Are we in a downward spiral/Where have all the Majors gone?

[Jada Raxis]

If you look back at the map, we used to have hella Majors coming and going. Some were really unique and had their super cool take on things. Nowadays seems like Majors are but going extinct. I've seen even the longer running ones struggle to keep fresh content going and generally seems like the site as a whole just has way less people than we had even this time last year.

Are we too cliquey now to give new things a chance?

Is there just less writers?

Are ideas just overused?

What gives?

Interested to hear opinions.

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

[member="Jada Raxis"]

Based on having been here for almost a year (and a short stint in 2014 that doesn't really count) and ignoring December which its low activity everywhere and had a bunch of tech issues that have hit activity overall - I don't think it's a matter of clique. There always have been and always will be cliques on any board with enough people.

I think the main issue is that being a Major Faction gives you two things - active Map Game participance, and SSD's.

SSD's don't matter because PvP does not matter in the current rule set up. It's mostly for flavor, atmosphere, etc.

The map game is currently boring. There are enough suggestion/discussion threads dealing with it. Once a faction goes Major, the amount of time you can keep it going purely by doing Dominion after Dominion is limited. The limit doesn't have to be short, but it still exists. The result is that you have more little groups of people playing with each other and mostly ignoring the map game, for better and worse. Which, I suppose, in turn, might make it look like things are more clique-y, though I don't think they actually are. Add to that the unwillingness of most Major Factions to work with each other OOCly in order to fight each other ICly, and you have a stagnant map game that less and less people care about.

Some people think that giving PvP some importance again will fix this. It might, it might not. Other people think laxing the rules on rebellions could fix this. It might, it might not.

But unless we do something to make the map game exciting again, it'll continue to be used less and less over time. This is not necessarily a bad thing. While I personally love the Map Game and think this is part of what makes Chaos stick out compared to other boards of past and present, it's probably not the only way to go about it. Maybe with the decline of the Map Game, another idea will sprout.

Either way, it's an interesting process to watch.

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

[member="Jada Raxis"]

We have two invasions in the queue to kick off on 1 January. Both OOC threads have over 65 replies (over 100 in the case of the TSE/TJE one). We saw several new majors join the map over the past year and we've entered the holidays, where even without site issues, activity tends to slow down. Even with those issues, however, the JAN/Praxeum/SJO skirmish of TSE Ossus has been pulling strong.

We just need to get through the holidays. We'll celebrate 2019 with some big invasion threads and that will likely generate some new momentum (counter-invasions, new skirmishes, etc, etc)

 

[Jsc]

Nah.

 

[Reverance]

"Attacking the messenger instead of the message, nice." - Edited back in after an admin ghost-edited my post without any mention.

Burying your head in the sand doesn't change the fact the site has changed in the past couple years and maybe not for the better.

It's not a holiday thing. It's a a cultural issue between factions where they're content to interact with those they like and starve those they don't. Hence all the lovely map sand boxes.

Edit: Valiens, got an issue with my post? Feel free to contact me about it. FYI, you edited my post but left its reference in a post below.

 

[Revenchent]

Progression Removal: Chaos removed all of its forms of progression, and in turn lost all the people that were here for that progression. There are no company tiers to look forward to working toward anymore. Anyone can start as a knight or master, so putting in the time to earn those ranks now is worthless aside from clout. Canon items are no longer special or worth attaining. Dev threads are inconsequential and folks can make whatever they want without putting in much work. Nothing important feels earned anymore aside from faction territory.

There is no sense of progression and for people that thrive off of progression based roleplay, Chaos has very little to offer anymore since it's 'trimmed the fat' so to speak.

The only goals left on the site are that of major factions. Everything else is simply ideas for stories and such, which drives much of the RP community, but certainly not all of it. Speaking for myself at least, I will not be able to get invested in RP if there is no tangible goal that I and everyone else needs to work to achieve. The map game is the only thing keeping folks like myself around, simply because we have no objectives to go working toward ourselves anymore.

