How can we make RU better?

[Oglemi]

Hey guys,

So, the title is a little ambiguous, so I'll explain a little bit. Basically what I mean by RU is, the Rareylused forum, the #rarelyused IRC channel (and #pokemon), and possibly the RU tier itself.

Basically, what I'm asking is, what do you guys want to see done with RU to make it more enjoyable? Obviously increasing ladder activity is a big one, and one that I've been trying to work on, but what else do you guys want to see done around here? What's been fun, and what hasn't been?

Do you guys want to see more ladder games and tournaments? Other forum or IRC games? What would make the RU tier and community more fun?

I'm also going to open up the can of worms of the council. Would you guys like to see the rotating Jedi council return? I know this brings back the question of how exactly to reward the Tiering Contributor badge, but that's something I'm willing to tackle if it means more activity for the tier in general. Is the current Council Challenge interesting at all to anybody? What could make it better?

I realize I may not have been or be the best kind of leader, what with me being kinda absent due to school and such for the past couple of months (though now I'm back in full swing thanks to summer). I also tend to do things on a whim (like this thread) as well as the ladder games and mini-tournaments. Being a tier leader has taught me that I'm also a pretty hands-off kinda of leader when it comes to actually being a leader. Is my kind of leadership working for you guys? What can I do personally to improve (besides actually getting better at battling 9.9)?

So yeah, the floor is open to anybody and everybody with any kind of input you want to give about the tier. What do you guys want to see done? More games? Less games? Something else?

If anybody has any ideas on how to increase ladder activity, you're ideas are also open to take the floor.

Just remember to be respectful and follow the forum rules here when posting, no trolling etc.

Thanks guys!

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

I'd also like to hear feedback on my job as a moderator of the RU forum. What have I done well with? Where can I improve?

 

[biggie]

I have an idea akin to something that has been a part of the scramble thread contributors for a bit now: a type of tournament. Basically, everyone who participates has to give out a pokemon to everyone else in their bracket. This is limited to just the pokemon, and not specific sets. Using all of these donated pokemon, people have to build a team and compete. The team may rotate throughout the different rounds, but only with the pokemon you were given. The lone caveat being that if you were already given a pokemon by one person, you cannot receive it a second time and will get a substitute.

This type of tournament can inject new, random life into the tier. Who doesn't want to see who would win in a battle between two teams that are mashed together with completely random pokemon?

As for the way RU is run, I feel as though everyone is doing a fine job. I know I'm not as vocal or active as some other people, but I do watch (read: lurk) quite a bit. You guys are actively pursuing new ways to strengthen the community and the tier itself, and that should be commended.

tl;dr: random pokemon tournament, you guys are doing a GJ

 

[DittoCrow]

All of these challenges etc. are mostly aimed at increasing activity on the ladder. While this is working to some extent, it's obviously not meeting our standards. Thus, I don't think the focus should be on the ladder. We should really focus on being more of a close-knit community, like #nu (yes I always compare the two tiers 9.9). If we have an active community, more people would be inclined to join in the discussions, challenges, and test stuff. #nu is even more active than #pokemon, and I always see people discussing the tier and creative sets etc.

Now, why isn't the tier as active as it was 4 months ago? I'm not so sure if it's because of the rotating council. I'm not saying that this is a valid reason or anything, but maybe it's because now that RU is a "balanced tier," it's less exciting. There aren't many options to use like there are in NU, and a few Pokemon just dominate the metagame. Have we really found good Pokemon through the research weeks? The only mon really worth using and wasn't outclassed by something was Smeargle. Like I said, there aren't many creative things worth using RU, which makes the tier boring. Plus, we lost our most creative players to NU *coughmolkcough*. How to fix this and make RU better? I don't know. But hopefully my input helped figure out why the tier is so inactive.

