Removing all Progression Rules is killing us...

[Ashani Kyp]

Removing all progression rules is killing us.

Writers are leaving Chaos faster than joining. My theory is because there's not much variety left to write for anymore. Now you either join a Major Faction and clique up; do doms; invasions etc.

Or you write one off's or private threads.

Gone are the days when you could put in the effort and be proud to display that shiny Tier 6 Company that can crank out a big ship, bigger than just what a Major Faction could do alone.

Gone are the days when you could feel a sense of pride about your character getting promoted to Master after much, much work.

Gone are the days when Diplomacy and Contracts actually mattered.

Gone are the days when you could be proud to hold a cool Cannon item that you put effort into finding.

In this writers opinion we have nerfed too far, and invalidated several avenues of alternative RP besides the grind of Factionism or Private Threadism.

I know folks will say "It's on the Writer to display their creativity, it's all in your hands."

But really who wants to see twenty noobie RP'ers running around with Master tags? Or massive Companies they put zero effort into.

I think a lack of a progression system has cut off a large chunk of writers who came here for that attraction.

We are competing for folks attention on all fronts. We vs TV, Movies, Video-games, RL stuff etc.

We used to have over a couple hundred active writers. I notice we are down to like seventy five writers (approx.) That log in and participate daily.

The map game and the cliques just aren't cutting it anymore....

 

[Malok]

"It's on the Writer to display their creativity, it's all in your hands."

 

[Zef Halo]

Thank God.

 

[Darth Athora]

 

[WelshGuy]

What about Writers who have worked to get a Master rank in one character and don't want to go through all that progress with a second character? Companies are limited to the creativity of the owner, they can only be making small, unique things or someone might want to create a big company because they have big ideas that they want to do now and not have to wait months to finally build. Canon objects being limited to one person was terrible because people would horde canon objects.

I do agree that something needs to be done about contracts and diplomacy threads, I would like to see more of them. But for the most part, a lot of people argued against the things you want back so to back peddle will upset a lot of writers.

 

[Fabula Caromed]

Gone are the days

Complaining about things changing.

We are competing for folks attention on all fronts.

When was that ever the intent of a roleplay board? We're here to have fun. Not have a population in the hundreds (which we often do, regardless of intent).

If you want to see change on the site? If you want to see content? Create it. Do things. Complain less, write more.

 

[Captain Larraq]

I did the company grind.

Fuck the company grind.

If you wanna RP being Elon Musk, go be Elon Musk.
If you wanna throw a Star Destroyer design through the factory so you can RP an Admiral. Have fun and get on with it.

The arbitrary roadblocks in those two instances always drove me crazy.

I will say though... I'm still 50/50 on dev threads. As annoying as they were at times, they did serve as good writing prompts and inspired me to create an assortment of characters and NPC just to use in dev threads.


As far as people leaving though... I enjoyed Chaos the most when I was doing competitive roleplay. But people started getting way too petty and way too competitive, people made huge deals over trying to start a quick skirmish thread and it always devolved into a competition to see who could out-escalate the other, instead of trying to out-smart each other or simply wage some attrition warfare and get lucky. And then there's the people who will only ever except being percieved of as being absolutely godly with the most powerful starships ever.

-gag-

I stopped enjoying Chaos because people took things way too seriously. Myself included at times. And I just... Went back to playing videogames where powergamers were kept in check by gameplay mechanics.

My best suggestion for how to grow Chaos as a platform would be to find a way to improve the behavior of the community itself. Get people to stop being so petty over OOC things, and get the community to... Be less stressful and more fun to be exposed to.

 

[Coci Heavenshield]

I was one of the people that voted against the removal of the (master) rank system, sighting some of the points you mentioned and feared that there would be nothing but master on the boards. But I am happy to say that I was wrong and that there are plenty of padawans, knights and yes master from the start but it all kinda evens out. I still RP new characters from the bottom and work up and decide myself when I think they would be ranked up.

Also in the days when the system was in place, (and being a faction owner and/or admin at that time) it was a very laborious exercise. Keeping track of thread trackers, doing the vote thing in faction and then onto the powers that be upstairs, from an admin pov, is was just one more thing you had to worry about.

So all the things you mentioned are still very viable for writers to do in RP, you just have to want to do them.

 

[Amea Virou]

Writers are leaving Chaos faster than joining. My theory is because there's not much variety left to write for anymore. Now you either join a Major Faction and clique up; do doms; invasions etc.

This was what it was like before too. Except the requirements to rank up was so arbitrary and just a hassle for the RPJs to manage. The vote in staff was literally just putting the vote up, everyone says yes without motivation, and then it gets sent back to the writer that had to be held up. Major factions and cliques doing doms and invasions have literally always been the map game.

Or you write one off's or private threads.

This also hasn't changed, Chaos for as long as I have been here has always been heavy on Private Threads. The real villain in all of this is the 'us vs. them' mentality that used to go around.

Gone are the days when you could feel a sense of pride about your character getting promoted to Master after much, much work.

Or the day a faction decides to deny you because of personal OOC reasons that have nothing to do with your character's accomplishments. If not that, factions actively pushing out more and more masters because only they were seen as worthwhile and "allowed" to vote on whether or not a character was promoted. Masters meant longevity of a faction and it added a layer stress to writers that weren't masters while also adding an unseen layer to the mapgame that we can do without.

Gone are the days when Diplomacy and Contracts actually mattered

It's still there. It's just as irrelevant and unused now as it was back then.

