Less games per ranking period (Part 2)

[superaielman]

Pretty simple. The ranking freeze is over, and there isn't much new to rank. The reasons why can be found in other topics, along with the various arguments.

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I pretty strongly support lowering the amount, simply because of the lull we're in console wise. The group's really struggled to play new games of late as well, which hasn't helped. Blowing through our new games in a few periods doesn't do any good, stretching them out is more in our interest with how weak everything has looked.

[SageAcrin]

I'm not entirely sure why "Extend freeze" isn't an option here.

[Cmdr_King]

Agreed with Sage.  I'm not hot on the idea of cutting down the number of rankings, and would definitely opt to extend the freeze at least to the end of summer (much of the DL is college students, good time to play games, etc etc.)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I'm not entirely sure why "Extend freeze" isn't an option here.

More or less my feelings here.

[Dhyerwolf]

I third extending the freeze.

[VySaika]

Extending the freeze does sound like a better option then trying to rank things that aren't ready. I'd support maybe ranking a couple of FWs, but not any full games at present.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Extend freeze is my vote too~

[Ultradude]

Extending the freeze does sound like a better option then trying to rank things that aren't ready. I'd support maybe ranking a couple of FWs, but not any full games at present.

Agreed. Though, I'd like to know what FWs have support right now.

Besides trying to revive the ToS Yuan push that a whole of... two people were in on?

[Grefter]

We can always reduce the number of ranks, do one season, see what pops up and then refreeze.  Better to test the waters than just keep the freeze indefinitely.

Edit - This is assuming of course that you are all reasonable people who can rank things intelligently, which you aren't and you will fuck it up.  I said it earlier and just want to be proven correct.

[superaielman]

I don't think we had many suggestions for keeping the freeze going in the last topic.

That said, keeping a freeze going longer for a year is a seriously bad idea. Rankings- even if we have to force playership post ranking, something I loathe doing- is good for the site. We can't go a year and a half to two years without putting new ideas on the site.  Reducing the number of slots gives us a few new ikdeas to chew over every time and at least -something- new in the DL.

[OblivionKnight]

Keep the same interval for rankings, but limit them for the interim (until something changes our opinion...i.e., lots of influx and demand for multiple games).  So...

For this period, my suggestion would be to limit, until a change is needed, to one new game (e.g., P3, WA5, D2, etc.) and one FW mix (my definition of a FW, personally, is a character from a ranked game that wasn't ranked, but the other definition, of a single character from an unranked game, works too; examples here would be WA4 bosses [Fiore, Asia, etc.], DDS bosses [Varin, Jinana, etc.], Sora, Alucard, etc.). 

I think this would work out pretty well - it would force people to be good and selective about what new game gets in (based on merits of interest, votership, etc.), and also allow the option of adding more characters to the DL from already-ranked games where there is interest (Yuan, more bosses from WA4, FE characters, whatever) and an already dedicated and set-up niche for the game in the DL (since it's...already ranked).

Obviously, people can still say no to a game or not, and I would hope we'd be able to do that.  But this should get people thinking, with limited slots to choose from, and limit any "damaging" ranks that could occur. 

I would suggest we put the usual "What games would you want to see in the DL" thing on the website, tailored for this.

[VySaika]

I...suppose I could support that, OK. I'm not really sure what full game I'd be willing to rank right now though. But if we think that an extended freeze would actually be bad for the site, then we can try the toned down rankings.

And I would support 1 game/1 FW over 2 games. I just don't think we have 2 games ready right now.

[superaielman]

Sounds like a good idea to me OK.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I don't agree with a guaranteed slot for FWs. Feels like a way to push some pet projects.

Think I support two slots, use them for whatever. If we think that's too much, then slow the rankings to every three seasons.

[Cmdr_King]

Regardless of how long ago the last rankings were, the fact is that the best ideas now (WA5?  Disgaea 2?) are not good enough.  The last NR showed without much doubt that both of those ideas and quite a few others should be rejected if they come up.

Even if we do reject the games that come up, that means those particular games get the awesome stigma of being rejected in the second round and we get the entire ranking machine moving for no purpose.  I'd rather skip that and maintain the freeze *shrug*

[SageAcrin]

That said, keeping a freeze going longer for a year is a seriously bad idea.

