Post
by TyDie » Wed Nov 22, 2017 5:55 pm
First, I'd like to say that this right here is a good step in the right direction, and I appreciate the effort you're putting in PR. I'll try to give my take on each of these as best I can.
1: What systems in the site that you see inhibit creative freedom? - Copyrights. I fully understand in certain situations we don't want every gary stu or mary sue suddenly being able to read minds, or mess with souls, or take life force, etc. However in that same vein, Copyrights can create a situation in which, for someone to truly realize their character's goals, they have to either pay points to bypass restrictions or go so far out of their way that it's almost not worth it. By the time anyone would be capable of invading a village, they're practically fully trained and statted as it is, so anything they gain is a drop in the bucket in comparison to what they already know.
1a: How do you suggest we fix this? - Truthfully I don't think that copyrights should be completely done away with, but I think copyrights should be limited to a personal basis. If you personally come up with something or earn something that does not belong to the site, that should be yours to do with as you see fit. However I think things such as the Soul Genma's eternal copyright on anything and everything soul related should be able to be worked around. You can't even -pay- to access genma abilities as it stands, their copyrights are untouchable, and I know for a fact that there are people on this site who have wanted to do soul things / edo tensai things for a long time now.
2: How do you suggest we attract potential members and bring old members back alike? - For starters, make changes to the site lol. I know that seems obvious, but no one is going to want to come back unless the things they took issue with have been revised. After the site has changed for better or worse, the best you can really do is send out messages to everyone you know that "The site has undergone an overhaul and many things have changed, and we hope that you'll come take a look and see if the new changes are to your liking". Emails work, and many people still have skype and/or discord, you could send messages through the grapevine. I'm sure that through other saigeners you can contact the ones who have left. I personally don't remove anyone from my contacts list, even the people I don't like.
2a: If you know of any reasons why old members left, please state them. - Other than Kat not really, and kat reasons honestly are irrelevant at this point. She has become so much better mentally since leaving Saigen, I think staying here kept her in a funk and being off of it does her more good then coming back to it. She is the only one who can make that decision.
3: Are there any issues with the way staff handles RP situations that inhibit story telling opportunities? - I take two major issues with things as they currently stand. 1, I have been told no a few separate times about certain story ideas I'd like to pursue, such as my character learning and understanding chakra at the highest level, beyond any who have come before him. I don't see that as an unreasonable aspiration for an S-rank Ninjutsu specialist type character. And truthfully, our world is ever expanding, so why should their be any reason to deny someone the right to explore areas left untouched?
2, Certain things took WAY too much effort to even get started on. To even establish a main base of operations for an org, it requires an A rank plotboard, which IIRC is a bare minimum of 5 threads. that's insane to me, how hard is it to pay or coax some workers into constructing a base for you? How hard is it to access some faraway land and establish a foothold to build up into your base? And after that, there's more A-B-C rank plotboards to come if you want any kind of defenses in place, or NPC to protect your base, or weaponry to outfit your members. I understand the idea that an org should have many different members looking to help power up the org, but even with a dozen members that would still be daunting. Are we really to believe that each of the villages was established through the same amount of effort, when IIRC not many past shinobi have come close to the levels of power of today's shinobi?
3a: Are there any restrictions you'd like to see on how far we should regulate roleplay? - Does it need to be regulated? I understand setting certain ground rules for the sake of maintaining world uniformity; No guns, No Uchiha, etc. But as far as what a character decides to pursue in terms of IC story, what does that matter at all? So what if Kenji knows everything there is to know about chakra, that doesn't make him any stronger than Hayate, or Shiv, or any other S rank. It just means he's pursued and attained his goals, and I don't think there should be many limits on what kind of goals can be attained.
4: Do you think a PvP oriented system has ruined potential story telling moments? - Somewhat.
4a: If so, please state why. - I think some people are so afraid of PvP that the moment a potential fight arises, they back out of their potential story to avoid that confrontation. I do understand the sense of a realistic world where people die, but this -isn't- real. People should be free to fulfill their character's ambitions without fear of reprisal, unless of course those ambitions come at the cost of others. Obviously you can't just walk into a village and take whatever you want, but the fact that someone can up and slay your character "because they can" is rather upsetting. IIRC no one has actually done that in a while, except for Sia who changed his mind afterwards, but the potential is there, and I think that turns people away.
5: Do you have any event suggestions that could drum up activity? - Perhaps a welcome back present for old members who return to the site would incentivize people to come back. As for an actual event, i've got nothing as of now, but you'd want to go for an event that appeals to as many people as possible.
6: Do you think the old system (Pre-Big Flip) worked better? Or is the new system working better? - I think both systems have their pros and cons, as anything does. I think that the old stat system worked out better. Less numbers, less confusion, stat trainings were worth more than they are now, Jutsu cost less but we got less points, which made earning strong weapons harder but affording jutsu the same. Meanwhile I didn't like the fact that any joe shmoe could be an absolute master of all things nin, gen and tai provided they had the time to put forth to it. I didn't like how someone could have every possible method of Taijutsu under their belts, all methods of genjutsu, and almost all types of ninjutsu. Concentrations puts a limit on that that I like to see, because that prevents the "know it all" character archetype from getting out of hand.
