This is something completely unrelated to the other stuff I've posted, but I, like most people, think better when writing stuff down. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I noticed I myself have some issues I battle with everyday. They're nothing super major. Others have problems way worse than I, but this and a few other posts will be fun for me, allowing me to objectively pick apart my own brain and see why perhaps I think the way I do and things of the sort. These are my own social problems. Stick around if you want, I'll post in the thread if I post anything relevant to the community anyway, but these are mainly for my sake and for those who wanna get to know me a little bit better.
Prefacing this is hard. There are many places to start with when trying to discuss this problem. If it seems like I'm rambling a lot, I apologize. I've gathered my thoughts on this but never wrote them down, so formulating a well written entry about this will be haphazard. Hope you guys can still get from it what it is I am trying to convey.
I don't dream at night. Or at least I have literally no memory of them. Practically every night I lie in bed, and within three or four minutes I wake up however many hours later I set my alarm for. This wasn't always the case, and I was excited the occasional time it would happen when I was younger. The immediate experience of going from awake to awake seamlessly was great, but as I've gotten older I have started to dread this feeling, and in turn sleeping.
The reason this has made me hate sleeping is for a few reasons, but the big one is simple: my life moves 33% quicker than everyone else's. Our time on earth is already limited, and knowing that 1/3 of my life is spent doing literally nothing bothers me. Everyone I've talked to remembers their dreams. Some remember every detail and sleeping is a wonderful place for them as it's like a whole new day, while others vividly remember them for a brief time. I don't get any of that. My week is 1/3 the length of everyone else's. My life feels 1/3 the length of everyone else's. I have absolutely no recollection of that 1/3 of my life, and then you throw on the five infantile years (~27% of my current life ATM), and you're left with a majority of my current life without any memories. This horrifies me.
My solution to this problem isn't one that is necessarily healthy for me either. I have consistently made a conscious effort to get less sleep so I can spend more time of my day awake and active than wasting it on something I will never remember. No one ever remembers their best day of sleep. It feels insignificant, and I have limited the sleep I get. I seldom get the recommended eight hours a night, and often settle for six or less. Fortunately, I'm highly functional with limited sleep, but it catches up to me eventually, and unfortunately.
However I try to make sure my hours spent awake aren't wasted. I have spent less time playing video games and more and more time hanging out with friends, practicing useful talents such as singing, guitar, a foreign language, and even picked up philosophy and reading of all things. I also make sure I am as busy as possible, to prevent me from wasting my days. Someone once told me; the easiest way to avoid bad vices in life is to avoid being bored, and I try to live this out to the fullest. My days are filled with friends, hobbies, clubs, etc. I make sure no hour is truly wasted, as that is one hour I will never get back.
This may seem like a good thing. Not dreaming at night empowers me to live an active life and make the most of my day. And to that I would say you're not wrong, but it doesn't make me feel any better about losing 1/3 of my life, and this is because I don't remember the additional things I do each day. No one does. I couldn't tell you my friends who I passed on my way to and from class today, but I can tell you some stupid shit I regret when I was 10. I couldn't tell some super funny thing my best friend told me before going off to college, I couldn't tell you why I almost cried laughing. I couldn't tell you because I have forgotten, and it's that added knowledge of forgetting and loss of that memory which makes me losing time sleeping hurt even more.
Combating that is easier. My New Year's Resolution this year was to write down all the good things that happen to me each day. It can be simple things from "I talked with X today and we caught up a bit" to as major as "Got a huge scholarship to college." It doesn't matter how big or small, if it made an impact on my day in a positive way I write it down. This helps commit it to memory, and it gives me a place to look back on if I need to refresh my memory. It truly does help. I remember the fun things I do with my friends more, I remember the things we say, and the things we hope to do. It works, but it's still not enough. I have to refresh my memory and go back through them. Maybe one day I'll go through the years worth and keep my favorites, the ones I want to remember most, but it's still just me throwing away memories of some distant past.
This problem is rooted in a deeper psychological issue all people suffer with. I hinted at it before, but it's our tendency to remember embarrassing, depressing, and darker moments in our lives over happier memories. I think this is due to those emotions being stronger. Anger and sadness can lead to very dangerous paths, while I've never seen someone OD on joy. For whatever reason we as people remember the bad more easily, and this is what I try to combat everyday.
I fear running out of time. It bothers me daily. We live in a time where we have seen drastic advances in technology, science, medicine, and all sorts of things within a single lifetime. It wasn't long ago that man thought going to the moon would never be possible, and now we're looking at other galaxies and learning the finer mechanics of our universe. We've curing diseases, we're exploring properties of matter that we didn't even know existed until the last decade, and all sorts of crazy shit. There is so much we can do in our lives, the potential to do something has never been more readily available, and I want to do so much. Time is my biggest enemy, and it's one I have to face every second, of every day.
Hopefully I'm not being morbidly depressing and bringing people down. I'm an incredibly happy-go-lucky person and very rare to see me upset or bothered by something. I promise my mental psyche is doing just fine, but this is something I am long wanted to explore more. I wanted to find out WHY I fear time so much, and why I hate sleeping. So if you're still with me thank you. You're the real MVP.
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Friday, August 14, 2015
It's Who Said It, Not What Was Said
This is something that I am fully aware is not something that is going to magically change once I write this (does much change when I write these I sometimes wonder). This is not something that will ever go away. The whole point of this is to get people to realize what they're doing, and at least try to be more aware of this and to do something about it. I'm sure I'm going to get a little flustered with my words and probably rant a lot, but this is a topic which has long since bothered me.
The topic of this one is rather simple, but extremely important; it's the idea that all users make a preconceived judgment of a users post before ever reading it, primarily based on who said it. This is something that is very easily observable in the forums, on Twitter, and even at events. It's a dangerous game we play when doing this. It easily ostracizes users who are trying, but obtained a bad reputation for doing something stupid long ago. I think this contributes to people leaving the community so frequently. It contributes to them perhaps not feeling welcomed or unappreciated. I'm not saying we continuously baby bad users and posters, but we need to try our hardest to evaluate what they say based solely on the content of the post, and not who said it.
To bring up the most recently example of this, I want to look at a casual thread I made a couple days ago. It's intention was purely fun, just to be creative in a stress free environment. Of course, I was met with over a half dozen one liners and posts which failed to add to the discussion within the first hour of the thread being opened, including this one in particular:
This post was one of many hidden in my thread before Rushan made it very clear that posts that do not add to the discussion will not be allowed. What Hydreigone is asking for is something that has been said many times in my thread; he wants a rework of Rock Slide, or at least an alternative to Rock Slide. He didn't expand on his thought process as to why this would be a good thing to add, but it's still a solid complaint a lot of people bring up. People have been using Rock Tomb on occasion, I've seen it on Scarf Brelooms, Jeudy ran it extensively in 2014, and Blake ran it on his 2015 Nats team this year. It hits harder then Rock Slide and people value that. If we had a slightly stronger version of Rock Tomb, Rock Slide might see less usage and we'd probably be less annoyed by it, although people often fear Rock Slide simply for the flinch chance and would use it anyway.
I'm digressing heavily, but the point is he made a half decent complaint, but all he did was fail to explain his thought process. Hydreigone is for all intents and purpose, a random in this instance. He is someone who's name you wouldn't recognize aside from maybe seeing him post on NB. His post is hidden in my thread. I'm not saying it shouldn't, but it is.
Likewise, we have other one-liners from noteworthy users which were posted well after Rushan's post that remain in my thread. Now, these were hidden at one point, but they have since been unhidden, but I'm not going to address that can of worms. I am talking about the questionable posts from Scott and Len, shown below.
I would like to first note that Len's post use to be two separate posts, with the two bulletpoints being one and the sentence below being another. Someone has since had the wisdom to merge these, however it still doesn't quite do much to justify it remaining in my thread.
What's wrong with these posts? you might ask. I think it's very clear what is wrong with these. They did exactly what the 7 or 8 people in the thread before them did, yet they are able to get away scot-free (XDXD I'm so funny). Again, I would like to bring up that it's who said it, not what was said. Compare both of their posts to what Hydreigone said. All three of them want a Rock-type move which is of decent base power that cannot flinch. Okay, we're all in agreement. The only difference between their posts is that Scott has a funny "I work at Pokemon" joke, and Len asks for the removal of Team Preview, without saying a single word about why that is beneficial, or why he thinks so. What is the difference in their posts? I fail to see it.
Maybe I'm just missing something, but Rushan clearly laid the ground rules, yet why are some users not getting punished for doing the exact same shit that another is? This shit pisses me off. I don't care who you are, if you shitpost like that when countless users have been given fair warning, why are you getting away with it? (And you're practically talking to the king of shitposting: see here and here).
There's a time and place for shitposting. I fail to see how anyone can think they can get away with blatantly bad posts after Rushan very clearly said what is and is not acceptable. I think Hydreigone gets why his was hidden, but imagine him checking back on the thread and seeing those two (former three) posts left untouched. He probably doesn't get that. He's probably confused as to why, and wonders what he did wrong that they didn't. To me, he did do something wrong, yes. But they just know people. And are people who are known, and, in this instance, are exempt from the rules.
Their posts remaining in the thread also sets a precedent to others. It shows that one liners are allowed in the thread, and I'm sure some others were posted after which have been hidden. They must wonder the same thing Hydreigone does. It doesn't make sense. Again, it's who said it, not what was said.
Of course I mean no bad blood to either Scott and Len. I certainly did come off a little angry and upset, but I'm upset at the problem at large, and not the two of them in particular. Hope I'm not offending you two, but it is a perfect example.
I hate bringing this topic up, but the community really showed a lot of their true colors, so I'm again going to bring up the Jflynn stuff. This time, I'm not going to look at what either major party said, but a third party.
The topic of this one is rather simple, but extremely important; it's the idea that all users make a preconceived judgment of a users post before ever reading it, primarily based on who said it. This is something that is very easily observable in the forums, on Twitter, and even at events. It's a dangerous game we play when doing this. It easily ostracizes users who are trying, but obtained a bad reputation for doing something stupid long ago. I think this contributes to people leaving the community so frequently. It contributes to them perhaps not feeling welcomed or unappreciated. I'm not saying we continuously baby bad users and posters, but we need to try our hardest to evaluate what they say based solely on the content of the post, and not who said it.
To bring up the most recently example of this, I want to look at a casual thread I made a couple days ago. It's intention was purely fun, just to be creative in a stress free environment. Of course, I was met with over a half dozen one liners and posts which failed to add to the discussion within the first hour of the thread being opened, including this one in particular:
I'm digressing heavily, but the point is he made a half decent complaint, but all he did was fail to explain his thought process. Hydreigone is for all intents and purpose, a random in this instance. He is someone who's name you wouldn't recognize aside from maybe seeing him post on NB. His post is hidden in my thread. I'm not saying it shouldn't, but it is.
