DISCUSSION Future of the Duel Portal section

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

As you all have noticed by now, this section is very much barren in terms of activity so I want to have a discussion about where you all stand in its future. At the time of writing, there's literally posts from a year ago still on page 1. 

 

Since the dissolution of both 2099 and the YCM Duel Portal format, plus most (if not all) of the DP regulars moving to their own Discord chat for various reasons, the section really boils down to just the support thread and a few minor questions. 

 

Why did you make the section in the first place if it was going to die out?

 

At the time of conception back in late 2014, it was designed to give members more space to expand on Duel Portal ideas instead of getting stuck inside the support thread. For a good while, we did have all iterations of the YCM DP format and 2099, plus some discussion on other stuff. 

 

But again, after both formats dissolved and the DP Discord being formed, yeah, this section generally lost its purpose. 

 

Main ideas for this area were the following:

• Any potential formats you wanted to have for testing your stuff (essentially, filter out the things you don't want from Konami and then apply them to your own stuff).
  • This was the case for DPF, 2099 and the short-lived AGM thing in its infancy (actually, it is still alive but it's exponentially larger and the banlist has definitely changed).
• Hosting tournaments on the server.
  • There have been a few during this section's lifetime, but more front-heavy. 
  • During the time Dueling Network was out, a lot of you used this to get things done as an alternative until Book came around.
• Card discussion that would be pertinent to what's on DP and not for the existing meta.
  • However, unlike Advanced and Casual (including Free Design if you want to go there), the pools are larger, strictly member generated and generally harder to comment for, given its instability and the addition of possible generics/engine cards that may make/break Decks.
  • Some of you who design cards for DP do post them in the regular areas as well. 

 

Bottom-line, this section did have a lot of the things above during its working period, but various factors in recent times have caused the decline in this area.

 

What do I want from you, the member base?

 

How you feel about this section's existence at present, in light of the recent factors contributing to its decline?

 

Outside of the support threads and all because a good chunk of you here do use Duel Portal and are not on the Discord, should we keep the section around?

 

What should be done with it? 

 

Try to make it more appealing for users to come to [maybe get some of the DP Discord members to come here / return], host more tournaments, try to revamp the DP format, etc. 

 

Or if this section's outlived its useful life, just retire it. 

 

---

 

Those of you who have used Duel Portal and this section at any point in time are highly encouraged to give your thoughts on the matter.

[AGATHODAIMON BANGTAIL COW]

Haven't really been on DP much lately but I guess I can try to answer these questions.

 

• How you feel about this section's existence at present, in light of the recent factors contributing to its decline?

The existence of this section, rather than having the Duel Portal thread shelved as a pinned thread in some other section, is a notion of support for the project that I like that the site is showing. A pinned thread blends much more easily into the background of everything else in CC, and heck, we even sometimes have questions in the Questions section about Duel Portal. Which is why that despite the section's lack of activity, that it's had since like forever, I'm loath to say to get rid of it.

 

• What should be done with it?

Given the Discord's takeover of pretty much anything this section could be used for, there's not really much that can be done here. It exists, and is getting the activity, and an entire forum section doesn't have all that much to offer in its stead despite having the advantage of your posted threads being on the surface for far longer than they would be in the Discord before they're eventually buried. Speaking of the Discord, a small benefit could be to pin a thread for the Discord channel, or see if Sea will edit the OP of his thread to include it. I know it is available in the Duel Portal site, but hey, you get to save a step in getting there. Another small change would to also allow this section to function as the Deckbuilding section, in addition to a CC section. I don't actually think anyone would've even batted an eye if someone had posted a Deck build thread, but saying that it's allowed couldn't hurt.

 

This section's activity is based more on the activity of Custom Cards than it is on the activity of Duel Portal itself; YCM is mostly irrelevant to the Discord community from what I've seen.To them, YCM isn't really a community, it's more alike a tool because of the "upload from the cardmaker" option, and they think even less of this place since right now our cardmaker is pretty awful. The eventual cardmaker fix would help activity in this section, but only because it'd improve the activity in CC in general. The Duel Portal Discord community has little reason to even consider a forum when they have Discord, and there's perhaps absolutely nothing that can be done about that. As of this post, they haven't even acknowledged that they even know this thread exists.

 

Perhaps the best course of action would be to try to foster a community that just feels different from the one in the Discord. This could be just because of a few users on the Discord, but the DP Discord peeps sometimes seemed kinda hard to approach. A bit ironic to say coming from me, but still. Nevertheless, they don't seem to have the patience for dealing with DP members that don't commit very much to their archetypes, or play on their power level (which, kinda like back when I and other YCMembers were in their position, seems to be a meta-level or slightly below such). They're totally going to quote this post just to say "nuh-uh, we're totally nice!" now that I said this. The section should be welcoming to the users who aren't doing that. If their entire archetype has no synergy whatsoever, if their monsters are Ninjas instead of Warriors for no apparent reason, if their card arts have no background half the time, let's not get abrasive about it.

