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Anti July 26th, 2014 8:18 PM

Feedback: PC's Competitive Battling Community
 
"I asked wolf if I could post this."


Anyway, this thread is just a place for people to weigh in on PC's competitive battling community. I think it's safe to say that it's gone through a lot of transition in the past few years. Looking to the future, I think it would be very useful if community members themselves outlined how they view the forum and where they would like to see it go, both generally ("we should use the forum more") and more specifically ("let's bring back clans"). Some important considerations might include:


*Competitiveness: determining the ideal spot for PC on the casual-competitive spectrum and defining what that might mean in practical terms (for example, if we're more casual, what does this mean for our tournament and battling groups scenes?)

*Forum-Server Relationship: determining what respective roles the forum and server will have, how to better integrate the two to form a more cohesive community, etc., and "defining what that might mean in practical terms" (which I won't keep including but will probably apply to these other considerations)

*Staff Presence: determining the community's expectations of its staff members, on both the forum and the server, and how to make the staff work better for the community

*Server Atmosphere: determining what the ideal server atmosphere is, especially in terms of the focus of the main chat, how strict or lax rules and rule enforcement should be, etc.

*Forum Content: determining what content is the most useful, fun, and entertaining for us as a community, with such wide-ranging options as RMTs, battle logs, discussions threads, community projects (like a CCAT or team-building workshops), and tutoring

*Community Events and Groups: determining what types of events we want to have, whether it be tournaments, clans, leagues, ladder races, team-building competitions, or something else that you think would add to the competitive community here

*Community Growth: determining how to grow our community and expand our player-base, especially as it pertains to how our community interacts with newer players


So yeah, don't feel obligated to cover everything, as those topics are just there to frame the discussion a little.

And to be clear, I want to encourage people to discuss both the competitive community we have now and what we want it to be (and maybe how to get from the former to the latter), but really the tread is about as broad as its title suggests.

Post away.

champagnepapi July 26th, 2014 8:31 PM

I agree all this definitely needs to be adressed. Number one issue to me is competitiveness/server atmosphere and number two is fostering growth. I think the best way to promote growth is clans and leagues since newer players are more likely to get involved that way.

Anti July 27th, 2014 7:45 AM

In general, I think the community has improved a lot since last year, where (as far as I could tell) no one battled and the server was just painful. I'm really happy about that. I have a lot to say so I'll separate it into the categories from the OP, in ascending order of importance to me. If you simply must skim my post, at least read the very last section, as I prioritize it the most.

Spoiler:
Forum Content: I think this is pretty solid where it is. RMTs are obviously going to be a staple. I'd like to see more battle logs because they're far superior to replays in terms of entertainment value. Also, they have added benefits of inspiring contribution (perhaps in the form of another battle log), inspiring battling/team-building, and giving the forum more variety. I wouldn't mind a team-building workshop either since teams can be a major barrier to people battling, and having some pre-made teams for newer players seems like a good idea to me. I brought up tutoring in the OP but I think that's a lower priority, personally. I think there are plenty of good discussion topics that we should more actively try to unearth as well. And then actually participate in the discussion. But yeah, besides the total collapse of battle logs (RIP battle log forum), I think forum content is pretty good.


Spoiler:
Staff Presence: I worked with Wolf for a long time and obviously think highly of him, and have full confidence in Zeffy. On the server, I've often been frustrated with the inconsistent moderation (and have already brought it up privately). I get a warning for saying "fap" but a server moderator makes a rape joke and that's okay? Come on. I know a double standard when I see one. It's not too bad overall though. I also think that a rule that reinforces the societal taboo of masturbation is probably a little too paranoid (and I would argue regressive in nature), but this is also about the 103rd most important issue for the competitive battling community. So whatever lol.


Spoiler:
Community Growth: I think this is very important and needs to be kept in mind with how we approach these other things, but I do think it will kind of take care of itself as long as we're mindful of it.


Spoiler:
Events and Groups: Ah, the old subforum! We need more of these. Very casual tournaments on the server are nice, but I think tours can be a way to broaden battling experience, whether it be by trying a new tier or seeing how the game changes without weather (if this is BW) or Stealth Rock. I do think we should think outside the box and make events not just tournaments, regardless of how competitive or casual they are. There are other events to do (I'm sort of ignoring CommDay here but that's a good thing to have around) like a ladder race or maybe even a team building competition, which I think would be fun and challenging.

While I am not against clans or leagues, I think we need to explicitly lay out what it is we would want them to accomplish for the community. I wouldn't want leagues to be noob pits that are disconnected from the server community entirely, for example. (Nothing against noobs, but I think that we should be directing them toward integrating into the battling community here instead of being isolated and never really improving.) So if we brought back clans, what would we want them to accomplish, and how would they define their niche on PC? I'm not a Battle Stadium guy, so my knowledge and vision with these things is more limited.

I do think that overall though, battling groups are a good idea that add variety to the scene here. And with events, I think we can do more tours but also more than just tours. I don't think it's terrible right now, but there is a lot of room for improvement at the moment.


Spoiler:
Forum/Server Relationship: I think the integration is still a little lacking, but at the same time, I think it's better than it has been in awhile. I think it's a little weird that the regulars don't necessarily overlap, which I'll address in a moment, and I think that fact is the biggest issue with this. Really, they should go together quite well, in theory.

Perhaps it might be useful to define what exactly it is we want out of both, but I think that we kind of know this already. (Forum: RMTs, formal discussion, event organization, logs, etc. Server: battling, informal discussion, event location, informal battling spot, etc.)


Spoiler:
Server Atmosphere: Really important, but I'll just cover in depth in with my last section since these two things are so connected.


Spoiler:
Competitiveness: I've argued for a more competitive community before, but I do feel like my argument kind of got strawman'd last time, so I'm going to be as clear and specific as possible.

If I could magically set PC's place on the casual-competitive spectrum, I'd place it right in the middle. I think that's how a place like PC gets its niche when a place like Smogon exists. I think that being too competitive can lead to an environment like Smogon's, where it can be intimidating and battling can stop being fun. I don't want to drop the Hatorade on Smogon (I think it's a great resource etc.), but trying to emulate their approach to competitive Pokemon on a smaller scale is not a recipe for success. It's just a recipe for having too many folks with inflated egos and an old school "anything goes" environment. And who wants to go to Smogon lite anyway when the real thing is right there? In other words, it's not that Smogon is bad, it's that PC isn't Smogon.

At the same time, I feel like over the past several years, the community has swung too far in the other direction. We are too casual, and I don't think it's hard to see that. When I discuss Pokemon with D_A or Sweep or Karpman or whoever, we inevitably get the "wow, we're talking about pokemon? that never happens!" comment, which pretty much says it all. And it's all the more frustrating when we actually get battlers online talking about Pokemon, and then a few regulars show up and drown out that discussion with off-topic stuff. Recently, Karp showed me a battling group from several months ago whose affinity was "we actually play Pokemon," which also isn't ideal. (I was highly amused to see people who definitely don't battle join the group for some reason anyway. x_x) I want to be very specific in identifying this problem beyond obvious indicators though.

I think that PC's lagging competitive battling community is directly related to its server atmosphere. On any given day, competitive Pokemon probably won't come up, and everyone accepts this reality. I think there's a pretty long tradition of this. Sometime during my own mod tenure with D_A or Wolf, a lot of server regulars stopped battling, myself included. We blamed Platinum or whatever else. Still, we kept coming on the server because we knew and liked each other and we still had a community. But as much as we complained about the decline of the community, we ourselves were that decline because we had stopped battling. Some new blood held it above water for awhile, but the point is that the precedent for "eh, as long as we like these people, we can ignore the fact that they don't seem to care for competitive Pokemon" was set awhile ago. The server has been a glorified IRC for too long. (I wish to make this distinction because I don't want to be accused of throwing the "new era" under the bus because I miss the "glorious past." It's a problem we have all shared at some point or another, not a PC generational thing.)

We need to reverse this trend. Server regulars who don't battle and don't seem to have much interest in it should be TPC regulars. The entry point for both the forum and the server should be "is this person someone who engages with competitive Pokemon on a consistent basis?" To define that phrase, "engaging" is just participating: posting or posting in discussions, rating teams, battling on at least a semi-consistent basis, participating in tournaments, etc. Really, I mean to say that the entry point is "do you battle?" It's not a hard standard to meet. Or it shouldn't be, anyway. What doesn't count as engaging? RandBats doesn't count. Also, showing up to CommDay and then waiting until next CommDay to battle means that you're probably in the wrong place. The single most frustrating thing in confronting this problem last year was when people insisted that they were interested in battling when they clearly were not. Come here to battle, or don't come at all.

...At the same time, I do want to acknowledge that the community took time to rebuild itself (which I was not here for and did not contribute to) and that suddenly taking a hard-line stance on battling could jeopardize all that. I want to be very clear: I do not want a puritanical environment where something as common as taking a break from battling becomes stigmatized or the environment itself becomes cutthroat. I realize that the rhetoric I'm using might suggest the opposite, but that is not what I believe. I don't want to evict anyone from the community either. What I'd prefer is a shift away from "let's talk about nothing all day because this is a glorified IRC and why not?" to a true mixture of off-topic and competitive chatter, depending on the flow of the conversation. I don't want to declare war on off-topic chat; it just can't be the only game in town. (...And if it's really low-quality, I don't think it's too tyrannical for a staff member to push for a new topic, so long as the reason is because of the chat's quality rather than its topic.)

Of course, this is difficult to enforce (as if it's a rule), and as I said a moment ago, it's not like we can (or should) force out people who don't battle. I think a gentler approach would be best. People who don't battle shouldn't have voice, period. They certainly shouldn't be server staff. (I realize that the server administration is more closely tied to PC's actual staff now, and that my proposal has limits that I don't wish to push at the moment.) I think this sets up an incentive structure where battling is a rewarding venture, while also more formally backing the priority of competitive battling here at PC. The server tournaments are already a positive step in this direction.

I just think that you should be a regular on the server for PC's competitive battling community only if, even on a casual basis, you wish to play competitive Pokemon. (This is not an oxymoron: I just described my relationship with competitive Pokemon for the last seven years.) If we can't set our standards even that high, then what's the point of even trying to bring "activity" or doing new events or whatever else?

Competitive battling as a discussion topic should not be a surprise to anyone in a competitive battling community. Period.

Dark Azelf July 27th, 2014 10:50 AM

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5oakoA79WGA/UPF4F12hzUI/AAAAAAAAFj0/AxdS-G4c9Bo/s640/Easter-Island-Heads.jpg

Heil anti etc.

wolf July 28th, 2014 10:24 AM

I agree with everything that has been said, aside from one thing. I don't think battle server staff should be required to competitively battle. By all means they should be encouraged to battle and promote it as much as possible, but you also have to keep in mind that we need a capable moderation team as well. Our PS server isn't like PO or Shoddy. We get plenty of visitors from pokemonshowdown.com, and just as many spammers. I don't know about you, but I'd appreciate being able to chat about battling without the lobby getting flooded, haha. :P Anyway, I'm more or less nitpicking, since all of our current staff are interested in competitive battling to some degree.

I'll respond to the other stuff later. I have some clan/group/event ideas in particular that I would like us to explore.

Anti July 28th, 2014 10:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wolf (Post 8373526)
By all means they should be encouraged to battle and promote it as much as possible, but you also have to keep in mind that we need a capable moderation team as well.

Those things aren't mutually exclusive, are they?

(I don't want to be difficult and as you hinted at it's a more minor point, but I think the question should at least be posed.)

MoxieInfinite July 28th, 2014 10:06 PM

Shouldnt the moderators be the most knowledgeable ones?

I mean, if you wanna push this community forward, you cant have colorblind sheeps steering the wheels. Take advice from the best players. Because they are the best. And being the best deserves recognizion. Because thats what everyone here is trying to be.

wolf July 29th, 2014 7:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anti (Post 8373550)
Those things aren't mutually exclusive, are they?