Gone are the days when you could be proud to hold a cool Cannon item that you put effort into finding.

Gone are also the days when people hoarded these things, went inactive, and then went active when someone contested it only to disappear again. Or god forbid that, bid 300 billion credits for Revan's lightsaber or what-not.

But really who wants to see twenty noobie RP'ers running around with Master tags? Or massive Companies they put zero effort into.

Who are you to judge this? This is exactly the mentality that led to staff scrapping the arbitrary master rule in the first place. Just because someone is new doesn't mean they can't write these things or put effort into it over time.

We used to have over a couple hundred active writers. I notice we are down to like seventy five writers (approx.) That log in and participate daily.

People grow up. People get jobs. People get families. PbP role-play is a hobby and some hobbies will inevitably be put by the wayside when other matters need to be seen to IRL.

 

[Mythos]

I told y'all to bring back dev threads and 100 posts dominions. But noooo.

You gon soon feel exactly how anyone who played WoW Vanilla feels. #VanillaWasBetter #EarnStuffAgain

 

[Judah Lesan]

I can see the tension here, but the old system had its flaws as well. The two month Master was a problem. We saw active writers go from padawan to master in 2 months of ZERO story or character development, only to kill them off when the git master because there was "nothing more they could do with them." That is a legitimate quote from one such in those days.

I feel like the best part of the system now is you can work things up if you want. If you would rather write story, you can do that too. The old system was just as optional and gave people a sense of achievement if they were wired that way. Maybe this is a both/and, and not an either/or thing.

 

[Kahlil Noble]

Nah. That old system was a hassle.

I don't even remember Krest being apprentice rank (this is the only character of mine that went master) because I had a concept for him.

Being an apprentice wasn't it. So i grinded the crap out of it to get what I wanted to RP.

So nah. Don't feel like wasting time writing stuff I don't want to so i can write what I do.

 

[Adron Malvern]

I originally came from a site that had VERY strict progression rules, far more than the worst days of chaos. While it can be suffocating, it's also fun to have a challenge in the RP and have that progression. I'm not against bringing back some of those progression rules, however the majority of the community is, at this point in time.

 

[Allyson Locke]

I stopped enjoying Chaos because people took things way too seriously. Myself included at times. And I just... Went back to playing videogames where powergamers were kept in check by gameplay mechanics. My best suggestion for how to grow Chaos as a platform would be to find a way to improve the behavior of the community itself. Get people to stop being so petty over OOC things, and get the community to... Be less stressful and more fun to be exposed to.

This and all of this. The days of old were a bit hectic and "chaotic" we are more in the place where stuff like this is more detrimental to the community. There's a toxic air, but in the end I believe we do like each other for the most part. Let's go back to having fun, where an invasion didn't mean stress, or a rebellion was done to get back at someone who blocked you on Discord.

We come here to have fun, destress, have fun and make friends

 

[Tathra Khaeus]

[member="Amea Virou"]

We live in a society. Reee

I agree. But 'us vs them' mentalities are alive and Well, thriving in the social clique sort of culture we've got.

And, [member="Allyson Locke"] I'm all for turning down the stress, but there's just too many people who act superior, deriding people who are different or have different opinions. And there's also plenty of people who are here to win, it to play.

I dunno how to change that, but that's my perspective.

 

[Kaalia Pavanos]

I was going to leave my two cents here, but [member="Amea Virou"] pretty much summed up all of my points perfectly already. So instead, I'll just leave this xkcd.

 

[WolfMortum]

[member="Ashani Kyp"]

With Veiere, his position and role of a Jedi Master was voted for, earned as it used to be in the old system and that was something I was proud of. I did enjoy the feeling of achievement that the old system gave us, but that's also not to say that these things cannot still be earned if you have the will and patience to do so yourself.

[Member=Caedyn Arenais] for example was trained as a Je'daii, reached a level equivalent to a Jedi Knight yet when the Je'daii fell inactive and he joined the SJO, I kept him at a Padawan rank due to his lack of Jedi training and understanding of their ideologies. I still very much plan to have him earn his positions in the Order.

There's also the case of some writers holding different responsibilities and real world priorities than others, meaning that they might have less time to write on here than some of our fellow writers. For those people, they can move up the hierarchy when they feel it's appropriate for their Characters, without being hindered by their lack of available down-time.

I liked your post, because I enjoy the thought of seeing some of that effort return, but not at the expense of other members freedom and creativity.

I do still like the idea of dev threads too, but again under the same premise, the current system works better for the majority I feel.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

There is nothing stopping you doing everything you did before and having your faction vote on your mastery, or writing dev threads for your tech.

We just don't mandate you do it any more.

Our key realisation was that adding layers of busywork and barriers wasn't beneficial to the site. It generated posts, sure, but it was akin to a F2P game where you have to grind for ages to get what you want. Sure, that's an achievement, but it's also a frustration.

I was initially sceptical on allowing free promotions and removing company tiers. However, the washup has been...fine. Giving people more choice is always better than less. And let's face it, who wants to write 30 posts about your characters standing around writing passages of techno-babble so you can get an extra doodad? I've done it since they were removed, but that was my choice, not a requirement, and when it made a good story.

Having said all this we are always looking to expand on new thread types and styles so if people have ideas for those by all means start a new thread.

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

Nobody actually misses mandatory dev threads, right?

 

[Jsc]

[member="Ashani Kyp"] - Oh ye sinful Chaos. How now, in the desert of your own creativity. Cry out for a return to the bondage of Egypt.