 

This is more of a thing that's in this (currently nonexistent) community's hands than in the hands of a moderator, though.

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

To be honest though, I haven't been on it too much over the past couple months either since the switch to Unity, but that's mostly due to splitting my time between real life and here among other stuff (i.e. Some issues on Chromebook/my upstairs computer, internal issues with DP itself which are out of anyone's control, etc).

 

Though, I am technically on the Discord too, but nowadays it is mostly to get any updates on the site since Sea rarely gives them here. For most intents and purposes, I generally lurk because it usually is hard to start a conversation given how fast things go.
 
Then again, the main thing I want to find out from members is how you generally feel about the section right now and thoughts. Doesn't have to be directly answering the two questions. 
 

---

 

• How you feel about this section's existence at present, in light of the recent factors contributing to its decline?

The existence of this section, rather than having the Duel Portal thread shelved as a pinned thread in some other section, is a notion of support for the project that I like that the site is showing. A pinned thread blends much more easily into the background of everything else in CC, and heck, we even sometimes have questions in the Questions section about Duel Portal. Which is why that despite the section's lack of activity, that it's had since like forever, I'm loath to say to get rid of it.

• What should be done with it?

Given the Discord's takeover of pretty much anything this section could be used for, there's not really much that can be done here. It exists, and is getting the activity, and an entire forum section doesn't have all that much to offer in its stead despite having the advantage of your posted threads being on the surface for far longer than they would be in the Discord before they're eventually buried. Speaking of the Discord, a small benefit could be to pin a thread for the Discord channel, or see if Sea will edit the OP of his thread to include it. I know it is available in the Duel Portal site, but hey, you get to save a step in getting there. Another small change would to also allow this section to function as the Deckbuilding section, in addition to a CC section. I don't actually think anyone would've even batted an eye if someone had posted a Deck build thread, but saying that it's allowed couldn't hurt.
 
This section's activity is based more on the activity of Custom Cards than it is on the activity of Duel Portal itself; YCM is mostly irrelevant to the Discord community from what I've seen.To them, YCM isn't really a community, it's more alike a tool because of the "upload from the cardmaker" option, and they think even less of this place since right now our cardmaker is pretty awful. The eventual cardmaker fix would help activity in this section, but only because it'd improve the activity in CC in general. The Duel Portal Discord community has little reason to even consider a forum when they have Discord, and there's perhaps absolutely nothing that can be done about that. As of this post, they haven't even acknowledged that they even know this thread exists.
 
Perhaps the best course of action would be to try to foster a community that just feels different from the one in the Discord. This could be just because of a few users on the Discord, but the DP Discord peeps sometimes seemed kinda hard to approach. A bit ironic to say coming from me, but still. Nevertheless, they don't seem to have the patience for dealing with DP members that don't commit very much to their archetypes, or play on their power level (which, kinda like back when I and other YCMembers were in their position, seems to be a meta-level or slightly below such). They're totally going to quote this post just to say "nuh-uh, we're totally nice!" now that I said this. The section should be welcoming to the users who aren't doing that. If their entire archetype has no synergy whatsoever, if their monsters are Ninjas instead of Warriors for no apparent reason, if their card arts have no background half the time, let's not get abrasive about it.
 
This is more of a thing that's in this (currently nonexistent) community's hands than in the hands of a moderator, though.

 

[spoiler=I need to stop writing textwalls]
1. Yeah, I'd rather not get rid of it because getting easier to support and all for DP is important, as opposed to it being stickied in Experimental where it once was. 
 
2. I'd be open to having this be a Deckbuilding section, though you were allowed to do that in here anyway, but with DP stuff only. With the suggestion, suppose you can take in your custom archetypes and then put in any outside techs that Konami made. CC does lack its own deck area though, so...
 

(How does everyone feel about giving CC its own Deck area? Or I guess the equivalent of TCG's Tournament, Theory and Deck areas rolled into one.)

3. I won't deny the fact that the Discord is a major contributor to this section's decline (and by extension, Casual/Advanced too because some of their members also used to post there too). There are other factors too such as the aforementioned formats going out of style for various reasons.

 

A member did post a new link to the server (as I do recall that the previous one got deleted due to the owner's controversies or something; should still be on this page or top of page 2 at the time of writing). I could just edit the link in on my own though. 
 
The cardmaker's still sheet; not denying it, though they got their own templates for Paint.NET and Photoshop that also work with their custom summoning mechanics and stuff. Or yes, TCGEditor (even though no Links there either). With the updated one, it's coming along for the most part; slowly, but it's there. 
 

