CBC Improvement Thread

[Wolflare]

I'm fine with either Saturday or Sunday. I'll be busy Saturday until around 8 PM though.

Originally Posted by Anti

The Improvement ComNight!

I prefer Community Meeting. It sounds very important.

Originally Posted by Karpman

Anyways I'm posting to ask if Impo's league post is still a thing.

I doubt it, because he's unable to use PO for a while. I have a few things in the works anyway.

[Forever]

Do it Saturday imo, the quicker the better.

[Wolflare]

Just so everyone knows, we decided to not hold the meeting, or whatever you want to call it. There weren't enough people online, so it wouldn't be worth bothering with it. We're going to do something instead soon (as in, tomorrow most likely).

[Anti]

NOTE: We were going to do this as the "Community Meeting" but due to some last-minute scheduling issues, we're just going to use this thread to say what we were going to. We may still have the Community Meeting, but for now, discussing in this thread will do. AKA what Wolf just said.

Wolf and I formulated this after a ton of internal discussion. Please do read it all despite its length as we have given it a lot of time, effort, and thought!

Anyway, the first thing we wanted to bring up is how we feel like the initiative for creating "activity" or just for making the forum more fun has always rested entirely on the shoulders of S&M/CBC staff. This isn't necessarily a problem, but we think it would keep you guys involved a lot more if everyone collectively determines what initiatives we take. For example, instead of Wolf and I saying "well, time for a ComNight" and then having one, one of you guys can ask if you can run it in this thread (we will say yes, it's just so that multiple people don't plan on it at once) and then do it yourself. And if you need our help with anything or you have an emergency on the day of the event or something like that, we can step in and do whatever you need. And really, ComNight is just example: if no one wants to do a ComNight and you guys would rather do something like the Hunger Games event that was proposed a few months ago, more power to you. We just want fun things to be going on. We definitely feel like T&E has great potential and is merely dormant. If awoken, it could be really awesome much like Battle Stadium once was. You guys can basically post any event that your imagination deems worthy of being posted, so have something in mind, fire away.

In other words, we want you guys to determine what events we do because you guys know better than we do; at times it is frustrating when we feel like we don't really know what anyone wants to do. So that is in part what this more decentralized approach is trying to solve. Also, unless it's a ComNight or an official PC tournament, you don't even need to post here for approval to run your event. You can just make it and post it. We don't want to get in the way though like I said, we are always willing to help if anyone needs it. But as Vrai said during the 2011 "let's fix S&M/CBC" wave, "become the change that you wish to see." And we will provide all the necessary support.

Similarly, we feel like discussion threads have been completely ignored, and even at the height of the forum years ago they were virtually nonexistent. Discussions are engaging and fun if the topic is good. Either use the Chat sticky or post a thread, but if you feel like nothing is going on or you just think a specific topic is particularly thought-provoking, post it! I know that I have reacted pretty negatively to the threads about tier placement, but we're not going to lock anything unless multiple people break the rules. It's as simple as that. Don't feel held back at all. We just wanted to bring up the fact that while discussions threads are not traditional, they can be awesome. Just look at Dragonspiral Tower on Smogon. Even individual Pokemon, items, or moves can be discussed if you want. There are lots of possibilities. Don't forget the possibility of posting a thread about a different metagame (and maybe even a tournament to complement it if you're a superstar) as this can give battling (and competitive Pokemon in general) more variety, especially for people who don't like BW. Though again we stress that you should only do what you want to do. We just wanted to throw this out there because it is a forgotten possibility. Don't feel obligated to post them or in them, but you can always post a discussion if you want.

In truth, this isn't some groundbreaking thing. We have just noticed that sometimes us CBCers like to blame others for activity woes or complain about activity in general without actually doing anything productive to combat the problem. This is our answer to that. Activity bad? Make a tour. Rate or post a team. Post a discussion thread. Host a ComNight. Make any kind of event you want. It's easy to get pessimistic, but if everyone has the outlet to channel that frustration into fun events or helping each other with our teams, we think it will be much easier to see real improvement. And no one will have any excuses; we will collectively take responsibility for the fate of the forum.

