More About Custom Cards:

[Sleepy]

I have a couple things....
Can we get rid of some of the sections?
The other forum (NCM) doesn't have "casual vs advanced" at all, and the thing is, the line can be very easily blurred at a very fat point and it is not like we have enough activity to justify 2 areas further dividing up the member activity. I noticed earlier there was this member that complained about how barren advanced is anyways...
Just having a "Custom Cards" instead of "Casual" and "Advanced"....

The other thing is a bit more of a debatable point but:
I also would like to dismiss the "joke and overpowered" section. I think it loses the point if people have to go look for "the joke" at a different corner... nobody falls for the joke. I think it was a fun experience back in the MyBB days of the forum when you'd just get caught off guard by off the wall content. How many people really go looking for it anyways? 
I think it's enough if people say "Joke/OP" inside their thread's original post to avoid people trying to dump a balance essay on their joke because said joke wasn't clear to everybody....

Umm what do you think?

[The Nyx Avatar]

It wasn't always this way. I remember when I first started this account (2014), there was a Custom Cards and a Pop Culture cards section. Dunno why they did the split of Advanced and Casual.

I'd be okay for the split just to be for Singles and Multiples, as opposed to Casual and Advanced. I mean, it's not like we have many users posting there. 

The Joke and Overpowered section could be hidden (given how no one can even post there). It's just a question as to how to merge/hide whole sections/subsections.

[Rayfield Lumina]

I'm not sure about this. Joke and Overpowered, it can go no problem. But somehow I liked the division between Casual and Advanced. The thing is that some people come all violent attacking your cards and whatnot (doesn't happen normally, but it's a possibility) because they're YGO competitive geeks like Darj and didn't like X or Y of your post. The idea of having them divided is because you're supposed to get much more friendly and lenient feedback in Casual. Anyway, I suppose it can be solved by mentioning clearly that the environment of your Topic is either Casual or Advanced.

[Sleepy]

Ah yeah, I remember the Pop Culture Cards section as well xD 
I had forgotten about it until you mentioned. I think it was for stuff like "I made a set of cards for Madoka Magica", "checkout my Spongebob cards" and stuff like that.
Often enough the cards would otherwise be pretty balanced so it was just a superficial difference that put them in pop culture.

Singles vs Multiples I think is needed yes xP
and I remember there were a lot of members complaining that they don't make the cards with the metagame in mind (AKA "stop pestering me about improving it to stand up to the top tier, I made it for my casual favorite theme"). Or vice versa with casuals insisting something is broken and competitive minded users explaining why it wasn't as huge a deal... 
That said, I don't think we have much activity AT ALL these days so I'd personally say we can benefit from a merge.

[Sleepy]

1 minute ago, Rayfield Lumina said:

I'm not sure about this. Joke and Overpowered, it can go no problem. But somehow I liked the division. The thing is that some people come all violent attacking your cards and whatnot (doesn't happen normally, but it's a possibility) because they're YGO competitive geeks like Darj and didn't like X or Y of your post. The idea of having them divided is because you're supposed to get much more friendly and lenient feedback in Casual. Anyway, I suppose it can be solved by mentioning clearly that the environment of your Topic is either Casual or Advanced.

The line can be a little blurry, as some people posting their casual stuff think there feedback is not valid because "it's just casual". Not realizing there's ways to optimize support for casual themes where things DO improve and it still makes the supported card(s) nowhere near tier 1 status. Kind of like an excuse.... it doesn't work well when the other side is pushy...
but like... has that happened at all in the past huh.... 3 or 4 years? xD

[The Nyx Avatar]

12 minutes ago, Sleepy said:

Ah yeah, I remember the Pop Culture Cards section as well xD 
I had forgotten about it until you mentioned. I think it was for stuff like "I made a set of cards for Madoka Magica", "checkout my Spongebob cards" and stuff like that.
Often enough the cards would otherwise be pretty balanced so it was just a superficial difference that put them in pop culture.

Singles vs Multiples I think is needed yes xP
and I remember there were a lot of members complaining that they don't make the cards with the metagame in mind (AKA "stop pestering me about improving it to stand up to the top tier, I made it for my casual favorite theme"). Or vice versa with casuals insisting something is broken and competitive minded users explaining why it wasn't as huge a deal... 
That said, I don't think we have much activity AT ALL these days so I'd personally say we can benefit from a merge.

