Role-play Suggestion

[Bardock]

Alright kids, I'd like to take a second of your time to check in with you. As you probably have noticed, activity isn't doing so hot right now. Even OOC is less than what it normally is. Kudos to the members who have been continuously writing over the summer. I know that now is the time of year where everybody's going back to school and all that jazz, so I can understand being busy settling into dorms for all you college kids or back to high school or wherever it is you go.

This place is still aimed at being a writing community and we're always looking for ways to improve upon it. Since we can't read minds, it's time for another suggestion thread:

What, as role-players, would you like to see that would make it more enjoyable to role-play? As in, what would help you become more active? Is it time for a saga? Do we need new items or cool stuff for your characters?

This has not been made a poll so people can make open thoughts, although I can make it so or have one follow.

[Belle Hibiki]

-Need more people playing. Need new players. Dunno what the situation is with us not showing up on google - perhaps someone needs to host a 'front page' that links to these forums that Google can actually see. You can only roleplay in a vacuum so long before you start to wonder if you should even bother.

-No real competition between alliances. Some of the more 'competitive' players have gone inactive or simply left. Everyone pretty much knows each other and/or doesn't think ill of one another in OOC to go and start shit IC. Wanting to 'power up' to take on the 'big guys' was a major incentive to me when I first joined. Now? Pft. Why bother? It's not like they do anything.

I think our main issue is that we have a lot of either retired or semi-retired oldbies and no constant inflow of new, active players to fill the content gap.

Those older players might or might not jump in for a new saga, but afterward their activity would probably go right back down the tubes. I'd love to take an interest in the goings on of Rad, 18, Bra, et al., but I can't when they don't post more than once a month... if that.

I, uh, hope I'm not offending anyone by saying that last. It's just the trend that I've noticed lately.

[Dehan]

Wow, I just decided to start rping like half an hour ago and I see this thread yay.

Belle's on point. I believe Vi had some awesome ideas to toss out there so yep...some new items and cool stuff would be cool. I don't know what else to add at the moment, more to come.

[Violet]

Yeah, I'm still trying to flesh out the rest of my plan before popping it on the staff forum, but its something ya'll will like.

[Orion]

Rewards. I like to write; however, sometimes that desire isn't always there, and being in a saga or trying for an ability can really bring out my creativity.

[Bardock]

Rewards. I like to write; however, sometimes that desire isn't always there, and being in a saga or trying for an ability can really bring out my creativity.

Reward as in a better pay-off for effort, or a specific objective or goal in mind?

[Dehan]

Better pay off for effort in general. That's just me.

[Belle Hibiki]

... Have you guys even gotten one personal saga done? How do you know the rewards for effort aren't enough?

[Kirano]

Rewards. I like to write; however, sometimes that desire isn't always there, and being in a saga or trying for an ability can really bring out my creativity.

If trying for an ability can really bring out your creativity, then do it.

[Orion]

... Have you guys even gotten one personal saga done? How do you know the rewards for effort aren't enough?

I've done a few. The only person I saw get a reward for a personal saga (when not training for one) was the old Broli, and his work was exceptional.

[Belle Hibiki]

I've done a few. The only person I saw get a reward for a personal saga (when not training for one) was the old Broli, and his work was exceptional.

I hope you're not offended, but I just did a /search of your posts for the last nine months. I didn't want to look farther, because that's roughly when the new stats/systems/personal saga grading and such was announced.

You've participated in DA and CC, it's true. Back in January you finally closed out Retribution on Koola (no reward asked, presumably because the bulk of the work was pre-customs.) But other than that you made, what, a few solid posts in Duality?

Not to sound like a dick, but I think it's rather presumptuous for you to say that the current system isn't 'rewarding' enough for personal sagas when, from what I see, you haven't made the effort to get one.

[Belle Hibiki]

I hope you're not offended, but I just did a /search of your posts for the last nine months. I didn't want to look farther, because that's roughly when the new stats/systems/personal saga grading and such was announced.

