S49 Retirement Topic

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I'll just go straight to the jugular here:

Boot Barbarossa, Tales of Eternia (or, in case it doesn't pan out, Rassius and Shizel at the very least) and BGs. I'd also support culling Bebedora/Kharg/Darc, and am much more amenable to further trimmings/bootings that make sense, but we can't just tackle it all on a single season. As for Freya, toss in an Abstain.

[superaielman]

That's more just my own opinion. What I'd like to do is say completely redo the roster from scratch with a much smaller pool of games/fighters, and do a very large pool of FWs (With a cap on how many could get in any one season).  That won't ever happen, but it's still a thought.

I sometimes wonder if I'm the only one who doesn't mind even if I can't vote on anything. It doesn't bother me in the least. I don't consider the DL any less fun, but then again, it's more due to the community than the arena that I come here. Nonetheless, it more makes me go "Hey, I should play that game!" than "Man, fuck this. I'm not having fun." I'm talking about the DL proper more than NR for this, since I've never encountered a week where I couldn't vote on anything (though sometimes when newly ranked games flood in, I've come close). It's sometimes funny that usually when a game like ToE or AtL4 gets in, it ends up facing a new game like P3 or FE9 that I haven't played yet and I end up not being able to vote on it.

Not voting means less fan interest and it's harder to get writeups/the work done. People won't stick around if they can't vote, which is why we of course have fairly strict ranking requrements. Even with those we still have some 70 odd games and 1000+ fighters in.  If a game can't win no matter what, the game should not be in the DL.

[Dark Holy Elf]

No, it's not the logical extension, especially that last part. It's taking it to an extreme mixed with a general strawman argument. No, it's not going to destroy the DL. And I never mentioned at all that we should rank everything. We just happen to have a different definition of where the line is when it comes to staying in the DL.

If you're going to attack my argument, you need to explain why it's bad. Otherwise all I can say in response to your strawman allegation is "no it's not" and we get nowhere.

We have a different line for what deserves to be in the DL. I'm fine with this. Note that nowhere in my argument did I state an objective location for that line. If your line falls in such a place that Persona 2 is worth being in the DL, then I don't have a problem with that. (I think you're wrong, of course, but it's not an inherently flawed viewpoint.)

My point in that paragraph was only that the line does exist. You just admitted as much. And as long as that line exists, a game that is ranked can cross over to the wrong side of it (or have been there all along, we just didn't know before ranking it). This is where booting is appropriate.

And yes, if we completely removed the line, it -would- destroy the arena component of the DL. (I should have added that qualifier; the social part would survive even if the tourny shut down.)

Well, the other option is, of course, as Snowfire alluded to, closed season construction. But I'm not willing to give up open noms, one of the DL's coolest features. In order for the system to work, though, we have to keep what is nommable, acceptable.

I sometimes wonder if I'm the only one who doesn't mind even if I can't vote on anything. It doesn't bother me in the least.

Cool. However, surely you can understand why many people dislike being unable to vote? Any why it's a bad thing if a lot of people can't? I'll restate it: quite apart from the desire to vote and participate, there's the fact that the DL arena interest is maintained by people discussing and debating matches, something which is extremely difficult when only a third of voters can vote on a match.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Regardless of whether anything gets booted this season or not, would it be possible to build a 'Retired roster' section under the Records section of the main site so that previous fighters' history would be easily accessible? I know the records are still in the database, but they're hard to find without a lot of digging.

[Grefter]

Posting to say I am not swinging in on this, but I was asked to look over the way arguments are going, so looking at it.  Meh both sides have fair arguments this time (what how?  When did DL start having logical fucking arguments in ranking/booting and why did you have to wait for me to stop taking part to do it?  Trying to pummel sense into people season after season to at least logically think about their choices burnt me out on caring).

To be frank, at the state of the DL last time we booted, I thought we had pretty much hit the point that was acceptable to me.  Brig wasn't great, but AtL4 was pretty much the threshold for fail I was prepared to trim.  I have no idea about the current internal state though.  SF2 might be below that fail threshold now.