(I don't want to be difficult and as you hinted at it's a more minor point, but I think the question should at least be posed.)

Right, being an active battler is part of being a good BSS member. However, I wouldn't consider it a bare minimum requirement. As much as I'd like to promote only people well-versed in battling, we don't always have that luxury. e.g. If the BSS is running low on staff and no viable competitive battler candidates are around, then I'm not going to wait around for an extended period until that happens. First and foremost, I would rather make sure the battle server is usable without spammers, trolls, and other rule-breakers.

Anyway, it goes without saying that being an active battler is preferable, but it doesn't always translate to being a good staff member.

Anti July 30th, 2014 6:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wolf (Post 8374864)
Right, being an active battler is part of being a good BSS member. However, I wouldn't consider it a bare minimum requirement. As much as I'd like to promote only people well-versed in battling, we don't always have that luxury. e.g. If the BSS is running low on staff and no viable competitive battler candidates are around, then I'm not going to wait around for an extended period until that happens. First and foremost, I would rather make sure the battle server is usable without spammers, trolls, and other rule-breakers.

Anyway, it goes without saying that being an active battler is preferable, but it doesn't always translate to being a good staff member.

I agree that battling capability isn't necessarily correlated to aptitude at moderating, but that's not what I was trying to say. Rather, I mean to say that if you can become server staff without battling, then there is a bad incentive structure that further reinforces the glorified social IRC atmosphere that currently exists. If you have to actually battle to become a server staff member, anyone who aspires to this will actually have to play the game. This is the incentive structure that we want.

Anyway, to avoid getting bogged down on a relatively minor issue, I propose that rather than excluding non-battlers from staff, first priority is always given to any active server member who battles, so long as they are considered to be a capable staff member. This may well be the system in place, but I don't think it would hurt to explicitly make this a policy. That way, you can't run out of staff members, but there is still a light incentive placed on battling.

I don't see any reason, however, why voice shouldn't only be given out to people who at least periodically battle or discuss battling. The scenario I presented earlier of "competitive chat is happening only to be interrupted by something off-topic" is frustratingly common (about as frustratingly (un)common as actually competitive discussion). The only thing I can think of in opposition to this would be "you can still be a good presence without battling" or something like that, and while this is true in a vacuum, you shouldn't be on the battle server in the first place if you have no inclination to battle, and voicing non-battlers just reinforces the current environment of exclusively being a social IRC at the expense of the integrity of the battling community.

(Admittedly, I'm somewhat unfamiliar with the actual function of voice on PS. My assumption is that it is somewhat symbolic in rewarding good chat presences while also giving them a few new chat commands or something? Either way, unlike staff, I don't see the downside unless I'm reeeeally mistaken about the function of voice, and I don't feel like I'm THAT far off.)

Also it would be cool if we got more replies ~_~

Jake♫ July 31st, 2014 8:25 PM

I'm lazy and just going in the order that Anti originally posted.

Competitiveness:
Spoiler:
The last thing we need to do is be Smogon. I'm not registered there for a reason. I like how laid-back we are, but we some of us still battle. If we're going to be a battling server, there needs to be more emphasis on battling itself, excluding randbats. Those are fun time killers, but they don't really teach you much, and don't actually encourage discussion. Laid-back is good, but we need to add some competitiveness in there. Heck, adding ANYTHING more battling related (aka what the forum and server are meant for) would be an improvement.


Forum-Server Relationship:
Spoiler:
I think what was kind of sad was that everyone that goes in the server didn't even acknowledge the existence of this thread. If the main point of the server is to be an extension of this subforum, shouldn't the users at least attempt to post in it? Of course, it's not like I've been doing that a large amount either, but I'm at least checking the subforum on a regular basis to keep track of stuff happening. Active server members should also be participants in the subforum it's based around.


Staff Presence
Spoiler:
This kind of goes hand-in-hand with the above, but the server staff should be more inclined than an average member to be active here. Other than that, I think the staff is doing a good job of moderating the server itself. It would be nice if the server staff did battle more often/have some battling knowledge outside of randbats (this is a broad generalization, but it's mostly true), since they're moderating the battle server, but that's about the only complaint that I'd have (not that it's a huge one).


Server Atmosphere
Spoiler:
I do like that the atmosphere of the server is really laid back, and not super-serious about everything. However, the very large majority of the time the chat is just about...absolutely nothing. The worst part was, after logging in tonight, there was a user asking for a battle, and it wasn't even acknowledged by a single user. If anything, we should be promoting that on the battling server. Obviously it'd be dumb to regulate the chat as far as "we need to talk about battling for x amount of time a day", but if someone is actually trying to talk about it, instead of drowning them out with random stuff, we should encourage that.


Forum Content and Community Events and Groups
Spoiler:
Merged these two together because I have pretty much the same comments. From the past year or two there's actually been an improvement in RMTs, in-game stuff, as well as events (Ladder Race, Tournaments, and that League that a bunch of members are creating themselves). The subforum does have a lot of content in it now, and it's a nice improvement. However, the problem is that the people that are usually posting in the forum don't frequent the server, and vice-versa. Some sort of integration would be nice!


Community Growth
Spoiler:
Above covered it pretty much, but the amount of growth since I left last year and returning a month or two ago is really nice. Again, having the new people that join the server and actually encouraging battles would be nice, as a lot of them time people just join, don't talk, and leave. Bringing them into the community, both battling and the off-topic stuff (with an actual healthy balance of both) would be ideal.

Pokedra July 31st, 2014 8:57 PM

This is honestly just my opinion but I think you should relegate the regular chit chat to another channel (I believe this is possible on PS) while having the main chat focused on competitive battling. I know we tried to do this by having the competitive chat relegated to another channel. Because honestly whenever I pop on there's just random talk about the weather, TV or something. It gives zero reason for anyone to pop onto the PC server to battle, Smogon is better in that regard.

Like in the past I when we used Shoddy Battle I could pop onto the server and ask for some help/battle and someone (Elf, Jake, Aero, etc.) would be willing but nowadays it just gets lost under all the "Omg my neighbours dog just barked" comments. I realize the Showdown server is now the official chat room for PC but if you want the server to actually flourish as a Battling Community Service the chit-chat has to go. Not saying chit chat is bad but it can't dominate the chat to the extent it is currently, to the point where people feel it's pointless to bring up anything battling related.

And honestly I don't mind chit chat but some of the stuff that is posted is literally pointless. Like it's just a random statement. Like crap like this.

A: Omg neighbour just left home.
B: Wow.
A: He left his dog out the back.
<Wants to Battle Guy>: Hey, want to test a new team. Anyone?
B: Cute dog?
A: Yeah.
C: Is <Insert Name> on?
A: No
C: Okay

Quite honestly if I was to use the server it'd be for some discussion/chatting with regulars. I don't need a blog of a person's life, keep that on your PC blog or Twitter.

tl;dr Balance is needed if you want more competitiveness on this forum and the server is where it starts. We had a nice balance of battling/chat before I feel but the current trend is far too casual for my liking. There's zero reason to choose to go on PC, battling-wise.

champagnepapi July 31st, 2014 9:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Troye
think what was kind of sad was that everyone that goes in the server didn't even acknowledge the existence of this thread. If the main point of the server is to be an extension of this subforum, shouldn't the users at least attempt to post in it?

Very powerful, I highly cosign this. It was in a spoiler and needs more exposure. Rather than my reposting this as a slight to server members, I'm posting it to encourage these people to share their ideas here, if they are part of the community like they claim, so there can be a fair solution worked out rather than a clash of ideals.

Good post pokedra as well, I know me and jake would just idle during chit chat but I agree that it doesnt encourage battling. I feel bad that you and kevin garrett have to log on and see the chat filled with nonsense and inevitably leave lol

Starry Windy July 31st, 2014 11:03 PM

Ok, so I have posted mine in here, I hope you guys don't mind.

Spoiler:
I personally think, even though this is a battle server, I don't think some of them are going into competitive battling, given that some just battle for fun. I personally think battling has no point if there's no enjoyment in it. But giving them the option to join the tourney can balance it a bit, imo.

And personally, I expect the staffs to have some good attitude meanwhile modding in here (some of the mods here have done a good job, though). Well, because, with due respect, PC Battle Server mods, sometimes the chat goes inappropriate and having double standards, like Anti said earlier, that sometimes I'm not sure if I should come to the server before 13:00 (1 PM) in where I live. I believe that if the server is having a good vibe, many people will be interested to come here, and this server will become better.

Sirfetch’d August 1st, 2014 12:25 AM

warning: its 3 am and this post is very long/all over the place so I apologize in advance if it's a little messy.


Been meaning to weigh in on this thread for quite some time now because as a staff member of the server, I feel like I should.

I wanna start of by saying that I agree with what Anti is bringing up here about how it is a battle server and that there should be a good degree of emphasis put on competitive battling as a whole. For the most part, I think the server has adapted to this belief and that the overall competitiveness of the community has grown significantly over the past few months. Likely due to more people enjoying the Gen 6 meta.

Gonna address the points here individually as well:

Competitiveness:

I feel as if overall this is not a problem at all. There are tournaments frequently held(almost daily) with the newly added /tour command, we have the ladder weekends now every week, and the forum tournaments seem to be getting a lot more participation(see the current OU tourney and the GT tournament). That said, there is still room for improvement here. How can we become more competitive? That's a little tricky. We are a small server and can only really have so many tournaments before people just naturally grow tired of it. I think maybe some clans or leagues might be beneficial assuming enough people are interested; organize it.

Forum-Server Relationship:

A good point was brought up about how a lot of active people from the battle center forum were not active on the server and vice versa. Not sure how we could fix this, but I do agree that members of the server should at least try to contribute to the forum in some way or another even if it is something as simple as giving feedback in this or the server thread itself. I will try to advertise this thread around because I think there is some good discussion/debate to happen here.

Staff Presence:

I think Jake summed this up well. It is hard to comment on this from a staff point of view, but overall in terms of managing the server I feel we are all doing a good job of maintaining a healthy atmosphere for everyone. As for us being more competitive in battling, I have mixed feelings on this. I do think that to be a staff member on a battling server you should have at least some knowledge on competitive battling to help out newcomers by answering questions/helping them and I can say for 100% certainty that all of us do. Sure, we don't all actively battle anymore but we all have at one time or another to where we are definitely qualified to be server staff. I also want to point out that not everyone sees what we do behind closed doors. We are very often discussing ways to improve the overall competitiveness of the server in the battle server staff forum to better the server for everyone!


Server Atmosphere:

I don't think anyone has a big problem with this and they shouldn't. We are a very lenient server that allows a lot more than other servers do. We have a good balance of both casual chit chat and competitive battling chat which I think is ideal and what should happen. I do agree that maybe a bit more focus should be put on Pokemon as a topic, but that is really up to the members of the chat. If there is nothing competitive to talk about, I don't see an issue with casual chit chat.

Community Growth:

Skipping to this one as I don't have opinions on the others. I feel like the community is growing and has been for a while now. We have had many members venture over from other communities such as Smogon(such as our staff member, Sweep!) because they like the atmosphere that our server provides. There will always be room for growth though and any ideas on how we could grow even more would be great guys!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pokedra
This is honestly just my opinion but I think you should relegate the regular chit chat to another channel (I believe this is possible on PS) while having the main chat focused on competitive battling. I know we tried to do this by having the competitive chat relegated to another channel. Because honestly whenever I pop on there's just random talk about the weather, TV or something. It gives zero reason for anyone to pop onto the PC server to battle, Smogon is better in that regard.

Like in the past I when we used Shoddy Battle I could pop onto the server and ask for some help/battle and someone (Elf, Jake, Aero, etc.) would be willing but nowadays it just gets lost under all the "Omg my neighbours dog just barked" comments. I realize the Showdown server is now the official chat room for PC but if you want the server to actually flourish as a Battling Community Service the chit-chat has to go. Not saying chit chat is bad but it can't dominate the chat to the extent it is currently, to the point where people feel it's pointless to bring up anything battling related.

