See title. I'm curious what you all think.

I think it's simply because people see Advanced as too demanding, and Free as too low a standard.

What exactly is the different between free and casual anyway? It seems like they both have about the same consistency of writing, from what i've read in them at least.

I think @Ether touched on an interesting point. Casual always seemed to me to be the section that most go to for their roleplaying needs because it's higher on the quality scale than Free, but it doesn't have the strictness that Advanced often imposes on its players. It's sort of that middleground of the two.

Generally when you ask people how attractive they think they are on a scale of 1-10 they're more apt to rate themselves an "average" 5 than less or more honestly. At least what I've heard, I'll need to double-back and look for that study.

Therefore I feel that people could be looking at the forum sections and seeing advanced as too much over their 'game' and free being beneath them. So Casual feels like the acceptable middle-ground between both. This is compounded by Casual being the busier forum which ends up feeding itself with more activity.

Free RP is inhabited by the crowd simply too intimidated probably because they could be young or more casual than casual, and Advanced the handful of people that feel or have been convinced they're better than the rest.

The elitists in advanced are, from our experience, pretty few in number now. A lot of them left with the guildfall.

Still, we've no doubts a few still remain.

There are many still who feel advanced is filled with grammar nazis and novelists rather than the fairly balanced spread it actually has. But casual is by far the largest section.

The nice thing is that you can stick an RP in advanced and you choose exactly how strict you want to be. If you're satisfied with content without really caring about grammar or spelling, you can do that. If you get a headache just from seeing a single letter that is capitalized incorrectly, then you can demand that.

Most tend to be in the middle, though. We know our advanced RP runs on quality over quantity.

Because we are the 99%.

Because they're too pleb-like to be Advanced, and too good for Free, whereas Advanced people are just good, and Free people are just plebs.

Lol, but probably simply because it appeals to the largest audience, like most things that are not too serious, but also not simply ridiculous. Plus the term "casual" is simply appealing from a psychological perspective. The term "casual" is a naturally inviting word, often embodying a calm or carefree sort of style.

Furthermore, most people don't RP for the sake of just making a story or having fun, they like to do a little bit of both. I feel like Advanced and Free sacrifice one of each of those elements. Advanced is, in many cases, more about the story than anything, and it's sort of restrictive in that sense. That's not to say it isn't fun, but it does put more dampers on what people can do than most casual RPs do. On the other end of the spectrum, Free is, well, free, and also often chaotic and without a good baseline. Literally anything can happen, with very little regard for retaining any coherent storyline.

Naturally, Casual is a good middle ground, and it is really more broad than just comprising 33.3% of the RP community on here. Casual holds a broad variety of RPs, some of which could even be mistaken for their Free or Advanced counterparts. Really, it all just depends. The Casual section is very versatile in that way, making it appealing to many people for that reason. It can be manipulated fairly easily whilst still maintaining a sense of dignity.

Also, as someone who almost exclusively roams the Advanced section, I will say that there is possibly an element of elitism at play, but I also honestly, legitimately think that Advanced and Casual are both devolving somewhat. I've been in both Casual and Advanced RPs that I had high hopes for, but ended up disappointing me a lot with their too casual nature. I like having something concrete to work with, and while open-world shit is cool too, I feel like it needs to be moderated so as to avoid it being populated with, like, 80% shitty, underdeveloped ideas that end up going nowhere and having no bearing in the actual story.

Free: Quantity over Quality
Casual: Quality over Quantity
Advanced: Quality and Quantity

I believe some people just find it hard to write more than a few posts of good quality in the time that they are given. Everyone has different writing and reading speeds and trying to dedicate time for that can be difficult for people's busy schedule. I can see why casual is popular because 2-3 short posts of can suffice if you're held up for a while and it can keep the ball rolling.

So the consensus seems to be that people are drawn to the middle-ground, and either extreme of the spectrum scares them off (either by being too shitty or too demanding). Fair enough.

There might also be something in that, while 'Post Quality', if we're going to call it that, increases from Free to Advanced, sheer number of posts tends to go the other way, perhaps making Free slightly intimidating in terms of the amount of posts and Advanced perhaps a little too slow, while people assume that Casual is somewhere in the middle.

So the consensus seems to be that people are drawn to the middle-ground, and either extreme of the spectrum scares them off (either by being too shitty or too demanding). Fair enough.

I think a large portion of RPs in the Casual section could be classified as Advanced not only in terms of length but also story and character development. Although, as others have said, there isn't the pressure of having to worry about whether or not your post qualifies as "Advanced" and if you're having a hard time you can get away with short posts and no one will think anything of it. GM's will ask for "high casual" and usually they end up with mostly Advanced level writers, at least according to the Guild's standards:

- Advanced Roleplay - Elevated standards. Advanced RP focuses on longer posts that include character development and elaborate plot development. Suggested minimum of 2-3 paragraphs per post.

Most of the RPs I join are in casual but this is a perfect description of the GM's standards and how they usually turn out.

Reading through, and not sure if someone mentioned it, but it could also be a coverage thing. Having a look there's 5 times the amount of members in casual as opposed to advanced, meaning your selection pool for possible players is larger.

The problem with "Free" is that one-liners are extremely abundant and annoying. If those one liners meant anything, then it would be okay. However, couple the one-liners along with the people who lack any grammar whatsoever and whose posts are really shit-tier. There you have the average "Free" user.

Then you have the Casuals, which mostly fall in the category "High Casual to Advanced". People here write 2-5 paragraphs of really good consistency, following gramatical rules with little typos, etc. This place is really appealing because the section is for Casuals, but the content ends up being for Advanced.

Finally, we have Advanced. Half of the GMs have ridiculous standards for this section (I remember one particular GM who had the requirement of no less than 2,000 words per post, which I found idiotic to the extreme.) The other half end up lowering their standards to Casual, but since most RPers are scared of Advanced due to thinking that it is a lair of "Only-pros", Advanced ends being abandoned.

I have to say, I don't find Advanced to be all that advanced. Every time I look in there I see just a few less plebcademy RPs than I would on Casual.

I have to say, I don't find Advanced to be all that advanced. Every time I look in there I see just a few less plebcademy RPs than I would on Casual.

It's an awkward situation. If you tried to make an "Especially Advanced" section and tried to maintain it, everybody would think you're a dick or something. It would be cool to have some sort of top-tier section, but what would the rules even be? Wordcount certainly helps, but that isn't everything. How to you quantify quality?

How to you quantify quality?

Whether or not googer thinks it's shit.

Honestly I just hate excessively long posts, which seemed to be a common thing in advanced when I checked it out so I haven't touched it since. Too much time to read everything, too few things you can react to, too much fluff. I'd rather have smaller posts going through one action at a time so I can actually interrupt them if I want to. Seems you can't even get that in casual nowadays though.

Honestly I just hate excessively long posts, which seemed to be a common thing in advanced when I checked it out so I haven't touched it since. Too much time to read everything, too few things you can react to, too much fluff. I'd rather have smaller posts going through one action at a time so I can actually interrupt them if I want to. Seems you can't even get that in casual nowadays though.

This is actually something that has bothered me as well xD

People seem determined to do massive, sweeping posts almost all the time. While I don't mind them as they can be useful for changing the setting etc, I do hate it when it's what happens ALL the time :<

I'm still trying to convince @Rin and @Dblade26 that advanced isn't all that scary.