Rookie
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So I have quite a few things that I think need to be pointed out, about the game's future, and general improvements / modifications I think should be added to the MK8PP. I'd like to throw out some opinions in general, and if we don't decide to take any of them up, I'd at least like to discuss everything so we can reach a common consensus on everything.
First of all, we need to talk about charts. With Deluxe coming out, I think no separate page should be made personally. Essentially, I think the solution to everything will be separate charts. Since it's confirmed that some karts have stat changes, it's likely that all the tracks will have different WRs and average times, etc. It'd be comparable to PAL vs NTSC on the SMK Page I think. We wouldn't have a way to integrate them / combine the times, but it shouldn't count as an entirely new game worth a new page in my eyes considering that the track list is identical. Much like SMK, the times you can obtain between versions are different, but the track list and basic mechanics seem to be the same/similar. I think if we were to make it a separate chart, it'd be not only confusing, but it would mess a lot with the combined rankings and bias strong MK8 players heavily over any other game as well.
If you agree with me up until now, here's where things start to get tricky I guess. 200cc TTs are now confirmed also, so it's likely that we'll need separate charts for those as well. So not only would we be introducing separate charts for Deluxe, we'd be creating separate charts for separate charts. What makes this even stranger is how we handle this for combined ranks also, since lots of pages take your better ranking of the game (like MKW Glitch vs No Glitch). However, you could argue that 200cc vs 150cc is significantly different as opposed to Glitch vs No Glitch, seeing how not every track is different / glitched.
And where this separate charts thing gets even more messed up is here. This is definitely one of the more debatable topics, but I think we need to rediscuss it, because the more time has gone by, the more I realize that it was more of a problem then we initially suspected it to be. This is an issue of Advantage vs Non Advantage times. I think we initially passed it off because we thought of it to simply be a Wii Wheel issue, and everyone thought it was justified because the wheel is harder to use anyway, and all the wheelers kinda got screwed in MKW, etc, but we aren't discussing the use of D-Pad at all, which doesn't force people to train through gyro controls. For someone who has played every game in the series and participated on the page for all of them, this thing alone killed my entire drive to try to stay competitive on this game as long as possible in TT and even online, but especially TT since many other players were getting better times than me when our runs were probably equivalent in cleanliness / lack of mistakes. I simply think we got this call wrong, and that we should've gone through with making separate charts for Non Advantage. It's like PAL vs NTSC on MK64 because it completely changes the mechanics of how the game plays and who gets faster times, but to a lesser extent. Even though it is a lesser extent in the end, it's still a significant difference (seconds, which can be the difference between 100 spots on some tracks depending where you are on the page). Of course, players who play stick and dpad could still submit separate profiles for each if they like both.
It is 2017, and I know these changes would be very hard. Who do we know D-Pads / uses advantage? How are we supposed to go back and know? Well, the answer is we won't for everyone on the page. But I don't think that should stop us from trying honestly. I'm sure we'd at least know for nearly the entire top 200 unless someone was self conscious and lied about whether or not they use advantage, but I still think we could restructure the site quite a bit. We missed out a lot on people in MKW who didn't do no glitch times, but they still went for it. PRB vs Non-PRB was an issue that only top MKDS players were concerned with, much like advantage. I think it's safe to say that a vast majority of the lower ranks aren't active enough to think about using dpad for better times or care that much anyway, so I think assuming most of those times are non advantage wouldn't be harmful really as well. If we go through with separate charts for advantage though, and I really think we should, there will still be a lot of questions to ask. Will MK8D have advantage? Are we really doing separate charts for 200cc, Deluxe, and Non-Advantage? Yeah, it's a lot, I'll be the first to admit it. Maybe even complex, but with an ambitious package of a game like MK8, I don't think there's anything wrong with having the most categories of any page, and I don't think it should stop us from just having a page with quite a few different types of rankings honestly. I just really think we shouldn't be making entire separate pages for essentially what is the same game with minor differences. The differences are notable still, but not new games. That's why I think we should revamp the page to account for all types of players in the future, even though some things we won't know we need for sure until after Deluxe comes out.
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Some other stuff I wanted to mention. I think we need another news writer - another, not a new one. I worked with the 7 page back when it was at it's most active. Often times it had 40 people a week or something, and we wrote about them all. It was actually really stressful; and the more we put it off when we just couldn't have the time, the more work it just created in the long run. The reason why I was able to do this job for a while and stay sane was because Zap helped me through it, and even Nicola / Lee sometimes also. What I'm saying is for an active game with a still active scene, we simply need more people writing because it's a super hefty job for one person to bare, and one person shouldn't have to do it. I think Jazzy is great and would love to see him keep up the good work and keeping the PPs all great. But I think we need some relief, with at least one more writer, maybe even a 3rd. This way, there is more break time, everyone does less work, but the page stays more updated and the people are happier overall. All pages are supposed to have a weekly update, but with the amount going on with MK8 still, I think we need more people to achieve this. I can't currently do this, and I'm sorry. I have too much on my plate right now. But there's gotta be a few people out there willing to volunteer, and start getting involved in the community. We just have to make the effort to find them, or give some new faces a chance.
Lastly this is a minor nitpick, and I blame me and the MK7 community for letting this take off too much. But I think the fake names / gamertags on the pages either need to go, or be heavily discouraged. I know there isn't anything impractical about having them on the charts, it's not the end of the world, but it just makes the PP not really feel like the PP for me, and many others that I've talked to about this issue for over a year now. It's understandable that people may not want to use a real identity, and that's not a problem. But the entire page just looks like a giant meme now instead of news. It's not difficult to just come up with a fake identity that at least looks real, and still feel like a legitimate news page. It was always a unique niche about the PP that the normal MK community didn't have. The PP news always felt like a news source writing about real people, and we always knew who everyone is (the involved people, that is). I go by Rookie on every forum, but I've always been Sam Smith on the pages, just like many others (my news partner Zap for example, Callum Douglas). The 7 and 8 pages simply don't feel like traditional players pages as a result I guess, and I think something should be done to change it and make it feel like an extension from the classic MK pages, not something new entirely all together, really.
Thanks for reading my lengthy rambles. Looking forward to getting opinions from everyone and hopefully see some changes for the better in the upcoming future.
TL;DR -
- Make MK8 & MK8D same page with separate charts
- Be ready to make lots of separate charts on this page, for 200cc also
- Seriously reconsider the inclusion of non advantage charts
- Add more news updaters
- Change Name Policy back to a more formal name system
Also, apparently there's some new stuff regarding Mike's WP / DS floating around. So to those who are currently important in this community and know more than me, find that out and test it. If he's legit after all, it may be worth some discussion also since he was reported having someone else TT for him in the past also for top 10s. Sketchy case, but needs to be looked into for sure. Ask Simon / Kyle Wade for more details, I think.
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