State and Direction of PokeBeach?

[Juliacoolo]

Hello everyone,

For those of you who don't know me, I'm Juliacoolo, and I've been a member of the PokeBeach Community since 2006.


PokeBeach will always be very dear to me, and in consequence, I've made some observations about the site and community that have struck my curiosity. Most of the questions I have are aimed at the staff and regular members, but I'd love to hear feedback from anyone who has ideas, thoughts, or suggestions.

First of all, I worry about the activity of the forum. I realize that forums are a dying community medium in general, but outside of the competitive TCG section, there appears to be a shocking lack of interest, discussion, and leadership. The conversation that does occur finds itself being surface level, and resembles scattered thoughts and questions more than thorough knowledge sharing. I mean no disrespect towards the PokeBeach Members or Staff, I simply am curious as to how the current state of Pokebeach is seen from an inside perspective, as I certainly am concerned from my returning, "outsider" perspective.

How do you guys view the current state of Pokebeach? What are your plans to improve the forum's weaknesses and bolster its strengths?

Secondly, I sense a lack of identity within the PokeBeach brand and community. A lot of this has to do with the main site, as well as the relationship between the site and the community. From what I've seen, Pokebeach seems to be clinging to life by holding onto its handful of assets. Partnerships with TCGOne and TCGPlayer have and will continue to keep PokeBeach relevant, yet PB seemingly hasn't done much to leverage these assets towards gaining activity, popularity, or market share among Pokemon fans. Additionally, PokeBeach's longest tenured and most reliable asset appears to be in moderate decline. The flagship news aspect of Pokebeach is still strong, but not as cutting edge as it used to be. Now, I realize that a lot of this isn't on the shoulders of the news staff. Nintendo/Pokemon has become more nasty with lawsuits and intellectual property control, and Pokebeach has certainly felt the impact of that behavior. However, the content that big sites are shying away from is quite often what most interests Pokemon fans. TCG scans, datamine leaks, and other insider news pieces are what drive hype and discussion, so naturally, related conversations have moved to smaller sites and image boards that don't have a target on their back. I don't have an immediate solution for this issue, but I'd love to hear about what others have in mind, or what may already be in the works. One option would be to have an "unaffiliated" subsidiary site handle the content that would jeopardize the sanctuary of the main site.

How have PokeBeach's competencies changed over the years? What is doing better, what has been worse? Why is Pokebeach so weak in areas outside of the TCG? What initiatives are being taken to make lasting, tangible improvement?

With these points presented, I find myself wondering where PokeBeach positions itself among competitors. It certainly isn't "Your ultimate Pokemon fansite," as it isn't a top dog in any one, let alone many sectors of Pokemon fandom. PokeBeach's best quality definitely stems from its TCG resources, but I don't see where these resources are being used together to offer something that really sets PB apart. Successful companies/communities are excellent at at least one thing, and outside of some TCG news pieces, PokeBeach appears to be merely above average at a handful of categories. There's also plenty more PB could be doing to expand its article program and business practices, but I understand that these decisions are made at the very top, and typically aren't weighed by input from lower levels of the hierarchy.

Ultimately, I think main site assets paired with a strong alumni network is keeping PokeBeach afloat, but the community is far from thriving. I want to see PokeBeach compete with the networks of other top sites, and I think that such a goal is well within reach. I'm not posting this thread to complain and chastise without providing solutions; I'm happy and willing to help contribute to a stronger PokeBeach Community. I simply would like to know what everyone else thinks about the topics I've covered, and hopefully generate some dialogue on the matters at hand.

Thanks!

~ Juliacoolo

 

[Celever]

Hey Juliacoolo, this is a great idea for a thread and thanks for making it! It'll be really interesting seeing where some of the members feel changes should be made on the forums, and as staff we'll do our best to try and accommodate to these desires. I'll be keeping a personal close eye on this thread, as my forum presence can be found everywhere besides TCG, so any ideas you have as to how to benefit all these smaller sections and departments would be awesome!

One thing I'll say in relation to the OP, is that while we'd have probably got a C&D if we had run an official news story about the datamine leak, discussion on the datamining was no holds barred in our VG forum itself. This means that all the information was still there... it just wasn't front page.

After we get a bunch of feedback from members I'll likely share some of my thoughts here myself.

 

[double o squirtle]

Now, I've only been on PokeBeach for just over a year and I'm really only active on certain forums so I wouldn't say my thoughts have that much worth, but opinions are opinions right?

How have PokeBeach's competencies changed over the years? What is doing better, what has been worse? Why is Pokebeach so weak in areas outside of the TCG? What initiatives are being taken to make lasting, tangible improvement?

I'm afraid I don't really have an answer for many of the questions, but I do have one for the third and sort of one for the last. When you say everything outside of the competitive TCG forums, I mainly think of the VG forum, which is one that I don't really pay attention to because I'm pretty clueless when it comes to VG. Due to this, I don't think I have much say in why it's been inactive and I honestly don't know why. However that also includes the Creative Works forum. Although it is not really a discussion forum, and creativity does play a big role in its activity, I think it could be a lot more active and as someone who spends quite a bit of time there it's sad to see only a couple updates every so often, when there are a few more people here that have the potential to contribute to it.

