[Boomkiller]

My only problem with this whole community, this whole forum, and everything are.  The fact, people are at each other throats, they are denying every single fact that they are regretting to ever meet each other.  Even to this day, people have these small fusses and it eats away at the community and the RP, even sometimes they drag new players into their shuffle.

As the post above me say, just roleplay with one another, you all just are stuck in the past and you're letting it cloud your way of RPing on this game.  You're all so caught up in being judgemental on every single thing, that it's starting to get on my nerves each day I get on this game.  I always just hear of someone not liking the other person or someone just outright being distaste. 

Me when people are picky about their choice of RP:

[Miller]

Since this thread has honestly been going in a noticeably downhill direction, I'd like to remind people that there's way more to this than having people follow solutions you find 'right'.

Yes, people have been exceedingly toxic and at each others throats to the point of disgust and some if not most of us are all equally guilty of this. However, RPing more and enjoying the RP are two different things and people individually have each of their own issues with the current state of the game, whether it be stagnation, lack of meaningful interaction, variety or conflict from what I've been seeing in this thread. You're entitled to have your own opinions and invalidating how others feel is extremely contrary to the original intent of this thread. I personally feel that this is indeed a community problem, but opinions where people find the game, 'too stagnant', 'too repetitive' are not invalid. 

I don't really have anything more to say than this and I didn't intend to respond after my initial post but this sort of mentality just pushes a further divide as a community instead of figuring out what could alleviate issues.

[Perdition]

Miller took the words out of my mouth. A lot of suggestions or things being framed as absolute facts boil down to what is essentially “be the change you want to see”

Yes, people could go out of their way to “RP more” at places that were once hubs. The issue with that is not everyone is content with the kind of RP that comes from that. I could make an average joe and park him at Cells or Dormeho and do my part, so to say, but the whole time I’ll be wanting to put a bullet in my head because the overwhelming slice of life in this game makes me want to end it all. Not literally. But yeah.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with enjoying that type of roleplay. If you do, good for you, but for those of us that don’t, the hard solution of “just RP more in public bro” falls very flat. Outside of that, what is one expected to do? Park themselves at a non conventional spot in hopes of doing something other than slice of life, hoping someone eventually passes by? I’ve actually tried this. I’ve sat characters in places such as Lorywell or others that I find interesting or atmospheric and tabbed out waiting for a ping. Nothing ever happened.

That being said, this is in large part a community problem, but it’s one that comes down to deeply ingrained mindsets and mentalities. As others have said it’s unfair to ask people to just not RP with their friends. Houses are also things that can be purchased with real money so it’s also asking a lot to have people abandon that kind of environment that they invested in. In addition to this, a large majority of the player base is content with the slice of life setting and don’t see any reason nor have a desire to rock the boat.

The hypothetical solution then becomes what can be done that can facilitate meaningful RP or encourage it in non traditional hubs? What can be done so that if you find yourself strolling through Lorywell or even one of the static dungeons that you may run into other players that are actually IC? I don’t have the answer to these questions, but I think they’re the right questions that need to be brainstormed. The LFG system was mentioned, but it’s very inconsistent.

[WaifuApple]

Honestly, I don't think this thread has been going downhill at all, it was always at this point. To say that would be to say that the opinion that some of us are showing in that people should be open to participating more is wrong - and to be honest, no, it isn't. The reason certain locations are dead are due to a lack of participation - and no, you cannot force people to stop RPing with their friends only, sure... but you can definitely point out that those situations are kind of contributing to this all.

The idea of not pointing out things that you can't change or force hasn't stopped people listing one of the problems as a certain kind of RPer, despite it being another thing you can't force. To be honest, the post has been staying at a level where it has always felt in some ways like people are trying to find someone to point the finger at for the situation, but I've had to point that finger back and say that... with this being a community problem? Everyone has to take responsibility and be more than just their words. 

You've all identified the issues... I believe now is the time to make good on them. You may not know a solution that is guaranteed to work, but you can now explore the options. A community problem needs community action, after all. It's time to gather groups to go RP in certain unused places, time for players to make more of their own event lines, time for people to get out there more. It's time for you to take your steps forward... because nobody's going to move those legs for you.