There are some active YCM members on that server right now; obvious ones are Eshai, Terrie/Azuriena, Zazu and myself. Other/former members of note who I can recognize are Fukato (idk how active he is), NovaInfinity (I think this is darkfireblade25, who used to be a judge in 2099), Sk00ps (Rei Saotome, who owns the server), Sluggaholic and Minimania.

 

(If you're a YCM member on there and weren't mentioned, I apologize.)

 

Like you mentioned though, the DP Discord runs separately and has nothing to do with us. Granted, there are the occasional inquiries about certain members here who are also there, but that's about it. Looking at their three review channels (oh yes, they actually have multiples for reviews because of bigger backlogs than the review request threads in Advanced/Casual), they can generally be okay in reviewing, but there are the design mentality discussions between a few members here and there; some of them do end up being somewhat abrasive (i.e. forcing card making ideals onto other users). And yes, there's also a dump channel for stuff that people no longer want to work on.

 

(So yeah, they really don't check this place too much.)

 

4. (Re-)building a DP community here would be the best idea, yes.
 
When I had a talk with Sk00ps and the other DP server admins, things they told me were that they didn't like how forums are structured in general (either by nature of posting or just the communities). I don't remember the precise details as it has been a good while since that conversation. 

 

Like I noted above, their general mentalities range from being civil to otherwise pushing their own ideologies on design onto users (that, and not wanting to grade certain types of cards). One example was a new member who posted 25 Pokémon cards that were admittedly not great (I remember this because I was grading them on hiatus), and yeah, general response by one of them was "you're getting reviewed by a guy even less active than (whoever); be grateful peasant". I cannot say if that member who post these cards ever read the critique or logged onto the server again. 

 

(They do have their fair share of drama too, but I'm not at liberty to discuss it too much because I'm usually gone when it happens and then I end up asking "what the hell happened". I am a DP moderator, but that doesn't equate to actual server power [and it's just a role that I can use to talk about server stuff with the other mods])

 

It's probably not surprising that they also had a feedback channel to complain about certain admins they didn't like (though I'm not at liberty to discuss this one in specific because I don't check). Yeah, I am a DP moderator, but I got no actual powers in the server.

 

Yeah, it's more on the community as a whole to build. While I or whoever else that gets elected for CC can try our best for the section and keep things in order, it's up to everyone to make it worth a place being on. 

 

 

 

tl;dr version

 

1. Yeah, keep the place around for general DP support.

 

2. You got my support in reformatting the DP section to handle CC decklists in general (your custom cards combined with Konami stuff to make something). Can still host tournaments and general card making theory (what would make things work in terms of archetype/series design, etc) in here too if that's what members want. 

 

3. For most part, the DP chat is oblivious to our affairs here (except when they ask me about certain matters). A few YCM members do exist there as well, but their activity levels vary. But yeah, it is a major reason for declining activity in CC overall (though there's other factors).

 

4. Rebuilding our DP community is the best idea right now, but does depend on you guys actually making it a place where members can feel welcome and collaborate on things. A lot of why the DP regulars don't come here is usually because of how the forum is structured and how we as members act towards them. Their community isn't perfect; CC's community isn't perfect and by extension, the whole site isn't. (I digress on the last one)

 

The success of revitalizing this section does fall on you as the memberbase to make it happen; the staff does play a role, but our jobs are mostly to facilitate things and keep the peace.

 

=====

Your comments are appreciated.

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

Before I go through with any changes to this section (well, I'd like more than one person to give opinions), anyone else have things they wish to say in here? 

 

 

At present, I'm probably going to change DP to be a Deckbuilding area for Custom Cards; somewhat similar to the Decks section in TCG (but not really). You would still be able to host tournaments and stuff though (if any of you find time for it). 

 

You will still have the Support / Bug threads if you need to ask questions about anything pertaining to DP, but just that it won't be the main focus of this section anymore, given the activity being shifted to their Discord.

[Guest Lightning777]

Well, for starters, the features to delete account if you feel like you no longer need it.

Also, a rating at the end of a duel to see if your cards are overpowered or not.

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

Well, for starters, the features to delete account if you feel like you no longer need it.

Also, a rating at the end of a duel to see if your cards are overpowered or not.

 

This thread is for how to improve the SECTION, not the actual program.

 

As for the latter, I think it's already there but I've not seen it used too much. Former, you would need to talk to Sea about that, but would probably run on the same principles as here in terms of account deletion.

 

=====

For everyone:

 

I did say that this section may be revamped to a general Deckbuilding area for CC, but I haven't gone through with the idea due to lack of input among other things. So, if you guys have any input on this idea or other suggestions, do speak up.

 

Just don't spam this thread or misbehave in here, but this should be self-explanatory.