CBC Improvement Thread

[wolf]

[a id]top1[/a id]

DIRECTORY

— Undecided Suggestions
— Approved Suggestions
— Community Events

[a id]cbcrules[/a id]

CBC IMPROVEMENT THREAD

Welcome! We made this thread to promote staff transparency, and allow anyone to offer their input on our ideas and projects, or suggest their own. Even members that aren't CBC regulars may offer feedback, but keep in mind you might not have a full understanding of how the forum works. While everyone can discuss and suggest their ideas, everything still needs approval from Anti and I before it is applied to the forum. The first post will list all the possible changes so far, and the approved ones we will be implementing soon.

— "Bumping" is allowed in this thread.
Expect to see me or whoever reviving this constantly! By the way, bumping means to post in a thread that hasn't been posted in for a month.

[a id]undecided[/a id]↑

UNDECIDED SUGGESTIONS

None...for now.

[a id]approved[/a id]↑

APPROVED SUGGESTIONS (THINGS TO DO)

— Battling guide.
Easily our biggest project; covers mostly everything there is about battling that can be written. There will be one for the basics of battling (along with team building, prediction, etc.), and one directed towards more experienced battlers looking to improve their skillz. The first one is our main priority. Could include a RMT and battle log guide as an extra thing. This guide will replace Compiled Guides.

— Rating guide and resource.
This will also have a few sample teams and an example rate for each. This will be separate from the battling guide, and will be a sticky thread most likely. Anti is working on majority of the guide. (Mostly complete.)

— An in-game team guide and resource.
It would include topics such as how to make a good in-game team; good Pokémon, HM slaves, and strategies to use; strategies and Pokémon to help defeat certain Gym Leaders. That isn't all, but just some subjects off the top of my head.

[a id]events[/a id]↑

COMMUNITY EVENTS

— Clans.
Most important event currently; there needs to be more stuff happening with clans. Clans are the first thing we should work on, because everything else can wait. I have couple of ideas that I will introduce soon.

— Community Night.
Will be back up and running soon. There's a lot of stuff we can do with commnight (and clans).

— Pokémon Online tournaments.
More convenient than forum tournaments, but on a smaller scale and only includes people who are currently on PO. Will give megausers to pretty much every regular. Note: megausers is a PO status that allows a user to make tournaments, and nothing else.

— Forum tournaments.
Additionally, I shall revamp the official PC tournament soon, along with the concept of "Tour Series" being implemented. This is delayed for a while though, as clans require more attention or they will die.

— PC Ladder.
Is now running. Need to bug Petie about resetting the ladder rankings though.

These are events that could happen later:

Spoiler:

— PC league.
Leagues certainly aren't as successful as the other events, but this is still worth a try again. Ideas for the league include two divisions that have 5 users each, and one champion (totally copying Luke here!). That would replace the traditional Gym Leader -> Elite Four -> Champion layout. It doesn't require as much users, and is simpler.

— Battle Frontier.
This was something Oppo and I thought of a year ago. The Battle Frontier would consist of five tournaments, each with a theme such as Battle Factory-style rentals (themes that require a bit more time to do). Each of those would have a factory brain like in the game, that follow the theme. Once you defeat all the tournaments, you can battle the final brain. This was going to be an annual event that lasts for one month, with each tournament lasting around six days consecutively. Meaning, they won't happen all at once. This is a very big event, so it probably won't happen anytime soon.

— Community Create-A-Team.
This a forum event where everyone helps make a team. To put it simply, users will discuss and vote stuff as we go along the team building process. Then, everyone can test the team and suggest changes.

— RMT of the Month.
Member fame: RMT style. Except regulars don't post enough teams. And it encourages the "RMTs are for showcasing teams, not for help" way of thinking.

— Team building competitions.
Two users have to make a team (that follows a theme?) and everyone votes which is the better one. (lol)

— Community Create-A-Pokémon.
Anti's worst nightmare! Also, instead of creating a Pokémon, we could improve an already existing Pokémon.

Sooo Karpman said I should ask here ;x

Since I was enjoying writing the comments on that battle log I was thinking how about an event where you get some good and some not so good battlers together to battle in like "unusual" teams and post the logs of the battles without comments or anything, and get members to write commentaries on the battles and see who can make the most interesting battle log of the battles w/ emblem rewards or something?