I do agree that the DL has kind of hit the state though that it should only be done for the internal group now.  I would be gauging how good and bad it is based on that.

If stuff is being robbed and we are almost entirely functioning off of internal staff votes then that is an ENTIRELY seperate problem to look at unless every single external voter we have votes on everything then we have some internal voters that just may have to think about their approach to how they are voting even.  I don't even know how out and out robs we are talking though of course, becauuuse you guys stopped making me care.

[DjinnAndTonic]

That's more just my own opinion. What I'd like to do is say completely redo the roster from scratch with a much smaller pool of games/fighters, and do a very large pool of FWs (With a cap on how many could get in any one season).  That won't ever happen, but it's still a thought.

I'm curious what this pool would look like. Could make a good board tournament pool. Something that tournaments like Dhyer's Proving Grounds, Cmdr's Tourney of Interest, or your List tournament could pull from that would make voting there easier.

...I realize that it might be kind of long (and off-topic in this thread), but that would be an awesome thing to read/discuss/brainstorm over.

-Djinn

[superaielman]

Gref: We're averaging 80 votes a week. We'll always have some level of casual voters, and the fact that SF2 can't overcome them and is tanknig across the board is a bad sign. I was pretty much the only board vote for Rozalin.

Closed season construction would by and large be horrible for the DL. We did it all of once, and that was a season 7 emergency. Funnily enough, one of the people I used for that was Odd Eye.

Djinn: Nah, fits in here well enough. The very rough idea is to shrink the core DL by a large margin while keeping a large pool of games. Something like S2/CC would be trimmed to an extent, and several of the lower tier draws like Lufia 1 would go down to FW status. You c ould also add the odd character or boss who fits the format now or was missed.  A WA4 boss would work well enough here as an example. It'd be a lot of roster fine tuning.

You then have a large (50+) pool of characters from various games with the FW label that BCB used.

Say:

FW_Kharg (Arc the Lad 4)
FW_Nate (Though funnily enough, P1's a bad idea to drop down to FW status for this with the remake coming in theory)
FW_Yuri (Tales of Vesperia)
FW_Jack (Radiata Stories)
FW_Chopin (Eternal Sonata)
FW_Alicia (Valkyria Chronicals)
It'd be a mix of new games and older titles. We could pretty harmlessly stick in a lot of games that way while keeping the core roster good. The format would limit any kind of floods for FWs. And if one bombs, it's less important since with a large draw of FWs of old favorites and new titles to draw from, it'll be easy to let some games sink into obscurity. Can remove really bad offenders as at worst.

In theory I would like to do a universe reboot and start from scratch with that in terms of rankings/seasons as well (While keeping the history).  Set all the 4.3 godlikes to 4.5, the 3.1 lights to 2.99, etc.

[alanna82]

Super, I voted Rozalin too! Granted I have more respect for her than most and I vote on Taos remake form since that is all I played.

I do like the idea of redoing the roster and leaving a bunch of forgotton warriors. It still leaves fan favorites in.

One of the reasons I came here was BECAUSE Arc the lad 4 was ranked. I got the link from Elfboy on the Suikoden 3 board and stayed because I was like "Hey, someone else becides me knows about this game. cool!" I even attempted to get more people to play it., both online and in real life. Part of the reason I love this place is because of the large variety of games ranked. Of course I cannot vote on all of them, but I even loved not ranked and I am sad to see it die, since it was the only chance some of my obscure favorites like Phantasy Star 3 would ever have.

Again, part of the bad votes this season is old game vs new games. Take Shining Force 2. Look at Odd Eyes votes compared to Kazin and Taya. Odd Eye drew much better vote wise. He was facing Wren, from another Genesis game. Kazin and Taya were facing newer games, and in the case of Taya, a game only about a year old. Darc also was facing the same game as Taya.

Maybe we should have the DL go "on hiatus" again and redo the roster and have a bunch of forgotton warriors. I like that Idea alot, especially since I like many of the games that have or are going to be booted. And really, Lufia 1 is that bad? the last time it was in Lufia faced Hachel, one of the lesser used Legend of Dragoon characters.

