It's Time For Change: S&M Revival Starts NOW

[Anti]

Isn't this a different context though? This isn't just joining a tournament since tutoring is something that is a process. If you only join a tournament for the incentive, you will still participate since it takes little time and is at least potentially very fun. But tutoring is a longer process and people joining just because they want a shiny reward (even one as crappy as emblems which is why I think it's a waste anyway but never mind that) is really a recipe for people joining on an impulse and then not following through on the commitment. If our well respected and established regulars had trouble holding up their end of the bargain someone attracted to tutoring for the emblem at the end (lol) probably won't be very useful.

As for contributor emblems, it just sounds silly. I mean, we have fabulous team rater emblems, but no one rates teams, so I mean...

And honestly, since I'm about 99.9999999% sure that none of our regulars take emblems seriously/remembered that they existed until they were brought up in this thread, why would they affect us? I mean, just about every contribution ever in this forum ("golden days" or now) has been from a regular--at least the good contributions. And honestly, how is a new user even going to know about the "reward" at all? I don't know, this seems like a total gimmick and I think we're kidding ourselves if we act like emblems are going to have even a minor impact.

And yes, I realize it's not a big deal regardless of what momentous, ground-breaking decision is come to about emblems. But still, why put in a bad incentive when we can put in a good incentive? Even though I don't like incentives much (note how some of my arguments can be applied to all incentives), I feel like we should at least do them well if we're going to do them.

 

[RealWorld]

S&M is breaking? Impossible, why do you think I joined? For this small forum, of course. I hope to see some more activity as the new generation gains popularity.

 

[Vrai]

As far as the incentive for the to-be tutored, isn't it good enough incentive to just be getting better?

 

[yellowbird]

Uhm, yeah, my opinion/input is probably really out of place here, but I've always wanted to post here but been sort of scared. You people ARE really scary.

But I would really love to be tutored if that ever got up and running... I don't know.

Becoming increasingly less confident about posting this due to scare factor. Ah.

 

[Aurafire]

Uhm, yeah, my opinion/input is probably really out of place here, but I've always wanted to post here but been sort of scared. You people ARE really scary.

But I would really love to be tutored if that ever got up and running... I don't know.

Becoming increasingly less confident about posting this due to scare factor. Ah.

It's good that you have some interest in the tutoring program. It'll be up and running fairly soon, so keep checking back and stuff ^^

By the way, we don't mean to be scary. We're actually a nice bunch, and we're always like having new people post teams/come on the server who are eager to learn. I think people get the wrong impression because of all the competitive jargon we use :(

 

[wolf]

Isn't this a different context though? This isn't just joining a tournament since tutoring is something that is a process. If you only join a tournament for the incentive, you will still participate since it takes little time and is at least potentially very fun. But tutoring is a longer process and people joining just because they want a shiny reward (even one as crappy as emblems which is why I think it's a waste anyway but never mind that) is really a recipe for people joining on an impulse and then not following through on the commitment. If our well respected and established regulars had trouble holding up their end of the bargain someone attracted to tutoring for the emblem at the end (lol) probably won't be very useful.

As for contributor emblems, it just sounds silly. I mean, we have fabulous team rater emblems, but no one rates teams, so I mean...

And honestly, since I'm about 99.9999999% sure that none of our regulars take emblems seriously/remembered that they existed until they were brought up in this thread, why would they affect us? I mean, just about every contribution ever in this forum ("golden days" or now) has been from a regular--at least the good contributions. And honestly, how is a new user even going to know about the "reward" at all? I don't know, this seems like a total gimmick and I think we're kidding ourselves if we act like emblems are going to have even a minor impact.

And yes, I realize it's not a big deal regardless of what momentous, ground-breaking decision is come to about emblems. But still, why put in a bad incentive when we can put in a good incentive? Even though I don't like incentives much (note how some of my arguments can be applied to all incentives), I feel like we should at least do them well if we're going to do them.

After thinking about it / reading your post, I agree that the tutor and contributor emblems won't do well. Anyway, what other incentives are there? The only other idea I have is giving them mods for a day/week on the server, but no one would really care and people could abuse it.

As for apprentices for receiving emblems after participating, there could a few new people that care about emblems even though we don't really need rewards to get a lot of apprentices. Giving those apprentices who participate a flawless Pokemon or something similar (or the winners of the tour) would probably get us more users I assume. I still don't see the harm in them for apprentices, we might get a few members because of that.