That's the main thing. The few remaining points require less talking on my part but are no less important. YOU'RE ALMOST THERE!

I just alluded to this, but there is no point in being pessimistic. We're not sure where everyone stands on how bright you think the forum's future is, but it will never improve if we don't think it will. It sounds corny, but it's true. And if you're upset about something, use this thread. Wolf and I both feel like the Improvement Thread is a vastly underutilized resource. It's here for a reason. If you have a complaint, don't be afraid to post it. If we wanted to be above criticism, we would have kept it in Staff Forums. (This thread is just the old "let's fix S&M" thread reincarnated so that you guys would be more involved.) It's much better if you post your issues now in this thread rather than a "goodbye PC" rant a few months later. If you have to throw someone under the bus and it's not appropriate for the thread, PM Wolf or myself and we'll do our best to solve the problem. Don't just say nothing!

Next up is RMTs. To be honest, Wolf and I have both to varying extents wondered if they matter as much as they once did. Indeed, we don't want to force you guys to do it. Forums are to have fun, not to do something you don't want to for the sake of activity. All we ask though is that, if you need help with your team, use the main forum, as it is there for a reason. We also want to stress that your team doesn't have to be some ladder-climbing behemoth with overwhelming aesthetics in the RMT to match. Six Pokemon, some short descriptions, and maybe some sprites to make it pretty (and easier to rate) is plenty. Feel free to go the extra mile, but don't forget the "rate" in "rate my team." Their function is to get you help!

In terms of rating, we know some of you view it as a chore. Just know that you don't need long, in-depth rates to be helpful and make a difference. Again, going the extra mile is great, but rating used to be much more simplistic and everyone seemed to enjoy it more. Coincidence? Maybe not. We definitely would like to hear your thoughts on this (and what was mentioned in the previous paragraph) though as it (the inactivity of the RMT scene) has puzzled and even divided Wolf and I at times. We don't quite know what to make of it or where people stand (and why). This might be better for the Community Meeting, but we might as well bring it up now.

And on that note, feel free to comment on or discuss anything we brought up...or even something else if you feel like there is something important that needs to be addressed. We just want everyone to be on the same page going forward so that we have the best forum possible and to ensure that everything is harmonious.

[Dark Azelf]

Well my ideas;

Originally Posted by Dark Azelf

Anti told me to post here.

Those of you were here in 2007 may remember a thing called "the legion of supremacy". When i first joined PC, it was one of the most fun ideas and things ive done. Original guy to post the thread was a guy called artful-one iirc.

Basically it entails the following;

You join and are in the lowest rank (which was 8 iirc, unless he knew you were better and placed you accordingly) and then once you win 2 or 3 matches (forgot which, but its one point per match for a win and -1 for a loss) in a row and thus 3 points you move up a rank to 7 and so on and so forth. If you lose 3 match in a row you lose a rank. Post results and challenges in the thread, give logs to the OP (back in the day we used wifi though, but this could still be used now also in addition to PO lol)

Id very much like to bring this back. What do you think ?

Ofc ill need help with formatting.

Also i have another idea, "the Pokecommunity frontier" in which you face "brains" in a best out of 3 battles and get badges in battles of the brains choice like anything from NU to uber and even doubles, random or whatnot. Obv this is still an idea and needs more refining, but what do you think ?

[Alexial357]

Forever told me I should post this here. :> I'm just going to copy and paste my entire blog into this post so half of it seems a little oddly worded because of the context.

**

Hello everyone.

So, I found some time to check out the CBC today. Which, of course, means I stumbled upon the CBC Improvement / Discussion thread and, subsequently, Anti's very powerful post about the new horizons being breached. Now, I consider myself guilty. I'm one of those repeat "Yay let's change stuff! - No wait, I'm gone" offenders. Even though I never made my exit official or truly receded from competitive battling, there is no doubt I have completely cut myself off from the friends I have made in my time here. But I digress.

I'm going to pitch some ideas I have and ask some silly questions that I hope can be answered.