I'll talk about Smeargle's Canvas first. After participating in the recent competition, I realised that there are quite a few talented artists on this site aside from those who have galleries here. I don't know if it's embarrassment, fear, irl stuff, or just lack of commitment, but if everyone with some sort of talent could do something, well, I think that could make Smeargle's Canvas thrive, or at the very least, become more active than maybe one or two updates every couple weeks or so. This applies to a lot of things, really. I experienced some of those difficulties when coming up with my story for the Ruins of Alph and I'm sure a lot of people that have or are thinking about writing something experience those difficulties too. I'm not to sure about IPOF, though I do think that there's more activity there than in the other two sections. Imo that's because you don't really need to have drawing skills or a good image editing software to be able to make text fakes. All you need is a little bit of creativity, a keyboard and there you have it, a text based Pokemon card. Basically, my answer to the third question is that from what I can see, the reason for lack of activity in the CW forum is, well, what I listed above. Embarrassment, fear, irl stuff, or just lack of commitment.

Now for the last question rather than answer what is being done, I'm going to answer what can be done, because as somone who doesn't really know what happens behind the scenes, I don't know if things are already in motion.

How to combat inactivity, I'm not exactly sure. One thing I did notice though, was that when the recent competition was going on, quite a few people participated, and I'm sure more would have had it not been about Fakemon. A lot of those people don't have a thread in Smeargle's Canvas. So basically what I think is that for CW to become more active, it needs to be competitive or hyped up. We all can get competitive, it's evident because a lot of us here play competitive TCG or VG. If there's some kind of insentive other than moral benefits then that could increase activity. This also applies to a lot of things other than Smeargle's Canvas, it's in our nature to do things that give us some kind of benefit if we consider it to be worth our time. So if we were to have little contests every so often I think that would help. The main problem is that organizing these things takes time, and I'm sure that the people who help organize these events have irl commitments they need to do first. That's really something that one can't just avoid so that's where I stop.

I'm not exactly sure if this is the kind of response you're looking for, but I hope this is good enough.

 

[Lorde]

PokeBeach will always be very dear to me, and in consequence, I've made some observations about the site and community that have struck my curiosity. Most of the questions I have are aimed at the staff and regular members, but I'd love to hear feedback from anyone who has ideas, thoughts, or suggestions.

First of all, I worry about the activity of the forum. I realize that forums are a dying community medium in general, but outside of the competitive TCG section, there appears to be a shocking lack of interest, discussion, and leadership. The conversation that does occur finds itself being surface level, and resembles scattered thoughts and questions more than thorough knowledge sharing. I mean no disrespect towards the PokeBeach Members or Staff, I simply am curious as to how the current state of Pokebeach is seen from an inside perspective, as I certainly am concerned from my returning, "outsider" perspective.

How do you guys view the current state of Pokebeach? What are your plans to improve the forum's weaknesses and bolster its strengths?

How have PokeBeach's competencies changed over the years? What is doing better, what has been worse? Why is Pokebeach so weak in areas outside of the TCG? What initiatives are being taken to make lasting, tangible improvement?

I have to agree with you with basically everything here, and I have answers:

First, Pokebeach's forums aren't very much an issue, it's the lack of new material being brought into the VG and Anime discussions. We know Pokebeach has for a long time, been a primary TCG Pokemon site, but it does at least inform for new stuff on other things. What may help? VG tournaments. Every month we see Pokebeach holding a PTCGO tournament, and the lack of there being a VG tournament, even though it'd been difficult to set up, is probably something holding back a lot of the competitive VG discussion here on Pokebeach. But also, we see sets of the TCG released every 3 months, while Sun and Moon is the first Pokemon game in two years. Of course, over the course of those 2 years of a drought in the VG era, the conversation would significantly drop. Don't worry though. Sun and Moon comes with all sorts of new strategies for the competitive scene of the VG, and will thus, revive those forums, and hopefully, they'll be kept alive by a Pokemon title in 2017.

Anime however, most people are in it for the TCG or VG, and the anime is really only used to promote these products. I never really expected the anime to have very deep discussion.

As someone who's only been surfing the waves for a year, my evaluation of Pokebeach's current state compared to the past probably isn't a great analysis, but considering I'd been coming around Pokebeach since September 2015, I can say I feel like Pokebeach is slowly declining, at least from where it was a bit over a year ago. Pokebeach I notice has been dealing with issues like WPM being extremely busy with things in his daily life, and that's understandable. However, if you notice, the calendar hasn't been updated since February this year, almost nine months now. A sign that not as much effort or time is being put into the site by executives. But hey, I'm 15. I don't know what they deal with in the world, so who am I to judge?