TLDR: Cool things like achieving mastery, raising a company to galactic heights, developing a ridiculous story centric weapon over several dev threads, and other aspects matter less and have far less impact when they require zero work, and everyone and their mother can get it with zero effort.



Major Faction Animosity: I've been here a couple of years, and the first two were the best. I recall a time when people could have invasions, make IC jabs in the OOC discussion, and then a bunch of folks on both sides would hop into a skype chat and play minecraft or something similar while we waited for posts. I have extremely fond memories of my first dominions and invasions, all of which were wholly friendly, and I was able to get on a first name basis with everyone whom I was fighting against. It was chill, no one took anything particularly seriously, and we all lost our osik when big emotional moments would happen, together.

These days factions treat one another like guilds in an MMO, rather than IC organizations. Something happened that made people stop seeing their factions as IC homes, and more as a blend of IC and OOC both. I think it was the general competitive spirit of the board that drove us to that eventuality, along with the introduction Discord's tidy guild style interface. I suppose the meat of what I'm trying to say is that while the community understands that a faction is more than just a faction to you, that it may be your online home, and it may be where all your friends are, it is and will always only be a faction page on a Star Wars roleplaying forum. It doesn't make you better than anyone else, nor does another group's faction or what they do make them any better than your. Folks need to go back to seeing Chaos as their RP community rather than seeing their factions as such, and unless they do things will only continue to stagnate and whither.

Final little addition, if your faction chat spends a significant amount of time chattering like highschool children about drama and how much you hate other writers, or how poodooe other writers are compared to your group, or how much better your own stories are, you are most definitely the problem. It doesn't make you bigger, it doesn't make your writing more interesting, it just makes you someone to be pitied for not realizing the damage you're doing to the community as a whole.

Side Opinion: A big reason why a lot of people have stepped away from Star Wars RP is not Chaos, but Star Wars in its current state. The obvious political leanings and general fan division have turned off a lot of people, and I for one have had trouble writing SW consistently since TLJ came out as it simply no longer feels like the universe I had grown up with. That's been changing for the better lately, and I'm hoping SW will stay the course.

 

[LT-137]

Attacking the messenger instead of the message, nice.

Coming from you? This is rich. Lol

---

Maybe instead of griping in the RolePlay discussion area - y'all can go to the Suggestions/Site Feedback area and plead your case to the admins in the hope's of changing things.

I can't, nor won't speak for anyone other than myself, but I rather like having the lack of enforced progression. Sure, you can argue that it eliminates the desire to advance, but that only shows you were never in it for the story to begin with. Having your faction of friends promote your character to knight when they deem fit is clearly better than letting you, as the writer, choose when they're ready.

Same with people forcing Master votes. If you and your character were popular, progress didn't matter.

So, just because the site removed the restrictions on certain things, doesn't mean it's lost any of it's supposed value. Now, it's merely up to the writer instead to determine their own worth, rather than having their peers do it.

If you believe that everything's lost, and we're going down the drain, throw up suggestions in the proper area and such to fix it, rather than pointing out what's wrong.

Clearly, y'all see things better from that mighty fine horse than those marching beside you. Lol

 

[Cotan Sar'andor]

I've got popcorn for sale and front-row tickets for anybody who wants 'em!

 

[Jada Raxis]

[member="Calico Tal'verda"]

I'm inclined to agree.

I've been here since 2013 and things have definitely changed. Like how even in a discussion thread people come in to immediately attack one another. This was supposed to be a debate

Here's my opinion.

• Major Factions

Major Fac's nowadays seem super content not to write with one another. Instead it seems to me that they get in an uproar the second you come at them, and they certainly don't wan't to write with certain other Major Factions. I think a large part of this has to do with unspoken animosity between writer bloc's, and I think a lot of that just comes from real poor attitude of some folks towards others.

I think people are just getting downright mean and vile to one another.

Major Factions not wanting to integrate with on another just makes a bunch of echo chambers, which keep echoing how great they are or how much this bloc of writers is trash etc.

