The storm has kind of died down but as of late, but there's been more and more talk about us being a 'divided community' and how we need a 'solution to this huge issue'. So I'm here to set the record straight so we can just avoid this talk altogether:

The community is NOT divided.

There are a lot of arguments against this statement, so I'm just going to go through the popular ones and quickly talk about them.

The older players are elitists! They hate speaking to the newer players!

While there is some truth to the fact that older players like to stick to themselves, it is not because they have hate towards newer players. It is simply because 'old school' players are in the minority and are quite a tightly nit bunch now because of how well they know each other. Furthermore, there are older players across every platform, including the newest one (Discord). If older players had a hatred for newer ones, they most certainly would not intermingle with them.

The Slack players think Discord/SmashLadder players are bad!

This is quite a silly statement honestly. The farthest this has ever gone was the silly little Slack vs SmashLadder meme that happened when Anther's started attracting a whole new wave of players. You see Slack players on all platforms getting along with everyone just fine.

The players who are seen as good have egos and disregard anything anyone else says!

First and foremost, you should probably acknowledge and accept the fact that everyone will have opinions that differ to yours, especially if they're seen as a better player. I'm not saying you should put good players on some kind of ego pedestal, but chances are, if a player is much better than you, their game knowledge is probably going to be stronger and differ a lot from yours.

The Slack thread is locked! Why are you keeping newer players out?
I am not sure about this. But the thread is most likely locked to reduced the amount of players coming in all at once. For one, most of the community's misfortune has happened on Slack. Secondly, having a large influx of new players all flooding in at once can be quite overwhelming and exhausting, especially for the mods. I'm sure if you simply DM someone like TSON you have a good chance at joining the Slack chat. If you get turned down, it's nothing against you, it's probably because of the two reasons I said before.


Now, the point I'm trying to get at is, nothing about our community being divided is true. Having different platforms to communicate doesn't make the community divided, it makes it flexible. Some people prefer to use all platforms, others prefer to use just one. Either way, the fact that we have so many outlets to meet up and talk to each other only shows how strong our community is. We're the complete opposite of divided. Besides, the fact that we have this wonderful forum site to be used by everyone should be evidence enough that we aren't divided. A person from Slack can easily talk to a person from Discord on these forums without having to use a platform they aren't fond of.

It is quite embarrassing that something like this has to be pointed out, but we kind of have this collective habit where once we're in a certain mindset, we refuse to leave it (even if leaving it is the only logical thing to do). But it's all good. As long as we all strive to improve this community and make it more welcoming, then nothing else really matters.

If you still do have concerns, feel free to express them here.

Speaking as someone from the slack chat, I see a general unwillingness to associate with newer players (words like dumb and braindead get thrown around way too much) and I am genuinely surprised at how little the players seen as better do for the new guys. What happened instead? A couple of people left Anther's ladder initially for whatever reason (idk what it was, maybe it was as trivial as losing interest in AL), then since the more skilled players left, the overall skill of the ladder drops. Eventually other players think the rankings are ridiculous and then just leave it until eventually it doesn't represent the community at all. Now Anther's just becomes associated with laughable placing because the kind of players that could make it useful refuse to use it.

As for the ego thing, sometimes I see two ppl of different community status arguing, and sometimes the crux of the argument ends up coming down to "I've been playing this/that game for years and you haven't". My related story: When I walk to the bus, day after day I based my arrival on the time of my phone. I always arrived in time, but according to my clock the bus was always 2 minutes late. So, what does this mean? From one point of view, the bus is always late. But, from another point of view, my clock is ahead and I'm arriving early. My point here is that many times I feel like some players aren't so willing to realize that the bus isn't late, they are early, even if they have been playing the game for years longer. I guess that comes down to ppl just being stubborn while trying to uphold their end of a discussion haha.

I think the real problem is the general community mindset of "if something seems wrong, don't try and fix what's wrong with it, just make a new one." This is what leads to fragmenting the community, imagine if someone just up and decided to make a new wiki because they don't like the current one (which was in talks at one point!). It wouldn't necessarily divide the community into ppl that use one wiki over the other, but it's the support for all the different platforms that is really just unnecessary.

