To forum or not to forum...

Possibly Dohnut · February 4

Figured we needed a new topic for this.

gluemchen · February 4

Vote yes for what? Can you rephrase the poll please. I can`t make any sense of it. Sorry

BrandX · February 4

gluemchen, post: 7968378, member: 23972 wrote:

Vote yes for what? Can you rephrase the poll please. I can`t make any sense of it. Sorry

Yes to making our own forum so that it will be a much bigger SkullGirls hub.

shirz · February 4

Possibly Dohnut · February 4

Whoops looks like I'm more tired than I thought. Uh, how do I change the poll options anyway? But, yeah, 'Yes' is for making the forum and 'No' is for waiting/staying with SRK as kind-of the main hub.

worldjem7 · February 4

you should edit your post with a link to this thread.
http://shoryuken.com/forum/index.php?threads/smash-brothers-skullgirls-bonding-communities.175329/page-3#post-7968373

It would be pretty awesome if on the new forum we had a section with all of the artists tumblr, livejournal, and whatever else accounts to make their art easier to find.

view619 · February 4

I heard something abt an official forum opening once m$ releases the patch. Why not wait for that?

Hawkingbird · February 4

Who knows how long until the patch finally reaches the 360. It could easily go the way of FF Versus 13

gluemchen · February 4

Personaly i`d like an entire site dedicated to skullgirls. But yeah i guess a forum will suffice.

view619 · February 4

Hawkingbird, post: 7968446, member: 32370 wrote:

Who knows how long until the patch finally reaches the 360. It could easily go the way of FF Versus 13

With the way lab zero is pushing for it, I doubt it.

Possibly Dohnut · February 4

gluemchen, post: 7968447, member: 23972 wrote:

Personaly i`d like an entire site dedicated to skullgirls. But yeah i guess a forum will suffice.

Complete site, forum, some sort of hub really is what the question is. I know someone who could probably make a website if we were to go that direction.

Hawkingbird · February 4

view619, post: 7968455, member: 14076 wrote:

With the way lab zero is pushing for it, I doubt it.

The ball is in M$ court. They need to loosen up on their policy a bit for this to go down. Indies and M$ don't have a history of playing nice

Kristoph · February 4

The "proposition on the table," as far as I'm concerned, is "community-run website dedicated to Skullgirls and any future Lab Zero games." Probably just a forum to start with, though. Compare to Dustloop, Smashboards, or AllisBrawl as potential models, but nothing's set in stone of course.

There are a lot of strong reasons for this, already discussed in this thread (it's a good read). To summarize: community independence is good, people have to sift through SRK just to find us, we'll want better resources in the future (guides, wikis, tournaments/ladders, much more organization in general), and it's not as alienating towards people who love Skullgirls for non-competitive reasons.

Online polls are never great by the way, since people are so naturally resistant to change. Honestly even if this doesn't happen for some reason, I'll probably end up doing it like 6 months from now anyway, succeed or fail lol. I feel like this is sort of an "act now" situation, considering the huge morale boost that donation drive gave us.

Possibly Dohnut · February 4

Poll wasn't really meant to be the end all be all, but yeah... Personally, I don't care either way, but would love to not have pages that randomly slow down when I try to read a thread.

Fatal_Poke · February 4

I'm cool with our home here. It keeps me posted on other fighting games while being here.

shirz · February 4

Honestly we should just make it. There's no disadvantage community wise because it's not like the SRK forums will vanish or anything like that.

not so saint · February 4

I'd suggest to tackle Ravidrath before going for it. I'm not sure we want to create competition for official forum if they're going to open it anytime soon.

klaww · February 4

I would totally be behind this. I think there would be more room for different discussions and a more dedicated area to help out noobies, etc. Being confined to one subforum is difficult. Lets do this.

Vulpes · February 4

shirz, post: 7968565, member: 83367 wrote:

Honestly we should just make it. There's no disadvantage community wise because it's not like the SRK forums will vanish or anything like that.

A gigantic disadvantage is that one has to doublepost every halfway sensible post.

I'm registered in a german FG board and it's pretty much only used for local meetups and tourney info, as all the char info / guides / etc is on SRK - so why should one bother.
If you write a guide, posting it on both boards isn't an issue. But if someone asks a question which pops up on the other forums a bit later as well, it gets annoying. Everytime someone has tech to share, they'll have to post it in two forums. Every idea, video, explanation etc will have to be posted on both sites or one will die off sooner or later.
People don't even manage to post their character tips in both the general Gameplay discussion and the character subboards - the latter are seldom used with most of all discussion happening in the gigantic Gameplay sticky.