What are you guys thoughts on it?

 

[champagnepapi]

This is by far the greatest thread in Pokecommunity History. At any rate, everything here looks great, Wolf, even Community CAP sounds cool, so I can make the Unaware Steel/Ghost Type with 100/120/120 Defenses that I've always been dreaming of B)
All joking aside, I think pretty much everything outlined here can work, if everyone is motivated to make them work. I love the format for the Frontier, but if time constraints come up, we can always run our Frontier similar to the Smogon Frontier. I'd also be willing to make Logos for every clan, if they wanted them. Also, will we be implementing our Fire/Ground spinner from the initial CAP as part of Community CAP?

 

[Anti]

I think the most important thing is that we only start with what we can handle so that we don't overwhelm ourselves. People are still busy so we can't get overzealous, though I think that most of these ideas are fine.

As for the Simple Q&A rename, naming it "Help Thread" is like naming a restaurant "food place." I'm fine with changing the name, but Help Thread actually sounds silly! I would be fine with removing the breeding questions aspect as that was mostly to "replace" the old Breeders Corner. I can't help but feel like the other two elements are essential though. "Questions and Moveset Requests" could work but sounds clunky to me...so I don't know. Not like it really matters though...just as long as it's not Help Thread, I don't mind.

The tier resource is mostly outdated now if only because Smogon is completely superior because it's just more convenient with all of the other links and features. Unless there is still a lot of confusion about tiers (maybe there is), I think Smogon is fine.

Since the recent mood has been (at least as far as I can tell) that we need to promote battling itself more, clans would be the logical step to take in order to make that happen. We definitely aren't getting as much as we could out of the subforum. I feel that given our limited amount of people, a concentrated effort to launch three or four strong clans would be ideal. I think that three would be a good starting point, maybe with a fourth reserved for a currently inactive user or something. Before we do any of that though, I think it's important that we know what we want out of clans and how they would function as a part of CBC. While I think they gel quite easily, we should still be completely aware of what we're getting ourselves into (not to make it sound ominous x_x).

 

[Vrai]

lol food place

I agree that both actually feel essential but I'm leaning more towards a 'Simple Q&A Thread'-style name because it just feels smoother rather than 'Simple Questions & Movesets Thread' I guess. That seems like one of the easier tasks ahead of us so might as well get it out of the way. :)

As far as those community events towards the bottom, we need to really only focus on one or two max at a time and see what works and see what doesn't. Clans sounds like the best to begin with and we definitely have some people willing to run them in Aero and Karpy and Wofl; I think they could turn out well. The only other one I'd be interested in seeing right now would be Comm Night with a little organization. Things like PC CAP will require a lot of effort and I think we're just not prepared to try something like that yet.

The things you outlined for the Tutoring Corner sound wonderful. If I had a little more free time I'd totally jump in there and help out with that guide too. ;-; I do think that while it was reasonably a success (I suppose?) it's just too much effort and needing constant attention for us to really run it effectively. A compiled guide would be much much better.

 

[Dark Azelf]

I could revamp my threat lists again if it helps. I lost motivation last time as i was going through some personal issues, that and the meta was changing so it was annoying finishing a set and the poke moving to uu/getting banned. Also my explanations were too long.

It needs stuff adding and everything putting into alphabetical order still or by relevance and a couple of UU mons removing, but yeah.

It'd be nice to get some help with it too though. :)

 

[wolf]

@ Karp Glad you like it! We can both make the logos, because I would still like to make some. As for our past CAP, I doubt it. It was originally for generation four, so it wouldn't work the way it was supposed to now. Especially with Rotom-A (I haven't heard Rotom-"A" used in so long!) no longer being a spinblocker.

@ Anti Well, I was listing all the past ideas that came to mind, so I am not intending to make them all at once of course!

"Questions and Moveset Requests" doesn't sound as clunky as "Request a Moveset / Simple Q&A" in my opinion. Maybe "Moveset Help & Questions" would sound better? Out of all of them, I prefer "Simple Q&A" the most because moveset requests do fall under "questions."