• The Rank System

Definite issue of contention here. Back in the day your faction or other Mentor would send up some of your RP's to a vote of other Masters and they'd determine if you were ready. It helped ensure quality control, and that abusive or poor sports were not promoted to Master. Granted it didn't always work.

There was another awesome part to that though. If you gained Master it Meant something. It meant you put in time and effort into your Char and/or Faction. It felt good to be Knighted, and it felt awesome to be promoted to Master. You got that thrill of all your stories and hard work paying off. And then you went and trained another newbie to the board, and Knighted and Mastered them, which also felt nice.

It gave characters IC bonds that were good for story.

• The Factory

Two things in the factory really ruined it fro progression RP'ers. The current system for approval is awesome. I like that, as it leads to a quicker turnaround time on sub's that matter, and gives us a better experience overall.

However Nerfing Tier Levels, Workshops, Restricted Materials Obj's and the Owners list of Canon Items really nerfed the game for a lot of folks.

Some of us liked the grind to get our Companies up there so we could produce behemoths, without Dominioning for our lives. Others just liked to make Complex Corporate Empires, and it was fun to gobble up Corporate entities and wage corporate warfare. Or churn out Factory subs that served a wide audience.

It was fun to hunt down new Canon Items, or to auction them off. It was a progression thing, for those of us who didn't just wanna write a Faction Thread.

Nerfing those pretty much negated the core concept of my Treasure Hunter Chars, and My Corporate chars.

Also as a side-note, it's ok to have your opinion. It is not ok to try and dismiss the discussion because it dosn't suit your vision of how things should be. Healthy debate is a good thing.

Also stop attacking each-other in here please.

 

[Tathra Khaeus]

[member="Calico Tal'verda"] - said it better than I could.

Things are different. The site does have cliques, the site is a drama driven cess pool full of people who all talk about each other and gossip aplenty.

I don't know how to put to words how's it's changed but the factional segregation of Chaos is very apparent now upon reflection.

I still like Chaos. I don't know if it's a downward spiral but things have changed.

 

[Nerd Wizard]

[member="Tathra Khaeus"]

Groupthink and human nature, let me tell you... I haven't been here that long, but such is the case everywhere. It's far worse in other areas of the 'Net, I think, but... At least, in the past, Star Wars was one of the safest, friendliest fandoms around, and everyone just had fun together and focused solely on the subject matter.

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Jada Raxis"]

There was another awesome part to that though. If you gained Master it Meant something. It meant you put in time and effort into your Char and/or Faction. It felt good to be Knighted, and it felt awesome to be promoted to Master. You got that thrill of all your stories and hard work paying off. And then you went and trained another newbie to the board, and Knighted and Mastered them, which also felt nice.

It gave characters IC bonds that were good for story.

But why wouldn't it matter something now though?

Every writer has now been put in charge of their own progression. They have been giving the reins of their own characters, their own story and their own arcs. You can still do all these stories and hard work, before you up your characters. Similarly if you want to write out an apprentice-master relationship... you can do that! Hit up a writer on the board, plot it out and just go wild with it.

That is the beauty of choice.

Every person has their own pacing, but their pacing doesn't influence yours. So it is completely possible to still have that feeling of gratification, when your character is ready to take the next step in ranking.

Nerfing those pretty much negated the core concept of my Treasure Hunter Chars, and My Corporate chars.

And I suppose my thoughts extend towards this sentiment.

Why would nerfing them negate the concept and fun for your characters?

If people want to tier up their companies... they can still do that? The templates of tier-ups are in the archive. Copy-paste them somewhere, then slowly start working towards those goals. The only change is that you get to decide when you are ready. When you consider your company to be high enough in stature, when you feel like you put enough work into it.

It is completely possible to still write out stories of hunting down artifacts, of building out your company and make it grand.

Especially the latter thing... the famous companies like Arceneau Trade, Akure Leviathan, they were never 'grand' because people like Ashin and Danger got them to Tier Six. They were notorious and famous throughout the board, because their writers heavily engaged with every subset of the community. They went out there, did interesting things and constantly generated interest.

