Thread 6498

Currently vr is suffering from a massive brain drain. In it's years of existence, every topic has been explored, every anon has been called a faggot for liking the music in obscure JP only computer games and every console had been repaired using 3rd world country tier settings. There are no topics left for us to discuss and as a direct result of this, vr is in a downward spiral of shitposting. The typical vr anon is there because he sees himself as roughing it or is like me, the shit they call retro now is the shit I grew up with. In the years of vr we've enjoyed, we've had some truly great discussion without WE WUZ KANGZ memes that v deals primarily with. It is my opinion, however, that the massive wave of shitposting we have been existing in currently is a direct result of a lack of several things. New people, new ideas and new topics. I considered at length today if 2000 or 2001 would be a better goal post for the board and I can honestly say that at this point, vr serves essentially no purpose if we do not give it life. We have tilled it's soil and enjoyed many summers of fruit, but we have done so at the cost of quality.

Here is the typical morning for a vr janitor. Remove 'I can't believe you thought THIS was better than Genesis.' Browse board to remove the copy / pasted version of this thread for SNES, TurboGrafx, PC Standard / DOS and any other iterations of this thread. Anon wants to post, he wants to post on vr, but because he has discussed in detail sprite transparency, disk drive rot, button input lag and CRT refresh rates so such a degree, he would rather shitpost then have those spirited arguments for the 600th time. Having the metric of 1999 being the hardline for retro was fine for years because there was always more stuff to discuss, but vr is in the dark ages and has not had a golden era in a very long time.

>>6498 (OP)

In 2001 we were given essentially a whole new set of consoles. We currently allow Dreamcast but for whatever reason, we have banned discussion of PS2, GBA, GC, XBox and to a lesser extent GBC. What could this mean for vr? First and foremost, those consoles are not going to be heavily discussed on v. I tried it today just as a proof of concept. People on v are more into the meta-culture of video gaming, the sports drinks, the memes, the failed PR, the thief Kickstarters, it's all on topic, but they do not want to discuss at length the inner workings of the consoles I listed above. The games on these consoles are near and dear to us and would offer new reasons for more people to visit vr and new avenues of discussion which are desperately needed.

Go and look at vr right now, it's catalogue. Most OPs are going to be 'SNES sucked bro fight me irl' and 'Top 10 best SNES Games.' Both of these are on topic and should not be pruned, but what you are seeing is in fact a parody of a parody of a parody. Those threads were organized 2 years ago, but now it's just subtle jabs at Metal Jesus Rocks with Hidden Gem Posting and other little easter eggs for the anons to pick up on. Having new topics, having new blood and new posters could potentially save vr. Staying the way it is, as I said before, is essentially pointless and that traffic would be better used diverting it to vg for instance.

I am sure that we will get a little push back from the hardened cynic that we have come to love on at least some level. The vr purists will be upset at any change, but I have a strong feeling that the majority of people we currently entertain will be extremely happy to have a new game, system or market event to discuss.

Libraries in question:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_2_games

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GameCube_games

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Game_Boy_Advance_games

tl;dr

vr is dying. It is not dying a body death but a brain death. We can keep it alive for as long as we want, but why? vr is losing posters, tired of the hamster wheel of living in a capsule, every thread is just a parody of another; we absolutely need new discussion to save this board and allowing the 2001 or by larger extent the remaining consoles of the 6th generation to be discussed. We are experiencing an all time low in quality and it's entirely due to repetition.

Our threads are on-topic shit, not shitposting, just shit quality because the conversations are zombie versions of conversations we had several years ago. The sky is the limit on this, we can only go up from where we are right now.

another /vr/ jan here, i think the problem can be summed up more succinctly and less dramatically: stagnation

/vr/ is currently suffering from the same issue /vg/ mods struggle with, i've seen a lot of them complain about the katawa shoujo general and such. how can people continue to discuss a game that's been out for five years and everything's been done already? the short answer is, they don't.
now apply that to an entire board.

obviously, not everybody can play every single game from older times, but there's still an upper limit of content. new games are coming out so there's always new discussion on /v/, new anime is coming out so there's always new discussion on /a/. you can't release a new retro game, though, so /vr/ is extremely limited.
the best topics on /vr/ are the ones that use old games as a platform and make new things with them, modding, romhacking, and etc, because there's OC, people are making things, there's new content to discuss, to like and to hate, to shitpost about and contribute to.

