Less games per ranking period (Part 2)

[Yakumo]

A major reason we've done so well at screening out the bad ranks is that we've been smart enough to freeze when there weren't good ranks, so we didn't have a chance to get the bad ranks in.  I mean, if we voted in BG ranks with a console-heavy crowd like this, obviously we aren't very picky about what gets ranked if it gets past the first round.  We froze right after that, after all, so we clearly knew we were stretching, but they got in anyway.

Another point that your big list brings up is that there have only ever been two things vetoed once they get past the first round of rankings.  One was FE, one of the most boring ranks we have(even if it's popular) and widely considered over-represented already, and the other is FF:MQ, with the possibly Bluelike possibly not votesplit issue among other problems.   This really doesn't tell us much at all about whether the DL as a whole will stop a bad rank from happening if we see it.

Also, I agree with Sage and what he says here:

I pretty much head desked when I saw people condoning "Extended Freeze" only cause of the whole "the whole reason we're going off a freeze and we rank stuff is to keep the DL interesting; you need new blood once in a while, and the freeze has been pretty long."

Which one's going to make the DL more interesting?

WA5, which runs off people who get some arguable cases at equippable magic, which at best has characters that are basically like a luckier version of Cloud and get a few more spells? (But lack Limits.)

Or Disgaea 2? Disgaea has a lot of interesting history in the DL, true, but I wouldn't say it makes the DL overall more interesting...

Or FE9, perhaps? I might argue with people on this one, but I know there's a sizable amount of people that would mock this one.

If we want interesting, rank P3. But people don't seem too interested in that one yet. Perhaps Persona's DL record is what does it? <_< I dunno, seriously, haven't looked into it's ranking case.

If the whole point of undoing the freeze is to make things more interesting, then our current options really don't help much.  P3 is the only one where the cast isn't boring aside from maybe WA5 bosses, which I don't really know much about, and looking at the NR draw it didn't do very well in it's match there.  The FES release might help... if it weren't an Atlus release and nearly impossible to find already what, a month after it's release?  Seriously, I was in three games stores on Friday and saw one copy between them, used.  So, what about our best options here actually makes the DL that much more interesting?  We have the first season or two where the fresh faces flood the arena(and if the ranks are bad, crush the vote totals) and then... what?  They sit around and only get in once in a blue moon because not enough people care?  How does that help?  You can see that the numbers for them to be big players in the DL just aren't there.

I guess what I'm getting at with this rant is pretty simple.  Why would you want to undo the freeze unless you actually intended to rank something, and if you do intend to rank one of these games which all have obvious problems, how do you expect it to help?  I mean, if there's something I'm missing here, feel free to fill me in.

[superaielman]

Minsc did surprisingly well at the time, so it was worth taking a stab there. It sadly did not work out as expected. There was however decent reasons for supporting it as a rank. I fully admit to screwing that one up.

---

The point of undoing the freeze is that's it's more harmful to leave things frozen. Do any of the games we have up benefit from more time? Probably not with the exception of maybe WA5 (FE9/Dis2 have been out well past the year mark). Even if a game isn't DQ8 or WA4 for interest, if it can draw fans somehow and hook them into the site and maintain decent drawing totals, it's worth adding.. I don't think a flood's a worry, we aren't ranking any large titles though luck is always a factor there. We're at a year on the dot as it stands right now. We have a few workable ideas as it stands now and still have two months to go till the actual ranking topic opens so there is still time for people to try and muscle up support for ideas that are sorta there.


Re: Stuff about the games having problems.  Until one of the consoles hits it big with RPGs and the DL group moves over en masse to it, all of our ideas aren't going to be very strong. We can strengthen the ideas we want to rank with playership pushes and working out interp issues before we rank them. Doesn't mean we should completely shut down the process.

If it llooks like nothing's ready or our new games bomb, we can always refreeze and move on, but I'd rather open things up for at least a few periods.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Which one's going to make the DL more interesting?

I think this is missing the point of interesting; we're not taking the Dhyer-like view of that here (I hope).