I agree.

Ranking freezes for too long stagnate interest internally and don't give any sort of a "hook" for new people to come in and see a new shiny game they recently played and wanted to vote on. It's true, it's a bad thing.

...but blame the gaming industry's current model for making it a worse idea to unfreeze. Specifically, the usual issues of console waves. There's an on-average 1.5-2.5 year gap between a new console wave and new waves of RPGs, just because the RPG dev times are so long. (Probably, the fact that they have partially become the medium for pushing a console's graphics hasn't helped this.)

Objectively, yeah, not having any new blood for this long is a terrible idea, but when the alternative isn't actually adding anything the DL has actual interest in by and large...

WA5 is okay internally, but has no external hook; Hell, WA4 didn't, IIRC, and 5 barely had an internal... WA5's the least offensive idea, for what it's worth.

Disgaea 2 may have an external hook-something honestly I give leave to doubt, I don't recall it getting anywhere near the same hype because to most of the Dis 1 fans it was more of the same. Also, it's worthy of note that if Disgaea was a successful external hook, it'd be of the sort that would probably tick off many current DLers due to a powerleveling focus, kinda like how you get an action-element focus off Tales fans. It clashes and leads to what the internal group thinks of as robberies.

And...the fact at this point that I'm going to have to look up the old topic for other suggestions is bad.

*Glances.* Ah, yes. FE9/10 still hold true, they are games whose internal interest/writers are borderline and externally have some issues...again, I see them going nothing but up, even more strongly due to Brawl and Ike. (It worked for interest in Marth's games strongly enough so that they're remaking one. Or at least the game companies think so. Regardless, with a GC and Wii game available...)

XS3 got a DL hatchet job in the court of opinion, and XS2 wasn't precisely a quick ranking due to it's abysmal draws, so that's probably out for the foreseeable future, if not indefinitely.

The ARPGish set(KH/SoTN) still doesn't work in the DL. Ditto SRW games. RS is possible but has spawned some novel headaches and is a poor draw and basically has nothing going for it in any way. Just less massively against it than some... P3 may work at some point, but I'm not holding my breath, it needs a resurgence of interest with cheap FES in the picture and I can't says I'm betting on that...the game's just too weird conceptually for many. PB/La Pucelle will likely never get above an FW level, PB almost can't due to some odd issues of interp while LP has too little interest.

So basically we have WA5, firstly.

Which, eyeballing Chuck's figures, has an extrapolated 45%~ draw from comparing his NR figures to DL ranked stuff from the same games. Not NR wonkiness; It's actually steadily -15% from average for some reason for all three of his matches.

And then we have Dis 2. Which, based on Axel's and Rozalin's stuff, doesn't really look too bad; -5% below average and the draw against P3 look okay for Axel, but the sub-Harley-relative-draw for both against White Mage looks less stellar. Then there's Rozalin vs FFT Generic, which drew less than Suzu vs Don Joaquin. No, you can't really draw anything conclusive from this mess, I'll admit, there's nothing stable about Dis 2 draws.

There's also not a lot of internal love, not a lot of duelling interest in the characters, and rather abysmal growth hopes, as anyone interested in Dis 1 enough to like it probably has already grabbed 2, and anyone ran off by 1 will probably not play 2 just because it's ranked. The first game polarized the internal too much.

So, if you think these two games-because, let's face it people, you're not coming up with a better option than these, when we're talking about ranking two games this period, we mean these two, really... Oh, FE9 has a case, but I'd really rather it be shiny as a case so as to lessen the inevitable whining when people want to rank more than four characters, wouldn't you, people that want it ranked? Anyways, if you think these two options are good enough reason to defreeze and rank them, whatever.

I'm just not really sure why "Keep freeze." isn't an option. It seems a viable option here. Wish it wasn't. It is a bad idea to freeze, but you've got to keep in mind why it is a bad idea to freeze. We'd be better off swallowing our own personal gaming quirks and ranking FFXII if we really wanted to break a freeze, despite the fact that it's a horrid ranking idea for many reasons, than rank these two, probably. At least that'd actually have the hooking ability, either internally or externally, that, really, breaking a freeze is about.