I guess a Hub where one talks about stuff which is mostly ignored on these forums (artstyle, lore, soundtrack, ..) is cool, but as soon as you let the same content be discussed on two pages, one will pretty much only exist for the sake of linking to the other (so eg any question in the SRK subboards will be answered with "Register on these other boards"*).

*Which most people are too lazy to do. Someone who heard of SG and thinks about picking it up won't create an account on an SG-only forum. He'll just say "Okay, whatever, back to SF4".

AsteriskBlue · February 4

Larger communities than this have split over new forums.

GHNeko · February 4

That's a strong assumption they'll at like that though.

worldjem7 · February 4

Vulpes, post: 7968963, member: 57311 wrote:

*Which most people are too lazy to do. Someone who heard of SG and thinks about picking it up won't create an account on an SG-only forum. He'll just say "Okay, whatever, back to SF4".

If anyone on SRK hasn't already bothered to look into the SkullGirls subforum, they probably won't start now.

And if they actually did that, then they weren't that interested to start with.

Maker · February 4

Im with Vulpes on this one. I don't check SRK for BB / GG stuff often and I basically come here for Skullgirls and general FGC news. Skullgirls lore site /w art etc: would be pretty sweet though.

I say this out of exp. I was with a group of forum guys for Armored Core years ago and Coredump was the hub at the time, it died ACO became the only place to go but when ACU came out years later, community split REALLY bad into noobs on one forum and vets on the other, naturally that really hurt the game and gave us the abortion which is ACV because the company listened to fractured input. Now I know Mike and crew are smarter than that but its still a bad move to split your community. From PS2 era to current gen the game also went dual console 360 vs PS3 didn't do it any favors since X Platform wasn't available. Seen that happen way to often and SG doesn't need that kind of fractured community or difficulty for helpful people who are on SRK all the time. Divide their time and your likely to hurt everyone.

guitalex2007 · February 4

Can we just wait for official word?

First of all, having the only hub of SG info, tech and everything else on SRK is a bad idea, because for example people like Ciscokid who are active online didn't even have an SRK account until others pointed it out.

For new players, is it REALLY common knowledge that for every fighting game ever you should make an account at SRK? Because if so, I can't seem to find the BattleFantasia subforum we obviously must have.

Having Skullgirls info on Skullgirls.com is OBVIOUS, and pretty much everyone who starts to play the game can figure out the website name. So let's just wait for official word.

PointBreak91 · February 4

Outside of Japan, you guys are basically in the same boat as VF, and we have had a dedicated and stable forum for over a decade.

Your move.

Rekano · February 4

An official board may seem like a real good idea, but I have personal experience how shit can go south on that end. The original soulcalibur.com was my home from 2003-2008 when 8Wayrun was created and became the new central SoulCalibur hub. For SC, it was Namco wanted to use the domain for SC4's official site also, because it was under Namco's control and they, really didn't care about us. The forum was never updated to newer versions, server crashed all the time in the later years of the site, and even though we had ways to fix it(well, Jaxel did) not having the permissions to do so lead to seeking ways to speed up the site (including a bright idea of deleting all the old SC2 and 3 data without backing it up first) which ultimately was for not when Namco took the domain for SC4's official site and threw the old site and forums in the garbage completely.

Not saying LZ would have these same issues. But considering the past/current money troubles...how confident are we the lights will stay on?

I personally think a site dedicated to LZ...games. Would be a smarter idea than one simply for SG. So long as great care is taken to ensure any future games they release get the same star treatment on the site as SG. I think it could work. There's quite of bit of work involved with this, but I could see it working if implemented correctly And LZ/SG sites could link to us if they wanted to (like what Sega does with PSO-World on their official NA site)

But SRK isn't a bad place either. It kinda sucks we're hidden(kind of). But we do have our own spot and a wiki spot with information all up in it. So it's not like we're a thread in FGD getting buried everyday by "Should I use stick or pad?" threads. We do have our own hole in the wall, right in with a pretty big(overcrowded) part of the FGC. (We can wave at them.)

IMO. I'd be for a dedicated LZ site(obviously a huge focus on SG) so we could also support their future titles in one central hub.

BillyBones · February 4

Advantages:
1. More open to beginning or casual players.
2. It could organize the fan art world.
3. Brings artists, cosplayers, casual fans, and tournament players under one roof to be better coordinated.
4. VAs would be more likely to participate.