Tier or no Tier, they would have done that either way.

Just my two cents.

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

The Rank System Definite issue of contention here. Back in the day your faction or other Mentor would send up some of your RP's to a vote of other Masters and they'd determine if you were ready. It helped ensure quality control, and that abusive or poor sports were not promoted to Master. Granted it didn't always work. There was another awesome part to that though. If you gained Master it Meant something. It meant you put in time and effort into your Char and/or Faction. It felt good to be Knighted, and it felt awesome to be promoted to Master. You got that thrill of all your stories and hard work paying off. And then you went and trained another newbie to the board, and Knighted and Mastered them, which also felt nice. It gave characters IC bonds that were good for story.

Ahem. This can still matter. I start most of my characters at apprentice level. Scherezade (my current main) lack of progression from her peers and those above her affected her story tremendously. Did I have to do it like that? Nope. But I had a choice, which is something that many of those who QQ about it not being mandatory anymore seem to forget. You can still make it matter. If you can't do it because there's no rule forcing you to, the problem is you, not the lack of a rule.

 

[Kuzo]

If it's possible, I'd love if ya'all can ignore the blue name here and take this as from a fellow member.

The board *is* changing and has changed. Some of it for the better, some of it not, and I suspect no one will agree on all facets of that. Everyone has different things they enjoy, different goals that matter to them. Different aspects of this hobby that they value more than others.

I think a facet of this challenge that is getting over looked is that running a major faction is an enormous amount of work, and a lot of time put in. This is neither a bad thing or a good thing- simply a fact of the matter. A successful major faction has an active and pro-active staff in order to generate both IC activity and handle the ooc that goes with the process. Many of the names that have run successful major factions in the past have either moved on to other projects outside of Chaos, or have handed the reigns of that process over to others. In many cases people need extended breaks after running a faction for a while because it is such an intensive process that they simply get *tired* of doing it.

This is again not a 'this is good or bad', simply the nature of juggling as many facets of running a MF that there are.

As veteran faces and voices fall back, perhaps we can do our best to encourage new ideas, to support new Major Factions. To reach out specifically to new players and introduce them to amazing stories, or to join in on their ideas.

The energy and time necessary to run successful factions is not an infinite resource. Gathering the players to begin with can often feel like an uphill battle, especially for newer faces without the history and name recognition of many of the veterans. The weight of history of Chaos can be daunting, and sometimes even discouraging and intimidating. Those of us with that experience can encourage and help open possibilities up to the new faces, and work toward building the types of RPs that most interest in those cases. Just as different people will see different problems or opportunities opened by the changes of the board, there is also so much room for different sorts of RPs and Factions.

Chaos is an incredibly diverse place with so many different types of characters, and writers with different motivations and interests. There is so much room for growth and fascinating stories.

 

[Jada Raxis]

Things are different. The site does have cliques, the site is a drama driven cess pool full of people who all talk about each other and gossip aplenty.

Especially this. I hate this part. Since the move to Discord it's def been more of a toxic type of atmo.

Nailed it dude.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

It's not a holiday thing. It's a a cultural issue between factions where they're content to interact with those they like and starve those they don't. Hence all the lovely map sand boxes.

I'd be hard pressed not to agree with this statement. Clearly, Invasions and Faction Interactions are in a downward spiral. We've had less invasions in the past year and most of those were in January running off 2017's momentum. Since January we've had 3 Invasions (Skor II, Gree, and Dubrillion).

We've had very few new major factions this year as well (New Republic, Rebel Alliance, Jenari Empire), so there is some stagnation there, but several new faces. That said, I strongly disagree that Majors are going extinct. The last Major to leave the map was the Rebel Alliance in June/July. Certainly Majors are safe for the time being and clearly Dominions are not what is required to stay on the map otherwise we'd have more recalled factions.
So, are we as a community in a downward spiral? I don't believe so regarding overall activity.

Are invasions currently in a downward spiral? Yes.

