Dion

Let's B!tch. I feel it's a healthy release for our roleplay annoyances 2.0

What the hell, it's been three months. That's probably a sufficient waiting period.

The writing contest subforum is dead.

@Terminal

don't say this too loud or people will get upset. I think you know why it died.

In regards to dropping roleplays and user attractiveness

>"I would write a reply to all of that but..."
>494 words
:P

@pugbutter

I meant to write a reply to each of your points individually, decided not to, and then did it anyway halfway through my post. It's what happens when you're godlike like me. Sue me.

IDK where to even begin with that tbh. Besides all your points being disjointed and irrelevant to each other, some are outright fallacious, like linking a direct correlation/causality between post count and thread loyalty. As a matter of fact, one of the four players who I included in that screenshot (the one who hasn't been seen in three months) was my most loyal by far, and I'm pretty sure from her status feeds that she only left because her kid is in the hospital and she has more important shit to worry about.

@pugbutter

I mean, homie, you're the one that brought up post count where as I hadn't mentioned it before. You're using it as a measurement to prove that you can't smell someones activity rate beforehand, which is true, but if you consistently find people that end up flaking on you then I have to ask why that is the case if I never really had a problem with that at all. It either has something to do with the fact that the flaky roleplayers seem to flock to you, shitty partner choice, or your own personality. Maybe it's the first, maybe it's one of the latter two? I can't tell you which one it is, but then you also don't seem like the type of person I was talking about to begin with. Unless you self-associated with someone who consistently and constantly bitches about how all their 99 partners dropped out on them AND their mom?

As for the causality between posts and loyalty, there is none. I dropped on people and I have thousands of posts. But you brought it up so I addressed it - perhaps my intent in the argument was unclear. If you find that people with a certain traits (i.e. low post counts) drop on you a lot then it's up to you to not RP with those people again. In my eyes it really is that simple. Any other criteria are fair game to me too, since ultimately it's you who decides who you RP with. Now, no, you can't smell thread loyalty, but there's some pretty fucking good indicators that have helped me personally.

I guess the biggest flaw with your reasoning is that you think people act like dipshits from the get-go, and we're choosing to enter RP with them anyway. Whereas out here in the real world, with the exception of a few narcissist spergs (who I definitely avoided, so again I don't see your point), all my partners have presented themselves with more professionalism than they really possess. It's basically a hobbyist's version of lying on a résumé, so I ask again: why are you keeping all your mind-reading powers to yourself instead of sharing with the rest of us?

@pugbutter

In general in my experience people do act like dipshits from the get go, so maybe that's my own experiences providing me with unique mind reading power, but I like to think I've got a pretty good idea of when roleplays just aren't going to work out and it usually comes down to my personality just being an extreme mismatch with theirs (or, in less nice terms, them being absolute fucking tossers).

So, I'll say it again - I wasn't giving you a fix. There are no mind reading powers involved. It's just a judgement call you need to make and from how it sounds (apparently people ghost you a lot?) you make the bad calls? Or maybe you don't make calls and say OK to everyone who offers to RP with you? Honestly I don't know. But like I said, you don't seem like someone that complains constantly about everyone ditching them, so perhaps you misunderstood that I'm talking about a specific set of spergs who constantly whine about being ditched, and not the person that goes oh, one of my partners ghosted me once.

Unless you whine a lot. Then I don't know. Grow a pair, I guess?

@ArenaSnow seems to get it right in my eyes.

Afterwards, what are you going to do? Learn and try to improve your mechanics, even if it's the tiniest of changes to how you approach people, or go on about being ditched so often> The latter is what I read to be the source of Odin's post - those who simply go on about how they're constantly dropped yet don't fix their circumstances, or just try again. Maybe even a new hobby where you're writing your own book, who knows.

Eh, yes, more or less. Though I'd take it a step further. It's not just circumstances, sometimes people just don't understand and cannot comprehend why people don't like to RP with them - either they're absolutely shit at roleplaying (for instance their post just rehashes the partners' posts without adding anything new, just regurgitating the words in their own words) or they have really really nasty OOC habits and personalities ("ARE YOU GONNA POST TODAY? I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR AN HOUR. WOW. CAN YOU POST TODAY? LET ME TELL YOU ALL ABOUT MY PERSONAL LIFE. I AM SO MISERABLE AND I HAVE NO FRIENDS AND MY COLLEAGUES BULLY ME. WOW. HEY DO YOU WANNA TALK? LOL!!!") or we just don't click (which is far more innocent but becomes a problem when they get really offended that I drop them because of it).

So, what I'm really saying is, if people drop you a lot, the first step should be not to cry wolf and whine on the internet about how everyone else is a bad boy, but maybe you should look at yourself and wonder what the fuck is wrong with you that causes people not to want to write with you.

If you genuinely can't find a reason then yeah, by all means, whine about it.

