Not-Useless Criticisms of DB

[»Noelle]

It's the easiest thing in the world to complain about D/Cs or lag (both of these have gotten a lot better yet still have issues,) these criticisms are obligatory and not entirely "useful" to a critique of DuelingBook. I wanna focus on some of the things that actually irk me about the structure of the site itself, rather than its functionality. I do this out of a place of love, because I think that it's been improving lately and that, even though I don't think it will ever be what DN was, it might be able to come close. As such, I'll begin with good things I have to say about the site.

 

Good Things About DB

 

There are ~800 users online at the time of me writing this, which is better than what they were averaging in the beginning, even with the hype. On top of this, I think the average DB player is better than the average DN player. One way to demonstrate this is to consider what the lowest rated matches on both sites looked like: on DN, it was 5 set monsters 5 set s/t 6 in hand pass, whereas on DB, it's at least semi-relevant decks. At one point in 2017 I grinded up to 3rd place in the rankings and, while the grind wasn't as real as the old DN grind, it was still pretty respectable and I played against meta almost every single match. It wasn't like DN where you would would play against nonsense until you hit about 1400-1600. Finally, the better players are starting to respect and use this site a lot more recently. Replays were obviously a huge plus and might revolutionize the way testing and data are collected, if we fully realize their potential.

 

There's other aesthetic things that are pleasing about the site, like how the scrolling now works in-game.

 

Those are some of the good things I have to say about the site. 

 

Now, for the criticisms. If any of them are off base or not completely grounded in reality, feel free to post explaining why.

 

Critique

 

1. Decide Who You're Fucking Catering To

 

As a Yu-Gi-Oh! site, you can either cater to competitive players or casual players. One would ask why you can't just cater to both, but often you're faced with binary decisions in doing so. For example, do you make singles part of rated or do you not? From a competitive point of view, you would not, since singles are not tournament games. This would incentivize people to get serious and play matches with a side deck. If you were catering to casual players, on the other hand, you would do shit like, oh I don't know, incentivize the entire rated pool to play singles by changing how the rating and experience functions work, which DB did.

 

But while this decision seemed to appeal more to casual players, DB has been inconsistent from the beginning on deciding which group they're catering to. Since competitive players tended to get heated and easily banned on DN, the more lax policy on shit talking that they've had since day 1 on DB seemed to indicate a more competitive-sided site. Useful things like deck exporting/importing, the shuffle function to test hands in the deck builder, etc also were competitive-friendly. The crowning achievement here, as indicated in the previous section, was the replays.

 

So which side should they cater more to? Well, considering what I've already said about the userbase being more competitive than DN, I think we can justify treating the audience like grownups and catering to more competitive players. I'm not trying to make an is/ought error here, and perhaps I'm biased as a former competitive player, but this seems easiest and most practical. In effect, this would mean moving singles out of rated altogether because it isn't actually Yu-Gi-Oh! If people want to play that bullshit "competitively" (in quotes) they can head on over to YGOPRO or somewhere else. Maybe this will lose a few dollars from LARPer donations, but my interest here is more in making the actual site better.

 

Overall, although this might be a criticism one could also make of DN, I think DN handled this better. Part of this is that the DN mods were mostly friends with more competitive players so they had a more competitive mindset, meaning they adjudicated quite strictly as they would at a real event like a YCS. Outside of Cameron, and I don't want to make sweeping generalizations here, but considering that Xteven is the head guy on DB, they seem to have a more casual staff than DN did. Perhaps that is part of the problem, the staff and the audience are mismatched, whereas on DN it was only the staff and the rules that were mismatched.

 

2. Location Default

 

Can you think of a single person that honestly doesn't think this shit being the default is weird as fuck and, if unnoticed, sort of invasive and obnoxious? I don't even think it should be an option but if it should exist, then for the love of god don't make it the default so people can forget to turn it off like what the fuck is wrong with you. I understand this site started as a joke dating site but I think we're past that at this point.

 

3. Please Have a Gender Neutral Default

 

"But the default is blank!"

 

When you play, even with the blank default, it uses "his" instead of "their." Even if it's going to be this way, at least give a non-binary option in the gender settings.

 

"But muh esjaydubayoos cultural marxist attack helicopter i get all my politics from youtube videos and dont read actual literature *tips fedora*." 

 

Calm down resident neckbeard, adding one option to be more inclusive to multiple people I know that would prefer if they had a they/them option isn't the end of the world.

 

Conclusion

 

While DB has done a lot right, there are a mixture of both aesthetic and deeper criticisms one could make on the site. Go ahead and use this thread to post your non-useless criticisms of the site, if you want. I'm sure there are plenty more one could make but these are the three that come to mind.

[Small Acacia 0]

"Not-Useless Criticisms of DB"

 

"3. Please Have a Gender Neutral Default"

 

lmfao

[»Noelle]

idk who alt u r but that shits not useless for ppl that matter sooooooooooooooooooo

[Small Acacia 0]

Not an alt I'm a shit ass lurker who finally registered to laugh at this shit

[»Noelle]

well, thanks for contributing

[+pretty lord flacko]

3 hours ago, Small Acacia said:

"Not-Useless Criticisms of DB"

 

"3. Please Have a Gender Neutral Default"

 

lmfao

yeah great that you want to laugh at people for being themselves. 

[+pretty lord flacko]

i think the staff team really sucks. many of the interactions ive had with them have been unpleasant. i think the staff team is basically a closely knit group of friends from dueling network. tournament organizers like monarch snow do whatever they can to encourage a non competitive environment but still host tournaments with prizes to be competed for. people who can't tolerate competitiveness shouldn't be TO. they can be judge but not TO. the staff team just seems really unprofessional and just kinda does things instead of taking anything serious or trying to make their site go anywhere. sucks.

[NB96 830]

Add a ranked ladder for Goat Format. You went to the trouble of adding non-ranked Goat and it's not like anybody plays the Traditional format on the first page or the Expert room on the second anyway so why not.

[Fullerene60 379]

My issue has been with judges disappearing part way through me joining and playing a match. Players have often been abusing the fact that no judges are online and find some trivial ruling in the game to be inquisitive about and call judge. Then when the judge shows, they leave. 

 

I've tried to explain to the staff a few times that people who do this need a much more harsh reprimand. No one ever pulled this shit on Dn when I played, I'm assuming because they would probably ban your Ip if you tried.

 

Another solution would be to increase their amount of judge volunteers. 

[Small Acacia 0]

7 hours ago, Comrade Subaru said:

yeah great that you want to laugh at people for being themselves. 

bitching about that on a fucking yugioh emulator is retarded

[+mmf]

57 minutes ago, Small Acacia said:

bitching about that on a fucking yugioh emulator is retarded

ok thanks for letting us know anon throwaway of a duelist whose name we will never know or care about

[»Noelle]

oh i totally forgot about how u cant change the default on whose statuses u see when u log in so u gotta look at all the garbage on the public statuses.

[Mascis 4478]

Goat format should be rated 

[Mascis 4478]

Also make actual rules instead of blanket statements as rules so you can’t freeze me for being nice