I agree that clans would the best event to start with, along with a few tournaments. Funny you mention it, we actually have three users ready to make their clans (Karp, Aero, and I), with Vrai possibly sometime in the future. I imagine a clan's main focus would be preparing for clan wars by improving battling skills and teams?

@ Vrai I agree. All of the tutoring programs were successes to an extent; they brought us some active members regardless if they didn't last long.

@ Elf I don't know, all of our threat lists were trying to do too much. I think it would be better if we had the format similar to:

Spoiler:

-Salamence-

Overview - Probably shorter than Smogon's, but still gets the point across about its impact on the metagame. (Or is an overview even necessary?)

Offensive Dragon Dance - P2, Cress, Zong, yada yada.

MixMence - So many counters!

Then the rest of the Smogon movesets.

That would be simpler. It focuses on the purpose of a threat list, lets Smogon explain the movesets so it doesn't clutter the thread, and is easy on the eyes. Also, it doesn't take as much time to make or update! The threat list should also try to list checks and counters that Smogon doesn't list usually, so there is more of a reason to use it (this is already being done probably).

 

[Dark Azelf]

@ Elf I don't know, all of our threat lists were trying to do too much. I think it would be better if we had the format similar to:

Spoiler:

-Salamence-

Overview - Probably shorter than Smogon's, but still gets the point across about its impact on the metagame. (Or is an overview even necessary?)

Offensive Dragon Dance - P2, Cress, Zong, yada yada.

MixMence - So many counters!

Then the rest of the Smogon movesets.

That would be simpler. It focuses on the purpose of a threat list, lets Smogon explain the movesets so it doesn't clutter the thread, and is easy on the eyes. Also, it doesn't take as much time to make or update! The threat list should also try to list checks and counters that Smogon doesn't list usually, so there is more of a reason to use it (this is already being done probably).

BUT MIXMENCE IS ITS BEST SET :((((((((( lol

Idk, i kinda like being thorough when it comes to things like that. I guess thats just me though. Ill probably try your way though, typing up those damn things my/Anti's way is really annoying and tedious lol. :/

 

[wolf]

BUT MIXMENCE IS ITS BEST SET :((((((((( lol

Idk, i kinda like being thorough when it comes to things like that. I guess thats just me though. Ill probably try your way though, typing up those damn things my/Anti's way is really annoying and tedious lol. :/

I was being sarcastic!

It can be thorough when listing the checks and counters (that was just a short example). I just think the movesets and descriptions for them take up too much space.

 

[Cycle]

Ok I'm kind of annoyed right now because I've taken a brief glance at the RMT's and I've seen people say to replace five out of six pokemon. This thread from smogon shows how you give a proper rate, and if you read rule #3, it says: Indeed, it is often best to try and deviate as little as possible from the original team as possible. Remember, you're here to rate the team, not rebuild it. I like seeing people trying to be helpful to other people, but the goal of an RMT is not so you can get a completely new team, it's so you can fix your old team to adapt better to the metagame. If you suggest 1 or 2 pokemon to replace, that's fine by me, but replacing the whole team is absolutely ridiculous as you can see in this thread. I'm not trying to pinpoint anybody, but this is really kind of ridiculous telling someone to replace essentially their whole team.


Thanks for reading and have a nice day~

 

[Vrai]

It seems to me that in that example thread you linked, the owner of the thread was very open to any changes and even asked for more or if changing it was a good idea. Yeah it's wonderful that you want to achieve Smogon-quality rates here but we do not have Smogon-quality battlers and more often than not they're very very new to the whole battling scene, meaning half of the time the raters need to explain why a certain Pokemon is better than another for the job they're using it for. We just don't have the same kinds of RMTs that the vast majority of Smogon is comprised of and that's ok. Sometimes new players need to be given options and even if all of the team members are suggested to be 'replaced', it's still just giving the owner of the team more options to experiment with. They can go through and replace everything if they want or only the things that sound good or fluid to them. The last post in that thread is a wonderful post, too;

I think I most likely will be swapping houndoom out and competing in RU though because the pokemon in this team were chosen because they're my favorites and they're all in the RU tier. I'm really looking into some of the changes you have all mentioned though.

