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huey253

"Time to Make History" Dustloop Revamp Community Effort #1

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Hi Dustloop,

 

As promised, I've created a thread for the resurrection of Dustloop. After receiving feedback, we've realized that one of the biggest issues is...

 

 

The Front Page 

 

 

 

This includes the lack of articles, informational content, and promotion of community efforts.

 

How would you change this? Please leave any suggestions for improving this issue as a response to this post. Currently, one of the greatest issues for generating content is a lack of motivation. If anybody would like to help contribute to the front page, please speak up. 

 

Once again, please continue to leave any other feedback regarding issues or potential changes to Dustloop. 

  

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1zdYq0ruR9CGwhzGcMG-tDZPca3oU75y5AnbkvrkD0ps/viewform

 

Thanks!

 

 

"So, step on up to the plate, meet your fate

Walkin' straight on into the lion's lair

So, step on up, up to the plate,

'cause this ain't no game It's time to make history, yeah!"



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Motivation is not a reliable factor for someone who needs to consistently keep something up to date, it's dedication. There's plenty of no-effort content that can be made in to front page articles. 

 

Evo/tournament results. Upcoming tournaments. Streams. 

 

All of those are already set up, post them on the front page so others can know about them. It seems so obvious but how is this an ArcSys focused site and there is no Arc Revolution 2015 article on the front page? it has BB, GG, UNI and P4U2 2.0 as events and there is not a lick of coverage when it's in 2~3 weeks.

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The front page is a bit bare as far as articles and informational content goes. Although promotion of community events/efforts could be addressed easily with articles, what exactly warrants the creation of an informational article? Something as simple as new tech discovered for a character, or something big like the announcement of new games? There should be a guideline of course, and how high it should be is dependent on what kind of content everyone feels is "Front Page" material.

A couple of suggestions that I have would be rehauling the front page to cover things like announcements, tournanement results, streams, interviews, updates, loketests and many more. I'm sure there are some I didn't name and others can think of, but it just comes to down people speaking up about what they want featured and known.

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I sent a feedback.

 

But wanted to write it here anyway. having a Xrd league. where once a month we meet and play matches online.

where you score points depending on placement. almost like a football league or ishockey league. you get the idea

 

 

 

Would be cool. and Xrd netcode isnt bad at all. aslong as you got decent connection.

 

 

Should be fairly easy to upload matches as well. thanks to ps4

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People wanted to do these things before. They were basically ignored at best and condescended towards at worst for their efforts, while the rest of the moderation team disappeared or fucked off to do whatever it was they were concerned with doing. What great motivation to do unpaid, volunteer work that hardly anybody ever noticed or mentioned.

 

I don't see any reason for that to change now unless something internal actually changes. The moderation team who basically sat and let the site go to shit while a very small handful of mods tried to do anything should probably not be the ones moderating. I know some people are friends, there are cliques and internal politics and whatever and we wanna play nice, but really come on. While I was here it was me trying to clean up mess after mess with like 4 other people while eating the brunt of the shit for visibly trying to do anything. Occasionally somebody lights a fire in the otherwise vacant staff forum and this happens for a week or so before people get bored and drift away again.

 

Like, why would I spend time doing that for free while everybody else around me is not caring and any work I do basically amounts to nothing? Maybe it'd help if people worked together to bring that work out, or at least didn't ignore it. I'm not sure what the solution is there, but honestly the feeling of "shit's dead it's pointless" was so pervasive and just reinforced by everybody really doing nothing. Some people work hard but it's just not enough.

 

What really got me was when I finally decided it wasn't worth it and left, then people decided to say something. This is all stuff I talked about before I left, things I was saying were issues that just were left alone and are now just awful looking. What's different now? What's going on behind the scenes to make me think this fire will last more than a month at best? I don't wanna kill your vibe, but I do wanna challenge to actually present solutions other than just being excited and trying harder.

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Also, it's worth noting that the games we play on Dustloop don't have a large audience at all.  We're not Marvel Vs. Capcom or Street Fighter.  It might help a bit to band together with other quality niche sites, like Skullheart.  We could place prominent "friend site" links or pages on the site and have each other encourage our players to check another out.  Then again, with such a niche fanbase, I'm willing to bet there's already a lot of overlap: For example, I'm pretty sure anyone playing skullgirls or yatagarasu already knows about dustloop.

 

Hm.  Not sure what to do other than a multi-million dollar media blitz to promote our niche games and the website along with it.  Anyone have a few mills lying around?

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I am free most weekday nights to help with the front page if you'd. I won't be able to write mega insightful articles but I can share / highlight what I find.

It's not much but I do want to see the site do well and fixing the front page should be the first step.

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Want to see the site do well?  The front page is an afterthought. There are more pressing community-based issues in my opinion. If you add more people and don't make their experiences with the game a living hell, the site (and game) will grow naturally.

