Duel Activity

I post in site suggestions to suggest a direction, after addressing an issue. It's an issue brought up in the "Digi's Leave?" topic, but I avoid posting in topics that bring up personal matters in general.

The issue I want to address is the "You should duel." issue. Let's take it from the beginning and explain why we should duel. Back when I joined TWA, in the days of KCVDS, what I was indeed looking for in TWA was dueling. In an academy you could consistently find opponents who were either decent, would not randomly break rules or perhaps most importantly, could be reasoned with (imagine playing random people on kcvds and having a ruling disagreement, where it is just your word against your stranger opponent's and no one to help. Yeah, it was ygo hell, it's a lot worse than even DN's unrated). Additionally, you would have other people you could compare yourself to, there was no such thing as ranking on kcvds, so unless you felt like pointlessly spamming duels, the only way you'd find point in playing was in a community.

From that originated the "need to duel". Duels would become official and sanctioned within the academy, with consistency and rewards. This was the only way for members to have fun dueling, so for the place to maintain itself, people would need to duel. It made perfect sense, over half the reason you were there was dueling, this was the easiest way to do it so it was a common goal.

As most of you have probably realized reading up to here, things are different now. It's not lazyness or that the times are changing. In fact online ygo is more active than ever. The thing is this
https://i.imgur.com/DVPEge5.png
Ignore mr. Kick Buttwosky, the horrible player that wants others to play only with 2002 cards, as if it's common knowledge what those are, and even my unappetizing deck name. Focus on the left.
That's a problem solver. Want decent opponents? Want your opponents to follow the rules of the game? Want to find games fast? Want to be compared to other players by a fair system?
There's your answer to everything.
And even without that, do you perhaps want less risk or less decent duels? By adding a small risk to your opponent not following rules, you can do that in the middle. And even then, it's not like kcvds, the community is constantly active so you can even use the public chat to solve such issues.

It is not strange that the decline of duel academies came around the time of DN (even though inactivity preceded it, but the elimination of most and their state of today came after DN). Academies lost that purpose. It wasn't a bad thing by any means. If all you wanted was to duel, then now you have a better way and an easier way. If that was all the forum was for, then it should close down as it is not needed anymore. That's all natural and good. If what you wanted from your forum was not the exact same thing DN will offer you, then the forum stays as it still has a purpose, and you stay in it. Everyone is satisfied so long as they look at things with reason.

Like that, some places survived. Some because they had a big memberbase to begin with, so with effort it was possible to maintain them, even if it meant clawing into it. I'd like to thing we survived for a different reason. My ability to gather records has greatly diminished due to some circumstances, but I can tell we were already different at the time, and we had an easier time adapting, perhaps without even acknowledging these circumstances and just naturally to survive.

But even after adapting, as if they were useless wisdom teeth, we kept a need. The need to randomly, generally and consistently do official academy duels. I'll be frank. You can tell people to finish the tournament they signed up for, you can tell people to be active on the event they wanted, you may even tell people to have activity in general, but telling them to randomly and generally have official duels with no reason other than wanting to see duels done, is bullshit. Certainly it is not bullshit the staff just came up with. It was forced on us, at the time, and on them now, by certain people with the arguement "we are a ygo forum, so we have to have inner duels". Why would someone honestly want that to happen generally, you may ask. That would be because one may want to compete with a more enclosed or perhaps familiar competition, for various reasons, ok or not, it's irrelevant. That is all good but it is not a general need among the majority of members (most are satisfied ygo wise with just playing on DN), neither is it required for the forum's survival, so it is not a real need to be imposed on the forum, and there is no reason for members to be forced to do that, unless they view the whole thing as an event for sorts (which some people do, some people may be on the holy crusade to bring duels in the academy in the name of the staff, which is in its own way a role playing event).

(inb4 the below is completely ignored)
Of course we can still have fun with inner dueling. That is what we have tournaments and events for. I may want to win a tournament within the academy, that is shared and can be fun ygo. An event may be interesting (not just duel spammy, interesting), so I'll participate, play ygo in WDA and try to win. That makes sense, and if people are signed up for it, knowing what it is (if I cover what something is and it turns out boring in the end, members have a much smaller responsibility), then as it is by their own will that they joined, they should play. However tournaments and events should only exist when they serve an actual purpose, that being that their are fun and/or interesting (or in other case required from the members, but if they are not fun or interesting and they still require them, whether they should be is a different discussion). Having an event, merely for the sake of dueling, that is not really fun or interesting, is pointless.

As I said, in a discussion earlier today, I fear much more for this academy's activity when boring chores are forced unto people, than when the duel arena isn't spammed. Dueling should be filling a need. Tournaments should exist when they serve a purpose or are fun. Events should exist when they are fun and interesting, and not just for the sake of getting some duels done.

Even though I did not want to join the event due to the theme, when I saw that the nature of the prom was a regular duel league, just with teams, I have to say I was disappointed. When people aren't dueling that much in the first place, the only purpose a duel league serves is trying to hit two birds with one stone, one being getting an event out of the way, the other is getting duels done. Problem is, being fun is in neither of those goals and becomes secondary, since other things are prioritized (mainly, filling our duel quota in).