The idea of ranking some of these games isn't because they're interesting, it's because hopefully we get some casuals to say "Yay, Ike!" or "Yay, Rozalin!" or "Yay, Rebecca!", etc., and catch their interest with that.

Now, there's no point to this if the internal can't write for these games, or gets turned off by lack of voting (actually this last one goes for the external too). But there's definitely merits to ranking new stuff, and I think it's pretty independent of how "interesting" it is personally, provided it at least works better in the DL than something like FF12.

On the other hand, we have an already bloated, daunting roster which I suspect isn't doing us favours as far as getting new fans goes, so despite all I've just said I'm not completely sure I support unfreezing anyway.

[Grefter]

Just because they were reasons TO freeze doesn't mean they are reasons to continue to freeze indefinitely.  They are reasons to reinstitute a freeze again after trialling things.  If you unfreeze with the idea that if things fail you will refreeze (was this not implicit?) then you only have one round of things to weed out.  Two at worst.

Unfreezing doesn't have to be about ranking something, it can merely be about preventing stagnation of DL policy.  It has been an entire year since we were even open to the possibility of ranking. 

If people can't see past the emotions when ranking stuff they are emotionally retarded.  Edit - And for clarification here, if the ideas are so bad then they shouldn't get past phase 1.  That is the big problem there.

[Cmdr_King]

Super: reread an earlier post, and you're wrong here.  Firstly, it hasn't been a year yet, and secondly this is an extention, not a new ranking freeze.  I dunno about others, but what I want to do is basically play it by ear and decide each session whether or not to reopen rankings for now.

More generally, I think the period since the freeze started has been unfriendly to playership for various games.   We picked it up in mid-summer, summer being when people tend to do the most game playing.  Additionally, there haven't been any major pushes for second waves of players in the frontrunners (WA5/Disgaea 2/FE9), nor for a few games that have been released since then that are getting to the point of meritting consideration.  Odd as it seems, I think three or so more months really will make a difference in this case, and for various reasons I would rather not run rankings on them before then.  If they fail to get ranked, they may well never recover, if they get in and bomb that doesn't do the DL any damned good at all, and I don't think things have improved enough since last year to believe they'll succeed.

Grefter: You've ranted, for years, at length, about how bad the DL is about giving anything after the first round of rankings a free pass, and how loathe it is to boot things.  What exactly makes you think anything at all has changed? 

I agree that opening the floor and getting people discussing rankings is a great idea, but there's no need to actually open rankings to do that and I don't see any reason to believe good will come of doing so.

[Grefter]

Conversation without the potential for action is almost always pointless and gets us nowhere here (see DL reviews).

I don't think anything has changed, that means nothing, I didn't call for everyone to stop ranking anything back in season 7.  I believe people should get their chances to fuck up before we go and snatch it away from them.  Extending the freeze once I was fine with, I do strongly believe that there should be a restriction on how long we can do that for and this is it.

[superaielman]

Super: reread an earlier post, and you're wrong here.  Firstly, it hasn't been a year yet, and secondly this is an extention, not a new ranking freeze.  I dunno about others, but what I want to do is basically play it by ear and decide each session whether or not to reopen rankings for now.

July to July as it stands for the freeze.

And ear by ear does.. what exactly? There's not going to be some amazing breakthrough if we keep in a holding pattern. It's three months for each additional period we keep things frozen and it's easy to just let things drift. Do we wait 10 seasons? 12? I really don't want to get to that point.

More generally, I think the period since the freeze started has been unfriendly to playership for various games.   We picked it up in mid-summer, summer being when people tend to do the most game playing.  Additionally, there haven't been any major pushes for second waves of players in the frontrunners (WA5/Disgaea 2/FE9), nor for a few games that have been released since then that are getting to the point of meritting consideration.  Odd as it seems, I think three or so more months really will make a difference in this case, and for various reasons I would rather not run rankings on them before then.  If they fail to get ranked, they may well never recover, if they get in and bomb that doesn't do the DL any damned good at all, and I don't think things have improved enough since last year to believe they'll succeed.