That's the point of RMTs - to give the owner new thoughts on how to change it and improve it. Yeah, changing only one or two Pokemon is the 'optimal' idea here but sometimes we need to go through and give them new options for every 'mon because a lot of them aren't as good as they should be.

 

[Anti]

Let's not let this thread get personal. Discussing the merits or issues of a rating style is fine, but let's not get heated. ;(


Anyhow, I really don't mind people posting a lot of potential replacements. I think it can get out of hand with newer players just because they don't have anything to gain really from going into battle with six standard Pokemon and not understanding their synergy or even how they work individually. It seems like a waste of the rater's time. More than anything, new players just need experience and encouragement, and tearing down their teams isn't exactly the most uplifting experience no matter how it's worded. That being said, it's not really a big deal.

In general, I feel like we're not really in a position to be nitpicky about rates. Activity is limited as it is, and whatever our issues with how it's currently done, I don't think it's really worth getting worked up about. I feel like our energy would be better off being channeled for something less inherently negative that could make a positive difference...in other words, what Wolf said.

I feel like the thing we need to focus on most is the dormant T&E subforum. We combined it with S&M to make them more connected, and while that has to some extent happened, we can do so much more. We also need to get people battling more [/guilty]. Out of the plethora of metagames available, there is one for everyone. I would certainly be willing to get behind the Advance metagame or even the extremely obscure 200 metagame. After all, this is CBC, not CBC: Gen 5 only. I think that there is a lot of untapped potential with the subforum. I think that three clans to start is plenty and we can build the foundation from there.

We would have to make sure we know what we want out of them exactly. Still, the general basis will definitely be battling, so that's a fine start.

(unrelated note: Vrai is probably watching Wisconsin/Nebraska right now, the Huskers' first Big "Ten" game. For the sake of the sanity of the state of Nebraska and the state of Vrai's mental health, let's all cheer for the Huskers even if Wisconsin is going to win)

 

[Cycle]

Am I allowed to double post in a thread if I haven't gotten any replies?

 

[Vrai]

(unrelated note: Vrai is probably watching Wisconsin/Nebraska right now, the Huskers' first Big "Ten" game. For the sake of the sanity of the state of Nebraska and the state of Vrai's mental health, let's all cheer for the Huskers even if Wisconsin is going to win)

Yeah, I know we suck. :| gtfo stop passing martinez three ints already.... ok i'm done watching now

Am I allowed to double post in a thread if I haven't gotten any replies?

I'd imagine that if you have no replies that you're not going to get a whole lot more, but in any case I wouldn't see why it's not worth trying.

 

[LawOfTheLand]

While it's all well and good to share the wealth with other communities like Smogon, one thing I've noticed is that while they've been quick to jump on updating the tier listings, the set analyses are slower in coming. (A modest example: Excadrill got the boot to Uber recently, but its sets are still listed for OU effectiveness.)

Let's treat their resources as just that: Resources. As much as they might want us to think that their word is final, in the end what works for them might not be the best option for us, or even an effective option. If Smogon teaches university-level courses, more casual sites like this one might be better suited with a high school education, if you get my drift.

 

[Vrai]

While it's all well and good to share the wealth with other communities like Smogon, one thing I've noticed is that while they've been quick to jump on updating the tier listings, the set analyses are slower in coming. (A modest example: Excadrill got the boot to Uber recently, but its sets are still listed for OU effectiveness.)

Let's treat their resources as just that: Resources. As much as they might want us to think that their word is final, in the end what works for them might not be the best option for us, or even an effective option. If Smogon teaches university-level courses, more casual sites like this one might be better suited with a high school education, if you get my drift.

I agree. We shouldn't be over here trying to do the same things that Smogon has already done (and probably done better) but rather focusing on the differences that would keep people coming here and not just simply jumping to Smogon. Community-related events like community night; in-depth and up-to-date guides on things like rating teams, building teams, and how-to's in general; and even just the totally different environment we have here are all things we should focus on and emphasize. While D_A's threat list was cool (and I learned sososooo much while trying to work on it) we have no reason to put that much effort towards being a lesser Smogon.

