FinalPalladium

Casual, really?

@FinalPalladium I hope you don't mind me dropping this into your thread but out of curiosity, I bootlegged your code and replaced all of the necessary variables relevant for the Advanced Section to see if there were any statistical differences. Props to you. I recommend everyone take a look at their code if they are more curious about other aspects of the site in general. Really adaptable and easy to modify.

Few things to note. I am a dabbler in code and thus, my IDE was different to what the OP was using. I had to use html.parser instead of lmxl parser due to difficulties with my software. I also had difficulties with the matlibplot module that the OP used to visualize their data. Therefore, I used the painful process of manually shoving it all into Excel. Could have done a R Plot instead but eh. Anyway, here is the result.



There are a few differences and similarities of note. To begin.....

- We see a parallel scenario with Casual/Advanced Tags in the Advanced Section. Casual tags are commonplace whilst Advanced Tags are barely non-existent whilst the opposite exists in the data for the Casual section. This may imply that GMs use these tags as a way of quantifying themselves relative to the rest of the section.
- More even split of proportions between small group and large group in Advanced Section relative to Casual.
- Sci-Fi more prominent than Anime/Manga for Advanced.
- Top 4 genres are Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Fandom and Modern.

Might apply this code for Free if OP doesn't. Anyway, thought I do this and I was both mildly surprised and expectant of the results. Sorry if OP was in the process of doing one for Advanced.

@Bork Lazer

Feel free to use the code as you wish. I'm glad that someone thought that a simple project like that was worth anything.

Also, it's interesting to see the conclusions you took from the advanced forum, however, the first one (marked in red) is based on the same lack of context I had when I first wrote this.

To understand what's truly happening with the section tags just refer to @stone's post (quoted below). They found out what was truly happening.

<Snipped quote by FinalPalladium>

Yeah, I also took a look at your code (it checks out). Since it (seemingly) had no problems with the other tags, the Casual tag not showing up is definitely a Guild thing, not your program. Cheers!

@stone

Thanks again for the appreciation. I'm glad people are still having fun with this idea.

Casual, really?

It's interesting to see he opinions that come out from the analysis of a simple piece of data. I'm trying to hold back on making any judgements of my own to get a better of everyone's opinions.

It's interesting to see how some here take that information about the Casual tag not appearing at all as granted. That's an interesting take in the matter.

@SleepingSilence
I wouldn't be so hasty to say that half of the recent activity in the guild comes from the 1x1 section. At least not without something to back it up. I myself go through that section every once in a while (reason why I don't have many public posts) and it seems to be about the same level as Casual not significantly more, or less, busy.

On the matter of this analysis not taking into account PMs and off-site stuff. That data isn't available publicly, it doesn't have any impact on a study of the public available data. We can't compare oranges and apples, can we?

I also didn't mention meta tags in my intro post (though obviously anyone is welcome to talk about them, like you did) because I think they are kinda irrelevant for an analysis of the taste in RPs of the average player/GM here. Especially the Large/Small group tags because of how they are described.

@FinalPalladium

I went back and checked a previous casual RP that I made. It turns out that, even if the Casual tag is checked off, it won't show up in the RP description!

@stone

Now, this actually something I appreciate. That was quite an interesting discovery about the inner workings of the Guild (and made me significantly more confident in my project).

You really have my thanks for pointing this out.

Casual, really?

We all like click bate titles, otherwise we wouldn't click on them.

I find the fact that people omit the casual title an interesting detail. However, I'm not sure I agree with your reasoning on why you don't see it so often. Two points to consider.

My Danganronpa RP was posted in the casual section and has the casual tag. I'm surprised that my RP was not sampled in the 2500 that you did. I posted in it recently, so it should have been in the first 100 or so pages. I will say that it's become very collab heavy, and the last post was made 24ish days ago, but I still think it should have been in the first 100 pages. The last OOC post was 4 days ago. Furthermore, I've randomly clicked on 5 RPs and all of them had the casual tag. There might be something wrong with your software.

RP in question: roleplayerguild.com/topics/157933-dan…

Secondly, there are a limited number of tags one can put on an RP. So if an RP is already in the casual section, scrapping the casual tag could have been done to make room for something more relevant.

NOW!

The stats on the rate in which RPs are created is an interesting one. Personally, I've been quite successful with my RP ventures as a GM and seldom look for something to join. I believe this trend is a combination of things. Firstly, I think everyone tries to start their own RP at first, and then most of those people decide it's too much work to promote an RP and join one instead. Interest Checks have gotten a lot more ambitious, and it's much harder to stand out without putting forth considerable effort. So while it may have to do with player density, it could also have to do with the ever changing RP meta. My danganronpa RP has been going for 4 years, and that's largely in part because it had a very strong start. I started months before Danganronpa V3 came to the west, and I was rewarded with a bounty of players stoked with interest. Had I started it today I do not believe many people would have bothered to join.

Good stuff, @FinalPalladium. C :

@BrokenPromise

Well, I wasn't making any judgements on the reason why people don't add the casual tag to their RPs. Just asking a question worth asking.

Anyway, this issue you mentioned got me intrigued, I checked some pages manually at random, looking for RPs tagged as casual because I found that data to be strange and didn't find any so I was convinced my code was working fine despite the weirdness of no RPs marked as casua in the casual section.

I guess I'll double check the code again later to be sure I didn't do any mistakes there.

Anyway, your opinion about about the reason behind the decline in new posts ever since 2017 is an interesting one. It certainly feels like it's very possible for people to try to GM at a point, become tired/disillusioned and begin to look for games to join rather than run.