 

8 minutes ago, Sleepy said:

The line can be a little blurry, as some people posting their casual stuff think there feedback is not valid because "it's just casual". Not realizing there's ways to optimize support for casual themes where things DO improve and it still makes the supported card(s) nowhere near tier 1 status. Kind of like an excuse.... it doesn't work well when the other side is pushy...
but like... has that happened at all in the past huh.... 3 or 4 years? xD

There were a few members that were very critical, but given the lack of activity, and how some of those members aren't even that active in Custom Cards anymore, I think it's fine. Just try not to post anything that's very blatantly unfair.

I'm not against merging the two and hiding Joke and Overpowered Cards. We'd just have to know how to do that.

[Rayfield Lumina]

17 minutes ago, Sleepy said:

The line can be a little blurry, as some people posting their casual stuff think there feedback is not valid because "it's just casual". Not realizing there's ways to optimize support for casual themes where things DO improve and it still makes the supported card(s) nowhere near tier 1 status. Kind of like an excuse.... it doesn't work well when the other side is pushy...
but like... has that happened at all in the past huh.... 3 or 4 years? xD

 

5 minutes ago, The Nyx Avatar said:

 

There were a few members that were very critical, but given the lack of activity, and how some of those members aren't even that active in Custom Cards anymore, I think it's fine. Just try not to post anything that's very blatantly unfair.

I'm not against merging the two and hiding Joke and Overpowered Cards. We'd just have to know how to do that.

I get what you mean. It's a little hard to determine where the line is supposed to be, it depends in the person and their mindset. With all honesty, I love getting feedback in my Casual cards, but not when the person comes with an "Advanced" attitude and saying why your cards terribly fail in X and Y. I don't feel the lack of activity is truly a reason for merging both sections. No can do if there's no activity, but having them separate help maintain the order and improves the chances that people will keep the level of their feedback how they should, having all customs in a single place will cause a mess, imo

[The Nyx Avatar]

2 minutes ago, Rayfield Lumina said:

 

I get what you mean. It's a little hard to determine where the line is supposed to be, it depends in the person and their mindset. With all honesty, I love getting feedback in my Casual cards, but not when the person comes with an "Advanced" attitude and saying why your cards terribly fail in X and Y. I don't feel the lack of activity is truly a reason for merging both sections. No can do if there's no activity, but having them separate help maintain the order and improves the chances that people will keep the level of their feedback how they should, having all customs in a single place will cause a mess, imo

So would you propose a strict rule of "If you review/critique a card and believe it to be unbalanced, give a suggestion as to how to better balance it"?

[Rayfield Lumina]

5 minutes ago, The Nyx Avatar said:

So would you propose a strict rule of "If you review/critique a card and believe it to be unbalanced, give a suggestion as to how to better balance it"?

No strict rules, I'd say. We're striving to help increase the site's activity, iron rules will probably keep away newcomers who just want to have a good time posting the stuff that comes from the heart (<-sorry for the corny comment). I'm against a merge, but if you guys see it as an useful measure and proceed with it, I'd say the rule should be somewhat along:

At the start of your Thread, CLEARLY state if your topic is Casual or Advanced. The kind of feedback you'll receive should be based on that parameter.

[Tinkerer]

Is this topic coming up in response to @Messoras?

There is value in merging the CC sections, but I there is also value in keeping them separate.  Honestly, I don't care much one way or the other.  My concern would mostly be for new users and I'm not sure how merging might affect them.

@Thomas★Zero Any thoughts from our resident Advanced/Singles poster?

[Messoras]

I literally joined this community about a week ago, but since I got pinged, and spent alot of time in this forum in the last days, I hope you don't mind me commenting on this too. First of all I don't really care much about singles, so I won't really consider them in this evaluation. I basically agree with Lumina, as I definetely think the type of reviews is supposed to differ significantly depending on whether Casual or Advanced Cards are adressed. 