And honestly I don't mind chit chat but some of the stuff that is posted is literally pointless. Like it's just a random statement. Like crap like this.

A: Omg neighbour just left home.
B: Wow.
A: He left his dog out the back.
<Wants to Battle Guy>: Hey, want to test a new team. Anyone?
B: Cute dog?
A: Yeah.
C: Is <Insert Name> on?
A: No
C: Okay

Quite honestly if I was to use the server it'd be for some discussion/chatting with regulars. I don't need a blog of a person's life, keep that on your PC blog or Twitter.

tl;dr Balance is needed if you want more competitiveness on this forum and the server is where it starts. We had a nice balance of battling/chat before I feel but the current trend is far too casual for my liking. There's zero reason to choose to go on PC, battling-wise.

I also wanted to comment on this because you bring up some very good points here.

I think your idea would be good and possibly fix what seems to be the dividing issue here, but I just don't see it working. It didn't work when we tried it the other way around and I don't think sending the chit chat to another room would work either. This would require more staff members to moderate 2 chat rooms, many of the server regulars would be turned off by this, and simply put we just don't have a large enough community for this to work. I understand that it is frustrating to visit the battle server to discuss battling and have it drowned out in another topic that has nothing to do with Pokemon. :( But everyone has to remember that while we are a battle server, we are also a community that has grown close and enjoy chatting about various things. I think we can integrate a more competitive chat without taking that away or splitting up the two sides of the community.


One last thing I wanted to bring up is, If we are going to strive for a more competitive community we need to find a way to include everyone that is a part of the server. Running members out because they don't battle isn't the way to go about this(and I feel like a lot of members would feel like they are unwanted there if we try to put too much emphasis on the "you must battle to be here" part). It makes the server seem like a dictatorship and is more of a turnoff if anything. One idea I was thinking about is; how would you guys who are veterans of the battling community maybe feel about mentoring newcomers/regulars who don't have a knowledge of battling? Honestly, I think a lot of our members don't battle because a lot of us haven't learned competitive and get stomped every time we try. This would be a good way to integrate the current members into the community that we are trying to achieve here without anyone feeling like they shouldn't be there just because they don't battle competitively.

Pokedra August 1st, 2014 1:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Castform (Post 8379667)
I also wanted to comment on this because you bring up some very good points here.

I think your idea would be good and possibly fix what seems to be the dividing issue here, but I just don't see it working. It didn't work when we tried it the other way around and I don't think sending the chit chat to another room would work either. This would require more staff members to moderate 2 chat rooms, many of the server regulars would be turned off by this, and simply put we just don't have a large enough community for this to work. I understand that it is frustrating to visit the battle server to discuss battling and have it drowned out in another topic that has nothing to do with Pokemon. :( But everyone has to remember that while we are a battle server, we are also a community that has grown close and enjoy chatting about various things. I think we can integrate a more competitive chat without taking that away or splitting up the two sides of the community.

There are less then 10 serious battlers on here while their are over 30 people who just use it to chat. Forcing them to take an extra step will not deter them from using the server. It didn't work as well before because PS was still in early beta and entering a different room was harder. You had to type in a few commands. The main should only need one staff member at a time to watch over it to ban trolls considering the non battler; battler ratio.

Quote:

One last thing I wanted to bring up is, If we are going to strive for a more competitive community we need to find a way to include everyone that is a part of the server. Running members out because they don't battle isn't the way to go about this(and I feel like a lot of members would feel like they are unwanted there if we try to put too much emphasis on the "you must battle to be here" part). It makes the server seem like a dictatorship and is more of a turnoff if anything. One idea I was thinking about is; how would you guys who are veterans of the battling community maybe feel about mentoring newcomers/regulars who don't have a knowledge of battling? Honestly, I think a lot of our members don't battle because a lot of us haven't learned competitive and get stomped every time we try. This would be a good way to integrate the current members into the community that we are trying to achieve here without anyone feeling like they shouldn't be there just because they don't battle competitively.
Running them out is an exaggeration, we've giving them their own space to chat about their lunch, kittens, pimples and whatnot. It's not like they wouldn't be welcome in the main chat either, as far as toxicity against "newbies" go, PC has come a long way I can tell you that much. This might also be a good way to improve the quality of the server chat too, we can have normal chat in the main room just not to the extent it is now. I may sound overly antagonistic but some of the chat at the moment is appalling.

It'd be nice to be able to find a compromise that works for both sides but it's not feasible. This isn't the first time people have wanted to do something about the server being used as a chatroom rather then a PC Battle Community server and each time we come up with some half-hearted method to try change things that doesn't work.

It's not even the fact that people are scared of getting beaten, most of the server just don't care. You post anything competitive-related and it gets swept away in the chat, there's a reason why the battlers are always quiet. If anything the battlers have been run out of the PC server, I could list several people who migrated over to Smogon because they didn't need Twitter; PC edition.

If you want to keep the regulars happy then by all means keep the server in it's current state. I have nothing against using the server as a chatroom. But if you actually want to kickstart the battling community here you'll have to make some people unhappy. wolf keeps telling me the community is getting more and more active but quite frankly the battling community here has never looked more dead to me.

champagnepapi August 1st, 2014 2:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Castform
It didn't work when we tried it the other way around and I don't think sending the chit chat to another room would work either.

If this actually happened I think there is more of a problem than you are describing......

wolf August 1st, 2014 1:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anti (Post 8377533)
I propose that rather than excluding non-battlers from staff, first priority is always given to any active server member who battles, so long as they are considered to be a capable staff member.

We already do that, so no need to worry.

Re: Restricting voice to only active battlers: I don't have a problem with that. I'll bring it up with the staff.

Re: Making a separate chat room for battling: Very interesting idea, but extremely tricky to pull off for a community of our size. Last time it didn't work because a) it's too inconvenient compared to auto-joining the Lobby, and b) the conversation felt very forced and didn't occur naturally. However, it is worth noting that it's more realistically viable now. We could restrict the Lobby to mostly battling related topics and make a chat room for anything off-topic. Then, for any battle server links on PC, we could link to the off-topic chat which would effectively allow any PC user to auto-join both chat rooms. Anyone visiting from pokemonshowdown.com would only join the Lobby and not the off-topic chat, but most of them would be battlers anyway. And we could provide links to either of the chat rooms in their intro messages.

Still, the bigger question is if our community is capable of keeping both chat rooms active. And is off-topic chat prevalent enough to warrant this? Could we get away with having only one chat room if we simply put more emphasis on battling?

Anti August 1st, 2014 2:34 PM

I'm strongly against two separate chats. The two possibilities...

Competitive battling room: We might as well stop pretending this is a battling community if we're explicitly making competitive a secondary part of the server. Totally unworkable if we're serious about fixing the glorified social IRC element of the server.

Off-topic room: Situating the main chat as always on-topic is just putting the server at the other end of the extreme Pokedra mentioned. While I am annoyed at the server's current state, no one wants to be obligated to always be on-topic. That's too contrived.


More broadly, grouping people into separate chats doesn't solve anything. All that does is further solidify divisions that shouldn't exist in the first place. Even if there weren't practical problems (as Wolf talked about), all we're doing is segregating--and suffocating--the existing battling community and enabling the sort of banal and, frankly, useless/pointless chat that Pokedra mentioned above. Instead of trying to make everyone happy with a compromise option that addresses none of the community's actual problems, we should explicitly set the goal of refocusing the community on battling. This needs to be one community, not two.


In order to make the chat casual but also not as inane as Pokedra describes, I propose the following alternative solutions:

1.) Making competitive the priority of the chat. In practical terms, this means that if a competitive discussion is taking place, it is an expectation that it doesn't get drowned out by a different off-topic chat. Besides being rude, that kind of interruption hampers the ability of our battlers to casually chat about the game. I think that this should be enforced in the sense that if competitive gets drowned out, I don't think it's too much for a mod to say "hey, an on-topic discussion was going on, your discussion of videogames can be taken to PM" or something. Baby steps.

2.) The voice incentive I mentioned earlier.

3.) Further incentivizing battling and battling discussion by getting a couple of Showdown-connected clans going. I think this would give us an opportunity, institutionally, to mentor new players or current non-battlers who'd like to battle, as senior clan people could serve as mentors of sorts. This would help with forum-server integration as well. I do think we need to explicitly lay out how a clan culture would work here in terms of our expectations as well as its practical execution, and I'm curious what y'all think about this (especially the former, for now at least). The main point though is that something like clans (probably just two) would allow us to give an avenue to non-battlers to become real members of our competitive community, allowing us to grow our userbase. Because ultimately, if we want a more topical chat, we simply need more battlers who will actually want to engage in one, so seems like a win-win to me.

I'll expand on this later, but I have to go.

Jake♫ August 1st, 2014 8:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Castform (Post 8379667)
One idea I was thinking about is; how would you guys who are veterans of the battling community maybe feel about mentoring newcomers/regulars who don't have a knowledge of battling? Honestly, I think a lot of our members don't battle because a lot of us haven't learned competitive and get stomped every time we try. This would be a good way to integrate the current members into the community that we are trying to achieve here without anyone feeling like they shouldn't be there just because they don't battle competitively.

Specifically quoting this part because I don't really have much to argue against in Chase's post, other than that the balance of off-topic and competitive isn't balanced really, it's more 75-25 if anything. But that's been addressed to death so moving on.

For the quoted part, speaking for myself, yes, I think that would be a good idea. There was a point a few years ago where we actually did try this to some success, and it can't hurt to try again. I think the last thing anyone wants to do is drive anyone away. Bringing the focus of battling back to the center, by integrating everyone in, would definitely be ideal.

Still, I'd like to point out that other than two people, we've only had old regulars posting in here, even with Anti asking people on the server directly to give their feedback. Lgi people.

Sweep August 2nd, 2014 2:11 PM

Competitiveness

As others have noted, PC is not inherently as competitive as Smogon. I see PC as a social community as much as a battling community and by no means would I support bloodythirsty competitiveness. Then again, I doubt that would be an issue :p. With that said, there's nothing wrong with some good 'ol competitive spirit, and Matt's tournaments and the (successful) gt 11 tournament are steps in the right direction for getting the community into a competitive mindset. I would like to see tournaments and other competitive battling avenues, so long they keep up with the spirit of PC.

Forum-Server Relationship

I don’t have a strong opinion on this. In regards to tournament play, it’d be nice if major matches could be advertised on the forums before they are played on the server. For example, if DA plays Kevin Garrett in an OU final, one of them can post “We’re fighting at 11:00 A.M. EST Sunday” on the thread.

Staff Presence

Believe me when I say that server authority do our best to keep everything under control. If you have an issue with the way a moderator or admin is doing their job, you are welcome to (politely) ask why they performed such and such an action. We don’t bite! I also feel people look too far into warnings. They are not actual punishments, but are simply meant to keep the chat healthy.

Server Atmosphere

Minus some overly lewd talk (mind you I don’t mind such discussion so long it stays PG-13 lol), I have no problems with the server atmosphere at the moment.

Community Growth

If we are successful in other areas, this will take care of itself IMO.


Not sure which criteria this falls under, but I'd love an OU Gym Leader league. This league would involve some of the best battlers on PC being elected to Leader positions. If a player can defeat a leader in a best of 3 series (or perhaps best of 1, though I'd hate to see people win or lose due to hax and a series would provide opportunities for hax to even out), they earn a badge. Each leader may be challenged once a week. This is just an idea I saw on the server that I wanted to follow up on n_n.

MoxieInfinite August 2nd, 2014 4:29 PM

kevin garrett is on PC? hes like my hero o_o

Dark Azelf August 3rd, 2014 1:05 PM

My only issue with the server is the staff structure.