6a: Do you think the specialization system is intuitive or obstructive? - Again I see value in it, but I also see problems with it. I think it makes certain builds too difficult to attain, or in some cases impossible. For example, my old Kiri Swordsman would be impossible to use in this system, because he was a master of Chiton ninjutsu and multiple sword styles. He was a tai specialist who also was a master of ninjutsu, but in this system he'd have to be an Elemental ninjutsu specialist to make any decent use of Chiton, which would hamper his hand to hand extensively. It would have forced me to pay for access to Chiton, which would also force me to think of a reason why he has access to chiton outside of just training it, and also consumes an ability slot and like 40 points. Just to use one kind of ninjutsu, because it's locked.
On the other hand, I feel certain things on the site -should- be limited. It's not a secret that I think the publically available endgames (Spacetime, Heavenly Tai, Overlay Gen, Kinesis) Should only be attainable by specialists in their respective fields. This is the pinnacle of the art, the absolutely highest level of technique. It should take even a savant decades of practice to actually access, but then steve over here spent 100 points and now he can stop time and open portals. Like... wat?
I think there's a happy middle ground here, where the spec system isn't overly limiting, but it does decide what your possible endgame is. Maybe your spec should only decide what stats go to max, and what endgame you can access. Or maybe just what endgame you can access. A true nin specialist is going to divide their stats properly to max out what is important to them, but the current spec system actually hampered characters like Hideki. I know for a fact Sanjuro didn't want to max speed, he wanted nin, control, stam and instinct. I don't think it's fair to put their stats in a box like that, let people max what they want to max.
7: Do you think the staff should be more transparent in its decisions, thought process, and progress on certain projects? - This is a double edged sword. On the one hand, it's great to keep people informed of potential changes and get feedback. On the other, too many cooks in the kitchen means everyone is getting in each other's way. Fights start, feelings are hurt, and no one wants that.
7a: If yes, what do you think is the best way to keep the memberbase informed on this? I think the memberbase should be kept in the know on potentially -big- changes, and should also be asked to weigh in on these decisions. Not a proper vote per se, but it's important for leaders to be aware of what their people want. The people's voice should be heard at the very least.
8: Do you think advertising on other sites or consistent site activity are the most effective way to attract members? - Believe it or not, When I quit, the first thing I looked to for options for new RP sites was our affiliations and our advertising section. People -do- look at these things. I think advertising is a great help. Sure, anyone who googles "Naruto Roleplay" is going to find Saigen in the top few options, but not everyone is looking for such a specific niche. You need to cast a wide net, get the site's name out there in as many places and ways as possible.
8a: If anything else, please state what, and how it helps. As stated above, the more places that you are affiliated with, and the more advertisements you put up, the more people we will get. Even if each advert only gets one new members, that's still one person we didn't have before.
9: If there are any concerns that I haven't asked about, but you'd like to explain please place them here. - I think that there is a sore lack of respect coming from certain people on the board, and I think this is partly because there's no code of conduct for interacting with other members. No one is asking for censorship or thought policing, but I don't think it's too much to ask for people to show some respect when talking to each other. Of course, rules are useless without consequences, which means offenders would be punished, but I sincerely don't see a problem with that. Even if I was the one who made the mistake, feel free to punish me for it. I probably deserve it.
Overall, I would like to see less of a focus on rigid rules and regulations for the site itself. Less system, less limitations. Simplify things as much as possible, complex things scare people away. I want missions to be difficult again, but I also want the option for disabling death in social scenarios to avert people's fear of RPing dangerous situations. I want people to actually show each other some respect and be adults when interacting with each other, even / especially in PvP scenarios. If people acted like adults, we wouldn't need the rules to determine who was the winner. I want story especially to be less limited, and I want things to be at least a bit easier to obtain. One thing that was actually better about our old mission system was that a mission was -one- thread, not 4-6. I'd like a return to that. Instead of one PB that has multiple threads, maybe do multiple missions to fulfill the task, but not nearly as many missions as threads required for high ranking plotboards.
I'll stop here for now, but i'll be happy to add more to this if anyone wants me to. PR, you're still free to contact me via skype whenever mate, I wish you luck in fixing this broke-ass site.
Active Characters |
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Village of Origin | Character Name & Link | Rank | Color |
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Sunagakure no Sato | Henrin Emi | Genin | [color=darkgoldenrod][b][/b][/color] |
Konohagakure no Sato | Ibakuro Aiya | Chuunin | [color=#8CD600][/color] |
Sunagakure no Sato | Kouseki Takuma | Genin | [color=#003893][b][/b][/color], [b][color=#AFBCDB][/color][/b] |
Kirigakure no Sato | Kazuki Ryu | Chuunin | [color=#dc143c][/color], [b][color=#C71585][/color][/b] |
Iwagakure No Sato | Hiraku Kenji | Bannin S-Rank Missing Ninja | [b][color=slategray][/color][/b] |
Iwagakure No Sato | Fukusha Jinsai | Jounin | [color=#BF0000][/color], [b][glow=orangered][color=#000000][/color][/glow][/b] |