Ways to Improve Dream Cancel (part 1)

[desmond_kof]

Hey everyone. I created this thread to give a very, very big thanks to the players in the KOF community that has contributed to this site and those who have contributed great information and ideas outside of this site as well. If you edit the wiki, post news articles on the front page, written articles, posted good gameplay information in the forums, hang out in the chat, host casuals, run tournaments, recommend the site to new players, run a stream etc. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Since nilcam has shifted duties over to myself and Kane317, we will still and always try our best to make this site the go-to homebase for good KOF/SNK information and a way to help build and strengthen local communities. I subtitled this thread "part 1" because we may need to ask the community again later down the road.

Since EVO is over and the Steam version of KOFXIII has been announced, also with possibilities of 98UM/02UM being released on Steam (not confirmed), and because the site is now almost 3 years old, I wanted people to share ideas, suggestions and ways to improve Dream Cancel. I still feel that we are very young site compared to others that have been around and we are still learning how we can use this site to our advantage to help new (and mid-level) players learn KOF and to expand the KOF community, more-so focusing on North America, and other places that may need help.

I would like for people to be as honest as they can with their feedback and criticism on our work so far, and to be as constructive as you can and not destructive. Now, I will throw out a categories on certain sections (with my own notes) of the site and the community for players to give their opinions and honest feedback.

Front page

Are people satisfied by the amount of front page posts of news and gameplay content that are featured? Is the frequency of posts too long or too short? Is the quality good? What are ways to strengthen the front page?

Other pages

We do have other pages featured on this site linked on the front page, for example the tutorial section, Videos page, Netplay page, etc. What are your thoughts on those pages? Do you find them helpful?

Wiki

Our wiki's are as old as the site. We had a long hiatus of adding information to the KOFXIII wiki but now we are adding new information everyday, as well as adding things to the 2002UM wiki. Post your honest feedback on our wiki's here, it can be from the quality of information, to the way to pages of structured, to the editors, and ways to help the pages become better and helpful for newer players and more intermediate players.

Forums

I've been seeing feedback from players here and other places that the forums are dead, especially the KOFXIII character sections. Anyone have any ideas on ways to make the forums a bit more lively and active? I know that not every single KOF player posts here, and we do have a small active member base too. Is it mainly because people would rather post things on Facebook or twitter?

Also, are people satisfied with the amount gameplay discussion here? Do players find the information here useful and accurate?

What do you think of the moderation team here? Do you feel the mods here do their jobs well or need improvement?

Community

As I said before, the active member base here on the forums still quite small compare to other FG communities websites. Anyone have any ideas on strengthening this? Are players here comfortable posting here and sharing information here? If you aren't comfortable here, explain why. Be honest. Do you recommend this site for new KOF players or KOF players that are trying to step their gameplay up? If not, explain why.

Chat

Do you like the chatango chatbox that we have on the front page? Do you find it helpful?

When KOFXIII Steam Edition (and/or other KOF titles) are released, Dream Cancel should do...?

Complete the rest of the sentence with your ideas.

Misc topics

Do you feel this site has helped you become a better player?

Do you feel this site has helped build your local community?

Do you feel the site needs to be re-designed?

Do you have any suggestions or recommendations better forum software, front page plug-ins, etc.?



If you have any other questions, comments, suggestions, ideas, PLEASE POST THEM. I'm very open to new and helpful as ideas as well as the team here. So be honest and constructive as you can for we can help make the site better for the community.

Please spread this thread around to as many players as possible. If a player doesn't have a member account to post, link twitter posts, quote facebook comments, link posts from other forums, etc.

-Desmond

[Merkilo]

I'm posting this from my phone so excuse my bad grammar. The front page needs more ways to pull people in. Eventhubs gets a lot of viewers because of constantly updating the front page with new stories. Also they have a good stream finder on their front page as well.

Steam release is an opportunity for the site to grow as there will likely be a large spike in numbers if the online is good. it would be a smart time to try to grab some of those new players. Consolidated resources for new players is a big way to start and maybe you can get some stream advertising during big kof events. How are people currently finding the site other than word of mouth?

By the way the front page chat is my favorite part of the site. Also the wiki.

[Kane317]

I dunno how it would be possible, but if only we could integrate the forums with the front page posts some how. 

Might need a complete layout in order to do so, but it's a shame when our front page editors spend a lot of time writing stuff up and it may get skipped over.  Any ideas?

