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"Understand the Past, Gain the Future": Dustloop Revamp General

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I'm not good writting a lot of stuff just from opinions so it'll be short:

1) I don't have problems with the actual forum layout, but it could be interesting to see a new one. Still, I really don't like the idea of a Reedit-style layout.

 

2) As one of the admins of a Facebook group (let's say the "bad guy") I know what is trying to stay calmed and friendly with the people, while at the same time giving them warnings about breaking the rules in a cold way (the typical lose-lose), but I'm trying to get better at it. Obviously this is a way bigger community, but I'm an example that it's possible.

 

3) I like the idea of a separate section for General and Offtopic discussion (as a section, not for every character subforum) to raise the community sense, it helps to release stress and have fun.

 

4) About people posting useful info . . . well, that's something that a lot of people can't do because of the experience needed, but that doesn't mean that is impossible. Even if it's only discussion for asking and testing, watching people get interested in learning and being active is very satisfying.

 

5) Why is that a lot of people want to nuke Video Threads? Too much videos but not enough useful info with them as proofs? Knowing how to analyze a video and learning from them is one thing, but having a lot videos or almost nothing is another. We need to learn how to analyze videos and get useful stuff from them and having a lot of resource material makes it even easier. Another thing is that people like to see videos as sometimes they interpret this as a sign that the game is popular.

Edited by heavymetalmixer

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One reason to nuke video threads is that DL already links to comprehensive databases of videos (often separated by matchup) in the top bar. The site is Japanese which can be problematic for some, but the site itself more or less makes video threads redundant.

Though the databases are often another case of the top bar not being very well advertised and I imagine many users didn't know it was there.

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I

 

5) Why is that a lot of people want to nuke Video Threads? Too much videos but not enough useful info with them as proofs? Knowing how to analyze a video and learning from them is one thing, but having a lot videos or almost nothing is another. We need to learn how to analyze videos and get useful stuff from them and having a lot of resource material makes it even easier. Another thing is that people like to see videos as sometimes they interpret this as a sign that the game is popular.

 

One its redundant like Chaos said. Two, not every match actually has any valuable information; like if the player is ass, what am I actually getting from that match? SKD's video analysis format at least shows off videos of either ourselves or other noteworthy players. Its a lot less work.

,

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One its redundant like Chaos said. Two, not every match actually has any valuable information; like if the player is ass, what am I actually getting from that match? SKD's video analysis format at least shows off videos of either ourselves or other noteworthy players. Its a lot less work.

For you, yeah. But it's a lot of work to make match analysis videos. Do you want the community to just be a few key people serving you content and spend a lot of their free time helping you, maybe, learn?

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Hi, hello, gosh this is weird.

 

So, I said this over in mod chat but I wanna move it over in here because I want the general users to see my thought process on this. A lot of it has to do with redundancy and why we made the rules more in line with "info dumping".

So, we have these character subforums, right? They're pretty neat, they house all relevant information for a character. We have this wiki, right? It's pretty neat. It houses all the relevant informa- wait.

Why do we need both of those things to do the same job? We need a video thread, several MU threads, a combo thread, a set up and oki thread, etc. I guess? When all of those things can be formatted and thrown into the wiki. Because discussion can happen there? Discussion rarely happens there, it's more info dumping. Discussion starts to happen there, the things that aren't added to the OP get buried and lost. Besides, a lot of that discussion happens elsewhere offsite, and can just happen in the character general thread anyways. We end up having to be strict and control the content in those boards because we don't want not so relevant things to bury anything useful. It's an issue that really compounds on itself. I honestly don't give a fuck if you want to talk about your waifu's feet, I just don't want you talking about it next to a thread that is supposed to teach all of my character's oki to the universe.

