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Repost of FiWiFaKi's poll:
Poll: Your support for this change?Strongly Disagree (244) 64% Strongly Agree (53) 14% Disagree (52) 14% Neutral/Don't care (21) 5% Agree (13) 3% 383 total votes Your vote: Your support for this change? (Vote): Strongly Agree
(Vote): Agree
(Vote): Neutral/Don't care
(Vote): Disagree
(Vote): Strongly Disagree
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Even though I kinda like the fact that each game gets a new website, it does come with its downsides.
I often visit teamliquid for streams. I watch sc2, dota 2 and hearthstone streams. Now i have to visit all websites to see whats on them. It makes me more likely to just go to twitch.tv and watch the stream from there, without visiting teamliquid at all.
Also it was nice to have one website where news of multiple e-sports games is displayed without having to visit 3 different websites.
I would like it if there was still the option to show streams from all games and show news from all games.
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I think it's a good direction but i would like to see Community and Blogs etc. to be displayed on dota 2 page as well because right now you have to visit two sites.
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Well i guess i have mixed views. I enjoy the sc2 content even though i don't watch it anymore really so i think i will probably not be coming on TL main much once the community and other forums are shared. I enjoy the much improved calendar and stream system on liquid dota. So it depends what TL wanted from this move they wont really lose people but they will lose alot of views on their SC2 content and probably some on their dota2 content. I think alot of people also used TL to see all the streams of the games they liked (sc2/dota2/HS and i think adding CS:GO would be nice), these people will be lost and i think that number is quite large. I think a site with all the content and all the streams would be nice to have on top of the new site, with of course given the starcraft people their own site as this one.
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I understand the motivation, and I almost always have more than one TL tab open at any one time (so this change won't change much but which favicon I see), but as people have put in much more detailed fashion above: if you're going to do it, so it right.
The major point, I think, is that the thing that keeps TL ahead of the numerous other sites around is that it's not just a website about Starcraft or Dota or whatever. It's a site where you can discuss the seventh episode of the third series of some niche TV show, read intense and moving (fictitious or not) stories from a paramedic, learn about the progress of a recovering addict via the medium of sculpture... There's no bottom, it just keeps going. People come for videogames and stay for the community (don't need to tell you guys that). This change has made that community shallower and less sprawling. The response from staff on the sharing of forums is positive, and that IMO is the holy grail: independent sites for each game that share the same core of general forums. That has the potential to improve the experience for people interested in the games, whilst also not cutting others off from the lifeblood of TL. Unfortunately, I think you guys made the wrong call - this shouldn't have been rolled out until that feature was in place (obvs TI4 is a big factor and hindsight is 20/20).
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cool but... should really at least leave all streams merged on tl.net, as before
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mmmm I don't like this much.
Of course, now we have a page for all the dota news, where it's all about it and only it, leaving the other games for the other pages of TL.
But what I really liked was seeing all the news in the same page. I like different games, and now if I want to know news about it, I have to enter and check different pages, where before I only had to open one and had it all.
Still, I hope this is good, and that we get a lot of more news and things from them.
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Bisutopia19267 Posts
I love clicking each new site link up top and getting sent to a new fancy customized template for each game. It does a great job of absorbing me into the environment and say "hey, you are here to view such and such game." I really love it. And then just click the tl.net tab to return to all the general threads of greatness.  its actually very well thought out and detailed. I'm sure you all will enjoy it soon enough. At least its not windows 8 metro templated.
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On May 13 2014 00:21 aicaramba wrote:
Even though I kinda like the fact that each game gets a new website, it does come with its downsides.
I often visit teamliquid for streams. I watch sc2, dota 2 and hearthstone streams. Now i have to visit all websites to see whats on them. It makes me more likely to just go to twitch.tv and watch the stream from there, without visiting teamliquid at all.
Also it was nice to have one website where news of multiple e-sports games is displayed without having to visit 3 different websites.
I would like it if there was still the option to show streams from all games and show news from all games.