Likewise, we have other one-liners from noteworthy users which were posted well after Rushan's post that remain in my thread. Now, these were hidden at one point, but they have since been unhidden, but I'm not going to address that can of worms. I am talking about the questionable posts from Scott and Len, shown below.
I would like to first note that Len's post use to be two separate posts, with the two bulletpoints being one and the sentence below being another. Someone has since had the wisdom to merge these, however it still doesn't quite do much to justify it remaining in my thread.
What's wrong with these posts? you might ask. I think it's very clear what is wrong with these. They did exactly what the 7 or 8 people in the thread before them did, yet they are able to get away scot-free (XDXD I'm so funny). Again, I would like to bring up that it's who said it, not what was said. Compare both of their posts to what Hydreigone said. All three of them want a Rock-type move which is of decent base power that cannot flinch. Okay, we're all in agreement. The only difference between their posts is that Scott has a funny "I work at Pokemon" joke, and Len asks for the removal of Team Preview, without saying a single word about why that is beneficial, or why he thinks so. What is the difference in their posts? I fail to see it.
Maybe I'm just missing something, but Rushan clearly laid the ground rules, yet why are some users not getting punished for doing the exact same shit that another is? This shit pisses me off. I don't care who you are, if you shitpost like that when countless users have been given fair warning, why are you getting away with it? (And you're practically talking to the king of shitposting: see here and here).
There's a time and place for shitposting. I fail to see how anyone can think they can get away with blatantly bad posts after Rushan very clearly said what is and is not acceptable. I think Hydreigone gets why his was hidden, but imagine him checking back on the thread and seeing those two (former three) posts left untouched. He probably doesn't get that. He's probably confused as to why, and wonders what he did wrong that they didn't. To me, he did do something wrong, yes. But they just know people. And are people who are known, and, in this instance, are exempt from the rules.
Their posts remaining in the thread also sets a precedent to others. It shows that one liners are allowed in the thread, and I'm sure some others were posted after which have been hidden. They must wonder the same thing Hydreigone does. It doesn't make sense. Again, it's who said it, not what was said.
Of course I mean no bad blood to either Scott and Len. I certainly did come off a little angry and upset, but I'm upset at the problem at large, and not the two of them in particular. Hope I'm not offending you two, but it is a perfect example.
I hate bringing this topic up, but the community really showed a lot of their true colors, so I'm again going to bring up the Jflynn stuff. This time, I'm not going to look at what either major party said, but a third party.
I am not going to discuss the validity of Angel's argument at all. We have had this argument before and I do not want to bring it back up. What I am going to do is address a comment from someone that attempted to invalidate what he said simply based on who said it.
Who said it? Angel did. Who does Angel know well? Chuppa. Angel's argument is invalid because of that. He's trying to do damage control and has his own bias toward Chuppa. This may very well be true, but I too know Angel very well, and he will tell you, "I agreed with Jflynn until the whole community went insane." Angel may be making a false equivalence, as Evan said, but it's that Evan is trying to devalue Angel's idea simply based on who said it is what I want to draw attention to. Would Evan have said that if someone else had said it? I doubt he would reply if it was a random, but what if it was someone who wasn't affiliated with Chuppa? What if Ben, or Wolfe had said that? Would the response have been the same?
I think it's clear Justin would still have gone off no matter who said it, but would we have reacted the same way if it was someone much more respected? What if Randy went off the chains and told him off? What if Scott decided to ravage him on Twitter? What if Aaron made a "JFlynn is a fraud" video similar to what he did about Verlisify? This is a bunch of hypotheticals, but I do think we react and respond to things differently, and in some cases severely differently, based on who said it.
The final example I want to bring up is two articles we have on NB that I think are valued very differently based on who wrote it. Both are aimed at teaching players how to think about the game, as opposed to our usual articles about teaching players how to build a good team, or make a good EV spread.
I'm talking about Werford's article on cognitive bias, and Zog's article on not losing. Now I don't know much about Werford. I know he got drafted by the Hornets in NPA last season, and that's about it. I think a lot of players had the same mentality going in. Regardless of the article's content, you're wondering, "why am I learning how to think about the game from someone I've never heard of?" This is precisely why when I write my Top Players Talk, I seldom talk. I just ask the questions. I'm by no means a top player, and I'm very aware that my input will be valued less than what any of my guests will say simply because I am not a top player with a plethora of top cuts. It was something I was very aware of going into the process.
Zog on the other hand is a player who has been around a long time. You may not have seen him post on the forums much, or do well at a tournament in a while, but it's hard to forget his 5th Place finish at Worlds in 2011 and his incredibly cheeky mannerisms. Zog hasn't done a whole lot since then, but for whatever reason I value his article more than Werford's, regardless of content. How many people remember Werford even wrote an article? How many people are still waiting on Zog to write part 2?
I would also like to bring up that I think we've done the same thing to MindApe's article about training. I'll be 100% honest, when I first saw the article my response was: "Who the hell is MindApe?" I had never heard of him, and I didn't feel compelled to read the article. I immediately judged his article on who wrote it, not what was said. That being said, I have since read it because I heard from numerous people that it was very well written and useful for everything, not just Pokemon. MindApe has since been an extremely helpful user, and I look forward to what he does in the future, but I can't help but remember how opposed I was to reading the article because of who wrote it.
Changing this mentality is important to me, because it encourages eager users who want to write to post good articles on NB, however we unknowingly have created an environment that doesn't invite them to write. I think if we change this we'll have a lot more users try to write good articles. Of course, we don't know what will happen until they write a bit and it gets approved, but I'm sure we can think of something.
As always thank you for reading. Please direct all comments you have to the NB thread. But before you do, ask yourself: would you value my blog more if someone else had written it? Or are you perhaps valuing it too much because I wrote it? Do you think we'd have everyone in Top 8's Team Report if Rushan called for it instead of me? Or do you think nobody would read these if a random user wrote these? If you take away anything from this, it's to be mindful of trying to avoid that dangerous bias.
Monday, August 10, 2015
Improving NB Forums: The RMT Section
Hey guys! Yes, I'm still alive, no I've not given up. I was just watching The International and got caught up in that, but I'm back and will hope to wrap up the major things I want to hit on before I go to college, so without further ado I will get onto this big eyesore: the RMT section.
Yes, I am fully aware the RMT section is absolute shit. Yes, I am fully aware no one wants to do anything about it. Yes, I am aware we're discussed this before. Time for discussing is over. I want action, and I'm going to explain what I think we should do and why we should do it.
1. New Dedicated Mods for the RMT Section
This one should be intuitive. The current mods (all 16 of them) don't seem very interested in having a massive reworking of the RMT section. On occasion will you see one of them lock a thread and tell the OP why it's locked and what they need to do to change it. That's not enough. We don't need occasional, we need all the time. It's very clear the RMT section is where new players go, players with little to no forum experience who don't get how things work. They don't read the sticky, they don't look at well-written RMTs, they just know they need help and go there and want it as soon as possible. For this reason we need to get a handful of mods who only moderate over the RMT section. They will police over the RMT section with a fist clenched tighter than a virgin asshole, and they will infract, lock, delete, all bad users, threads, and posts until it is clear what is and is not acceptable on the forums. People will learn in time, and it will be a hard road for some users who don't get things, but this is what must be done if the RMT section will ever improve. There are people who would gladly sign up for this position. I wouldn't mind stepping up myself and having some responsibility over the forum, and if a mod is slacking in their duties, the team can ask for another RMT mod to be created to help them in their duties.
While there certainly have ample mods to cover it, a lot of them aren't active and if they wanted to do something about the RMT section they should have a long time ago. This is why I suggest we create new mods who reign over the RMT section. They will be motivated to do something, and will actively and continuously do something to make it better. Also, if being extremely authoritarian and slightly rude to users is what it takes to turn the RMT section from absolute shit to something worthwhile, I am all for it, and I think others will be inclined to agree with me. I'm not saying we tell users their teams are garbage, but be strict and consistent with rulings and make examples out of troublesome users to encourage better quality. It will always be a work in progress, but something must be done about it.
2. Dedicated RMT Raters
This is something Smogon does, and for a very very good reason. It makes it very clear to the OP who is experienced enough to offer good advice, and who's advice you could take with a grain of salt. Of course, other posters may feel less valued, but the fact of the matter is that it is an obtainable goal to work toward and people will strive to obtain a user title, or to have to say "RMT Rater" under their username instead of member. The best thing Smogon ever did was get a stupid 8-bit trophy system. People work so hard all the time for those trophies because they carry weight and bring prestige to the user and that garners respect from others. It would be much of the same here. It's not as flashy as having a million in a half trophies like Obi or Phillip do on Smogon, but it makes you feel important, and people will always work toward that. It's hard to gain respect on NB nowadays when now a lot of the big names are around, and this is a sure fired way to get noticed and I think people will try to obtain that.
But how do we get these dedicated raters? Do we just pick good users and ask them to step up? Or do we pick people who volunteer? Once again, we steal an idea from Smogon. Very frequently, Smogon does something called "Rating Practice" where a user posts a team with obvious flaws that users then have to pick out for practice. This is something we would use to test people who want to be dedicated raters. They would try out. We would do a handful of rounds and then have the modding team decide which raters did the best job and then ask them to be dedicated raters. Again, it is the RMT mods who will run this, the RMT section should be almost run entirely by them since they are the ones interested in making it not shit.
Also, if the modding team feels a particular rater is slacking in their duties or aren't perform as well as they use to, it is easy to remove their user title and give it to someone else. They can PM the user and say "ayy fam you gotta step up" as a warning, but they need to make room for new users who are trying to make a name for themselves.
3. Temporarily Lock the RMT Section
The RMT section needs help, so I am suggesting we temporarily close it and then pick the modding staff, start the rating practice, pick the dedicated raters, and then open it back up for the public. It shouldn't take a whole lot of time and it will be open before Fall Regionals for new players to get advice on their team. This is the perfect time to do it. No world's players are posting their teams in the RMT section and the metagame is going to massively shift after Worlds anyway, so there's no need to make an RMT at the moment. Players who want to can just ask in Showdown or PM a user for help. But we need to get it open before Regionals. It will be the first major test to see if the RMT section can be improved, so we need to start soon if we want shit to get in order.