[superaielman]

Roz lost the board vote very badly is the point. She may have had one or two other of the regulars going for her but the vast majority were going for Tao. SF1 managed to get remade and ended up worse overall thanks to formsplit and almost zero boost in drawing. Go it! Odd Eye's always done better than the rest of SF2. You're right that new game versus old game can be ugly, but there's still no reason for SF2 to perform as badly as it has for as long as it has. This is not new, the game's been laying eggs since season 4 or so. Lufia 1's not bad, I just used it as an example of the type of game I'd clear out.

The idea isn't practical for so, so many reasons, but it's cool to shoot the breeze about.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Kill Brigandine, BGs, Tales of Eternia. Bottom feeders. (Looking at the drawing of the last 20 seasons.)

SF1 isn't even close to a bottom feeder and THEY LOSE SO WE SHOULD BOOT THEM is just... what? Yeah, so what? SF2 has drawing problems but still is close to 5% better than the things on my list, and again, I don't think a cast losing is a good reason to boot them. Especially Taya. Taya is an unmemorable optional PC that I've barely ever used despite playing SF2 5+ times since all she does is fucking die in-game!

A hearty fuck no to anything that draws better than SF1.

[Yakumo]

Taya is an unmemorable optional PC that I've barely ever used despite playing SF2 5+ times since all she does is fucking die in-game!

Out of curiosity, why is this the type of character you want to keep?  <_<

I'm probably going to vote to trim things down and get rid of the unmemorable or optional characters that aren't doing well because people don't remember them or care about them.  Not remove the entire games.  I'm not sure why, just because the vote draw isn't pathetic, we can't get rid of characters that, if we were to rank the games from scratch right now, we wouldn't even consider adding.

[DomaDragoon]

Try and look surprised on this one:

Keep 'em all.

[Dunefar]

ATL 4 (Bebedora got a specific mention): Boot Bebedora, keep the rest.

Chrono Cross (Lesser used, less connected, later characters; Split-path characters; Pip and Sprigg): Boot.

Baldur's Gate: Boot.

Brigandine: Keep.

Fire Emblem 7 (Lesser used, less connected, later characters): Boot.

Phantasy Star 1: Keep.

Phantasy Star 2: Keep.

Shining Force 1: Boot.

Shining Force 2: Boot.

Barbarossa (Suikoden): Keep.

Suikoden 1 (Lesser Used, Less Connected, Later Characters): Keep.

Suikoden 2 (Lesser Used, Less Connected, Later Characters): Keep.

Suikoden 3 (Lesser Used, Less Connected, Later Characters): Keep.

Tales of Eternia: Boot Ras and Chat, keep others.

Valkyrie Profile (Lesser Used, Less Connected, Later Characters): Keep.

[Yakumo]

Stealing Dune's format because I'm lazy. <_<

ATL 4 (Bebedora got a specific mention): Boot Bebedora, keep the rest.

Chrono Cross (Lesser used, less connected, later characters; Split-path characters; Pip and Sprigg): Boot the plotless and bigger pathsplit issues, I'll try and come up with an actual list later.
Edit:  From a quick glance at the ranked characters list I would get rid of: Leah, Orlha, Pip, Sprigg, Greco, Janice, Skelly, Draggy, Poshul, Doc, Macha, Funguy, Mojo, Luccia, Neo-Fio, Turnip, Mel, Van, Pierre.  Guile is split but he's the easiest to find in my opinion and has other strange plot stuff.  Other people are at least important even if you don't get them.  There may be others that I'm not sure are pathsplit.

Baldur's Gate: Boot.

Brigandine: Keep.

Fire Emblem 7 (Lesser used, less connected, later characters): I don't see a real reason to get rid of these.  Everyone remembers them.

Phantasy Star 1: Keep.

Phantasy Star 2: Keep, I guess.  I can't see any reason to boot some but not all(aside from like Rolf) and it doesn't seem that bad except for like Kain.

Shining Force 1: I haven't played these so I can't pick out specifics, but boot optional/plotless characters.

Shining Force 2: See SF1.

Barbarossa (Suikoden): Boot.