You don't have to just participate in the slice of life of the world, but problems aren't solved by just pointing them out. And we can't sit around waiting for the developer or people in my position to solve them for us.

I hope that's something people understand, now.

The divide will grow unless people take action rather than speak it. Between people who don't want to RP more until the quality of what they're wanting goes up, and between people who want people to RP more SO it goes up.

Anything that can be mechanically done is something to discuss, at this point, on it's own... as a suggestion for people to get on board with. But aside from that? Consider what you as an individual can do, now. Things are only bound to get better if people put their own feet forward.

I'm grateful to those of you I've seen beginning to try again. Thank you for taking the steps forward to at least try with the rest of us.

Edit: I'm aware that RPing more and enjoying it are different. Just know on the way forward RP is not going to suddenly, spontaneously become the level of enjoyable people want to start RPing again. We're in a state we need to work our way out of... and that's not always going to be fun, unfortunately. Don't let that stop you, at least.

[Rasengetsu]

I've been noticing a (personally perceived) lack of people around. Even when the byond page says 50 people and I do a world tour I usually find like 5 scattered around in accessible areas.
Now, I'm pretty new to this game. I've seen active moments and dead moments since I first made a character two weeks ago. The thread is pretty big so far and I've glossed over a lot of it because everyone feels like writing light novels every post, but a few things I've read resonated with me. And now, I'm going to hypocritically write a small novel myself because it's the trend. 

Living World
Living worlds are definitely a great thing that help roleplay. The issue is that while everyone on byond always expects living worlds to "give players full freedom to change the world", as a retired game admin on different games: Fuck that; they're wrong. Players work best as the steering wheel, not the engine. The driving force of a living world cannot be the players because they won't push the story unless it benefits them or directly relates to them. People who like roleplay are, inherently, more introverted than extroverted. Introverts don't go out and seek people. It's best to have a slowly changing world that people can "reactively" interact with in ways that help steer the changes, but not to have a frozen world that only changes if people make it change. Freedom is only perceivable when within confines, else it quickly becomes forgotten as a concept.

Hutting
Nothing new here. People have been doing this across every roleplay game on byond since the history of forever. It's not going to change and no matter how much everyone likes to claim they don't do it, everyone is guilty of it if not already then eventually. I try to stay away from it, but since you're most likely to get some development in these places I end up being guilty of this crime against roleplay regardless.

Player Villains
If you want player villains, the game cannot have a structure that actively punishes such behavior without offering any sort of support. All we've got is the stick and no carrot right now. You can make a villain, but everything about the current game structure makes life easier for the good guys while heftily punishing the bad guys... And who the hell is gonna blow a couple hours grinding a character to max level (god forbid they even LE them...) just to have them die off to guards/prison boredom within a day. Prison sounds nice on paper but ultimately requires more effort to maintain than is possible to work with. You can repurpose when you die but even then, you made that character for that purpose in the first place so it's unlikely to help your motivation regardless.

Event Staff
It shouldn't be up to the event staff to carry us (the players and our roleplay), but experience tells me that it will be regardless. It's a thankless job and it's a lot of work. Even with a team of 10 people it was an ordeal and a half to provide entertainment for 100 over a week, and we had a daily population of 200. It's a massive struggle and I thank you for the work you put in. My advice on the matter is to have many short adventures planned and open to the public with group limits. And if the world is to have changes, plan out many small events for people to participate in. Big events sound nice on paper but never work out in a satisfying way because of sheer fustercluck.

Conclusion
The situation this game is facing is as old as byond RP itself. It is unlikely we will change the way people play because playing shouldn't require effort and changing requires effort. Thus, changing how the game interacts with players is the most likely solution here. We don't need gigantic history-changing events all the time, but a sense of making the world change a little at a time would go a long way to reinvigorating what currently feels stagnant to so many. Small things like a job to take out bandits in an area leading to a raid on Cellsvich/Tannis in repercussion, or finally ending the black beast threat, or through the efforts of players a new town is founded, etc etc, are what I'd like to see personally. We don't necessarily need a bunch of public RP; We can simply have a lot of publicly available private RP.
We probably can't support a full-on villain community (god knows I tried with 200 players and an actual structure for them...) since that would just split our already small(ish) activity, but without (quick) access to items, mercs, shops, inns, or literally anything once you reveal yourself (without risking it all anyway) it's not very conducive to a game that wants this kind of player character. They have no backup (guards etc) and no place they can really call a hub with access to commodities and services.
I also don't believe in OOCing around so... Yeah.