[desmond_kof]

^ It seems that dustloop.com has their whole front page and forums ran through vBulletin which has complete and seamless integration between forum posts and content.

[Malik]

Ok honest opinions incoming

Front Page
The front page seems alright to me honestly & I actually like the chat that we have, although I previously mentioned that it would be great if we could have links to streams like what eventhubs.com & iplaywinner.com does, the fact that we can link streams from the calendar page to those events eliminates that issue & the chat being there allows people to post links to people streaming random sessions or tournaments from anywhere in the world so in regards to that, I think it's fine. Frequency of news that's posted on the front page seems to be decent because to be honest there isn't much going on right now & KOF XIII has been out for almost three years so "news" in relevance to the game is all on YouTube by now & people either know or don't know at this point. I don't have much to say in terms of older games because I'm not good or knowledgeable enough to be posting news about those titles.

Other Pages
Links to other websites and other things like Tutorial vids seems pretty straight to me, no complaints & I can't think of anything at the moment of what to add to make it "better."

Wiki
Oh boy.............. So yeah as stated the Wiki's have been pretty outdated since Original Arcade version of XIII & yes people have been cleaning them up lately because they definitely need to be. As far as older games, I don't think it's necessarily a "waste of time" to fix them up but perking them up isn't a bad idea either in case people want to randomly playing those games & since this is supposed to be "the-go-to SNK site" fixing wiki's up for games like 98/98UM/2K2/2K2UM/XI/etc. is productive regardless.

Forums
So this is one of the two biggest issues that I've been experiencing since before getting involved with wanting to better the "community" & getting others involved. I feel as if people that play not only XIII but other titles don't use these forums enough AT ALL. I know that people felt a certain way about this site in it's beginning days but not everything can be perfect when you're first starting off & if no one offers help then it takes longer to fix these "issues." Moreso than veteran players, new players should all be on here & actively discussing things in terms of the game(s) & random topics because THIS is to be SNK site, not Facebook groups or random Twitter posts. I do feel as if there should be more mods in certain parts of the site because some are not really active or no longer active but the mods that are on here for the most part do their jobs efficiently. Gameplay discussion is satisfactory from what I can see, there's just a lack of people that play characters contributing to it (both beginner & up) & I would honestly like to see that change because ALOT of people are NOT efficient with their characters & discussing those things out would be quite productive. Also I like our random threads like "When Boys Meet KOF" cause it's a change of pace & allows for members to experience other sides of people.

Community
And HERE'S the big one!!! Ok so honestly I think that a majority of people that are not contributing to the site or aren't a decent or more knowledgeable person are part of the reason that this site gets so much shit & that they should be doing what they can to better the community FOR REAL. Not to get off of topic but I know David Kong's original intent for the Facebook group was to get people together & whatnot but it's more as if it's what Dream Cancel is supposed to be, I actually recently left the group because the amount of incoming spam & repetitive questions that are more than likely answered on here or if it hasn't been asked CAN be answered on here & people can easily go back to here & reference the info. If people have upcoming tournaments & or sessions yes it's a very good idea to make a Facebook event BUT people frequently forget to post about their event(s) on here & don't post in their section of Offline/Online Matchmaking. Yes some people don't use this site but there are many people who actually DO view what's going on in terms of events & things in their area so it's up to those people to not forget that this site exists & we have to remind them to post their things on here as well so they'll know to do it on their own & tell others the same. Basically it takes a community to really BE a community, there can't be less than 100 members that actually care about the growth of the community & others just expect to idle by & think things are going to work out, EVERYONE has to put in effort & people have to show that it's worth all of us investing our time into making things better because I'll be honest, I wasn't going to type this up because I have other things I can do with my time but I still believe in those same people who aren't being as productive, but people like Desmond, Merkilo, ChoySauce, Reynald, Romance, David Kong, Merkilo, Kane317, JennyCage, Juicebox, BALA, DarkGees, the guys from France, Chile, CafeID & S. Korean people, Japan, Taiwan (Yang Yao Ren/ET/everyone else), China & whoever else I'm forgetting or have done things have all AT least tried or are doing things but I feel like we're the only ones that care & I honestly love XIII & like most of the people that I've met through this game, I want it to be a real community, not just people who cared to step up & that's it. As the saying goes "It takes a village to raise a child" & I believe this is the case for KOF/SNK games.