(I did have more to say, but I noticed I was mostly repeating what you said sooo...)

 

[.Aero]

Well a flawless pokemon on Wifi doesn't seem like it would do much good if we bring up the apprentices in the Pokemon Online world, where you know...teams are just a click away. Just doesn't seem like a good incentive if you ask me. I'm sure some of the students will want a flawless pokemon, but I don't think that all of them will. I see it like this: If they learn through PO, they'll want to play PO.

 

[blaQk]

Honestly, I've read like five posts in this thread. Mainly because all of it is tl;dr.

But, bribing people to learn isn't the way to go about this. If they want to learn to play competitive pokemon, the will come. Their "reward" should be the knowledge they gain from the experience, not some emblem, pokemon, or whatever.

 

[Vrai]

@ all:

incentives should and will be "getting better at mons" and "meeting S&M regs/getting to know people online". i'll tell you one thing; you never get good at something until you get to be around other people who are good at it. i know hacking =/= competitive battling, but i hacked for about six months before i started getting involved in the community and i was about as good as gamer's dog's dump at it. i eventually got better by being around good people. the same happened with competitive battling; once i hung around the server a lot more, i got significantly better (though i can't really say i'm good yet). we shouldn't need to have rewards and stuff; if they're doing it for "emblems" and rewards then they shouldn't be doing it. the only incentives we need are for them to get better, and that's it.

 

[Anti]

If I may change the topic for a moment, I'd just like to comment on the state of our commitment to make S&M a less intimidating place.

Just from observing the server a lot since this thread was created, I have still seen people making of of other users, insulting users directly, or just being generally rude. In every case I can remember, it has been from people who should know better but either don't care or don't realize it. Since changing a culture like ours is difficult and takes time, I'm quite sure that it's the latter. But I still want to bring it to everyone's attention so that we can gradually become aware of how our actions might be perceived by others--in particular, people who could have been good members of the community but decided not to because of our actions.

So what do I mean specifically? Telling people that they suck, making fun of various users and posts on PC, and being condescending by being excessively sarcastic and treating people like they're idiots. Since all of this is stuff that none of our regulars have ever viewed as too alarming, I definitely give everyone a pass. But yeah, insulting people directly is still sending the message that "if you're a new user and you post something stupid, you will be the new community punching bag." That didn't change just because we pledged to be nice. The other actions apply to this in varying degrees.

Now look at the RMTs in the main forum. Most of the rates I see are just "this sucks and is inferior, replace it with this because this team stinks and doesn't work competitively." Not only is this unnecessarily cutthroat and discouraging (and sometimes even downright mean), but it also doesn't tackle the real problems that the OPs are having. People who are new to competitive battling aren't going to get it right on their first try. The point of rating new users' teams is not to fix the team as much as it is to put the OP in a position to make better teams. Like I said, no one gets it right on their first try, even the edited first try. When you just replace things (especially in a decidedly harsh and detached way), it's not helping so much. Maybe I'm alone in that philosophy, but the rating has to be less "lol dis teem sukz."

I guess what I'm saying is that perception is reality with new users. When you give off the impression that you think they suck and they're not "up to our level," then naturally it's going to be discouraging and people aren't exactly going to be lining up to join the community. I don't expect perfection or anything close to it until we can get used to not being "you-know-whats" (-_-), but I feel like some of us (if not all of us) don't really know what being nice means when applied to specific situations. I think we need to clarify that and work it out.

As a sort of postscript, what made me post this was my aforementioned server observations as well as this post, which I realized could have bee applied to various posts in various threads after reading through some of them.

 

[Ninja Caterpie]

Yeah, I just came back here to reiterate what Anti just said (lol). I thought "hey look all these RMTs this could be good!" and the first thread I see is a number of posts all saying "delibird is terrible", not all with explanation.

I hate to say it, but D_A's way of rating is kinda... rude, unnecessarily harsh, etc, what we kinda don't want. Most of the time it just says "use this > that because that is bad" with very little (if any) further explanation. Most people won't take it too badly, but...we really can't afford to lose that many anyway, so yeah. :| Plus what anti said; it usually doesn't help the player and it's practically making a team for them, which "we don't do in S&M".

PS. that D_A post Anti quote-quoted seems to be an outlier compared to normal. Honestly, if it wasn't for the distinctive writing style (ie. >>>>>>>>, :|), it would be hard to tell it was D_A.