It'll dead in the middle of summer when we start rankings again, the games won't even have a chance to have a DL match till August. At this point they've had more than enough time to build playership and there's even time from now till the ranking process starts for a final wave of pushing if people so desire. WA5's the only one that's not a year from it's release date.

If they don't get ranked, they'll get more playership and be back up for ranking sooner or later. The ideas we've shot down in stage two have other issues (FE being FE, FFMQ being an older game with other problems). Getting rejected in stage two for a reasonable idea that's short on playership isn't a kiss of death, it just means it needs more support.

If they bomb.. well yes. But we've had (SH2, everything from the last ranking period) struggle at first. As long as they are just slow starters and not bad ideas (BG) they'll be fine.

On the other hand, we have an already bloated, daunting roster which I suspect isn't doing us favours as far as getting new fans goes, so despite all I've just said I'm not completely sure I support unfreezing anyway.

Not much we can do about that. You can boot the bottom ten or so games but even they are for the most part able to at least tolerably draw and win. It's as much a side effect of the age of the DL as anything else, can't do much about that.

I agree that opening the floor and getting people discussing rankings is a great idea, but there's no need to actually open rankings to do that and I don't see any reason to believe good will come of doing so.

Getting anyone but the actual hardcore board members to comment on anything but the ranking process itself is pretty much impossible, see my earlier posts. The good is that it could add a few games to the DL which attract fans- and the ranking process *will* make people pick up some of the ranked games and play them. We've seen that constantly over the DL. Relying on people to pick it up post ranking is a bad idea, but if there's a solid base to start with it works out okay.

Odds are we won't have rankings open for too terribly long as is and it'll mostly be projects, but again, I'll take that over waiting another three/six/nine months and mostly hoping things get better.

[Meeplelard]

First off...no, Benjamin is nowhere near Blue-like, Yakko.  Not sure where you get that idea from; the argument regarding him is actually something that more applies for the OTHER 4 PCS: Life.  Accurate (not 100%) Instant Death that still hits immunity (you can kill some bosses, but there are things explicitly immune too), and for Reuben and Tristam, it doubles as a full Healing spell (the other 3 all get Cure which is the same thing anyway, so no worries there.)
Can't see how he's any worse than...say...Yuna.  Yes, Yuna's a whore in the DL, but we've noted she's not Bluelike; Benjamin's much weaker.

But that's an aside, and I realize your point was that only 2 things got rejected (though as Super said, FFMQ was cause its an old game whose playership isn't very high and its not gaining playership in anyway.)

Anyway...yes, Elfboy pretty much nailed what I meant about Interesting.  To give you an idea...

I was telling some people about the DL in real life, a few of them were curious if some characters were in it PURELY cause they were favorites.  A few of them I was thinking "no, they aren't interesting duelers in the least" but you have to keep in mind, some people just like to see their favorites.  Yes, FE9 isn't the most interesting rank of all time...in fact quite the reverse...but its still got some popular faces (if nothing else, Ike's probably gained popularity from Brawl.)
To give a parallel...
How many people actually bothered to buy Fire Emblem PURELY to see Marth or Roy due to Melee?  That's the only reason the game sold any decent amount of copies.  Yes, neither was in the game (barring a Roy cameo), but it didn't change the fact that people do things just to see their favorites.  I mean, I know I bought Radiata Stories purely to see Lenneth! (I regret that decision, granted <_<; )

Now, the proper counter argument is that the things we're ranking don't have much interest among fans, which...is hard to say.

The point is, fresh new faces from time to time keep things less stale.  Even if the duelers are bland and uninteresting (WA5 PC Cast for the most part anyone?), adding more people to nom, having a few extra spoilers in a division, what have you makes things a bit more interesting in the grand scheme of things, even if marginally.

The fact remains that we really can't afford to extend the ranking freeze any longer, as super noted.  If we just push it back...oh, two seasons, what if things haven't changed by then? Are we just going to push it back until some big SLAM DUNK idea appears out of the blue? No, that's bad; not only is it a risky gamble, but its showing no actual movement in the DL *UNLESS* we change the format, such like having a different style tournament, add more to the site, etc.  Rankings is one way to keep things somewhat fresh.  We've been on a freeze for nearly a year; if Super's numbers are right, it will end when we hit that year mark.  Are you sure you really wanna go that long without an idea?