That's true for me too, before I never visited Twitch to see if Trump is online, now I always do it. Well, good for Twitch I guess.
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East Gorteau22261 Posts
On May 13 2014 00:03 zul wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2014 23:47 Zealously wrote:On May 12 2014 22:57 Faust852 wrote:
If it isn't broken, don't fix it ! How about "If it isn't broken, don't improve it"? That doesn't sound as great, does it? In essence, the majority of TL staff involved in the discussion believe that the benefits of this change outweigh the disadvantages. This is not TL trying to "fix" anything, this is TL trying to evolve and improve. Adding "dota2" coverage to TL.net was an improvement, spliting the community is not. Lots of users give reason to it. especially this paragraph has lots of truth in it: " ...why is it impossible to add e.g. "Dota Community" "Dota Strategy" and "Hearthstone Blogs" to my left sidebar and customize it the way I'd like to? This feature was one of the most brilliant things for regulars I've ever seen on any even remotely similar site. It allows the page itself (aka you guys) to display whatever you want for non-registered users and it allows me as a registered user to set the page up the way I'd like it to be. "Outsourcing" sites like this with zero backwards compatibility completely kills that feature."
Several staff members have made very detailed responses to much of that criticism. Below is what I posted earlier in this thread, detailing some of the reasoning behind this change.
On May 12 2014 08:05 Zealously wrote:So, as promised, here is a summary of what the interested staff members had to say about the idea of moving Dota2 to its own site: - The issue of too much content: Yes, filters exist. But as a rule of thumb, I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of TL's visitors do not know of or do not use filters, and first-time visitors were very likely to feel overwhelmed by the abundance of content - with Dota and two Starcrafts, there was so much of it that it became periodically hard to navigate. It is true that filters may be the most comfortable solution for established members, but if you come to a new site you typically don't want to go through the trouble of finding a filter function before you start browsing through the stuff you're interested in. With Liquiddota, TL goes back to being a source of Starcraft news, and thus more 'welcoming' for Starcraft fans visiting the site for the first time, whereas Liquiddota becomes a dedicated Dota site that runs no risk of confusing new visitors.
- Competition: Most of TL's competitors are dedicated sites. This ties in with the previous point in that a site covering many different games will be, in general, less attractive to a dedicated fan than a site covering your game specifically. The quality of content can be the same, or even slightly worse, on a dedicated site, and the fan that cares only about that single game is still more likely to go there, both for the sense of community and because it feels more natural to go to LiquidHearth than it does to go to LiquidSeveralGamesYouDontLikeAndHearthstone. The idea is that a dedicated site will offer more competition and attract more visitors than TL's Dota section did.
Also, I think it's fair to say that the Dota community as a whole views Teamliquid as "the Starcraft site that also does Dota" rather than "a Dota site like any other", and not without reason. Below is a quote by monk on the subject when Nazgul first brought up the idea of a separate Dota site.
+ Show Spoiler +On February 13 2014 20:44 monk wrote:
The way I see TL Dota right now is the same way I view Gosugamers HS coverage. Besides LH, Gosugamers actually has the best HS articles on the web right now. However, even though you might read a HS article by them linked on reddit, it's very unlikely that you'll stay on their site. There's just way too many games covered there and everything is impossible to find, especially HS content. As a result, there's no HS community there and their forums are barren. The same problem seems to be happening for Dota 2 on TL. As far as I can tell or what I've heard is that we have some best articles on the web, but articles aren't what are going to draw users to stay on the site if everything is so difficult to find and there isn't a sense of shared community
Relating to that, I've noticed that Dota has way fewer, if any, cool ancillary features compared to what SC2 currently has on TL or what LH is planned to have. SC2 currently has TLPD, FPL, and Liquibet. LH is planned to have a Deck Builder, Arena Simulator, and Puzzle Maker. To the best of my knowledge, Dota has none of that. I don't know the particular reasons for that but if Dota had its own site, there'd at least be additional room to put these features.