Now again, how would I fix this? VG Tournaments, Art and Writing Competitions, and more stuff like that. How would that all happen? It'd be a long process, and never having been on the staff team of a website like this before, my first assumption would be, it's a long process. But it can be done, and I think Pokebeach forums would have much more deep discussion, interest in the site would go up, and more people would choose to stay (because we can't deny we've seen a lot of people join, then never post anything). We want to be known. We want to be a place where Pokemon fans near and far can unite, and have prosperous and meaningful discussions and maybe even debates about various topics of Pokemon. I think Pokebeach can achieve it.

 

[Tequila]

I'm only new here but I used to be a very active on another card game forum for a very long time and it's not just Poke Beach having a decline in activity it''s the whole forum scene.

It's so much easier and more convenient now for people to participate on FB groups these days and they feel less need to come to such forums.

 

[King Arceus]

I want to start out by saying I've been around for a very long time and one of the top posters of all time. I've wanted to run a tournament or two, but supposedly badges or other things are holding it back. By taking that approach, video games is slowly dying out. Last year I also had developed an action plan, but never received any kind of response. It makes me not want to bother trying anymore because I feel like my efforts will be wasted.

Something else that puts me off is we have a thread that is basically spam: http://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/standard-dankness-deck-memes-pokémon.137114/. Had it not been posted by a mod, I would've reported it right away. It didn't used to even have memes in the title when the thread first went up so I had looked at it thinking it would belong in the deck garage. After opening it, it reminded me of the thread long ago that a joke deck was made.

 

[Professor Palutena]

Speaking for VG here solely because it's my specialty.

I share a lot of concerns with King Arceus, as VG always feels like the awkward cousin that no one spends time with (Sun/Moon is helping but once the hype dies down, it's going to be a graveyard). In the seven years I've been here, we've had a lot of VG talent, but in recent years, no one has been encouraged to use their talent so they've gone elsewhere. I know that I'm personally on my way out the door as there's no point in playing games with a dead playerbase, and I'll be able to improve as a player by going to a different site.

tl;dr version: VG has no players that want to play. This kills the community. No one wants to play because there is no incentive to play. Su/Mo lunch is the PERFECT time to fix this, but I guarantee no one will because the site's direction is very much anti-VG.

I also have a major grievance with the article program being restricted to just TCG articles. VG articles and community works articles definitely have a place here, and you could even make Mafia articles. I've wanted to make VG articles for Su/Mo, ORAS and Pokken, but they won't get past the draft stage. There's money there, but apparently we can't do anything that threatens the prestigious status that TCG has. Not like there's a point in making VG articles now that the community is basically dead, but that's not my fault.

I feel like a lot of issues PB has are due to the staff trying to be more ambitious than their workforce allows. A perfect example is the badges, which serve no purpose whatsoever aside from looking cool and were in development for /years/, and the result is still really sloppy.

 

[quakingpunch73]

As a Forum Games player, the inactivity has definitely taken its toll there. Mafia games, which would quickly fill up and have huge activity have trickled down to low activity, slow games. While this is a result of the player base moving on in life or simply being too committed to other things to play. The site should still be trying to get activity where ever they can. With hundreds of members, many who I'm sure know how to or would be willing to play many of the forum games, there should be news updates for this section of the site advertising games. This can help get more people to notice the forum games and take part in them.

 

[Scorched Feathers]

Speaking for VG here solely because it's my specialty.

I share a lot of concerns with King Arceus, as VG always feels like the awkward cousin that no one spends time with (Sun/Moon is helping but once the hype dies down, it's going to be a graveyard). In the seven years I've been here, we've had a lot of VG talent, but in recent years, no one has been encouraged to use their talent so they've gone elsewhere. I know that I'm personally on my way out the door as there's no point in playing games with a dead playerbase, and I'll be able to improve as a player by going to a different site.

tl;dr version: VG has no players that want to play. This kills the community. No one wants to play because there is no incentive to play. Su/Mo lunch is the PERFECT time to fix this, but I guarantee no one will because the site's direction is very much anti-VG.

I also have a major grievance with the article program being restricted to just TCG articles. VG articles and community works articles definitely have a place here, and you could even make Mafia articles. I've wanted to make VG articles for Su/Mo, ORAS and Pokken, but they won't get past the draft stage. There's money there, but apparently we can't do anything that threatens the prestigious status that TCG has. Not like there's a point in making VG articles now that the community is basically dead, but that's not my fault.

I feel like a lot of issues PokéBeach has are due to the staff trying to be more ambitious than their workforce allows. A perfect example is the badges, which serve no purpose whatsoever aside from looking cool and were in development for /years/, and the result is still really sloppy.

This speaks to me a bit honestly.
Most old folk probably know me from my tenure on the 'Beach from like... 2012-14 when I was particularly involved. Heck, the site at that point really felt alive and thriving; there was something to do everywhere and there was always someone enthusiastic. Whatever happened to CaC? That was probably the thing that got me interested and made me come back again and again. I mean, I kinda drifted off on my own but it just seems like after the move to XF everything was very... not overdone, but it was trying to get too much out of people on a voluntary basis. The badges program, while great in concept, never seems to have materialised to much and the article program seems very limited. I don't even come on here for news much, it just pops up in my feed and I click. Overall it just seems a bit hollow compared to what it could be. Not sure how to fix it really but just my two cents considering I'm really wanting to get involved again with the advent of Sun and Moon.