Do you have to be a mod on the forum to have power on the server? Why do i say this? Well because people who have been fired on the forum are still server staff, higher staff who dont even battle have power on the server, people who arent staff on the forum are admin/mod on the server and people who arent even active and piss off to smogon the majority of the time still have power. None of these should be the case imo.

Its inconsistent and probs needs addressing.

.Aero August 4th, 2014 10:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dark Azelf (Post 8383797)
My only issue with the server is the staff structure.

Do you have to be a mod on the forum to have power on the server? Why do i say this? Well because people who have been fired on the forum are still server staff, higher staff who dont even battle have power on the server, people who arent staff on the forum are admin/mod on the server and people who arent even active and piss off to smogon the majority of the time still have power. None of these should be the case imo.

Its inconsistent and probs needs addressing.

Frankly, I disagreed with this post at first. I didn't care much nor did I think it mattered. However, after thinking about it for a bit I realized that I do agree.

I think the fact that I'm on rather consistently throughout various hours of the day (due to a horrible cycling sleep schedule) allows me to get to know various people on the server regardless of their time zones. As a result, I feel like I should know everyone who is on staff on the server, seeing as how those who deserve server staff status should be consistent members as well. However, every few days I see a brand new name pop up and I have literally no idea who they are (even after they explain who they are). My question is: Why are these people on staff? Clearly they are not consistent users on the server, and I highly doubt they battle at all, save a few random battles here and there (which I, personally, don't even count).

Basically what I'm here to say is:
- Members who don't battle / show up on the server consistently should not be server staff
- Precedent should be given to those who prove themselves to be:
--- Helpful to other members
--- Consistent in appearance on server
--- Decent / knowledgeable battlers
- It's a battle server, this shouldn't be too much to ask
- Members who are staff on the forums themselves should not automatically be given staff on server . This is like giving anyone who posts in S&M (idk what it's currently called) mod abilities just because they mod somewhere else.

ggwp

EDIT: I think I won the tutor war forever ago btw seeing as how only my student is still around and is probably one of the strongest, if not the strongest battlers here. Shoutout to my boy Karp. <3

MoxieInfinite August 4th, 2014 4:01 PM

Strongest battler at this place is not an achievement. What players has this place brought up? If KG actually DOES go here, thats a fantastic example. Sweep is a great Ubers player. Anti and antebellum have made posts with relevance, which is great looking at the theorymonning. But that size is minimal. For every 5 players here, you have random brazilian forums/Smogon bringing up 1,000. How do you get good students? Proffesionalism.

This place needs some good tutor program. And good tutors. If not, why would people choose this place over Smogon. The laid-back experince? Oh please.

.Aero August 4th, 2014 6:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MoxieInfinite (Post 8385607)
Strongest battler at this place is not an achievement. What players has this place brought up? If KG actually DOES go here, thats a fantastic example. Sweep is a great Ubers player. Anti and antebellum have made posts with relevance, which is great looking at the theorymonning. But that size is minimal. For every 5 players here, you have random brazilian forums/Smogon bringing up 1,000. How do you get good students? Proffesionalism.

This place needs some good tutor program. And good tutors. If not, why would people choose this place over Smogon. The laid-back experince? Oh please.

To be fair you just nitpicked my side-edit of my post which has no relevance to this thread whatsoever.

As for the tutor program, I completely agree. A tutor program being implemented again would be a good idea. As for people choosing PC over smogon, I'm pretty sure the reason people choose it IS because of the "laid-back experience". At least that's the case for me. If I wanted a true competitive and strictly competitive environment I'd go to smogon any day. But I don't. I don't see this argument flying very far.

MoxieInfinite August 4th, 2014 6:52 PM

Then youre begging to fall behind. And if thats what you desire, your choice. But if you want this place to get some "deserved" recognizion, stuff needs to be done. I'd love to tutor someone half-decent (I dont wanna deal with retards using Bellossom because its their fav mon), and though I rarely play XY, I'm good enough to see and understand the metagame.

Jake♫ August 4th, 2014 7:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MoxieInfinite (Post 8385882)
Then youre begging to fall behind. And if thats what you desire, your choice. But if you want this place to get some "deserved" recognizion, stuff needs to be done. I'd love to tutor someone half-decent (I dont wanna deal with retards using Bellossom because its their fav mon), and though I rarely play XY, I'm good enough to see and understand the metagame.

I don't think anyone is asking for "deserved" recognition at all. The entire point of this thread was just general feedback of our current community, and where people think it stands. No one is disagreeing that Smogon is where you would want to go if you just want a strictly competitive environment. People are arguing that they would like our own balance on the battle server to be less like a general chat room, and have a better balance of off-topic and battling discussions.

MoxieInfinite August 4th, 2014 8:10 PM

If you wanna know where this place stands, its far behind. Youre coming to a second-tier community asking for advice, when nothing stops you from getting somthing better. If you want a rate, go smogon, or expect inferior advice. And TRYING to be the second best is just weird as a goal.

Kevin Garrett August 4th, 2014 8:12 PM

For clarification, I did not start here. I was already a member on Smogon. My reason for joining was to compete in a forum war. I come back from time to time because the people that are here are long-time members that I knew from years ago. The more relaxed atmosphere is a nice alternative to the serious competition on Smogon. That's not to say there isn't serious competition here, but it certainly has a different vibe and you shouldn't look to erase that. You won't ever beat Smogon doing competitive. My recommendation would be to build a competitive infrastructure that members here can learn from to build up the current base, but keep it at a point where there is a noticeable cultural difference between here and Smogon. That way you have a good chance of keeping members that participate on both sites because they understand the value of the community here.

Anti August 4th, 2014 8:56 PM

Yeah I think on the note of what Aero and Jake are saying, "laid-back experience" is a legitimate draw for some people, and more to the point, no one in our community really wants to get intense, get recognition, etc. It's just not in the cards at the moment with the competitive community in the state it's in, even if we did want it. Basically what Kevin Garrett said. And with that, I'd prefer to just move on since it's a discussion that probably isn't going to go anywhere except downhill, and there are real efforts we need to get working on right now.

(In case that wasn't clear: STOP WITH THIS TOPIC.)

edit: adding spoilers to make it less daunting so y'all will read it ;)

on clans:

Spoiler:
So to keep moving right along, I wanted to talk a little more about how we can build a battling community from the present community. I think clans and leagues are a good place to start. (I'll address tutoring in a moment as well since that's definitely something to look at.) I'll repost what I said in my first content post, with bolded emphasis on what I want to talk about now:

Quote:

While I am not against clans or leagues, I think we need to explicitly lay out what it is we would want them to accomplish for the community. I wouldn't want leagues to be noob pits that are disconnected from the server community entirely, for example. (Nothing against noobs, but I think that we should be directing them toward integrating into the battling community here instead of being isolated and never really improving.) So if we brought back clans, what would we want them to accomplish, and how would they define their niche on PC? I'm not a Battle Stadium guy, so my knowledge and vision with these things is more limited.

I do think that overall though, battling groups are a good idea that add variety to the scene here. And with events, I think we can do more tours but also more than just tours. I don't think it's terrible right now, but there is a lot of room for improvement at the moment.
I talked to wolf about clans a little bit earlier, and he brought up a good point in that a big part of clan activity was simply scheduling battles, since WiFi isn't as convenient as laddering or just asking for a battle in our server's main chat. I think that if we're serious about refocusing the community with clans as a part of the solution, we need to ask what the purpose of our clans will be, what their specific functions will be, how they will be organized to fulfill their purpose optimally, and how they fit within the more general competitive infrastructure, as KG just termed it, here at PC. Here is my general outline for that.

Since clans won't be doing much good if they're just a crappy way to organize battles that can easily be organized on the server anyway, I think that clans should be refocused to help newer players get into the game and compete while doing so. In other words, clans would be where there are experienced and new battlers, and those with experience would help along others. With tutoring, people have brought up the concern that we may not have enough willing and qualified tutors. Well, hopefully a clan environment would achieve similar goals.

Besides that, I like the idea that intra-clan competition for clan war roster spots would further motivate people to do well. Besides clan wars (which I think would have to be infrequent enough as to not become stale), I think clans would have to really think outside the box for being interesting. One idea I've had is each of the clans making a sort of CCAT (community create a team) where each clan makes a team to see who can make the best one. I think the main thing is that clans shouldn't be based around things like tournaments or discussions that are better created with the entire community in mind, or else they'll just be too contrived. Other clan activities might include creating unique/creative movesets or clan war-ladder races (where the clan war becomes the sum of each clan's ladder scores instead of direct wars with battles between each other). To be honest though, I'd want to see a few more ideas before being sold that clans are where we should focus, just because I wouldn't want them to flame out in a few months.


on tutoring and leagues:

Spoiler:
Alternatively, it may make more sense to just do tutoring "the old-fashioned way" and not restrict ourselves with clan groupings and to make leagues the focus of how we do battling groups here. I think the league thread that keeps bumping this thread down is evidence of the activity they bring (and the spam-ish shortcomings as well, but these can be ironed out with time). Regardless of what happens or doesn't happen with clans, I think leagues are clearly a good idea. Smogon has the Smogon Frontier, and I think that having something similar would be cool and would encourage people to get good enough to actually participate in or challenge that league.

If we do tutoring, we need to begin to discuss what the details of that would be as well.


Just some other thoughts...

on forum name:

Spoiler:
We need to stop changing this forum's name. I'd prefer if it went back to Strategies and Movesets (for symbolic reasons that I won't get into because I know it's not going to happen anyway), but since that isn't going to happen (!), we need to pick a name and stick with it. Why is this a big deal? I think S&M has rebranded itself enough--let's get down to business now.


on a potential team building workshop thread:

Spoiler:
I think a team-building workshop, maybe as a sticky, would be awesome for noobs and experienced players alike. Maybe something like this could go there: "Hey, I've been wanting to using RP Landorus-T and Mega Heracross as an offensive core that can challenge all playstyles, but I'm having trouble supporting it. Right now I'm considering Pokemon X, Pokemon Y, and Pokemon Z, and I really need a good lure for Gliscor and opposing Landorus and Landorus-T, any ideas?" Look at how many RMTs don't have six Pokemon. I worry this could get too crowded, but I think that team-building as a process is really neglected in this forum beyond the unbearably vanilla "what's your team building approach?" thread that comes up every so often. Why not actually have a place where we can put our ideas to work and have multiple minds work at something? I was talking with Aero about this idea earlier and he suggested having a sort of mini archive of good teams or cores or whatever in the OP as well, which I think would be awesome and useful for players of varying skill levels.


on potential truncated ou threat list thread:

Spoiler:
I think an OU threat list would be nice. Just a simple "huge threats / notable threats / niche threats" organization with basic typing/abilities/common movesets listings would be great, perhaps in the following format as an example:

[mini sprite, like the ones in the viability ranking threads on smogon]
LANDORUS [link to smogon analysis]
Ground / Flying
89 / 125 / 90 / 115 / 80 / 101
Sheer Force / Sand Force
Notable Attack Moves: Earth Power, Focus Blast, Psychic, Knock Off, Sludge Wave, Hidden Power [Ice] Rock Slide
Notable Set-Up Moves: Calm Mind, Rock Polish
Notable Support Moves: Stealth Rock
Checks: Specially Defensive Gliscor, Assault Vest Tornadus-T, Azumarill (RK), Mega Charizard Y, Chansey, Keldeo (RK), Thundurus (RK), Greninja (RK)

Short, sweet, and to the point, though it's pretty rough and is probably more optimally done some other way, maybe with a moveset focus but the point is that this might be nice. Also listing Pokemon and what Pokemon they check would be cool. (For example, on that list, Keldeo's entry would show that it checks Bisharp, Mega Tyranitar, Heatran, Landorus, Mega Mawile, etc.) We should have some kind of resource though, again for teambuilding help.


meh just look:

Spoiler:
Lastly, I think a team-building competition would be fun and I plan on posting one next week once the OU Tour begins to wind down. I think it would be a cool and unorthodox competition like ladder race (needs more participants only six people isn't that fun :( c'mon d00ds) and would further stimulate teambuilding which seems to be a significant barrier of entry here.

champagnepapi August 5th, 2014 3:35 AM

I think with the clans it might be worth having a sort of clan champiomship, as well as channels on the server for each clan, to promote competition and interaction.

