Deck Hubs (Reloaded)
TappedOut forum
Posted on Aug. 22, 2011, 1:43 p.m. by yeaGO
So I overhauled the whole 'deck hub' system.
What's a deck hub?
Its a place for centralizing common deck archetypes such as:
....etc. They're all located here.
Your deck-cycles will not only throw your decks to the top of the front page, but also to the top of any hubs your decks are a part of.
View any of your decks and you should see an 'Edit hubs' link near the middle of the page. Also, if T/O comes up with suggestions for which hubs your deck seems to fit in, they will appear there too.
Feedback
I realize the first thing you all may ask is, 'WHY CANT I ADD MY OWN HUBS'. The reason for this is because it turns into a huge mess when I open the flood-gates for all hubs. If anyone out there wants to volunteer to become a Hubmaster, I could give you privs to add/delete/change the current set of hubs. New hubs will be added as game trends change (last week it was genesis wave, this week its puresteel paladin that people want).
Thoughts and comments welcome as always.
I would happily be hubmaster, since I don't have quite enough time to devote to tokens.
August 22, 2011 2:23 p.m.
insertcleverid says... #4
Thank you! This is great!
May we have a hub for each commander?
I believe a few of the hubs are redundant, like the infect hubs, do you have a system for integrating them yet?
August 22, 2011 3:21 p.m.
yeah we gotta clean them up. I just dumped them in based on a bunch of keywords I was seeing people find decks. I think it needs a more human approach.
A hub for each commander. See that's thinking. Though I would rather automate that. By 'each commander' are you talking specifically about the Commander set oversized cards?
August 22, 2011 3:24 p.m.
insertcleverid says... #6
No, unfortunately for whoever has to do the work, one for each legendary creature. I know that's asking a lot.
I am really excited about this idea. I have some suggestions for organization.
1 for each mono-color1 for each duel-color combo.1 for each shard1 for each wedge1 for each of the top decks in standard...most of which you already have...
then...maybe a good way to aggregate would be to allow users to add any tag they want to their deck, then a top-down organizer could take the most interesting and popular ones and then put them up as hubs.
You might even find that users are creating new archetypes. Unique, community generated deck concepts would be a real feather in tappedout's cap. Would it be possible to prove when an innovative deck design originated here? You have a lot of really creative users.
I don't know, I'm not a web-designer, so I might be asking for the moon.
Thanks and keep the great improvements coming, by the way!
August 22, 2011 3:36 p.m.
insertcleverid has some good ideas and I'd agree with hubs for each color and most of the combinations of colors.
The only hub that I see missing off the top of my head is Birthing Pod !
Also, letting the users choose from a list of hubs for their deck when they make it, and adding it if it isn't there, could possibly ease the work of the hubmaster/programmer doing the work
August 22, 2011 4:51 p.m.
Adding a custom hub if it is not listed could be problematic. Users may oversee an existing option and duplicates will appear, or irrelevant options that are far too narrow will appear. With the amount of decks that are added to Tapped Out, this would get way out of hand.
The only difficult part is the initial process of eliminating duplicates and adding what is missing.
August 22, 2011 5:01 p.m.
Then perhaps a "send deck suggestion to the hubmaster" option
August 22, 2011 5:08 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #10
You might also include the three archetypes as hubs without color restrictions, namely Aggro, Control, and Combo.
I definitely advocate the color combo hubs though.
August 22, 2011 5:19 p.m.
Shadowhand says... #11
Two different listings for metalcraft, a Steel Overseer hub, but no Tempered Steel.
August 22, 2011 5:20 p.m.
It will be refined soon. I am a "hubmaster" now, and this is my goal:
- One for each basic archetype, as Epochalyptik suggested.
- One for each mono-color, color combination, and shard, as insertcleverid suggested.
- One for each popular metadeck, such as Birthing Pod and Tempered Steel.
August 22, 2011 5:31 p.m.
Shadowhand says... #13
I wanted to add my thanks for Edit Hubs link. Didn't want to just be another whiner, and look forward to the refinements of our new Hubmaster. :)
August 22, 2011 5:34 p.m.
Let's hold off on the Legendary/Commander one for now--I need to think about how to integrate that.