4. New Stickied Threads Showing Examples
The Stickied threads we have now are good, but they explain what needs to be done instead of showing what needs to be done. We need to show them what a good RMT looks like, what a good rate looks like, and how to format them. A simple guide explain how to use the forum toolbar would be much needed to users trying to format their thread, and a very simple to follow guide about how to format an RMT prevents people from making bad threads (in theory). If they do not, then it is very simple to lock the thread, redirect them to the thread and say once they meet the qualifications set by the forum modding team then they thread will be unlocked. Simple, effective, clear. This is what it will take to get the RMT section out of the cesspool it currently wallows in.
Once again thank you for reading. I hope this one gets the ball rolling ASAP because we desperately need to change this one. As always, please send comments to the NB thread, please share this on Twitter or whatever. (Much appreciated)
Yes, I am fully aware the RMT section is absolute shit. Yes, I am fully aware no one wants to do anything about it. Yes, I am aware we're discussed this before. Time for discussing is over. I want action, and I'm going to explain what I think we should do and why we should do it.
1. New Dedicated Mods for the RMT Section
This one should be intuitive. The current mods (all 16 of them) don't seem very interested in having a massive reworking of the RMT section. On occasion will you see one of them lock a thread and tell the OP why it's locked and what they need to do to change it. That's not enough. We don't need occasional, we need all the time. It's very clear the RMT section is where new players go, players with little to no forum experience who don't get how things work. They don't read the sticky, they don't look at well-written RMTs, they just know they need help and go there and want it as soon as possible. For this reason we need to get a handful of mods who only moderate over the RMT section. They will police over the RMT section with a fist clenched tighter than a virgin asshole, and they will infract, lock, delete, all bad users, threads, and posts until it is clear what is and is not acceptable on the forums. People will learn in time, and it will be a hard road for some users who don't get things, but this is what must be done if the RMT section will ever improve. There are people who would gladly sign up for this position. I wouldn't mind stepping up myself and having some responsibility over the forum, and if a mod is slacking in their duties, the team can ask for another RMT mod to be created to help them in their duties.
While there certainly have ample mods to cover it, a lot of them aren't active and if they wanted to do something about the RMT section they should have a long time ago. This is why I suggest we create new mods who reign over the RMT section. They will be motivated to do something, and will actively and continuously do something to make it better. Also, if being extremely authoritarian and slightly rude to users is what it takes to turn the RMT section from absolute shit to something worthwhile, I am all for it, and I think others will be inclined to agree with me. I'm not saying we tell users their teams are garbage, but be strict and consistent with rulings and make examples out of troublesome users to encourage better quality. It will always be a work in progress, but something must be done about it.
2. Dedicated RMT Raters
This is something Smogon does, and for a very very good reason. It makes it very clear to the OP who is experienced enough to offer good advice, and who's advice you could take with a grain of salt. Of course, other posters may feel less valued, but the fact of the matter is that it is an obtainable goal to work toward and people will strive to obtain a user title, or to have to say "RMT Rater" under their username instead of member. The best thing Smogon ever did was get a stupid 8-bit trophy system. People work so hard all the time for those trophies because they carry weight and bring prestige to the user and that garners respect from others. It would be much of the same here. It's not as flashy as having a million in a half trophies like Obi or Phillip do on Smogon, but it makes you feel important, and people will always work toward that. It's hard to gain respect on NB nowadays when now a lot of the big names are around, and this is a sure fired way to get noticed and I think people will try to obtain that.
But how do we get these dedicated raters? Do we just pick good users and ask them to step up? Or do we pick people who volunteer? Once again, we steal an idea from Smogon. Very frequently, Smogon does something called "Rating Practice" where a user posts a team with obvious flaws that users then have to pick out for practice. This is something we would use to test people who want to be dedicated raters. They would try out. We would do a handful of rounds and then have the modding team decide which raters did the best job and then ask them to be dedicated raters. Again, it is the RMT mods who will run this, the RMT section should be almost run entirely by them since they are the ones interested in making it not shit.
Also, if the modding team feels a particular rater is slacking in their duties or aren't perform as well as they use to, it is easy to remove their user title and give it to someone else. They can PM the user and say "ayy fam you gotta step up" as a warning, but they need to make room for new users who are trying to make a name for themselves.
3. Temporarily Lock the RMT Section
The RMT section needs help, so I am suggesting we temporarily close it and then pick the modding staff, start the rating practice, pick the dedicated raters, and then open it back up for the public. It shouldn't take a whole lot of time and it will be open before Fall Regionals for new players to get advice on their team. This is the perfect time to do it. No world's players are posting their teams in the RMT section and the metagame is going to massively shift after Worlds anyway, so there's no need to make an RMT at the moment. Players who want to can just ask in Showdown or PM a user for help. But we need to get it open before Regionals. It will be the first major test to see if the RMT section can be improved, so we need to start soon if we want shit to get in order.
4. New Stickied Threads Showing Examples
The Stickied threads we have now are good, but they explain what needs to be done instead of showing what needs to be done. We need to show them what a good RMT looks like, what a good rate looks like, and how to format them. A simple guide explain how to use the forum toolbar would be much needed to users trying to format their thread, and a very simple to follow guide about how to format an RMT prevents people from making bad threads (in theory). If they do not, then it is very simple to lock the thread, redirect them to the thread and say once they meet the qualifications set by the forum modding team then they thread will be unlocked. Simple, effective, clear. This is what it will take to get the RMT section out of the cesspool it currently wallows in.
Once again thank you for reading. I hope this one gets the ball rolling ASAP because we desperately need to change this one. As always, please send comments to the NB thread, please share this on Twitter or whatever. (Much appreciated)
Friday, July 31, 2015
Too Many Players Do Not Return The Following Year
Hey everyone! I'm back after taking a much needed break from writing. I know I haven't been super direct with what my ultimate goal is with these posts, so this one will be a much clearer statement of my purpose and what I hope to achieve. This one will be much much longer as I have a lot to get to, and they flow rather seamlessly (at least in my head). Please bear with me, and thank you!
To state it plainly, NB forums are a shell of their former self. Many players can attest that they'd check everyday what was going on the forums. They were exciting back when we first started. Now a lot of players seldom check the forums. There isn't many threads, or not many interesting ones, or ones worth commentating on. NPA seems to be the only time people get on the forums. To me, this is a problem. New players don't have a place to go to learn from the better players. They don't have an example to follow, or a role model. Sure, there's the handful of YouTube players who are doing a lot of good, but they're it. But for the most part communication is one way. There are many questions the players still have, but no place for them to be answered.
For example, when Unreality made the thread about Aegislash, people weren't sure why running speed on Aegislash was a good thing. And in theory, you can easily understand why they think this. In a vacuum, fast Aegi can lose the 1v1 if they both Shadow Ball. It took a good player to have to explain to them that faster Aegi has more options in that situation, and why it was better. This is what our communication is missing, and I think a lot of newer players learned something that day.
But instead, you see bad RMT threads or bad posts in Competitive with hundreds of views from other novice players and no one gets the knowledge they need to in order to improve. It's a negative feedback loop and it takes a good player to break the cycle. I understand the RMT section is a massive issue to tackle, and I'll get to that eventually, but objectively there isn't a whole lot of quality content going into that section, and no one is being empowered to do something there. But I digress.
Players need to learn somewhere. NB is a perfect place for it. The articles we get are a good jumping off point, but they only go so far. They don't teach players how to learn from the game, or fully explain things. To a lot of good players things seem intuitive. It makes sense to run Aegi with Speed EVs, it makes sense to run Flamethrower on Charizard-Y, it makes sense to love Gastrodon. New players don't get these things. And its our job to help them.
But why? Is it just that the new players aren't just getting better? Our game is growing at a healthy rate, what's the big deal? Pokemon is growing. I think we can say that rather safely. Our numbers increased a lot in the past few years, but our numbers can grow faster. For example, when looking at the CP spreadsheet Gavin managed for 2014 and 2015, objectively it looks like we had a huge growth between those years (544 players in 2014 and 1259 in 2015). These numbers are met with a dark side. Of the players in 2014 who's only achievement was a T64 at a regional (the lowest placement to get CP), 77% of those players did not return the next season, and only 9% went to more than one event in 2015 (which literally means going to 2 PCs for some).
I'm going to repeat that since if that doesn't set off a red flag what the hell is wrong with you. 77% of players in the bottom of the CP standings will not return next year. Oh, that guy who killed your resistance because he's new? Don't worry! Chances are he won't be back next year! Forget about it!
Oh, but Kenan, I bet that's only the bad players who aren't good. I'm sure the players who do well don't quit in such droves! I hope you're sitting down because you cannot be more wrong. Of the 544 players who were on the CP standings in 2014, 57.7% of all players did not return in 2015. ALMOST 60% did not return. And of the 544, only 30% attended more events then they did the year before (and with only 2 PC limit finish in 2014, it's not hard to do that, but people aren't).
Now, the sample size on this data is small, I have only one years worth of data to compare, and there are very valid reasons why some people do not return or maybe they don't get CP, however this should not throw out the evidence. This is a serious problem for our community. Unreality said on the forums when talking about the RMT section, "I don't know why I should be involved in teaching a specific single player if there is no guarantee that player will even be around in a week." You know what, he's right! He's right 77% of the time for novice players and 60% of the time for all players. This is a problem! People won't feel the need to help others if the chances they will return are so low.
We need to fix this, and I have some ideas as to why the average player quits, and how we could fix this. I've discussed this with several people, and I think this is something that NEEDS to happen desperately.
Now, be honest: how many of you reading this would still be playing if you didn't perform well early on in your time playing VGC? I know I wouldn't be here if I didn't win a Regional and meet an amazing group of friends. Manoj told me today he wouldn't be playing if he didn't T4 Nats in 2012. I know many many people who haven't been relevant for a while, but still play the game. Why? It's simple: the community. Simon said: "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the amazing people I've met all these years of playing." This is how many of the players feel who haven't done well in a while. We still go to Nationals and get on Skype simply to hang out with our friends.
But would we get to meet our friends if we we didn't do well? Think of a big name in the community and try and find one that doesn't have a big placement that brought them into the community. There aren't many. It's rare that people don't perform exceptionally well at events and still manage to get into the community. It's an unspoken right of passage, you have to perform well to hang with the big kids. Denying this is naive.
So what does that mean for the people who don't do well? Well, for the most part they get ignored. Their forum posts have less merit, their articles have next to no merit, and people pass up on them. They don't make the friends that we all cherish, and there isn't anything keeping them in the game. They tried their hand, they didn't succeed, and now they move on. To fix this, I suggest we simply give them a place to play with people of their skill level and host tournaments. But Kenan, we have Lives and Showdown Tourneys! Shut up. Lives are worth something (invite to Invitational) and Showdown Tourneys are dominated by the same handful of players over and over and over again. Gavin one night literally dumpstered kids and won like 4 in a row before going to bed. They are not a good place for newer players to go to play against other players of their skill, and showdown ladder and battle spot ladder is often filled with players who reset cart / new alts who just dumpster them at 1000 / 1500 rating (Showdown and BS respectively).