MoxieInfinite August 5th, 2014 5:53 AM

I know the laid-back experience is why you'd go here. But my question is, why would you want a laid-back experience? If you post RMT's here, you're expecting second-hand rates, when you coulda gone Smogon and gotten a tier one rate at no cost. That's like choosing Ember over Flamethrower.

Also, Smogon isn't all 100% serious. Isn't that why Firebot exists?

champagnepapi August 5th, 2014 6:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MoxieInfinite (Post 8386422)
I know the laid-back experience is why you'd go here. But my question is, why would you want a laid-back experience? If you post RMT's here, you're expecting second-hand rates, when you coulda gone Smogon and gotten a tier one rate at no cost. That's like choosing Ember over Flamethrower.

Also, Smogon isn't all 100% serious. Isn't that why Firebot exists?

Man we are not trying to compete with smogon. This is only a subforum of a general big Pokemon site. We're just here to chill and train really, but that doesn't mean we settle for mediocrity. Me and Anti hit up the ladder a lot, Pokedra and Dark Azelf were competitive back in the day as well. If you want to compete with smogon, or any other battling forum for that matter, you are not in the right place. You also talked about the 'random brazilian forums' popping out players, but those are competitive battling geared too; the whole board is meant for competitive and attracts competitive players [I'd wager they don't take themselves that seriously either though]. Most of the competitive players aren't okay with being subpar, but really it's futile at this point to try and be the next smogon, even when serebii, marriland, etc were active, they probably had the same goal as us: to be a strong community. If we get a bunch of people battling and eventually doing well on ladder and in tournaments, that's great, but the site and this subforum itself, isn't going to be putting up analyses or becoming the center of battling any time soon. Also if you are expecting tier one rates at smogon then you are sorely mistaken lol

MoxieInfinite August 5th, 2014 6:32 AM

Pretty sure if you put up a well-made RMT on Smogon, players like Chimpact, SS, Aim, whoever the ♥♥♥♥ that rates teams nowadays, will give you a top tier rate if you ask for it.

But yea, point taken. O_o

BeachBoy August 5th, 2014 6:51 AM

Anyway, we wanted to move on.

About clans, I like the thought of having various teams of players going against each other. If it jumped to a serious scale, a couple of world-cup-like tournaments would be refreshing. However, Anti makes a fair warning about them flaming out. It'll be all excitement at first, but needs some serious investment of players/(maybe artists to keep it fancy? Seriously, grab some talented folks from the artistic forums. If it looks amazing, people are more likely to be attracted to the cool-factor and they'll have a more unique flare than here-is-our-thread-join-us-look-at-our-trophies) to sustain itself. I'm not so sure it could be a let's-figure-it-out-along-the-way kind of project.

I'd comment on other areas (server staff/forum staff disconnect) but I've simply been too absent to fairly recommend changes.

Mana August 5th, 2014 1:20 PM

I don't come here much ;-;. I realise that this is a bit delayed, and the topic has moved on a bit, but I just wanted to give my point of view as an outsider to the battling community.

I only go on the server to play some fun matches, I don't play competitively and I don't stick around there for chatting. Some members have mentioned people asking for matches and being ignored, that has happened to me most of the times I sign in - which, admittedly, are getting rarer and rarer. I'd also like to address Chase who said...

Quote:

Server Atmosphere:

I don't think anyone has a big problem with this and they shouldn't. We are a very lenient server that allows a lot more than other servers do.
I think your overall lenience is offputting to members. I often open up BSS, see a very weird/borderline conversation - yes, I've seen some about masturbation, some with people just randomly swearing - and just quit. It's very intimidating and even if it's not always like that, and I somehow just always come at a bad time, I don't see a reason it should ever be like that.

champagnepapi August 5th, 2014 1:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magic (Post 8386981)
I don't come here much ;-;. I realise that this is a bit delayed, and the topic has moved on a bit, but I just wanted to give my point of view as an outsider to the battling community.

I only go on the server to play some fun matches, I don't play competitively and I don't stick around there for chatting. Some members have mentioned people asking for matches and being ignored, that has happened to me most of the times I sign in - which, admittedly, are getting rarer and rarer. I'd also like to address Chase who said...



I think your overall lenience is offputting to members. I often open up BSS, see a very weird/borderline conversation - yes, I've seen some about masturbation, some with people just randomly swearing - and just quit. It's very intimidating and even if it's not always like that, and I somehow just always come at a bad time, I don't see a reason it should ever be like that.

Hey Magic, thank you for the input! Its very valuable actually to see what users who are hesitant of being involved in this community want, and what is off-putting about it to them. I think chat control is definitely an issue that needs to be adressed, since you arent the only one affected by its content. Anyways we do have some more casual leaning tours and events from time to time that might be worth joining, and I know most of the people posting in this thread would love to give you a battle. We also occasionally have tournaments hosted on the server itself ("script tours"), many in non ou formats, which are pretty fun, although theyve been less common lately.

Sirfetch’d August 5th, 2014 6:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magic (Post 8386981)
I don't come here much ;-;. I realise that this is a bit delayed, and the topic has moved on a bit, but I just wanted to give my point of view as an outsider to the battling community.

I only go on the server to play some fun matches, I don't play competitively and I don't stick around there for chatting. Some members have mentioned people asking for matches and being ignored, that has happened to me most of the times I sign in - which, admittedly, are getting rarer and rarer. I'd also like to address Chase who said...



I think your overall lenience is offputting to members. I often open up BSS, see a very weird/borderline conversation - yes, I've seen some about masturbation, some with people just randomly swearing - and just quit. It's very intimidating and even if it's not always like that, and I somehow just always come at a bad time, I don't see a reason it should ever be like that.


Very good points here! I wanted to say though that these topics you are referring to are totally not OK at all. Before the server was recognized "officially" by PC, we did allow more sexual topics and weren't cracking down on such things but now everything must remain in line with what is allowed on PC itself. If I were to come on a new server and see them talking about masturbation I would immediately leave because as you said it is offputting. Eliminating these types of discussions is a top priority for us staff right now because if we are bettering the server overall we can't have outright explicit chats.

Pokedra August 5th, 2014 10:33 PM

I'd also propose to ban Twitter-like spam. I think getting rid of this kind of chat like this would go a long way to making newbies feel at ease since it's easier for a newbie to join a discussion on competitive talk or a topic (says some news) rather then 2-3 people talking about their lunch.

Sirfetch’d August 5th, 2014 10:58 PM

While I do agree that for newbies looking to battle that entering on a chat centered around competitive battling would be better for them, we aren't just going to ban certain topics. That is turning the server into a dictatorship. You can't just go and alter the rules to include things like "no talking about your lunch", "topics about your pet are prohibited", etc. That just sounds silly and is way over the top. There is no way with as small of a community as we have that the server will be 100% competitive chat 100% of the time. There is just nothing wrong with small talk. We can still make the server more centered around competitive without completely changing the way it's run. As a community we just have to find a way to make the chats more balanced. Right now I'd say it's 70/30 with 70% being small talk. I'd say a good goal for our small of a community right now would be to try to bring it to 40/60 with the 60% being focused on competitive. Compromise is the key, not exclusion.

Pokedra August 5th, 2014 11:19 PM

There's a difference between small talk and meaningless spam, I mean I don't tell my irl friends about where my dog did his daily deed...do you? I don't think it's possible to keep the server 100% competitive talk related and I wouldn't want it like that but I think we need to rethink what we define as small talk and what is essentially spam. We should chat like normal people and utilize the server properly.

I don't say this to be an ass to the people who do like to use PC this way but the server is much more productive when the chat is focused on competitive talk. I don't even visit the server that much and I can tell that much. If you want I can post some logs or something about the difference between the two.

Sirfetch’d August 5th, 2014 11:26 PM

That's fair enough. Still though rather than banning "twitter like spam" and punishing users for it, I think the best step it just to discourage this and encourage our users to be more mindful to the chat if it is having a competitive based discussion. When no one is talking, as long as it isn't breaking the rules for being explicit I am fine with anything being the topic. We have a very understanding userbase that I think would really do well as we start to transition into the more competitive chat. And for those who weren't around last year, our chat has improved beyond belief. This time a year ago, you were lucky to see the chat be about Pokemon 5% of the time. The usual topic was about the color of usernames. So things are improving. Just slowly.

Pokedra August 5th, 2014 11:41 PM

It's funny you mention that any topic suffices when there isn't chat since the main reason chat dies is because someone posts about their day and only one other is interested in discussing it.

Isn't the fact the chat has made little progress a worrying sign? We had this discussion about the server chat last year and came to exact same conclusion. We need to drive the chat to be more competitive. A year has passed and our progress is...coloured usernames to PC Twitter? Do we become PC Instagram next? There are times when good discussion gets going, sadly enough this is when most of these so-called regulars are offline. We don't need a massive ban but for mods to keep the chat on topic and actually do their job.

Sirfetch’d August 6th, 2014 12:05 AM

Not trying to sound arrogant but when was the last time you even visited the server? If it was recently you would see that it has in fact improved so much since this time last year. I don't see the issue that you seem to be having with the chat. It's improving. It's not going to change 100% to the way you want it overnight and it's highly annoying that you think us mods aren't "doing our job". Us staff have put a lot of effort into moderating the server, finding ways to bring it more activity, and just overall make it a better place. The issue isn't that we "don't have the stomach to tell friends to stop spamming" but rather we just simply aren't going to mute people or tell them they can't talk about a subject just because it isn't always competitive.


On another note, I am fine with staff stepping in and telling users to not interrupt the current topic with something that doesn't contribute, but for the most part this isn't an issue. I can say that I personally will pay more attention and try to discourage users from blatantly changing the current topic if everyone seems to be engaged in an all in discussion on competitive.



Also just one more thing, I don't know why the chat has become the center of discussion. It honestly is one of the smaller issues overall in the big picture. Just changing the chat isn't going to achieve what we are all trying to here.

Pokedra August 6th, 2014 12:31 AM

It was today and it was actually quite pleasant since the chat was of worth. And no, it has improved in it's consistency but when it hits rock bottom (which unfortunately is more then it should) it degenerates into something no better then the colored username fiasco. There is improvement but it comes from a small portion of the server rather then the server as a whole.

And I'm not saying it's going to change overnight, this exact discussion was had last year and the decision was made to change the server chat. A year and a bit is plenty to change things. And you don't want to mute people but what difference is there muting a spammer and someone who is contributing absolutely zilch to the topic at hand? Far as I'm concerned the two are the same. Not saying you aren't doing your job but rather I think being a little harsher is probably what we need. The modding team is well chosen as far as I'm concerned, maybe just a little too lenient.

Because the server has always been the backbone of this forum. Making the server a better place for newbies will create interest for the forum. Other ideas like tutoring and clans would take place on the server. If people want this forum to actually become active again, the improvement starts from the server.

Sirfetch’d August 6th, 2014 12:38 AM

I agree totally! Starting from the server and working up is the route to go. We just have to find a way to get the server regulars involved. I think the majority would love the idea of clans and tutoring programs as nearly everyone there is there because they have at least some interest in competitive. As more people become involved the chat will naturally fix itself.


(also i want to apologize if I have sounded arrogant in any of my posts. I have a high amount of respect for you because I realize you are a veteran and have contributed far more than I have to this forum and servers over the years. I understand why you want things to be a certain way and fully support that.)

Pokedra August 6th, 2014 12:48 AM

Believe me I had no intention of attacking anyone, it is a little frustrating for those who've been here longer to see just how active and fun this forum used to be. Not saying the current state is terrible but rather it could be so much more (sure you would agree with this?). And I agree, if we can get tutoring and competitions going and slowly cutting back on some of the server spam I think it'd go a long way to getting this forum back on it's feet. The userbase is there no doubt.