 

1.) Tell new players about Dustloop.

 

    When you see or fight someone who is new at the game send them a message about dustloop.com, telling them that it's a place where you can learn how to play the game and find other players. Most people get lucky to find this site in the first place. If you google search "How to play Blazblue" or "Blazblue [insert character name]" Dustloop doesn't even show up in the first 5 results. Think about it...Have you ever actually told anyone that Dustloop exists?

 

Sometimes just discovering this site and having a place to talk to other people who also enjoy the game will make someone stay active on this site for a long time. This is why you see new people coming in and being overly social/making jokes in the gameplay threads. They finally found a place to talk with people who are like them and they are understandably excited. Then they get badmouthed and infracted for not being familiar with the site QQ. 

 

2.) Don't be a condescending, pompous, trolling, or styling asshole to new or much-less skilled players.

 

    I know that saying this isn't going to change some people, but this kind of behavior can make someone drop a game or stop going to a scene completely. The learning curve for the game is going to ward off some players naturally, but we don't want to discourage the ones who will actually stick with the game by being mean to them.

 

Hell I'd just like to say don't play weak/new players at all unless they ask for it. Let them stick to fighting other beginners until they get familiar with the game.

 

 

 

 

So basically what I said earlier: If you add more people and don't make their experiences with the game a living hell, the site (and game) will grow naturally.

 

A bigger point would be adding more players to these games in general since Arc doesn't advertise in America really. But that's a much larger and more hit-and-miss task.

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Want to see the site do well?  The front page is an afterthought. There are more pressing community-based issues in my opinion. If you add more people and don't make their experiences with the game a living hell, the site (and game) will grow naturally.

 

1.) Tell new players about Dustloop.

 

    When you see or fight someone who is new at the game send them a message about dustloop.com, telling them that it's a place where you can learn how to play the game and find other players. Most people get lucky to find this site in the first place. If you google search "How to play Blazblue" or "Blazblue [insert character name]" Dustloop doesn't even show up in the first 5 results. Think about it...Have you ever actually told anyone that Dustloop exists?

 

Sometimes just discovering this site and having a place to talk to other people who also enjoy the game will make someone stay active on this site for a long time. This is why you see new people coming in and being overly social/making jokes in the gameplay threads. They finally found a place to talk with people who are like them and they are understandably excited. Then they get badmouthed and infracted for not being familiar with the site QQ.

Before doing that, people should probably contribute to the wiki / character subforums. CPEX wiki is pretty much dead, even though it hasn't been out even for half a year (not even a month for most of the website's audience), all because people either think that it's all the same as in vanilla CP (it isn't) or because the CF announcement made everyone lose interest in this "outdated" version that we're still going to play for about a year. Of course, there's also the sheer size of the roster that's at fault here, as it's not so easy to find 28 players across the entire roster who both know their characters well and are good writers (and have enough time on their hands to write an in-depth article). I wanted to update the Bullet page since forever, but job hunting and random translation requests take more time than I'd like.

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My first thought is "does dustloop even have a front page...oh yeah it's that thing I miss-click to by accident sometimes and rapidly click away from".

 

 

I think not enough people use the front page so making it better in a marginal way will mostly go unnoticed. Most people just use a few forum topics because they have the latest news about things that interest them. I think it's hard to change this since a front page can only hold so much information which will not be that interesting compared to information found inside the specialized topics to enough people to enable it to stand out in their wake.

 

 

I don't think user-created-volunteer-content is what can help here. We already have this in the forum topics with people typing up helpful posts and translating things left and right. Just putting some of it on the front page too won't help since the topics will still be the place to go. You need exclusive content not found elsewhere in the forums or on the internet for the front page to shine. An example of this would be an interview Stayfree had done in the past with the people of arcsys from a convention or whatever it was.

 

It's supposed to be something more than what a single, devoted, passionate fan can type up in their pc from their house, without doing anything else. It has to have legwork, research, etc. It has to basically be a journalism piece in a way if it is to grab the attention that is sought after. Anything short of that will always lose to the much more vastly detailed forum topics, I fear.

 

To get to this level, though, you can't have independent members of the community acting of their own accord. You need a top-to-bottom organizational approach and there must be some sort of order established. We're at a point where we need to be asked to do something, not asked to come up with what to do, since each singular person has little power to enforce their ideal plan of attack. Those with the power ought to be thinking of this, solving it, then relaying it to us. This is why they have this power in the first place. If they truly desire to change things, it is their responsibility to either guide us to a more focused point or let someone who has that capability in them take their place.

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Just a thought because its something I would like to do... so if its dumb just ignore it...