Hosting new tournaments with no incentive, that good players do not participate in is good for the scene. This gives new / undervalued players a place to show their skills and make sort of a name for themselves. Online tournament hold some merit. Lunar got drafted by Angel in NPA for 3k because Angel knew he performed well on lives, and ended up having one of the best records in all of NPA! We need a place to cultivate new players. Regionals is demoralizing, Nationals is demoralizing, PCs can be demoralizing, Lives are demoralizing, Showdown Tourneys are demoralizing. We need help.
Here's the thing. All those tournaments are bad for one reason, and one reason only: no one knows who anyone is. To a brand new player attending their first event, or just entering the community, no one knows anyone's real names. We all have moved to Twitter and not all of use have our real names with our handle. If you're new, there's only a handful of players who's name you know: Aaron Zheng, Wolfe Glick, Ray Rizzo, Alex Oglaza, and probably Jeudy Azzarelli and other top World's players. But lets say you get paired up Round 1 against someone named Michael Lanzano. Who the fuck is this guy? I've never heard of him in my life. Yet this random BTFO's you. That's terrible for morale! You, as a new player, have no idea that Michael is a former world's competitor, and has won regionals before. You don't know! There's no way for new players to know who is good and who is not. You cannot tell.
All events in our current circuit and even online force new players to play with experienced players, and they don't know why they're getting stomped repeatedly. They just know they got their ass handed to them by a random. And when good players have a bad start to their day (Angel at Nats started 1-2) and you get paired up with him at 1-2, you're expecting him to not be crazy good. But when he 4-0s you two games in a row you feel like absolute shit. You wonder why you're getting beat so badly by players with negative records. They shouldn't be that good, but you have no idea you played one of the best players in the US and just mad unlucky.
Other esports do this all the time. I don't follow more than DotA, but there are tournaments where one or two tier 1 teams play with a bunch of tier 3 and 2 teams. There are teams who get paired up with EG, Fnatic, Empire, or whatever top team is invited, very early on. However, they don't feel like shit if they get stomped. Ah damn, they think, we just got unlucky and played the best team early on and got eliminated. They KNOW who is good. If you're a new player to Pokemon and you draw Gavin Michaels, you aren't gonna know he's about to unleash the biggest can of whoop ass you've ever seen. But if you get paired up against EG, you sure know it's coming.
Now, that one is a little harder to fix. We cannot all brag about all our past accomplishments to demoralize our opponents before the match, we cannot all get sponsored and wear the gear (and people wear their favorite organization to be a fan anyway so that doesn't work). There isn't a major fix to that one. But what we can do is create tournaments that are more friendlier to new players. A tournament without the top players. A tournament where the newer players can feel good about themselves instead of repeatedly getting stomped by players who have been around the block.
To do this, we need something from the players. We need the good ones to self-select who should and should not be qualified to play. It has to be a silent one. We cannot make the requirement to play "has gone negative at an event," or something, as that only makes people feel bad about themselves. It has to be open for everyone, but big players will not play in them. In addition, we need people to host tournaments, and we need a place for these players to get respect for their achievement. Winning these tournaments is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. It does not give cash like the major and does not give CP like a PC or Regional, but they need to feel empowered and good about winning. Whether we get a hall of fame or something where that goes, or make an announcement post on the NB twitter is something we could do. It's small, it's easy, and it gives name recognition to newer players.
We need to do SOMETHING for new players, because as it stands we can say goodbye to 726 players in circuit. If you don't think that is a serious problem you are sorely mistaken.
As always, thank you for reading all this shit. Post comments on the NB thread. I am aware my method of calculating players going AWOL is flawed in some sense, but that is literally the only way I am able to get a rough estimate without asking TPCI to see what Player IDs were and were not used from 2014 to 2015. Unless that data is released, my numbers are the best we have.
To state it plainly, NB forums are a shell of their former self. Many players can attest that they'd check everyday what was going on the forums. They were exciting back when we first started. Now a lot of players seldom check the forums. There isn't many threads, or not many interesting ones, or ones worth commentating on. NPA seems to be the only time people get on the forums. To me, this is a problem. New players don't have a place to go to learn from the better players. They don't have an example to follow, or a role model. Sure, there's the handful of YouTube players who are doing a lot of good, but they're it. But for the most part communication is one way. There are many questions the players still have, but no place for them to be answered.
For example, when Unreality made the thread about Aegislash, people weren't sure why running speed on Aegislash was a good thing. And in theory, you can easily understand why they think this. In a vacuum, fast Aegi can lose the 1v1 if they both Shadow Ball. It took a good player to have to explain to them that faster Aegi has more options in that situation, and why it was better. This is what our communication is missing, and I think a lot of newer players learned something that day.
But instead, you see bad RMT threads or bad posts in Competitive with hundreds of views from other novice players and no one gets the knowledge they need to in order to improve. It's a negative feedback loop and it takes a good player to break the cycle. I understand the RMT section is a massive issue to tackle, and I'll get to that eventually, but objectively there isn't a whole lot of quality content going into that section, and no one is being empowered to do something there. But I digress.
Players need to learn somewhere. NB is a perfect place for it. The articles we get are a good jumping off point, but they only go so far. They don't teach players how to learn from the game, or fully explain things. To a lot of good players things seem intuitive. It makes sense to run Aegi with Speed EVs, it makes sense to run Flamethrower on Charizard-Y, it makes sense to love Gastrodon. New players don't get these things. And its our job to help them.
But why? Is it just that the new players aren't just getting better? Our game is growing at a healthy rate, what's the big deal? Pokemon is growing. I think we can say that rather safely. Our numbers increased a lot in the past few years, but our numbers can grow faster. For example, when looking at the CP spreadsheet Gavin managed for 2014 and 2015, objectively it looks like we had a huge growth between those years (544 players in 2014 and 1259 in 2015). These numbers are met with a dark side. Of the players in 2014 who's only achievement was a T64 at a regional (the lowest placement to get CP), 77% of those players did not return the next season, and only 9% went to more than one event in 2015 (which literally means going to 2 PCs for some).
I'm going to repeat that since if that doesn't set off a red flag what the hell is wrong with you. 77% of players in the bottom of the CP standings will not return next year. Oh, that guy who killed your resistance because he's new? Don't worry! Chances are he won't be back next year! Forget about it!
Oh, but Kenan, I bet that's only the bad players who aren't good. I'm sure the players who do well don't quit in such droves! I hope you're sitting down because you cannot be more wrong. Of the 544 players who were on the CP standings in 2014, 57.7% of all players did not return in 2015. ALMOST 60% did not return. And of the 544, only 30% attended more events then they did the year before (and with only 2 PC limit finish in 2014, it's not hard to do that, but people aren't).
Now, the sample size on this data is small, I have only one years worth of data to compare, and there are very valid reasons why some people do not return or maybe they don't get CP, however this should not throw out the evidence. This is a serious problem for our community. Unreality said on the forums when talking about the RMT section, "I don't know why I should be involved in teaching a specific single player if there is no guarantee that player will even be around in a week." You know what, he's right! He's right 77% of the time for novice players and 60% of the time for all players. This is a problem! People won't feel the need to help others if the chances they will return are so low.
We need to fix this, and I have some ideas as to why the average player quits, and how we could fix this. I've discussed this with several people, and I think this is something that NEEDS to happen desperately.
Now, be honest: how many of you reading this would still be playing if you didn't perform well early on in your time playing VGC? I know I wouldn't be here if I didn't win a Regional and meet an amazing group of friends. Manoj told me today he wouldn't be playing if he didn't T4 Nats in 2012. I know many many people who haven't been relevant for a while, but still play the game. Why? It's simple: the community. Simon said: "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the amazing people I've met all these years of playing." This is how many of the players feel who haven't done well in a while. We still go to Nationals and get on Skype simply to hang out with our friends.
But would we get to meet our friends if we we didn't do well? Think of a big name in the community and try and find one that doesn't have a big placement that brought them into the community. There aren't many. It's rare that people don't perform exceptionally well at events and still manage to get into the community. It's an unspoken right of passage, you have to perform well to hang with the big kids. Denying this is naive.
So what does that mean for the people who don't do well? Well, for the most part they get ignored. Their forum posts have less merit, their articles have next to no merit, and people pass up on them. They don't make the friends that we all cherish, and there isn't anything keeping them in the game. They tried their hand, they didn't succeed, and now they move on. To fix this, I suggest we simply give them a place to play with people of their skill level and host tournaments. But Kenan, we have Lives and Showdown Tourneys! Shut up. Lives are worth something (invite to Invitational) and Showdown Tourneys are dominated by the same handful of players over and over and over again. Gavin one night literally dumpstered kids and won like 4 in a row before going to bed. They are not a good place for newer players to go to play against other players of their skill, and showdown ladder and battle spot ladder is often filled with players who reset cart / new alts who just dumpster them at 1000 / 1500 rating (Showdown and BS respectively).
Hosting new tournaments with no incentive, that good players do not participate in is good for the scene. This gives new / undervalued players a place to show their skills and make sort of a name for themselves. Online tournament hold some merit. Lunar got drafted by Angel in NPA for 3k because Angel knew he performed well on lives, and ended up having one of the best records in all of NPA! We need a place to cultivate new players. Regionals is demoralizing, Nationals is demoralizing, PCs can be demoralizing, Lives are demoralizing, Showdown Tourneys are demoralizing. We need help.
Here's the thing. All those tournaments are bad for one reason, and one reason only: no one knows who anyone is. To a brand new player attending their first event, or just entering the community, no one knows anyone's real names. We all have moved to Twitter and not all of use have our real names with our handle. If you're new, there's only a handful of players who's name you know: Aaron Zheng, Wolfe Glick, Ray Rizzo, Alex Oglaza, and probably Jeudy Azzarelli and other top World's players. But lets say you get paired up Round 1 against someone named Michael Lanzano. Who the fuck is this guy? I've never heard of him in my life. Yet this random BTFO's you. That's terrible for morale! You, as a new player, have no idea that Michael is a former world's competitor, and has won regionals before. You don't know! There's no way for new players to know who is good and who is not. You cannot tell.
All events in our current circuit and even online force new players to play with experienced players, and they don't know why they're getting stomped repeatedly. They just know they got their ass handed to them by a random. And when good players have a bad start to their day (Angel at Nats started 1-2) and you get paired up with him at 1-2, you're expecting him to not be crazy good. But when he 4-0s you two games in a row you feel like absolute shit. You wonder why you're getting beat so badly by players with negative records. They shouldn't be that good, but you have no idea you played one of the best players in the US and just mad unlucky.