 

[professorlight]

I've known for some time now that the site was faltering; Chaos jackal and I, back when he was here, knew that there wasn't much time left for us here; he already left, and although I left for a while as well, the only reason I returned was my fake cards, later the DnD game (which was a fluke and didn't happen again), and later, sun and moon. Same happened to fletchie and P has already said about him.

What Chaos and I noticed was two things: first, the TCG has an enormous importance here; although I still like it, I grew sick of collecting (if you can call that what I used to do), and never had anyone to play, so I don't care much, but I can still notice how prevalent it is here, in detriment of other things. I guess that's where the money is?

The second thing, and the most important and general, is maturity: discussions have been getting... simpler. Less clever, more shallow, emptier of content, more and more comparable to a tweet or a facebook post. Back when I joined, we used to have lots of split threads because we would not just discuss the topic of a thread, but find other things to discuss; I can't remember the last time I saw a split thread around here.
That's not to say there aren't mature, smart and deep people here still, but they're not many, not many join in, they're not particularly encouraged to post, and their numbers will probably be lower in time, as they realize that trying to have a sensible discussion is difficult when everyone around you is "OMG I luv thizzzz" and such. It might just be me (and Chaos) being crotchety old bastards who don't get with the times, but, it's there for what it's worth. Age was the one thing we could notice and say "hey, where did the people we used to talk to go? why is everyone suddenly so much younger and speaking in 140 characters and emoji?"

And, I guess games have to do with it as well? I don't play mafia here, and couldn't even if I wanted, but I doubt many people know there is a mafia to play; other activities as well; The Challenge, when it starts; and although I'm loathe to calling them "games", the YPPY threads; the CaC and the recent experiment of the create-a-pokemon... all those things, like overall discussion about both pokemon and non-pokemon-related subjects, may be incidental to the TCG business, but in practice, they build a sense of belonging and familiarity (so does the chat, I guess, but I'm not there, so I don't know).

 

[Juliacoolo]

Hey Juliacoolo, this is a great idea for a thread and thanks for making it! It'll be really interesting seeing where some of the members feel changes should be made on the forums, and as staff we'll do our best to try and accommodate to these desires. I'll be keeping a personal close eye on this thread, as my forum presence can be found everywhere besides TCG, so any ideas you have as to how to benefit all these smaller sections and departments would be awesome!

One thing I'll say in relation to the OP, is that while we'd have probably got a C&D if we had run an official news story about the datamine leak, discussion on the datamining was no holds barred in our VG forum itself. This means that all the information was still there... it just wasn't front page.

After we get a bunch of feedback from members I'll likely share some of my thoughts here myself.

I appreciate the response, Celever. I understand that PokeBeach cannot get away with posting this kind of content, and has faced consequences for doing so in the past. My recommendation is that this information is still presented through other mediums that do not hold legal liability. Now, of course even this seems shaky to a risk-averse administration. Instead, I think a more reasonable compromise would be to have some news channel that presents information about leaks and rumors without posting the actual content. Obviously PokeBeach's background makes it aware and phobic of horserace journalism, but that doesn't mean less concrete content is worthless, or a hindrance to the site's reputation. I would point to inferior sites such as *gasp* Pokejungle for outdoing PokeBeach in respect to this kind of content.

Now, I've only been on PokeBeach for just over a year and I'm really only active on certain forums so I wouldn't say my thoughts have that much worth, but opinions are opinions right?

I'm afraid I don't really have an answer for many of the questions, but I do have one for the third and sort of one for the last. When you say everything outside of the competitive TCG forums, I mainly think of the VG forum, which is one that I don't really pay attention to because I'm pretty clueless when it comes to VG. Due to this, I don't think I have much say in why it's been inactive and I honestly don't know why. However that also includes the Creative Works forum. Although it is not really a discussion forum, and creativity does play a big role in its activity, I think it could be a lot more active and as someone who spends quite a bit of time there it's sad to see only a couple updates every so often, when there are a few more people here that have the potential to contribute to it.

I'll talk about Smeargle's Canvas first. After participating in the recent competition, I realised that there are quite a few talented artists on this site aside from those who have galleries here. I don't know if it's embarrassment, fear, irl stuff, or just lack of commitment, but if everyone with some sort of talent could do something, well, I think that could make Smeargle's Canvas thrive, or at the very least, become more active than maybe one or two updates every couple weeks or so. This applies to a lot of things, really. I experienced some of those difficulties when coming up with my story for the Ruins of Alph and I'm sure a lot of people that have or are thinking about writing something experience those difficulties too. I'm not to sure about IPOF, though I do think that there's more activity there than in the other two sections. Imo that's because you don't really need to have drawing skills or a good image editing software to be able to make text fakes. All you need is a little bit of creativity, a keyboard and there you have it, a text based Pokemon card. Basically, my answer to the third question is that from what I can see, the reason for lack of activity in the CW forum is, well, what I listed above. Embarrassment, fear, irl stuff, or just lack of commitment.