Disadvantages:
1. Have to double post to reach everyone, especially if you are running an event.
2. SRK could turn into more of a ghost town reinforcing the belief of some that the game is dead.
3. I'm already on SRK for everything else, now I have to track two boards?

The way I would see it working is I go to SRK if I want to watch match vids, talk about setups and resets, and have 2 page long conversations using nothing but combo notations.

People would go to the SG forum to get feedback on their robo-fortune drawing, find out which convention is having SG people or a tournament, learn how to make a giant shark head for their cosplay, and ask people how to beat the end boss because she's so cheap: all things that SRK isn't really built for.

In any event, I'm sure Mike's a little busy and tired right now after we've kept him from sleeping for a few weeks, berated him with questions he's not allowed to answer about xbox patches, shaved his head, and sent him hundreds of e-mails to go through. Let's give the guy a few days to rest, catch up, and get back to us. Then, we can talk the whole thing out.

Number 13 · February 4

At the very least we could experiment with this idea and see how it would turn out within 4-6 month trial. We won't truly know what will happen if we simply discuss theories all day without making a move.

At our current state, I see this low risk and high reward depending how this plays out. The payoff is we could expand our size very efficiently from the fighting gaming aspect to the FanArt and not be overshadowed at SRK as a subforum. The risk would be a split the community even more and hurt the current status of our current size at SRK and end up slightly worse off in the end.

However, the "risk" should not be a likely factor depending on how serious we want this to happen. If this is gonna be half-assed effort then we might as well play it safe being content with the current status quo and stay at SRK while praying for the "official" forum to eventually open.

The month of January was very beneficial for SG with alot of exposure and Updates. This is the kind of momentum we could use to spread awareness about this possible website/forum. If its gonna happen, better sooner rather then later.

I said in the other thread I can help pitch in for some of the necessary expenses if we are serious about this as a community.

Should we stay being small fish in a big lake? Or large fish in a smaller yet respectable lake? Thats honestly the real question here

Jet Set Dizzy · February 4

I kinda feel like it's a bad idea to splinter ourselves further from the rest of the FGC and potentially push our game further into obscurity.

not so saint · February 4

Oh God, people, just contact Ravidrath already and ask if there'll be official forum anytime soon. And better catch him on the NeoGAF. Looks like he's posting there frequently.

yomipower · February 4

What a great idea, if the SG base is going to collaborate with the Smash scene, who have their own circlejerk community distanced far off from the real fighting game community - thank God for that - the SG community should do the same. Nobody plays SG anyway so you won't be missed either.

0sh · February 4

guitalex2007, post: 7969273, member: 28284 wrote:

Can we just wait for official word?
<snip>
Having Skullgirls info on Skullgirls.com is OBVIOUS, and pretty much everyone who starts to play the game can figure out the website name. So let's just wait for official word.

not so saint, post: 7969946, member: 55966 wrote:

Oh God, people, just contact Ravidrath already and ask if there'll be official forum anytime soon. And better catch him on the NeoGAF. Looks like he's posting there frequently.

I haven't contacted Ravidrath myself, but in the previous thread Chibi was able to find out that the forum was initially supposed to be released after the 360 patch, but not only does that not have a solid release date but with the PC port and DLC it could be pushed back even further now. Nicknyte then contacted MikeZ on facebook and he said to go ahead, because "I doubt SG.com will do anything".

Also, @Vulpes, etc.: We're not going to force people to move to the new forums, and you won't need an account just to read the info posted in the threads. So if you want to keep using the SRK sub-forum (as I'm sure some) will, then feel free.

I also can't agree with Number 13's post more. This thread is like theoryfighting - it's valuable, but there's no real way of telling until you try putting the ideas to use. Personally I think that the Skullgirls community is strong enough to withstand the change and that the site will prove to be a positive thing, but there's really no knock-out argument that either side can give right now.

Dime_x · February 4

No.

No no no, sorry.

Fact of the matter is that unless we think that we as a community can ignore evo srk and do our own thing, which means running our own events like smash does... No we shouldnt fracture from srk. We already have it good here. Our own forums, it isnt slow as balls anymore, enough room to grow.

Now if we cant get more forums for sgs expanding roster... Like for squiggly and brella, big band etc or if srk starts crawling at a snails pace again... Then yes we should look for other opportunities if for no other reason than necessity. But until that time, being in the biggest fighting game forum in the world, cant be a bad thing.

Plus many if not most of us play different capcom games that are represented here, at srk. I like the one stop shop thatis srk and i dont want to have multiple windows open just to stay abreast of sg and other fighting games.