So, with that being said, to be quite honest, social media does what the subforums are supposed to do, but it does it better. Evernotes and google docs exist that contain all of that information, reviewed by multiple players sometimes, are easier to read and work on, require less fiddling, and cut out a lot of the forum BS. Why not just take the link to the doc, throw it in the gen thread, discuss it there and spit out on the wiki once it's been decided? You wanna ask a question? People will just go find the ask FM account of the person they think is most fit to answer them, and they can ask it anon with no account, and usually get a better response because that person is more likely to look at twitter than Dustloop. I mean, twitter actually works better for sending short pieces of information because I can do it on my phone (without a 3rd party app or horrid format), and I'm already looking at other shit on twitter anyways. Hell, my phone has a little special ringtone for my twitter and ask that goes off. I get tagged with something with a link to a doc, I peep that doc and learn a thing, then go back to whatever I'm doing. I should probably put that info on the wiki at some point, but I mean I'll do that. The character forum never even needed to be part of the equation.

From who I've talked to and what I've seen, a lot of users already work like this. I mean, I see it happening in real time on my twitter feed, I even grab Japanese docs I see pop up in their conversations and have people translate them. That works pretty well. So why have a huge info dump subforum as the middle man? We don't need it, a lot of stuff could just fit in single character threads like the UNI forum. That frees up some space and allows breathing room in the gen threads to have some more discussion that doesn't need to be super on point, because I won't have to dig through it later to find one thing, that thing will be on the wiki or in a doc linked somewhere(wiki pages will probably just have a "links" section with good docs crammed into it).

I'd like the forums to be more of a place for discussion, for people to feel comfortable and talk, without them having to worry about putting what where and burying info or whatever. I know the wiki policy used to be "wiki is general info, forum is deeper info" but that didn't work out. Since the info dump in the forums needs to be preserved, discussion suffers as a consequence. I mean, the majority of users just wanna talk in the gen threads anyways because that's where talking happens instead of just raw ass info. I wanna try to propose an idea to make talking the focus of the forum and make info dumping the focus of the wiki. I don't want an off topic board, but I do want things to be more lax in threads. That's why I wanted to try the idea of the reddit style system or BBS system. Conversations can happen there pretty freely, be disposed of pretty freely, and shit can move around. If the forum can do that though, so be it.

This also gives relief to the mod problem. There will be fewer mods without huge character subforums, and the mods that are left will have more power and can more easily manage things. It's hard dealing with the 100 head mod monster that fights itself. It also does put more impetus onto users to try and make conversation with others manageable, so I mean they'll need to be on point too. If somebody steps out of line or starts spouting bullshit, mods will need to be pretty strict and just hand out the infraction or ban. At the same time, if it's a not so serious issue, mods can probably gloss over it and pass it up instead of having to start putting the foot down in the thread.

Anyways, yeah. I'm not saying we need to nuke everything, but it's really worth considering slimming down and focusing on talking, and moving the info dump elsewhere. I hear the idea of users wanting to talk, but it can't exist in the same place as all that information so we should just split them up. That way we can have a nice, good place to store info and the forums can be more about talking and way more open to that happening. The alternative is making Dustloop a raw info dump, no fun allowed zone and tell you to take anything else to social media. That's the direction things moved in, the users didn't like it and the site is now dying :v

 

Edit: The forum upgraded but Kevin hasn't been able to finish formatting it and making it look nice. Be patient and it will be fixed at some point.

Edited by Anne

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As you might've guessed already, I'm not a fan of the whole "Forums are dead, long live Twitter" attitude, but I certainly agree that the redundancy problem is real. Back when the arcade CP has just come out, I did my best contributing to the Bullet subforum, making a separate thread with descriptions and pictures of all her moves, writing down the combos from the combo videos. Then I realized that I should also contribute to the wiki... And basically copy-pasted everything I've written so far over there. Then it has come to the point that the wiki was more up to date, but the thread was still up, no longer serving any purpose. That felt bad, and I wouldn't want that to happen again.

I like the current state of the Bullet discussion: people rarely bring up things unrelated to gameplay, and new tech is brought up every now and then, but I wouldn't mind if it was condensed in a single thread, with someone responsible (the mod?) pasting the emerging tech to the wiki so it doesn't get lost down the road. 

