Hey all!
In this blog post, I would like to talk about the previous year of ShatterpointDB. Around a year ago, I bought this domain so I thought now would be a good time to go over what has happend this year and what I am planning on doing in the next year. Also, let's take a look at the stats and maybe talk a bit about dream features that I would love to add to the website.
But first, why?
I am not sure if I really talked about this before, but let's start about why I started this website. At the time, one year ago, I ran the website SkytearHordeDB.com. I really liked seeing the community come together and make decks, so I thought "How difficult would it be to also run this for Shatterpoint?". At that time, I was ready for the game, following every spoiler and just being very excited. So I set out to modify my existing code and make it work for Shatterpoint as well.
Personally I really like sites like this. Places where the community comes together and allows us to share the game with other people. I think websites like this really help the surrounding game grow. If you want to show someone what characters are available in Shatterpoint, just point them to the website. If people want to see what is popular, then they can also see that there. There are so many features that help the community grow. And with that thought, I want to make the websites as good as possible for the community and with the community.
Stats
But I assume that most of you are here for the stats! And I can't blame you, even I am excited about the stats as it isn't really something that I look at. But let's start with the easy stats and see how many squads you all have built on the website:
5411 squads
That is a crazy number! That is like ~14 squads a day. It is great to see that people are using the site.
Next to those 5411 squads, there are also 158 Premier teams. Premier team wasn't there in the beginning and they are bit more focused to the competitive side of Shatterpoint. But even then, 158 teams is a huge accomplishment and I can't wait to see this become even higher.
So, what character is the most used in all the squads? In 1459 squads you'll find the most played character: MagnaGuard.
Second place goes to Jango Fett with 1408 squads and third place goes to Captain Rex with 1326 squads.
And the lowest place goes to the Weequay Pirates, which isn't really surprising as they haven't been released yet. You can find them in 21 squads.
And as a last stat, with the introduction of likes, there are now 77 likes across the whole website, with Bounty Hunter Ball having the most likes!
If you have any more stats that you would like to see, please message me on Discord so I can add them to this page!
Features of last year
Looking back at last year, I think a lot of cool features were added to the website. My favorite is the new styling of the squad builder. This used to be a mess, but we now have the easy interface for both desktop and mobile! I think that feature alone has probably taken most of my time to implement, but I think it was easily worth it.
We also have Premier teams now, something that should have been here a lot sooner, but I am happy where it is now. Along with the new deck previews. I think the old ones only showed you the image of the first character in your squad, so that wasn't really helpful if you quickly wanted to glance and see what characters someone was using.
Another feature that I have mixed feeling on is allowing everyone to build decks. This makes it very easy for people to make decks as they don't have to log in, but I think it also adds a lot of decks to the database that maybe aren't that special. I think it is something that I will keep my eye on and see how it evolves.
Future features
And let's also take a look at some of the future features that I would like to add to the website.
Collection tracker
I want to add a way to track your collection, so that you can easily see what you are missing and what you already have. Combine this with a way to filter for squads that you can build with your collection and I think we have a great feature! Maybe we can even have a wishlist so we can share it with anyone for more games.
Improve the squad builder
While the squad builder is currently already very nice, there are still things to improve. Adding mission packs are very important for me to get added, but also allowing actions in the squad builder would be very nice. Just imagine being able to export your squad in the builder without having to publish it. I think that would be a nice addition to the squad builder.
Just general improvements
There are many places on the site that could probably use some more love. I will probably go through all the pages that I currently have and see which one really need some help and which ones don't.
My dream ideas
There are a few ideas that I would consider to be my "dream" ideas. They are ideas that would add a lot to the website, but they take a lot of work and time to build. I will probably eventually get to them, but they are very much in the future of the website.
Custom card creator
I love seeing all the custom content that is being made in the Discord and I would love for the website to play a role in it. Creating a simple interface where people can fill in information and it allows you to create custom cards would be crazy! It would make it a lot easier for people to get started with custom content for the game.
Tracking your games
If you add your decks to the website, then you might also want to track them. How good are your decks doing, what is your winrate, what are your biggest weaknesses. I know not everyone would be interested in this, but especially for the more competitive group, I think this would be a great addition to the website.
And that will be all for now. I want to thank everyone for using the website this last year. I love what everyone is doing with it and I can't wait to see what the next year will bring. I am excited for the new releases and I am excited to see what the community will do. Again, thank you all so much!