Mahz's Dev Journal

@The Nexerus although that is a fair comment, I like to think it still stands a step above policing what RP's go where, lol.

In regards to dropping roleplays and user attractiveness

@pugbutter I would write a reply to all of that but the solution there is simple; remember what type of people dropped you and stop RPing with those people. I wasn't suggesting a fix to your problems - I was saying what I think the problem is. You tend to RP with people who are weak roleplayers or have shitty personalities. I mean, we've spoken about this before, and the fact that you just pulled random accounts out of your ass to show me evidence just further proves to me that either you have really shitty taste, or perhaps, maybe you are part of the problem, as in, you can be a bit of a twat at times.

And I know we've spoken before, and I also know you're not the most social of all personalities on this website. Not that there is anything wrong with that, because neither am I, but let us be fair here and say that a majority of people on this website most likely do not match you in personality too well.

If a low post count is a sign of a weak roleplayer or someone that is going to ditch you, then I'd possibly avoid RPing with them and/or ask them for a sample post. People who can't supply that at the very least probably aren't gonna be suitable for you anyway.

Likewise, if they have an extensive roleplaying career that you can take a look at, the duty falls on you to analyze this if you wish. Nobody is forcing you to have a 100% certainty rate of success before you engage in a roleplay, so if you want to do that, that's on you. If the person ends up ditching you, perhaps you should've analyzed better. I don't know. I've never run into problems with this. Perhaps because I prefer not to get upset over when I get ditched, or perhaps because I'm good at selecting my partners.

As for 'psychoanalysis,' that'd be rather hard. You're fooling yourself if you think you can't tell anything about how people act from a text post, though. If someone is a raging cunt at me right from the get go then I'm not gonna go

welp psychoanalysis is impossible so i better give em the benefit of doubt

I'm gonna stop RPing with them right then because that's not worth my time.

And even then, I still think there's a difference between constantly 24/7 bitching about it in a thread/status bar as opposed to just accepting it and moving on and/or being angry on your own. Why you'd get so upset over something so small is a wonder to me but I suppose it's possible. My one question is why do people feel a need to throw it out there all the time? Maybe you don't see it in the same way as I do, but if someone is constantly going

whe whe my hundredth partner just dropped on me JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHERS

I'm gonna probably assume that they're not really pleasant to RP with and ignore them even harder.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Policing it seems like a bad move both because it gives people the idea that they need to meet certain criteria in their hobby. People write for fun, not to strike their ego (well, I do, but that is besides the point) so I doubt many people are interested in getting a list of..

your post needs to be this and this, and if it is not, we will move it to a 'lower' tier of writing.

That aside it's also just a shit tonne of work. We don't have 20.000 RP's a day, but there are a lot of new RP's springing up at all times. And to be fair, I'd also not really be looking forward to moderating the RP's and their criteria just because that'd mean I'd have to sift through horrid roleplays that tend to pop up in certain sections.

The only RP section I'd moderate, even now, is 1x1, purely because there's been some stuff posted there that really skirts the lines or sometimes blatantly breaks the rules.

But besides logistical reasons for changing the descriptions, I think it'd also be nice to refresh the RPG frontpage from time to time. Reworking some of the wording, changing the looks of certain buttons, etcetera. Seems like a simple way to breathe life into the site, even if it might not need it. But we didn't need a PM deletion system, we just really wanted it.

In regards to dropping roleplays and user attractiveness

@71452K ... bruh I'm just telling you the underlines are making it hard to read...

In regards to dropping roleplays and user attractiveness

@pugbutter but then the point I was making arrives: do you bitch about it in the bitch thread or the status bar for days on end, and is the only thing that ever seems to come out of your mouth 'whe whe nobody wants rp with me'?

Perhaps the problem is with you - in that you tend to accept requests from fickle roleplayers?

@71452K the underlines aren't really helping you, it makes your post a bitch to read. But I got the gist of it. I don't think you are right - my best RP is currently ongoing for close to a year (like 9 months) and thrives purely on the promise that we will each get a post out at some point in the future whether that be in 2 weeks or 2 months. We have had intervals of a month, even 2 at some point, because of life and IRL occupations.

Doesn't mean either of us are going to drop it because we are both invested in it and want to see where the story takes us. It helps that we have a clear cut idea of where we want to move the story - but the pacing is important. And not necessarily to up the pacing, but to take your time.

Mahz's Dev Journal

@The Nexerus yeah, the problem I have with that is that it's all true, but it relies on common sense on the guild. The other solution is to police what RP's get posted where, which also isn't going to happen (getting over the fact that it's boring and we shouldn't do it, good luck convincing the mods to add that to their pile of work that they already have trouble dealing with).

In a perfect world everything you said would work. But this is RPG. I want to know how you'd implement what you suggest successfully (ergo, no changes to the existing model) and still achieve a change through people being less whiny.

