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Ways to Improve Dream Cancel (part 1)

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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.

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