As for all this "Bring back the Rank system" I believe the vast majority of the active folks don't care for that, and every Staff member that's spoken up about it have been against it. It's not happening.

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

[member="Laira Darkhold"] Tatooine was invaded too, and we had the Fel Empire for a wee bit

 

[Siobhan Kerrigan]

Give war a chance.


And I agree with what [member="Laira Darkhold"] said.

 

[Revenchent]

[member="Khonsu Amon"] - That's a difference of opinion my friend, but I think that we simply have a different way of structuring story. For me, if there aren't certain establishing rules to make things worthwhile, then it is simply more difficult to get invested in a story. I need the game aspect for my writing to feel like it has structure, otherwise I feel like I might as well just be writing fanfiction alone. It's not a matter of not caring about the story - the story is what I care about the most, but there are particular ways in which that story need to be structured to make me feel like the emotional payoff was worth it. Mandated objectives to work toward enhance the experience for me because they provide that end goal. You could argue that I could create my own objectives, but when I do that it usually feels far less earned because they feel like they are of less consequence than something mandated to be recognized by the community. I suppose it makes those accomplishments feel more grounded. Moreover they were part of what separated Chaos from every other SW forum for me. Without them, all that separates Chaos for me is the map game and the aesthetic

[member="Scherezade deWinter"] - It isn't the matter of the rank system mattering for my character, so much as it being a means of judging master level characters I haven't interacted with. Still I suppose the community manages that with matters of public opinion, but I liked being able to see a master level character, know they worked for it, and that the character's earned due respect by putting the time in. It's the difference between knowing this stranger has earned his IC capabilities, and he's likely learned to balance the abilities that accompany mastery, and having a stranger adopt the master tag and have to gamble on whether or not you're going to get a rounded character, or someone intent on smudging their power fantasy all over your story.

I'm reading a lot about people saying 'you have full control of your progression, why are you complaining'. I think that comes down to people simply being different types of RPers. I like my accomplishments to be reflected by the mandate of the board, or game, if you want to call it that. If I set every goal for myself in this big world we have created, everything feels arbitrary, and it rarely feels earned. It's a sense of accomplishment that makes me feel like I'm not wasting my time writing, even though I know that sense is artificial. I like knowing other writers have put in similar work to earn what their characters have, that way they are less likely to abuse such characters.

It all comes down to a matter of opinion, and I'm not posting any of this to change anything or get the admins to do some such nonsense, just giving my opinions. Overall I think Irajah is more right in new major factions and their owners simply needing more support. Running MFs can be like a second job at times.

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

[member="Calico Tal'verda"]

Scherezade deWinter - It isn't the matter of the rank system mattering for my character, so much as it being a means of judging master level characters I haven't interacted with. Still I suppose the community manages that with matters of public opinion, but I liked being able to see a master level character, know they worked for it, and that the character's earned due respect by putting the time in. It's the difference between knowing this stranger has earned his IC capabilities, and he's likely learned to balance the abilities that accompany mastery, and having a stranger adopt the master tag and have to gamble on whether or not you're going to get a rounded character, or someone intent on smudging their power fantasy all over your story.

I'm reading a lot about people saying 'you have full control of your progression, why are you complaining'. I think that comes down to people simply being different types of RPers. I like my accomplishments to be reflected by the mandate of the board, or game, if you want to call it that. If I set every goal for myself in this big world we have created, everything feels arbitrary, and it rarely feels earned. It's a sense of accomplishment that makes me feel like I'm not wasting my time writing, even though I know that sense is artificial. I like knowing other writers have put in similar work to earn what their characters have, that way they are less likely to abuse such characters.

When achieving Master rank is based on a vote, you're going to have people that have attained the rank by being sufficiently popular and not necessarily by being balanced and all of that.

That said, your concerns are valid - but there is more than one way to check these things. For instance, check if they have a thread tracker on their bios. Look at their bios. Look at their content. Yes, this requires more than a glance at the tags under their avatar image. But it is not impossible.