In any event, as Grefter has noted, the potential of ranking doesn't mean YOU HAVE TO RANK.  A lot of people automatically say "yes" to that option, just cause it made it that far.  People seem to forget that.  You nom the best idea you can think of, and in the second phase, you decide "is this game really DL Worthy?"

It usually comes up, that deny option, for debatable ranks like, say, Pokemon, which is a different shit fest entirely (GRANTED, speaking of Pokemon, how is Diamond/Pearl looking for a PURE NUMERICAL STANDPOINT.  No, not saying "rank now" if only to avoid the arguments, etc.)  Thing is, people cling to favorites and often forget to look at things objectively; this is a problem with the ranking process in and of itself, HOWEVER, that's an entirely different can of worms to deal with.  The issue at hand is that people look at things too subjectively, and think "Like game = rank if it gets to second stage!" They aren't trying to view things objectively; only subjective aspects that belong in the ranking phase are interp issue nonsense (one of the main reasons FF12 will never see the light of day in the DL, even if player ship picks up.)

In any event, regarding the things that were bad ranks?
Balder's Gate was us jumping the gun a little, in hindsight.  Minsc pulled in half decent numbers, and we decided it was a decent rank.  I think the main issue with Minsc was, though, that his numbers weren't actually that great, just compared to Morte (the other PCRPG Rep), they were a hell of a lot better, so...
FFX-2...was a bit of a wild card.  It could have gone either way.  The game had sales, IIRC, and the internal wasn't really that bad, but there was no way to tell how it'd perform.  I remember opposing the idea for interp issue reasons originally, forget if I was eventually persuaded into saying yes.

So yeah, despite my rant about "why people are often don't vote against things!"  in truth, like super noted, we have had a fair small number of bad ranks.

The end result? Extending the Freeze does no one favors.  I am in complete agreement with Grefter that if you think nothing deserves to be ranked, THEN DECLINE EVERYTHING ON STAGE TWO (if there's more than one.)  At least this way, we're putting effort into it, but simply saying "Freeze Longer!" doesn't look good for lurking casuals, and as I noted, the DL just starts getting staler as things go on.

[SageAcrin]

The idea of ranking some of these games isn't because they're interesting, it's because hopefully we get some casuals to say "Yay, Ike!" or "Yay, Rozalin!" or "Yay, Rebecca!", etc., and catch their interest with that.

Now, there's no point to this if the internal can't write for these games, or gets turned off by lack of voting (actually this last one goes for the external too). But there's definitely merits to ranking new stuff, and I think it's pretty independent of how "interesting" it is personally, provided it at least works better in the DL than something like FF12.

Yeah, the problem with what's up is that only two games do that. And neither one of them's WA5.

Oh, again, FE9 would do it, but...well, I've said stuff about that before. Basically, FE9 is WA5 with potential for tremendous growth and with a sizable amount of DLers that hate it. It's just more...politic, to wait on it, I'd say, so we can show that to be true. (Or, possibly, not, but that isn't likely...I mean, Zenny actually beat FE9, didn't he? That says a lot about it's DL potential! This isn't really humorous, it probably does say a lot.)

(There's also some questions about hooking people using Brawl as a lure, I suppose, but I consider those silly myself, it'd be safe enough.)

And Disgaea 2's "hook" ability is...iffy. Disgaea's GFAQs forum has only half of Dis 2's topics or so, say...but Disgaea PSP's forum has about triple, and it's not unlikely that most of the people simply moved there. I've...not...really heard much popularly; You hear a lot of popular hype for Laharl as a character in battle, say, regardless of if he deserves this, but you really don't hear this for Dis 2 characters(And, seeing as how IIRC from the stats, Dis 2 characters actually beat the generics handily until very late Transmigrate forms, instead of just having a few unique skills, that's weird.).

So that leaves P3, and...the more I talk about P3 the more I talk myself into thinking it's a good idea, which is just freaking weird. This is creepy. Someone hold me. (Actually, it'd probably be OK under the circumstances, so belay that.)

