1. If you could rank just one person without question, who would it be? How realistic is this goal? For those that responded last time, was your selection last time ranked?
La Pucelle FW Prier. The whole LP cast would be too repetitive, but just one good dueller from the game to represent its battle system is good enough. And Prier's very memorable, good writeup-bait, and has a few cameos in other N1 games. In general, though, I think a lot of NR's best should get FWs ranked. Sora, Jack, SMTN Dante, PE Aya, maybe CV Alucard... seems like there should be a place for them.
Last time I hoped for an FW Reyvateil (Aurica or Misha, whichever's more popular, or both). It still gets mentioned every now and then, but it hasn't happened yet.
2. If you could rank one game without question or complaints, what would it be? How realistic is this goal? For those who responded to the last poll, was this game ranked?
Jeanne D'Arc. Really fun PSP SRPG. Duellers have some interesting tricks and transformations and such, though nothing that gets most of them out of Light. I think it would really spice Light up.
Last time I hoped for FE9. And it got in. And now Naesala's up for ranking. So... twice!
3. What are you final thoughts on Not Ranked? (From the board tournament all the way to the final season/it's impact)
I liked it. NR was really cool and a fun idea. A great testing ground. Something like it still needs to exist on the site somewhere. I propose a 'best of not-ranked bonus match'. Only, instead of two NR characters duelling it out for who has fewer fans, you could pit a NR fighter against a Ranked fighter. Call it "Revenge of NR" or something... >.>
Basically, an NR dueller would be rolled up (from the current pool or from a nom pool) and pitted against a ranked fighter (a la Cmdr's Tourney of interest). This match would be posted under the bonus section after Light, and set up to look just like regular matches with writeups and art, ideally. If the NR dueller wins, a new random (from the correct division obviously) Ranked dueller would be rolled up to be the next week's opponent. If the Ranked dueller wins, a new NR dueller is rolled up to be their opponent. In this way, the format is always NR vs. Ranked (unlike the Tourney of Interest). It's also always a bonus match as there's no way to declare a season's 'champion'.
Still, it's only one extra match a week (or biweekly... or even once a season, maybe on finals week since there's already so few matches?) and it gives us a chance to test out new games on-site or a chance for people to nom their old favorites. I think this could help the site grow as well if people are given a chance to nom their favorite NR picks.
For the next three questions, use 5 if you're having trouble coming up with ideas.
4. Who are your favorite 10 godlikes?
Elc (AtL2) Godlike
Fou-lu (BoF4) Godlike
Rika (PSIV) Godlike
Chris (S3) Godlike
Tir (Suikos) Godlike
Zelos (ToS) Godlike
Lenneth (VP) Godlike
Citan (XG) Godlike
Zed (WAF) Godlike
KOS-MOS (XS1) Godlike
Not in that order.
5. Who are your favorite 10 heavies?
Shu (AtL2) Heavy
Rei (BoF3) Heavy
Millenia (G2) Heavy
Leo (Lunar2) Heavy
NeiFirst (PSII) Heavy
Jowy (S2) Heavy
Ted (S4) Heavy
Lyon (S5) Heavy
Raquel (WA4) Heavy
Arngrim (VP) Heavy
6. Who are your favorite 10 middles?
Jessica (Lunar) Middle
Nei (PSII) Middle
Ashton (SO2) Middle
Arche (ToP) Middle
Philia (ToD) Middle
Sheena (ToS) Middle
Virginia (WA3) Middle
Arnaud (WA4) Middle
Bart (XG) Middle
Natalia (TotA) Middle
7. Who are your favorite 10 lights?
Flonne (Disgaea) Light
Serra (FE7) Light
Josh Kain (PSII) Light
Chisato (SO2) Light
Bleu (ShF1) Light
Mallow (SMRPG) Light
Keele (ToE) Light
Yumei (VP) Light
Shiho (VP) Light
Mariel (WAACF) Light
again, none of these are in order...
8. The more things change.. we're at 80-90 votes per week now. What would you do to improve this or make us more attractive to new voters?
The DL is more of a social crowd than just a voting site, but there are still some casuals. To increase the number of hard-core voters, though, we need to make the DL easier to find. In my experience, I remember that I kept stumbling across the DL whenever I was searching for obscure art/information on RPGs. So what the DL should do is upload more art of obscure RPG characters!