~~

Now, I really liked the post D_A made in response to Anti's post about changing the etiquette of the CBC. In fact, the idea reminded me a lot of how EVs work. Maybe D_A's tourny idea can be tweaked to follow that theme (ie: 4 wins = 1 step / point). I'm sure you all know what I'm getting at here. However, while it might seem like a cute change, the problem lies with participation in the event- not so much how the event is conducted.

Another thing that has been working for me (admittedly, it may not - and probably will not - work for everyone because of its "forced" nature) is watching the Pokemon shows. Even though it may not be available to everyone at the same time, or at all, I found that if I make I conscious effort to watch the shows I always, at least, think about picking up my computer and saying hello to everyone. In fact, this is one of those moments. Having a structured and scheduled time of day to spend 15 minutes on PC has been enough to integrate it back into my routine somewhat. Again, this structure is what inspired this blog and may inspire more posts / general activity to come. Who knows? Maybe orienting one's day around more Pokemon (but not PC related Pokemon) can end with one silly little post.

I also have a question for everyone (or whoever is most qualified to answer based on their general consensus of the CBC-goers). Is the inactivity experienced by everyone stemming a boredom of competitive battling? Or have they fallen out of love with PC as a whole? I ask this because I'm not even sure why my inactivity began. I mean, I got busy yeah.. but somewhere along the line I just stopped caring too. There have been numerous moments where I have the free time to make a post but I just don't feel like it. Maybe having an understanding of where this inactivity came from can give us better insight on how to combat it.

This brings me to my next point. I love how Anti's post doesn't revolve around "fighting inactivity as hard as possible" (which always seems to be our first reaction - at least, since I was around) but builds the case of making the forum more flexible and accommodating to newcomers and those who have the ability to participate but choose not to. This idea is why I'm posting this blog with some of my observations and will post it into the thread depending on the feedback.

I would now like to bring up the point of RMTs. While writing this blog, I thought, "Well, if I had a good idea for a team, I might actually use it". Now, I, like all of you, have told many newcomers "we can't build teams for you, you have to at least have some kind of idea and a partially constructed team to pitch us before we can rate it". So, I had this idea to tweak that rule a tad. What if we made a community built team? Like, we all offer one or two Pokemon that can be revised periodically based on team weaknesses or occurring trends. It can be a team used by anyone featuring some of our spontaneous or gimmicky ideas and represent what we as a community can accomplish based on our collective knowledge. That way, we can freely battle with one team if the mood ever strikes and report the outcomes (which will ultimately help in identifying weaknesses) and no one will have to shoulder the weight of building on their own.

~~

And that's all I got. If any of these ideas / questions have been presented and dismissed, please disregard this blog. Good luck to you guys. I'll try to hop on again tonight.

**

I hope these ideas can be expanded upon at some point.

[Forever]

I just had an idea for in-game team help. :3 Basically a lot of the threads are from different games/generations and often people get confused or just skim over the generation, this issue doesn't really exist with the main CBC forum as much as it does with ingame. But yeah, to solve that... possibly a prefix system?

So prefixes of:

[RB]
[Y]
[GS]
[C]
[RS]
[E]
[FRLG]
[DP]
[P]
[HGSS]
[BW]

& possibly B2W2 later?

Might make it a little easier for people, since in the matching games, the breeding/TMs are the same and if people specialise in a certain generation and see that, they might be more likely to rate.

[Anti]

Originally Posted by Dark Azelf

post

I'm all for both things. I will say that the Legion of Supremacy seems like it could turn into a bureaucratic mess unless it's kept up with really well, so it would take a commitment to keep it updated. But am I against it? Nah, it sounds like a nice, straightforward thing.

I really really like the PC Frontier idea. It's pretty simple yet actually beating all of the brains would be a pretty nice accomplishment and a fun challenge as well. I'd be happy to help you refine it and then get this up and running. I know Smogon does something similar, and as far as I know it was good.

Originally Posted by Alexial357

post

Don't feel guilty! Sometimes life gets in the way.

Community Team has been proposed before but nothing came out of it - we didn't fail, it was just never tried. I think at the very least it would be a fun way for everyone to contribute to something. The problem of not having a team has definitely plagued me...maybe a team building workshop of some sort could be beneficial alongside a community team? I'm curious what others think about it.

