What would you roleplay?

[Shun]

Lol, I've always been more of a DC man myself. I'd have to agree with you though. The story lines seem to lack continuity, especially in Marvel. I was mainly suggesting the DC universe because of the Flashpoint story arc. They recently rebooted the entire universe and are re-introducing characters and refocusing their attention and direction.

Given the recent boom in their sales and the success of their online attempt at an MMORPG I figured it'd be an interesting way to attract the attention from a different crowd. With the present focus Chubbs seems to attract people who stick around for a bit then dissapear because they get tired of it.

The only reason I dismissed One Piece so quickly is because I wasn't sure if the entire series has ended. All the Anime's I've come across are finished or drag on so long I lose interest. Western Comics continues to progress and evolve after 73 years. Both in character development and story lines. Gaining new interest and maintaining a following.

I have to agree with you on that other part also Belle. With all due respect to staff and the effort they've put into the site throughout the years...it's like their attention and/or passion has died. Sure we appreciate that time is volunteered and lives don't always allow room for hobbies, etc but when you take an authoritative position you kinda accept all the responsibilities. Sites don't just run themselves despite how much coding and content you throw in 'em.

I know it's easier said than done though. Just felt I had to touch on it cuz it was brought up. It's just we all been here for a while and yeah there's the 72 hr rule for courtesy but sometimes its like you guys see a little work and its like, reply to the thread in the forum next to it then, go play LoL or some shit for the next couple hrs, then sleep, then work, then rinse and repeat.

It's almost like seeing dirty dishes and not washing them cuz you know someone else probably will when they see it. I can name a handful of people from OOC relationships both RL and internet who've left for the simple fact they felt like updates took forever.

I don't wanna seem like I'm bashin' staff though. I fuck wit you guys.

[Jonathan Meer]

Oh yeah, another note.

If we were going to do something long term with little branch off things for other projects, then that long-term thing has to have moderator support. People have to start hosting sagas again and shit.

No more "let's talk about what we're going to do" threads that have tons of good ideas that are commended, then completely ignored/unimplemented so that six months later another thread comes up.

/bitter

If there was more activity, people would host sagas.

It's not particularly tempting to host a saga when no one writes.

EDIT: Going to flesh this out for Shun's post.

We're not responsible for maintaining activity. That isn't something we can do. We can encourage it by providing a dynamic atmosphere that people enjoy and find fresh, and that's something that can always be done better (we have room for improvement, sure), but it ultimately comes down to whether or not people write.

And people just aren't doing that.

Chubbsians are a fickle bunch. They maintain this show of always-wanting-to-write, and when you provide them the opportunity (a new saga, a new game mechanic a la The League), they get roaring and excited and ready to go for the first week or two, and then it dwindles. They find some excuse not to keep going with it. Some people stick it out, more people wander off and play LoL or Skyrim or masturbate.

There was a time when writing activity was constant and potent, regardless of Staff output. It isn't like that now.

EDIT2: And I've never, ever understood this 'Update-must-happen-NOW' rationale. It happened with The League too. People got pissy and refused to write and blah blah blah because an update was delayed. Why? Delayed updates don't prevent people from doing other writing. It's, at most, a mild inconvenience; you have to wait a bit to find out how your scenario is resolved, but it's not debilitating.

It does provide a convenient scapegoat, though.

[Mal Nova]

Hmmm. I don't know.

I just don't know...

I'm unsure most of the people in this thread can actually 'put up' when it will comes time to 'put up or shut up'. And I mean no disrespect when i say that. I say that about the writers and staff.

Here most of us are... 8-12 years later. I was 16/17 when I joined here(same month as Minoshia/Alex Trafford). I think the gap was mainly 3 years difference up or down with maybe a few 3 years older on the upper end? I'm now 25... So just about everyone's up around there... We've grown... life has become a bit more important.

Heh.. I'm not leaving the community... And I'll write for as long as I can... for fun and efforts to get better.