 

[complete legitimacy]

I just think that a larger community is what we need; there's just not a lot of people that play RU on a consistent basis. However, I really like the direction that this tier has been taking recently, as I'm sure the Council Challenge, Mini-Tournaments, and Ladder Cup (v2?) will be a lot of fun. You can see that from the recent RU Tourney II and the CCAT that people lurk the forum at the very least, now we just have to convince them to actively play. I agree with DC that Research Week needs to be stepped up since there's a lot of Pokemon that are getting low usage but are still great Pokemon (note to koko: Mandibuzz for next RW).

We need to get people to enjoy this tier, but before that we need to get people to play this tier. I think that something along the lines of what has already been done can convince people to get started, and the RU communty can help itself grow by hitting the ladder and increasing the overall quality of play. This is one of our weakest areas, as I know that few good players were laddering prior to the Ladder Cup, and competition will surely increase as July 1st draws closer. People need incentives to try the tier, and ultimately the newness of the tier overall is what is killing us. However, I do feel that the community is pretty close-knit, I can think of at least 20 people who actively engage in conversation on #rarelyused (it's no NU, but a lot more active than #genvuu).

EDIT:

Thanks for making this thread Oglemi. I'm all for bringing the rotating "Jedi council" back; it gives people more incentive to push their alts at the end of the month, hoping to get voting reqs. However, this lack of activity on the ladder is perhaps due to the fact that the RU metagame is incredibly balanced. There's nothing new and exciting going on, and that makes the ladder stale. The DW metagame recently came up with a tournament allowing Darkrai to be used. I recommend we do something similar to spice thing up; suspects could be stuff like Yanmega, Venomoth, Hail and Sun.

Free Durant.

 

[The QWAZ]

I personally don't have an issue with RU at the moment, admittedly this may only be because i'm trying to get into RU and the smaller community seems easier to fit into, but that's not the point. Oglemi does a top job at managing the tournaments and keeping things good down in C&C, and Texas is great at keeping the forum in order and sparking up a chat.
The ladder is a bit of an issue as IIRC RU is the least played tier, only beating LC and ubers.

 

[jake]

Alright so I've been avoiding this thread primarily because I haven't really gathered my thoughts, but I was sitting in bed thinking about this and I figured I might as well post. Also I'm really bad at explaining myself so hopefully you guys understand what I'm talking about. :x

@Oglemi's post: I definitely appreciate the attempt to increase activity on the ladder with all of the games and stuff that's been put up lately, and RU has actually started to become more popular on ladder than LC again, which has long been the benchmark of a pitiful ladder. The ideas are innovative and obviously have garnered attention, and #rarelyused has actually been somewhat active these past few nights which is awesome...

...but at the same time, I feel like not enough attention is given to the forum at all, which imo is equally as important as the ladder, if not moreso. I mean, take a look at some of the more prominent threads around RU. The np: thread was dead for a good two weeks before alexwolf gave it a little bump with a solid post, and even then no one responded. It's got a grand total of 54 posts, despite having been up for two months now. Threads in RU seem to follow a general pattern and it's embodied here really clearly: a new thread is active for a day or two, and then it dies for at least a week, if not more. Texas bumped the thread and there were a few quality posts afterwards, but not nearly enough to really say it was a positive discussion experience and that we learned a lot about the research week Pokemon. I don't know how important this is for everyone else, but to me it's top priority: we need to focus on developing good discussion on the forums, and RU players/forumgoers need to be willing to have an active discussion with other people about the metagame etc.

Another example; this thread was dead for a month and a half before Incon bumped it with his set, and it at least provoked some discussion. It needs to be emphasized that discussion =/= tl;dr posts, and hopefully if people realize that they don't need to rewrite war and peace MK II then they'll start posting more. The potential for forum and ladder activity is here, but right now no one is really doing anything about it. Is it because the metagame has settled down? Is there not enough interesting things/sets/whatever to discuss? I'm going to try to go out of my way to promote discussion in RU threads, but that's not going to work out unless other people do it too.