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For the record, I don't think forums are dead. Forums do a unique thing twitter can't in condensing things down to common spaces, and it keeps stuff in a controlled environment(we can't moderate twitter) and it can still be sifted through pretty easily. But the tools we've gained through social media and other spaces as time went on do make parts of what we used forums for in the past redundant. I don't see why we don't let the forum and wiki focus on their individual strengths, while we also use some of those other tools. No point in competing with something that does it better. Forums are better to talk in long form about certain things in an organized manner, so I'd like to let that happen here. Twitter is good for passing things around quickly and directly, but it can't do much past that. Docs are good for housing information, but they get lost. Wikis exist purely to retain information and often house links so they don't get lost, so why not let it do that?

Edited by Anne

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Contrary to many people in this thread I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with Dustloop in its current form. I come to Dustloop, among other places, to read and discuss news related to Arc System Works's games or to obtain information about a character I'm trying out.

As an information source I think Dustloop functions well enough, but compiling and keeping all the information up to date requires dedicated people. To take an example from the wiki: I-No's Xrd article has a boatload of information regarding strategies, combo theory and execution as well as section with combos against all the cast, while the strategy and combo sections in Millia's Xrd article are empty. I didn't mention these to talk down on the Millia community or how some information must be on the wiki, I just meant to point out that in the end, the amount of relevant and interesting information on Dustloop depends on the dedication of the community and it's difficult to just globally improve that.

On another note, I sincerely doubt that people are avoiding Dustloop because of general unfriendliness, drama and/or moderator circle jerking. The users here are, from what I've seen, generally very friendly and accommodating when it comes to new players trying to seek out information, so I don't understand why people keep talking about rudeness and alienating new players as if it's a widespread problem. It might be an issue associated with the fighting game community overall, but on Dustloop, no way. 

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i dont think you've been on DL long enough to have seen whats been going on here for the last 6 years with the ppl associated with this site. if you have then idk where you've been no offense intended. just saying

 

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I think it has less to do with unfriendliness and more to do with perceived unfriendliness. It's like being out of shape and nervous going to the gym. Usually no one cares except you. Occasionally there is someone that's really condescending though. Today I'm planning on trying out a slightly different style of wiki editing and am hoping to get some feed back. I'll specifically be "testing" it with Bullet's 2a and j.c to see if it ends up being too cluttered. Of course, saving the old stuff and reverting if it turns out to be bad.

Also, regardless of what ends up being done with the character subforums and whatnot the lack of bullet points or separation makes it feel very cluttered.

Unrelated, but has anyone been able to get dustloop working on tapatalk since the update?

Edited by Corbenik

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i dont think you've been on DL long enough to have seen whats been going on here for the last 6 years with the ppl associated with this site. if you have then idk where you've been no offense intended. just saying

 

You're right, I've been coming here only occasionally for five or so years, but I didn't start reading these forums frequently until about two years ago. I'm only speaking from what I've seen recently and the Dustloop community seems plenty friendly to me. And no offense taken! I don't partake in drama and insults on the Internet do not faze me, so it's possible I've missed or just ignored some things while I've been here. If it's not too much to ask, could you send me a PM and list some of these major things that have happened these last six years?

I didn't mean to bring up discussion about particular events. However, I'm quite confident that even if there is/was some drama ongoing, I doubt that's something that's preventing large groups of new people from coming here. Again, I'm just speaking from my experience. I'm more willing to believe the All-hail-twitter theory and that new players seek out other places to discuss the games before going on a forum such as Dustloop. Aside from Twitter I imagine new players often find people streaming Arcsys games on Twitch and ask them about game related things. At least it seemed that way to me when I jumped around between Xrd streamers shortly after the North American release of the game.

Edited by SQNR

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@Corbenik  Feel free to experiment with the wiki if you want to. But one thing to keep in mind is that an update to the wiki is in the works and should be rolled out fairly soon.

And yeah, Dustloop has a fairly long and colorful history. But I don't think it's usefulness as an information hub is invalidated by Twitter. Keep in mind that even if you know what players/sources to follow for good information, most people do not. A lot of things get posted and easily forgotten about on Twitter, which is kind of the point. And the reason why Twitter is more accessible is because you post and forget and largely you're talking to people who you want to talk to.