I aspire to write a book one day(think most know this) and hope it hashes out to a chain of them. I've used this site as a place to try to bring me to the point where I want to be...

Still it's almost like most of the people here have 'grown out' of their writing stage and just stick around for the community.

If CDBZ goes down, and they recreate another RPG.... meh.. I'll hate it. I'll bitch about it. But thats mostly because I hate investing so much in a character and watching it get flushed.

Hell..... I knew there was a site that had the old stuff... but I cant find it anymore =(

But yeah.. in the end... I'm still here and I can always make time to write(It's just that since i broke my leg I've been usually more obliged to put my leg up and relax... or do something with less concentration and thought(LoL..PS...BLAME MEER I THINK HE DRAGGED ME INTO IT!)

Also I haven't refused to write in the League, Meer.... I've continued... I just think me and Sig said to hell with the rules =D

[Super Buu]

On an individual scale, the answer to the question is everything in this thread.

On a wider scale: No RPGs survive by making the same people stay active forever, they stay active because they're constantly getting new members to replace the old ones. Some people will stay longer than others, and some people will stay forever, but most people won't. When staffers go inactive, they get replaced.

The staffers at the top here just aren't as interested in CDBZ anymore. And why would they still be? The setting has been here for a decade. It's had a damn good run. Either they get re-interested, or they pass it on to someone still interested, or the community migrates to a different RPG.

Or there's IMO the best solution, which is what Waffuru is doing with the RPG hub idea. It keeps the community together and lets the staffers put their creativity into some new and interesting stuff that they're actually passionate about. Best of all, CDBZ can stay around, maybe even get some new members from those that join for the other RPGs like Anyria.

[Shun]

Mal - epiqz.com/cdbz/forums

I think it's down now though. It was sexy with that dark vision skin.

[Alexander Trafford]

If there was more activity, people would host sagas.

and if there were more sagas and organized group roleplaying, there'd probably be more activity. you can't definitively say that you have absolutely no responsibility in maintaining activity, when so much of what moderators do (sagas, keeping storylines alive by moderating/judging in a timely manner) has an effect on activity. for instance, when you started the league you had eight-ish consistent writers in that thing (which was a boom considering Chubbs at the time), and when you started to give up on it, and not moderate, you eroded many league-writers will to write (including my own).

[Jonathan Meer]

Thank you for essentially representing exactly what I'm criticizing. League fights did not require previous fights to have been resolved. Any delay in getting a fight resolved has absolutely no impact in a person's ability to write another one.

And yet, people took that as a reason to not write. That's a conscious decision on their part (and one I still don't understand). The delay is blamed/scapegoated, and the Chubbs community spins on, blaming staff for the lack of activity.

It's patently absurd, and it happens over and over again.

[Mal Nova]

Meer... dude.... You pretty much did this....


I made a tournament that I dont have to do anything and make everyone else decide.... Yeah... No one is biased...


Then... LEAGUE! Oh! I don't want to be a judge and expect everyone else to do so.....

WAIT! NOVA! YOU DONT QUALIFY!

EDIT BY ORION: No insulting members.

[Shun]

Woh, woh, woh...

How could you blame people for choosing to be inactive when it's impossible to progress in the league without judges who actually judge? You were goin' in for a while, even removing inactive judges who were inactive then didn't even bother to do that anymore. Sure I'm not even participating but it's obvious new threads have to be created by the story account. That means members don't have permission to start new threads dude. (Yes, I checked). So if Mal and Sig finished their fight what would you have them do? RP for themselves about a fight they might not have next? Fill up word or whatever program they're using with a story line that would be useless if they ended up losing it all? Use precognition to see the result and how it affected their character's psyche?

I'm not trynna get at staff, like I said, but if members both old and new keep using the "cliche" scapegoat. Maybe it's not only a scapegoat then. Maybe it's actually a problem your not seeing just because every other time you decide to come back, from what I've seen, you are staff.

