[quote=@ArenaSnow]If anything, you can argue that making your own character adds a minuscule level of investment as compared to having the character built for you.[/quote]

	Although I agree that this site is plagued by players with inadequate attention spans, I don't see how you came to this conclusion in particular...

[quote]Now, premade characters I will not do for the same reason why I rarely, if ever, play canon characters from a particular 'verse. The main reason is investment. There's branches, but really, if I don't create the character and thus know every niche of the character's personality, then I don't actually care.[/quote]

	After saying this, not a moment earlier.

	It was this potential I had mentioned though; I do believe that if players join an RP while knowing they are limited to a specific set of characters to chose from, it's likely they may end up more invested. This idea assumes that people enjoy the act of role playing, more than the act of creating characters. Creating a character, when contrasted with actually acting that character out over a long period of time, is something easy and enjoyable that people can do. I would say that a great deal of people on this site enjoy creating characters much more than actually fleshing them out, or playing as them for long period of time.

	I assert that it's for this reason - Character creation is fun and easy - that there's an endemic of people losing interest forum wide. The characters they create may be the only things that they're invested in, even if they're usually inspired by a particular RP. But since they have no hand in the functions of the universe they're role-playing in, they're far more likely to bail.

	Now this [i]might[/i] sound selfish...But that's because it is.

	This is also why 1x1's are so successful. They're more often than not, a collaborative effort in both character creation, and world-building. This is also why the idea of predetermined characters has some merit, as it retroactively [i]weeds out[/i] those people who aren't actually all that interested in [i]role playing,[/i] but rather, [i]character creation.[/i]

	It's also worthy to note that [i]Roleplaying[/i] and [i]Writing[/i] are [b]NOT[/b] mutually inclusive. Some people enjoy [b]Writing[/b] more than they do [b]Playing a Role.[/b]