[Meeplelard]

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."

That said, I think OK's solution works, though unsure about the FW thing.  I suppose we could do something like "highest game, and an FW if one is equal or higher in noms" but...yeah, its just an excuse to force some pet projects in.

So yeah, less is probably a good idea.

[Grefter]

And I almost threw shit accross the room at people going "No keep the freeze there is nothign to rank" as if open discussion, the opportunity to do so was a fucking bad goddamned thing and that we can't just say no where we fucking should.

Opening up a ranking session or two and doing nothing with them is infinitely better than just extending the freeze without taking this chance to gauge interests.  If nothing else it will give us a chance to know what we should be working on playership wise to be sure we CAN rank something again eventually.

The industry at the moment and its abject failure to produce a product is no reason for us to not be testing the waters anyway.

We are supposed to be generally speaking people that are capable of doing a broad analysis (see stat topics and comparing duellists and averages and all that shit), why the fuck wouldn't you take the chance to test something instead of just going on a guy feeling that nothing is worth ranking.  We all "know" this, but I don't give a flying fuck if we know it.  Try a rank, show it.  It does no harm at all to do so.

[Cmdr_King]

So your position is that it's retarded to not start rankings and "give it a try" because we have no other means to gauge interest, and we just have to 'say no at the right time' if nothing is worth ranking.  While quite accurately pointing out that the DL gets very excited about rankings and does not turn down anything to be ranked ever?  What the hell kinda logic is that?

Besides, you're wrong.  There are plenty of ways to gauge ranking interest without actually ranking a damned thing.  Monkey suggested holding the "what do you want to see in the DL" on-site to get a feel for things but not actually initiating the ranking process.  This is a good idea.  NR largely exists for two things, to give untested ideas tests and to give things with low rankability an outlet.  Shock and awe, everything likely to come up for ranking failed it up in its most recent NR test.  These aren't unfounded speculations, there is evidence here suggesting nothing deserves ranking.

As a last thought, look at the people against extending the freeze in this topic.  The argument is "no, going this long without rankings is bad it makes things stagnent."  This supports strongly your much-ranted belief that the DL does not turn down ranking ideas.  Opening the gates is not a good idea at this time, and the only positive reason to do so is the every so slight chance that the game being ranked and getting matches will get people playing it, which is a chancey proposition at best.

[superaielman]

A: I've tried that (Getting feedback). The feedback we get from voters is next to nil. We get a little with the ranking process but not a ton, and the longer we go without rankings and with totals in the meh range, the less likely we are to get responses.

As a last thought, look at the people against extending the freeze in this topic.  The argument is "no, going this long without rankings is bad it makes things stagnent."  This supports strongly your much-ranted belief that the DL does not turn down ranking ideas.  Opening the gates is not a good idea at this time, and the only positive reason to do so is the every so slight chance that the game being ranked and getting matches will get people playing it, which is a chancey proposition at best.

Do you really think keeping rankings closed for a year and a half is a good thing at *all* for the site? That's what it comes down to. By narrowing the number of games we have in possible slots, we'll have less ideas come through but at least a few.

More to the point, the DL has generally done a stellar job with rankings since we adopted the current format back after S10.

Games we've put up for rankings since then:

Saga FW (TL/Fuse)
FFX-2
FE7
FFMQ FW- benjamin
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Star Ocean 3
Shadow Hearts 2
Pokemon
FF1
Karyl, ToD FW
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Suiko 1/2 FWs (Netted Eileen, among others)
Tales of Symphonia
Suikoden 4
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Saga FWs (Roufas/etc)
Zera Valmar
FE7 FWs
Kahn
Minsc
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BG characters (Edwin, etc)
BoF5
FE8
Kato
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*Freeze*
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Dragon Quest 8
WA4
SD3
Luther
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S5
VH1
XS2
Mithos
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RSE/GSE Pokemon
ToP
Barbarossa
Mother
WA:ACF
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VP2
SH3
LoL2
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TotA
G3
DDS
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*Freeze*
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I italized games I consider to be failures as ranks, and bolded games that were rejected. Several more (VH1, S4, LoL2, BoF5) have underperformed. But.. for the most part we've ranked games with strong, reasonable cases. We made a few mistakes, but most of them had some numbers behind them and at least good reasoning to be ranked. The DL has in large part ranked everything because there has been a hell of a lot of rankable games in the past few years. I mean, look at all the strong games numbers wise on that list.  About the worst thing we've done is shaky ranks for certain PC's and bosses but that's not a huge deal.