You're last IC post was when? In August. Whan I was talking about accepting those responsibilities it also includes actually posting IC. Doesn't have to be hyper active, doesn't have to even be once a week, but to blame other people for not writing when you don't even write? Lol

"Saga's don't get made cuz people aren't active", "I don't write cuz no one reads it." "People don't post cuz they don't wanna." Bottom line is activity promotes more activity.

Look at what Alex said for example. You proposed a saga, began it and activity started to boom again. Nobody here is saying they stopped writing just because they lost interest. They're saying they lost interest because you stopped giving it your attention.

Not blaming you specifically for the decline of Chubbs because we all have played our part. The real problem here is everybody's passing blame and no one is taking responsibility. Yeah the new RPG thing is taking the initiative in a way but at the same time its once again. "Chubbs is dying. REVAMP/ADD CONTENT" instead of find out whats wrong, utilize the information we have and take a different approach.

Edit: Damn Nova. You goin' hard for no reason. Too much emotional irrationality could lead to this thread getting locked bro. Why not try and keep it civil?

[Orion]

All right, people. If you can't keep a civil tongue this thread will be locked and warnings will be handed out. First and last warning.

[Orion]

I have to agree with Shun. Pointing fingers doesn't help activity. I definitely understand that members want to have jobs/quests/sagas graded before they move onto something else, especially since sometimes the points/zeni from the grading enables the progression of the planned storyline (buying an item, purchasing a ship to go to a planet, etc.) while other times an ungraded fight can feel like moving on is weird since there isn't closure from the last action.

On the other hand, staff cannot make anyone write. That is entirely on the writer's shoulders to find the initiative. Even with what I wrote above about grading, none of that stops anyone from writing about something. We've even got dual characters in case you want to have a break from your main storyline. Staff can engineer sagas and tournaments but the last few of those have petered out without any solid reason.

To move forward, everyone has to take responsibility to an extent for the lack of activity, but it really comes down to the effort of each individual writer. If you want to write, I mean really want to write, none of the above will stop you.

[Jonathan Meer]

I'm not planning to argue about it. I've said my piece. It doesn't surprise me that it's unpopular.

[Alexander Trafford]

Thank you for essentially representing exactly what I'm criticizing. League fights did not require previous fights to have been resolved. Any delay in getting a fight resolved has absolutely no impact in a person's ability to write another one.

And yet, people took that as a reason to not write. That's a conscious decision on their part (and one I still don't understand). The delay is blamed/scapegoated, and the Chubbs community spins on, blaming staff for the lack of activity.

It's patently absurd, and it happens over and over again.

I'm happy that I represent exactly what you're criticizing, I really, truly do. It doesn't matter that people could write again before the other fights were finished (even though most people didn't know that until the inactivity had already crushed the writing spirit, but let's forget that), most people wanted some sort of closure before they moved on to another fight. Especially in a competition that was entirely based on winning and losing. If I lost a fight, i didn't want to start one against the best person in the League, I'd want to build myself back up force, and if i had one, I would have wanted to take on the next highest on the latter, and so on and so forth. So to just say "you could have kept writing" is ignorant on so many levels - the game you designed and the mentality of the people who were involved in it made is so that many people wanted results before continuing. And it is 100% the moderators fault that things didn't get judged in time. It took people four times as long to read those posts then it took us to write them. It was so unbearably ridiculous. And the fact that you shrug off all responsibility just goes to show how absolutely lazy and pathetic the staff has become at this place (no offense to those who actually do their jobs, and those who do their jobs behind the scenes). I understand that you're volunteering, and no one is paying you to be staff here, but you accepted the position, and not only are you doing what you promised to do by accepting that position, but, whether you think it's your fault or not, you're crippling activity here among the members who are still here, and still have the potential to be active.

[Alexander Trafford]

I'm not trynna get at staff, like I said, but if members both old and new keep using the "cliche" scapegoat. Maybe it's not only a scapegoat then. Maybe it's actually a problem your not seeing just because every other time you decide to come back, from what I've seen, you are staff.

This too.