Now for the last question rather than answer what is being done, I'm going to answer what can be done, because as somone who doesn't really know what happens behind the scenes, I don't know if things are already in motion.

How to combat inactivity, I'm not exactly sure. One thing I did notice though, was that when the recent competition was going on, quite a few people participated, and I'm sure more would have had it not been about Fakemon. A lot of those people don't have a thread in Smeargle's Canvas. So basically what I think is that for CW to become more active, it needs to be competitive or hyped up. We all can get competitive, it's evident because a lot of us here play competitive TCG or VG. If there's some kind of insentive other than moral benefits then that could increase activity. This also applies to a lot of things other than Smeargle's Canvas, it's in our nature to do things that give us some kind of benefit if we consider it to be worth our time. So if we were to have little contests every so often I think that would help. The main problem is that organizing these things takes time, and I'm sure that the people who help organize these events have irl commitments they need to do first. That's really something that one can't just avoid so that's where I stop.

I'm not exactly sure if this is the kind of response you're looking for, but I hope this is good enough.

Thank you so much for your input! I agree the creative section of PB is doing better than the rest of the site, but it still is far removed from its glory days,and has a lot of room to grow. As you touched upon, the core issue is incentive, and creating incentive can be hard to accomplish. I would like to see the main site assist in stimulating these areas. When I was a staff member, I recommended a program called "Member of the Month," where an article would be written about a featured member and the cool stuff they are doing on and off the forums (could be artwork, philanthropy, career matters, etc.) This would provide an opportunity for high-quality members to be showcased, and rewarded for their contributions. It also fosters a sense of community and encourages people to pursue stronger relationships with each other. This proposal was made years ago but was never adopted.

On the topic of community, another one of my proposals as a staff member was to create a PokeBeach orientation program. In the PokeBeach orientation program, any new member who joins and posts x amount of times or stays active for however long is put into an orientation group of ten or so members. PokeBeach staff members are designated as orientation leaders, whose responsibilities are to reach out and develop friendships with the members of their group. Reaching out to new members early will drastically increase the likelihood of them staying active, developing networks, and contributing to various aspects of the site. Orientation groups can be led to participate in forum games together, form skype groups, and complete other bonding activities. While the program certainly won't snatch up everyone, even gaining a single quality member from a pool of ten would do big things for our community. This proposal never saw daylight.

I have to agree with you with basically everything here, and I have answers:

First, Pokebeach's forums aren't very much an issue, it's the lack of new material being brought into the VG and Anime discussions. We know Pokebeach has for a long time, been a primary TCG Pokemon site, but it does at least inform for new stuff on other things. What may help? VG tournaments. Every month we see Pokebeach holding a PTCGO tournament, and the lack of there being a VG tournament, even though it'd been difficult to set up, is probably something holding back a lot of the competitive VG discussion here on Pokebeach. But also, we see sets of the TCG released every 3 months, while Sun and Moon is the first Pokemon game in two years. Of course, over the course of those 2 years of a drought in the VG era, the conversation would significantly drop. Don't worry though. Sun and Moon comes with all sorts of new strategies for the competitive scene of the VG, and will thus, revive those forums, and hopefully, they'll be kept alive by a Pokemon title in 2017.

Anime however, most people are in it for the TCG or VG, and the anime is really only used to promote these products. I never really expected the anime to have very deep discussion.

As someone who's only been surfing the waves for a year, my evaluation of Pokebeach's current state compared to the past probably isn't a great analysis, but considering I'd been coming around Pokebeach since September 2015, I can say I feel like Pokebeach is slowly declining, at least from where it was a bit over a year ago. Pokebeach I notice has been dealing with issues like WPM being extremely busy with things in his daily life, and that's understandable. However, if you notice, the calendar hasn't been updated since February this year, almost nine months now. A sign that not as much effort or time is being put into the site by executives. But hey, I'm 15. I don't know what they deal with in the world, so who am I to judge?

Now again, how would I fix this? VG Tournaments, Art and Writing Competitions, and more stuff like that. How would that all happen? It'd be a long process, and never having been on the staff team of a website like this before, my first assumption would be, it's a long process. But it can be done, and I think Pokebeach forums would have much more deep discussion, interest in the site would go up, and more people would choose to stay (because we can't deny we've seen a lot of people join, then never post anything). We want to be known. We want to be a place where Pokemon fans near and far can unite, and have prosperous and meaningful discussions and maybe even debates about various topics of Pokemon. I think Pokebeach can achieve it.

Hi LODR! I agree that more organized competitions will help the site, but I don't think they will fix much alone, and I believe there is indeed much that needs to be fixed in the forums. The key to gaining new members and taking members from other sites is to offer something that the other sites don't. Maybe that's more recognition; maybe that's a friendly/unintimidating staff; maybe that's a wealth of expert mentors; perhaps it's even unparalleled resources (such as what we're already doing with TCGOne and TCGPlayer.) No matter what it is, we need something, and that thing needs to be clearly defined, and vigorously pursued.

I'm only new here but I used to be a very active on another card game forum for a very long time and it's not just Poke Beach having a decline in activity it''s the whole forum scene.