Other esports do this all the time. I don't follow more than DotA, but there are tournaments where one or two tier 1 teams play with a bunch of tier 3 and 2 teams. There are teams who get paired up with EG, Fnatic, Empire, or whatever top team is invited, very early on. However, they don't feel like shit if they get stomped. Ah damn, they think, we just got unlucky and played the best team early on and got eliminated. They KNOW who is good. If you're a new player to Pokemon and you draw Gavin Michaels, you aren't gonna know he's about to unleash the biggest can of whoop ass you've ever seen. But if you get paired up against EG, you sure know it's coming.
Now, that one is a little harder to fix. We cannot all brag about all our past accomplishments to demoralize our opponents before the match, we cannot all get sponsored and wear the gear (and people wear their favorite organization to be a fan anyway so that doesn't work). There isn't a major fix to that one. But what we can do is create tournaments that are more friendlier to new players. A tournament without the top players. A tournament where the newer players can feel good about themselves instead of repeatedly getting stomped by players who have been around the block.
To do this, we need something from the players. We need the good ones to self-select who should and should not be qualified to play. It has to be a silent one. We cannot make the requirement to play "has gone negative at an event," or something, as that only makes people feel bad about themselves. It has to be open for everyone, but big players will not play in them. In addition, we need people to host tournaments, and we need a place for these players to get respect for their achievement. Winning these tournaments is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. It does not give cash like the major and does not give CP like a PC or Regional, but they need to feel empowered and good about winning. Whether we get a hall of fame or something where that goes, or make an announcement post on the NB twitter is something we could do. It's small, it's easy, and it gives name recognition to newer players.
We need to do SOMETHING for new players, because as it stands we can say goodbye to 726 players in circuit. If you don't think that is a serious problem you are sorely mistaken.
As always, thank you for reading all this shit. Post comments on the NB thread. I am aware my method of calculating players going AWOL is flawed in some sense, but that is literally the only way I am able to get a rough estimate without asking TPCI to see what Player IDs were and were not used from 2014 to 2015. Unless that data is released, my numbers are the best we have.
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Improving NB Forums: Top Players Please Write
I'm gonna try and hastily get this out there, as I definitely need to clarify somethings from the last entry, but I didn't want to write such a huge post. This one will be tackling the whole issue we have about revealing team information, players being hesitant to write articles, and stuff of that nature. Now before I started writing articles for NB, I talked with Unreality a bit about why I think they should set a requirement team reports need to meet before getting put on site, and he just said "we have nothing else." I got tired of seeing bad content, and I like to think of myself as a good player, but a bad performer, so I went ahead and began writing, and I began to take his perspective a bit. But at Nationals I was talking with Wolfe about these entries (when they were still an idea), and the big one we had a discrepancy on was this topic: why good players should write. He made a lot of good points, but I think there are easy answers to them. I'll highlight them below.
As is stands, I think the quality of articles on site can be improved. We had some solid ones from Regionals: MajorBowman's, Unreality's, Zach Drayyyykamp's, etc., but those still aren't the ones players gravitate towards, as I explained last time. But what we're missing is reports from Nationals. Nats was almost three weeks ago, yet the only report we've gotten from Nationals is Angel. Jeudy, and Jun's which they all used to good success. Yes they were posted on Pokemon.com, but I want to understand the thought process behind these moves, not an interpretation from someone. But why? Why don't we have any other reports? Why was it that we had so many last year, and the years prior but we can't get a single one this year? On the other hand, why should they write? Why should they feel obligated? These are things we'll have to overcome as a community. These are dangerous mentalities. Let's begin.
1. No One Gives A Damn About Your Team Going Into a Tournament
Scouting is overrated. There. I said it. I don't see the reason why'd you want to hide your team to people. No one is going to counterteam you at a serious event. This wasn't the case when we had legit pastebins of peoples teams due to Pokecheck, and it sure as hell isn't the case now. In 2012 at Nationals, an early iteration of my Nats team got leaked to some of fiercest competition in the Seniors division in Snake, Maski, and KingofMars. They had a pastebin of my team and they all thought out their matchup weeks in advance, and even considered running Cradily to counterteam me. It was a thing back then. It's not anymore. Get over yourself. Post your team online. People aren't going to remember what you're using or your speed tiers. And I'm not just saying this. Manoj in 2014 wrote a report on his Regionals team, and he used the same team at Nats and got T16, only not making T8 due to resistance. Manoj is a great player, and if you're good enough to T4 a Regionals, or T16 Nationals, any knowledge they have on your team doesn't matter! Just play better than them and you will win more times than not. Simon knew Ashton's team in T16 of Nationals in 2014 because it was posted online, yet he still almost lost! It doesn't matter. Post your team, help someone out, improve the game you love. We all owe something to this community. We all have met some of our best friends through this game. It's time to give back when the game needs it most. If you want the travel stipends and prizes for this game to keep growing, if you want Nationals to keep feeling more and more like a prestigious tournament then we need to grow the player base and keep them around. We have so many players who try their hand, don't get anywhere, and quit. We need to retain them. Post your team. It's one step in the right direction.
2. Writing Team Reports Doesn't Have to be Strenuous
Holy shit for the love of God no one wants to read 920153 words about your team. I want to know why you chose X move, the synergy between your team, and what your EV spread does. I know I can't speak for everyone. I'm sure there are people out there who appreciate the longer team reports, but a lot of players aren't there for that jazz. The Imouto report from Nationals looks really long, but considering that three people wrote that, it isn't very much from each player, and it certainly isn't a lot of work for any of them. They get their team out there without much hassle. It's the same mentality I have with my articles I write. I just ask top players questions, they answer when they get a chance, and then I C/P it to a document. It's easy to make content, it's painless for the good players, and it gets quality information out to players. Don't feel the need to write so much. People skip that stuff. The team is the focus, not who you played. I'd rather see a section on bad matchups so players who draw inspiration from it can easily see problems they need to fix then you elaborate for an hour on how hard your match against someone at X-1 was. If you want to write that, go for it! Some people will read it and some people will enjoy it. But I want the people who are lazy to feel like they can write without having to write that extra stuff. (Because it's not super important.)
3. Various Points Wolfe Raised and Rebuttal
Wolfe raised a lot of good arguments when we discussed this at Nationals on the way to film some footage for the documentary, so I'll bring those up and answer them here.
A. Good Players Do Not Benefit from Writing
This is 100% true. In terms of what the player himself gets, it's nothing. It takes a person like Unreality to see the value of keeping the community strong and going to understand the importance of that. The writers don't get anything from writing, the editors don't get anything from editing, the mods don't get anything from managing, and neither do the admins. NB is 100% non-profit. All ad revenue goes into the Major and Invitational prize pool, which I really like. But in the sense of people getting something tangible out of it, it doesn't exist. Unless NB expands to new heights (which if we retained a lot more players for a longer period of time it could be a reality), then perhaps in the future we could reward players with some of the ad revenue their article receives, but for now players have to accept the reward of educating the player base and advancing the metagame.
B. Writing only Benefits the Competition
Again, this one is true. There's not a whole lot to combat this point. If a player is consistently at the top, as Wolfe is, and they want to continue to stay at the top of the CP standings year after year, it may very well be in their best interest to keep their information to themselves to keep the edge between them and the average player as wide as possible to maximize their chances of success. This may be a very selfish argument against writing articles, but we have to remember we're playing for money now, and the prizes are getting better. People will always do whatever they can do win (screen peaking, loading die, slight of handing cards). It's very fair to keep a players greatest advantage: knowledge. This is something that will always differentiate a good player from a bad one. However, to say that posting your team and some info about why you chose X or Y isn't going to cost you very much. If you limit your writing, then you won't be revealing a whole lot in terms of you're personal mentality behind the team and it'll just be a good team that people can experiment with. I personally don't see any harm in that.
C. Posting Teams Promotes Lazy Team Building
I think we're all guilty of this. When I need a spread to test a team, I usually browse NB forums and see if there's a good spread that does roughly what I want, and if I want it to be more fit to my specific needs then I make it myself. But what does this do for the player? It may let them win an addition game or two because their Sylveon is optimized or something, but overall the player doesn't quite learn very much and could become reliant on these given spreads when building. While there are plenty of articles on the site which teach players how to make EV spreads, these aren't aimed at the newer players. These are aimed at the more experienced players. A new player probably doesn't understand any of that stuff, and it's way over their head. But they can copy EV spreads no trouble.
To be honest, I don't think this is a super serious complaint, but I understand its validity. I think the people who rip EV spreads are the new players who don't get that aspect of the game. I don't think a new player have a good EV spread is going to make or break a tournament for a top player, and if it does then they do well and will stay in the community for a while and well, mission accomplished. Besides, there are ways to get around that. Angel, Jeudy, and Jun's team report didn't discuss the EVs one bit, so anyone who rips them is going in with no idea what they do and has to figure it all out themselves. While they still have a good spread, they have no knowledge what it does and have to learn from practice. Alternatively, you could also do what Zog does which is just not posting the EVs at all and perhaps explaining what they do. While the good players who can make EV spreads are able to recreate it, they can easily just calc the spread on their own regardless. They know what hits Pokemon should take, and which ones they should KO. So while I get the need to preserve intellectual property, as it is yours, I think it's less of an issue as it may appear when you think it through.
I may have missed something, but those were the major ones that I remember from Wolfe and I's discussion at Nationals.
Anyway, as always thank you guys for reading these and sharing them and whatnot. I really appreciate the feedback I'm getting and I'm glad we're evaluating our community a little. As always, please feel free to join the discussion on the forum thread, and I look forward to hearing your responses!
As is stands, I think the quality of articles on site can be improved. We had some solid ones from Regionals: MajorBowman's, Unreality's, Zach Drayyyykamp's, etc., but those still aren't the ones players gravitate towards, as I explained last time. But what we're missing is reports from Nationals. Nats was almost three weeks ago, yet the only report we've gotten from Nationals is Angel. Jeudy, and Jun's which they all used to good success. Yes they were posted on Pokemon.com, but I want to understand the thought process behind these moves, not an interpretation from someone. But why? Why don't we have any other reports? Why was it that we had so many last year, and the years prior but we can't get a single one this year? On the other hand, why should they write? Why should they feel obligated? These are things we'll have to overcome as a community. These are dangerous mentalities. Let's begin.