As far as opinions of Oglemi/Texas/where the fuck is Nails go: DC already mentioned that RU will always be compared to NU, so I'd like to draw a connection here - NU is driven by its playerbase, not the leadership. You guys can't fulfill your role of shaping the discussion when there's no discussion. :/ Being hands-off is ok, since the playerbase should be leading discussion and everything anyway, imo.

I have few opinions on the rotating council. I'd like to see things in IS settle out a bit before that, but if it really does promote more activity on the forum/IRC/ladder then by all means go for it. The current challenge seems to just be another push towards ladder activity, but it seems like it's not a strong effort there on its lonesome. I really want activity on the ladder to not require compensation every time you battle, but bring it to the point that we have people laddering in RU simply for the enjoyment of laddering. I don't know what to do to make the council challenge better, but I do know that some things need to change around RU before that becomes an effective way to get people to ladder.

tl;dr: it's a team thing and everyone has to start doing their job. making good forum posts/discussion will lead to more discussion on irc/testing on the server which leads to more battles and then more creative sets or discussion or whatever. it's a vicious cycle of good things

As for the way RU is run, I feel as though everyone is doing a fine job. I know I'm not as vocal or active as some other people, but I do watch (read: lurk) quite a bit. You guys are actively pursuing new ways to strengthen the community and the tier itself, and that should be commended.

tl;dr: random pokemon tournament, you guys are doing a GJ

No comments on the tournament, but this is probably the one time people would advocate -not- lurking and posting more. Become vocal and active!! That's the only way RU will thrive. :(

All of these challenges etc. are mostly aimed at increasing activity on the ladder. While this is working to some extent, it's obviously not meeting our standards. Thus, I don't think the focus should be on the ladder. We should really focus on being more of a close-knit community, like #nu (yes I always compare the two tiers 9.9). If we have an active community, more people would be inclined to join in the discussions, challenges, and test stuff. #nu is even more active than #pokemon, and I always see people discussing the tier and creative sets etc.

Now, why isn't the tier as active as it was 4 months ago? I'm not so sure if it's because of the rotating council. I'm not saying that this is a valid reason or anything, but maybe it's because now that RU is a "balanced tier," it's less exciting. There aren't many options to use like there are in NU, and a few Pokemon just dominate the metagame. Have we really found good Pokemon through the research weeks? The only mon really worth using and wasn't outclassed by something was Smeargle. Like I said, there aren't many creative things worth using RU, which makes the tier boring. Plus, we lost our most creative players to NU *coughmolkcough*. How to fix this and make RU better? I don't know. But hopefully my input helped figure out why the tier is so inactive.

oh you said most of the things i said. maybe you gave me subliminal messaging or something, or maybe we're just geniuses who share the same ideas

but yes, having involved players who really want to see RU actually gain speed and discuss RU and stuff is definitely a step in the right direction. research weeks.... don't work out if no one really tries to do them. i mean, the last few have definitely died just because the quality of the ladder was so bad and slow. it's a step-by-step process but i'm hoping that RU research weeks will get to where we want them to be eventually

I just think that a larger community is what we need; there's just not a lot of people that play RU on a consistent basis. However, I really like the direction that this tier has been taking recently, as I'm sure the Council Challenge, Mini-Tournaments, and Ladder Cup (v2?) will be a lot of fun. You can see that from the recent RU Tourney II and the CCAT that people lurk the forum at the very least, now we just have to convince them to actively play. I agree with DC that Research Week needs to be stepped up since there's a lot of Pokemon that are getting low usage but are still great Pokemon (note to koko: Mandibuzz for next RW).