It's so much easier and more convenient now for people to participate on FB groups these days and they feel less need to come to such forums.

Forums are definitely a dying medium, but that does not excuse PB from its degree of woe. Many other sites continue to have prosperous forums, and even if that isn't the goal of PokeBeach, the site hasn't compensated by having a presence in the new mediums of discussion.

I want to start out by saying I've been around for a very long time and one of the top posters of all time. I've wanted to run a tournament or two, but supposedly badges or other things are holding it back. By taking that approach, video games is slowly dying out. Last year I also had developed an action plan, but never received any kind of response. It makes me not want to bother trying anymore because I feel like my efforts will be wasted.

Something else that puts me off is we have a thread that is basically spam: http://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/standard-dankness-deck-memes-pokémon.137114/. Had it not been posted by a mod, I would've reported it right away. It didn't used to even have memes in the title when the thread first went up so I had looked at it thinking it would belong in the deck garage. After opening it, it reminded me of the thread long ago that a joke deck was made.

I share your concerns, KA. I don't mean to single out the mod who posted that, but I agree that we need to have better quality control standards, especially coming from our leadership.

Speaking for VG here solely because it's my specialty.

I share a lot of concerns with King Arceus, as VG always feels like the awkward cousin that no one spends time with (Sun/Moon is helping but once the hype dies down, it's going to be a graveyard). In the seven years I've been here, we've had a lot of VG talent, but in recent years, no one has been encouraged to use their talent so they've gone elsewhere. I know that I'm personally on my way out the door as there's no point in playing games with a dead playerbase, and I'll be able to improve as a player by going to a different site.

tl;dr version: VG has no players that want to play. This kills the community. No one wants to play because there is no incentive to play. Su/Mo lunch is the PERFECT time to fix this, but I guarantee no one will because the site's direction is very much anti-VG.

I also have a major grievance with the article program being restricted to just TCG articles. VG articles and community works articles definitely have a place here, and you could even make Mafia articles. I've wanted to make VG articles for Su/Mo, ORAS and Pokken, but they won't get past the draft stage. There's money there, but apparently we can't do anything that threatens the prestigious status that TCG has. Not like there's a point in making VG articles now that the community is basically dead, but that's not my fault.

I feel like a lot of issues PokéBeach has are due to the staff trying to be more ambitious than their workforce allows. A perfect example is the badges, which serve no purpose whatsoever aside from looking cool and were in development for /years/, and the result is still really sloppy.

Good points, Professor Palutena. I don't think that PB is hurting from overambition, but rather, lack of organizational direction. The badge program was in the works for almost a decade, and has certainly been underwhelming and under-functional. That said, it still has value and can be turned around with the right goals in mind.

As a Forum Games player, the inactivity has definitely taken its toll there. Mafia games, which would quickly fill up and have huge activity have trickled down to low activity, slow games. While this is a result of the player base moving on in life or simply being too committed to other things to play. The site should still be trying to get activity where ever they can. With hundreds of members, many who I'm sure know how to or would be willing to play many of the forum games, there should be news updates for this section of the site advertising games. This can help get more people to notice the forum games and take part in them.

Forum games definitely play a huge role in the overall health of the community, and the current state of the section is indicative of the overall state of PokeBeach. Forum Games are always tricky because too many restrictions cuts activity, but too few promotes spam and is a nightmare to moderate. I'd love to hear more about your ideas to fix the section.



Lastly, there is a lot that can be done to help PokeBeach's revenue stream that doesn't involve tons of ads or soliciting members. This money can be used for a myriad of purposes, including gaining awareness and market share. I would really like to talk to the administration about ideas for helping this aspect of the site.

 

[PMJ]

In my experience, WPM and the rest of the staff have always had big plans for PokeBeach but for some reason or another, nothing gets done. I feel like this is due largely in part to PokeBeach's problems finding a reliable programmer to handle the things that need handling. This is why the new layout took forever. This is why badges took nearly ten years to happen. And it's happening again, right now: PokeBeach Adventures has stalled for more than a year. The front page calendar is horribly out of date. Activities (http://www.pokebeach.com/activities) is completely dead, to say nothing of VG, which still has threads from a year and a half ago on the first page.

I don't believe that reason these projects have stalled is because of lack of interest among the staff, so that leads me to believe that there are other reasons, handed down from on high, that it seems no one has taken any initiative to bring these programs back to life.

I think that the fact that Smogon is a thing kind of cuts into the idea of competitive Pokemon VG on PokeBeach. Smogon has been the de facto authority on competitive VG for a long time and we aren't going to cut into their player base any time soon - not that we should try. Does this mean that we should let VG stagnate entirely? Of course it doesn't. I don't think that any of our VG players would complain if PokeBeach held a monthly tournament and the prize was a cool or rare berry or Pokemon. I don't think that we'd get huge signups like we do for TCG, but that's not a bad thing. It feels like there is nothing for VG players here, casual or otherwise. Organize some events. Revitalize the forums. Do something, because right now it feels like PokeBeach doesn't care about their non-TCG player base.