1. No One Gives A Damn About Your Team Going Into a Tournament
Scouting is overrated. There. I said it. I don't see the reason why'd you want to hide your team to people. No one is going to counterteam you at a serious event. This wasn't the case when we had legit pastebins of peoples teams due to Pokecheck, and it sure as hell isn't the case now. In 2012 at Nationals, an early iteration of my Nats team got leaked to some of fiercest competition in the Seniors division in Snake, Maski, and KingofMars. They had a pastebin of my team and they all thought out their matchup weeks in advance, and even considered running Cradily to counterteam me. It was a thing back then. It's not anymore. Get over yourself. Post your team online. People aren't going to remember what you're using or your speed tiers. And I'm not just saying this. Manoj in 2014 wrote a report on his Regionals team, and he used the same team at Nats and got T16, only not making T8 due to resistance. Manoj is a great player, and if you're good enough to T4 a Regionals, or T16 Nationals, any knowledge they have on your team doesn't matter! Just play better than them and you will win more times than not. Simon knew Ashton's team in T16 of Nationals in 2014 because it was posted online, yet he still almost lost! It doesn't matter. Post your team, help someone out, improve the game you love. We all owe something to this community. We all have met some of our best friends through this game. It's time to give back when the game needs it most. If you want the travel stipends and prizes for this game to keep growing, if you want Nationals to keep feeling more and more like a prestigious tournament then we need to grow the player base and keep them around. We have so many players who try their hand, don't get anywhere, and quit. We need to retain them. Post your team. It's one step in the right direction.
2. Writing Team Reports Doesn't Have to be Strenuous
Holy shit for the love of God no one wants to read 920153 words about your team. I want to know why you chose X move, the synergy between your team, and what your EV spread does. I know I can't speak for everyone. I'm sure there are people out there who appreciate the longer team reports, but a lot of players aren't there for that jazz. The Imouto report from Nationals looks really long, but considering that three people wrote that, it isn't very much from each player, and it certainly isn't a lot of work for any of them. They get their team out there without much hassle. It's the same mentality I have with my articles I write. I just ask top players questions, they answer when they get a chance, and then I C/P it to a document. It's easy to make content, it's painless for the good players, and it gets quality information out to players. Don't feel the need to write so much. People skip that stuff. The team is the focus, not who you played. I'd rather see a section on bad matchups so players who draw inspiration from it can easily see problems they need to fix then you elaborate for an hour on how hard your match against someone at X-1 was. If you want to write that, go for it! Some people will read it and some people will enjoy it. But I want the people who are lazy to feel like they can write without having to write that extra stuff. (Because it's not super important.)
3. Various Points Wolfe Raised and Rebuttal
Wolfe raised a lot of good arguments when we discussed this at Nationals on the way to film some footage for the documentary, so I'll bring those up and answer them here.
A. Good Players Do Not Benefit from Writing
This is 100% true. In terms of what the player himself gets, it's nothing. It takes a person like Unreality to see the value of keeping the community strong and going to understand the importance of that. The writers don't get anything from writing, the editors don't get anything from editing, the mods don't get anything from managing, and neither do the admins. NB is 100% non-profit. All ad revenue goes into the Major and Invitational prize pool, which I really like. But in the sense of people getting something tangible out of it, it doesn't exist. Unless NB expands to new heights (which if we retained a lot more players for a longer period of time it could be a reality), then perhaps in the future we could reward players with some of the ad revenue their article receives, but for now players have to accept the reward of educating the player base and advancing the metagame.
B. Writing only Benefits the Competition
Again, this one is true. There's not a whole lot to combat this point. If a player is consistently at the top, as Wolfe is, and they want to continue to stay at the top of the CP standings year after year, it may very well be in their best interest to keep their information to themselves to keep the edge between them and the average player as wide as possible to maximize their chances of success. This may be a very selfish argument against writing articles, but we have to remember we're playing for money now, and the prizes are getting better. People will always do whatever they can do win (screen peaking, loading die, slight of handing cards). It's very fair to keep a players greatest advantage: knowledge. This is something that will always differentiate a good player from a bad one. However, to say that posting your team and some info about why you chose X or Y isn't going to cost you very much. If you limit your writing, then you won't be revealing a whole lot in terms of you're personal mentality behind the team and it'll just be a good team that people can experiment with. I personally don't see any harm in that.
C. Posting Teams Promotes Lazy Team Building
I think we're all guilty of this. When I need a spread to test a team, I usually browse NB forums and see if there's a good spread that does roughly what I want, and if I want it to be more fit to my specific needs then I make it myself. But what does this do for the player? It may let them win an addition game or two because their Sylveon is optimized or something, but overall the player doesn't quite learn very much and could become reliant on these given spreads when building. While there are plenty of articles on the site which teach players how to make EV spreads, these aren't aimed at the newer players. These are aimed at the more experienced players. A new player probably doesn't understand any of that stuff, and it's way over their head. But they can copy EV spreads no trouble.
To be honest, I don't think this is a super serious complaint, but I understand its validity. I think the people who rip EV spreads are the new players who don't get that aspect of the game. I don't think a new player have a good EV spread is going to make or break a tournament for a top player, and if it does then they do well and will stay in the community for a while and well, mission accomplished. Besides, there are ways to get around that. Angel, Jeudy, and Jun's team report didn't discuss the EVs one bit, so anyone who rips them is going in with no idea what they do and has to figure it all out themselves. While they still have a good spread, they have no knowledge what it does and have to learn from practice. Alternatively, you could also do what Zog does which is just not posting the EVs at all and perhaps explaining what they do. While the good players who can make EV spreads are able to recreate it, they can easily just calc the spread on their own regardless. They know what hits Pokemon should take, and which ones they should KO. So while I get the need to preserve intellectual property, as it is yours, I think it's less of an issue as it may appear when you think it through.
I may have missed something, but those were the major ones that I remember from Wolfe and I's discussion at Nationals.
Anyway, as always thank you guys for reading these and sharing them and whatnot. I really appreciate the feedback I'm getting and I'm glad we're evaluating our community a little. As always, please feel free to join the discussion on the forum thread, and I look forward to hearing your responses!
How to Improve NB Forums: Articles
Spoiler: This entry will go hand in hand with the next one. I fully understand the complaints people are going to bring up, and I will try and get the next one soon, which will probably be tomorrow when I get off work.
Rushan brought up that "Twitter is where I go to post random happenings in my life -- usually Pokemon or esports related -- that I don't feel like polluting my Facebook feed with."
I definitely agree with this statement. Twitter serves a terrific function as social media. It's great for knowing what people are doing. There's no real place for people to update how they've doing at Regionals or a PC, or even Nationals and Worlds, aside from like Twitter. It's harder to find that all on Facebook, posting on the forums is less than desirable, and IRC is well, less crowded. So I definitely think Twitter serves a useful function in our community, however that's where I think it should end on Twitter. Discussions are better off elsewhere, in my opinion. Of course, you can still use it for everyday social functions, but in terms of Pokemon related things, I think it should end there.
Pookar mentioned that "There are a TON of posters who reply to every single thread that is posted in competitive with pretty much nothing to add to the topic, and why? Are those posts infractable? No! They're just terrible posts. And they are opinions and posts I wouldn't want to have to weed through if I'm trying to get productive responses. They are posts that turn other people off to discussions."
Unfortunately this is a true reality for the NB forums at the moment. There are a lot of new and very active users who don't contribute much with there posts. I think there's many reasons WHY this is the case, but the biggest one for me is that there isn't an active example for them to follow. These players see other "bad posters" with more experience and take after them. All of the good players aren't on the forums, or are on Twitter trying to get a thought across in 140 characters. Sure, they may not gain anything out of the forums, but helping others should be enough to get players back on.
Anyway, with that out of the way I'm going to transition into my main points that I want to bring up with this article. Unfortunately I may upset some people with this. This is not the intention. I'm just going to say publicly what a lot of players say privately.
The problem that I want to address today is the articles on NuggetBridge, specifically team reports. While I think we definitely do get some good articles, (still waiting on some to come from Nationals) it does not make up for the lower quality articles we've had the entirety of the year. This is of course met with the "it's that or nothing" complaint from admin and staff, but that's a different subject which I will answer in the next entry.
1. Lower Quality Articles Glorify Bad Ideas and Team Building
Ohhhh boy. This is where things might get ugly. I mean no disrespect to the players. Their accomplishments are entirely their own, and there's nothing I can say or do to take that away from them. Which is why I'm going to pick on a player who I can poke fun at without him getting exceptionally upset: Ashton Cox. Asthon hasn't written anything this year, but his article in 2014 showcases a plethora of "Ashton teams" that probably cannot be used in the hands of anyone othre than him. While I think a lot of people would like to see how he made his teams, unfortunately a lot of newer will gravitate to his teams and see "He's using his favorites and does well, so I can too!" and then build a bunch of really bad teams filled with favorites and then wonder why they're not winning. Sure, Ashton says his teams are eccentric and odd and he's definitely an exception to the rule, but that's not the message it sends to newer players. Now I know underused Pokemon can still be good. I understand there can be a niche, but Ashton pilots odd teams to success because he is a good player, not because he believes in his Pokemon and loves them more than other trainers.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think Ashton has any malicious intentions with his team report, I just think it unknowingly sends the wrong message to newer players. While Ashton's quirky team building has certainly calmed down, using a rather standard team at Spring Regionals, newer players will always use unique teams that aren't good, and Ashton's article could have validated that trend slight.
Ashton, if you're reading this, please don't change. You're team building always spices up an event as we all want to figure out what crazy stuff you're using. I just use you as an example because I know you can handle it, and I don't know some of the other people who write questionable (IMHO) articles well enough to call them out publicly.
Regardless, the problem with articles that aren't very good is that those ideas are glorified in a sense. They get on the main page, the NB Facebook and Twitter shares it, and those are teams people look at. Remember that 2014 report with Pyroar? Sure the team did well, but Pyroar isn't very good. Still, tons of people began to test it after. Of all the things we took from Japan, it's that. Japan had Goth + Maw practically all year, yet that was what we gravitated towards because it was cool. That's where I think the main problem is with articles such as that. Newer players gravitate to the cool teams with the cool mons that have decent tournament placings, and pass up the boring teams that are leagues better which could teach newer players a thing or two.
2. Setting Strict Requirement to Post Team Reports
This is something I see happen in the Workshop when people want to write articles, but not something that happens when people write reports. I periodically get linked a thread on Skype that has Rushan just thrashing someone who's trying to write an article who doesn't have any tournament results as credibility, or has a bad premise, or something. Whether the article would be good is irrelevant, players have to prove themselves most of the time before writing. (Which is why when I write my articles, I let the good players do the talking and slowly have been adding my own commentary, because no one wants to hear how to play the game from me). This is something I think we should do for team reports. We should simply be blunt and tell the people who's teams simply aren't up to snuff "sorry."