We need to get people to enjoy this tier, but before that we need to get people to play this tier. I think that something along the lines of what has already been done can convince people to get started, and the RU communty can help itself grow by hitting the ladder and increasing the overall quality of play. This is one of our weakest areas, as I know that few good players were laddering prior to the Ladder Cup, and competition will surely increase as July 1st draws closer. People need incentives to try the tier, and ultimately the newness of the tier overall is what is killing us. However, I do feel that the community is pretty close-knit, I can think of at least 20 people who actively engage in conversation on #rarelyused (it's no NU, but a lot more active than #genvuu).

agreeing with a lot of this. getting people to play and be active is the hard part, though. i wanted to say something else to respond to you but it's like 1:30 am and i don't remember what it was anymore and it took me too long to write what i already wrote. i'll think of it tomorrow


but yeah, hopefully this made sense!! also tomorrow morning i'm going to post in the np thread about breaking apart the current metagame as i'm too tired to formulate a post now, so i fully expect everyone to contribute to the discussion kthx

 

[Psychotic]

I personally believe that increasing ladder activity is the #1 thing that you could do to to improve the tier, coming from the perspective of someone who doesn't play the tier but wants to get into it. I think RU is one of the funnest tiers, and a bunch of cool people play it. But the one thing that always holds me back is the fact that I can never find a battle, and thus I never feel inclined to play simply because I don't battle enough, and it takes a very long time to improve because of this. Learning a tier by itself is hard enough, but when I have to wait 20-30 minutes between battles on the ladder, I become disinterested and get off after a battle or two. I believe that if you increased ladder activity, the playerbase would expand exponentially, because people would be willing to play and learn a tier if they could find a battle whenever they wanted to. You have to remember that the normal playerbase is not one that has time to sit around all day and play 3 battles an hour.

Now, this is coming from someone who does not know the full scope of the problems that RU is facing, just someone who thinks the tier is fun but cannot stand the amount of time it takes to find a battle. If this was changed, I think I, and many others, would play this tier much more, thus increasing overall activity.

Now, this is just an idea that I haven't really thought through, but it might be a good idea to look at NU and see what they have been doing differently. Their activity on the forums has been exceptionally high in comparison to RU and even UU, and their ladder is quite active as well. The NU section of the forum already has 5000 posts, and has only been around for 5 months IIRC. I have no idea if the only difference is that they have a more motivated playerbase, and perhaps the activity will drop once the novelty of NU wears off, but it is just something that might be worth looking into.

 

[Cherub Agent]

Thanks for making this thread Oglemi. I'm all for bringing the rotating "Jedi council" back; it gives people more incentive to push their alts at the end of the month, hoping to get voting reqs. However, this lack of activity on the ladder is perhaps due to the fact that the RU metagame is incredibly balanced. There's nothing new and exciting going on, and that makes the ladder stale. The DW metagame recently came up with a tournament allowing Darkrai to be used. I recommend we do something similar to spice thing up; suspects could be stuff like Yanmega, Venomoth, Hail and Sun.

 

[Oglemi]

Thanks for the comments everyone!

I recommend we do something similar to spice thing up; suspects could be stuff like Yanmega, Venomoth, Hail and Sun.

This was actually on my agenda with the mini-tournaments, though it wouldn't be for a while due to the fact that I was going to do different gimmicks first.

However, we can always run more tournaments, if people would be interested. Either multiple mini-tourneys at the same time, or something else.

 

[complete legitimacy]

I don't know if other people would like this, but I know I sure would enjoy basing a tournament around past stages of the metagame. It'd be cool for those of us that never got to play these metagames and those who did could revive their old teams. For example, the first of these tournaments could be Initial RU, where stuff like Rhyperior, Yanmega, and Gastrodon were still around. As each one finished we could progress to Stage 1, 2, and so on with the Pokemon that were available to use during that time.

 

[DittoCrow]

That's a very cool idea, c_l. Having more RU based tournaments in the Tournaments section of the forum could also help activity. I know that during the RU Tournament II, the ladder was pretty active as people were testing teams. I'd be open to hosting and participating in something like that.

I also like Cherub's idea of releasing stuff into RU for mini-tournaments. It would definitely spice up the metagame and we could potentially even unban something (though that's pretty unlikely xD). At least it would make playing less boring and give us a reason to test Pokemon. Being primarily an RU player, I find that there isn't much to do outside of the challenges; like, I wouldn't ladder on my own unless I needed to test a new team (which never happens because there aren't many reasons to build a really competitive team).