You've participated in DA and CC, it's true. Back in January you finally closed out Retribution on Koola (no reward asked, presumably because the bulk of the work was pre-customs.) But other than that you made, what, a few solid posts in Duality?

Not to sound like a dick, but I think it's rather presumptuous for you to say that the current system isn't 'rewarding' enough for personal sagas when, from what I see, you haven't made the effort to get one.

After speaking with Vi last night, I thought I'd expand on this. And maybe do a little flip-flopping.

Although I don't think anyone has the ability to say that personal sagas aren't rewarding enough - I don't think anyone's really completed/graded a big one - if they're anything like the saga rewards from CC, you'd be correct.

What came to me last night is probably another main reason why people are listless, and that is a flaw in the Diminishing Returns system of stats. Not a flaw in the calculations themselves, but in the amount of experience that players are awarded for actions. The difference in power between the big guys and little guys has been lessened by DR, but a person's power relative to others has become more static, not less.



To explain, let's compare Raditzu and Belle Hibiki. Raditzu has somewhere around 2260 SP, last I checked, and Belle has 1201 SP. Now, I earn 6xp per week. At my rank, that's enough to buy 1.2 stat points. Got that? Good.

Even if Raditzu never trained or did a saga, and I did not suffer further diminishing returns from here on out and was active every week, it would take me 1000/1.2 = 833 weeks to catch up. Over 17 years to catch up to someone who's not doing anything, and that assumes that I don't get hit with further DR.

Now, consider the recent saga: Calculating Catastrophe. Raditzu and I both scored big in rewards there - we both got the highest amount of TP/XP there was to get, which was 20. At that time, that was about 5 SP for me.

If you want another reason why people aren't interested, there you go. It's effectively impossible for lower dudes to catch up at the current rate of growth. I doubt this site will still be up in 10 years, much less 17.

Now, it's quite possible that maybe personal sagas do something ridiculously more than Staff Sagas and give like 100 exp or something, but I sort of doubt it.

So, actually, in a way I think Orion is right. But it's not 'more promise of rewards will get players to play more', it's promise of 'play having any real tangible effect on play. Period.'



I don't think the DR system needs to be changed; I think DR is a great idea. What needs to be changed is the amount of experience we allot. 5 XP per week is far too small. It's a pittance. The amount of experience awarded from all activities needs to be ramped up by several degrees, either by:

• Increasing the benefit of weekly training/gravitychamber/weighted clothing by x10, or
  
• Increasing the benefit of weekly training by like x5 and then having rewards for effort (personal sagas, activity in Staff Sagas) contribute vastly more than they do now.

[Dehan]

After speaking with Vi last night, I thought I'd expand on this. And maybe do a little flip-flopping.

Although I don't think anyone has the ability to say that personal sagas aren't rewarding enough - I don't think anyone's really completed/graded a big one - if they're anything like the saga rewards from CC, you'd be correct.

What came to me last night is probably another main reason why people are listless, and that is a flaw in the Diminishing Returns system of stats. Not a flaw in the calculations themselves, but in the amount of experience that players are awarded for actions. The difference in power between the big guys and little guys has been lessened by DR, but a person's power relative to others has become more static, not less.



To explain, let's compare Raditzu and Belle Hibiki. Raditzu has somewhere around 2260 SP, last I checked, and Belle has 1201 SP. Now, I earn 6xp per week. At my rank, that's enough to buy 1.2 stat points. Got that? Good.

Even if Raditzu never trained or did a saga, and I did not suffer further diminishing returns from here on out and was active every week, it would take me 1000/1.2 = 833 weeks to catch up. Over 17 years to catch up to someone who's not doing anything, and that assumes that I don't get hit with further DR.

Now, consider the recent saga: Calculating Catastrophe. Raditzu and I both scored big in rewards there - we both got the highest amount of TP/XP there was to get, which was 20. At that time, that was about 5 SP for me.

If you want another reason why people aren't interested, there you go. It's effectively impossible for lower dudes to catch up at the current rate of growth. I doubt this site will still be up in 10 years, much less 17.