PS: HI MOOSE, I'M IN YOUR CELLSVICH PLAZA PICTURE ON PAGE 3! YAY!

[Maksimum_Fire]

this thread got messy in the few hours that I left it.  Thank you, Miller, for bringing it back on topic.

I think it's not wrong to call the lack of easy-access RP a community problem.  There's at least a little bit of gatekeeping in most cliques, as is reasonable for a clique even IC.

To me?  It makes sense.  It's not easy to just run in, nestle up with somebody, and start divulging your character's background in the span of a month.  As a newbie, I spent months as just "crab murderhobo" as my IC.  It wasn't always a great time and I didn't always get RP, but I sure as heck went with it.

If the goal is 'to make rp more accessible', then it'd be a simple measure to just.  Push ourselves to do a lot more public rp.  Whether that be hanging out in cellsvich square, having a spat at the arena, what have you.

I think what turns people off to those sorts of things- and indeed, what turned me off as a newbie, specifically to cellsvich square, declared as a main rp hub- is that more often than not, what dominates those sorts of scenes isn't (phenomenally forced and unnatural) small talk, but instead eh.  Kinda nonsense stuff?  Being frivolous, random and loudmouthed- memes- and then gossip.  And if it feels unnatural, you're gonna start to feel like your character is out of place pretty quickly in that, I feel?  It's some people's cup of tea, but I can't imagine wanting to do that day after day.

Some things that benefit public RP, I'll mention, are some of the organizations made by players that serve the community.  The Blades of the Promised Land is open to taking commission quests from the public, Sanctuary Hospital takes care of wounded, bars and food spots like the Last Resort Cantina are a staple for making people feel less awkward, and Stella Trading is a lovely IC mercantile guild for characters to dip their hands into making money.  A few other locations like this exist in the game, but.  There's a pretty solid reason there aren't more.

They're costly as heck to get running.  To start:  You need to find a good slot to plonk down your house.  Then, you need a house ticket.  Then, you need to design the house.  Then, you need to make furniture.  Then you need to make all that look nice.  For particularly detailed projects, builders need to purchase floor planners.  Then, if  you want more than one floor?  You need to repeat that all over again.  Do you want your house to have some nice jams?  Then you have to ALSO go buy a fun-o-gram.  So, if we're looking at the costs for just making a two-room house, with 250 furniture in one or more rooms....

500 Asagos for a house ticket.  500 for an extra level.  1200 for fun-o-grams.  200 for furniture planners.  And then however much murai you need to populate those locations with furniture, plus the time and effort it takes to make these things look absolutely gorgeous.

So, setting aside the murai and time, because in a perfect world that's just 'a little bit of grinding' and 'a little bit of effort'-  That's 2400 asagos, or $24.  That's why an establishment that's as well polished as the recently refurbished Sanctuary Hospital is so rare, imo.

It's hard to really combat that, though, and decreasing costs probably isn't appealing from a development standpoint.  So really?  here's what I would like to see- and it's pretty solidly based on things other people have been discussing.


Roleplay areas need a significant touch up.


Right now, the arena doesn't have spectator seats.  Honestly, people just kinda congregate around some grass and either cheer or jeer for the people brawling on said grass.  Clinics have very little RP value for the people managing them, as literally all they are is a bazillion doors for people to farm XP on.  And there really aren't any locations other than that that specifically foster RP, in the base game.  The community's kinda carrying it.

What I'd like to see is: 

>Modelled off projects like Sanctuary Hospital, clinics being expanded to have rooms for players to stay in, npcs to interact with, and locations to RP in.

>The arena getting an 'inside' map, where people can go up into the spectator seats and watch.  If possible, a betting mechanic when watching fights specifically at the arena would also be cool, and give a mechanical incentive to come watch and enjoy fights as well.

