Allow in-game screenshots on the forum

[Felidae_]

On the weekend a user was describing a problem with his Expanded deck, posting two in-game pictures in order to help us finding the problem.

He used an external file sharing side and the links were taken down swiftly by a Mod soon afterwards, yet they played an important role to determine the problem and pinpoint a swift solution.

 

By now we are all aware that links to external sites are prohibited on the ********* they go against the seemingly arbitrary terms of service.

Little side note: when clicking n those pictures a little chatbox opened, declaring that “you are now leaving the official Pokemon TCG homepage and that the company is not responsible for any content you may find from here on out” (or something along those lines), which is a statement that countless other sites use as a “get out of jail” free card and something that I've suggested in the past as well.

 

However, what if there was a way to implement screenshots from the game? The same way we can copy & paste deck lists, we should be able to store and attach in-game screenshots to the forum.

 

Pro:

• since the game is also using the same profanity **********'s pretty much impossible to post anything offensive (and if you do, you could write the same thing here on the forum without any problems as well)

• screenshots can help tremendously in resolving technical questions, bug reports, **** **

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  *********** serves as a great narrative tool. Showcasing cool scenarios from your ********************************************** of your **** deck, teach someone a handy trick, or for dozen other instances, pictures are simply amazing.

• The easier it it to communicate, the more people are likely willing to take part. This forum places heavy shackles on his users and it's no wonder that only a handful or people are even regularly posting here. If you give us more freedom I can ensure you that more content will be created

 

Con:

• people will find a way to use this as means to ridicule, publicly shame and harass people, because this is the nature of the internet. That being said, they already to that plentiful without the ability to post pictures and I'd argue that the community and the moderators are able to work together to stop any toxicity from spreading

• depending on the system you *******'s possible to alter the screenshots before posting them, rendering a lot of the safety measurements I mentioned earlier meaningless. Personally I don't know enough in order to have any opinion on this, thus I'd hand this problem over to people who know what they are doing

• not everyone will be happy if their opponent takes a screenshot during the match

 

Neutral

• the ability to create screenshots already exists. Just because we can't post them here doesn't mean we couldn't use them in any other Pokemon related forum and to my knowledge our society hasn't crumbled yet and I haven't been force to offer my firstborn to Ba'al.

 

All in all I'd argue that this is an instance were the benefits heavily outweigh the negative implications, all while keeping in check with the Pokemon code.

 

Then again, that's only my opinion and you are free to disagree :).

 

Edit: some words that are filtered: "Forum", "Filter" "picture" "use" "game" "brag" "winstreak"

🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

Edited June 25, 2019 by Felidae_

[WingsofFire1014]

I strongly agree to this. The question is why do they not allow us to do this?

 

Well, it could be because this forum is kid friendly. You see that at the bottom of your home page. I think that this forum is not supposed to be like ALL other forums. Cough.. like Reddit...Cough.

 

The mods could see screenshots as a way to be more aggressive to other players. You never know what screen shot anybody could post on here. It could be totally inappropriate. Heck, spammers would probably even become more popular. We already have a minor problem with them requesting that we go to Michigan St. University.

 

We are pretty limited to what we can do on here. I wonder every day why the mods don't step up and say why? I also wonder why they don't step up and say why they won't fix these bugs. Our staff is not very active. I know that I have no rights whatsoever to say this. But it's true. If they can explain (in a good way) why they don't do the simple things we request, then most of us will be happy happy happy.

 

I did copy some things that you said, but I went into a little bit deeper detail. And what I said was also my opinion. But I for one totally agree with you. 

 

EDIT: It looks like some of the bugs have actually been resolved now

Edited June 26, 2019 by WingsofFire1014

[XK920XK]

i like the idea, only thing i hate is if we start adding ingame screens people will start flooding this forum with useless pictures.

you can just visit the ptcgo subreddit and see all the random dumb screens of useless pulls and weird/odd flex photos.

[SKBellmore]

4 hours ago, WingsofFire1014 said:

We are pretty limited to what we can do on here. I wonder every day why the mods don't step up and say why? I also wonder why they don't step up and say why they won't fix these bugs.

The real question is, are they allowed to speak out, or only use canned responses? (I think the latter.)

 

Also I agree with your idea, Felidae.

[AlexGoneCrazy]

11 hours ago, Felidae_ said:

On the weekend a user was describing a problem with his Expanded deck, posting two in-game pictures in order to help us finding the problem.

He used an external file sharing side and the links were taken down swiftly by a Mod soon afterwards, yet they played an important role to determine the problem and pinpoint a swift solution.

 

By now we are all aware that links to external sites are prohibited on the ********* they go against the seemingly arbitrary terms of service.

Little side note: when clicking n those pictures a little chatbox opened, declaring that “you are now leaving the official Pokemon TCG homepage and that the company is not responsible for any content you may find from here on out” (or something along those lines), which is a statement that countless other sites use as a “get out of jail” free card and something that I've suggested in the past as well.

 

However, what if there was a way to implement screenshots from the game? The same way we can copy & paste deck lists, we should be able to store and attach in-game screenshots to the forum.

 

 

 

This idea sounds great but maybe since it sounds like it'd cost a lot of bandwidth they might not implement it. TPC likes to cut cost as much as possible and that sounds like itd end up being a pretty penny for them to add.

[SuperStone]

20 hours ago, WingsofFire1014 said:

I strongly agree to this. The question is why do they not allow us to do this?