Suikoden 1 (Lesser Used, Less Connected, Later Characters): There... really weren't many from this?  Can't think of any really worth getting rid of offhand. 

Suikoden 2 (Lesser Used, Less Connected, Later Characters): Boot, like CC will look into an actual list later.
Edit:  I looked at the rankings and frankly, it's been so long since I played I'm not sure who is and isn't forced anymore. 

Suikoden 3 (Lesser Used, Less Connected, Later Characters): I would like to trim a few of these, but not many.  Stuff like Kenji that nobody cares about.

Tales of Eternia: Boot Ras and Shizel, keep others.

Valkyrie Profile (Lesser Used, Less Connected, Later Characters): Boot Freya?  I can hope, dammit. <_<  Keep otherwise.

[SnowFire]

Just for clarification, since super refuted it vociferously: I never suggested a closed ranking system, though I did note that the current random selection method is problematic.  And indeed, the democratic nature of RPGDL nominations is cool.  That doesn't change the fact that there exists such a thing as an objectively bad season setup - I will glare at the season in which Middle that had 5/8 Suikoden fighters with another 3-4 Suikoden fighters scattered throughout the other divisions in Week 1 here - and that there should be some mechanism for dealing with this.  Yes there are a zillion asterisks and it's possible that the cure could be worse than the disease (especially if some kind of nightmare bureaucracy of rules was established to deal with the situation), but I'm sure that there's SOME way to avoid this without instigating drama and hurt feelings.  It could be as simple as "the benevolent dictators of the DL have booted this rolled-up nom to next season because there are 3 fighters from that game in this season and it's too obscure to support that."

That said I strongly agree with super's idea for more FWs, perhaps pre-emptively ranking new games with FWs to get their feet wet, and gently moving older games to FW status.

[superaielman]

Booting things to the next season just spread the pain out some. This goes double with large cast games, because they could get anohter flood in the next season and you're just stuck constantly pushing back.

[Hunter Sopko]

Some ideas I came up with have problems too.

Best suggestion is to cap the amount of people each game can get in. There are a few problems with this, even with a tough cap like 2-3. It stops say, CC from flooding, but not Suikos. It also skews a games heavier, since we roll top-down. It also doesn't help with low-drawing games like SF2 or so, because even 2 getting in the same division can cause problems. I WOULD like it for newly ranked games, because new games lead to just as many vote total problems as unpopular ones and tend to flood more as people want to see the new blood in.

Open noms but closed brackets would also help alleviate it some, but again sometimes open brackets can make things more interesting, and there would be problems with basically orchestrating the entire season for characters to win.

Anyone else on this?

[Dark Holy Elf]

I'm opposed to closed brackets. Just don't want to open the can of worms of who constructs seasons, etc.

Capping people who get in is possible, and you could avoid the problem of skewing towards the big games in top divisions by rolling divisions in the random order. (i.e. "d4 for division to roll first: 3 = Middle" or whatever)

[DjinnAndTonic]

We could forgo the 'ranking' stage for Forgotten Warriors altogether, and include them as part of the Season Nomination process.

For example, we could set aside one slot each season for a non-ranked character. Everyone who nominates a pool gets to nominate one character who isn't ranked. From anything with a stat topic, just to cut down on some of the options there. When it's time to roll up a season, we roll from the FW pool to see which of the 50 or so characters gets a shot at being a FW for a season. (At this point, we can either put them in the correct division if that's known/obvious, or we can move to a short voting session where we decide democratically what division this temp FW belongs in.) Then we roll up the rest of the season's ranked picks.

The temp FW works like basically any other duelist for the season.

This gives a chance to see how certain games can work in the DL proper without the hassle of deciding what's worthy of ranking. It also doesn't clutter up the DL with new stuff/obscure stuff because it's only one fighter per season. It sort of takes over all the good points of NR, but it also pits the new fighter against Ranked (therefore hopefully more well-known) competition. A sort of mini-version of Cmdr's Tourney of Interest except that the whole of the DL gets a shot at nomming their favorite character, or more likely, the most interesting duellers will be nommed by multiple people.

(It might be fair to ask the nommers to be willing to do this FW character's writeups... and provide art.)