The color combos I am all for. Once again though, this is something that could be automated (why shouldn't all mono-green decks auto-join the Monogreen hub?? Same for BRU, but they would still have to join the "American Control" hub manually)
I have been pulling my suggestions directly out of the search traffic which people use to find TappedOut. I browse it periodically and import those phrases which are clearly deck archetypes as hubs.
One thing I can do is enable a tool for Hubmasters to easily import keywords they think would be good--as magic trends change we'd then have a good window of what hubs are missing.
August 22, 2011 5:44 p.m.
....OH
And may I also say that I'm glad to see people finally excited about this feature. Nobody seemed to really get it at first but, in my mind, this blows TappedOut wide open.
For deck-makers: no longer does everyone have to fight over only the front page. You have entire new markets where you can push your deck.
For deck-browsers: who wants to rely on searching all the time? In the hub you'll be able to easily tell what's the best and freshest of the archetype you're after.
August 22, 2011 5:51 p.m.
mozerdozer says... #16
So there's like nothing for UW control which is a hugely played archetype...
To mafteecher: There are several popular 3 color combinations that aren't shard. Mainly American (UWR).
August 22, 2011 6:15 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #17
Those are the wedge colors. Any 3-color combo is either wedge or shard.
August 22, 2011 6:51 p.m.
platinum_demon says... #18
On the Commander thing, could there maybe a sort of sub-hub where it just said "Commanders" and then within that was a list of the commanders, so they didn't clutter up the main hubs area? It would also be possible to seperate it even further, sorting Commanders by color or CMC or something.
Or the Commander hubs could be an entirely different thing altogether. One page of hubs, then an entirely different page dedicated to Commander hubs. This might make things a bit less cluttered, as well as reducing the traffic going to and from that one page of hubs.
August 22, 2011 7:08 p.m.
insertcleverid says... #19
I wonder what your thoughts are on my earlier suggestion of user-generated tags idea? Jewrummer mentioned a "send hub suggestions to hubmaster" button. The tags don't even have to be searchable by members, I suppose. You could treat a admin-searchable tags database like a suggestion box on which to draw from. You could look at a thousand tags in alphabetical order and pull out the most useful ones. It would be a good halfway point between top-down monarchy and total anarchy.
August 22, 2011 7:41 p.m.
@ above
I like the idea.
The practice is that its always tough to get people to maintain things like that, which is why I have up until now been relying on an automated system of importing search keywords and fixing them up into deck hubs.
If the Hubmasters can keep things tidy, we can definitely see about opening it up. I would hate to offer a hub suggestion box and then have nobody available to go through it.
August 22, 2011 7:54 p.m.
insertcleverid says... #21
Just tossing out another idea. What if the hubs lived in a file tree? The heirarchy might be: Format, which updates automatically, then either Color or Archetype like:
Standard/mono-black/control
Commander/Bant/Rafiq
extended/Soul Sisters/WB
Legacy/U/Mill
or maybe that would be too restrictive?
August 22, 2011 7:55 p.m.
Something like that, yeah. A way to mash hubs together, or have different types of hubs (Color based, archetype based, format based, General based) for example.
A hot interface where we could quickly throw hubs together and find out their intersections would be nice.
August 22, 2011 8:03 p.m.
mozerdozer says... #23
So why is their a deckhub called Etched Champion, Etched Champion Tempered Steel, and Tempered Steel. Middle one is a little redundant. Also idt anyone builds a deck around etched champion.
August 22, 2011 9 p.m.
Shadowhand says... #24
Just an FYI, but it appears that the hubs for a deck are being cleared whenever the Edit link (under Options) is used.
August 23, 2011 12:42 a.m.
Cyber Locc says... #26
maybe im confused about wat hubs are but i think you most defiantly need a reanimation hub i mean its a staple in magic always has been always will be shouldnt it get a hub
January 23, 2012 11:10 p.m.
Cyber Locc says... #27
scrath that there is one now didnt see it lol sorry thanks much
theemptyquiver says... #2
I like it. I'm glad my mono-white infect deck no longer links to U/B decks.
August 22, 2011 2:12 p.m.