 

[Ho-Oh]

I was just thinking about something in regards to how to "improve". I was looking over the tournament & events forums and I noticed occasionally users are posting personal battle threads as allowed, but it's not really worded to be a "battle me tournament", but technically is within the rules because they're asking for more than one battle, but yet lower down in the rules it says the users will be infracted if they don't organise their thread, I dunno, maybe some clarification on the rules there might help? Since as it is I don't really think one or two lines really qualifies for a "battle me tournament" (that's what I'm calling it, since idk what else to call it), and it's confusing because I don't really know whether to report those threads or not because they're technically within the rules but not really?

Idk I hope that makes sense.

 

[sims796]

Ok I'm kind of annoyed right now because I've taken a brief glance at the RMT's and I've seen people say to replace five out of six pokemon. This thread from smogon shows how you give a proper rate, and if you read rule #3, it says: Indeed, it is often best to try and deviate as little as possible from the original team as possible. Remember, you're here to rate the team, not rebuild it. I like seeing people trying to be helpful to other people, but the goal of an RMT is not so you can get a completely new team, it's so you can fix your old team to adapt better to the metagame. If you suggest 1 or 2 pokemon to replace, that's fine by me, but replacing the whole team is absolutely ridiculous as you can see in this thread. I'm not trying to pinpoint anybody, but this is really kind of ridiculous telling someone to replace essentially their whole team.


Thanks for reading and have a nice day~

I have to back this up.

I remember back in my earlier days in this site, when Anti was still in diapers and I was mentoring Dark Azelf with my 1337 skillz, team rating was a chore. Or rather, getting your team rated. A tad too many times, you'll get 3 or more pokes outright replaced, which got me thinking 'huh, this...doesn't look like my team at all'. Now of course, I was a picky little brat then, and was terrible at taking criticism. At the same time (and as I matured to how a forum works, this was my first one), having an entire team torn down and replaced was...discouraging. By the time the suggestions were made, it was like 'eh, what's the point?'. The teams didn't really feel like me, and if I was just going to use any ol' team, I would have asked for it to be built from scratch (I think we had "Build me a team" threads then).

The rates I loved, which incidentally came from people that have gotten used to my style, were ones that saw my weaknesses (how the heck do you have a Yanmega weakness) and suggested ways to fix it without mutilating my team. For example, I'll get things like:

"A Water type, like Swampert or Gya, will really help with that Infernape weakness"

Now I know that my team is Infernape weak, and I need a bulky water. At this point, I can say

"Well, those two might work, but how about Quagmire!"

...that was a pretty cheesy example, but it made me point. Now I know my weakness, how I can fix it, what steps I have to take, and my options at taking them.




But I haven't been here in a while, so maybe that has changed. I dunno, just wanted to say something.

 

[Dark Azelf]

Anti told me to post here.

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

Basically it entails the following;

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

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

 

[Kittyipawd]

Clans would definetly improve activity. There are little homes for battler especially newers ones. Outside of pokemon usally there are different tiers of clans (The snooby elitiest ones with all the best people of said game/moderators , good clans . nooby clans with one good leader , etc) and they really help with getting out of the "noob" phase of battling. I mean you can read all you want but unless you battle you can't really get the game. This is where we can be different from smogon because you could be more personal with the newer battlers. I remember when I first started off battling I had alot of questions and I wish I could open up some type of chat and ask every little thing. ex) Why does the cb set have more synergy then the CS set for my team. When is safe or optimal to double switch)

I like the idea of a "high school" approach to pokemon battling. Maybe have the veterans give general help on the pc po server. I mean this tutor buisness is really dumb when you have a quick question.

That and when I first joined pc I looked first into the wifi battling center and not the S&M section when the battling section should be a sub forum of it. It just makes life easier.

I hope what I wrote made sense lol.

 

[Anti]

Christmas break is coming for a lot of people so I think that now is as good a time as any to actually start to launch some of the stuff we've been planning. As far as I know, Wolf's clan is done or at worst very close to completion, and the same can be said of mine and Ooka's (we just need a cool name :x). We definitely need someone to take Karpman's old clan off his hands as he is gone from PC...unless Wolf already took care of this and I'm just out of the loop!

The plan for awhile has been to launch clans during a Community Night event where we have something resembling a clan "rush" where people join the three clans and we have other CN events (tournaments mostly). I think it's about time to start to find a good day to do this so that things can get up and running again.