepted into the community, why leave? What does PC not have that Smogon does? Their ladder is necessary but little else is.

Of course, PC's battling community isn't vibrant at all anymore. Or at least it wasn't when I left. Which I think is more of the problem than Smogon's superpower status, something that wasn't even a problem until PC became so unbearable that I think people leaving was inevitable whether Smogon has been there as a competitor or not. I think focusing on just making PC fun again is the best policy. Not active, fun. And just rebuild what once existed.

edit: (brought this up because I feel like not doing things because "that doesn't make us distinct from smogon" is a very narrow approach)

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You aren't wrong or anything, but Smogon doesn't have a monopoly on competitive battling entirely; Serebii's battle section is fairly active [very by pcomm's standards], so I guess that proves that its possible to actually have a thriving, for lack of better words, battles section that isn't Smogon. There are obviously negative connotations that go along with the name Serebii and many of them are true; but this battle community is at around the same skill level or whatever as them.

Wolflare said:

Anyway, I'm working on getting a PO server that we can use before Petie gets the PS server up again. I'll let you guys know once I get the server working (if that happens). No luck.

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There's also currently a server called PokeCommunity server. :( I think we're better off just waiting til we get PS back tbh.

I think I've seen this point raised somewhere in the thread, but I want to point out how it could help. Instead of trying to make people join (or be a BC regular) right now, the regulars should first sharpen their skills at a specific tier, work their way to the other tiers and follow-through. If you think that the community is already skilled in NU (I think it is), then everyone should try their hand at another tier (UU or OU, for example). They could accommodate other people to try the tier too, and make it some sort of a mutual relationship.

Real-time chat is also very helpful. Smogon has a large irc community (I think they almost own synirc lol), but PC doesn't. PC has #thepokecommunity, but talking about battling there annoys some people. shnen actually had the liberty to make a channel for team building and, to an extent, competitive battling (or just battling itself). It isn't official or anything, but it's there. Nothing is more helpful than real-time help, nothing. The lack of a server doesn't help either. Having an irc channel would really help, imo.

That's just my 2 cents right now. I have more to say, but I have to go to school in 30 minutes and I'm still not ready yet lol.

Requility said:

There's also currently a server called PokeCommunity server. :( I think we're better off just waiting til we get PS back tbh.

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I know right lol!! I was wondering what that was.

Zeffy said:

I think I've seen this point raised somewhere in the thread, but I want to point out how it could help. Instead of trying to make people join (or be a BC regular) right now, the regulars should first sharpen their skills at a specific tier, work their way to the other tiers and follow-through. If you think that the community is already skilled in NU (I think it is), then everyone should try their hand at another tier (UU or OU, for example). They could accommodate other people to try the tier too, and make it some sort of a mutual relationship.

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I don't know, that's asking a lot. It takes a while to learn a new tier. We're having difficulty getting an active community that can simply play one tier to begin with. We'll definitely branch out to other tiers later once we've established a community that can battle.

Real-time chat is also very helpful. Smogon has a large irc community (I think they almost own synirc lol), but PC doesn't. PC has #thepokecommunity, but talking about battling there annoys some people. shnen actually had the liberty to make a channel for team building and, to an extent, competitive battling (or just battling itself). It isn't official or anything, but it's there. Nothing is more helpful than real-time help, nothing. The lack of a server doesn't help either. Having an irc channel would really help, imo.

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Having both a IRC channel and a battle server seems a bit pointless to me. We've traditionally used the battle server for real-time chat, since it's practically the same thing but with the option to battle (afaik?). I would be fine with an IRC channel, but then no one would visit the battle server. And if there's no one on the battle server, there wouldn't be a point in having it. Unless you guys would rather have an IRC channel, and use the official PS server for battling? However, we could use the channel for when the server is down and Petie is too busy to get it back up (right now, basically).

Wolflare said:

I don't know, that's asking a lot. It takes a while to learn a new tier. We're having difficulty getting an active community that can simply play one tier to begin with. We'll definitely branch out to other tiers later once we've established a community that can battle.

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That was what I was saying. I apologize if my wording was confusing, I wrote that 5 minutes after waking up. I don't know why, but I just did. u_u

Wolflare said:

Having both a IRC channel and a battle server seems a bit pointless to me. We've traditionally used the battle server for real-time chat, since it's practically the same thing but with the option to battle (afaik?). I would be fine with an IRC channel, but then no one would visit the battle server. And if there's no one on the battle server, there wouldn't be a point in having it. Unless you guys would rather have an IRC channel, and use the official PS server for battling? However, we could use the channel for when the server is down and Petie is too busy to get it back up (right now, basically).

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I'm all up for using the irc channel for when the server is down (which is, as you have said, right now). When the server is back up, then I suppose we could use that for real-time chat instead of the irc.

Just posting to say that we now have a PS server thanks to PPN (and Nica for asking?)! I'm not sure if this is temporary or not though (waiting for Nica to verify this). Here is the URL anyway: http://tinyurl.com/tpcbattleserver

I think I remember her saying that the server was for, uhmm, the PCX. If it's going to be permanent then that would be great, but when we tested it last night the ladders weren't working yet.

That's because the server needed to be registered. It's all good now.

I'm not familiar with running PS servers and such, I'm glad it's all good now. Hopefully this server is going to stay! :3