 

Well, it could be because this forum is kid friendly. You see that at the bottom of your home page. I think that this forum is not supposed to be like ALL other forums. Cough.. like Reddit...Cough.

Well, they are paranoid, of course.  ^ is certainly the root of the reason.

20 hours ago, WingsofFire1014 said:

We are pretty limited to what we can do on here. I wonder every day why the mods don't step up and say why? I also wonder why they don't step up and say why they won't fix these bugs. Our staff is not very active. I know that I have no rights whatsoever to say this. But it's true. If they can explain (in a good way) why they don't do the simple things we request, then most of us will be happy happy happy.

This is mostly speculation, but it seems to be the most common conclusion: they can't implement most things because TPCi doesn't give them enough money and restricts their options, and they can't tell us anything because Pokemon has a policy of opaqueness.

 

@Felidae_ what I can't think of is how the feature would be possible.  It can't be copy/paste, because than you'll be able to put whatever image in you want, no matter how they try to restrict it.  Having a function connecting the TCGO directly to the forums would work- an export function of some sort- but sounds very difficult to do (not that I would know.  0 coding experience here.) And of course they can't go through a third party- unless they made their own, I suppose. 😶 Possibility!

[AlexGoneCrazy]

12 minutes ago, SuperStone said:

Well, they are paranoid, of course.  ^ is certainly the root of the reason.

This is mostly speculation, but it seems to be the most common conclusion: they can't implement most things because TPCi doesn't give them enough money and restricts their options, and they can't tell us anything because Pokemon has a policy of opaqueness.

 

@Felidae_ what I can't think of is how the feature would be possible.  It can't be copy/paste, because than you'll be able to put whatever image in you want, no matter how they try to restrict it.  Having a function connecting the TCGO directly to the forums would work- an export function of some sort- but sounds very difficult to do (not that I would know.  0 coding experience here.) And of course they can't go through a third party- unless they made their own, I suppose. 😶 Possibility!

 

They would have to code the game to where when want to take a screenshot it'd be server side as opposed to client side so there's no funny business and sent directly into a users screenshot bank. to save on bandwidth the photos would need to expire between patches or server maintenance. Then they would need to link our accounts to the photo bank/cloud and we would only be allowed to select from our own bank. That is the safest way that I can think of. Also it sounds like a premium feature as opposed to something they'd be willing to give to us for free but I'm sure if we pester them long enough they might budge and allow us to pay for these premium features.

[SaucyMouse]

This would be a great addition to the game Felidae_ because even I have some issues with decks and would like a second set of eyes to see if I am understanding correctly what is in front me and it's not just a bug. I don't think it would be an issue if it were even drag and drop because if there are bad seeds and we catch it the quicker we can **** them out.

[SandaledOtter]

4 hours ago, SaucyMouse said:

This would be a great addition to the game Felidae_ because even I have some issues with decks and would like a second set of eyes to see if I am understanding correctly what is in front me and it's not just a bug. I don't think it would be an issue if it were even drag and drop because if there are bad seeds and we catch it the quicker we can **** them out.

 

THAT won't happen. They haven't gotten rid of the Uni-spam yet, so trusting people and banning violators just won't work-- they'll come back over and over, now with the ability to spam images instead of text.

[SaucyMouse]

On 6/27/2019 at 5:28 AM, SandaledOtter said:

 

THAT won't happen. They haven't gotten rid of the Uni-spam yet, so trusting people and banning violators just won't work-- they'll come back over and over, now with the ability to spam images instead of text.

 

What's Uni-spam?

[RobRatt]

28 minutes ago, SaucyMouse said:

What's Uni-spam?

 

An Asian spammer (Korean/Chinese) has been doing University scams (?) for a long time now.  The mods are quick to delete them, so many players only see them occasionally.

 

On ‎6‎/‎27‎/‎2019 at 5:28 AM, SandaledOtter said:

THAT won't happen. They haven't gotten rid of the Uni-spam yet, so trusting people and banning violators just won't work-- they'll come back over and over, now with the ability to spam images instead of text. 

 

If the Staff would realize, there are a lot of helpful tutorials, or examples, that could be given to other players if they'd just trust that we weren't stupid or malicious.  I'm guessing that's what most people have in mind.  It would really open up the forums, and make a better experience for everyone who visits.  All they would need to do is disable this ability until someone had a certain number of posts (proven themselves).  The "report this post" feature would take care of any bad behavior, while the good outweighs the risk (IMO).

 

Edited June 29, 2019 by RobRatt

[Mod_GuruLot]

On 6/29/2019 at 5:42 AM, RobRatt said:

 

An Asian spammer (Korean/Chinese) has been doing University scams (?) for a long time now.  The mods are quick to delete them, so many players only see them occasionally.

 

 

If the Staff would realize, there are a lot of helpful tutorials, or examples, that could be given to other players if they'd just trust that we weren't stupid or malicious.  I'm guessing that's what most people have in mind.  It would really open up the forums, and make a better experience for everyone who visits.  All they would need to do is disable this ability until someone had a certain number of posts (proven themselves).  The "report this post" feature would take care of any bad behavior, while the good outweighs the risk (IMO).

 

 

 

Hello RobRatt, 

 

Thank you for your constructive feedback and suggestion. 

 

We always welcome trainers to share their thoughts on the forum to know what could be improved.