so what we can do?
if we want to get autistic, "retro" means evoking a time of the past in style and design. we consider the 90s retro, for example. the 90s weren't actually that long ago, yet its style and design are a distinct entity from Current Year. likewise, we're on the verge of the ninth console generation, but the games and releases of the sixth gen are definitely its own separate era.
the often-repeated suggestion is to consistently bump up what "retro" is, and in lieu of anything else it's pretty much the best solution. by consistently bumping up the cutoff date, we'll consistently have new content to talk about, stuff that the other boards don't care much for but still holds a niche interest.

boy am i sure not looking forward to the fucking smash melee and halo threads, though. holy shit those are going to be a fucking firehouse.

if you read through all that, have some anime titties

A bunch of janitors had a long conversation about this earlier today in IRC, and there seemed to be a general consensus that something should be done, but also a consensus that it's a complicated issue. Several people (including myself) think the GameBoy Advance should be allowed while still not allowing sixth-generation home consoles. The GBA is decidedly old and retro: it has a defunct brand name (GameBoy has not been used since), a tiny resolution, and very little capability for 3D gameplay, and the games made for it cannot be played on any console or handheld Nintendo currently produces. Meanwhile allowing the 6th gen consoles would open the board up to a lot of flack, and allowing one or two of those consoles would make it seem even more fair if we (in a reasonable move) exclude the PlayStation 2. I would suggest one rule for handhelds and one for home consoles, but that could chafe people pretty hard.
On the PS2, it really is the big problem (in my mind) that still exists with that proposal and with moving up the date and a lot of the ideas for fixes, because it had such an unusually long and fruitful life. If we go by the standard of allowing titles produced after 1999 for systems made before 1999 then we'd have some games from as late as 2014-- that's really stretching it of course, but there was a good flow of games for the system through the entire first decade of the 2000s.
Additionally, there are concerns that opening up the GameCube and Xbox to the board would open up discussion about Smash Bros. and Halo respectively, which are ongoing and popular series and are largely defined by more recent titles. I don't see that being too much of a problem outside of designated shitposters and people who lack the sense to grasp some rules anyway, but it's worth looking at.
I would suggest allowing the GameBoy Advance and its entire catalog, along with allowing PC games made in 2000 and 2001, with the 6th gen consoles to be allowed around 2021, at 20 years old.

>>6596
>and allowing one or two of those consoles would make it seem even more fair if we
meant to say it would seem even more unfair
any way you slice it, if we put a blanket cutoff further up it'll seem unfair, either to the PlayStation line or to other console lines

>>6597
Not him but I was a part of the conversation too.
I'd say having a separate handheld and home console cut off date would work well. Handhelds go obsolete faster than home consoles

>>6596
>Additionally, there are concerns that opening up the GameCube and Xbox to the board would open up discussion about Smash Bros. and Halo respectively, which are ongoing and popular series and are largely defined by more recent titles.
i don't see why this is a problem when we have scenarios like this happening already
we have zelda threads where people occasionally try to talk about the modern games, metroid threads where people occasionally try to talk about the modern games, sonic threads where people occasionally try to talk about the modern games
as long as it doesn't dominate and become the focal point of the discussion (i.e. "sonic 3 handled X better than Generations did" instead of "MAN I CAN'T WAIT FOR SONIC FORCES TO COME OUT WHO'S WITH ME???"), it's fine, otherwise it gets pruned

it's going to happen anyway, trying to go with a half-solution isn't going to solve anything, especially when people WILL explicitly call out this out for being an imbalanced solution
i say apply occam's razor, just move up the cutoff one generation. gba, gamecube, ps2, xbox, bob's your uncle.

yeah, we're going to have a fucking funhouse with the smash and melee threads, but that's what we're here for. and, frankly, even the worst of them is still going to be easy street for us, /vr/ isn't as active as /vg/ or /v/

>>6601
what we could do, which could help with new and old issues, is have a rule that ongoing series like Smash Bros. and Halo and Metal Gear are to be discussed on /v/ or /vg/
even if it doesn't dissuade bad posts by a noticeable margin, it would at least provide a clearer idea of what the board is about and provide more specific ban messages when it's broken so people have less wiggle room or genuine uncertainty

>>6601
Why do generations instead of a specific number of years to be considered retro? That fixes the PC games confusion, too

>>6614
Tradition.