Delta-cod
Smash Hero
Hey everyone, Deltacod here, your (as of writing) Smash Ultimate Yoshi Board moderator. As those who have been around Smashboards for a while know, activity on the boards (especially the Yoshi boards) tends to become...non existent very quickly into a game's life cycle. When I initially joined Smashboards during the Brawl days, the Yoshi boards were a pretty active place. I had been lurking for a week or two before finally making an account and posting. There was plenty of activity, match up discussions tended to actually get some nice meaty analysis going, lab and data was cataloged pretty well (though not everything was completed), and the community felt welcoming to all new players.
Perhaps my favorite time on Smashboards history was when the Brawl Back Room undertook the massive project of developing a match up chart for every single match up in the game. Character experts from each board were brought into a forum to discuss match ups with each other and to try and arrive at a ratio, to provide a nice resource for all Brawl players, across every single character. It was a really incredible experience -- discussions were nice and organized, the analysis was (generally) well thought out, and I feel like some aspects of match ups that had never been explored before got...well, explored!
Unfortunately, with the advent of Esports and social media and sponsors and branding and streaming and twitter and etc. etc. etc., board activity does not last long at all. After the initial hype wave, people come to the boards, ask to be pointed to the nearest Discord (using Smash 4 boards as an example), then...never really show up again. Full disclosure: I don't spend any time on Discord (I ain't got time for that), so I don't know what happens there. I'm sure people help each other out and discuss match ups. The problem is...where is this discussion cataloged? Where can a new Yoshi go to find all this information that's been provided already? Where are the resources for players to reference so they can try to improve their game?
I think that this move to more instant media (Discord, twitter) has been good for getting people talking, but awful for the benefit of lower leveled players. Guides and data aren't quite as easily accessible as they used to be. If I'm trying to find any information for self study, I'm probably out of luck. I'm entirely dependent on the good graces of a top player to share their wisdom with me, if they feel like I'm worth the time. I think that, since the Brawl days, the average player of a Smash game has gotten worse. I actually feel confident in my ability to place Top 16 in a local and I've attended one whole Smash 4 tournament in my life. There's not enough investment in the community anymore, just feeding the top players.
So, I want to try to reverse this trend for Ultimate. I want Smashboards to actually be a place where players can come, find cataloged data easily, find match up analyses, get critiques, and to feel like this is a place where good discussion actually takes place. I don't want the Yoshi community to be a place where there are one or two Yoshi Gods and everyone else is basically scrubbing out of their own locals. Everyone should be at a decent level of play. This is the type of playerbase that will prove Yoshi's strength.
I posted some ideas (and a similar explanation) on the Smash 4 boards. You can find the original here: https://smashboards.com/threads/yoshi-social-20-years-of-yoshis-island.352003/page-72#post-21940541
Here's the things I think need to happen (from the same post):
Perhaps my favorite time on Smashboards history was when the Brawl Back Room undertook the massive project of developing a match up chart for every single match up in the game. Character experts from each board were brought into a forum to discuss match ups with each other and to try and arrive at a ratio, to provide a nice resource for all Brawl players, across every single character. It was a really incredible experience -- discussions were nice and organized, the analysis was (generally) well thought out, and I feel like some aspects of match ups that had never been explored before got...well, explored!
Unfortunately, with the advent of Esports and social media and sponsors and branding and streaming and twitter and etc. etc. etc., board activity does not last long at all. After the initial hype wave, people come to the boards, ask to be pointed to the nearest Discord (using Smash 4 boards as an example), then...never really show up again. Full disclosure: I don't spend any time on Discord (I ain't got time for that), so I don't know what happens there. I'm sure people help each other out and discuss match ups. The problem is...where is this discussion cataloged? Where can a new Yoshi go to find all this information that's been provided already? Where are the resources for players to reference so they can try to improve their game?
I think that this move to more instant media (Discord, twitter) has been good for getting people talking, but awful for the benefit of lower leveled players. Guides and data aren't quite as easily accessible as they used to be. If I'm trying to find any information for self study, I'm probably out of luck. I'm entirely dependent on the good graces of a top player to share their wisdom with me, if they feel like I'm worth the time. I think that, since the Brawl days, the average player of a Smash game has gotten worse. I actually feel confident in my ability to place Top 16 in a local and I've attended one whole Smash 4 tournament in my life. There's not enough investment in the community anymore, just feeding the top players.
So, I want to try to reverse this trend for Ultimate. I want Smashboards to actually be a place where players can come, find cataloged data easily, find match up analyses, get critiques, and to feel like this is a place where good discussion actually takes place. I don't want the Yoshi community to be a place where there are one or two Yoshi Gods and everyone else is basically scrubbing out of their own locals. Everyone should be at a decent level of play. This is the type of playerbase that will prove Yoshi's strength.
I posted some ideas (and a similar explanation) on the Smash 4 boards. You can find the original here: https://smashboards.com/threads/yoshi-social-20-years-of-yoshis-island.352003/page-72#post-21940541
Here's the things I think need to happen (from the same post):
- Can't advertise/use alternate channels of communication publicly (I'm sure we have ways of contacting each other privately/off the boards already, but we can't continue to expand them to all newcomers).
- Hold everyone on the boards to a high standard of contribution
- Recognize great contributors ([IMG]https://smashboards.com/data/avatars/s/302/302498.jpg?1459035546[/IMG] Pixel_ would be an example off the top of my head)
- Cultivate newbies into better posters by forcing them to actually explain themselves (one liners are garbooooo)
- Spelling/Grammar actually do matter
- Tone actually matters
- Make people feel like their presence here is worthwhile and that they matter
- Respond to questions in the Q&A thread quickly.
- Actually critique people's videos
- This means forming a dedicated critique team.
- How should we deal with Discords and other external methods of communication?
- Should we put most of our discussion here? Or should we just try to catalog the important conversations that occur elsewhere here? How do we hold people accountable to sharing the discussions that occur elsewhere here?
- Do we want to promote/recognize some people as being top contributors? Is it worth doing? How could we do this?
- On the other hand, should we sort of scold people for posting poorly in discussions? How should we do that?
- Should I just take my nostalgia and shove it away and accept that Smashboards has become obsolete?