If people aren't doing something, then they don't want to do it. What comes first is what they want to do, and that doesn't refer to what a couple of people want to force the rest into doing. We are not that many around here. We can tell what each other wants out of this place to a certain extend. And that involves ygo. But that's not random. Make an event and make a tournament people want to join. At the time we have a lot of people complaining about the state of the format (unfortunately) so a special rules tournament that comes from their wants would be an ok idea. And even without that, we can still just make interesting and fun events people would want to join, instead of forcing each other to play ygo.

That's the direction I want to propose. I propose the mindset that says "We need to duel because we are ygo" "We need to duel to be active" "We need to duel to survive as a forum" and all such things which come down to dueling for the sake of dueling, to be dropped. Instead focus on answering the wants of the members, which do include ygo, with the neccessary events etc. That basically translates into, not forcing people to do official duels, but just making sure they have good events they can enter if they want to.

One last thing. I mentioned yesterday a staff member is not to do more than what another member would do in that position, and mentioned joint responsibility. That is a concept of equality. It is the WDA member that also becomes staff and acts like the WDA member that makes decisions. In a sense, for the community to be sustained by its members, that person still needs to be an equal WDA member and act like one would, however at the same time that this member that is staff, due to that equality, needs to do no more than the equal WDA member, it also needs to not ask of others to do what he/she would not do, and not ask of others to have fun with something they would not find fun themselves.
Sorry but doing duels is nobody's work.

so in the end, its basically the fate of academies based on dueling to simply die now. That's what I basically got from this

On a more serious note, as long as DN forums exist, it doesn't seem to matter whether the academy is oriented on dueling, or on several matters, it'll soon become obsolete as the purpose it served is now being done better. Its why its so incredibly hard to find any at all. What's keeping WDA afloat isn't dueling or even its variety, its the members, and whether we force them to duel or just duel casually, WDA will live until they go. But remember this, nothing lasts forever

edit: I'm summarizing this and sending it to ADA. If the academy is to die, at least they'll know why

kaiza wrote:

so in the end, its basically the fate of academies based on dueling to simply die now. That's what I basically got from this

On a more serious note, as long as DN forums exist, it doesn't seem to matter whether the academy is oriented on dueling, or on several matters, it'll soon become obsolete as the purpose it served is now being done better. Its why its so incredibly hard to find any at all. What's keeping WDA afloat isn't dueling or even its variety, its the members, and whether we force them to duel or just duel casually, WDA will live until they go. But remember this, nothing lasts forever

edit: I'm summarizing this and sending it to ADA. If the academy is to die, at least they'll know why

~Opens envolope~ And the award for the most emo roll in WDA goes to....Kaiza! Stand up and take a bow, Kaiza. Seriously, I don't know who pissed in your cheerios but you do this on ever topic made. Al's point is that we're a community of people that last because we don't need events. We run them to try and have fun. That we have no need to duel just to duel. Stop trying to twist everything into a cutting contest.

Minako wrote:

kaiza wrote:

so in the end, its basically the fate of academies based on dueling to simply die now. That's what I basically got from this

On a more serious note, as long as DN forums exist, it doesn't seem to matter whether the academy is oriented on dueling, or on several matters, it'll soon become obsolete as the purpose it served is now being done better. Its why its so incredibly hard to find any at all. What's keeping WDA afloat isn't dueling or even its variety, its the members, and whether we force them to duel or just duel casually, WDA will live until they go. But remember this, nothing lasts forever

edit: I'm summarizing this and sending it to ADA. If the academy is to die, at least they'll know why

~Opens envolope~ And the award for the most emo roll in WDA goes to....Kaiza! Stand up and take a bow, Kaiza. Seriously, I don't know who pissed in your cheerios but you do this on ever topic made. Al's point is that we're a community of people that last because we don't need events. We run them to try and have fun. That we have no need to duel just to duel. Stop trying to twist everything into a cutting contest.

I'm not trying to be emo, was trying to understand what Al-bhed said, and in my eyes, what he said basically, is that the only thing keeping the academy afloat isn't dueling, but its members, you even verified that in your own post

edit: my English expression must suck or something

well i'm glad to see things haven't changed too much lol. al is still just as long winded as ever. i'd like to say that i agree with al (assuming that i understand him) in the fact that we're surviving because we're a community and i want to say thanks to al and everyone else that continues to keep this place going. i get a sigh of relief every time i'm able to come back here after a huge break and see things are still as they were when i left.

First wall'o'text of the new (English) summer. Huzzah!

As it stands, let's not start flaming eachother or starting arguments and stuff.

But yeah I think them there are some good points, though I can't say I read the entire post. I have work to do tonight.

I'm glad we have a big-ass monologue to refer people to concerning the state of WDA and what we do, so that they can see the sheer size of the font and how long the post is and decide to leave there and then. xD

It's been difficult to keep up with YGO after getting my Xbox 360 back as soon as it was fixed, and not to mention getting even more games for the PC. Eventually, YGO lost its value for me not only because of video-games, but because I had even less time to juggle my leisure moments with studies now that I began playing games even more. Also, as what Al said, the rewards received from dueling eventually lost value.

Would just like to remind the people who didn't notice, Thu Apr 04, 2013 4:58 pm

'Tis be an old topic that seems solved. If there are any relevant issues, feel free to make a new topic. Topic locked.