Having our own forum wont legitmize us anymore than we currently are... Only numbers will do that..
However it will ostracize us from the fgc as well as alienate us... That ticker that is at the top of this forum that goes into EVERY FORUM HERE is a very awesome way to constantly market ourselves to the rest of srk... Which is a bunch of like minded gamers.

The only thing i think we should do is make an official site named skullgirls.com and have it just link directly to here... Nothing else justa link straight here... Problem solved about people not being able to find sg forums that have never heard of srk.

Age_of_Fools · February 4

Srk is the best place to concentrate on if the community is mostly hardcore fighting game players looking for strategy and information.

The truth is that a large portion of the fanbase are people who like squeeing at cute characters like squigly, and they don't get very much out of this forum compared tumblr (let's not mention what they get out of pixiv).

If the goal is to grow the competitive scene, we can cannibalise from already competitive communities by being involved at locals, travelling to play at majors, and recommending the game to fighting game players. We can also bring in new people to the competitive scene by helping casual fans get started, and getting them interested in higher level play but that will only work if we have somewhere to talk to them. Some stuff benefits from having a strong presence on srk but it's not strictly necessary with the news feed and guides we already have here.

If the goal is to grow the skullgirls fanbase, the main untapped market is the anime scene (in my opinion anyway). Getting them interested in skullgirls enough to play it means creating media that appeals to people beyond the tutorial or gameplay videos (stuff that leverages the character design, lore, or music), representing the game at conventions and on websites like ANN. However, if people google 'skullgirls' and only see:

Then they're not going to be very impressed. A fansite at number 2 or 3 would be a hell of a lot better look.

Mr. X · February 4

The in danger of distancing ourselves from the greater FGC makes 0 sense.

Virtua Fighter
Mortal Kombat
Tekken
Blazblue
P4A
KoF

all have sub forums here (some w/ character sub forums) and their own hub and they have wikis located in both sites' wikis. Smash/Melee is the odd one out (even though you have Smash at FG events or local meetups so it's really just a minority on SRK thing to claim Smash is an outcast).

Cross posting is not a problem either, MK, VF and KoF players do it. You'll still need to check SRK for events and they still put up news articles about your game if you have your own forum because this is a fighting game hub nowadays even though still mostly dedicated to Capcom fighters (except Dustloop being home to Vampire Savior). An SRK account is important for more than just posting in your game's forum, this site is like Grand Central Station or an important airport hub, you'll need to pass through here sometimes.

So if you think it's a bad idea because of some we'll be forgotten or banished, you're silly.

I don't think it's a good idea and already said why in the other thread. This doesn't mean I wouldn't help, I'm behind it 100%, just chiming in.

0sh · February 4

@Age_of_Fools: That is exactly why I think that SRK and the new forums would have complimentary role in the community. It's not that the new forums won't focus on the gameplay, but that it can also go into other areas that SRK just won't touch.

@Mr.X: Your last line confuses me. You don't think it's a good idea, but are behind it 100%?

not so saint · February 4

0sh, post: 7970060, member: 67532 wrote:

@Mr.X: Your last line confuses me. You don't think it's a good idea, but are behind it 100%?

We can't abandon the community if community does something we're not approve. Otherwise we'll be pretty shitty community members, won't we?

Mr. X · February 4

0sh, post: 7970060, member: 67532 wrote:

@Mr.X: Your last line confuses me. You don't think it's a good idea, but are behind it 100%?

What's confusing? You never disagreed with someone but were willing to help and supportive regardless?

0sh · February 4

I just wasn't sure what you meant, but I completely support the sentiment.

Master Chibi · February 4

I personally think we should wait on official word. Also Melty Blood really wouldn't be where it is without MeltyBread. It was extremely vital in helping us grow as a community.

I would love to put fanart and the like on my blog to help at least that portion of the fandom, though discussing it would still be a problem.

freeAM · February 4

BTW apparently we have an official Skullgirls Tumblr-blog:
http://officialskullgirls.tumblr.com/

DaRabidDuckie · February 4

The official forum is still coming, guys. Remember that the team is still small.

The Martian · February 4

For the time being I feel that the SG community should just be content with what we have on here. Segregating ourselves like that isn't going to get this game more recognition.

Vulpes · February 4

Mr. X, post: 7970049, member: 7367 wrote:

The in danger of distancing ourselves from the greater FGC makes 0 sense.

Virtua Fighter
Mortal Kombat
Tekken
Blazblue
P4A
KoF

all have sub forums here (some w/ character sub forums) and their own hub and they have wikis located in both sites' wikis.

