MAMP
MAMP!
I've recently introduced some IRL friends to Pokemon Showdown, casual Pokemon players who were curious about playing competitively. Watching them play on Pokemon Showdown for the first time made me realise that Showdown is pretty unfriendly to new players in a lot of ways. In particular, a ton of extremely useful information and features on Showdown are only easily accessible via chat commands, and there's no way to learn about these commands without going into a chatroom and asking about them or seeing someone else use them. A vast majority of Showdown users do not use chatrooms, a fact that can be easily verified by comparing the number of online users with the number of people in each chatroom. There is a massive contingent of Showdown users who don't know about commands like /dt and /rank, and for these people I'd imagine the website is far less convenient to use. The friends list feature doesn't exist at all if you don't know about chat commands. Once I watched a friend open up the teambuilder in the middle of a battle, make a new team, put Celesteela onto the team, and then scroll down its movelist to check if it could learn Roost. This isn't an ideal situation.
This design pattern is also annoying because I don't want to be in a chatroom all the time, but sometimes when I'm teambuilding I want to be able to use the /ds command. To do this, I have to either go into a chatroom or click on my name at the top of the screen and select 'chat self' (not every command can be used in the PM chat box, so that isn't always an option either). I don't really want to have to do this, but there's no good alternative.
I have a couple of solutions to this. The first is that more information could be provided on the battle screen. Maybe if you click on a Pokemon's sprite (either its battle sprite or the little icon) a window could pop up that displays the results of the /dt command? Hovering over the name of a move, item, or ability in the battle log could come up with information about it as well.
A more flexible solution is to have a information search bar at the top of the screen, perhaps next to the player's username. Users could type the name of a Pokemon, move, item, ability, type, etc and it could give them the result of the /dt command + movelist + link to Smogon analysis, etc. This seems like the simplest and most intuitive solution to this problem to me.
Minor thing: would be nice to be able to see my ladder rank by clicking on my username at the top of the screen.
The format selector could use a lot of work too. If you're new to PS and you want to try something besides Random Battles, and you click the button to see what other tiers are available, you're greeted by this monstrosity:
What are you even supposed to make of this? Close to a hundred options sprawl across half of your screen, most of which have names that are inscrutable to you. RU? NFE? BSS Factory? You have no way of finding out what any of these formats are or how to play them, unless you go into a chatroom or google it. I imagine this is part of the reason that Random Battles are as popular as they are: it's the default format, and the size and unhelpfulness of the format selector dissuades new users from trying other things.
What can be done about this? I have 3 suggestions.
First, and simplest, is to expand the names of formats to make them a bit clearer. OU should be listed as 'OverUsed (OU)' or something similar. LC should be 'Little Cup (LC)' and so on. These names are easier to parse and make the connections between the formats more apparent.
Secondly, it should be easier to find information about formats. Showdown already has a command, /format, that shows a description of a format and includes links to sample teams, discussion threads, and other resources. Stick a little icon next to the name of each format that people can click on to make this information pop up.
Thirdly, the sheer size of the format selection window could be toned down. Having the format categories be collapsable and collapsed by default could go a long way towards making it easier to find the formats you want, and making the window less overwhelming to new players. I saw a suggestion that Showdown should allow people to mark certain formats as their favourite and have those show up at the top of the format list, and I think this is a good idea too.
The Showdown FAQ is pretty in-depth, but there's no way to find it without being linked to it. A help button somewhere visible that brings up the FAQ could be handy to have.
Sorry that this is a bit all over the place. The way that Showdown's design seems to ignore new users who don't want to use chatrooms, which is an enormous portion of the playerbase, has been bugging me a bit lately and I wanted to put some ideas out there. I hope some of these can be considered.
This design pattern is also annoying because I don't want to be in a chatroom all the time, but sometimes when I'm teambuilding I want to be able to use the /ds command. To do this, I have to either go into a chatroom or click on my name at the top of the screen and select 'chat self' (not every command can be used in the PM chat box, so that isn't always an option either). I don't really want to have to do this, but there's no good alternative.
I have a couple of solutions to this. The first is that more information could be provided on the battle screen. Maybe if you click on a Pokemon's sprite (either its battle sprite or the little icon) a window could pop up that displays the results of the /dt command? Hovering over the name of a move, item, or ability in the battle log could come up with information about it as well.
A more flexible solution is to have a information search bar at the top of the screen, perhaps next to the player's username. Users could type the name of a Pokemon, move, item, ability, type, etc and it could give them the result of the /dt command + movelist + link to Smogon analysis, etc. This seems like the simplest and most intuitive solution to this problem to me.
Minor thing: would be nice to be able to see my ladder rank by clicking on my username at the top of the screen.
The format selector could use a lot of work too. If you're new to PS and you want to try something besides Random Battles, and you click the button to see what other tiers are available, you're greeted by this monstrosity:
What are you even supposed to make of this? Close to a hundred options sprawl across half of your screen, most of which have names that are inscrutable to you. RU? NFE? BSS Factory? You have no way of finding out what any of these formats are or how to play them, unless you go into a chatroom or google it. I imagine this is part of the reason that Random Battles are as popular as they are: it's the default format, and the size and unhelpfulness of the format selector dissuades new users from trying other things.
What can be done about this? I have 3 suggestions.
First, and simplest, is to expand the names of formats to make them a bit clearer. OU should be listed as 'OverUsed (OU)' or something similar. LC should be 'Little Cup (LC)' and so on. These names are easier to parse and make the connections between the formats more apparent.
Secondly, it should be easier to find information about formats. Showdown already has a command, /format, that shows a description of a format and includes links to sample teams, discussion threads, and other resources. Stick a little icon next to the name of each format that people can click on to make this information pop up.
Thirdly, the sheer size of the format selection window could be toned down. Having the format categories be collapsable and collapsed by default could go a long way towards making it easier to find the formats you want, and making the window less overwhelming to new players. I saw a suggestion that Showdown should allow people to mark certain formats as their favourite and have those show up at the top of the format list, and I think this is a good idea too.
The Showdown FAQ is pretty in-depth, but there's no way to find it without being linked to it. A help button somewhere visible that brings up the FAQ could be handy to have.
Sorry that this is a bit all over the place. The way that Showdown's design seems to ignore new users who don't want to use chatrooms, which is an enormous portion of the playerbase, has been bugging me a bit lately and I wanted to put some ideas out there. I hope some of these can be considered.
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