WA5 just has a lot else going for it as an idea.

The more I think on it, the more neutral I am on this subject, but it really should be thought over first, before we unfreeze. That was all my point ever really was.

P3 is a quirky borderline idea that I'd probably push under the circumstances because it really has every good point going for it to some degree, but the vote draw's nearly untested. WA5 has a decent amount of interest internally but almost none externally. Dis 2 has more external interest than WA5, definitely, but how much more? The internal interest isn't going to grow a whole lot, realistically, certainly not as much as WA5. And FE9 is a borderline idea with many things going for it that, let's face it, would probably get shot down at this stage because it's not ready yet and because people aren't really happy with FE in the DL in general, for reasons you can't entirely blame them for.

It really needs to be considered if this, the four best ideas right now, are a good enough pool to bother discussing. I'm not saying they aren't, per se...I'm just saying thought needs to be used, 'tis all.

I keep oscillating between going "I'm thinking of potential 45% draws as ranking ideas!? When did TA become a ranking standard?" and "Well, realistically WA5 and P3 are pretty decently likely to draw more outside and P3's cheap and WA5 will get more people playing it and DDS set a sort of precedent for SMT games that are borderline ideas being rankable anyways..." It's headache-producing.

[Yakumo]

I was under the impression that Life could even go so far as to kill the final boss, if I'm misremembering or that's just a wierd glitch or something than I apologize, but I was under the impression that basically he would win if he got a turn if Life were allowed.

On the major issue, though, I seriously don't honestly believe that we will shoot down anything that looks like it -might- be a good rank once it gets to round two unless there's hatred for it for some reason.  Now, one or two of these games getting in this time would probably be fine, they're not huge ranks and won't have a significant effect, but then what do we do next time?  Have one small ranking and then freeze again?  Or go into rankings with no good ideas, something has to get to round two, and then we rank something that really doesn't belong in the DL?  Sure, we can support opening the rankings again, but unless we limit it to just one or -maybe- two games we're going to run out all the viable options in the first ranking session.

[Talaysen]

I was under the impression that Life could even go so far as to kill the final boss, if I'm misremembering or that's just a wierd glitch or something than I apologize, but I was under the impression that basically he would win if he got a turn if Life were allowed.

Yeah, that is incorrect.  Benjamin's Cure spell deals 5-digit damage to the final boss, but that's a bug, I believe.

Honestly, I agree that we should open a small ranking session, and if things don't turn out so well, freeze again.  At least this way we get SOMETHING new in (or even if we don't, we at least thought about it).  If we get something in, I think we'll get more external interest in the DL.  If we don't, perhaps we'll get out the word that we're trying to get things ranked and the casuals will play stuff so maybe we can get more ranked stuff in the future.  Because really, if the casuals are getting bored (or even any of us) because nothing new's coming in, we at least have to show that we're TRYING to get new stuff in, even if we don't.  If we don't do anything, they're just going to think we're dying and leave.

Also, Sage, thinking that P3 is a cool idea in the DL isn't unnormal.  It's probably the most interesting idea we have right now.  And this is coming from someone who hates the game.  >.>

[Dark Holy Elf]

Unless I'm very much mistaken, P3 is completely unacceptable internally at the moment. It does not yet deserve consideration over WA5/Dis2/FE9. This isn't to say those don't have their own problems, or that P3 may not deserve consideration a few months down the line.

Yeah, the problem with what's up is that only two games do that. And neither one of them's WA5.

I disagree pretty strongly; I think every game has potential to excite people. Every single RPG manages at least its small share of fans.

This is why we rank games. This is why we rank games even if we largely find their casts bland in a duel (WA3), bland as personalities (Lufia), etc. Because some people like them, be it for in-game use, DL translation, personality, outfit, the fact that they drive Meeple insane, take your pick. Every single game can appeal in this way.

This is why we rank anything that has significant playership, is generally agreed upon as an RPG, is easily interpretable in a DL setting, has art, etc.

[superaielman]

Not touching the other things, others hit them (Tal).