You can post new tech and not have to worry about some dude arguing with you over it because they don't understand something like how TRM functions. And if you do, you call them stupid, block them, and move on. To some people some dude arguing because he doesn't understand basic concepts is valuable because then hopefully other scrublords get a very detailed explanation of why he's wrong and learn from that, to others it is not and a huge waste of their time.

However, Twitter is really awful for keeping track of information. Even when I post resources they get buried pretty easily under regular tweeting. I guess I could pin an evernote to the top or something, but ultimately IMO what Dustloop exists for is to make information accessible.

Edited by Bohemian Polka

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Re: Video thread nuking. I'm only going to speak for BB, and I'm mostly going to use the Jin horibuna page as an example.

At this very moment (if/when an english database is made then this is all just w/e)...video threads are (mostly) not redundant. I checked that video data base for Jin and noticed some glaring problems:

-Pretty much all the videos linked are on Nico. if you don't have premium you're stuck waiting for it to load, a timestamp on a YT video is infinitely more useful. In addition..

-There is SO MUCH (and i can't stress this enough) relevant footage that is actually not on nico. Nico stream archives/JP twitch archives are also not linked there. The top ranked Jin player (Fenrich) plays at an arcade that does not upload their events to Nico (Unless i searched wrong..Tetsuwo isn't even on there (lol) ). Without someone ripping the archive..the top ranked player for that character doesn't exist since November despite participating in his locals on an almost weekly basis. Same for Koike Litchi since the arcade he frequents uploads their stuff to YT and streams on twitch. Not to mention JP players who just stream themselves netplay, that's definitely not going to be covered there despite being useful imo. (Koike streams himself in training mode/casuals very often)

-Some arcades don't seem to post to nico at all (G Station (film's arcade) mostly posts on YT). A-cho is another one, but looking at the Jin database i only see one A-cho link.....and it's not definitely not the relevant one.

A glance at persona shows similar problems but i haven't looked at it as much as i have the Jin page for BB.

Two, not every match actually has any valuable information; like if the player is ass, what am I actually getting from that match?

Going through that Jin page...there is zero Tetsuwo but there are 13 videos for KLY...a jin that has been um.....let's say average, since the cs days.

tl;dr Basically what I'm saying is that directing people to the databases aren't necessarily the answer since they have some holes in them.

Edited by Jourdal

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Hi,

I've done a test restructuring of the wikipedia to be more organized. I was skeptical about sub-dividing characters until I actually did it, it seems quite clean now.

 

Character Example:

http://www.dustloop.com/wiki/index.php?title=BBCPE/Azrael_Test

 

 

Game Example:

http://www.dustloop.com/wiki/index.php?title=BlazBlue:_Chrono_Phantasma_Extend_Test

 

I'm going to restyle the navigation buttons once I have a better idea what dustloop looks like, so consider those placeholder. But it should be more accessible and easier to understand. I can't get too fancy with the styling in order to keep it responsive across all devices, but let me know if anything looks wonky on your display.

 

Let me know any feedback or usability issues. I want to get some basic opinions before I apply it wiki-wide, but the people I've shown it to so far like it.

 

Edited by Yohosie

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Re: Video thread nuking. I'm only going to speak for BB, and I'm mostly going to use the Jin horibuna page as an example.

At this very moment (if/when an english database is made then this is all just w/e)...video threads are (mostly) not redundant. I checked that video data base for Jin and noticed some glaring problems:

-Pretty much all the videos linked are on Nico. if you don't have premium you're stuck waiting for it to load, a timestamp on a YT video is infinitely more useful. In addition..

-There is SO MUCH (and i can't stress this enough) relevant footage that is actually not on nico. Nico stream archives/JP twitch archives are also not linked there. The top ranked Jin player (Fenrich) plays at an arcade that does not upload their events to Nico (Unless i searched wrong..Tetsuwo isn't even on there (lol) ). Without someone ripping the archive..the top ranked player for that character doesn't exist since November despite participating in his locals on an almost weekly basis. Same for Koike Litchi since the arcade he frequents uploads their stuff to YT and streams on twitch. Not to mention JP players who just stream themselves netplay, that's definitely not going to be covered there despite being useful imo. (Koike streams himself in training mode/casuals very often)

-Some arcades don't seem to post to nico at all (G Station (film's arcade) mostly posts on YT). A-cho is another one, but looking at the Jin database i only see one A-cho link.....and it's not definitely not the relevant one.

