REVOLUTION!(system change thread)

[Ashe]

PP was added to curb the perma-SSJ possibility when we first turned over. It's also become a way to augment custom techniques into being more powerful.

This is true.

It's seen as useless because we've had, like, no actual official PvE saga where the shit was tracked since the system was put in place.

Fair point. I do agree with you. Unfortunately, as much as I want this to change, to my knowledge (and I could absolutely be wrong), any attempts at doing such resulted in a total lack of interest from all ends. People appear (and sometimes state) to have a desire to be able to roleplay whatever they want with no inhibitions upon their creativity while maintaining a need for measurement against others (which to me seems contradictory in that its a desire to limit another's roleplays by similar means). It makes for a rough balance to try to approach.

We have one of these threads up every few months where people push around ideas that, so they say, will bring them back into activity. And then staff implements what people want, and no one budges, and then there are more excuses, and then we have another one of these threads.

Arguing about whether or not we have PP, or whether or not people like pre-made vs. non-pre-made quests, and how PP should be replenished, is not going to affect the activity on this site, at all. The only way I've seen a system change affect activity is a large-scale overhaul, like what we did in 09 that triggered activity for a year and a half or so, before it died again. Tinkering with tiny, insignificant things isn't going to make anyone post.

Another fair point as well, for the most part. I do mostly agree with you. I think the approach of "system overhaul, change everything, condense this, rename that, call it something different" being used in hopes that "oh, thank you, the naming convention of this combined with the existence of this other element that we didn't actually use but I felt severely hindered me is gone, now that I don't have a scapegoat to use I'm going to roleplay again!" is not the exact panacea for the problem.

I am not going to pretend to have a solution to that, because I don't. I'm part of the problem, as are any of us that don't actively post and look for elements of the RPG that we can hope will shoulder the blame. Even the last couple of days I have found myself looking at the site and contemplating writing a bit, to the point of having open my Let Go thread from Mercy earlier in the evening but not making it to the point of turning off the video I was watching to write (thus why I didn't get on LoL - I intended to write).

You don't think the system matters. Noted! Now, I know this is crazy, but some of us have read this exact same post by you several times before, and we haven't accepted the truth of your words! (I know - morons, heh) But since the system doesn't matter anyway, would it be alright if you humour us and let us discuss it? I mean, if that's okay with you. Otherwise, I guess just keep posting this, we might smarten up enough to understand what you're saying eventually.

This post was entirely unnecessary. His post was a respectful one and pointed out that he disagrees with the proposed changes to the system being the solution we may hope it would be. Its a good point. I think it does further the discussion in that it promotes debate on what exactly leads to the lulls in activity aside from other forms of activity gaining our attention. It makes people defend why THIS is THE problem and not this other thing, or perhaps a combination of this one and that one.

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I want to narrow down what factors might lead to this. Now to offer a suggestion, I think that one thing I might have an issue with is lack of incentive.

* Other than increasing an arbitrary number in my post bit that has been used approximately zero times, what do we have. The first step to identifying what is missing is to understand what we currently have access to to support giving our members motivation to write in general.

* Other than what we do have, what other things could we possibly utilize that would lead to more writing as a whole but not increase the work/stress load of others so much (rating/judgment systems, things that lead to inactivity from the other end?) Would a better comparison system lead to more overall competition and desire to stay ahead? Would some other form of reward system (in character or out of character) fuel your desire to write more? What can we do that will make you want to put aside the time that you are idling in town on your MMO of preference, or when you are playing that flash based game, or when you are boredly pressing F5 on the forums of your other preferred games/reddit, and get you to use that time to throw down a post on here?

* What do we currently use that possibly hinders your motivations and dissuades you from posting? What can we do to identify the things that make us feel pressured to write as nothing more than upkeep on our characters, becoming less something that we want to do and more something that we have to do?

I think engaging in discussions of these topics would be a great starting point in identifying a few of the issues and helping find the right tweaks that we can make to the site as a whole to bring about a better, more active writing community.