This topic is meant to be a discussion for ideas and ways to... guess what. :rolldice:
That's right, it's meant to MAKE SHODDY MORE POPULAR!
Spoiler
(http://i.imgur.com/qYnx7yV.jpg)
I'd like to make a few suggestions myself, but I'm sure you all have some ideas, so please do your best to share them with us.
Oh, and if you ask me why I want Shoddy to be more popular: a larger community creates a very competitive environment, which is just fun and perfect all-around. The overall gameplay level increases, and as it does, there will be stronger and stronger opponents to face. It'd never really get boring, now would it?
And if anyone says something's too hard or almost impossible in this case... nah, not really. The steps are mostly laid down, they just take a lot of work to do.
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☢ CAUTION!! ☢
EXTREME LEVELS OF WALL OF TEXT AHEAD.
☢ YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. ☢
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Well... Shoddy isn't very popular right now.
Agastya would probably argue that there were days when it was even LESS popular; nowadays, Shoddy does have a stable community, but it's still small, and communities which don't grow only tend to dim out with time.
However, there must be some ways to make it more popular, right?
What I have in mind is discussing this each step, one by one. Of course, that requires that the steps be laid down in the first place. So here we go.
- Advertisement for the Shoddy client itself, as well as for the wiki as the most reliable THPP reference around.
- Actually making the wiki "the most reliable THPP reference around". That includes both visual and functional improvements.
- Making the community more beginner-friendly, as in: introduction guides, measures to make balanced teambuilding easier, and so on.
- Visual improvements to the forums, such as a different way to lay categories out, new categories and subforums, and so on.
agastya fix solarbeam n curse bug pls, n stop being haetd by evry1voodoo
steps #5 and #6 are best steps ok
As for the order of the steps... I do have some ideas for #1 (advertisement), but I think there isn't much point in advertising too much before completing the wiki and tweaking the forums.
Anyway, for #1, I didn't think of anything flashy, really: just putting up links to "Touhoumon 1.8 netplay - Shoddy 2 client", "THPP wiki" and "THPP forums" in places that are usually references for Touhou fangames. What I can think of right off the bat is en.touhouwiki.net (http://en.touhouwiki.net) and touhou.wikia.com (http://touhou.wikia.com). Of course, said links would be limited to the actual THPP page in those wikis, but it's a start.
The next step from there would probably moving onto GBA Pokemon ROM hacking communities... or maybe Touhou communities... or why not both. The first option'd probably be the faster one, but both should have plenty of people interested in it.
However, this can NOT be done too intensely early on, because if a mass of players does end up miraculously forming thanks to our effort, then that mass will be largely uninstructed in THPP, and if we can't hope to instruct that mass and have them actually building teams, nobody'll really want to stay.
I guess the first step for everyone should be playing through Emerald first, so as to at least have a general idea of how the types work? Would that require additional steps, then?
#2 and #3 can't really work without each other. Why did I even put them as separate steps?
Well, first of all, the wiki needs to be visually appealing. So broken links should be fixed, and so on. Also, we really need a better main page! Just saying.
It also needs to be easy and intuitive to navigate through, so pages like Common Support Moves (http://thpp.supersanctuary.net/wiki/Common_Support_Moves) have to be in places where people actually see them.
Also, if someone checks the Spikes (http://thpp.supersanctuary.net/wiki/Spikes) or Levitate (http://thpp.supersanctuary.net/wiki/Levitate) page, they'd expect a full list of mons who can run it, at the very least.
That and there might be a need to make redirections in the fashion DParsee -> Defense Parsee for EVERY shard form, as well as changing the order of the base stats (the actual one is off-putting for old Pokemon players), and some disambiguation pages here and there.
Of course, that's already a lot of work.
However, that's not even the point. The point is making teambuilding easy.
For that, my suggestion is for a Category to be created: that Category would hold puppet Categories, as in "Bulky Attacker", "Spinner" and so on, with one puppet being able to be in more than one category at the same time, even within a single set.
From there, if there is a "Teambuilding" page categorizing teams into basic types - semi-stall, offensive, whatever - and basic guidelines for it, like advising people to run at least one Spinner unless they know what they're doing... then teambuilding'd be that much easier.
There should also be external links on a puppet's page linking to the forum sets made for it. That way, the sets would be way more useful and approachable. And of course there should be sets for EVRY TAWHOU! Well that's my dream anyway, lol.
Also, this (http://maya.sector-5.net/py/touhou/) really has to become more popular, but so does the fact that it doesn't actually account for abilities.
I got things to do (unfortunately), so I'll wrap this up with #4 for now, the forums themselves.
Well I didn't think much about the forums tbh. However, I think everything'd be far more visible if the subcategories were to be below the main category one by one, instead of just being there as little links. That shouldn't be too hard to do, really.
As for new categories, no idea, but it's for sure that these forums could use a lot of new ones, and that the right ones'd actually get plenty of use. I personally vote for a blog-style News category just to make those news easier to see (should be easy to do for the most part as well).
Ok, discuss, comment, suggest, complain, whatever you all wish. Actually, I'd love if this was actually turned into a discussion, but I did put down plenty of ideas there already, at any rate.
tl;dr: Shoddy's kinda unpopular, so I thought of a few steps of how to try and make it more popular or die trying. This is supposed to be a discussion based on these steps, including suggestions and ideas from whoever and whatnot.