There's some good discussion going on in the "What happened?" thread, but I think it would benefit us to have an orderly discussion with the goal of deciding upon things we can actually do.

Status:

1) Discuss and decide what we want for the community
* One specific location to focus our community on
* A large enough active playerbase that players of all skill levels can play and enjoy themselves
* Diversity in available gameplay to avert burnout and boredom
* An environment that fosters camaraderie between players and offers a social element to maintain people's interest and participation
* A specific set of game settings that is acceptable to skilled players but also accessible to casual players, with a focus on balance and (at least initially) breadth of play across varied skill levels.

2) Discuss and decide what specific changes can get us there
3) Discuss and decide upon ways to test these specific changes to determine if they achieve the desired result
4) Implement said changes and iterate if necessary.


The discussion in the "What happened?" thread is centering mostly around 2, but without a dedicated effort to first determine 1 or execute 3. So let's start at the top.

I propose that what we want for the community is:


I think that is a pretty good set of goals and it describes a situation that all of us would like to be a part of. Let's take a week to discuss and debate to arrive at a general consensus and then move on to item 2. Please don't post about specific changes yet; like many of you, I have a lot of ideas too, but let's not get ahead of ourselves

* One specific game to focus our community on

This is gonna be a controversial one, people like playing a variety of games. If we're gonna have one, it should be nullpo, but that precludes us then from playing any official tf tourneys if they ever arise again (which in the next 5 years, is likely)

* A large enough active playerbase that players of all skill levels can play and enjoy themselves

yes

* Diversity in available gameplay to avert burnout and boredom

yes, but then why not have many games?

* An environment that fosters camaraderie between players and offers a social element to maintain people's interest and participation

yes

I didn't say "only play one game," I said "pick one to focus our community building efforts on."

Besides the fact that Nullpo has the potential to provide a glut of game types, it will be counterproductive to try and gather a bunch of people in three different places.

Re: "why not have many games?"
community
1. a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.

"Specific locality" is central to community. Having one thing that brings us together and provides the focus for our efforts not only makes those efforts more effective by not diluting them with multiple locations, it also gives people a common standpoint to interact around. It could be argued that this focal point could be a forum instead of a game, and so perhaps I should have said "one specific location" and designating that location as a game is stepping into solution territory. I'll edit the OP.

thanks, you correctly pre-empted me

What we want for the community in abstract terms, we can all agree on I believe. They are probably very similar to why Hard Drop was created in the first place and why people become members.

It's the how it should be done ( your (2)) that is always the problem.

Like Paul said the first one is kind of the most disputable one,
but I'll go along with it, although I don't like you already referring to Nullpo in your reply to Paul, I thought we weren't discussing specifics yet.

* One game to focus our community on

Yes we need to focus on one game that increases player base and activity so we aren't so spread out everywhere.

* A game with a large enough active playerbase that players of all skill levels can play and enjoy themselves

Yes

* Diversity in available gameplay  (game modes?) to avert burnout and boredom

Yes and no. I want a main game mode but with other game modes available.

*A game with an environment that fosters camaraderie between players and offers a social element to maintain people's interest and participation

yes

Quote from: mippo
What we want for the community in abstract terms, we can all agree on I believe. They are probably very similar to why Hard Drop was created in the first place and why people become members.

It's the how it should be done ( your (2)) that is always the problem.

Like Paul said the first one is kind of the most disputable one,
but I'll go along with it, although I don't like you already referring to Nullpo in your reply to Paul, I thought we weren't discussing specifics yet.

Originally I wrote "one game" not "one place" - Paul called me on it and I corrected myself. That's what caused the Nullpo reference.

Number 2 is the main point of having this thread, but without a clear definition of 1, number 2 can get muddled. That's why I want to arrive at some goals for (1) before tackling (2) - because then when discussing items for (2) we can refer to whether the ideas support (1) or don't, or devise tests to determine if they do.


Paradox: I agree. There are ways to emphasize a single "main" game type while still allowing peripheral for-fun games. I think a primary focus for gameplay is beneficial, though, because it provides a common point of reference that's the same for everybody and ties into what was said about community.

I'm working on trying to help increase the Nullpo playerbase with the following actions:

- Create database to store our match details in done!
- Program the nullpo multiplayer client to talk to my database Not started
- Create a website where people can view match histories/data/compare with others 30% done
- Create leaderboards Not started
- Create tournament support on the website (automatic detection of when tourney games are played on nullpo and automatic score reporting) Not started

Nullpo IS the future if you ask me.

I'd like to kindly direct you to the OP, or maybe another thread

Also: I'd suggest for this project collaborating with Zircean and create it in the form of a NEURO plugin or something. Nullpo 7.5 is at the end of its life, it'd be a shame to do a bunch of work on it.

Yeah I've not had time to speak to anyone yet :< Hence why I was focusing on the web based elements. It would definitely be 8.0 based and not 7.5.

I admit that  NEURO plugin would be nice, but I feel we want stuff going to a website eventually anyway to show off to the world... and people who can't get onto Nullpo for whatever reason.

I'll be looking at NEURO once/if I get time. I can throw web stuff together a LOT faster because I know what I'm doing :>

Quote from: myndzi
Originally I wrote "one game" not "one place" - Paul called me on it and I corrected myself. That's what caused the Nullpo reference.

