A break.. (Part 2)

[superaielman]

http://www.rpgdl.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10408

Link to old topic. Anyway, break length. I want to take a month, some people have suggested a full season. Anyone have ideas?

[dude789]

It was discussed a lot in the last topic, but I think the DL really should use all the info it has to bring in new members. The reason I joined was because I saw a link to the FE7 stat gains on GameFAQs and started searching around the site and was interested by the concept. If were able to put up some more high demand information like that, I think it could really help the sliding vote totals.
 

[ThePiggyman]

*is confused beyond regard*

Honestly, so much happening. So, as I understand, we just ditched the old forums for these new ones? Do we do that every year or something?

Sorry for posting about it here, but I didn't want to make a new topic over it.

[Yakumo]

As I understand it, it was done because the old database was getting huge and error-prone, such as the error that caused the Suikoden Mafia topic to just kinda disappear.  So, we moved to a new setup.

[superaielman]

*is confused beyond regard*

Honestly, so much happening. So, as I understand, we just ditched the old forums for these new ones? Do we do that every year or something?

Sorry for posting about it here, but I didn't want to make a new topic over it.

The old forums were glitchy. Search was down among other things, so we changed boards. Oh, can you see the writer's boards now Piggyman?

[Yakumo]

Even if he can, I can't, now that you mention it.  I know I don't help out as much as I could, but I do work on occasion. <_<

[superaielman]

Set. Anyone else who wants access to the writer's boards and lacks it, post here.

[Shale]

The old boards grew too mighty, too MASSIVE, for the mortal Internet to contain. They had to be shut down before the rest of the Web was devoured by the beast we created.

Or something like that. Anyway, they're still where they used to be, we just can't post to them anymore because the database files were, in Hal's words, "hueg like XBox" and interfering with the workings of the software.

[hinode]

Still lack access to the writer's boards myself. 

Not that I do any real writeup/editing work these days, but I check on bios occasionally.

[ThePiggyman]

The old forums were glitchy. Search was down among other things, so we changed boards. Oh, can you see the writer's boards now Piggyman?

Thanks for explaining. And yeah, I can see the writer's board.

[Hunter Sopko]

That'd be me, Super. Need access.

[dude789]

I can't see the writers board.

[superaielman]

Got it.

[Tide]

Yeah, I need access back to the writer boards Super. Just checking in.

[superaielman]

Oh, and the Mafia fans drawing in people is good, though I'd obviously like for those people to interact with the DL at large and start voting. Any ideas to expand there?

[James_xeno]

A season might be a little too long. But three or four weeks sounds about right.

[ThePiggyman]

No matter how long your break is, I do hope you enjoy it.

[Taishyr]

We'll still be working, believe you me. >_>

Speaking of this. One of the primary suggestions (as advanced by myself and a few others, and decently supported) was resurrecting the Nyarlathotep's Dungeon from the old forums and using it as a new tournament in some regard.

Of course, therein lies a problem. There was much obscura used, enemies were not always the best-known sorts, and as such while it might be a fascinating attraction, the vote draw would be, naturally, low. Even one relatively obscura opponent (say, SaGa or Persona 2 or Legend of Dragoon) could stop a number of people from voting.

My suggestion to relieve this is as follows. Firstly, allow the challenging teams to choose which order to face the opponents in; secondly, say that only 4 of 6 need to be beaten to continue to the next floor.

This allows for use of some obscura (one or two teams), people who cannot vote on 4 can still point out battles that can or cannot be won by the team in question, and allows a fair ramp-up in difficulty.

'course, this is far from a solid idea. I'm well aware. Any thoughts?

(idly, this came up while I was trying to sketch out a high-draw team set for a beginning-level situation. The two teams and the modified first floor I came up with were:

Crono, Lucca, Marle, Robo vs. FFT Squire, Rafa, Malak
Crono, Lucca, Marle, Robo vs. Marcus, Erk, Serra, Guy
Crono, Lucca, Marle, Robo vs. Slimes (any DW game) x75
Crono, Lucca, Marle, Robo vs. Kimahri, Auron
Crono, Lucca, Marle, Robo vs. Frog, Ayla, PC Magus
Crono, Lucca, Marle, Robo vs. Serge, Lynx, Kid


Tidus, Lulu, Aeonless Yuna, Rikku vs. FFT Squire, Rafa, Malak
Tidus, Lulu, Aeonless Yuna, Rikku vs. Marcus, Erk, Serra, Guy
Tidus, Lulu, Aeonless Yuna, Rikku vs. Slimes (any DW game) x75
Tidus, Lulu, Aeonless Yuna, Rikku vs. Kimarhi, Auron
Tidus, Lulu, Aeonless Yuna, Rikku vs. Frog, Ayla, PC Magus
Tidus, Lulu, Aeonless Yuna, Rikku vs. Serge, Lynx, Kid

...probably would need to make it harder, but just a sketch.)