@ Zebraiken: Yeah I agree with everything you said. I'm hesitant to post discussion threads because I know they would probably die in 2 days. The main reason the RU forum was more active in the past is because it was a requirement to get on the rotating council. The problem with the rotating council now is that the TC badge would cause new problems to arise, possibly leading to other tiers having to change their council etc. But yeah, things need to settle down first xD.

All of our efforts are working though. IRC is definitely more active, even if the discussions are pretty short. They're short because there aren't many controversial things to discuss, as the tier is balanced. Therefore, having tournaments and other events like Cherub Agent and complete legitimacy mentioned would definitely promote more discussions. I'd be really excited if some of these ideas went through :)

 

[Honko]

I was actually thinking about hosting a tournament just like that c_l, although I was gonna wait for another couple of months.

 

[Incon]

Hello everyone! Being one of the newer players to become active in the ru community, i feel as though i may have some input in regards to people like me.

First off, i really really like the mini tournaments and ladder races. I have yet to join one because i just started being active however ill be sure to join the next one. These really drew me in because at the time this was the only tier that offered them. I created a team for it and laddered with it a little and discovered that i really like this tier.

Second, i really appreciate the kindness and support of the seasoned players and moderators. Im new and pretty clueless so i have a lot of questions. Ive pmed and vmed some mods asking them and they responded promptly and with a kind, encouraging answer. I really appreciated that and i feel like im apart of this community. Now all need is more knowledge so i can make some intelligent posts.

With all that said, i think tournaments geared to newer players would bring in a crowd of maybe not so experienced members. While i enjoy the tournaments now, most of the players have been playing for a while and i usually get crushed lol. I dont mind this at all because i like the competition and it helps me get better, but it might be a turn off to inexperienced player who feel as though playing a moderator is essentially a loss. Sorry if this post was completely off the wall and a dumb idea lol. Just thought i put in my two cents seeing that im newer to the community. Thanks to everyone for their encouragement and kindness to the new members. Its realy what made me love this tier.

 

[Incon]

I had another idea. Maybe offer a tutoring service exclusive to ru. Now idk how this would conflict with the battling 101 program but if this tier had their own list of tutors within these threads, i think it would attract a lot of new users who dont know where to start.

 

[jake]

I had another idea. Maybe offer a tutoring service exclusive to ru. Now idk how this would conflict with the battling 101 program but if this tier had their own list of tutors within these threads, i think it would attract a lot of new users who dont know where to start.

There are several RU tutors in Battling 101. ShakeItUp, yee, Windsong, Omicron, Thatsjustpeachy and myself are all signed up to tutor RU.

 

[Rakan]

Also, since RU isn't a very popular meta for b101, if you want to be tutored in RU, you'll likely get a tutor. Also, if you want to ensure that you get a tutor, feel free to contact any of the listed available tutors before the sign-ups start and ask if they will tutor you. That can come in handy if you miss sign-ups or w/e.

 

[lars]

@Zebraiken and kind of @ Omicron, that all works well in theory, but I have been keeping a decently close watch on the tutor/tutee assignments in Battling101 (round 58-62 specifically) and a severe majority of the applications that request BW RU and some even as the top priority don't get a tutor. If they do get a tutor, they usually are matched up for OU, NU, etc. rather than RU.

In fact, iirc, 4 applications during round 62 asked for a tutor for RU and none of them got it.

I don't blame Bloo because that is one tough job to even attempt and is pretty time intensive. He does a very good job in relative terms.

What I'm saying is that we need to take matters more into our own hands if we want to make sure these potential RU players are given a chance.

Given the situation, I have PMed a couple of those applicants (or others expressing RU tutoring interest) to see if they are still interested in receiving a RU tutor (which may or may not be affiliated with Battling101).

