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huey253

"Under Heaven Destruction" Dustloop Revamp Community Effort #2

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Community Effort #1 was a great success!!! We have tons of feedback which we are currently integrating now, as well as some other big plans that will come into play in the near future. Please continue to use that thread to suggest potential changes to our current front page. The main topic for this week's discussion is....


Match-up Threads

 

After reviewing the feedback we've received in the general feedback thread, we've realized that this an important issue with Dustloop that needs to get resolved. As of right now, our current solution for matchup threads is very inefficient and redundant (two threads for one matchup). Any and all advice regarding improvements or redesigns to the threads will be considered. Thank you for supporting Dustloop and believing in our community :)

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Ideas from the other thread included @zissou's idea of having a 

which included a huge table of links to threads for each matchup

 

Other ideas include

  • Do what the UNI forums have with a singular matchup forum for everyone to discuss matchups.
  • Creating singular Matchup threads in each character's subforums to share anti-char tech

One thing for sure, I want to get rid of the matchup subforums under each character's fourm haha

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If it's feasible, the "one matchup thread for each two characters" (ie: Zato v Faust and Faust v Zato should be the same thread) seems like the most logical approach. Zissou's suggested presentation of that approach is also nice, though I have absolutely no idea how feasible it is to implement that type of table on a forum.

 

While the UNI forums single thread per character approach is definitely better than what we have at the moment for the bigger games, it's still not very good for promoting discussion between players of both characters in a given matchup. It does sound much easier to implement, though?

 

The anti-char tech suggestion sounds somewhat awkward. Not sure how that would play out without having a better idea of what that suggestion is actually aiming for.

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I really ship the idea of singular matchup threads, a couple of benefits that it would provide: 

- Opposing players would be able to look at matchups from the perspective of their opponents in a clearer view

- Less daunting for mods/members to fill in 28 seperate matchup threads, when players from both boards are able to throw their two cents in, effectively filling it in. 

- Additionally, uncommon matchups are more likely to get information put in them, since players of both characters can easily discuss it. 

- It'll look a lot more cleaner, it was kind of redundant to have 56 different threads dedicated to the same matchup anyway. 

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New Board (Match Ups)

Sub Board (For Each Game)

Inside the Sub Board will contain every possible match up.

Have a pinned Thread that will act as a contents page for quick linking to Match Up threads. Like finding chapters in a book. (Saves you scrolling and scouting around for threads further down looking for the one you want)

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Maybe under each subboard heading, you could have that MU table that was suggested. Then you'd click and it would take you to the thread. That still kind of compartmentalizes everybody though...

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My favorite idea was the grid idea mentioned by someone before zissou i think. Plus I like the idea of a MatchUp Grid. 

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My only question is: Where would the grid go? A directory at the top of the subforum? The wiki? Because directory might be cool, but the nature of forums is the most recently active threads are at the top. I'm also not sure how it would keep track of new posts... but I guess that would be a task for the development side.

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I also feel that the grid is going to be hard to navigate if there is more than 20 characters in the game. Organizing it in alphabetical order and telling you the name of each square when you hover over it would make it easier, but you're still dealing with about 200 points.

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I'm glad my idea gained some traction! I really believe the core idea of one thread per unique match-up is the best way to get more match-up discussion happening and to get both sides (people who main each of the characters in question for a given match-up) participating.

I agree that using a grid to select the match-up you want to discuss could get unwieldy with higher numbers of characters. You could just two drop own boxes where you select the character names as used in the keep on rockin' video database.  

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If we did go with the grid idea, I think it should go on the wiki and redirect to the forum so they can discuss.

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Is there a way to leave the layout, but make it so the two match up threads just link to the same one?

Ahh- I suppose that would work too (assuming both links could be made to go to the one thread as you stated).

The core idea of a single thread per unique match-up is the most important part, IMO, but since everybody seems to be in agreement on that, now it's just deciding the interface for navigating to the appropriate thread. Part of that will just depend on what's technologically feasible- I'm not sure which of the ideas proposed so far are possible/practical to implement.

 

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The thing about if you could have the two threads link up to the same one would be that every time a new version comes out, an administrator would have to create a new thread and link it to each character board. (If it's possible)

The other way to do it would be to create a board for each match up and have threads in there for each version.

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Is there a way to leave the layout, but make it so the two match up threads just link to the same one?

While this is possible, unless there's a cleaner way to do it, the only method I know of right now is redirects, which I personally think tend to look pretty ugly.

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Thinking about organization within the threads...