Strong examples! Wait, let me quickly skim through the respective SRK subboards

Let's see:
VF: 3500 Posts, Decently frequent posting (but like, 2 posts per day)
MK: 14500 Posts, Forum is dead (extremely few recent posts, some from ~Summer 2012, most from Mid-2011)
Tekken (and this is 6+Tag): 9000 Posts, Forum is dead (around ~20 posts since Oct12)
Blazblue: 27000 Posts, Decently frequent posting (but like, 2 posts per day)
Persona: 7000 Posts, Looks active
KoF General: 40000 Posts, Looks active
KoF XIII: 9000 Posts, Looks active

SkullGirls: 87000 Posts, Extremely active (other than the Char subboards, which are still decently active, just not extremely)

Sooo.. either we are much bigger than all of these, or maybe the community split sucks pretty bad and causes the respective SRK subboards to be dead.

How many of these games are known for getting fresh blood easily? VF has always been a closed off community, MK has always been a closed off community, BB pretty much is, Tekken isn't but doesn't really garner too much interest from 2d FG players either, Persona and KoF are accessible. How many SF players / random people / etc go and buy MK/VF? They're pretty much as closed off as Smash is, even though they're on current consoles.

If I'm interested in any of these games, I'm not gonna ask questions on SRK but ignore the dead subforum altogether.
If I'm mildly interested in any of these games, there's a 50/50 chance that I will think "Oh, nobody posts here, game is dead" or that I google some other forum and then am probably too annoyed to make an account there.
If I'm a bit less than mildly interested, I will just ngaf and go back to other games where I have an easy time talking and getting info without a hassle.

As noted, this is for "competitive players" who have an account on SRK anyways. The artstyle/soundtrack/cosplay/whatever section possibly gets alienated by SRK, and as such a hub for these people might be a good idea. But the competitive center should stay here.
If this subforum was overbursting and we didn't have any room, I'd understand the demand for a private forum, but this just isn't the case - in fact, the char subboards are not really used and instead everyone just posts in 2-5 threads (Gameplay, Cupcakes, SkullBats, OTT, ..)

Zidiane · February 4

Since there seems to be some risk involved with splitting communities and whatever else, why don't we wait until we have at least 2 more characters and feel confident that nothing will happen to completely stop new content?

0sh · February 4

Zidiane, post: 7970583, member: 22679 wrote:

Since there seems to be some risk involved with splitting communities and whatever else, why don't we wait until we have at least 2 more characters and feel confident that nothing will happen to completely stop new content?

Because there will never be a time where there is no such risk, tbh.

The Martian, post: 7970566, member: 80076 wrote:

For the time being I feel that the SG community should just be content with what we have on here. Segregating ourselves like that isn't going to get this game more recognition.

Actually, there are some important ways that it could help, including gaining more recognition. My arguments to this end are in the previous thread (I'm too lazy to retype it all, lol).

Makross · February 4

I'll say "New Forum" just cause SRK is acting like an ass lately. Lots of loads, bugs, glitches and downtimes that are killing our momentum.

Zidiane · February 4

0sh, post: 7970702, member: 67532 wrote:

Because there will never be a time where there is no such risk, tbh.

Wouldn't splitting too early be bad, though? If we at least know that we'll be having content coming in, confident that the company wants to support the game over the long run, I think that's the safer time. But, I'll migrate wherever we go.

worldjem7 · February 4

I still don't see why there's this urge to stay on SRK. What makes SRK so special that if we're ONLY here, we'll somehow get magical benefits of some sort?
SRK is limiting our growth at this point. Anyone on SRK that hasn't already looked into SkullGirls by now probably isn't going to start any time soon.
We should expand to attract more people.

0sh · February 4

worldjem7, post: 7970783, member: 8433 wrote:

I still don't see why there's this urge to stay on SRK. What makes SRK so special that if we're ONLY here, we'll somehow get magical benefits of some sort?
SRK is limiting our growth at this point. Anyone on SRK that hasn't already looked into SkullGirls by now probably isn't going to start any time soon.
We should expand to attract more people.

True, but being a part of a large community also has its benefits. But again, moving forums doesn't mean the SRK forum dies so IMO it's a non-issue.

@Joe2187: Nope, it's the same for everyone.

joe2187 · February 4

Is there some sort of trick to making SRK work properly on my browser? every now and then the site will just give random errors, fail to load, or just take to damn long to do anything. I'm using chrome btw.

and right now as I'm typing this reply, I get two error messages that failed to connect to server

To forum or not to forum...

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