I'm sure you've done just as much as I have haha, probably more to be honest. And I guess I do sound like I'm trying to dictate what the forum should be but from past experience a more competitive-orientated server leads to a much more active forum. And it's not like we talked competitive 100%, there was more then a fair share of normal discussion ;D

Sirfetch’d August 6th, 2014 12:53 AM

mhm there is always room for improvement. As we are small we will be taking baby steps but I am really excited to see how things start to evolve over the coming weeks and months. I really expect to see the forum and server both improving as it seems everyone is serious about this. Moreso than last time this was brought up

.Aero August 6th, 2014 4:56 AM

Spoilers cuz a few long things I figure:

On Moderating the Chat Discussions
Spoiler:
Let me just backtrack a bit here. I don't think Pokedra wants the mods to tell people to stop talking about meaningless topics. I think what he really means is to have the moderators try to steer the topic of discussion toward something more competitive. I figure we're all friends on the server, maybe if something interesting in your life is happening and you want to share it with others, feel free. I do agree though that talking about incredibly menial things such as "I took a shower woo"-type stuff should be considered spammy.

Basically when moderators see a topic starting to get a little dry or just two people are talking to each other about their own little daily endeavors they should propose questions to everyone about competitive pokemon (or, hell, pokemon in general is better). The mods shouldn't berate those who are speaking about hyper off-topic stuff, they should just suggest a new topic essentially. Literally telling the chat to "change topic to pokemon" is doing nothing. It shows a lack of devotion to actually improving the competitive side of the server since having no questions / discussion ideas basically states that the moderator is incapable of being a mod of a battle server in my completely honest opinion.

Has the chat improved? Well considering I haven't seen anyone complain about how "ugly my username color is", I'd say it's gotten quite a lot better. I see Pokemon being discussed more frequently which is fun and interesting (mostly this is done by a few select members while some just sit and watch, maybe they're observing or don't know enough to weigh in, but hopefully they'll learn more by watching and can weigh in when they feel ready). Progress is happening, slowly, but it is and it's nice to see.


On Clans
Spoiler:
So we seem to all agree: Clans are a great idea. We should do them. But all of us just agreeing with each other isn't leading to progress. It might feel that way, but no plans have been drawn up, a system hasn't even been suggested necessarily, etc. I know some of you have discussed possible kinks (not those kind ;]) in a clan setup, such as wars becoming stale after a while, etc. But we can't work those out I figure until we have a basic foundation for clans in the first place.

So I propose we try the clan setup that Wolf, Karp, Vrai, and myself tried a while back but it fell through due to Football commitment on Vrai's end and Wolf busy with various projects (and then I left forever and Karp went to Smogon at that point I'm pretty sure).

Basically the setup was:
We have 4 clans, each with their own little unique styles. The draw to each clan is basically: Which theme do you like the most? For example, I remember mine was pirates themed and the mascot pokemon were the Kingdra family. The reason there were four clans, if I recall, was due to the player-base being rather small. If we allowed just anyone to make clans, then the member population of all the clans would be very small since people, let's be honest, would rather start their own clan than join someone else's in a lot of cases. But since we only had 4, members were essentially forced to choose among the 4 clans. I believe we planned on increasing the number of clans as the player-base grew, but we never made it that far.

So essentially, I propose a reinvention of that idea. Let's try it again.


On Server Atmosphere
Spoiler:
Having been around forever, I'm initially completely opposed to changing the demeanor of our community. I enjoy the more mature atmosphere of the server compared to the forums themselves. However, if those on the outside find the topics / language off-putting, I'm willing to put aside my nostalgic love for the classic S&M community if it means growing as a community that BATTLES.

Key word is battles. My opinion on the matter is: I value a battling-community over an adult-oriented community any day. I can still PM / skype / talk-irl with people about my adult-related humor / topics and get satisfaction there. However, I prefer an adult-oriented community over one where we talk about what kind of spaghetti I had today and that's it.

I, personally, see the only reason to disallow profane language is to attract new users. If these new users do not battle or TRY to battle, then I don't see why I should give a damn about their opinions on the server and its friendliness. I understand that the server is associated with the forums themselves, but I will sooner leave for good if the server becomes a place for discussing average every day tasks. (The main draw I ever had for coming back was because I enjoy engaging in random ♥♥♥♥ery with my friends here, if I can't do that anymore and battling isn't a priority on the server, I'll have no reason to come back).


On the UU Threatlist Project
Spoiler:
Not sure how many of you play UU, my suspicions tell me 2 of you (Anti / Karp and Anti is only sort of because he told me he wants to get into it but can't grasp what's good in the tier). However, I play UU, I enjoy UU, and it's way more stable than OU currently, especially after the Aegi ban. So I decided to start that threatlist. Hopefully its presence encourages some of you to give UU a shot.

I'm sure you've noticed I stopped filling in the Pokemon too. The reason for this is because I don't know where I want to go with the design of the thread. Its current setup just feels SO INCREDIBLY CLUNKY AND LARGE AND I HATE IT. So if any of you have ideas from a design standpoint, let me know. I'm very interested to hear.

Also since so few of you play UU, I'm not sure if I can get that much help with the sets. I'm literally pulling them from the smogon analysis page right now since I just got into UU about a week ago, so I, as you probably can guess, am not completely familiar with all the pokemon and their sets. So if you are familiar with common sets for pokemon in the tier, I'd really appreciate feedback as I add them in (as Moxie has done, which I appreciate btw).


On Elf Being Dumb
Spoiler:
Elf ur an idiot. :]

wolf August 6th, 2014 5:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by .Aero (Post 8385150)
I think the fact that I'm on rather consistently throughout various hours of the day (due to a horrible cycling sleep schedule) allows me to get to know various people on the server regardless of their time zones. As a result, I feel like I should know everyone who is on staff on the server, seeing as how those who deserve server staff status should be consistent members as well. However, every few days I see a brand new name pop up and I have literally no idea who they are (even after they explain who they are). My question is: Why are these people on staff? Clearly they are not consistent users on the server, and I highly doubt they battle at all, save a few random battles here and there (which I, personally, don't even count).

The BSS hasn't been particularly active lately, including myself. It could be attributed to the battle server's recent lack of activity in general, and it's summer break. As a result, we haven't been as interactive with the community as we used to. The problem certainly needs to be addressed, but I think it has more to do with the fact that the battle server has been rather boring lately.

Clans: Clans have two major problems nowadays: a) lack of reliable thread activity and content, and b) thread longevity. In the past, clans were kept afloat because of Wi-Fi battle scheduling (see: the current active league in this forum right now). When clans are completely reliant on battle simulators like PS, their threads lose a lot of activity for obvious reasons. Anti's suggestion of mentor/tutor clans would fix the first problem, but ultimately it comes down to our experienced battlers and if they're interested enough to consistently mentor people and keep the threads active.

If we don't have individual threads for each clan, we avoid these problems for the most part. Instead, we could make a league that's split up into teams. Within the league we could have clan wars, outsider challengers, and so on. Could also mentor in the league thread with every team/clan included, but a separate mentorship program would be better. Here is a more elaborate description on it (the spoiler contains the important stuff).

Miscellaneous ideas:

• Battle Dojo: An event that encourages people to improve their battling skills. Two major aspects of it: a) try to get as high as possible on Smogon's ladder (perhaps while using a specific Pokemon?), and b) after practicing on the ladder, everyone battles each other in a tournament finale. Can split everyone into teams to spice things up.

• Team Rating Event: Hopefully Zeffy won't mind me quoting him!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeffy (Post 8365569)
- Team Rating Event. In this event, the host will post a team. The team, of course, is rather well built except for a huge weakness. The task of the participant is to a) determine said weakness, and b) propose a proper solution for said weakness, including an informative explanation. Of course, similar entries are to be expected, so an aspect of creativity is heavily rewarded. Creativity in terms of proposing a solution that isn't always expected (like an underrated Pokemon / set for example) but also works and actually contributes to the team (basically not a useless gimmick).

We could even do in-game teams, where the host posts a team for a certain game (ie Emerald) and the participants are to determine how it would fair against the gym leaders, elite 4, battle frontier, etc. Since almost anything works in-game anyway, we could introduce themes like monotype teams, monocolour teams, and the likes.

Also could help improve everyone's team rating, provide a nice resource for good example rates, etc.

• Community Create-A-Team: Should be self-explanatory. The community develops a team together.

• More small tournaments with fun themes. I miss making these.

• A battle server rule that states battling related topics as a higher priority over off-topic chat, which essentially means that BSS will take action if people attempt to change the topic when there's already a healthy battling related chat going on. Probably isn't practical or needed, but I figure I would throw the idea out there.

• More noticeable prefixes. Could help discussions stand out. Here's a mockup that I'd like feedback on:

Quote:

Originally Posted by wolf (Post 8388897)
I'm playing around with stuff when I should be doing other things. D'oh.


Thoughts? Too flashy perhaps? I was thinking it would emphasize the prefixes and their usefulness, but I don't want them to be overwhelming or unappealing.

Voice: The staff plans to remove the current form of voice, then replace it with senior (=) and rename it to voice. We did consider making the senior rank (aka the future voice rank) exclusive to active battlers, but there were concerns about it. A PM of mine explains the counterargument well enough:

Spoiler:
Re: Voice: Major contributions to the community that aren't related to battling include: a) promoting a welcoming and friendly atmosphere (e.g. greeting people), and b) providing notable off-topic chat (the type that isn't always generic like what Pokie referred to in the thread). Wouldn't you consider these contributions worth recognition? It means little that these contributions aren't currently prevalent, as the same could be said about battling contributions.

I'll also point out that promoting non-battlers to voice doesn't mean battlers won't receive recognition for their efforts as well. Would this be a happy middle ground? Understandably you want more emphasis on battling and you see the battle server as predominately a place for battling discussion, but others view it differently. Some like to use the battle server as a medium to purely enjoy time with friends without participating in battling discussion. "Battler-only" voice would no doubt undervalue all of these people.

I'm still on the fence about it so feel free to comment.

Starry Windy August 6th, 2014 11:06 PM

I personally think that forcing anyone to talk competitively if they don't feel like it (like if talking about other stuffs, they will be muted) is not a good idea, since most of us are just here for some good chat, not just about battling stuffs, and I fear that many users will feel rejected if that happens, and it will ruin PC Battle Server as a whole.

I'm wondering, if there should be a second lobby dedicated to the competitive battling, so that anyone who talks about competitive stuffs can talk freely in the special room, meanwhile anyone who will talk about casual stuffs can go to our usual Lobby.

champagnepapi August 7th, 2014 3:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Starry Windy (Post 8389552)
since most of us are just here for some good chat, not just about battling stuffs

Quote:

Originally Posted by Starry Windy
PC Battle Server

Ehhhh, the battle server isnt the first place you should go for chatting, we have tpc irc for that, where the primary purpose is friendly discussion. In the same vein i dont know why you would funnel battling discussion to a room other than the main one on a battle server with the purpose of promoting battling and connecting the competitive community. Wouldnt it be better to do that for another topic, like they have sports and music rooms on main?

Okay edit ----'

More important than chat moderation is the server's purpose and the perception that its exclusively a place to log on and chat like an irc. I think chat should be moderated lightly in the future but right now there needs to be a culture change since right now people might be getting deterred from getting involved if pokedra and magics posts are anything to go by.

Starry Windy August 7th, 2014 4:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Exile (Post 8389717)
Ehhhh, the battle server isnt the first place you should go for chatting, we have tpc irc for that, its a solid chat where the primary purpose is friendly discussion. In the same room i dont know why you would funnel battling discussion to a room other than the main one on a battle server with the purpose of promoting battling and connecting the competitive community. Wouldnt it be better to do that for another topic, like they have sports and music rooms on main?