 I think many people are like me and don't have time to devote to writing articles for free all the time BUT every once in a while, maybe once a week I can write something about whats going on in the scene, or even just share my thoughts on a game or mechanic. If we at least a a way to submit articles to possibly be included on the front page I would definitely try. It doesn't get a tone of exposure but even if 10 people felt the same as me it could make  a significant difference. Games like Xrd BB or UNIEL are getting a lot of exposure right now and this site could take advantage. 

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Before doing that, people should probably contribute to the wiki / character subforums. CPEX wiki is pretty much dead, even though it hasn't been out even for half a year (not even a month for most of the website's audience), all because people either think that it's all the same as in vanilla CP (it isn't) or because the CF announcement made everyone lose interest in this "outdated" version that we're still going to play for about a year. Of course, there's also the sheer size of the roster that's at fault here, as it's not so easy to find 28 players across the entire roster who both know their characters well and are good writers (and have enough time on their hands to write an in-depth article). I wanted to update the Bullet page since forever, but job hunting and random translation requests take more time than I'd like.

 

Well this has more to do with there  being no mook for CPEX, so there's really no way to add frame data unless we go into the game and record things frame by frame; and not everyone on this site has the equipment to do so.

 

 

But yea, if we truly want this to be a real community, people need to actually work together and do it. I would gladly commit, but not if I would be one of the few people who actually give a shit.

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I like the idea of a DL online League.  If anyone is interested, I can keep track of the players involved and set up some sort of power ranking.

 

I am more than happy to help out in anyway I can!!!  I can help post news, articles about tournaments/events,  get interviews with players....  Whatever people would be interested in seeing on the site.

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No one uses the front page because there's nothing there. When you tell a new person to check out dustloop the first thing they see is the front page not the character specific forum.

I think it all stems down to having capable and dedicated mods. If we fix that first then the rest will slowly fall into place

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At dreiko, there is nothing wrong with even the higher power asking for help sometimes. After all, the content created is meant to please us, so having at least a little input is almost required.

200% agree with exclusive content on the front page though... What else is there to put up on the front page anyway? Frankly I never though it was a good addition tbh besides from a select few amazing reads. Most other content seemed mundane or not important enough to be an announcement in the first place. Maybe the article page can be implemented as a header into the forums, similar to a sticky, viewable on the home page, as I don't think the article page is important within itself. These games, while sporting a large community, is lacking enough varied ideas to keep people motivated to keep coming back to that page in particular.

Free stuff. People love free stuff. Stream some matches, offer content to viewers. Have view quotas to reach and inform viewers. Of course it would have to be related to the game... That may require a bit of funds, but a community stream where people pitch in can be immensely fun for all seeing their online supporters grow and such.

That's all I have at the moment. Dust loop has fallen into a veeerery predictable pattern, and I hope a few strong ideas can change the way people think, because the traditional methods simply are not working. Well, they work, but not producing, and apparently, that is important. I'll leave the rest up to the people in charge.

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  1. A plug in that updates in real time on the front page with match video uploads from jourdal and anyone else for games in the community.
  2. A calendar of events where anime games are featured at.
  3. Moderators who actually have some feeling of motivation or work ethic.
  4. Have top players who have the knowledge required to help fill in wiki/character guides, match up shit.
  5. Probably have some subforums just be locked like it's embarrassing to come here looking up some combos or matchup advice and seeing 2+ pages of people talking about waifus and some shit .
  6. Anime Suite not being mentioned anywhere on the front page is uhh, that's a whole nother mess. Daisuke Ishiwatari, Ogawa..I mean fucking Ishiwatari was there lol.

 

 

I know article submissions have been open for a while but nobody has stepped forward to submit anything, which isn't a moderating issue but a community one. Anime community is extremely lazy, like being real with you Dustloop has been a joke for quite a few years like I don't feel like I should be going to SRK for Xrd/CPEX/anime news. It should immediately be on the front page here, like there's too many people who say they have passion for this but don't step up for it myself included.

 

Like I know most of us have migrated to twitter but it's not that hard to compile information from there and credit the sources and make articles or submit it for that or something like that.

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I may be misunderstanding huey's intent but from what I can tell, this thread is just one of many that he's going to create to present problems, gather feedback and come up with solutions. We should stay on topic and focus just on the current front page problem and save other topics for later threads. With that said, here's my feedback on the current topic.

To be honest, the biggest problems with the front page are

  1. That it's on a page completely set apart from the rest of the forum. Most people spend their time browsing the forum itself and never see it. It should be just a regular news forum at the top so people can see if anything new has been posted as they browse
  2. A lot of the stuff that people are suggesting should be posted in the news section should be already posted somewhere else. Want to know what tournaments are coming up, whether it be a local or major? Go to the events forum. Want to know the results of a specific tournament? I want to say you should check out the tournament results subforum in the events forum but to be honest, next to no one actually uses. Want to know the latest news on your favorite ASW game? Again, Ideally I want to say you should check out the sticked news thread that's only for posting news in the gameplay forum. Unfortunately, a lot of people just post the latest news in the News and Gameplay Thread, not both. Informational content can be news worthy though but it depends. If it's general stuff like OSes, it's news worthy. But stuff that only really applies to just one character and its player base should just go in that character's subforum.