Mahz's Dev Journal

The question is whether we want criteria to be enforced at all. I personally prefer not, and letting people use their common sense as a guiding tool. But that would be easier if the current descriptors weren't so vague. As mentioned before, a single RP can apparently fit criteria for all the sections (allegedly because I honestly doubt it can) and thus that signals that the descriptions are poor.

Other than that I agree with Nexerus, if your free RP is being told it's free, then that's that. I also don't really believe in the advanced elitism but that was brought up to me by many others so I decided to include it in my suggestion, but it doesn't really affect anything other than relating back to the thread where it came up a few times.

@Odin

I am very well aware of Myriad Reality—in fact, it's almost as if the suggestion was written with that in mind. However, you seem to be a part of a collection of people that dislike it for its ARG-esque style (or at least its location on this site). While the Free category does state "involving one-liners, few-liners, speed-posting," it also states "and for anyone who doesn't want to have to worry about standards." This line attracts a great deal of low-effort posters, and (at least for Myriad Reality), the standards are very high—they happen to turn away many individuals who do not meet them. Casual, on the other hand, mentions "enjoy writing at least a paragraph or two, character development, and some depth." While speed posting does not match the first qualification, it does match the latter two, considering character development is mostly performed irrespective of post length, as well as depth. "Grammar and spelling are encouraged" implies that it is of significantly less consequence in Free. So for that one in particular, it aligns more with Casual (or Advanced, if you want to chase that rabbit trail) in every qualification other than post length.
The main point of this being that if you want to change the qualifications for each subforum to post length, feel free to lobby all you want for it, but I don't believe that it is correct to use roleplays that match a majority of the current descriptors as evidence that there is an inherent problem with the system. Though I would like to point out that at the end of the day, it is Mahz, not the users, who decides what is interpreted as what on his site.

@Etcetera

Myriad Reality was what kickstarted me to make the suggestion in an informal way before I got told to write them up and they'd take a look at it (which they have, by now). And before you say it, this isn't me going after them, this is more so me being really confused about it being in casual, and about the GM's wanting to move it into advanced. It doesn't click in my head.

I also think that as long as these people are having fun we shouldn't be judging them for the content of their RP, after all it is not unreasonable to think that they might just have a lot of free time and a desire to go back and forth rapidly. I'm not saying anything about the quality of the RP - just about what is actually in it and why I believed it was better suited for a different section, or for a rework of the descriptions entirely.

the standards are very high

This, however, is about as subjective as it gets and I happen to disagree. Very strongly so, actually.

"Grammar and spelling are encouraged" implies that it is of significantly less consequence in Free. So for that one in particular, it aligns more with Casual

Again, I happen to disagree. But I don't really want to discuss that specific RP. This isn't a witch hunt nor a public shaming and it shouldn't be made into one. They're just an example of something that very clearly doesn't match the criteria set out arbitrarily.

Though I would like to point out that at the end of the day, it is Mahz, not the users, who decides what is interpreted as what on his site.

Simply said untrue, perhaps he decides whether or not he implements it, but we as users decide what goes where.

If we did not, we would not have an influx of free and advanced RP's in casual, would we?

Mahz's Dev Journal

<Snipped quote by Odin>

However, this entirely seems to be situated on your interpretation of what the different subforums "should" be, not what the definitions of them are. I don't mean to sound nitpicky, but based on the current guidelines, a lot of RPs that seem to irk you due to their placement actually do belong in the category in which they reside, simply because RPG currently defines the terms differently. If you wish to petition to change what each subforum is for, that's perfectly legitimate, but the complaint doesn't lie in the idea that some RPs are implicitly "breaking the rules," so to speak.

@Etcetera

Have you ever heard of Myriad Reality? Outside of some outstanding issues with it's ruleset, lol, the RP was a free roleplay that was asked to be moved to advance and placed in casual in order to not upset the RPers, despite the RP clearly being free in nature. I'm talking rapid-fire, new post every minute one liners that was consistently at the top of the forum because there was just so much posts in it. That RP has 110.000 posts momentarily, all of which are one liners.

Now, correct me if I am wrong, but that doesn't belong in casual no matter whether you handle my standards or the current ones.

Changing the definitions would just give us more reasons to move them to the correct location - namely fast roleplay - because skill is no longer part of the equation (and theoretically neither is post length, because I'd consider a slow RP that is filled with one liners but where people reply slowly to be better suited for 'roleplay' or 'dedicated roleplay').

The current descriptors for the forums leave a lot to the imagination with a result that free and advanced RP's are up/downgraded (not really, but you get what I mean) to casual because that's just where the people are. That's why I'd advise not to have subforums, but 1 big forum where you can set tags for it. But currently, anything can fit inside of casual (or free, or advanced) and that bothers me personally for a multitude of reasons.

You are free, of course, to suggest suggestions. But I don't believe the current descriptions are remotely accurate for what they are supposed to represent and it is us, the community, that decides what goes where in practicality. Therefore, it should be us, the community, that decides what the best titles and descriptions are.