It's something I've talked with privately with friends, but I think setting baselines that players have to meet to get their team report on the front page prevents players from getting their feelings hurt if we deny them, and keeps our site consistent. I think having Top 4 at Regionals, Top 16 at Nationals, and then Top 32 for Worlds (or less, depending on number of players. Just a good record) is a fairly decent benchmark to have only super solid teams featured on the site. These are the teams that we want players to gravitate towards. These are the teams players should look at.
But where do the teams go that don't meet those requirements, but players still want to post them?
3. Other Teams Get Posted to the RMT Section
I will elaborate a lot more on why trying to make the RMT section better is useful at a later date, but to summarize it boils down to giving them an example of a good team, and then ideally having other top players show what a good team rate is and identifying problems the team could have. Leading by example, in summary.
Posting them to the RMT section still lets players get their teams out there. Blake and I posted some of our retired teams in the RMT section a while ago to get our ideas out there. This serves many purposes, which I promise I'll get to later (I say that a lot, but I promise), but it lets our ideas get shown to the masses, gives an example of good content to newer players, and lets other players get inspiration from known players.
Another interesting thing we can do with these teams that Smogon does, dear God I hope I don't get lynched for mentioning their name, is that they feature RMTs weekly. When we don't have a lot of articles going on site, we can easily feature a Top 8 or Top 16 Regional Team, or a Top 32 Nats team to still highlight good content, but we can be extremely selective with what content. And I trust the NB Admins to pick and chose which teams should and shouldn't get highlighted if they decide to do that.
So with that I hope I've gotten across why I think increasing the standards on articles is important to NB's success at cultivating newer players. As always, thank you for reading and be sure to send any replies to the thread I have on NuggetBridge. I'll be sure to reply if I feel the need to clarify something.
Also I'm aware the blog looks a little odd on mobile. I have literally no idea on that one. Well beyond my scope to change. Sorry fam.
To begin, I want to bring up points people mentioned in the forum post. People raised some good arguments, and I'd like to address them here.
I definitely agree with this statement. Twitter serves a terrific function as social media. It's great for knowing what people are doing. There's no real place for people to update how they've doing at Regionals or a PC, or even Nationals and Worlds, aside from like Twitter. It's harder to find that all on Facebook, posting on the forums is less than desirable, and IRC is well, less crowded. So I definitely think Twitter serves a useful function in our community, however that's where I think it should end on Twitter. Discussions are better off elsewhere, in my opinion. Of course, you can still use it for everyday social functions, but in terms of Pokemon related things, I think it should end there.
Pookar mentioned that "There are a TON of posters who reply to every single thread that is posted in competitive with pretty much nothing to add to the topic, and why? Are those posts infractable? No! They're just terrible posts. And they are opinions and posts I wouldn't want to have to weed through if I'm trying to get productive responses. They are posts that turn other people off to discussions."
Unfortunately this is a true reality for the NB forums at the moment. There are a lot of new and very active users who don't contribute much with there posts. I think there's many reasons WHY this is the case, but the biggest one for me is that there isn't an active example for them to follow. These players see other "bad posters" with more experience and take after them. All of the good players aren't on the forums, or are on Twitter trying to get a thought across in 140 characters. Sure, they may not gain anything out of the forums, but helping others should be enough to get players back on.
Anyway, with that out of the way I'm going to transition into my main points that I want to bring up with this article. Unfortunately I may upset some people with this. This is not the intention. I'm just going to say publicly what a lot of players say privately.
The problem that I want to address today is the articles on NuggetBridge, specifically team reports. While I think we definitely do get some good articles, (still waiting on some to come from Nationals) it does not make up for the lower quality articles we've had the entirety of the year. This is of course met with the "it's that or nothing" complaint from admin and staff, but that's a different subject which I will answer in the next entry.
1. Lower Quality Articles Glorify Bad Ideas and Team Building
Ohhhh boy. This is where things might get ugly. I mean no disrespect to the players. Their accomplishments are entirely their own, and there's nothing I can say or do to take that away from them. Which is why I'm going to pick on a player who I can poke fun at without him getting exceptionally upset: Ashton Cox. Asthon hasn't written anything this year, but his article in 2014 showcases a plethora of "Ashton teams" that probably cannot be used in the hands of anyone othre than him. While I think a lot of people would like to see how he made his teams, unfortunately a lot of newer will gravitate to his teams and see "He's using his favorites and does well, so I can too!" and then build a bunch of really bad teams filled with favorites and then wonder why they're not winning. Sure, Ashton says his teams are eccentric and odd and he's definitely an exception to the rule, but that's not the message it sends to newer players. Now I know underused Pokemon can still be good. I understand there can be a niche, but Ashton pilots odd teams to success because he is a good player, not because he believes in his Pokemon and loves them more than other trainers.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think Ashton has any malicious intentions with his team report, I just think it unknowingly sends the wrong message to newer players. While Ashton's quirky team building has certainly calmed down, using a rather standard team at Spring Regionals, newer players will always use unique teams that aren't good, and Ashton's article could have validated that trend slight.
Ashton, if you're reading this, please don't change. You're team building always spices up an event as we all want to figure out what crazy stuff you're using. I just use you as an example because I know you can handle it, and I don't know some of the other people who write questionable (IMHO) articles well enough to call them out publicly.
Regardless, the problem with articles that aren't very good is that those ideas are glorified in a sense. They get on the main page, the NB Facebook and Twitter shares it, and those are teams people look at. Remember that 2014 report with Pyroar? Sure the team did well, but Pyroar isn't very good. Still, tons of people began to test it after. Of all the things we took from Japan, it's that. Japan had Goth + Maw practically all year, yet that was what we gravitated towards because it was cool. That's where I think the main problem is with articles such as that. Newer players gravitate to the cool teams with the cool mons that have decent tournament placings, and pass up the boring teams that are leagues better which could teach newer players a thing or two.
2. Setting Strict Requirement to Post Team Reports
This is something I see happen in the Workshop when people want to write articles, but not something that happens when people write reports. I periodically get linked a thread on Skype that has Rushan just thrashing someone who's trying to write an article who doesn't have any tournament results as credibility, or has a bad premise, or something. Whether the article would be good is irrelevant, players have to prove themselves most of the time before writing. (Which is why when I write my articles, I let the good players do the talking and slowly have been adding my own commentary, because no one wants to hear how to play the game from me). This is something I think we should do for team reports. We should simply be blunt and tell the people who's teams simply aren't up to snuff "sorry."
It's something I've talked with privately with friends, but I think setting baselines that players have to meet to get their team report on the front page prevents players from getting their feelings hurt if we deny them, and keeps our site consistent. I think having Top 4 at Regionals, Top 16 at Nationals, and then Top 32 for Worlds (or less, depending on number of players. Just a good record) is a fairly decent benchmark to have only super solid teams featured on the site. These are the teams that we want players to gravitate towards. These are the teams players should look at.
But where do the teams go that don't meet those requirements, but players still want to post them?
3. Other Teams Get Posted to the RMT Section
I will elaborate a lot more on why trying to make the RMT section better is useful at a later date, but to summarize it boils down to giving them an example of a good team, and then ideally having other top players show what a good team rate is and identifying problems the team could have. Leading by example, in summary.
Posting them to the RMT section still lets players get their teams out there. Blake and I posted some of our retired teams in the RMT section a while ago to get our ideas out there. This serves many purposes, which I promise I'll get to later (I say that a lot, but I promise), but it lets our ideas get shown to the masses, gives an example of good content to newer players, and lets other players get inspiration from known players.
Another interesting thing we can do with these teams that Smogon does, dear God I hope I don't get lynched for mentioning their name, is that they feature RMTs weekly. When we don't have a lot of articles going on site, we can easily feature a Top 8 or Top 16 Regional Team, or a Top 32 Nats team to still highlight good content, but we can be extremely selective with what content. And I trust the NB Admins to pick and chose which teams should and shouldn't get highlighted if they decide to do that.
So with that I hope I've gotten across why I think increasing the standards on articles is important to NB's success at cultivating newer players. As always, thank you for reading and be sure to send any replies to the thread I have on NuggetBridge. I'll be sure to reply if I feel the need to clarify something.
Also I'm aware the blog looks a little odd on mobile. I have literally no idea on that one. Well beyond my scope to change. Sorry fam.
Sunday, July 19, 2015
Why We Should Move Away From Twitter
With only 140 characters available per tweet, it can be exceptionally difficult to form a coherent argument for or against something on twit-
Shit, okay lemme try again.
Due to the 140 character limit on twitter, I've noticed it's harder for people to get their whole idea on a subject when arguing over twitte-
Closer...
140 character limit is fucking retarded. If your argument is capable to be understood in that limit it must be simple as fuck and have no ra-
Fuck Twitter.
Hey everyone, on this first installment of my rants on the community, I'm going to tackle why I think we should move away from Twitter, and the potential effects it could have in fostering closer communication between new and old players.
1. Character limit is ass.
As I showed earlier, it can be tough to get a full thought out in that limit. You have to meticulously chose your words carefully, shorten things to u or 2 to save characters, limit punctuation, etc. While you may be able to get ONE thought across, imagine how difficult it is to fully communicate what you're trying to say when you're engaged in an argument, be it level headed or heated. You only are able to get one full idea across, if that. This leads to people not fully grasping the argument being presented by the other party, misinterpreting their points, and overall leads to less and less understanding and communication between parties. Honestly, if you are capable of wording a well thought out argument in 140 characters consistently, you're probably a god at the English language. However, you're one person, and the rest of us struggle with that bullshit and fail to get our points across.
2. Arguments often devolve into trying to be coolest / wittiest.
I'm gonna bring up a dead horse here because it perfectly shows my point: the whole Chuppa and JFlynn drama. If you completely missed it, you really need to come out from under your rock. There were several instances of people being overly aggressive to the other party, instead of trying to work out differences. I noticed Justin did it on two separate occasions when talking with Jonathan Evans (Ezrael), and Blake Hopper (Poison To This Community) [that's sarcasm, in case you're dumb] did it to Justin the next day when there were clearing things up. While I'm sure there are multiple other instances, these are very recent, sticks out as a huge blunder by the community, and clearly showcases why Twitter isn't healthy for us.
The first instance of this is when Jonathan used caps to emphasize his point, to which Justin completely ignored it, and made fun of him for using caps lock. While some people may find it funny, the problem is Jonathan is 100% trying to work out the issue and clear the air, but Justin wanted to be cheeky, and nothing is gained from the exchange other than everyone getting a little more pissed off and maybe a little smugness.