So yes, by and large I have some faith in the group to be rational about things. Opening things up to try an idea or two a period to see what catches is a good thing at this point.

What will happen if we unfreeze? We'll probably put together a few ideas, rank a few things, and maybe refreeze in three periods when we run out of ideas. And you know what? That's fine. IT at least lets us add something new to the group. As long as the group understands that we can't rank like we did during the height of the PS2 era, we'll be fine.

[Grefter]

No, my argument is that if we have nothing to rank like REALLY freaking have nothing to rank we have nothind to lose by running a rankings.  Just because we are running them doesn't mean we have to rank anything, that should be blindingly fucking obvious.  If people do otherwise when we shouldn't rank anything then it should be abundantly clear that people need to think more before ranking (Or nomming or voting or whatever), which incidentally is something I have been advocating for about half a decade now.  As for the kind of logic it is?  Mother fucking Scientific Method you tool.  Test. everything.

We have a ton of speculations like you said and obviously they are not groundless, so why are you so against just going up and saying "Yes this game is not ready DNR" it isn't fucking hard.  You do it, you see it, there is the proof and not just speculation.  Discussion of topics is always a good thing especially when we have the site like it is being a highly democractic thing.

We even have people here who have joined since the freeze started.  We owe it to these people to give them a chance to stand up and make a case for games instead of there just be a sea of old timers here who just go "No we don't need to unfreeze now".

And the other sources of gauging interest is what?  The ideas box?  The one that gets a random hand full of "rank the newest N1 game" every time we put it in and like sod all else?  Yeah it has been an awesome sign of what we rank in the face of the actual ranking process.  OH WAIT.  No, the best source of the suitability of ranking things is to try and rank them.  Not to use magic funky ESP to guess and have the process hijacked at the bud by the old forum regulars but to bring it up to the forefront, try another season let people know we are doing it and see the kind of response we get.

[SageAcrin]

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.

Super's bigass list

Non-applicable the way you're using it.

Look not at the fact that we have ranked few bad ideas recently.

Look instead at the following facts:

That we A: Froze for a long ass time right after one of our worst ideas, which only got in because we were running low. Ranking period right before that highlights this well: FW set from a game many people write off as an interp nightmare, FW that many people hated, more FW PCs that people hated conceptually so badly that we didn't rank them, KAAAAAAAHN who was vaguely an oversight and still wasn't loved as an idea, and expiremental FW(Which are timeless, basically.).

Perhaps we should avoid ranking periods like this, where they're the only options? Because this period's looking along those lines, just we have new games instead of FWs. 

B: Have turned down two things since S10.

C: Important one: How many recently released RPGs have we not ranked that have any DL interest? That's right, pretty much just the four even remotely possible options, none of which stand out as great concepts for many reasons.

(...though, someone talk me into P3 being a good ranking idea. The more I think about it, the better that sounds. It probably drew like ass, though, I recall it seeming horrid in passing but I didn't math it out. At least it's PCs have interesting skillsets.)

As I said, it's not that I think we should freeze, per se. I'm wondering why it's not an option at all, so strongly that some people are going OMG NO about it. Yeah, it sucks that the RPG industry hasn't been putting out a ton lately, but if RPGs as a genre died tomorrow, this doesn't mean we rank Monstania just to have something to rank a few years from now.

Edit:

I dunno, Grefter, I wish we lived in a perfect world where people didn't just vote for things to get in the DL because they like a character from the game/the game it's self, but it seems the hardest habit to break so far. Even booting is a more accepted idea than not voting for a game you like. I agree with you otherwise, in principle, but that one issue seems to ruin the concept of just simply having ranking periods.