[Nagato1992]

Front Page:  I think the frontpage is well done. 

Other pages: Same as above, I see no real issues here.

Wiki:  Last time I checked the wiki, it seemed to be updated.  I only checked KoF13 though, so I cannot speak for the other KoF wiki's on the site.

The Community: I have reached out here to help the community, but I barely get replies and when I do, I totally forgot about the said issue.  Not to mention, I don't have the funds to afford a stream setup or anything.  If I did, I would have gladly streamed my "stable" XBL matches with SoleChris, GameWizard, and Commonsense.  Forums are slowing down thanks to things like the Facebook group, but I do like the fact that we can have a FAQ on here so we don't get the same questions asked every few weeks.  As for events, possibly set it up similar to SRK and have the upcoming events at the top of the forum.  Then again, like Malik said, no one posts about it. 

[Loona]

The topic isn't new, but since it was created after a successful EVO, might as well pick up it again.

On my own reason not to hang out here as much: I'm in Europe, and a lot of info seems USA-centric.
Orochinagi was supposed to cover that, but as of late it has felt a bit off:
* when nothingxs asked for opinions on players here and there, the difference in response was quote in DC's favor.
* The site seems to be losing focus, covering such a variety of games beyond KoF that perhaps neither of them gets covered as well as it could
* the news posts there are getting pretty mixed, covering very different topic under a single title - as if the front page there wasn't turning into a mess lately, finding older stuff isn't very intuitive
* Twitter-wise, there's no distinction between Gunsmith the individual and ON.com the site, so you get a bit of unrelated silliness if you follow that, which would be fine if there was more and better stuff to be found there.

And it pains me to see and state this, because a site and forum that contains topic like thi translation effort and this critical bit of lore should live and thrive.

I'd rather not see DC go through similar troubles - the SNK/KoF scene is already pretty spread out as it is, and if it won't unify in some way, at least it's hubs should aim to be the best they can be.


Taking on the issues covered in the OP:

* Front page

My pet issue with practically every FG site is that it usually has only one blog-like news feed that treats actual news about the games and companies that make them the same way it does community-geneated stuff like tournaments, videos, poscasts, fanart, etc... So you you want to know when something was announced or released, you usually have to dig around the archives under piles of news about tournaments too far away from your area to be relevant to you.
Would it be very hard to have separate columns to separete these different typos of information? It would really be handy for posterity.
I found myself having to create something of the sort on Reddit mostly with plain news, as just about everywhere else it got buried under other stuff or entirely ignored: http://www.reddit.com/r/SNKplaymore

On a more specific note, it should be a bit embarrassing that SRK.com lists the characters used in the KoF finals, even if incompletely, up to top 16, but DC.com lists no characters and stops at top 8.
C'mon guys, is this how you want to be the KoF reference?...


* Other pages
When I check the site, I tend to stick with the front page and forum, but looking about a bit, you guys might want to revise the podcast page to put some dates on those shows - looking at it there's no way to tell how old or recent they are, which may be relevant to put the information in context (post-Climax/Steam? before or after collision box information was revealed?).


* Wiki
Now that collision box information is more accessible, that would be a good adition to the character pages - especially if it start with less-used characters, at least as far as tournament-visibility is concerned. That could encourage a bit more variety, as the predominance of Kim, EX Iori and Mr Karate at EVO does not give a good impression to the outside world.
Also, the wiki's front page's link to Mr Karate says "EX Mr Karate", when technically there's no such thing.


* Forums
There might be more sections than those the forum actually needs or uses - it might not be a bad idea to merge less-used section into more active ones. For example, the whole Tournaments section (which surprisingly contains no updated EVO topic...) into Offline Matchmaking.
That way you spend less time clicking around to find info, and from the outside everything looks a bit more active.


* Community
I can't really comment on the FB situation - I'm not in the group, as my expectation is that everything there is quite US-centric.
Finding out about that When Boys Meet KoF topic here was great though, and the Tumblr mentioned there to point people to was great as well (despite the background pic making it hard to read).
Above I mentioned separate main page columns for actual SNKP news and tournament stuff - maybe that's unlikely to implement, but if it turned out to be doable (each filtered by some tag-based system, for example?...), a 3rd, smaller column for fun stuff like that that also linked to corresponding forum topics would be great.