It also means less hurt feelings over bootings, because there's still a venue where non-ranked characters can get on-site recognition.

The biggest problem I can foresee with this is that a FW character gets into a too-low division. Thus, it might be a good idea to roll up the FW character a week early and then put him/her through the 'which division?' voting rigor before rolling up the rest of the season's duelists.

Even if the duelist doesn't draw very well, that's okay, because they are a temporary addition. If they do well, they (or their game) can be ranked. If not, then at least we didn't have to go through the process of ranking a whole new game only to see it fail and have to booted.

What do you guys think?

-Djinn

[AndrewRogue]

I think it is a really bad idea, since we have some very, very stupid stat topics. While there is some merit to it, you are basically asking for the worst case scenario, which is someone nomming something really stupid, it going into the wrong division, going on a tear and the nommer failing to write/provide art.

[Lord Ephraim]

Stealing Yakumo's stealing Dune's format because I'm that lazy.

ATL 4 (Bebedora got a specific mention): Boot all

Chrono Cross (Lesser used, less connected, later characters; Split-path characters; Pip and Sprigg): Keep,  plotless CC scrubs are still fun from time to time.  Light isn't the same without FUNGUY and TURNIP.

Baldur's Gate: Boot.

Brigandine: Boot

Fire Emblem 7 (Lesser used, less connected, later characters): Keep. Rank Geitz >.>

Phantasy Star 1: BOOT

Phantasy Star 2: BOOT

Shining Force 1: Don't care

Shining Force 2: See SF1.

Barbarossa (Suikoden): B.O.O.T

Suikoden 1 (Lesser Used, Less Connected, Later Characters): Boot

Suikoden 2 (Lesser Used, Less Connected, Later Characters):Boot

Suikoden 3 (Lesser Used, Less Connected, Later Characters): Keep. S3 filler is awesome

Tales of Eternia: Boot

Valkyrie Profile (Lesser Used, Less Connected, Later Characters): YES BOOT FREYA

[Vortex Infinitum]

ATL 4 (Bebedora got a specific mention) - Boot.

Chrono Cross (Lesser used, less connected, later characters; Split-path characters; Pip and Sprigg) - Keep.

Baldur's Gate - Abstain.

Brigandine - Abstain.

Fire Emblem 7 (Lesser used, less connected, later characters) - Keep.

Phantasy Star 1 - Abstain.

Phantasy Star 2 - Keep Rolf, Boot the rest.

Shining Force 1 - Boot.

Shining Force 2 - Boot.

Barbarossa (Suikoden) - Keep.

Suikoden 1 (Lesser Used, Less Connected, Later Characters) - Keep.

Suikoden 2 (Lesser Used, Less Connected, Later Characters) - Keep.

Suikoden 3 (Lesser Used, Less Connected, Later Characters) - Keep.

Tales of Eternia - Abstain.

Valkyrie Profile (Lesser Used, Less Connected, Later Characters)- BOOT FREYA. Keep the rest.

[DjinnAndTonic]

I think it is a really bad idea, since we have some very, very stupid stat topics. While there is some merit to it, you are basically asking for the worst case scenario, which is someone nomming something really stupid, it going into the wrong division, going on a tear and the nommer failing to write/provide art.

Well, yes, that IS the worst-case scenario. But honestly, that's not going to destroy the DL. And if a character getting a run because he ends up in the wrong division is the worst thing that could happen, doesn't that make the whole thing a decent idea. I mean, it's not like other characters haven't done this before. And games that aren't well-known tend not to be able to 'rob' matches anyway. Historically, they seem to be the victims are robbery more often than not.

Honestly, I think the stipulation of "only nom something if you're willing to write and provide art for it" should be good enough to keep what is nommed reasonable. But, worst-case scenario, if art is impossible to find, we toss that character and use some other randomly-selected alternate.

I don't think the concept itself is inherently flawed.

[VySaika]

Edited in boots for ToE and Brig. If that really is our lowest drawing stuff, then hey.

[Hunter Sopko]

ToE isn't. It's at about 48%, which is 3% higher than the next on the list.