Much like the old "Rank a FW! We can just boot it later!" was ruined by razor-edge boots, failed boots and hours of arguments from people that happily voted the game in, letting people think they agreed, and then no'd the booting. Sad how really nice ideas can be shot in the face by reality. ._.

Edit 2:

Oh.

And again, just to reiterate, for the record: I am not saying that I support an extended ranking freeze, per se. I may. But no, I really just wondered why it wasn't a poll option.

But OMG HEADDESK and two massive rants about previous history and theoretically optimal discussion aside, I haven't heard much that makes it sound like a good idea.

Shouldn't you guys be dredging up how this isn't a two-iffy-ranking show instead? I seem to be doing a better job of that than the people supporting the ranking.

This sounds more like a theoretical "We should never ever have a freeze that long!" than it does actually approaching the idea of a freeze as though it's a repeated series of not having rankings because no one considers the ideas up good enough to bother with the time, trouble, effort and possible fan-votings.

[Grefter]

It wasn't an option because we uh like already discussed it didn't we?  in the last topic that came up about this regarding extending the freeze we kind of got "For a bit but don't keep it up forever" I thought.

A: Froze for a long ass time right after one of our worst ideas, which only got in because we were running low.

B: Have turned down two things since S10.

Neither of these are reasons to keep a freeze up without trialing a reopen, it is a reason for people to reevaluate how they rank.  If people lack the self control to not rank shit ideas then we either A) need to man up and make someone be in charge rather than just having essentially commitee leaders (we DO obviously have leaders, but the DL is not completely in anyone's control other than Hal as our groundskeeper) and have them dictate this kind of thing through policy or B) handle them like we always have, keep up the trial and error did we get it right and then boot the chaffe approach.

What we shouldn't have is a small group of people dictating the policy for everyone just because the others don't want to get bogged down in the politics or try and muscle there way into situation that is full of people that have a lot more history in the DL than they do. Edit- cleaning up this sentence to clarify.  Rankings are far more manageable than DL policy minutiae for people to come in and have a say on.

Edit 2 - Oh yeah and Persona 3, well I thought it was looking pretty strong myself with the number of people playing the rerelease who had demonstrated having played the innitial in the Games Playing topic and picked up a copy myself figuring it would probably end up being a rank.  It is ranking pretty high on Gamefaqs at the moment as well, so I am wondering how it went for sales and general public playership.

[SageAcrin]

It wasn't an option because we uh like already discussed it didn't we?  in the last topic that came up about this regarding extending the freeze we kind of got "For a bit but don't keep it up forever" I thought.

Naaaah, exactly what I thought would happen, happened; There was pro-freeze-extension sentiment, but only late in the topic, because the initial question of "Should we just extend the freeze?" was never initially brought up until late, because the topic didn't broach this as "We're starting up rankings at X time, should we do Y thing?", it simply broached it as "Should we do Y thing when we decide to start up rankings again?". Completely different/highly misleading question. I'm sure that was accidental, though.

And then, in this topic, it still wasn't brought up. I figured I needed to fix that this time. ^_^

Neither of these are reasons to keep a freeze up without trialing a reopen, it is a reason for people to reevaluate how they rank.  If people lack the self control to not rank shit ideas then we either A) need to man up and make someone be in charge rather than just having essentially commitee leaders (we DO obviously have leaders, but the DL is not completely in anyone's control other than Hal as our groundskeeper) and have them dictate this kind of thing through policy or B) handle them like we always have, keep up the trial and error did we get it right and then boot the chaffe approach.

I thought B was why we had freezes. Because it was a lot less of a pain in the ass to get 66% of people to vote on that than it was to get them to not vote for a favorite if it made it to the final stage. Simple human psychology; Giving up a chance at something you like getting in is harder than giving up a chance of a chance for it. It's fundamentally an emotional thing.

[superaielman]

Sage: My point of using that big ass list is that the DL does an good job of screening out bad ideas before we even get to the ranking process. I'm extremely aware of the drawbacks of everything that's coming up for rank and the problems with it and each game, but I don't see any benefit to keeping things frozen any longer.