Although the HS move to LH was a much more drastic change than the proposed Dota move, I already see a lot of cool things resulting from it. I see 1 post users posting all the time. There's also a ton of HS blogs where there weren't before (we average about 1 blog a day). We almost never had HS blogs on TL and looking over blogs now, I don't think I see a single Dota 2 blog.
Speaking from experience working on LH, I enjoy working on the site a lot more and there's just so many more opportunities to display content. For example, we have a featured video everyday. In addition, because we don't have to compete with another game, each article we put out can get a lot more time on the front page. All in all, I think a new TL Dota site is a great idea and it'll be great for both the Dota staff and the building of a Liquid Dota community.
- With LiquidHearth in mind:
On May 12 2014 07:59 Hot_Bid wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2014 07:20 FiWiFaKi wrote:
Was hoping mod/staff would be able to answer....
How successful would you guys rate the splitting of Hearthstone from teamliquid? It was successful. It definitely wouldn't have worked putting it on TL frontpage and having HS, StarCraft, Dota, etc on it. If you were to compare LH to the option of keeping it on TL, it's not really even close in terms of how it can grow. Show nested quote +On May 12 2014 07:37 FiWiFaKi wrote:
I mean it's hard to say if teamliquid has been making good decisions recently, as their viewership has dropped to around 50% of what it was a year ago (going off of "active", as well as the activity I've been seeing). The real question is whether this will continue that streak or change it. This can be a really big nail in the coffin for teamliquid if it doesn't work out. In terms of traffic, viewership across all StarCraft sites has declined since 2012. I don't think this has much to do with any decisions we're making, it's just a reality in the scene. Dota was not growing on TL (at least not at the rate we consider acceptable) and the reason for this is because our Dota audience is just people that already use TL, not new users. This is because you have a site with a calendar not tailored to the game, with StarCraft icons, etc. It's not a very welcoming place for a Dota fan. This move at minimum will give our Dota staff and community a chance to grow. Status quo simply wasn't cutting it.
- Front page oversaturation: The separation of Hearthstone and Teamliquid alleviated this somewhat, but with potentially three games on the front page for some fans, it was impossible for the content we churned out to receive the attention it deserves. On some days, the articles on the front page would all be replaced within 24 hours, thus decreasing the amount of views that the different writer groups create. TL as a site wants to create great coverage for several games, and on the whole that's something TL succeeds in doing, but when something like 6 or 7 articles all go up within the span of a day, the content suddenly becomes overwhelming. For a fan interested in more than one game, there's suddenly too much, and too little attention given to the people that put hours in to create that content.
On that note, though this is a minor issue, there is some overlap once The International starts, and that tournament drowns out everything else for the duration of it due to its incredible magnitude. Remember last year, when WCS' Regional finals all took place during TI3? Do you remember the amount of content put out pretty much every hour? I swear at least one of the editors had a heart attack as a result.
- The issue of separation: A lot of people seem to feel like Liquiddota shatters the TL community, and I suppose in a way that is true. But the consensus was, and this is how I feel as well, that simply breaking TL down further with more and more sub-forums and sub-communities within a larger whole does not significantly aid the creation of a "community". The people that hang out in General tend to hang out in General, while those who frequented Dota did so and little else. Of course, there are a select few veteran members that browsed most of the site, but they are in the minority. The creation of Liquiddota is an attempt to create a Dota community with minor ties to TL (Starcraft), not simply a relocation of the site's Dota fans to another URL.
The purpose of the new site is to build a community for Dota fans much like other significant Dota sites available, and create a community just like a community was built around Brood War when TL first launched in 2002. People will come to Liquiddota as Dota fans and to Teamliquid as Starcraft fans, and those who really care about both games have the option to utilize the features including shared PMs and the like and visit both sites. It will be inconvenient for some users, yes, but long-term, Liquiddota allows for much more growth than cramming several games into the same site ever did.
