Darth

Arena Chat Thread

The biggest problems are a) a lack of traffic and b) a lack of organization. There's the ranking system, sure, but there's nothing really promoting fighting. New faces come in once in a blue moon, but there's no structure to keep them around or to "remind" them to check in. You can "just" have a lot of fights if you have a good population and can steadily bring people in (even if they pop in and out) but if you don't, you need to have some kind of a lure. Just having a handful of people who sometimes, sort of, maybe fight isn't enough. It can be frustrating because it's kind of the work/experience or chicken/egg thing. You have to work to get experience, but you have to have experience to get a job. You have to have a population to have fights, but you have to have fights to have a population.

Gaia has a similar problem in maintaining a PERSISTENT community, but we also have the advantage of a lot of cross communication across several dozen individuals. Someone can clap their hands and shout "FIGHTING EVENT AHOY!" and people will crawl out of the woodworks. People message each other over Skype or Discord, or even text each other whenever it happens.

Skalla and Rilla get a lot of immediate attention when they try to host something for a few reasons. A) They've been around a while, and havce run things in the past with varying degrees of success and B) like Melon said, they basically worked to build the Arena subforum from the ground up.

I think the drop-off has a lot to do with the change-over from Old Guild to New Guild. Fighting, overall, has seen a decline since about 2011, which is probably a mixture of people getting older and the changing technology. Back in 2007, not everyone had Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Vine, and a dozen mobile games on their phone. For a big chunk of the 2000s, the whole "forums" thing was a novel concept because most people didn't know about Usenet. You're always going to have roleplaying, but you can't just walk two paces and trip over a brawler anymore. You have to find them and then reel them in and get them involved.

Chat fighting has been dying a slow, ugly death for a decade. Forum RP has more sustainability, but only if people can commit to it.

Arena Chat Thread

That gaia tournament seems difficult in a bad way. You get a super bad penalty for killing your opponent, so this limits most characters you could do and most actions, as you'd need to constantly worry about killing your opponent so would always pull punches when the possibility of killing them comes up. Opening to the neck and you have a sword? Too bad, can't take it, etc. Someone like a brawler with their bare hands would be so much better in that ruleset as they would be easier to respond without lethal force. Not to mention the character tier limiting a lot of other characters. I'm fine with their rules but not as a main place to go for combat. Perhaps a different, less restrictive combat thread could be made in gaia. There appear to be enough people around that some could show interest in it even if already in the tournament.

Anyways, my character for our battle here would also be a student, as I would look silly having them a master and make mistakes in their form.

@ImportantNobody

I've discussed it before -- at length -- but the bottom line is that deathmatches trend towards being efficient at killing, which leads to a narrowing of viable character archetypes, both in power and in equipment. Nonlethal matches are the most viable means of ensuring that, for example, a fist-fighter can square off against a swordsman. The swordsman can still hamstring his foe or even jam his sword into his belly because the wound won't be IMMINENTLY fatal (a rewording I'll need to make and clarify). It's meant to keep people from "going for the throat", which is the narrowing trend that deathmatches promote. Having done plenty of deathmatches in the past, I've always found them to be both boring and an endless source of arguments whenever I've been made to judge them.

We also use a fairly specific scope of power because a) that's the major trend in our community's events and b) it's the easiest form of powered combat to balance because profile grading and adjustment is a thing in many of Gaia's tournaments. Mild powers has, more or less, been the calling card for Gaia's tournaments ever since about 2007/2008 onward. That being said, I personally promote any kind of event, provided it's run well by someone who doesn't have their head up their ass. People complain about no killing? Make your own event. Don't like mild powers? Make your own event. Want to do tag-team tournaments? Make it happen. The biggest issue in the quasi-fractured community on Gaia is that we lack in leadership. Lots of Indians, few chiefs, and a lot of people who just want to piss and moan about the color of the feathers on the headdress without putting it on.

For unrestricted combat, we have Kharessos, which will be revamped shortly whenever I find someone capable of running a separate thread solely for arena combat. I, unfortunately, haven't the time to do so while also running/revamping the seasons and pursuing my own personal projects and hobbies (cooking 3,500+ calories of fruit, veggies, eggs, and chicken takes a lot of work, as does touching base with agents and editors). I realized that too late after making Kharessos, so Kharessos will be filtered down to "seasonal story shit" and another thread will be made solely for fights, where players are only limited by what they mutually agree to.

Arena Chat Thread

The GCL front page is going to get revamped between seasons. I didn't get a lot of feedback on the layout, but it needs to get reworked to include some missing info and to clarify some stuff.

Arena Chat Thread

@Starfall

It would be funnier if I haven't had to grade profiles that approximate that image -- or are worse than it by several orders of magnitude -- for past events.

/ten thousand yard stare

The shit I've seen.

Arena Chat Thread

My answer (ripped from the GCL thread):

There's no real wrong or right answer as to whether or not defending or attacking is easier/harder. There's too many variables. What kind of character are you playing? What are they playing against? What are the weapons? The powers? The environment?

Are you fighting a counter-boxer, an out-boxer, a swarmer? A swordsman, someone with a spear and shield? Do they have armor? How much? What kind? What kind of powers?

There's enough variables that you can't definitively say one or the other is easier, especially when "attacking" and "defending" are very broad topics. It's going to vary from situation to situation, and part of being a good fighter is knowing when to attack and when to defend.

Arena Chat Thread

/Squeezes the bridge of his nose.

Starting the GCL's pre-season tomorrow. I can feel it. The impending torrential downpour of "what the fuck am I reading?" that comes every time I grade profiles for an event. You always get a solid 1/4th of the entrants who haven't read the rules/regulations and enter shit that's completely off the wall.

Arena Chat Thread

They'll care when you assault them with historical fact via a book to the teeth.

Arena Chat Thread

Way funnier to say the Canadians did it.

@MelonHead

/Baps him with a newspaper

HISTORICAL ACCURACY, OLD CHUM.

PIP PIP.

Also, just have all your characters meet on Gaia. Most of the people in our community treat Gaia as something of a multiverse hub anyways. All sorts of shit filters through the multiverse and ends up on Gaia.

Arena Chat Thread

That's it, I'm going to Canada and asking them to burn down your damn white-house again.

@MelonHead

Why? It was the British Royal Army that burned down the White House.

Also, I'm Amerindian. I don't have to pay war debts.

Or taxes.

I do what I want, and anyone who tries to stop me is a racist.

Arena Chat Thread

<Snipped quote by Darth>

Eh, not much point going to that much of a stretch just to interlink some characters that will probably rarely get to interact anyway.

@MelonHead

You get in that fuckin' Tardis or so help me God..

I'll go outside right now and throw a whole box of Earl Gray into the fuckin' river.