I personally think, even though it's clearly the Battle Server, doesn't meant that it's all limited to battle chats only, sometimes I do prefer more varieties other than just talking competitively. More varieties can make this server alive too, I believe. But that doesn't mean that I shy away from several competitive talk, though. I was here for battling, at the beginning, but when I was almost giving up on it, it's the friendly environment which makes me keep staying in this server, and PC at the same time, so... yeah.

.Aero August 7th, 2014 5:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Starry Windy (Post 8389794)
I personally think, even though it's clearly the Battle Server, doesn't meant that it's all limited to battle chats only, sometimes I do prefer more varieties other than just talking competitively. More varieties can make this server alive too, I believe. But that doesn't mean that I shy away from several competitive talk, though. I was here for battling, at the beginning, but when I was almost giving up on it, it's the friendly environment which makes me keep staying in this server, and PC at the same time, so... yeah.

The solution that has been proposed hasn't been to mute those who don't talk about competitive. The idea is that battling chat should be the focus. Essentially, if the chat is literally 2 people talking about their day, someone should step up and propose a topic related to competitive pokemon in order to produce a discussion rather than a conversation that could easily be maintained through PM of the two people involved.

Wolf also stated that it should take priority, meaning if the group is discussing competitive topics, then nobody should derail it with some meaningless topic when a healthy discussion is happening about battling on a battling server. I'd have to agree with Karp about the idea that if all you really want is a chat, then the IRC is a much more suitable place.

@Wolf: About voice, I mean, I don't really care. I feel like voice is a useless / pointless rank in the first place. I figure its only true use is to notify new users that "Yes, I am experienced at battling and know what I'm talking about for the most part." That's why I feel it should only be provided to battlers. I understand a lot of people like the idea of it making them feel "included" in the group of regulars, but it's literally a useless rank as far as I'm concerned (maybe you can broadcast /data commands and normal members can't I don't know). Those who require a + (or I guess an = now) next to their name in order to feel included in a group friends need to reevaluate the reasons they're on the server. Nobody is going to say you're not a regular if you clearly are just because you don't have a +/= next to your name. But like I said. I think it's pointless and my opinion on the matter shouldn't weigh in on the final decision since I honestly don't care how it ends up.

@Community Create-a-Team: Anti mentioned it earlier, and I think it's a great idea. I was thinking we could collectively create teams of all the different archetypes of teams (stall / offensive / balanced, etc) for each tier (or at least OU first) and then post them in an archive style for reference to newer users. This should include the team building process (condensed and a link to the thread where we collectively made the team), that way people who are new to OU or a team style can get a sense of how to properly build a team in that style. A short guide on how to play the team should also be provided to assist in developing game-sense for new users. Import should also be provided because I know when I get asked to battle OU I feel bad for rejecting, since I lack a team and an ability to make one since I'm unfamiliar with the whole meta. If there's an import available, as well as a general "here's how to play the team" guide in a single location, I can easily help other people test their OU teams or just casually battle OU.

@Elf being dumb: Why

Dark Azelf August 7th, 2014 6:22 AM

Quote:

@Elf being dumb: Why
http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e354/cobalt-wolf/images_forums/adf3198d2a80.gif~original

>Aero's bottix hole. :)


Anyway like i said in my previous post about staff needing a restructure, see here . Maybe voice does too? On one hand people are saying "well gee you cant have non battlers blah blah" and on the other hand you have "yah shouldnt exclude non battlers blah etc". This is what i alluded to in my previous post, its inconsistent. I mean there needs to be a clear cut line on what actually determines how and why people qualify people for such ranks. You could possibly incorporate driver role too or something for battlers and everyone else voice who is considered a regular idk.

In a nutshell, you should decide the focus of the server. If its battling focused? Mod and Driver active battlers who are actually active and care about THIS forum (read: not "i come on once a week and am on smogon the rest of the time" or "yeah ive never battled, try to or even relevant in the bs but for some reason im actually on server staff") basically. + everyone else who is a regular probs which includes non battlers.

HOWEVER. I disagree with the notion that you should always talk about battling all the time. That gets boring fast. I think the chat flow should be left to be as natural as possible, if it drifts towards competitive and people interrupt with crap then mods should be all like "yo dont interupt". Warning and muting is a bit much though tbh.

Sirfetch’d August 7th, 2014 9:41 AM

In the past we have given the voice rank to anyone who is a regular for more than a week or so as an experiment after our last restructure and we see now that wasn't the best way to go. It's confusing for new members who log on and see everyone on the server with a rank; many of whom don't deserve it for many reasons. This is why we have decided to restructure the rank and be more consistent on whom we promote. Seeing now that the (=) rank will be the new "voice", I guess we could have the player rank as a reward and recognition for the active battling contributers of the community(although I would have to propose this with wolf and zeffy). It would be unique to our server and a nice way to recognize those who have contributed by battling as opposed to just being a regular. Right now the player rank(which is the star) is just used for contest winners but I think could actually serve a better purpose recognizing the battling community as a permanent rank. Since we are a battle server, our battlers should deserve a recognition.

Also on another note, we do like to keep some structure of ranks so if we set "modchat" we arent just limiting staff to talking.

Anti August 7th, 2014 12:10 PM

So I'm not thrilled about voice being given to non-battlers, and I don't think "just showing up" or "being a regular" is a contribution. We have plenty of regulars who routinely ruin the chat or at the very least could be called negative presences. I can live with wolf's proposal if "notable off-topic chat" isn't the kinds of things Pokedra describes (which I think are overblown, but his general idea of "the chat is often really asinine" is not wrong).

I don't think voice matters though. It's more symbolic anyway. What matters is a cultural shift away from indifference to battling, and perhaps more importantly, a cultural shift away from ignoring or disregarding the people on the server who want a more battle-centric experience. That's kind of why competitive chats being interrupted is so frustrating: off-topic already dominates the server, so when we're talking about the nuances of the Aegislash suspect case, it would be great for us to at least be given the courtesy of talking about it. ANY chat being interrupted is rude, anyway.

I agree with D_A's idea of light moderation (just friendly reminders of that) to combat this, and I think that anyone who feels interrupted can also speak up and politely express any feeling of getting drowned out.

It's more the principle that competitive battlers shouldn't have to be protected on a battle server. Yeah, non-battlers shouldn't have joined here in the first place when TPC exists, but they're here now so we have to work out a middle ground. "Make a room for competitive chat" is not a middle ground, however, it's the status quo very thinly veiled. We have to be met halfway. Since this server is the ONLY place we can chat about battling, while there are numerous places to do off-topic chat, I would appreciate if everyone could at least empathize with the tough spot the battlers are often in.

And to be clear, no one wants to make a 100% competitive chat, ban off-topic chat, kick off non-battlers, etc., so I don't want to see this strawman. Thank you.

I do want to come to a solution ASAP on the chat though so we can make to some of the ideas people have been throwing around about clans, leagues, events, tutoring, etc. that will shape the future direction of the forum more, though the chat is definitely important lol.

Vrai August 9th, 2014 4:24 PM

Hi! :)

I hope most of you remember me - I've been quiet here for some time and I even see a few call-outs here in this thread (which are surely merited, haha). Reading through all of this, I do love a lot of posts in this thread! Especially most of Anti's, I can really tell there's a lot of passion and thought behind them. I have just a couple of ideas, responses, and points to make, but I'll be as concise as I can where applicable.

Firstly, at user MoxieInfinite in particular, since your posts had a certain air to them that none other in this thread have:

Spoiler:
Hello. I've seen you on Smogon and I'm pretty sure we've played in a tour or two. I also think you are glorifying Smogon and its users too much especially in comparison to the ones here at PC, and bringing a very heavy negative tone to this thread. All of the posts I've seen you make in this thread are very critical of our current users and imply that Smogon is better because of the way they do things. It's fine if you think that, but don't bring that mentality into this thread, OK? We've got a lot of work to do to make this place as special as it can be, and having someone in the background saying that our moderators (currently are? will be? might be?) colorblind sheep, saying that we are "second-rate" at RMT and other facets of a healthy competitive community, and saying that it's not worth it to pursue certain aspects is really just making you a setback in my eyes. Remember, we are not trying to beat out Smogon at the things they do best, nor will we ever do so. Also, we will deal with many many new players here - don't call them "retards" just because they used Bellossom. Everyone learns.

Additionally, to help satisfy the following question you posted earlier in this thread: "What players has this place brought up?"

My name is Zebraiken, and I am confident I'm becoming one of the most accomplished and strongest battlers on Smogon. This is my home - I was born and raised on good ol' S&M.


In order for this forum and this server to be truly competitive again, it has to begin and be enforced from the roots up. Like Anti pointed out, it starts with the auth - being active and constantly willing to battle will help. Encouraging battling whenever possible will help. If there's no discussion or there is some random-ass discussion going on, talk about something battling-related. Ask for help on a team, or ask someone for fights. Talk to someone about something new you're using. I like how it was suggested we should focus on competitive auth - voice for actively trying to battle outside of randbats is great.

If we honestly want this to happen, everyone has to go in hard. No half-assing, no "hey we should be good at battling again" "ok" "hows the weather" things going on anymore. I know I'm not the ~optimal~ guy to be saying this since I'm a ghost here, but it's true.

On Clans: No opinion on clans right now. I think it's more important that we focus on attitude and actually doing things first. More people join if they see it's worth joining, and then more people participate in clans... as they say, the more the merrier.

On Tutoring: I have some comments on tutoring I would like to make at a later time. I'm in the process of becoming a Smogon tutor, and I've refined my own methods enough that I could help make guides and work with people who are interested in tutoring here. Tutoring here should focus on the "brand new to competitive" types of people that get no attention elsewhere, then focus on helping them achieve bigger and better things while being a great environment so they want to stay here.

On Our Tournaments:
Spoiler:
As far as our own tournaments... they will always be a struggle until there is a consistent playerbase here. There is a small one now, but it's not consistent, and it's not big. We need to look at ways to build interest in staying and playing here before trying to drum up interest for some ~cool~ forum tours.

I had one idea in particular that I wanted to share with you all: Smogon has a ton of official tournaments, and it could be a pretty great idea for everyone here to work together as a team to improve and try to perform well in these. Don't team share, but practice with each other. Aspire to succeed, and when people see that x person has made great strides, others might be more inclined to try with us next time too. Learn from everyone else, practice with everyone else, get better with everyone else, and be proud of everyone who did better than they did before. Sounds pretty good to me.

Maybe we can try our own really neat unique tournaments later on too, but truthfully I think we need to work on the dedicated userbase part first.


On Server Atmosphere:
Spoiler:
Quote:

I think your overall lenience is offputting to members. I often open up BSS, see a very weird/borderline conversation - yes, I've seen some about masturbation, some with people just randomly swearing - and just quit. It's very intimidating and even if it's not always like that, and I somehow just always come at a bad time, I don't see a reason it should ever be like that.
Can we fix this? I've gotten on many times (sometimes on alts, sometimes logged out) and just been downright dismayed by the conversation and left. I would imagine that someone who has no ties to the forum whatsoever but might have been interested in hanging out would feel the same way. Be lenient because it is a free chatroom, but don't let everything go to ****. Don't be strict just for the sake of being strict. Don't make this into some intergalactic war between auth and non-auth, because together we're a team that's just trying to make this a better place to be.

Let's cut the peen jokes. Let's stop making awkward sexual references every time something dumb comes up. Let's talk a little less about the real world and a little more about the internet world we're all escaping into, something that shares common ground with everyone who will ever enter our server.

...please?


Random: Let's not ever make a team database, because it won't help us. Team cores and discussing teams will, but making a database of built teams for people to take won't help. IDC if the idea wasn't brought up, I just wanted to clear this in case I ever forget.