- The "family" factor: One issue that was brought up was the concern that the different communities will feel much more separate now than as a single site, thus losing some of the "Family"-feeling that was present during the site's earlier years. Especially for those veterans that frequented multiple sub-forums, I see how this may be a concern. But if you feel like this is an issue, keep in mind that TL is massive now compared to five-or-so years ago. That sense of a tight-knit community was already half-gone with just how large the site has become. It wasn't possible, even for those who spend four hours a day on TL like some of us do, to know everyone byname.
Quote on the subject below:
+ Show Spoiler +On February 16 2014 06:26 2Pacalypse- wrote:
I think you may be overselling the "family" factor. This may have been true once in the old days of BW, but now TL has become too big to have that feeling across the site. For example, and don't take this the wrong way, but I have never seen your account until a couple of days ago and you're a staff user with 9k posts.
The point is that you're much likely to have that feeling of family with people who share your interests. This is why I'm against sharing the non-game specific forums across the sites. I think our main focus should be in attracting new users and building new sub-communities, and best way to achieve this is by letting community creates itself and not by us micromanaging it.
- On the subject of having shared General/Community sub-forums: It's been brought up earlier in this thread, and it was brought up in the staff forums as well. I think the response was generally positive, though there are technical quirks to work out before it can happen. I think it is going to happen eventually though, provided the technical issues can be solved.
Hopefully that explains a few things.
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This is awesome news. Now please get everything that has to do with DOTA off of TL
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
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East Gorteau22261 Posts
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On May 13 2014 02:17 Zealously wrote:That's the idea
Ok, so filters are apparently too complicated for new users, but why can't going to TL give someone a pre-filtered website that shows SC2 content and going to LiquidDota give someone a pre-filtered website that shows Dota 2 content, with the general/other games/etc. forums overlapping between the two? I fail to see why those non SC2/DotA/Hearthstone forums belong on the SC2 site now that we are segregating everything.
And to clarify about the Hearthstone thing. I'm not saying I stopped playing the game because TL coverage moved to a separate site, I'm saying I stopped caring at all about TL's coverage when it moved to another site, and have since forgotten that site even exists. My homepage is TL, not LiquidHearth, and honestly I can't be bothered to check up on every individual site that TL wants ad revenue on now that there are like 5 of them.
This seems like a pure and simple business decision. That's annoying for long-term users who are affected negatively, but at least it's understandable. What's boggling me, however, is how half of the staff responses actually explain the business reasons for doing this and the other half are people saying "It's for your own good! You'll like it eventually!" No, I really won't. It's not like I'll start boycotting TeamLiquid out of spite but I'll sure visit a lot less because it's no longer what it was in the past, a place for me to get all the news I could ever want for BW/SC2/DotA and general shit that people interested in those games like to talk about.
Obviously this is just my perspective, but it sure seems like a lot of people are sharing it with me.
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100% agree thats a very positive change imho,its only 1 click more and you got so much better experience than before, i would like when i click the link from tl main page the liquidota site to open as new tab with out to press the mouse wheel.
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Eh? Well it's a huge step forward and all, but I have to say I was quite content with a subforum
That said, woot for independence!
Edit: Nope, we want your damn tea afterall. Reasons detailed next page 
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could the live events listed be collapsable per event or something, because even though the additional info is nice, if the event isn't intresting in itself the tab feels like it takes too much room. And make the live events list updateable like the main page is, otherwise you'll need a secondary tl page open just to update the list.
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This is stupid. Guess I'll need to find a different community.
I like SC2 and Dota 2 the same and it was very convenient to have them in the same place.
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Why are people bringing LiquidHearth into this? It was a really different situation because HearthStone is/was the new thing on TL that instalty got moved to another page.
Dota2 was here for two years or so, people integrated into the rest of the community. Its a different issue now.
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I think the team icons on posts are amazing on the new site. My only worry is that TL could become more of an elitist section of the community, where the welcoming atmosphere is lessened just due to the fact that it was the original site.
However I think having all the sub-communities (health and fitness, mafia, eve, ...) here on TL makes it more friendly just on principle, so there probably isn't a huge risk of it turning cliquey / clannish.
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EPT