It usually comes up, that deny option, for debatable ranks like, say, Pokemon, which is a different shit fest entirely (GRANTED, speaking of Pokemon, how is Diamond/Pearl looking for a PURE NUMERICAL STANDPOINT.  No, not saying "rank now" if only to avoid the arguments, etc.) 

Mehish. Bigger problem isn't the drawing, it's that we've seemed to hit our saturation point for interest with Pokemon in the DL. Hasn't really gotten in and attracted tons of attention. Think it'll keep more out for the forseeable future.

[OblivionKnight]

My opinion generally resides with Super. 

We do need to rank things.  Super, or someone, unless I missed it, is there any data on increased vote-draws, commentary, etc. during ranking periods?  Since there has been a slump (and...it's primarily been the main-stays talking about this as well) in voting, is there anything to indicate that rankings help with that?  It's a random thought, but would support the hypothesis that it keeps things interesting.  A year of no ranks quite possibly could be the reason the votes have been trailing off?  I don't know, I'd have to look into it.

Despite that, it is important to rank or at the very worst make it SEEM like something is happening.  If it looks like stagnation (no ranking, nothing exceedingly new happening), then what do people think?  Not much, which is baaaaaaaaaad.  Things that get shot down do come back, though granted, phase 2 things I can't think of off-hand, but there's no reason they can't come back, outside of people saying that it failed once, and can't fail again.

People CAN say no to ranking games - I did for DDS, and I'm the mostly likely person here to say "rank everything". 

That rant aside, even dropping it to 1 game with the same interval (1 game to mean 1 anything - FW set for a ranked game, FW for a new game, or whole new game) would be fine to me as well.  That shows something is happening, and even if we get some more FE or whatever else, it at least shows something is happening (hey lolz harkan is my favssss!!!). 

"Damnit, I like Knoll, and want to see him in - why did we not rank him!?  Oh wait, now they're ranking him?  I'll get back in and get involved!"

That's a biiiiiiiit crazy, but the concept is probably not too untrue.  God, I loves me my confuzzled way of speaking and typing.  Anyway, ranking even Knoll would draw some attention - as NEB, random interest in characters can vary in multiple ways - combat ability, like/dislike of the person, hell, even their prettiness. 

As for games with a decent shot coming up, in no particular order...

XS3
P3/Fes
WA5
D2
FE9/FE10
LPT

Those are the best I can think of offhand.  I know there are some I'm forgetting (and will edit in later!) but those are the ones with the most interest (in no particular order) character-wise, dueler-wise, and vote-draw-wise. 

I would like to see P3 particularly thrown against something like FE7 or something in NR just to get a better idea of the vote draw, but all the others couldn't hurt.  Maybe for next season?

Anyway, I'm now rambling, but I really would like to see rankings kept open - if there's such a slowdown of games, slow the rankings down by just doing one game, but not kill everything off entirely for another year.  We can always modify the process a bit to ensure this works.  Keeping people interested and up-to-date with the DL is important - people won't care if it gets stale and boring and isn't reinvigorated.

[Meeplelard]

Mehish. Bigger problem isn't the drawing, it's that we've seemed to hit our saturation point for interest with Pokemon in the DL. Hasn't really gotten in and attracted tons of attention. Think it'll keep more out for the forseeable future.

*nods* figured it wouldn't be as good as the previous Gens for a number of reasons.  Was just wondering purely for curiosity sake; again, not pushing for a DP ranking, at least not until it starts pulling in numbers ala Gen 2/3 at least (whether that will ever happen, who knows?  Being Pokemon, its got that potential, but its certainly not an insured thing.)

Despite that, it is important to rank or at the very worst make it SEEM like something is happening.  If it looks like stagnation (no ranking, nothing exceedingly new happening), then what do people think?  Not much, which is baaaaaaaaaad.  Things that get shot down do come back, though granted, phase 2 things I can't think of off-hand, but there's no reason they can't come back, outside of people saying that it failed once, and can't fail again.


People CAN say no to ranking games - I did for DDS, and I'm the mostly likely person here to say "rank everything".