I just kinda spewed some of my thoughts into this post so sorry if it's unreadable, but I'm tired now and I don't feel like cleaning it up. I plan on being around more, even if I'm not always available to play and such (I have a ton of things to do on Smogon + working full-time now).

e: OK cleaned it up a little

wolf August 9th, 2014 9:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vrai (Post 8394010)
I had one idea in particular that I wanted to share with you all: Smogon has a ton of official tournaments, and it could be a pretty great idea for everyone here to work together as a team to improve and try to perform well in these. Don't team share, but practice with each other. Aspire to succeed, and when people see that x person has made great strides, others might be more inclined to try with us next time too. Learn from everyone else, practice with everyone else, get better with everyone else, and be proud of everyone who did better than they did before. Sounds pretty good to me.

I like this. Basically use success at Smogon as an incentive, while staying on PC for the social aspect of battling. At least in theory clans (or a single clan with divisions, like a team league) would help us accomplish this by developing a close-knit group of battlers.

Quote:

Tutoring here should focus on the "brand new to competitive" types of people that get no attention elsewhere, then focus on helping them achieve bigger and better things while being a great environment so they want to stay here.
Perhaps we could collaborate and make a beginner's guide on battling? Similar to Smogon's DPP one but with updated info and additional stuff like team synergy and cores.

Anti August 10th, 2014 12:17 PM

Yeah I agree with wolf and Vrai that using SmogTours to get better would be a great idea. Perhaps expanding off that, maybe sharing replays and critiquing battling execution might also be helpful? I know this is something that happens on Smogon that could be useful to newer players, and from watching a fair number of battles on our server I would say that it could really make a difference. Also, I think it would help a lot in creating the sort of cultural change we've been talking about by promoting some deal of pride in getting better! That's the kind of idea I was hoping to get when I made this thread, so thank you for posting. :)

On prefixes: I don't understand why these exist, if I'm being honest. Do we really need "battle log" or "event" to alert us to a thread's purpose? I'm not against them really (it's not like they hurt anything), but it's the kind of thing that I think is ultimately rather trivial.

Now I don't want to take a turn for the gloomy here, but over the past few days this thought has creeped in so I figured I'd share it.

We've had a lot of these threads before, though it's certainly been awhile. I think that if there's a single lesson we can take from the successes and failures of those, it's that ultimately, everyone has to really buy in and make an effort. Jake mentioned the disproportionate veteran/oldie/whatever presence in this thread, and I'm not going to decry that as much as to say that I feel like we need more tangible commitment to something like clans or tutoring from the people who would be the learners. Is there actually a demand for the ideas we're presenting? If so, we'd love to hear that. :) If not, then I don't want anyone to put forth effort that won't be reciprocated. I think that at this point we have plenty of workable ideas that can at least serve as a starting point. Besides the mutual exclusivity of "tutor clans" (curious if there's any more feedback on those?) and a more traditional tutoring set-up, I think most everything that has been brought up--wolf's league, Battle Dojo, team-building competition (WIP as I type), team-building workshop, more discussions and events, etc. are all things that I think would be seen as coexisting positives. (I've probably forgotten a thing or two.)

But Vrai is right about needing a greater playerbase. I guess the question I'm trying to get at is simply, how much interest do server regulars who don't battle have in picking up the game? I would really appreciate if some of them could post here and speak to this so we at least know what we are or aren't working with. I'm not trying to set a trap so if you say "not interested" we pounce on you but am instead just trying to get a rough estimate of what turnout we may get from existing server regulars for something like tutoring, which is a logical first step in expanding the playerbase.

wolf, maybe you could set up a poll? Maybe even a different thread? I understand that some people have felt deterred from posting here because of the heavy oldie presence so I really wouldn't mind a separate thread if it would mean better responsiveness.

wolf August 11th, 2014 10:02 AM

I suppose I could make a separate thread with a simple goal: ask people brand new to competitive battling if they would be interested in a tutor program. Then put it in the Lobby's intro message on the battle server. However, I think it would be unnecessary for the tutor program. New battlers are constantly visiting PC, so there will always be people to tutor. On the other hand, tutor clans would probably require a great deal of interest, so it may help to receive some confirmation before going through with it. Personally I'm not too keen for tutor clans, because a) there would be the constant concern of thread activity, and b) the combination of this forum (e.g. team help threads) and the tutor program would accomplish similar goals.

PC League & Clans: I've been brainstorming ideas lately. Here's what I've come up with:

• The PC League would be a basic organized league. However, there would be clan divisions.
• Anyone would be able to make their own clan within the league. If the clan founder can't find at least 4 other people within a certain time period, their clan would be removed.
• 5 members would be the requirement for each clan. Could increase depending on the amount of sign-ups.
• Each clan would have their own official chat room on the battle server. These would be more for advertisement than for practical use, like to grab the interest of random visitors. Challenges could be held out there as well.
• 2 or 4 clans would be designated as "chief clans" (pending name). Challengers who would be interested in putting their name in the Hall of Fame, as well as other goodies, would have to defeat these clans. Defeating the other clans would be optional. To decide which clans would be chief clans, I'm guessing we would hold a clan war amongst all of the clans.
• Clans could have their own themes, but it wouldn't be required. OU would still be the standard format for most league activities and challenges. e.g. A clan could have a monotype theme for challengers, but stick with regular OU teams for other stuff.
• Lastly, it goes without saying that there would be league activities such as clan wars and free-for-all tournaments.

Also, I had this idea pertaining to the battle server's ladder. There are always problems with searching for battles, because it can be inconvenient getting two people to search at the same time. I could possibly code a message that is sent into the Lobby whenever someone searches for a battle. Unfortunately I don't think there's a way for the message to include what format the battle is for. However, I could remove all formats on the ladder except for a "Battle Week/Fortnight" format, so it would be obvious which format it is.

Anti August 11th, 2014 12:48 PM

I'm fine with run-of-the-mill tutoring as it's likely going to feel less contrived. If that's the case, what will the program look like? I truthfully don't have a hugely clear vision of this, mostly because of the aforementioned shortage of tutors which we'd have to work around. I would a tutoring infrastructure more than a tutoring "event" though if that makes sense, for the sake of giving it more longevity, allowing students become tutors over time, etc. (I don't know how that looks in practical terms though.)

I do think though that new battlers visiting PC isn't the entire demographic here. As long as the server is majority non-battling casual, I think the problems that have been described earlier in the thread (especially about the chat) will persist. Maybe you don't agree with this, but part of the appeal of tutoring to me is giving these people an avenue to learn the game and play it decently well, so that even if they only play competitive Pokemon in a casual manner, they can at least be members of the competitive community in earnest. That's more why I want to gauge interest, as otherwise we're still operating as two different communities which I don't think is ideal.

I really like your idea for PC League and fully support its implementation as soon as possible. Maybe we'd want to wait for tutoring to get up and running first--you can decide that--but whenever the optimal time is to post it you can do so and I think it would be an awesome and probably necessary addition to our competitive scene.

(Just a footnote, but I did want to push the team-building workshop thread again and gauge opinions on that since team-building tends to be a major barrier of entry, and it is perhaps a superior alternative to "here's a list of teams to use" that is more interactive and engaging.)

srinator August 12th, 2014 5:49 PM

I really don't have the time to read through everyhing posted above but I would like to say that anti you are awesome \o/
Anyway I wrote something that I thought about.

I agree with a lot that has been said above and in my opinion I would love a more battle centered battle center. Also I disagree with people saying off topic discussions is what brings the laid back-ness, when I joined yesterday on the bc, I think anti and karp were there? Idr lol, but it was actually fun, people were talking about competitive strategies for a while and then we all started to talk about what he future mega mons will bring to the game/if non-factual pokemons etc. it was fun and laid back back but also informative. Especially I wasn't really caught up on the new news.
While I don't want to put the impression that off topic discussions like what some of you are discussing about is a complete no-no for me (since I used to be involved in them myself lol) I would prefer only topics that are good contribution wise be present in the main chat and things that are more suited for pm's be taken to pm's.

I actually thought of a way so we can merge tutoring as well as tournaments. It was inspired by football but I was thinking if we could have the league concept introduced (I saw a lot league written above but irdk what that's about, I will read it by Sunday). What I mean by that is we do a whole tutor recruitment thing or what ever, you guys can honk about he process. But once that is done we get teams in with max 5 people in each team. Every team gets atleast one of the above listed tutors. Now what this does is help overall growth in people while battling, something like on-field experience etc. not only does this become fun but also very interactive and let's people get involved into competitive Pokemon with guidance. Small tournaments in between is also a big yes since it promotes practice and overall competitiveness.
Furthermore we should definitely have clans, although I am not an expert on those, but I have seen so many clan guys come to our server only to be dissed by the community saying this is not a battling-ish server (no I did not have a hand in that).

Anyway These are my views and I need to go to class (full days be so ass) I might add/tidy up later on. Ty for reading, elf sux etc.

Ingosmex August 13th, 2014 2:41 PM

A lot has been said on this matter, I agree with a many things. Alright just want to introduce myself for those of you who dont know me, Im Ingo a regular on the PC showdown server. I joined this site and as soon as I became a member I was impressed the site itself has so many features and a solid member base. The structure of the site is great, although I feel the competitiveness can be improved further.

Ok for starters I feel that there should be a clan section around here where members can build small clans/groups and challenge each other. Perhaps form an official ranking list with the top 5 clans of Poke' Community, have this maintained by a certain member and have mods over look it to make sure its being run smoothly. Trust me its effective, this site has a lot of skilled battlers however its lacking a bit of the competitiveness. On the positive side I do like the tournaments being held such as the GT11 things like that raises activity and awareness and will definitely help retain members. Also Wolf I most definitely agree with you on the fact that having clans and small groups will help the site have teams battling more closely alongside each other. So if the site was to war another site players would feel more comfortable and would know how to work with each other as a team too.

Another thing, I'm not having a go at the moderators here. But how many posts you have on the forum shouldnt declare whether you should be a moderator on the server. Post count is important dont get me wrong it shows dedication, how long a member has been part of the community is also very important. But im a regular on the Poke' community server as is E x i l e and Dark Azelf. Ive noticed a lot of the moderators on the server dont do anything or barely get on there most of the time I message them saying host a tournament. These are things that will keep the server active and running.

My advice, maybe have a competitive forum for pokemon which can be merged with RMT ratings, clans/ leagues. This will definitely enhance the forum and encourage new members to join also.

Vrai August 23rd, 2014 11:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wolf (Post 8394336)
Perhaps we could collaborate and make a beginner's guide on battling? Similar to Smogon's DPP one but with updated info and additional stuff like team synergy and cores.

I could most definitely help with this. (Sorry to bump an older thread, I've been crazy busy the last few weeks and I'm trying to sort out some of my obligations by priority, so I haven't been able to check this until like now).

wolf November 13th, 2014 11:17 AM

Ahoy! I'm not sure if anyone still cares about all this, but nonetheless... I'm more than willing to do what was discussed here, but I've been swamped with schoolwork lately. That and activity has been slow, especially on the battle server, which has been discouraging. Because of this, the tutor program has been put on hold until maybe the holidays. I've also been forced to delay the PC League due to the poor activity, since we don't really have enough active regulars to make it successful.

In the meantime that I have some goals to accomplish once my semester ends (or before that if I have time): a) write up a decent guide for beginners, b) host small tournaments (e.g. Battle Dojo and regular) to spark some interest in ORAS OU, c) be more active in general, and d) make it easier to find battles on the battle server.

I've tested out ladder messages on my private server (whenever someone clicks on the "Look for a battle" button a message like "<user> is searching for a <format> battle" appears), but it has one major glitch that deters me from implementing it in the Lobby. The server will post multiple messages for each member that has the same IP, regardless if it was just one of them who clicked on the button. So, if a crowd from school starts using the ladder, the Lobby will get flooded. To avoid this, I've considered making another room like the Lobby that everyone autojoins upon loading the server. Since the room wouldn't be intended for chatting like the default room, the ladder spam wouldn't be a big problem if it ever occurs. Plus, other stuff could be done with the room, like room-specific promotions as incentives for being an active or good battler. Then, more people would be able to start tournaments.


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