[Grefter]

Stuff like that is what makes me kind of sketchy about implementing Nyarlie as a main draw.  It is really cool and whatnot, but a decent chunk of low key stuff (not obscura worthy though, didn't I demonstrate just what Obscura was ... with well the Obscura stuff? Gizmondo games and old DOS games or RPGs that comlpetely and totally miss the main DL target audience) and the implementation of how to do it on site is kind of unclear to me.


Ahahahaha LoD being Obscura.  It is a shit game and pretty easilly panned around the place, but it isn't fucking obscure.  It is a game made famous for its six year development cycle, its hype with the town with 1000 doors and awesome graphics.  Didn't it sell like a few million copies?

Edit - 3 years development time.  100 members on the team is the hype, my bad

[Taishyr]

I based obscura commentary on site draw. LoD's definitely not obscura by general audience, no.

[Cmdr_King]

The draw of the floors isn't a problem.  We can probably design the entire thing using, say, the top 20 draws in the DL, and probably should... because the obscura will come from the teams players want to use.  And honestly we should give the voters as many options as possible for teams because the entire idea of using Nyarlies as the main draw of the site is to keep the voters more personally invested, and them assembling a dream-team as it were will definitely be a boon on that front.  Plus, in general, obscura games have a tendency to produce great characters for this for whatever reason so people tend towards the more obscure side of whatever options they end up with.

No, the way to combat obscura is to run multiple teams at once.  Nothing says we have to play it first come first serve, so if we run a high draw team to balance out the obscurafied teams, we should minimize the impact.  If neccessary we could even run theme teams (OK used the FFIV cast as an example) to balance out drastically obscure submissions.

There's some other boons to Nyarlies, like the work being almost entirely frontloaded (Very Good Thing since everyone agrees we should try to expand the site content-wise) and being able to draw on DL data for it (I really like the idea of just running numeric ranks for point value, it adds another element of figuring out who's a good investment and so on), although actually Hal's the one that was really liking the idea and I don't remember what all he said on the matter, except that he really sold me.

[superaielman]

DL restarts in just over a month. What are we doing to add new content to the site?

1. Wikiing stat topics. Progress, is there any being made? What needs to be done? Since the DB project itself is stalled out..
One suggestion I have here: Keep posting stat topics and then wiking the info so we have orginals floating around?

2. Crosslinking/new exposure. I've talked to Cranbud some about cross linking the DL on the RPGP space, but it's been several years now and it's not a big impact. Still, every vote helps.

3. NR. We're about done on writeups, I just need to pester a few more people into finishing things up. I'd like to restart this at the same time as the DL, but we can have 99% of the work done by then. Cmdr, talk to me tonight and I'll bang up a list of things to do.

4. RPGmon. We doing any more with this? It generated some talk and died out with the board move.

5. Strat league.  Mmm, haven't heard word back from Excal, so I may try my hand at it. I may poke someone who remembers RPGP history some about this one. Sopko?

6. This is more of a long term concern, but I may as well air it out here: What do we want to do ranking wise when the site reopens? We have a few decent games left to use (WA5, maybe some of the N1 titles) then not much else. If we get an expanded base going and get back to 120+ votes, do we want to try using one shot FW's from newer, less DL group centric consoles? Off the top of my head and without looking at my notes, we have:

Wild ARMs 5
La Pucelle Tactics
Kingdom Hearts
Disgaea 2
Final Fantasy 12
Radiata Stories
Super Robot Taisen: Orginial Generations
Fire Emblem 9
Pokemon DS

For games that have shown something either in terms of drawing or fan demand.  All of those are sort of old hat games and doesn't address the real problem of none of the new consoles providing much in the way of new, rankable games. Mmm.