And on the subject of fostering a better community, I agree that "good" threads are few and far between. To be fair, PokeBeach has never been a bastion of higher thinking, and that's due mostly to most adulty topics being off limits by virtue of the forum being "for kids" or rated PG. It's better now, but we still don't have a whole lot of "good" threads. Which is fine, because this is a Pokemon forum and not every thread needs to challenge your mind (but most should).

Mafia is cool, but with the declining activity, it's clear that PokeBeach members want more options for forum games aside from YPPY garbage "games" that should be eradicated. Bring Activities back. There was so much cool stuff planned. Just look at the calendar. We have PokeBeach merch, right? Why not offer it to some of the winners of some of the more creative activities? That would be pretty neat. Even without the tangible rewards, I don't doubt you could bring in lots of people if you advertised some of those activities on the front page. I dunno, offer 'em a badge or something for winning, just like TCG. And I bet more than one of those people you bring in would be interested in Mafia as well.

 

[bbninjas]

Something else that puts me off is we have a thread that is basically spam: http://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/standard-dankness-deck-memes-pokémon.137114/. Had it not been posted by a mod, I would've reported it right away. It didn't used to even have memes in the title when the thread first went up so I had looked at it thinking it would belong in the deck garage. After opening it, it reminded me of the thread long ago that a joke deck was made.

I share your concerns, KA. I don't mean to single out the mod who posted that, but I agree that we need to have better quality control standards, especially coming from our leadership.

I'm just popping in to comment on the concern quoted. The sort of thread that was posted is actually fine in the Beach Life forum. The Beach Life section should be a place to chillax and joke around, as well as discuss more intellectual or serious topics! Keep in mind that a jokey thread would be out of place in a different a section.

Regarding the quality of threads, anyone in the community is welcome to post some more thoughtful topics, especially in the Beach Life! This thread is a great start. ^.^

 

[TheRealBro..]

I think that the fact that Smogon is a thing kind of cuts into the idea of competitive Pokemon VG on PokeBeach. Smogon has been the de facto authority on competitive VG for a long time and we aren't going to cut into their player base any time soon - not that we should try. Does this mean that we should let VG stagnate entirely? Of course it doesn't. I don't think that any of our VG players would complain if PokeBeach held a monthly tournament and the prize was a cool or rare berry or Pokemon. I don't think that we'd get huge signups like we do for TCG, but that's not a bad thing. It feels like there is nothing for VG players here, casual or otherwise. Organize some events. Revitalize the forums. Do something, because right now it feels like PokeBeach doesn't care about their non-TCG player base.

I really agree with this. I joined Pokebeach mainly because of the VG, and I like the relaxed vibe the site has to it and look at news. I like to have good discussions about competitive play (I know, Smogon does this, but that doesn't mean Pokebeach can't) and speculate about the upcoming games, Sun & Moon. What Pokemon will be viable, and why etc.

Every now and then a good discussion pops up, but it feels like it's not really organised, and it dies very quickly. It pops up mostly random in another threat and doesn't really take off. It stays between only 2 or 3 members, causing it to stay relatively superficial as already pointed out and I think that is because of the biggest problem; even though some members would like to join in on a good discussion, they simply do not find it. The threads aren't very specific when it comes to VG competitive play, from what I have seen in the short time I've been here, so you have to look really hard to find a good in depth conversation about this.

For example; I found the link to the thread ''what competitive team would you like to use in Sun&Moon'' in another thread about ''what team I would like to use in the storyline''.. A brief discussion takes off but it dies down after 5/6 posts and it stays mainly superficial.. It's just a few opinions but no real discussion. I think there is a lot more potential here for some real discussion threads about these upcoming games that can be kept alive long after the games come out. It just has to be streamlined better.

Anyway, just my thoughts!

 

[VinculumStellarum]

I hope you guys don't mind if I throw in my two cents on this, even though I might be a little late.

First of all, I worry about the activity of the forum. I realize that forums are a dying community medium in general, but outside of the competitive TCG section, there appears to be a shocking lack of interest, discussion, and leadership. The conversation that does occur finds itself being surface level, and resembles scattered thoughts and questions more than thorough knowledge sharing. I mean no disrespect towards the PokeBeach Members or Staff, I simply am curious as to how the current state of Pokebeach is seen from an inside perspective, as I certainly am concerned from my returning, "outsider" perspective.

The activity on the forum hasn't exactly been the strongest from what I've seen during the time I've been around (since 3/10/2016). There's been days when I'll update my stories or art or something, and the thread would stay in the "Latest Posts" bar on the forums home page for quite a bit of time, sometimes even overnight. Even once-popular things like Mafia have been declining in activity, and it annoys me. Others have said forums themselves are becoming unpopular, and this could be true, but I don't think this is why our activity is declining. It's relatively easy to make a post of any length and to find a thread that you would want to post in, so I think it's more that there isn't enough that users want to post in. There's not enough that interests people.

How do you guys view the current state of Pokebeach? What are your plans to improve the forum's weaknesses and bolster its strengths?