That! I completely agree with it!  Even if nothing gets ranked, at least putting effort into ideas put on the table towards the public looks a hell of a lot better than simply "ho-hum freeze."

Though, to comment, one reason a game can get shot down in Stage 2 and come up later is if the game suddenly pulled in a huge vote draw from nowhere.  This is a pretty unlikely scenario, but its possible.  To use examples (PURE hypothetical, don't think I'm trying to predict the future, etc.)...
If MMXCM got into Stage 2 at this point, it'd probably be rejected since, well, the playership is not what one would call very good.
However, suppose after it got rejected, the game pulled in a lot of players out of nowhere, like say the MMXCM board noticed this site existed and there was demand for it, or lots more people played it, what have you.  Its conceivable that should MMXCM get into Stage 2 after something like this, it'd pass.

Again, the scenario is unlikely, since people don't just flock to a game out of nowhere, nor do games that are generally nowhere near ready make it to Stage 2 (MMXCM falls under the category from what I understand, though I think it has just enough to be acceptable in terms of writers?  Either way, its draw is just bad regardless.)  Mostly cause either games are successes out of the box (Star Ocean 3 was one of our most hasted ranks, from what I remember; out for only a few months before it got ranked?  Game was generally successful in most regards despite its short time of releasing to ranking, so it was justified in this regard) OR games show gradual increase in player ship (FE9 is probably the best example of games on the current list.  I know a few people are playing it now, and its been slowly getting more players over time.  For an example of a ranked game?  Grandia 3.  Not successful at first, but it slowly gained players over time and hence reached acceptable levels.)

...yeah, ok, I'm just nitpicking that last point, especially since I generally agree with the rest of it, so feel free to ignore this!

In any event, I more or less agree with OK's views.  Even if we're putting one game up for ranking at a time...or hell, just an FW, it at least shows we're trying to do SOMETHING.  Even if its rejected, the effort to get something ranked looks a lot better than idly sitting by twiddling our thumbs.

Though, personally? I'd remove FE10 from that list.  FE10 is...nowhere near ready, given FE9 is questionable, and its player ship is clearly considerably worse.  Unless you're just saying that cause a lot of what is ranked from FE9 is already from FE10, and some people might vote on that...though, labelling it "Fire Emblem 9" or "Fire Emblem Path of Radiance" or whatever should avoid that vote interp split issue...yeah, ok, now just rambling, but don't agree with FE10 being on the list in any event.

[OblivionKnight]

Yeah, FE10 was mostly posted there because it's so related to FE9, despite being newer and with less votership.  Much the same way I lumped Fes into P3 (granted, much less of an issue overall, but still similar enough to warrant it). 

I added LPT into the list, but I'm trying to think of anything that also jumped out.  Potential FW from ranked games and unranked games I didn't do because there are so damn many, but I could always make a list of them here.  Which I might do, but not now. 

Love rotation days where I'm in charge of things and don't have anything to do because I'm done too early >_>  Yay.

[SageAcrin]

I disagree pretty strongly; I think every game has potential to excite people. Every single RPG manages at least its small share of fans.

This is why we rank games. This is why we rank games even if we largely find their casts bland in a duel (WA3), bland as personalities (Lufia), etc. Because some people like them, be it for in-game use, DL translation, personality, outfit, the fact that they drive Meeple insane, take your pick. Every single game can appeal in this way.

This is why we rank anything that has significant playership, is generally agreed upon as an RPG, is easily interpretable in a DL setting, has art, etc.

I don't recall WA5 being interesting to anyone, internally or externally, in a duel, that I have seen. That should clarify my statement.

It...really is FF7, for the internals, albiet marginally better for interest(And some 40%~ less draw.), and externally it's really just that small group.

And it doesn't especially do well in the draw area or anything, from what has been seen.

Honestly, everything you said was a running assumption for me; every game ever appeals to someone, but just because Sailor Moon: Another Story has art and interest from people doesn't mean we rank it. It has too many problems of it's own, and such. The question is of relative interest, and I'd say WA5 has been falling flat that way, both for internals and externals alike.