A glance at persona shows similar problems but i haven't looked at it as much as i have the Jin page for BB.

Going through that Jin page...there is zero Tetsuwo but there are 13 videos for KLY...a jin that has been um.....let's say average, since the cs days.

tl;dr Basically what I'm saying is that directing people to the databases aren't necessarily the answer since they have some holes in them.

Don't we have an english database for Blazblue like the Xrd one in the Video tab and Chainshift? 

 

Speaking of, I really think Chainshift.com should also be in that video tab as well and maybe the Dengeki one as well, depends on who runs it.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94

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Hi,

I've done a test restructuring of the wikipedia to be more organized. I was skeptical about sub-dividing characters until I actually did it, it seems quite clean now.

 

Character Example:

http://www.dustloop.com/wiki/index.php?title=BBCPE/Azrael_Test

 

 

Game Example:

http://www.dustloop.com/wiki/index.php?title=BlazBlue:_Chrono_Phantasma_Extend_Test

 

I'm going to restyle the navigation buttons once I have a better idea what dustloop looks like, so consider those placeholder. But it should be more accessible and easier to understand. I can't get too fancy with the styling in order to keep it responsive across all devices, but let me know if anything looks wonky on your display.

 

Let me know any feedback or usability issues. I want to get some basic opinions before I apply it wiki-wide, but the people I've shown it to so far like it.

 

The best thing about this is an effective way of adding videos. Can the navigation links in the top box just directly link to the subpages as well?

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The best thing about this is an effective way of adding videos. Can the navigation links in the top box just directly link to the subpages as well?

Yea I was just thinking about this as well, the tab should really be able to link to the other parts of the site too.

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It's an auto-generated table, but I can try playing around with it. I was thinking of moving the navigation to the top and condensing it regardless

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Don't we have an english database for Blazblue like the Xrd one in the Video tab and Chainshift? 

 

Speaking of, I really think Chainshift.com should also be in that video tab as well and maybe the Dengeki one as well, depends on who runs it.

Am I just blind? I see the xrd english one....which is great/easy to use. The rest lead to Horibuna databases. http://puu.sh/jmLt3/9c88e7a8aa.png

If there is one...i certainly don't know about it. The language isn't really the issue though, what i was getting at was that an alternate hub for match videos that misses important matches is kind of well...yeah.

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Am I just blind? I see the xrd english one....which is great/easy to use. The rest lead to Horibuna databases. http://puu.sh/jmLt3/9c88e7a8aa.png

If there is one...i certainly don't know about it. The language isn't really the issue though, what i was getting at was that an alternate hub for match videos that misses important matches is kind of well...yeah.

No that's what I was referring to, I remember way back a link up there leading to a similar one with BB and very few matches of 2.0; In any case, I do agree relying primarily on Horibuna is limiting, but the main suggestion was having an easier way of archiving videos without the need of an entire thread.

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I built a custom navigation table as best I could. It's a bit of a pain to edit, but I think people can handle it.

http://www.dustloop.com/wiki/index.php?title=BBCPE/Azrael_Test

 

 

Yeah that's great. I, and I think a lot of other people, just prefer the navigation being located at the top. Condensing the buttons and moving them up is also a great idea.

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Yeah that's great. I, and I think a lot of other people, just prefer the navigation being located at the top. Condensing the buttons and moving them up is also a great idea.

That's difficult to do, because the buttons look really horrible on mobile and small devices when they're at the top of the page. I think it works as is!

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That's difficult to do, because the buttons look really horrible on mobile and small devices when they're at the top of the page. I think it works as is!

As long as its simple and easy to catch my eye it's no problem. Anything beyond that navigation table would just be cosmetic.

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I Think we should main focus on get all the Wikis update and well structed/ updated, has Journal says.
 

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