* Chat
I don't really use that, managing my Twitter feed is already tricky enough (I read everything and everyone I follow, so the volume gets kinda big some times).


I hope this helps, or at least encourages further discussion... I'm far from a good player, but I do love the games, and tend to carry around a stubborn "SNK(P) must live" mantra in my psyche, wondering what to do about that and occasionally putting effort into little things like the Reddit I mentioned above or this topic at NeoGAF, neither of which require deep game knowledge or execution, which others already seem to cover decently.If the tournament scene is what gets them attention, I try and keep up, but there's only so much time and attention I can put into that when so much of it seems to happen so far away.

[desmond_kof]

I'd rather not see DC go through similar troubles - the SNK/KoF scene is already pretty spread out as it is, and if it won't unify in some way, at least it's hubs should aim to be the best they can be.

Yeah, honestly, I think Gunsmith is doing a good job running Orochinagi even though it looks like hes trying to make the front page more general fighting game-centric than just only KOF/SNK. It's not a bad idea because the SNK/KOF from time to time can get a little quiet but I will try my best to make sure DC stays KOF/SNK only and catered mainly to players in the USA which was Nilcam's main reason for opening the site.

* Front page


Would it be very hard to have separate columns to separete these different typos of information? It would really be handy for posterity.

There is a 'categories' tab on the front page, in the middle of that long column on the right. But if you mean having posts in different columns than just one, that's something I might have to ask the community on their input on if they want that format because myself and others like the blog format.

On a more specific note, it should be a bit embarrassing that SRK.com lists the characters used in the KoF finals, even if incompletely, up to top 16, but DC.com lists no characters and stops at top 8.
C'mon guys, is this how you want to be the KoF reference?...

Yeah, I'm going to be honest about that, when it comes to major tournaments, SRK beats us to the punch extremely fast when getting those stats and results from tournaments. I'm not sure how exactly they get those results so fast with the characters and everything, they must have a crew of people watching streams while getting their full results from challonge. I will try to discuss this with the moderators and front page editors on ways we can get those results faster. Most of the time, we just mirror the results from them because they get it so fast. For tournaments that aren't majors, like regionals or local tournaments, we usually get those results first (example, KOFXIII Hyper Battle in Colorado or Tijuana's KOF Challenge II).

* Other pages
When I check the site, I tend to stick with the front page and forum, but looking about a bit, you guys might want to revise the podcast page to put some dates on those shows - looking at it there's no way to tell how old or recent they are, which may be relevant to put the information in context (post-Climax/Steam? before or after collision box information was revealed?).

Good idea, I'll add the dates on the podcast page on when they were recorded (or at least published).

* Wiki
Now that collision box information is more accessible, that would be a good adition to the character pages - especially if it start with less-used characters, at least as far as tournament-visibility is concerned. That could encourage a bit more variety, as the predominance of Kim, EX Iori and Mr Karate at EVO does not give a good impression to the outside world.
Also, the wiki's front page's link to Mr Karate says "EX Mr Karate", when technically there's no such thing.

We added a few of the hitboxes to the character wiki just as links: http://dreamcancel.com/wiki/index.php?title=NESTS_Kyo_(XIII)#Normals

And I just fixed that EX Mr. Karate typo, thanks man.

* Forums
There might be more sections than those the forum actually needs or uses - it might not be a bad idea to merge less-used section into more active ones. For example, the whole Tournaments section (which surprisingly contains no updated EVO topic...) into Offline Matchmaking.
That way you spend less time clicking around to find info, and from the outside everything looks a bit more active.

I might turn the Tournament Results section into a child board from the Upcoming Tournaments section. I'll keep offline matchmaking and the whole tournament section separate because the offline matchmaking is for finding people to play with locally, while the tournaments section is strictly for announcing tournaments. Yeah, most of the EVO discussion either was discussed in the KOFXIII general section or outside of the forum.

* Community
I can't really comment on the FB situation - I'm not in the group, as my expectation is that everything there is quite US-centric.
Finding out about that When Boys Meet KoF topic here was great though, and the Tumblr mentioned there to point people to was great as well (despite the background pic making it hard to read).
Above I mentioned separate main page columns for actual SNKP news and tournament stuff - maybe that's unlikely to implement, but if it turned out to be doable (each filtered by some tag-based system, for example?...), a 3rd, smaller column for fun stuff like that that also linked to corresponding forum topics would be great.