Maybe I've been watching the wrong places, and missed the discussions about how cool Chuck'd be in a duel or the external hardcore group of fans or something, but the biggest discussion about the game I've seen is an interp argument about if several duellers have a skillset at all...

Oh, and Monowheel hype. That's the other thing I recall discussed about the game. The ability to skip it's random battles.

...

*Coughs.* This is just not a great impression from random chatting about it, DL-interest-wise.

As for games with a decent shot coming up, in no particular order...

XS3
P3/Fes
WA5
D2
FE9/FE10
LPT

Game with poor internal/external and a DL reputation along the lines of Hoshigami for pure quality of game(Say what you will, that couldn't have helped PS3.), game with shaky internal/poor voting, game with the above interest and poor votership and poor external potential, game with below average external interest and with a massive slash against it due to many internals disliking D1's gameplay, game with tons of growth potential that isn't ready yet and game that we've turned down a few times.

Did I miss anything in that list?

I mean, I really do hate to be negative about this, but we don't actually have to have a topic open to analyze if there's anything that's an actually good idea to rank, do we? If half or so of us don't see anything to rank at all worthy of note, within any realm of doubt, there...probably shouldn't be a ranking because it's pointless. Right? It's just a waste of time? Breath? Effort? Hence it'd be nice to have a poll option reflecting this, which was my point to start with since I'm not even sure if these games fit my own personal criteria or not and would analyze this if there was such an option and it mattered?

What is it, precisely, that you think the DL has to lose by skipping a ranking period, under those circumstances? With half the DL opposing ranking any of the ideas they can think of? Hypothetically, of course, because evidently we can't find out because no one wants to open a poll for it because it's a bad idea. A chance to get in a game based on vote-it-all-in players who may not be voting two weeks from now? Oooh, wait, maybe someone will think of a ranking idea that hasn't already been thought of! That's likely at this stage. Except it's not.

Or maybe it'll be a token, for external voters! To show that we make a mockery of our own system to make it look better to them, by having a token ranking that half of us don't want and will shoot down! Great plan.

Perhaps a chance to start a fifty-post long argument? Haven't we had enough of those yet, often over the same subject of votes-mattering-for-ranking for those that it does, and those that doesn't? The "discussion" in ranking topics invariable degenerates into rambling arguments-as someone that's posted many in his time-that have probably in the history of the league never fixed a dratted thing.

I don't know. We're over 40 seasons in. Can't we have a darned poll option that might save us some argument, without actually having a freaking 25 post argument? I like argument as much as anyone here, but we take it a bit too far sometimes.

[Grefter]

The point is to have a topic to discuss these things and do them while following the processes for it that we have layed down and followed before that has always been open to everyone and anyone can feel free to come in and look at it.  If you have it as just a discussion point then it makes it that, a discussion, which is hard for people to butt into.

By making it part of the standard DL process you make it open.

Edit - And if you are going to just hold them up as token gestures and all that shit.  Fuck it all and put someone in charge.  If all this shit is just pointless flair and garbage there is no damned point to it.

[OblivionKnight]

A poll option?  That's fairly easy to do.  If you want, I'll make one once I get time on my rotation later today.  You could do that yourself (or could have earlier), if you want - I do like the discussion, but I can see your point.

The games I listed might not necessarily be ready, but those are the ones that have had talk recently.  As such, they're the most likely new ones to come up.  I agree, some of them are definitely not ready, but we haven't had a group of games noted like that for a while, so having them to look at put things in perspective. 

Now, shower and rotation.

[superaielman]

The point is to have a topic to discuss these things and do them while following the processes for it that we have layed down and followed before that has always been open to everyone and anyone can feel free to come in and look at it.  If you have it as just a discussion point then it makes it that, a discussion, which is hard for people to butt into.

By making it part of the standard DL process you make it open.

Edit - And if you are going to just hold them up as token gestures and all that shit.  Fuck it all and put someone in charge.  If all this shit is just pointless flair and garbage there is no damned point to it.

What Gref said. Ignoring that things can change in the two or so months till rankings open, we have the ranking topics for that reason.

and actually, I think this poll's settled, we're going down to two games per period for now.  Going to make a topic for extending the freeze in a sec.