No, wait, that isn't right...
The answer is the stat topics. We're moving in the right direction with the wiki, but I think if you want to increase traffic, the stat topics should get more emphasis on the site. They are interesting. Especially the ones with commentary on the individual duellers and their skillsets. Maybe just linking to the wiki is fine, but having them on the proper site will make them show up on Google searches more often.
Speaking of Google searching, the DL actually can pull some decent search numbers when you search for obscure RPG characters. In fact, the DL should stop abbreviating so often as it's hurting the search engine numbers. Anything that shows up on a page 1 google search is going to increase DL traffic. And the more people that actually -see- the DL, the greater the chance that one of them will be a hardcore RPG fan. And hardcore RPG fans are our only source of new hard-core voters/forum members.
Just some basic testing on Google. Here's where the DL ranked for various obscure-ish things.
"Vaynard RPG" - #5 (DL profile)
"Dryst RPG" - #3 (Brig: GE stat topic... what?)
"Jogurt RPG" -#10 (DL FAQ)
"ramladu RPG" -#7 (DL match results)
"scythe riebauer" - #4 (DL match results)
"chisato madison" -#17 (BTS)
"chisato madison RPG" -#2 (DL profile page)
"arc eda ricolne" -#2 (DL match results page)
"jessica d'alkirk RPG" -#7 (Profile)
"jessica lunar RPG" - #38 (ouch, match results)
"Lyner Barsett RPG" - #6 (NR results page)
As much as I hate to admit it, the less-popular games are going to be what we can use to increase our notoriety. I'm not saying we should RANK more of these games, but we should at least MENTION them on the site somewhere (thinking stat topics... or "NR vs. Ranked" matches/profiles would be the least inoffensive way of doing this).
I seriously think that every week's match results pages should start including the full title of the duellers' games, at the very least.
9. What direction would you like to see the DL go in for ranks? We've gone from the high tide of 2007 to.. not a hell of a lot of late. What consoles should we target?
I think we should just rank more FWs, honestly. The DL is bloated. Ranking new things is fun, but the roster is unwieldy. Having lots of games to vote on is fun, but trying to memorize every dueller in every cast (especially the larger ones) is pretty difficult, and the stat topics aren't perfect (or referenced directly from a dueller's profile, which would make voting so much quicker). FWs allow us to keep game diversity without endangering voting rights.
That said, there are definitely some good things to rank from the handhelds (WAXF, FFT:LW, TotW, TWEWY, FFTA2, PKMNDPP, SuikoDS, VPDS, CCFF7, DQ5, MK:AoAR, FE1r, JDA). Not all of those are great, but at least there's a pool to choose from.
Apart from those, I'd say XboX360 is in the lead for home consoles. At least some of those games have stat topics. (ToV, Eternal Sonata, Blue Dragon... and Last Remnant sold pretty well at least).
10. What DL game is next on your to play list? What DL game will you never play?
Still playing SaGa Frontier... but after that, I'm looking at Seiken Densetsu 3.
The games I keep avoiding are Vandal Hearts and Baldur's Gate.
11. Since the last version of this topic (October 2007), a lot's happened. What's been your favorite moment? Your least favorite moment?
Ugh, tired. Will think about this later.
12. Do you miss the high point (150 votes a week) of the board 8 flood?
I wasn't really here for it. But I don't think having a large amount of casuals is great. I'd much prefer just having a higher number of regulars/devoted forum posters. They're more likely to vote fairly, one. And two, more discussion is more fun. Also, I support the idea of making the site primarily for the devoted forum-goers, but trying to allow the site to still be accessible to casuals (though not devoted to them).
13. What was the last match that really captured your attention? Did the person you were voting for/rooting for win?
Too tired to think about all the specific matches since the last time this topic came about. Maybe later. Just noting that I generally try to focus on one match per week that I really care about and sort of just read the discussions on all the others. It's more exciting that way.
14. Do you expect FFX to be the last Final Fantasy game the DL fully ranks?
Isn't FFTA2 rankable? I don't know, haven't played it yet. FF12RW? They are on a system that we weren't ranking games from, but I think both of those sold decently well... and have rankable casts. CCFF7 could be ranked... except for Zack, of course. Though he might be good for some sort of Tourney? (Twink League?!)
15. Should we rank DQ5 slime y/n?
Emphatic Yes.