 

[Pokedra]

I figured I should post here being a former-regular and all and from experience (they just couldn't appreciate my discussions threads!)

I think the most important is to get rid of this intimidation this section has. Most see it as kinda a "scary" section and don't want to post because they don't want to be laughed at for making a bad team. Also if someone posts a bad team, telling them to completely redo it is probably wrong as well as they'll think they spent quite a bit of time on it and now having to redo it makes them not want to post anymore. Help them for sure but let them figure out certain things by themselves, I'm sure most people will figure out that Xatu isn't viable in OU for example. I don't think there is anything wrong with making fun of each other as usually it's all in good fun however it's probably better to wait until they've been posting and around for a while before doing it. S&M is also what I considered one of the stricter sections on PC, I glad to see descriptions was dropped and that's not just because I was bad at them but people new to the metagame wouldn't know exactly what to write. Putting it as a requirement for a regular is fine however as it makes rating easier and it should't be a problem for them.

Also I feel this is very important, if you don't like a newcomer don't show it, just keep it to yourself. When I joined I had the feeling Luke and Anti didn't particularly like me which made me kinda uneasy and half-want to leave S&M despite the fact I enjoyed competitive battling quite a bit. I think people remember Chaostorm, he was pretty active in S&M at one point but left, we hated him cause he kept stealing jokes and making horrible ones like CBMagikarp. I think one of the reasons he left was because he realized we didn't like him...

More tourneys is a good idea though you'd have to make sure the people get the matches done and don't forget about it but that has always proved real frustrating. I don't agree with the emblems, most people don't care about it and the real reward of participating in S&M is to enjoy battling and improve not an emblem.

I think B/W is the kickstart S&M needs to become active again so just make sure everything is ready when it hits America.

 

[Dark Azelf]

I'm sure most people will figure out that Xatu isn't viable in OU for example.

It actually is well in B/W anyway lol. :x

Oh its also wonderful you come back now just after our "tourney" with smogon and various other forums start, go figure. >_> lol

But yes you need to active more sir.

 

[Silent Crest]

I have no idea what this thread is talking about. But I have 2 things I would like to see improved:

1.) Black and White - I stopped following Pokemon a while ago. But it appears that BW is seriously different from 4th gen and should have it's own forum.

2.) I think there should be some kind of tournament (preferably on Shoddy - I'm really busy and don't want to hack), gym league, or something like that. More-or-less to get out who is who and so forth.

 

[.Aero]

I have no idea what this thread is talking about. But I have 2 things I would like to see improved:

1.) Black and White - I stopped following Pokemon a while ago. But it appears that BW is seriously different from 4th gen and should have it's own forum.

2.) I think there should be some kind of tournament (preferably on Shoddy - I'm really busy and don't want to hack), gym league, or something like that. More-or-less to get out who is who and so forth.

1. Black and White certainly is different (I'm actually pretty ok at it. x3). A separate forum might not be necessary, seeing as how we have those thread labels when creating a new thread. Chances are Gen 4 teams will die down soon enough (especially this spring when B&W releases on DS for the rest of the world). Feel free to post any B&W teams in the forum and I'm sure people such as myself will rate them. :3

2. We've had quite a few tournaments, not for Shoddy though. Instead, most of us have migrated over to Pokemon Online, which is much more visually appealing and serves the same exact purpose with the same functionality (and then some). I suggest downloading that and visiting our server called the PC Battle Server.

:3

 

[Silent Crest]

I see. Thanks. I'm new here.

 

[wolf]

Might as well post this here as well, and to revive this:

I can't think of anything else other than reviving clans or community night. Also, just a thought, we could combine community night and the tutor sessions that we might have. Except, this time community night will be less tournament focused, with just one or two tournaments and leave the rest for tutoring (maybe tutor new people in the tournament battles). Discuss a Pokémon or two every time we have it? That probably won't work, but again just throwing it out there.

We do already have two experience check tournaments for the tutoring, but these would be more laid back and have themes I guess.

Edit: Oh, and community night doesn't have to always happen during nighttime.

Edit again: Could also help keep people who didn't make it as an apprentice involved. Well, without the community night that would be the same, but with it they could participate in tournaments.