Not necessary, but Is there any way to easily differentiate posts from character perspectives shy of everyone actually writing out "I PLAY X CHAR"? Like, having a single thread is important IMO, but you also don't want to compromise the ability to quickly search for information relevant to your character (also, most people will be writing from the perspective of one character in a matchup, not both). Of course, it is ultimately important to see something like "oh, this character's move can punish this" but once you start to delve into character specific reasoning and stuff like that, it starts to become less urgent. You might not need to know every little nuance, there is definitely a priority on a specific character's perspective for players looking for light information, so I think some way to mark posts would be really nice.

tl;dr:

-First two/three posts of the thread can be maintained to include relevant information for each character / blah blah.

-Some way to mark posts perhaps? Character 1 Info / Character 2 Info / Neutral or Mixed Info ?

In terms of actually maintaining the initial posts, how would that go? Like, matchups subforum where all character mods have permissions? I think the grid idea is very cute, but i dont really know where something like that would be well placed. Complementary to a normally navigable subforum and placed somewhere could work, but still, could be unwieldy haha. I don't really think it has a place on the wiki, just thinking about the wiki's current formatting and coverage of information.

I like the idea of having it in a stickied post to navigate through the matchup subforum. It would also be easy to have a redirect in the character subforum to the matchup subforum, i think. Hell, it could even be a strip of the grid linking to the character's relevant threads.

I also really feel that there shouldnt really be new threads per version of a matchup, perhaps new GAMES are okay (in blazblue's case, CF is looking very similar to CP, so this might not even be necessary). Besides many dynamics between characters staying the same, contrasting how things have changed can be okay. I really doubt the threads are going to be so boisterous that it will be difficult to keep up with what information is relevant to what version.

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Thinking about organization within the threads...

Not necessary, but Is there any way to easily differentiate posts from character perspectives shy of everyone actually writing out "I PLAY X CHAR"?

Maybe if there was a way to tag posts themselves, just like the news articles. Then each post in the thread could be tagged "Hakumen" or "Izayoi" and then you could just pull up the posts related to one character.

But I have no idea if this is even possible on the forum.

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If you're thinking a post per character in a single thread, then one way to do it is in the OP/main/first post, you would need to make a contents page and all you would need to do is make a list of links that link the post number = character.

Example:

[url = post number link ] Ragna [ url ]

Make list and so on.

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I suppose something that might help the site is getting a web designer.  Currently, the site looks horrendous and amateurish.   Even in it's prime it was never that great.  Maybe we can start some kind of kickstarter?   Silly idea, but I do think revamping the visuals and UI of the site itself would help a fair amount in the long run, and a profession would be best if we could make that happen.

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I feel like you're needlessly concerned with complicating the match-up threads. Clearly presented true information does not require knowledge of which of the characters the poster in question plays. "Slayer's 6P counters Faust F.S" requires no special extra information to understand. Of course if the poster instead said "Use your 6P to beat his ranged normals!" it wouldn't necessarily be clear who is who, but that post is shitty and vague to begin with.

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I think a wiki page would be useful because system mechanics affect matchups universally. There's no general "vs Character X" matchup threads, even though things like blockstrings tend to be universal. For example, in Xrd, a 1 frame gap in a blockstring allows for throw/Blitz/backdash/DP and bigger gaps allow for jump/mash. Any character can take advantage of these openings, so why repeat that information 17+ times in 17+ different places? Backdashes, etc. do vary among characters, but the point is to collect universal information to let people experiment with their own characters.

A wiki page can also be edited by anyone, but (as I understand it) initial posts in matchup threads have to be edited by the OP or mods.

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Yeah. I thought about that too. Just without the right resources, it might not be good? My idea was to record and embed video for specific things just so new players have something to reference and leave the more meta stuff for the threads, but I don't know if the other pages would actually do that. As it is the BBCPE wiki is missing a ton of stuff. I haven't actually looked at the GGXrd wiki at all so I don't know if it's in a similar state.

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To avoid compartmentalization, maybe we could throw all of the MU threads into one giant subforum (though that'd be a mess) but still have that matchup grid to act as a shortcut. That way you could go right into a MU thread if you wanted but you could also easily see and jump to other active ones.

There's probably a better way to do it but you get the idea.

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I'm making a new mathcups section as discussed in this thread, and I've made a way to select matchup threads via 2 selection boxes. Hopefully i can get it up and running some time this weekend!

Capture.PNG

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So is there going to only be one thread for a matchup? Like, there's only going to be a "Ragna vs. Jin" thread for both parties and not a "Jin vs. Ragna" thread.

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