My favorite part of your post, I must admit, was the question about why people are inactive. First, I think that to some extent, it can be easy to overstate inactivity because the scene here isn't really dead, it just could be better. But I think your question is a good one because this is something Wolf and I have been a bit puzzled about and it was a motivating factor behind the more "decentralized" structure of the forum we want to create. Speaking personally, I stopped rating and posting as I stopped battling. As the DPP metagame because increasingly *meh* and battling started to stress me out a little too much, I stopped. It took awhile, but eventually, it just wore me out. It didn't help that this was during my first mod tenure which did not go well and I was frustrated with myself and everyone else. And even now, it can be a stressful job, and real life can be stressful too.

Looking forward, I just want a stable, fun metagame to play. I built a pretty good OU team and then Excadrill got banned, and then my rebuilt team suffered when Thundurus got banned. Of course. I know Vrai is about to post something about NU and I will follow up with something about Gen 3 OU. I'm especially looking forward to trying out NU which Vrai swears by!

I'm definitely curious to see what others have to say. Being inactive isn't a crime or anything, but at the very least we want to make the forum as awesome as possible so that people will want to be here which will definitely be easier if we have some more insight. I think you hit the nail on the head. Invite people to respond to your inquiry here, IMO.

Originally Posted by Forever

post

I find prefixes ugly and I feel like they won't stop people from not checking the generation. Nevertheless, I don't see the harm. I will probably just defer to Wolf/anyone else who has an opinion.

[Dark Azelf]

Ive just stopped caring about battling OU in general at the end of the last suspect round, of course you arent going to agree with me but OU has become a stale poop pit and as it is my favourite tier there literally is no point in playing it anymore because of the no suspect tests for it. Its boring, nothing happens in it, same old crap every battle. Id even prefer those "can we test Lugia and Giratina" in ou posts to be put into commission over this swamp of staleness lol. I mean i could get to #1 now but what is the point ? Voting reqs was a big motivational factor for me to have MY say on things.

Our own suspect tests that i proposed earlier may help a little with this but hmm.

Ive played ubers/other gens recently, but no one PC really plays them so it makes me less motivated to do so. =/

Even up until last year id of posted my threat list AND my tourneys by now and enthusiastically. Now im just like "whats the point?" and more recently just "ughhh" and ive even been questioning taking a LoA and quitting mons until next gen so hopefully it wont be as sucky. I might try NU as a last gasp for interest. Im only on the server now to have fun with you guys lol.

Essentially tl;dr, because pokemon sucks now and was once fun because of me being able to participate in OU suspect tests i find it hard to have fun here now too.

^Thats the reason why i havent been as active here as i once was.

[Wolflare]

I have been thinking about T&E a lot lately, and what should be done with it. In my opinion, we should start out small, and build on it. Clans simply aren't working. Each clan requires at least 5 active battlers (15 overall for three clans), which we clearly don't have. I can only think of about 3-5 members who actively visit CBC and battle. We don't have enough members for clans to thrive, and even if we did, they probably wouldn't be active regardless. No matter how many clan events we introduce, clans individually will stay inactive. I find that clans are outdated now that battle simulators are being used instead of Wi-Fi. Back then, clans were used to schedule battles and trades between clan members, which greatly enhanced activity. (Not to mention everyone was probably more enthusiastic about battling, because Wi-Fi battling was released recently.) Now they're just seen as another way to ladder, post your battles, and nothing else. I doubt anything will happen within clans, outside of tournaments. Speaking of clan tournaments, I believe they're redundant. Why should there be tournaments within a very small clan that can barely garner any members to hold one, when there could be a tournament between the entire community? We need activity within the actual community before we try and split it up. It's understandable if we were a large forum, such as Smogon, since members might want to hold a tournament within a group of friends. But that isn't the case for us, CBC is too small for that to work. What I am saying is, it's possible to have events like a competition between every clan, but to make each clan active separately, would be very difficult to do. Even if that did happen, I doubt we would be able to retain that activity. Not only that, but we always have to worry about keeping clans active if clans stay. What if we want another event? Not going to happen unless clans become active, since we don't want to distract attention from clans to the new event. We are likely to run into these problems again and again. I think we were too confident when we made clans. Activity was booming at the time we made clans, so we didn't think about the problems clans would introduce if that short span of activity disappeared. I propose that we abolish clans.