If you have an example of that format, link it up for I can see what you mean.



Thanks for your feedback bro!

[Loona]

* Front page


Would it be very hard to have separate columns to separete these different typos of information? It would really be handy for posterity.

There is a 'categories' tab on the front page, in the middle of that long column on the right. But if you mean having posts in different columns than just one, that's something I might have to ask the community on their input on if they want that format because myself and others like the blog format.

The Categoried drop-down list is so far down it's kinda of tricky to realize it's even there, which I guess is part of the issue.
Speaking of which, there are still a few things marked as Uncategorized, some of which might fit under Tournament or other existing categories - is it possible to update those after the news have been posted?

On a more specific note, it should be a bit embarrassing that SRK.com lists the characters used in the KoF finals, even if incompletely, up to top 16, but DC.com lists no characters and stops at top 8.
C'mon guys, is this how you want to be the KoF reference?...

Yeah, I'm going to be honest about that, when it comes to major tournaments, SRK beats us to the punch extremely fast when getting those stats and results from tournaments. I'm not sure how exactly they get those results so fast with the characters and everything, they must have a crew of people watching streams while getting their full results from challonge. I will try to discuss this with the moderators and front page editors on ways we can get those results faster. Most of the time, we just mirror the results from them because they get it so fast. For tournaments that aren't majors, like regionals or local tournaments, we usually get those results first (example, KOFXIII Hyper Battle in Colorado or Tijuana's KOF Challenge II).

For something big like EVO where the finals matches are broadcast, it should be viable to have one or more individuals keeping track of results, especially if those are recorded and uploaded later.

Keeping track of that sort of thing, especially with some level of detail, would be kind of cool.
In small tournaments at events I helped to run I drew tables for every match by hand that helped to reconstruct the events of a match: characters used, in which order, which beat which, and markers for perfects and time outs - the notation looked clearer by hand than something I could pull off with a standard digital system, but let me try:

Tokido:	EX Iori, Chin (1, 1), Mr Karate (1)
Xiaohai:	EX Iori (1), Mr Karate, Kim (1)

(well dammit, forum tables don't actually appear as tables with outlines... just imagine each player in his own cell, and each trio of character in its own cell too)

So, this is based on the 1st match here: King of Fighters XIII - Evo 2014 Grand Finals
Tokido's 1st character is KOed without beating anyone, so he's struck. Same for Xiaohai's Mr Karate.
Xiaohai's 1st character beat a single character, so here he's marked with a (1). Looking at Tokido's character order, clearly it was Iori who was taken down.
Then Tokido's Chin beat Xiaohai's Iori and Mr Karate, so he's marked with "(1, 1)" - I'm not using "(2)", because separating the matches allows for some clarity - had Tokido beated any of those rounds by Perfect or Timeout, I could use a P or T instead of the 1, or even expand the notation with markers like N for NeoMAX or H for Hyper Drive combo, but it's best to keep this simple for now IMO. The 1 could technically be replaced with something like a V for victory, but this isn't set in stone - on paper I have each character in his own table cell, and strike the defeated character with a line coming from the direction of the cell of the character that him him, but this is harder here.
Tokido took the 1st match, so his team for it gets bolded, for the same of clarity - you could add more cells with similar information, and that would allow you to understand the progress of the whole thing, perhaps with a final cell at the end adding it all up, and ultimately the winner of the whole set could get his name bolded too.
Then again, this case involved a reset, so after that there should probably be a separate table.

* Community
I can't really comment on the FB situation - I'm not in the group, as my expectation is that everything there is quite US-centric.
Finding out about that When Boys Meet KoF topic here was great though, and the Tumblr mentioned there to point people to was great as well (despite the background pic making it hard to read).
Above I mentioned separate main page columns for actual SNKP news and tournament stuff - maybe that's unlikely to implement, but if it turned out to be doable (each filtered by some tag-based system, for example?...), a 3rd, smaller column for fun stuff like that that also linked to corresponding forum topics would be great.

If you have an example of that format, link it up for I can see what you mean.

Off the top of my head, the closest I can find is the HG101 front page, which keeps a few highlight on its right side: http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/

Something like a short list of linked titles to articled under the "SNK" category closer to the top might help, for a brief overview of more official news, I guess.

Thanks for your feedback bro!

No problem, let me know if there's anything I can help with.