[dude789]

In addition to those games for when we begin ranking I think we should also consider Persona 3 and ranking FE9 and FE10 as one.

Persona 3 seems to be immensely popular with the people who have played it and it's still growing in playership. Depending on how Mitsuru does in NR, it good be an excellent rank.

Right now I would say that FE10 isn't ready to be ranked, but things may have changed by the time we start ranking. The biggest problem I can see with it right now is that even with only plot importants and favorites it would be a pretty big rank if we ranked the two together.

I think that right now these are some of the best options we have for ranking a newer game.

[Meeplelard]

Eh, the RPGmon sounded neat at first, but the fact that it lost interest kind of says something about it as an overall idea; it'd be tough to get it to work smoothly too.  We could try to broadcast it in the site and say "Join us in chat if you wish to pit your favorite RPG Characters against each other in exhibition matches!" or something, but that might not be ideal.

Wiking Stat Topics sounds like something that'll just have to be done over time; Tai was working on CT, and I don't think he's finished it.  Its a good idea, but time consuming and we should probably get several people working on.

Regarding Ranking games...

For Pokemon DP, honestly, we might as well just go the route we always do; Starters + Legendaries (though, which legendaries deserves some discussing.  Palkia/Dilaga feel like obvious ones, Uxie and Azelf as well, but Mesprit...it has actual plot (...granted, its a Pokemon game, so take that with a grain of salt) offset by Random Legendary BS, for all that Random Legendary nonsense here isn't as bad as others since you know where he is from the get go, instead of "RUN AROUND THE WORLD BLINDLY!")  Ranking an FW from Pokemon just leads to "Lets rank the game!" "No, Pokemon in the DL is stupid!" arguments that always erupt, so personally think the FW route is BAD here; might as well just knock off the rankables all at once, and move on.

There are a few games I think you should note on that list as well, but unsure what kind of criteria you placed, so I'll just hang back on the ideas there.

Though, for the FE9 being ranked with FE10 at the same time idea?  Think that's a bad idea offhand.  For example, there's one boss in FE9 who is an obvious Plot Fight with Plot BS around him...yet in FE10, he has legit forms.  If we rank him as "FEs" people could vote on his FE9 form which is plotty, where as if we ranked them separate, we could just rank him as "FE10" which would hopefully be pulling a VP2 Hrist situation (a character who has a form in 2 games, but one is obviously plot, while the other is legit.)

Plus some PCs have a massive spike in worth (Elincia becomes MUCH better, Sothe is actually a competent Light now instead of your typical Puny, etc.)

[Dark Holy Elf]

1. Wikiing stat topics. Progress, is there any being made? What needs to be done? Since the DB project itself is stalled out..
One suggestion I have here: Keep posting stat topics and then wiking the info so we have orginals floating around?

Wikiing stat topics is a bit of a lower priority at the moment, with the current emphasis being on porting over and updating old stat topics (including some major projects for Dhyer, myself, OK, others). Still, Tai's gotten a CT one up and running, so hopefully we will start to see more. It's not a one-man task, though, and needs a lot of us to turn to helping it. Hopefully it will, but it can not nor should it happen before they're ported to the boards.

2. Crosslinking/new exposure. I've talked to Cranbud some about cross linking the DL on the RPGP space, but it's been several years now and it's not a big impact. Still, every vote helps.

As always, never sure what to do about this one.

4. RPGmon. We doing any more with this? It generated some talk and died out with the board move.

I dunno. To some extent RPGmon can only happen as much as people are interested in it.

Sharking up the format a little would help. As Sage was observing in chat today, we do way too many FFAs and nothing else. It's not only a lack of diversity, but there's the problem of an FFA needing at least half a dozen or so people to get off the ground. Other formats could easily drop that threshold to three (even two in some cases?).

6. This is more of a long term concern, but I may as well air it out here: What do we want to do ranking wise when the site reopens? We have a few decent games left to use (WA5, maybe some of the N1 titles) then not much else. If we get an expanded base going and get back to 120+ votes, do we want to try using one shot FW's from newer, less DL group centric consoles?

Most efforts to expand to non-DL games (Baldur's Gate, FFX-2) have ended in failure. Fundamentally, I think the DL attracts like-minded people. Stick to games that have fan demand from our fans. This can be games with low sales or high, it doesn't matter.