PokéBeach is going stagnant with its activity, maybe even declining. It's still a fairly popular site in my eyes, even with its fair amount of inactivity, but it has a lot of potential to become one of the hotspots of the online Pokémon community. I personally plan to post more in the forums––comment on other threads and whatnot; maybe even check out the TCG side of things.

How have PokeBeach's competencies changed over the years? What is doing better, what has been worse? Why is Pokebeach so weak in areas outside of the TCG?

I've only been around for eight months or so, but I want to put my opinion on this anyways. I feel PokéBeach is weak in areas outside of the TCG because not enough attention is put into them. Our site is extremely geared towards the TCG––but what about VG? What about the anime and creative works? The only articles the website gets is pretty much just TCG. I'm not a VGC player, but this is the kind of diversity PokéBeach needs. I've heard before that the Creative Works used to be very active, and I would've loved to be around in a time like that. The Ruins of Alph were what brought me here, and what made me stay. I love reading what others put out for PB, but it's unfortunately not a very busy place anymore, and I want that to change. I also like seeing the art others make, and the Smeargle's Canvas is criminally inactive. I'm willing to do anything in my power to make the Creative Works a bustling subforum like I've heard it once was. I want to see it––and the rest of the forums––have constant activity and bustling user bases like I've heard it once had. I would love to see my favourite part of the forums thrive again; to see this forum succeed. PokéBeach sells itself as the ultimate Pokémon fansite, and if it's not putting everything it can into everything it offers, that's not what it'll be in the end.

So how do we fix this? It's easy: we need more activities and things that the users can be involved in, like competitions, and we need people to know these things are happening, through things like posting them on the front page. I've heard of the days when PokéPoetry and Create-A-Card were big and popular—why not bring those back? Surely they can't be so hard to organize. I remember a month or two ago when the VG Daily/Weekly/Monthly Challenges were started up, and only three or so people joined in. That event had a lot of potential, but as far as my memory goes it was never posted on the front page or really overly promoted on the forums, which hurt its activity a lot. Start up another event like that––or even a monthly tourney like the ones TCG has––and promote it on the front page, because I'm sure you'd get a lot more people participating if you did that. Start up another PokéPoetry or Create-A-Card and post those on the front page. Heck, the Activities page says there's tournaments for Pokkén and SSB4––give one of those a shot. (I recommend Pokkén first, since it's a Pokémon game.) It's things like these that will attract users and hopefully bring them to stay.

I hope this makes sense and has a fair amount of coherence without me sounding rude at all, because if I read this over yet again, this'll never get posted.

 

[Professor Palutena]

I'm just popping in to comment on the concern quoted. The sort of thread that was posted is actually fine in the Beach Life forum. The Beach Life section should be a place to chillax and joke around, as well as discuss more intellectual or serious topics! Keep in mind that a jokey thread would be out of place in a different a section.

I know many, including myself, would have appreciated better communication on this issue.

I love joke threads as much as the next, and may make some now knowing that they are allowed, but the forum rules place such a high standard on quality that it's so easy to think that joke threads simply have no place.

...Does this mean we can have "The Chillax Zone" return?

 

[Juliacoolo]

I know many, including myself, would have appreciated better communication on this issue.

I love joke threads as much as the next, and may make some now knowing that they are allowed, but the forum rules place such a high standard on quality that it's so easy to think that joke threads simply have no place.

...Does this mean we can have "The Chillax Zone" return?

What do you, and others think about this piece of policy? I think threads like the one in question are valuable, but out of place in the Beach Life forum. I don't think it makes sense for a joke thread to lie among others that discuss politics, life events, media, and other topics that warrant richer discussion. Not everything has to be serious, but it should still be held to past standards in my opinion.

Additionally, I think we should start a running list of desires/suggestions to paint a clear picture of what we want from PokeBeach. After more time for discussion, I'll update the OP with a list of enumerated requests.

 

[Professor Palutena]

What do you, and others think about this piece of policy? I think threads like the one in question are valuable, but out of place in the Beach Life forum. I don't think it makes sense for a joke thread to lie among others that discuss politics, life events, media, and other topics that warrant richer discussion. Not everything has to be serious, but it should still be held to past standards in my opinion.

Additionally, I think we should start a running list of desires/suggestions to paint a clear picture of what we want from PokeBeach. After more time for discussion, I'll update the OP with a list of enumerated requests.

If I had to put it somewhere, I'd put it in Forum Games, with a renaming to reflect that it is a more lax forum.

I'm fine with the policy though; I just wish it was communicated better.

 

[PMJ]

...Does this mean we can have "The Chillax Zone" return?

I will fight to my dying breath to see that it doesn't.

Short list of things I'd like to see PokeBeach do:

1. Start acting like it cares about its VG players
2. Diversify Activities further than just Mafia and a couple dumb YPPY games

This won't solve everything, but I feel it'd be a good start.

 

[quakingpunch73]

Things that PB could do...

1. Revive Creative Competitions and run them more often.
2. Advertise activities like Mafia through the front page.
3. Diversify the Article/Blog program by expanding the content these blogs cover.