So is it Nullpo or not? Because I agree about the focus, but I think if it needs to be nullpo should still be discussed, but don't want to get in the why yet to stick to your agenda.

That's what I'm leaning towards, but I want to give it time to see if anyone disagrees with the core focus first. Then we can talk about which game (or forum, or chat, or whatever!) makes the most sense for those goals and why, for example.

OK, it doesn't seem that anybody has much of a problem with this as a focus for our discussions:

* One specific location to focus our community on
* A large enough active playerbase that players of all skill levels can play and enjoy themselves
* Diversity in available gameplay to avert burnout and boredom
* An environment that fosters camaraderie between players and offers a social element to maintain people's interest and participation

And with the threads springing up going off in all directions, I think that an orderly discussion is perhaps even more important now  So while it hasn't been a full week, let's move on. If you have any problems with the core goals, we can still change them - but try to keep the goals as stated in mind when we discuss ideas of what to do about all this.

2) Discuss and decide what specific changes can get us there

* One specific location to focus our community on
As was discussed in the "What happened?" thread, the shoutbox is possibly detrimental as a community focus. I tend to agree with this, and I support the idea of changing the realtime communication focus to one specific game.

I think Nullpomino makes the most sense, since it has a global lobby and allows the kind of play that members of this community want - though I think that the default parameters of that play may need some adjusting (addressed in another item).

The forums have their own place, but I do believe that there are significant benefits to forcing realtime chat, which we all enjoy, to exist in a place where the effort to get from "chat" to "play" is much less. If we can reach a critical threshold of activity, it should become self-sustaining - but things like the shoutbox are making it harder to get there. It's also not as convenient perhaps as it might be to just "hang out" on Nullpomino, and I hope people will bring up reasons that might be so they can be addressed in future versions.

Does anyone have other games in mind, or other methods of realtime communications that they think would be more beneficial to community focus?

* A large enough active playerbase that players of all skill levels can play and enjoy themselves
This depends on the previous. If we decide that TF or TOP or something should be the community focus, the challenges are different than they are for Nullpomino. But TF doesn't have many things we want, not the least of which is a global lobby. Not sure about TOP or what it could become.

For this post, I'm going to focus on "If it's Nullpomino"

First problem: getting a large playerbase.
Obstacles: awareness of potential players, difficulty of use, wall of skill

Spreading awareness can be done with sustained effort by us.

Difficulty of use will hopefully be addressed with Nullpomino 8 - I believe one specific design goal will be to make it as "click and play" as possible

Wall of skill: this one is tough, and may require a top-down approach. Since the players who are most dedicated to Nullpomino are also extremely skilled, it is hard to keep new players' interest - since they won't have anybody to play on their level. This might be addressed by an increased focus on online single player games as a way to get people to play and interact with the community without actually having to face them in versus. If the game is easy enough to use that its feature-fullness will make people want to play it instead of, say, TF - then that's an "in" for growing the playerbase. We just have to not drive them off. That will take commitment from the dedicated players to being around and being friendly and willing to show people the ropes. Blockbox was in this sort of state for a while when I started playing it.

Some gameplay changes to the default rated mode might also expand the range of viable games for incoming players. We have to remember that if we want a large playerbase, we will need a large amount of players that aren't as skilled as the best of us, and who may not care about all the niceties that we care about. They just want to play Tetris and have fun. We should give some serious thought to a compromise that will allow us to still enjoy what we enjoy but will also allow more casual players to achieve this result.

* Diversity in available gameplay to avert burnout and boredom
Nullpomino provides a pretty pat solution to this one; you could hardly ask for more diversity - instead, the problem with Nullpomino will be to promote a focus on one specific game type. I think making only one game type rated will serve this purpose well enough. People can play all sorts of crazy things, whatever they want, for fun and diversion, but the "real" gameplay is for rating.

* An environment that fosters camaraderie between players and offers a social element to maintain people's interest and participation
This is all on us. This pretty much boils down to an active chat area of some sort with a friendly, welcoming population. This might entail moderation to remove troublemakers. Regular team events could also be an important component in player bonding.

What thoughts do you guys have on these items?

I notice that I left out an item from the goal list that is important, so I propose adding this to the goal list:
* Decide on a specific set of game settings that is acceptable to skilled players but also accessible to casual players, with a focus on balance and (at least initially) breadth of play across varied skill levels.
This is the item that made me want to start this thread, and will probably entail the most discussion. I believe we need to come up with and test ideas for making the game less of a skill hill and more of a skill bump. Not so extreme, of course, but you get the picture. I'll leave discussion of "how" until there's a consensus on if this is a worthwhile goal. I believe it is, since it will support the other items above - primarily by creating a game that can more easily attract casual players and focus them in one location with the rest of us.

I still strongly support the removal of the shoutbox, I think that is a must. Sisu told me that while HD site was down, nullpo had a few dozen people in it.... enough said. Centralize everyone on nullpomino somehow. Not speaking for anyone else but fwf's tournament has inspired me to play more and be more involved when I get home late at night and have to choose between playing Black Ops or Tetris. I like the RPG idea in the other thread and it is good that change is coming.

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