[Jonathan Meer]

'most people wanted some sort of closure' is the entirety of your argument. Activity is being crippled because people aren't being provided closure.

I rest my case.

[Alexander Trafford]

hahaha, you're a fucking idiot.

Edit: i mean, sorry, but i'm just really glad that i don't see things from your point of view.

[Jonathan Meer]

Since people are getting so caustic about this, let me make it clear: I'm not blaming anyone. Rather, I'm dismantling the argument that Staff is at fault for the lack of activity.

I don't think this language of culpability is useful for describing the nature of activity here.

[Ashe]

Either discuss this like adults, or step away from the conversation. Second post in this thread stating this.

[Belle Hibiki]

I'm not going to argue that some writers on this site aren't as active as they could be, but acting like people are just using the staff as a scapegoat is a misrepresentation.

Activity is a two-way street. The difference between staff and players, though, is that the players aren't the ones who made a committment to maintaining the site by accepting a staff position. Staff positions are (supposed to be) positions of responsibility, not priviledge. That means taking responsibility when the thing you're supposed to be looking over goes wrong.

I also take issue with this idea that players are demanding 'Update-must-happen-NOW'. Players were demanding that like over a year ago, and nothing was done. Then a few months later, and nothing was done. We had CA turned off without any input from players (irritating, but at least it was something) then re-enabled following big ol discussions. A lot of shit there never made it anywhere close to in the game. Some things did, like community grading, the biggest idea to come out of those discussions, but that flopped in Tenkaichi Budokai from players not doing their part (was probably a mistake to make them do the final rounds as most people involved were tired of doing so many of them), and flopped again in the League.

You added Achievements which would be relevant for a grand total of two sagas before staff stopped running them. You took the widespread concerns that newbies started way too far behind and decided that an adequate response would be upping the starting experience from 5 to a whole 10. We discussed rank systems, we discussed activity surges, short Rps, long Rps, prestige, retools of the entire CA system, etc. - and nothing came of it. It's been around half a year since the rank system stuff, and double that for some of the other idea threads/promises of changes. And how many of those happened?

So yeah, I'm going to call BS on this idea that players are demanding things happen unreasonably quickly. The speed that staff has used to address problems here could be generously called glacial. It's hardly a wonder that players feel like the staff just doesn't care anymore.

[Jonathan Meer]

I like how you say 'Nothing was done,' and then you make a pretty sizable list of a lot of stuff that was done.

A lot of discussion on these elements went on behind closed doors. The primary annoyance of RPG Discussions of the site's ills, though, is that while everyone has an opinion on how the site can be improved, they don't want to hear any criticism at all of that opinion. It's why those discussions tend to get pretty heated. Further, just about every idea has been discussed/debated to death.

Every time there's a thread in the RPG Discussion with members discussing the site's problems, there are at least three accompanying threads in the Staff forum, analyzing these issues and testing the proposed solutions to see if they'll work. Often, we aren't satisfied with the trade-off of switching to some of these new systems, and will quietly express that dissatisfaction in the RPG Discussion thread, only to be argued back at. Which is fine. It's good to be argumentative for your position (that's how Community Grading got implemented in the first place; I'm still sad that the community couldn't sustain it). But realize that a lot of thought goes into our response.

Ultimately, I think this site should be for writing. That isn't just a truism; what I mean by that is this: Regardless of stats, regardless of mechanisms, your fundamental drive should be to just write. Write with people. Write about things that matter. Write with characters in new and interesting ways. Don't rely on ethereal nonsense-concepts like 'closure' to be impelled to write. If that's what you require, you're not really potentially-active.

I've seen it time and time again. I saw it with the saga. We had a huge spike of initial activity, and about half of the people just flat-out stopped writing. Half of the people who said they would write again if we had a saga. This isn't to say the saga was a failure (three different groups of multiple people wrote pretty-damn-interesting storylines), but it definitely showcases this dynamic I'm referring to: Chubbs-folk will blame their own inactivity on anything and everything.

And I just don't think that's useful.