FF6 vs TotA
FF1 vs BoF1
FE8 vs FF7
PKMN vs LoD
XS vs Suiko 1/2
SoA vs LoD
FF6 vs FE7
BoF2 vs CC
This is a pretty well played lineup. The obscure games in the group are.. BoF1 (GBA release, older game but well played here) and maybe LoD/SoA? Both were huge releases in their day. I get what you're driving at, will touch on it below.
Right, those were huge releases. Nonetheless, I have great difficulty finding gamers who have played them AND remember them well enough to vote.
However, another point worth noting in these semifinals is that, surprisingly, FE and FF fanbases do not seem to overlap much.
I tried to sell this site on the FE forum, but most folks there hadn't played anything beyond strategy RPGs, with the notable exception of FFX.
PS1 I agree completely on, and a handful of other older games. But you can only make so much headway there before you run into a problem- the roster and the voters we've assembled are largely based around console games, from the SNES era to the PS2 era. You can't entirely reshape the roster on what outsiders say. We can only cater to the voters we have. Of course the flipside of this is the voters who don't play new games any more and only want the same few titles in over and over. Have to balance this out of course, can't let things get too stagnated.
I'd say that it's been out of balance for a while.
The vote-totals haven't been this low since... season 14? Hopefully I miscounted, but that's what it seems like.
According to the tracking sites, DL still gets almost as many page hits as before. I'm not quite sure what to make of that. Either there's an increasing amount of visitors who don't bother to vote -- or simply can't. If it's the latter, then I'd say that it's definitely time to consider pruning the roster; or at least to exhibit some restrain when nominating older games.
The low amount of voters also means that the numbers can no longer be considered statistically accurate. The votes are skewed towards the regulars, and if those totals are used to determine which game to rank, then the rift will only keep on growing. Other sources such as sales and popularity should be used instead when determining if the game is ready to rank. If there are enough writers internally and the game sold well, then I think it should be considered ready.
P3 for instance: now would've been the perfect time to rank it.
By not ranking it before P4 is released, we'll miss out on a potential influx of voters and likely some new writers[1]. Sequels always generate a surge of renewed interest towards the series, and if P3 had been ranked by the time that P4 is released it would've been easy to "sell" this site to the fanbase. If it's not ranked by that time, then there's nothing to sell.
[1] The P3 fanbase does seems to contain an abnormal amount of creative talent, although to be honest, there's few too many emo-kids among them.And as for the point about new games.. yeah, but how many of the new games released are niche titles? The PS2 era had a staggering number of RPGs released. Making even most of them rankable is impossible, same as in any era. We can only pick the strongest ones. While it's cool people are enjoying the new games, we're always only going to have our roster be a small fraction of the new, hot games. The DL is going to be a hard sell to a 17 year old who's never seen an SNES just due to the age of the concept (The RPGP started in the very early PSX era). Not a lot we can do about that but try to rank new games as they come like P3.
FE9 was released three years, D2 two. Neither fit the definition of hot and new.
The main problem here is the site visibility. There are plenty of gamers who have played those two, but most of them played them when they were released. It's unlikely that ranking them so long after they've been released will net us many new voters. Fortunately they're both strategy RPGs, so that makes it somewhat easier sell. I know just the right forum. ...but enough about that.
There are plenty of ways to improve the site visibility, to connect this site to the gamers who have played those games. I've mentioned some ways before.
I'd appreciate it if someone who is fluent in English and able to sum RPGDL in a sentence or two would click this link and submit this site to the directory:
http://www.google.com/Top/Games/Video_Games/Roleplaying/Fan_Pages/Trust me, that WILL draw more voters here. I'd do it myself, but I'm not fluent enough since English is my fourth language.
Because PC games by and large aren't rankable. The ones that do fit the format are older and can't draw at all. I hate to use the term 'doesn't fit the format', but.. most really don't. And PC and console gamers don't mix. How I usually explain it to new voters- not enough fan demand and the games don't fit the format. I know it's hard to sell the DL to people and doubly hard with the current downturn in new gmaes, but I'm not sure what we can effectively do there besides push the concept.
True. There haven't been many recent releases that are rankable, beyond popular shareware games such as Aveyond.
I doubt that those have any chance to get ranked, even though...
http://www.googlebattle.com/index.php?domain=aveyond&domain2=%22wild+arms+4%22&submit=Go!
Anyway, PC and console gamers seem to overlap more and more. Hardly anyone owns just one console these days, most serious gamers own a PC and several consoles -- and play RPGs on all of them. I'd recommend keeping an eye on that market, and ranking the next big-name rankable from there.
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), but I'm more concerned about the long-term health of this site than keeping my favorite games here. If we don't keep attracting new writers, the site will end up stagnating sooner or later.