If I hear back from any of these PMs, would anyone be interested in being paired up with them?

 

[zdrup15]

That's a good idea lars and I'd be willing to help after my exams aka in exactly a month.

 

[TrollFreak]

Well Oglemi, what ever you do to make RU better, it needs to be done. Fast

I was on PO recently, playing OU, when I noticed something. There was no player online atm that is in the RU tier. I tried condensing it so I can make sure, but as you can see from the screenshot, not one player was in the tier.

As to why RU is so dead, I don't know why, but I like lars idea and I would love to get some tutoring!

 

[hamiltonion]

Hello. I'm going to speak unbiased as a Uber forum moderator (another tier leader) as well as a ex RU-fan who lost interest in the tier although still lurks and reads. So first off

The ladder is a bit of an issue as IIRC RU is the least played tier, only beating LC and ubers.

Thats wrong, RU only beats LC. xD

Ok now that that is out of the way, let me outline why exactly I stopped playing on the RU ladder. In the beginning, RU was an extremely fun tier to play when I wasnt interested in playing Ubers. There was a lot of scope of ingenuity and creativity, these are the two MAJOR reasons for even playing a lower tier apart from UU. However, as time passed, RU became balanced much much faster than was predicted. As we all know a balanced metagame is a stale metagame (DPP OU after mence was pretty boring). Now that a large chunk of creativity and variety were out of the window, people (me too) got disenchanted and led to the exodus. Unlike UU, RU doesnt get too many potentially game changing tier shifts making it boring as well.

Now, while a tournament would be fun / exciting, it wouldnt help improve forum activity / ladder activity in any way tbf. Again suspect testing would be kinda pointless for RU as the tier SEEMS to be stable anyway. The thing is, there's really cut and dry method to go about doing this. Like Zeb said, its a team thing. People got to step up and make good posts, the members need to take initiatives to shake up the ladder by promoting styles. Lastly, like any other lower tier, RU needs a tight knit community like NU to keep it going. RU is made largely by a volatile floating playerbase. One possible suggestion is to take standard #rarelyused stuff to #pokemon. Yes, controversial but the point is, there while discussing RU, 200 people are listening to you while in #rarelyused, 20~ listen to you at a time ?

Just my opinion to help out a tier which I loved.

 

[Oglemi]

Thanks everybody for their input and their posts.

It seems that major cause for the lack of interest in RU is that it's balanced metagame, which then led to a dead ladder.

barry4ever and Zebraiken are correct, the RU community as a whole needs to be strengthened. I encourage everyone to start talking in #pokemon, or bring RU conversations up in the main chat on the Smogon University server on PO. We have a very tight community in #rarelyused, and I love them all to death. What needs to happen in RU is a spark of interest that will lead to new innovations.

The problem of the dead ladder is a tough one. I can't say "guys go ladder" and then people magically start laddering. The fix isn't solely with myself or with anyone for that matter. The group as a whole needs to start laddering, for one reason or another. Hopefully the upcoming Smogon Grand Slam and RU Open, people will have a sudden interest in the tier in order to do well in the tournament. While suspect testing may bring back some more activity to the ladder, there really isn't any point in bringing that back when we have a balanced metagame. In the end it's all up to everybody to decide to start laddering again, whether for glory or otherwise. I don't there really is a way to "fix" this. At least not from what I can find.

The getting people interested in tutoring is also a good idea. We have some very good RU players willing to tutor, and if anybody has any interest in getting into the metagame, please get in contact with them.

I recently put up a thread on discussing stall, and will continue to try to post more in the forum, and I encourage everyone else to do the same, especially the RU council members. I agree with Zebraiken that this is another weak area, and having more discussion in the forum would definitely spark more interest in the ladder.

BiGGie, if you're still interested in your tournament idea, I'll try to help you get that set up so we can have fun with that too.

Thanks again everyone! I'll leave this thread open yet, but I'm going to unstick it.