VFDC Design Ideas

Well, we're not too close to the Winter season and holidays, but we're not too far from it either.

Does anyone have any ideas of a new basic layout to virtua fighter dot com? I guess for now, try to keep it simple, but I thought I would encourage people to voice some ideas.

What do you like about the current layout? What do you not like? Stuff like that.

I'll try to keep this simple. For me, two layouts I have in mind, but for starters, I think it would be great if we could dig up and represent material concerning all versions of VF.

Idea #1
Keep consistant with the Character section layout, organize information for each character by version of game. Sub-organize that information into a step 1, 2, 3 or whatever kind of layout. I think Jeff's idea of step guides had a good premise for them. For the casual gamer, VF is hard to start out with. Also, instead of war or astro, we could just have a general dojo with the more universal information on technique, tactics, strategies, what not. Also we have the newsroom on both the index and the versus city page, so that's fine. A movies section would be cool I guess.

Idea #2
Pretty much very similar to above, but organize the site by game version. VF, VF2 and 2.1, VF3 (a-c) and 3tb, VFX. We can keep a news page seperate that has info regarding all games.

Note: In organizing faqs and information, we can put in parenthesis, italics, small font, or whatever the version of the game that document is specific for. This will help clarify things like VF3 ver. C versus VF3tb and will allow us to not have to reserve the site's content by worrying what works on DC and what not. Also, declare if the information is mostly for console or arcade. Therefore, we can have a full information source of VF. Hopefully organized.

On a side note, I like the current scheme, just my opinion.

-Chanchai

 

i never liked the step idea. the concept of lumping people into steps, at least as broad (*snort*) as 1 - 3, really pisses me off - there are no physical, definable boundaries such as that when you rate a player.

as far as the guides go, why hold back? if you properly explain the usage and execution of a concept, then only the really slow, stupid eggs will have a problem picking it up. example; how completely fucked up would it be if i wrote a step guide for kage but excluded TFT combos on the basis that it involves CD'ing, which is too advanced for that particular step?

if you're writing a guide, give it all you got. check out dirk tebbens VF2 kage guide or Tan Wu Mengs VF2 guide, or Colin Leong's VF2 Lau guide. i don't think you'll ever hear newbies complaining "iiiitt's toooo aaadvvvaaannnccced explaiiiin it sloooowwwweeerrr". and if they do, fuck em. they'll probably be crap VF players anyway.

i always saw the "step" idea as a really good excuse to not finish a guide up to a point. "i'm too lazy and don't feel like writing about option select...aha! it'll be a step one guide! it's done and now i can go play EQ! yeeee!"

not that it matters much, we're not likely to ever see a step 2 or 3 guide grace vfdc anytime soon, if ever. much less any decent full fledged VF3 guides. it's been four years. most people know enough and the rest probably don't give a shit.

--
"A chem bla deshembla blurr fuh bli fouzh"

 

I hear you loud and clear Rich. I myself prefer the more in-depth and most of all, complete faqs. They are overall more useful, have what is needed (if the player needs anything), and the best faqs are always of the complete nature. Not to mention how much organization is required in those things. I love the complete faqs.

However, the step faqs is something less... and I see where you are criticizing it. I won't say you are wrong for feeling the way you do. However, my experience with VF is a lot of the times having to deal with players who try to play it like other fighters or most of all have no starting point. Beginners run in there attacking like crazy with no clue what to use and unsure of how to actually defend. I say for their sake, a step 1 guide is good. Complete faqs have that information, I'll admit, but the step 1 guide is just there to keep it simple to the newbie/simpleton. It isolates a few basic things to them. The better players achieved their skills on their own as well as with great effort and I commend them for that. However, in trying to teach the game to a beginner, might as well teach them which foot is right and which one is left. If they start asking a newbie question, tell them to look at the movelist (if it's such a question, which is indeed annoying) or beginner material (I'll stop using the term step-guide because I'm referring to beginner specific material in this whole thing). At least they have no excuse for not reading the beginner material. It is their fault if they are too lazy to read a full faq, but those full in-depth faqs are about as intimidating as a big post by yours truly. Are people too lazy to read my posts? Anyways, two different things, I'm straying... But I think beginners (that are pressed for time, impatient in nature, or just don't have the enthusiasm quite yet) get the same type of feeling.

I'm not saying step 1, 2, 3 is a good thing. I'm not saying I want to specify information into a categorization of players. As in anything just about, the basics aka the step-1 stuff can win a match. Does that mean an expert lost to a beginner? Not really... So I personally think it can be ordered not necessarily as beginner, advanced, expert information.... More of simplified (usually basic, but sometimes not), more detail (may require more dexterity), loaded, and analyzed thoroughly and explained (information overload). Anyways, that's how I see it. Such information is objective data organized subjectively with additional subjective input surrounding it.

Note: In the ordering I listed in the last paragraph, (basic... more detail... etc) I'm referring to things in a more conceptual manner. Generally, players with better knowledge of basic things as well as slightly more detailed concepts benefit better on movelists like VP than the beginners... they understand the added detail in the lists (particularly VP), but there's no excuse for people wanting to learn moves to not use a movelist. Of course, if VFDC orders its information in such a manner, it's not a universal ordering... just whatever those that contributed towards the design of the site intended to order.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by Chanchai on 11/1/00 07:49 PM.</FONT></P>