Hi I am Mambo and I say important things sometimes.
The process by which we're doing these workshops is fucked at best right now. There are a some main issues that I'm going to bring up and propose suggestions on how to mend these problems, but the floor is open to you guys to discuss potential solutions as well. If you have a good idea on how to move forward with these, pm either me,
QuoteCS, or
Yagura.
1) The Focal Point: The focal point of the team's we've been building as gotten increasingly more niche and sometimes borderline gimmicky with each passing week. The concept of a workshop is to aid new users in learning how to teambuild for and with the common threats of LC; this isn't accomplished successfully if we're building around a shitty moveset / core. Also, when the workshops actually begin, nobody has any idea as to the direction of the team, unless it's incredibly obvious by the chosen Pokemon. To amend these issues, I suggest that we nominate Pokemon that are viable without copious amounts of team support and/or are known to be incredibly viable already. I know that this will lead to somewhat stale teambuilds from a glance, but I have a solution to that as well. I also suggest (and shoutout to
GlassGlaceon for this) that when nominating the Pokemon to build around, the nominators provide solid reasoning as to why that Pokemon would be a sufficient focal point and include a moveset for the Pokemon. If a moveset is posted that you don't agree with, feel free to debate it prior to voting and even during the voting process.
2) Frequency: Right now, we're holding workshops every other week. In my opinion, this is way too frequent because we aren't able to publicize the workshop and get newer players (which the workshops are directed at) to mark it on their calendars so they can show up, contribute, and learn about teambuilding for LC. I suggest that we shift the frequency to once at the end of every month, preferably still on a weekend, so that more people can prepare to be available on that date and the workshop won't just be limited to a few veterans building.
3) Publicizing: The alert for the last workshop was posted 35 minutes prior to the start of the workshop. Only the people who were already online at the time were aware that the workshop would be taking place and this was the main reason why very few people showed up and the last session was ultimately a failure. I know that Quote, who was co-hosting the last workshop, only saw the alert 4 minutes prior to it starting. I'm going to make a point to make sure that everyone who may want to participate is fully aware of the scheduled time and I'll periodically post reminders of the time in this thread.
4) Workshop-ness: The process that we're utilizing currently just ends in veterans teambuilding around something they don't want to, simply to pump out a team and say that they contributed to a workshop, even though it's not a workshop at that point. I have seen maybe 1-2 new people present and active during a workshop over the entire span of this project, which is disgusting considering that this entire project is targeted at new users. The frequency aspect is a good means of attempting to solve this issue, but there is more we can do. I suggest that we organize a panel of people who will run the workshop and will be focused on helping new users as opposed to just trying to contort the team to their liking. This panel will change every workshop depending on the availability of veterans, with the only truly stable players on the panel being myself, Quote, and Yagura. We will also be rather picky when it comes to deciding panelists, so if your status within the community is pretty shitty and you aren't some godlike player, good luck m8.
With that being said, the next workshop will be on
March 28th at
2pm EST. I'm going to open up the nominations process to the public, but make sure that you are posting a legitimate moveset / core and that you are fully explaining why you chose it, what the team structure may look like, why it's a good choice for a workshop, etc.
tl;dr read it you nerds