 

[Anti]

The experience check tournaments being laid back and themed pretty much goes against their purpose which is to check progress. There is no incentive to be ready for them if they do not matter. Themes mean that the students aren't even being prepared by their tutors for the experience check, and if they are then they're not being taught about the standard metagame which matters much more than a gimmick.

The rest of it I don't have a problem with though. If people want to organize a Community Night for tutoring, it could have some upside, especially when it comes to getting the students a bit more immersed in the community outside of the tutoring program. However, I would make sure that there is widespread support for it from the students. If they don't want to do it, it'll just end up like most of the other ComNights did. The concept itself when we first started them was for a fairly laid-back (though not entirely void of competitiveness) atmosphere for tournaments to just have fun playing Pokemon. To maintain that, I agree, we would probably want to scale down the number of tournaments and make it more educational than competitive (though again, with some competitiveness still preserved there, as it is called competitive Pokemon for a reason).


Also, I did mean to post this a week or so ago. I might be alone in my view that the main forum will always be pretty dead unless us regulars start making teams. But in case I'm not, I just wanted to ask why no one rates teams...I must admit, I'm a little stumped. It seems like D_A carries most of the weight for the Gen 5 teams, which are just about all of the teams now. For those of you who have played Gen 5 about as extensively as you could have given how early on it is, why not rate? We do have rating rules in place (explain your suggestions, don't rate without proper knowledge, etc.), but we rarely enforce them. There is literally nothing to lose from rating teams outside of time, to be honest. Is it a feeling that you don't have anything useful to say? Or that the intimidation atmosphere still looms in the back of your mind? Do you not view rating as essential (I don't mean to bias you toward my viewpoint, I'm honestly just curious)? For those of you who don't rate teams often if at all (that's most of us), I'm just curious why.

On a similar note, I feel like there has been overall improvement based on the things we discussed in this thread. The intimidation thing is hopefully in decline, though it's still a little hard to tell. We do have a lot of people coming on the server every day though (even if you exclude the randoms who then never show up again), and the main forum has more RMTs posted by regulars than it has in awhile, I'd say. Those are all positive developments to be happy with. Hopefully we can increase their scale, especially as we get this tutoring program underway.

 

[wolf]

The experience check tournaments being laid back and themed pretty much goes against their purpose which is to check progress. There is no incentive to be ready for them if they do not matter. Themes mean that the students aren't even being prepared by their tutors for the experience check, and if they are then they're not being taught about the standard metagame which matters much more than a gimmick.

Well, I'm not saying the experience check tournaments should be replaced by the Community Night tournaments. The CN tournaments will be there just for fun, and tutors and their apprentices can make a few teams during that time. Then there will be a few laid back tournaments with everyone on the server involved (or just the students?). All the tutors could teach students how to make decisions, predicting, etc in their tournament battles. Of course, have the tutoring classes as well. I do agree we should ask the students' opinions before this is started.

Also, I'm not rating teams because I haven't battled enough to feel comfortable rating teams. :> Kind of got distracted recently by getting modded, and some real life matters...

Edit: Can we stop linking to new users' teams on the server? I personally don't find it funny, but whatever. Not sure if that is breaking the nice rule though.

 

[Dark Azelf]

Sorry to bump this.

But im becoming concerned with activity again. This place is shrivelling up again. :/

I get people have exams and whatnot but umm yeah..

Suggestions ?

Also i was wondering what you guys thought of;

+ A RMT Archive ? (Only the best teams go here for things like presentation and success with the team etc)

+ Contributor badges. We need these NOW. "If you need a badge to contribute something is wrong blah blah" no. We have people who contribute greatly, see: Wolf. These are actually deserved. My next point, REGULARS STILL ARE NOT RATING TEAMS. This would perhaps give some sort of intrinsic gain to regulars and make them want to rate teams, encourage discussion and post useful resources. It works for smogon, why wouldnt it work for us ? These are different from emblems btw which are seen as nothing special. Badges are more prestigious and would be displayed differently (maybe at the side of your name) and wouldn't be handed out so easily as emblems are.

+ Id like to see

these, so mod and select members/regulars (yeah i know if everyone could use them they would be abused) can give them to good teams and threads. This will not only make the OP feel better about their team and thus encourage more teams from more people and more threads in general. Again its an intrinsic gain and another thing that works for smogon.

Intrinsic gain is what we should be looking into here.

I mean "what have we got to lose?"


Just some ideas. Thoughts ?