On Advanced Expectations: As a creator of Advanced Cards I don't want to read anything like "The cards are cool" or "The cards are silly", and although it is of course satisfying to know people like what you made, I would rather discuss about PSCT, balance and smoothness of the Cards/Decks/Archetypes and their playstyle. The way I expect people to evaluate my cards, and the way I evaluate theirs is taking a close look at the cards, correcting errors (if any), seeing them as a unit and classify their playstyle, aswell as trying to compare them to meta strategies and placing them inside a competitive environment to evaluate their balance (my target tier for Advanced Custom Cards would usually be anything between Tier 1 and rouge). I actually think the best way of assessing custom cards is actually testing them and I expect people who post Advanced Cards to test their cards on their own. In an optimal scenario every user who evaluates a Custom Card Archetype should actually do some testing with it too.

On Casual Expectations: I guess for Casual Cards there's not even a fragment of all of this to do, as I realized alot of people making them don't really understand the exact rules or PSCT, so I guess what they expect from a reply is something like an opinion about the card names and effects, aswell as a rating in "good" or "bad" and maybe some form of suggestions for improvement of clunky card text or effects.

For most of the cards I've seen in Advanced so far, I don't really think that they actually meet the requirements to be called "Advanced", as they contain a whole lot of errors and incorrectly used game mechanics or to put it briefly: very bad PSCT. Also, regarding the way people post their cards in Advanced, I assume the expectations of most of the posters in Advanced Cards rather come close to what I call Casual Expectations.

So in conclusion I think merging the two sections won't hurt anyone, as if there is anyone who still has Advanced Expectations on replies, they could tag their cards "Advanced" and ask for a detailed evaluation.

That was my opinion on the subject.

Best regards,
Messoras

P.S: pls don't be mad at me for calling everyone casual

[Sleepy]

@Messoras
We do have a lot of fresh blood around here indeed and I can say I've bumped into people telling me they don't care about exact PSCT so long as the effect's functionality is clear (and it often is only clear because I can guess the intention but the way it is written actually conflicts). xD
We are currently in the stage of trying to nurture some more consistent activity and get some improvement from there. Now, not everybody is in here for the same reasons so deep reviews won't always get rewarded so I can understand if you feel the burnout (have experienced it myself and so I actually haven't posted cards in... in IDK if months or years at this point xD )

I personally believe you can give a good critique to optimize something even if the theme supported will still not jump near tier 1 status at all. A few cards can't carry the world in their shoulders and some themes are too far behind, but it's not really a reason to never take a critique for casuals seriously (I'd say it goes beyond just grammar fixes). The amount of people that truly want nothing to change in their cards and just wanted to show them off is I think not the norm, even if sometimes you get no response at all from your critiques.

I find it interesting that you opened the post saying "I agree with Rayfield" and ended with "we could afford to merge"... even if the reasoning is "everybody is too much of a filthy casual" hahaha. Well I guess they are not contradictory thoughts. The section is supposed to have different mindsets but we are currently struggling with activity at all so it is fine for now. We'll take it from there and I think so long as we implement some etiquette we should be able to make it work, and who knows? maybe the section will have better times ahead.

Jolly mentioned you already posted in a number of threads so I am gonna take note on what you are saying here... I need to go around and check the state of things... I think Advanced is like 80% filled with Thomas's posts xD

@Rayfield Lumina
Yeah I see your concerns. I think it is common courtesy that if somebody replies they don't want that kind of approach, or don't reply at all (which is rude I know), the person giving feedback shouldn't get too pushy about it. Let us try to avoid those interactions from turning into heated arguments for now... I just am hoping that by putting the card makers into a single more concentrated area we might generate a bit more of a long lasting community even if it starts up small and with a lot of newbies or with a few people that are a bit overbearing on the competitive side of things. Rule of thumb: We gotta make thee members be nice xD
It is kinda the approach of my art club and although it is definitely not overflowing with activity or new members, it is the only non-dead club in both sites so there's that ^^"






 

[Sleepy]

2 hours ago, Mr Melon said:

Is this topic coming up in response to @Messoras?

There is value in merging the CC sections, but I there is also value in keeping them separate.  Honestly, I don't care much one way or the other.  My concern would mostly be for new users and I'm not sure how merging might affect them.

@Thomas★Zero Any thoughts from our resident Advanced/Singles poster?

Oh and yeah, that pushed me to put this thread on but it was more of a reminder than the origin of it.
I think I gotta think about the pros and cons of both keeping them together and separate, and seeing how it weights, though my hunch is that a lot of downsides of having them merged are nullified under close to no activity.

[Thomas★Zero]

10 hours ago, Mr Melon said:

Is this topic coming up in response to @Messoras?