I kind of feel like it's much more worthwhile to work on the Event forum and just making sure stuff gets posted in the right places. On the particular topic of Arc Revo since its the next biggest thing in the immediate future, I'd recommend creating a thread for it in the Events forum and making it a giant informational post. I can't really recommend putting all that much effort into content creation for the front page. Too much formal effort from the moderation team for something that can easily be covered informally in places you already have set up and pretty much anyone can do it. I rather that effort got put to use somewhere else.
 

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What hurts this community is that we seem to lack any sort of motivation to be known; its like we just accept all of the shit that gets thrown our way and never bother. Its so fucking frustrating because we all have the potential, but we're too damn caught up in our own problems to do anything about it.

 

I understand we all got lives and shit, I'm still trying to get a job and register for my final semester of college while having my Dad constantly call this hobby a waste of time. But I like these games and want to see us grow and I'm willing to put up with all of it.

 

So can we like...make an effort? Please?

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Removing the front page wouldnt be a bad idea. I think smashboards is kind of what I'd like to see these boards become. Even the dead character boards have good moderators that take care of it. Smashcapps also does a great job keeping the front page going with 1-2 articles a day.

Theres many articles we can do weekly like a "This weekend in tournaments" followed by a Results post on monday.

Like everyones saying, a communitg effort is what we need to push this.

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I think for incentivizing content creation for the front page would be good, so DL can offer some sort of compensation for the writers.

Would the mods be against putting up advertisements to generate some income for paying writers? Probably won't get prime ads, but SRK started somewhere similar and now they are able to compensate for work done.

 

Also having an easy and obvious way for community members to submit possible stories/streams/events/etc to be featured on the front page

 

Also I think if there's a way to embed a list of the top stories (especially events and streams) on the right hand side while browsing forums might be useful, that way the info is more prevalent for "mainly forum" type users

 

And def talk about just "upping motivation and hard work" is not going to work. 

We need to strategize on accountability and organizing information while keeping it fun.

 

Having at least one other character specialist that you talk to will help immensely with accountability. Work on sharing tech and figuring out matchups then share it with all of us on DL. 

 

If there are recurring topics in a character discussion thread, definitely need to consider making a new thread to extract that type of info. New players will have a daunting TLDR moment when they see 200 pages on a character discussion. Also helping out new players will let us grow and find those people who have way more time and energy than most of us do to help.

 

Let's use some outside research and studies too about how to organize, we can innovate and make things run well here

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Don't turn this thread into an example of what huey's trying to fix here. No shitposting, only contributions.

 

As for the article page, I'm not sure how useful it is by itself since I personally never even check it; all I care about is the forum when I log in. But as far as updating it goes, I could do that!

 

What I lack is information and being plugged into all the other subcommunities; I never check GG, for instance. I'd need people to forward me information they want to see being posted. Otherwise, I could be all ready to post up stuff but it'd be no good without the info. Whenever I see something that looks like a quality piece of information I could promote it to an article, as well.

 

For instance, on Twitter everyone was retweeting a breakdown of the stick lag different brands of sticks have, which was pretty interesting.

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As far as I know, people can normally submit posts and ask a mod promote them to an article. But for some people doing that might be intimidating? Maybe do a tips page like on SRK would make it more accessible? Also rather than tourney results, tourney videos would encourage people to click on it and watch.

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@Choysauce85

Some sort of youtube talk. where the skilled guys talk about matchups and characters would be AWESOME. atleast for new guys

 

 

Will spam dustloop links on the RBN site :3

 

 

am testing out some converters for ps3 to ps4. as well as seeing if I can make a ps3-> ps4 usb hub of some sort. asking around in our tekken forum back in norway. as we got some immensly skilled people. might be something people would be intrested in. sadly waiting for it to get here. shipping takes soo long >.>

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I already submitted my opinions,

 

one thing i did mention was more community supported events, or even online gatherings, podcast, anything that will garner attention.

 

one thing i always notice is that dustloop seems to be an island onto itself, and that island isnt friendly to new faces, but thats from the outside looking in, i'm not a very active member at all,.

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Dustloop is known for two things, the forums (which are dying in some cases) and the wiki. The frontage is that part everyone skips to get to the forums.

 

Before trying to create or focus on something new I'll rather recommend improving what you're already known for.

 

Others have already mentioned a lot of cool stuff to improve the frontage, but I like the idea about exclusive content the most. It's late at this point, but I'd like something as the Anime Suite not to go unmentioned ever again.

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