I think that, regardless of any kinks in this data set, the discussions and insights that can come out from this information is something most of us can benefit from.

And, an industrious person with more curiosity than I can even dig other statistics from this data, like RP activity (duration/number of replies), most prolific GMs, etc.

It's truly something worth talking about.

Casual, really?

First things first, excuse me for clickbait title. This is not another one of the myriad of topics complaining about how Casual has become advanced, or anything like this. However, the title still applies and you'll see why in a moment.

A little bit of background info, first:
Recently, I began to take programing as hobby and try to get the hang of my favorite language so far (Python). As of the moment of this writing (Nov 8th 2020), I'm finally beginning to understand how to do web scrapping and some very simple data analysis.

Just allow me to diverge from the topic for a moment to tip my metaphorical hat to those around here who are professionals in Data Science or are studying to do so. I have to say that, I had no idea how much insight you can gather about a subject from just a few well-thought lines of code.

Now, cutting straight to the point.

As a way to cross two of my favorite hobbies, I decided an analysis to see what kind of info I could extract from the Guild, especially the Casual section since it has the most traffic.

Here are two charts detailing some of the things I decided to get a detailed look at (considering the posts in the 1st 100pages only to keep it relevant-ish to the status of the Guild today):

1st - Tag popularity:

I'm sure every GM around here must have thought about what are the best tags to put in a topic, or better yet what are the best kinds of RPs to attract attention. So this was my first stop.

As you can see, not a single one of the first 2500 topics in the casual section has the casual tag, which is the reason for this post's title since I found that incredibly ironic to the point of being outlandish. After all, what does that say about the people in the casual forum?

Putting that aside, and considering only the genre tags, we can see that Fantasy, Modern, Fandom, and Anime/Manga are the most popular tags. So, if anyone ever wondered what kind of RP is on vogue/the most common, there's your answer.

2nd - RPs created over time:

Because people say their RPs aren't as popular anymore, that they few ignored, or have the impression that the Guild is dying somehow. I wanted to see the truth about that and, as you all can see, what appears to have happened is that was a wild, almost ridiculous explosion of new topics created around Summer 2017.

We have been on a gradual decline back to the original stable numbers of the Guild ever since then. What I theorize that is the cause of complaints of lack of activity is people who joined around the boom and aren't used to the old pace being slowly reestablished. So yeah, it's not anyone's posts that are particularly bad or anything like this, it's just that we are going back to the near flatline pace that was between 2014 and late 2016.

So, what's your opinion about this? I think this is the most insight we had about the guild in years, and it really changed how I see things here.

PS: here's the link for the code if anyone wants to take a look/modify it for other sections/etc.
https://github.com/Final-Palladium/simple-rpguild-data-analysis/blob/main/rpguild_scrape.ipynb

Feeling ignored. Part 2.

PS: As a final bit of advice, bringing things like your disability to shield yourself from criticism ("Because I have autism I often do this or that") is also frowned upon—especially by people with the same disability because that paints a bad stigma for them as a whole—I would refrain to mention it as a defense in the future as well if I were you.

On the other hand, it might be something word pointing out in your interest checks, because it might allow others the chance to mentally prepare themselves to deal with you in a respectful and appropriate way, the same it way it would be preferable to mention if you have any non-conforming sexual preferences and such just to make sure others won't others won't offend you without even knowing.

If you require special circumstances make them known, but don't turn them into a crutch. That's seriously not cool.

Feeling ignored. Part 2.

<Snipped quote by FinalPalladium>

Have done that before to be honest and putting myself into other shoes, in other RP-Sites and here but mainly it's just 18+'s on all interest checks I deem cool which disappoints me entirely due to the 18+ thing anyway. I don't think you know me well to be honest.

@NesyExecutive

Sincerely, I wasn't judging you. I was addressing the facts you mentioned in your own posts here. Being defensive about your age and accusing others of prejudice without looking at it through their prism.

Your answer only makes it more evident you don't understand what are the implications here from the POV of an adult. That's only to be expect since you are a minor and while we have been in your shoes in the past you haven't been in ours yet, that's what's called life experience.

I do agree with the others that legal liability isn't the only factor here.

Certainly it's the one I consider the most because I have no interest on ruining my life over a RP, but there are many other complex things involved. Doing things like roleplaying the weariness that comes from working, or family worries is certainly more engaging when you do it with some that may not have the same exact life experiences, but at least understands it somehow in their own way.

RPing is a great way to lighten your burdens without actually complaining about your actual problems to others because—let's be honest here—more often than not no one cares and it only annoys them. Such a social experience is much more interesting if the other party can relate.

At any rate, you'll get there someday, hopefully. But not with this atitude.

Feeling ignored. Part 2.

@Kuro

<Snipped quote by Kuro>

That's how it is unfortunately. It does shatter my heart when people are discriminatory though.

@NesyExecutive

I think this has less to do with discrimination and more with the fact people don't want to get into hot water for dealing with children on the internet. Just imagine for a moment what could happen if one of your parents/legal caretaker took a hold of one of your RPs with someone who's above 18 and decided that the content is inappropriate regardless of your opinion on it (since minor have no legal say in such matters) and sought legal action against that other player?

In the world of today you don't need much, just one misinterpreted word, to get your life completely screwed over, no matter your original intentions.

Maybe if you put yourself in others' shoes instead of being accusatory and defensive, you could find a better reception.

I may as well try...

Hi.

I made this account on a whim so there's not much to say, especially since I'm not much of a social networking type of person. Hopefully, I'll stick around and find something of interest to do here.

Thanks for your time.

Post a random fact about yourself.