The second instance was when Jon replied to that, and called him out on avoiding discussing just to try and be funny, to with Justin had another snarky comeback. This one bothers me more, because if he truly "[didn't] have to debate," then he wouldn't have been replying in the first place. But when Jon keeps asking to discuss things, he blows him off. Whether he truly was watching HBO is irrelevant, it's that he dodges after already ignoring him and trying to be funny.
Now I know I kind of said Justin is a bit of a prick, but I don't have anything against the guy. He does a lot of good to get new players interested, and I'm really not looking for more shit fests, I just used him as an example because it's fresh in our minds and I think it showcases the problem with Twitter as a social media platform when our community is in such an argumentative state. He is not what is wrong, but Twitter enables people to be snappy and snarky more easily.
With that, I'm going to call my good friend Blake a bit of a bastard and unnecessarily rude when providing proof to Justin about him not being rude to him. I think Blake was right to provide proof that he tweeted good things about the video, but I think him saying "since you're all about proof" is extremely unnecessary, a bit of a jab against Justin, and doesn't correctly run parallel to him trying to patch things up. I get in all of these situations people are frustrated and upset, but Twitter is all about choosing your words carefully, and that is not a way to do it. He is clearing the air, and then makes fun of him a little. Things worked out, but I'm sure Justin wasn't too excited to read that sarcastic comment from him.
Please for the love of God do not make that whole drama shit storm the only thing you take out of this post...
3. Choosing who you follow excludes new players in the community.
We've all got those followers. They have VGC at the end of their handle, or they say they're a VGC player in their bio, but you've never heard of them, they have like >100 followers, and follow all the big VGC players. These are new players, looking to get involved in the community. But are we gonna follow them back and make them feel accepted? No. It's your feed, you follow people who tweet things you want to see. I doubt they feel like no one likes them, I mean they probably accept they're just new people in the community, but the problem is we don't communicate with them. Any communication is good communication, and they just read what we say and don't reply, or we ignore what they say.
I'm not saying we go to constant communication with them, as we choose to follow our friends and communicate primarily with them for a reason, but increasing dialogue with newer players can and will foster them to be better players, posters, and people. Twitter does not allow for that.
4. When things get sour, people turn to a better outlet to communicate.
Again I'm going to bring up Chuppa, because he is a prime example. When he started drama with JFlynn, he immediately got on IRC and Skype and talked with numerous people to see if he was justifiable with his response, to explain his point of view, and to discuss things. The NB Admins who primarily sided with Justin in that debacle were on IRC, and he talked with them about it privately. But why there? Maybe it's because there, he isn't limited by a character limit. He can elaborate on his thoughts and why he did what he did, and can explain his point of view. None of these things happened on Twitter. And there's a reason. Chuppa knows, his friends he talked with know, the people he PM'd know. It's easier to communicate when you're not restricted the way Twitter does.
Solution:
So I hope you realize that Twitter is absolutely not the place to discuss things, but where do we go if not there? IRC was a decent option maybe in 2013, but the NB IRC channel is just the old farts who have been around forever, have their own social circle and inside jokes, and honestly probably wouldn't be too excited if the floodgates were opened to the masses. There's already a massive Skype call of like 84 people, and that seems to be a good number since not everyone is active, but again it's mainly old farts and we splinter into our own personal social circles even there. So where do we go?
To me the solution is simple. We've had a place to discuss things the whole time: Nuggetbridge forums. Yes, they've really gone to shit lately, but you're not limited to 140 characters, everyone's voice is heard there, or at least seen and read by some, and while people may still go to private to work out differences when things get bad, it still is a much more positive environment to go to. The limited discussion we've had on NB this past season is a great indication of why things need to go there. When AZ posted the feedback thread, we had several people give terrific insight on their season, what they think needs to change, and why it should be changed. You don't get that on Twitter! However, when he tweeted the proposed changes to CP distribution on Twitter, we got Zach simply saying "I will not play next year" Zach at least had the foresight to say, this deserves a thread post, but still, to anyone who reads that he comes off aggressive, rude, and dead serious. Yes, it clearly indicates to AZ that he thinks there is a serious problem with his proposed changes, but that is 100% not the way to do it. The way he went about it on the forums is the way to do it, and that's why we should move back.
Also: I will be making a thread on NB so if you want to reply to me, I would greatly prefer if you did it there for all to see! I am trying to make a difference, so help me out!
Shit, okay lemme try again.
Due to the 140 character limit on twitter, I've noticed it's harder for people to get their whole idea on a subject when arguing over twitte-
Closer...
140 character limit is fucking retarded. If your argument is capable to be understood in that limit it must be simple as fuck and have no ra-
Fuck Twitter.
Hey everyone, on this first installment of my rants on the community, I'm going to tackle why I think we should move away from Twitter, and the potential effects it could have in fostering closer communication between new and old players.
1. Character limit is ass.
As I showed earlier, it can be tough to get a full thought out in that limit. You have to meticulously chose your words carefully, shorten things to u or 2 to save characters, limit punctuation, etc. While you may be able to get ONE thought across, imagine how difficult it is to fully communicate what you're trying to say when you're engaged in an argument, be it level headed or heated. You only are able to get one full idea across, if that. This leads to people not fully grasping the argument being presented by the other party, misinterpreting their points, and overall leads to less and less understanding and communication between parties. Honestly, if you are capable of wording a well thought out argument in 140 characters consistently, you're probably a god at the English language. However, you're one person, and the rest of us struggle with that bullshit and fail to get our points across.
2. Arguments often devolve into trying to be coolest / wittiest.
I'm gonna bring up a dead horse here because it perfectly shows my point: the whole Chuppa and JFlynn drama. If you completely missed it, you really need to come out from under your rock. There were several instances of people being overly aggressive to the other party, instead of trying to work out differences. I noticed Justin did it on two separate occasions when talking with Jonathan Evans (Ezrael), and Blake Hopper (Poison To This Community) [that's sarcasm, in case you're dumb] did it to Justin the next day when there were clearing things up. While I'm sure there are multiple other instances, these are very recent, sticks out as a huge blunder by the community, and clearly showcases why Twitter isn't healthy for us.
The first instance of this is when Jonathan used caps to emphasize his point, to which Justin completely ignored it, and made fun of him for using caps lock. While some people may find it funny, the problem is Jonathan is 100% trying to work out the issue and clear the air, but Justin wanted to be cheeky, and nothing is gained from the exchange other than everyone getting a little more pissed off and maybe a little smugness.
The second instance was when Jon replied to that, and called him out on avoiding discussing just to try and be funny, to with Justin had another snarky comeback. This one bothers me more, because if he truly "[didn't] have to debate," then he wouldn't have been replying in the first place. But when Jon keeps asking to discuss things, he blows him off. Whether he truly was watching HBO is irrelevant, it's that he dodges after already ignoring him and trying to be funny.
Now I know I kind of said Justin is a bit of a prick, but I don't have anything against the guy. He does a lot of good to get new players interested, and I'm really not looking for more shit fests, I just used him as an example because it's fresh in our minds and I think it showcases the problem with Twitter as a social media platform when our community is in such an argumentative state. He is not what is wrong, but Twitter enables people to be snappy and snarky more easily.
With that, I'm going to call my good friend Blake a bit of a bastard and unnecessarily rude when providing proof to Justin about him not being rude to him. I think Blake was right to provide proof that he tweeted good things about the video, but I think him saying "since you're all about proof" is extremely unnecessary, a bit of a jab against Justin, and doesn't correctly run parallel to him trying to patch things up. I get in all of these situations people are frustrated and upset, but Twitter is all about choosing your words carefully, and that is not a way to do it. He is clearing the air, and then makes fun of him a little. Things worked out, but I'm sure Justin wasn't too excited to read that sarcastic comment from him.
Please for the love of God do not make that whole drama shit storm the only thing you take out of this post...
3. Choosing who you follow excludes new players in the community.
We've all got those followers. They have VGC at the end of their handle, or they say they're a VGC player in their bio, but you've never heard of them, they have like >100 followers, and follow all the big VGC players. These are new players, looking to get involved in the community. But are we gonna follow them back and make them feel accepted? No. It's your feed, you follow people who tweet things you want to see. I doubt they feel like no one likes them, I mean they probably accept they're just new people in the community, but the problem is we don't communicate with them. Any communication is good communication, and they just read what we say and don't reply, or we ignore what they say.
I'm not saying we go to constant communication with them, as we choose to follow our friends and communicate primarily with them for a reason, but increasing dialogue with newer players can and will foster them to be better players, posters, and people. Twitter does not allow for that.
4. When things get sour, people turn to a better outlet to communicate.
Again I'm going to bring up Chuppa, because he is a prime example. When he started drama with JFlynn, he immediately got on IRC and Skype and talked with numerous people to see if he was justifiable with his response, to explain his point of view, and to discuss things. The NB Admins who primarily sided with Justin in that debacle were on IRC, and he talked with them about it privately. But why there? Maybe it's because there, he isn't limited by a character limit. He can elaborate on his thoughts and why he did what he did, and can explain his point of view. None of these things happened on Twitter. And there's a reason. Chuppa knows, his friends he talked with know, the people he PM'd know. It's easier to communicate when you're not restricted the way Twitter does.
Solution:
So I hope you realize that Twitter is absolutely not the place to discuss things, but where do we go if not there? IRC was a decent option maybe in 2013, but the NB IRC channel is just the old farts who have been around forever, have their own social circle and inside jokes, and honestly probably wouldn't be too excited if the floodgates were opened to the masses. There's already a massive Skype call of like 84 people, and that seems to be a good number since not everyone is active, but again it's mainly old farts and we splinter into our own personal social circles even there. So where do we go?
To me the solution is simple. We've had a place to discuss things the whole time: Nuggetbridge forums. Yes, they've really gone to shit lately, but you're not limited to 140 characters, everyone's voice is heard there, or at least seen and read by some, and while people may still go to private to work out differences when things get bad, it still is a much more positive environment to go to. The limited discussion we've had on NB this past season is a great indication of why things need to go there. When AZ posted the feedback thread, we had several people give terrific insight on their season, what they think needs to change, and why it should be changed. You don't get that on Twitter! However, when he tweeted the proposed changes to CP distribution on Twitter, we got Zach simply saying "I will not play next year" Zach at least had the foresight to say, this deserves a thread post, but still, to anyone who reads that he comes off aggressive, rude, and dead serious. Yes, it clearly indicates to AZ that he thinks there is a serious problem with his proposed changes, but that is 100% not the way to do it. The way he went about it on the forums is the way to do it, and that's why we should move back.
Also: I will be making a thread on NB so if you want to reply to me, I would greatly prefer if you did it there for all to see! I am trying to make a difference, so help me out!
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