Now, it's quite possible that maybe personal sagas do something ridiculously more than Staff Sagas and give like 100 exp or something, but I sort of doubt it.

So, actually, in a way I think Orion is right. But it's not 'more promise of rewards will get players to play more', it's promise of 'play having any real tangible effect on play. Period.'



I don't think the DR system needs to be changed; I think DR is a great idea. What needs to be changed is the amount of experience we allot. 5 XP per week is far too small. It's a pittance. The amount of experience awarded from all activities needs to be ramped up by several degrees, either by:

• Increasing the benefit of weekly training/gravitychamber/weighted clothing by x10, or
  
• Increasing the benefit of weekly training by like x5 and then having rewards for effort (personal sagas, activity in Staff Sagas) contribute vastly more than they do now.

I agree with you Belle. Nice work summing it up, I suck at summing things up.

[Belle Hibiki]

Rambling thought to expand on above:

A possible way of determining how much XP people should get per week, if Staff wanted to bump it up, would be basing it off how much SP the current Strongest Fighter has, then calculate based on an estimate of how much EXP a newbie would need in 72 weeks (a year and a half) to catch up to said fighter, assuming the Strongest Fighter stays static.

Ex. Raditzu has 2265 SP. For simplicity's sake we calculate based off 2200.

2200 - 600 (starting newbie points) = 1600.

1600 SP / 72 weeks = 22 SP per week, rounded down.

Naturally DR screws with the calculation. People will blow past the first few ranks quickly but will slow down severely once they hit rank 3/4/5, where things really slow down progress wise. At the same time, calculating how much exp would be needed based on rank 6 or something would catapult players far too quickly. So let's calculate it based off Rank 4.

22 SP x 5 exp per point = 110 EXP per week.

At 110 exp per week it would take players significantly longer than a year and a half to catch up to Raditzu, but they could cover that gap with increased rewards from personal and/or staff saga contributions.

[Kirano]

I'll take my hat off to that idea Belle. I've had a few people talk to me AIM telling me the number of TP they get weekly is small and thus hinders them to train weekly. From those sort of comments they're probably thinking like you said, 'How am I going to catch up to the Rank A and S people? The formula you worked out would definitely encourage more people to want to train and RP and thus would bring activity back up.

[Celipa]

That's a fantastic suggestion. That should definitely be employed.

[Belle Hibiki]

So my suggestion was somewhat hampered the fact that I mistyped like a bajillion numbers in there because I was calculating off old totals, but it should be fixed now.

Among the top 10 most embarrassing things in the world, I think being caught doing bad arithmetic is definitely in the top 3.

[Orion]

I hope you're not offended, but I just did a /search of your posts for the last nine months. I didn't want to look farther, because that's roughly when the new stats/systems/personal saga grading and such was announced.

You've participated in DA and CC, it's true. Back in January you finally closed out Retribution on Koola (no reward asked, presumably because the bulk of the work was pre-customs.) But other than that you made, what, a few solid posts in Duality?

Not to sound like a dick, but I think it's rather presumptuous for you to say that the current system isn't 'rewarding' enough for personal sagas when, from what I see, you haven't made the effort to get one.

I've been on this site since 2003. I've been several characters, and done a fair few personal sagas. I did one when I first joined as Trunks on Vegeta which was pretty long. I also did PCII, which was basically a personal saga intro into the big flop saga PCIII when I was Goku. Plus handfuls of other stuff too.

And true, I've got almost every good technique I want. Hmmm ... maybe that's my problem. I should focus more on getting a good storyline together. I'm dead with Grand Kai, actually working towards Super Kaioken, but every time I think about it I go "oooohhhh..." and lose interest. I should do something else with Orion. I've got some good ideas on AD for Illidan, and the only reason I haven't written them quicker is 1) limit on free time (let alone writing time) and 2) laziness/other video games.

So yeah. Uhm.... what was my point again?

[Celipa]

I really think Belle's idea should be taken into serious consideration.

And for the record, I desperately miss automated training. xD

[Bardock]

We all miss automated training.