The actual concept of clans won't be lost, or at least we would have something similar. I have been wanting to do something similar to the Smogon Premier League. Unlike clans, each team wouldn't have their own thread to keep active. We would keep the battling discussion in the battling chat where it belongs, while the ladder will remain as a convenient method to find a battle. Basically, it would be a tournament consisting of teams. Therefore, we wouldn't to worry about keeping clans active. I am not saying this should be made soon after removing clans however. Just like clans, it requires quite a lot of members to function. It's a possibility later down the road as a better replacement to clans.

What I think we should start with is the PC tournament, along with the Community Night. Echoing what I said before with the PC tournament, we could hold different themes after each tournament to keep things interesting. Perhaps we should make a main thread for PC tournament discussion. Then make separate threads for the themed tournaments that can be posted and hosted (lol) by different members. The main thread would be for discussing the next theme, deciding on who should host the next tournament, etc. I think this would be a simple and easy way to encourage battling in different tiers (and battling in general) and makes things more interesting around here. Additionally, tournaments technically only need 4 members to work. Obviously, that wouldn't be very exciting, but we have to start somewhere. If we can keep this and Community Night running properly, I'm sure activity will eventually increase and we can then produce slightly bigger events. That isn't counting independent tournaments, as well as PO server tournaments. After that, the main forum might become more active once we have more members to post RMTs and such.

tl;dr: get rid of clans, revive the official pc tournament that consists of themes, and get commnight working again

replies:

Spoiler:

@ Dark Azelf: Legion of Supremacy sounds like the annual Get-Together tournaments I host. Essentially a point-based tournament, yes? We could either keep it exclusive to the GT, or have it all year around, with the risk of members eventually losing interest. The ladder is pretty much the same thing as well, just on the server.

Your Battle Frontier idea is the same as a league, right? Basically, have roughly 5 members as "brains", "gym leaders", or whatever, and everyone else can challenge them to see if they can beat them all. I think it's very possible. Also, I really like your "best out of 3 battles" idea, it fixes the issue we had with the past PC league and Motisma league (hax). And it would be more difficult to fish for hax by battling the same gym leader over and over. We should definitely incorporate this in the next league, and possibly tournaments. I have seen it work for Smogon's tournaments.

@ Alexial: Regarding your "Yay let's change stuff! - No wait, I'm gone" comment, I'm sure everyone has done that at least once. I have done it many times in the past, so you shouldn't worry about it haha. I do think we should try and retain a decent amount of activity constantly, instead of having these short bursts of activity that dies down a week later. We should try to log onto PC at least three times a week, or something similar.

"Is the inactivity experienced by everyone stemming a boredom of competitive battling? Or have they fallen out of love with PC as a whole?" Probably the latter, I'm sure members have lost interest after all of CBC's tried attempts to be active. We also can't fix the former, because even with events battling will still remain as a boring activity for them. I think trying different tiers and themes should make battling more interesting however. It's true that doesn't work when there's not many people playing in different tiers, but the PC tournament and tier discussion threads could help with that. Personally, I'm very confident that if we begin with small events, and then introduce bigger events as activity increases, we should do fine. But that's only possible if everyone makes the effort to make that possible by participating in tournaments and such.

Sorry to be like "we already thought of that lolz!!" with Elf, but Community Create-A-Team is one of the events we have thinking about doing (see this). Regardless, it's definitely something we should consider.

@ Forever: Maybe. We had prefixes for CBC (or was it S&M? idr) in the past, but they were pretty ugly. Most members tend to ignore them when making a thread as well.

[Alexial357]

Thank you everyone for your input. I really love how this thread is going so far. I believe, even if this thread dies, nothing but good thing can come from it.

Originally Posted by Anti

Looking forward, I just want a stable, fun metagame to play. I built a pretty good OU team and then Excadrill got banned, and then my rebuilt team suffered when Thundurus got banned. Of course. I know Vrai is about to post something about NU and I will follow up with something about Gen 3 OU. I'm especially looking forward to trying out NU which Vrai swears by!