There is value in merging the CC sections, but I there is also value in keeping them separate.  Honestly, I don't care much one way or the other.  My concern would mostly be for new users and I'm not sure how merging might affect them.

@Thomas★Zero Any thoughts from our resident Advanced/Singles poster?

I think regarding this the point to advanced was more to design cards with a support/idea to support themes in the game on a more standard/competive Level while following general card design while casual was just more so about making cards in any way without said restrictions hence why we have stuff like concept section in casual.

[YCMaker]

There are way too many sections. We need to simplify the forum structure if we want to encourage first time users to engage with the site. Pinning this thread until we can come up with a good solution here.

[Horu]

Just have a casual and advanced section. Remove the multiple sections. I mean, sure having the sections looks neat and all. But it also makes the site look like it has less activity than it really does. Also, removing the subsections makes it easier to hop from thread to thread. Experimental subsection should be its own category since that often pertains from new template/card designs and/or new game mechanics.

[Sleepy]

    I'd be normally tempted the disagree with that notion though..... as my personal experience had my preference on singles and when I found myself in a streak of finding sets after long sets after sets I'd feel less compelled to revisit for a while. That said, I see some people have the opposite preference and look for sets while deeming singles as not something with enough of an impact to shake up the status quo of the IRL game-state., and tend to skip them. On the other hand, I saw some people had issues with mixing competitive and casual content instead, fearing casuals to be not very good at taking feedback to really shape up their creations or fearing competitive-minded people will get pushy and high and mighty about what they think is best/worthwhile for the game..... I think there's a big gray area here but can't say the issue ever disappears.

    Clearly everybody is clashing in what we think the real issues are, yet due to declined activity we aren't really sure how many of these issues actually still exist in our member-base. I propose then something a bit more radical as an experiment: What if we simply fused all of Custom Cards into one primordial spot and see what issues arise. Then we take care of them as they appear and ignore the ones that do not wind up presenting a problem. We are worried about issues that won't even begin to exist until there is enough activity to really account for them. Though I'd like to see what the feedback from the other members that have put input in this thread is on the matter...

    EDIT:
Well to be honest, I'd be a bit worried about the Experimental section and the Workshop/"Create a Card" Games section..... those are their own thing completely. Though what I am saying in the above paragraphs is to disregard singles vs multiples and casual vs advanced, and dump the 4 in a single spot, and see if it wreaks havoc or if it builds up to merely standard desired amounts of activity. Then re-create whatever branches whose demand arises for and go from there.

[Sleepy]

Huh, I forgot there was "other TCG" as a part of CC. Mainly MTG since there's a card maker for it even if it is not super active either. That does sound incompatible with Yugioh's CC section... Contests is also kinda dead but I don't think anywhere else could fill that niche for when the need arises.... I'd leave these out of my suggestion.

YGOPro/Duel Portal I have no idea at the moment what to suggest for tbh.....

[Rayfield Lumina]

Goodness, we're moving from thinking of merging Casual /Advanced to even including Singles / Multiples in the Polymerization? I'm not comfortable with the plan, but I see your point about taking action and responding later depending on the outcome. At this point, I don't see what else we can do, beyond waiting for the fully updated and functional card maker, and perhaps the return of a point system. I've heard many complains about the veterans about the disappearance of said system as well as the famous friend list, which was replaced by the "following" format.

[ENMaker]

the subforums are basically outdated due to the plummet in activity, sections that were necessary when there was hundreds to thousands of people online and dozens of topics posted each day are not when we now average about 15 people active and on that basis i would say that just casual and advanced sections would be sufficient for the time being

experimental cards by their nature will have to be in casual because you can't post invented card types in advanced, and there's no real need to have singles and multiples subdivided when you can just have it in the title of the thread and, again, there's so few threads anyway that collecting all the activity into just a few centralised hubs is definitely beneficial as well as you just have all of the recent content that has been submitted conveniently grouped

so to summarise either sleepy or horu's suggestions i would say make the most sense given what we have

[Rayfield Lumina]

I have my concerns about Sleepy's plan, but I'll support it, let's see where it take us. The one thing I'd suggest is to make an official rule so people always tags their topics with Singles / Multiples. Sure, they can add that to the topic's name, but it'll probably be more organized this way.