Like, WHY does SSF2 need another chat? What was so wrong with the slack chat that necessitated a discord chat? lel

Even if we're not strictly divided, we are spread out a little thin. I would say we need to find some way to unite everyone because of that, but...



...but then this happens, and we get spread even thinner.

This Anther's situation is definitely true. There was a huge stigma about around new players on AnLa and them not knowing any better. However, I do not think this was a lasting effect. AnLa is nowhere near the peak it used to be at, but people who do use it are all friendly to each other, and I've seen many older players make a return to the platform.
I don't feel like this stigma is around anymore, a lot of older players have learned to swallow their pride and accept new players and we've seen a lot of good come out of this (for example, Gax started of on AnLa, but is now seen as one of, if not, the best fox player in the scene).



Arguments like this are a given, but I don't think it's reached a point where the community divides. This only really becomes an issue when the two people arguing are being completely immature about w/e they're talking about, and end up saying really stupid s*** instead of focusing on the topic at hand. Has this happened before? Ofcourse, but not to the point where divisions are made.



I don't think it was a matter of whether we needed a discord, but rather, whether we WANTED one. If there is demand for something, people will supply. This is quite clearly shown by the fact that the discord is much more popular than both AnLa and Slack. Although I do agree that the mindset you stated exists (a good example is the whole Slackroom vs Backroom situation) I don't think it's the reason why people are making new platforms of communication.

It's good that you brought up that mindset, however, because it is definetely something that needs to be addressed though.

All in all however, I don't think the points you stated show any significant kind of divide at all. Nothing has gotten so out of hand to the point where there is a clear split. The whole Slack vs AnLa thing was temporary (thank god it was) and that's the only significant division we've ever seen.

Oh I wasn't trying to show that divisions exist, on the contrary I agree that none of these things make ppl choose one chat over the other. No one bandwagons against the chats, and no one absolutely hates players for their egos or unwillingness to get over themselves. The things I brought up in my post were topics I felt you downplayed how they matter in a bigger picture.

But the real reason there is a discord is because someone else wanted to be a mod and they made their own chat , in a sense the problem was they had no chance of being a mod so they wanted to fix that (I think it also was an attempt to fix the seemingly high barrier to entry that the slack chat has). It happened to gain steam because anyone can join it, since all you have to do is just join, it makes sense that more people would join (you don't have to register on some forums and THEN post to get added to the chat). I think it goes without saying that the quality of the official MG slack is much higher because of needing to register via the forums. It keeps out true riff-raff, and since slack accounts are connected to a forums acc there is a degree of accountability, and anyone that wants to be a part of this community will probably join the forums (it's too inconvenient not to haha). Nothing stops ppl from making alts and repeating, but they have to essentially make 2 alts instead of just one.

July 18th .... I maria.....Woow boy..... Had enough of this yesterday.... Then there's the thought that some of us would rather not know the community up close and personal let alone at all so remain in our own little zones possibly.

I don't get why people assume the discord chat was made because random people wanted to be mod. It was made because discord itself is very popular with the gaming community, especially smash bros. Our main goal was to get our chat room on Smashcords (the website that has a list of all discord chatrooms for most characters in melee and smash4) so we can possibly get more people into SSF2. And i can tell you that there have been a hand full of people who came through smashcord not knowing much about this game. In the end we just wanted a easy access text/voice chat room that was open to anyone to discuss things about the game.

Well of course it's going to be divided if you have different chats being created every place. It's one thing when players create chats, but when mcleodgaming creates one. If you want it to be united go and chat on Anthers. As that's not only a place to get some notice while talking, but also has some cool tools last time i been there. Starkiller is completely right on the end of when the good players started to leave the other good players left as well. Hell the only reason i visit chats is to fight good players. Slacks is more than known for having the best players visit it. Ladders only have good players visit from time to time. You want a quick match go there. If you want to fight someone good go to Slacks. 

I don't think you read anything I said in the OP and I find that really frustrating.

u right homie

i miss irc.

lol