Anti, thank you for your support!

It really sounds like breaking out of this OU revolving door can freshen up this forum. I would love to try something new, and I certainly would if given the proper information (because I'm lazy and I don't want to do the research myself – perhaps others are in this boat also). If a few members are willing to start a series of threads and state a case for why another tier could be better suited for some individuals, (including various information about what Pokemon are commonly used, how battles differ and are therefore more interesting, etc.) members could have access to anything they would need to make an educated decision and build a team. Forever posted a “best tier” thread, I imagine it being something like that but specifically focusing on one tier and how it compares to OU. An “everything you need to know about – inset tier – and resource guide”, you know? Can't wait to hear what you and Vrai have to say!

This can also tie in nicely to Wolf's point of trying new tiers / themes = more interest. Posting tier specific, informative threads could be the catalyst that inspires more community driven events and, subsequently, more RMTs and forum activity.

Originally Posted by Wolflare

What I think we should start with is the PC tournament, along with the Community Night. Echoing what I said before with the PC tournament, we could hold different themes after each tournament to keep things interesting. Perhaps we should make a main thread for PC tournament discussion. Then make separate threads for the themed tournaments that can be posted and hosted (I enjoyed this also) by different members. The main thread would be for discussing the next theme, deciding on who should host the next tournament, etc. I think this would be a simple and easy way to encourage battling in different tiers (and battling in general) and makes things more interesting around here. Additionally, tournaments technically only need 4 members to work. Obviously, that wouldn't be very exciting, but we have to start somewhere. If we can keep this and Community Night running properly, I'm sure activity will eventually increase and we can then produce slightly bigger events. That isn't counting independent tournaments, as well as PO server tournaments. After that, the main forum might become more active once we have more members to post RMTs and such.

tl;dr: get rid of clans, revive the official pc tournament that consists of themes, and get commnight working again

Wolf, this idea of starting slow (4 player tournaments etc) and allowing this ripple effect to spread throughout the community is very strong. At the end of the day, no one can force anyone to be more active or battle if they no longer find anything in it for them. However, giving the proper incentives to somewhat active members, providing more structure - but not demanding - for commnight, and lessening structure in all the right places, may give other members (old and new) the motivation they need to just show up and see how it's going. I know I would at least take the time to visit. Early tournaments don't necessarily have to be exciting. But they do have to occur for a plethora of reasons. Themes can work as an excellent vessel to keep activity up and members interested. And maybe there can be an influx of willing participants and morale once a few tournaments have come and gone successfully. With the current size of the CBC, expecting anymore more may be, as it has been in the past, too overwhelming.

Slow and steady could very well win this race.

EDIT : Also, I had an idea for an emblem. I'll include that here cause this seems like the most appropriate place. And yes, I did just see Vrai's amazing NU thread. :>

Spoiler:

RMT Junkie

>>You've posted so many RMTs that you must have a problem! Keep up those good ideas!

I know the new emblem thing was done way back when in March, but I didn't see it until 5 minutes ago. I think you guys had an emblem like this before too.. but I digress. Obviously, this emblem would be geared toward new members to encourage them to post more RMTs. Kind of plays on the "Ladder Addict" theme. Captions / image / whatnot is yours to alter.

[Forever]

So although you mentioned removing clans, I have purposely not been posting in mine because of that, so... is that officially happening or no? I'd still want to have clans but clan inactivity is not fun. :(

Alsooo... when is the completed guide thing going up (is it being worked on rn?) Just wondering. :3

[PlatinumDude]

I'd like to suggest something for CBC. How about making the OP in each thread specify what generation that team is from? I always rate assuming Gen V if it's not specified, so I think that may be a good proposal.

[Dark Azelf]

Oh an idea that is fun, used to do it with people on official server when i played LU.

Basically you have two teams of people. Each team get their own channel and you each must create a team with certain restrictions i.e you are allowed one uber, you arent allowed to use SR etc. You are given a time limit to make a team and when you've done both teams battle each other. Its p fun.