>More mundane tasks around the world that can be RPed out.  People do once in a while get to meet each other cleaning up after black beasts, and honestly, I think that's a pretty nice function.  But there aren't a lot of tasks like that in the world, and what does exist doesn't have much specific location focus that brings players together, or is combat(mines and raids).


This gives a little more element of freshness to the game, and while it'd be difficult to implement, would, imo, have long lasting benefits for the community.  That said, this isn't like an, end-all-be-all, it's just a gauze wrap to patch things up.

The community is definitely super toxic to one another, and I think that's very obvious just reading this thread.  People are still gonna RP in closed-door situations plenty of times, because they're going to find better RP there most times.  But that's just sort of how things can be?  I think the best thing we can do is foster the things we want to see more of, as a community.

Last notes I got is regardless of how things are or whether it's frustrating that you can't find some people, or that you can't get some rp that you want-  That's not anyone else's responsibility.  There's always something, at least, to do in SL2 right now, even if it's not something you're super familiar with doing.

Thanks to everyone who's been keeping it calm in this thread, and thanks to Miller for keeping us on topic.  I probably won't comment any more on this topic since most of what needs to be said's already been said.

[Tanasinn]

I'll pitch in a couple opinions on the state of SL2 as someone who does not exist in any real clique, has only one or two real friends to speak of, and is in public roughly 99% of the time I'm actually on.

The first, the community is often heavily toxic towards roleplay in public.

Ever since I first started playing SL2, public RP has been treated as 'gross', 'lazy', and 'bad'. I cannot count the number of times I have seen people say things to the effect of, 'lol imagine rping in public' in a condescending manner. I have seen people drop by a public spot solely to drop something insulting in emote or looc and leave the area. I have seen people who were active in public to a high degree get poached into a clique and then within a week regurgitate the same tired complaints about RPing in public, despite everything. I've seen people specifically targeted in attempts to force them off the game because they didn't RP the right way in public. All of these things add up - Especially when the people who complain usually do the exact same RP things, just in private.

I have seen this even extrapolated into the wonderfully circular, "You RP in public" -> "RP in public is bad" -> "You're a bad player for RPing in public" -> "We'll never allow you into our groups" -> Stuck always RPing in public because there are no groups to be a part of.

In the end, some people end up not wanting to RP in public because it makes people see them as 'fair game' to insult and mock behind their backs, or sometimes, straight to their face. Nobody wants to play when it feels like trying will get them shit-stomped by everyone for it, especially when dislike of one character usually gets extrapolated by people into dislike of the player unless they're already friends. That isn't even bringing up general toxicity, like new players getting told to kill themselves for selling things that aren't 'valuable enough', or anyone with a basic question getting shouted down. If you don't luck into a group or people who will be nice to you, this game is impenetrable and painful.

The second, playing an antagonist really do be like suffering.

You generally want some kind of conflict to help drive RP, but often, it's really damn hard. I can't blame people for their IC not wanting to interact with people they dislike, of course, but let me give an example.

For a little while, I put together a group of people to RP bandits. We had a headquarters, we would go out into people's camps, and we would rob them. We didn't force fights, and we didn't even demand actual goods, having been perfectly willing to accept fluff items/money. The hope was to give people things to talk about, stories to tell, maybe occasionally an injury or two for further RP and growth. In short, it was the most mundane antagonistic thing you could realistically have that wasn't jaywalking.

What ended up happening was, between emotes, someone wandering into a camp, leaving, getting half a dozen people, coming back, and jumping us. When dragged into Arjav, we were left in a holding cell for over a real life week waiting for... Anything. While waiting, I then got several angry messages accusing me of being a terrible player intending to make people quit, for daring to be antagonistic.

This is what attempting to do even low-level antagonistic stuff nets you. Locked out of the game, and personally insulted and hated. God forbid you do anything more permanent, even with giving them a chance to evade consequences, because people will hold grudges for over a year. This is why antagonistic stuff is generally locked to a very specific group of community-liked players, and only in their own cliques, as someone else mentioned. If people want more conflict that isn't manufactured by people bantering back and forth in private discords, something about guardwork or the community's reaction to things happening has to change. As people have been saying for as long as I've been playing, getting jumped by half the server sucks.

As a further note on antagonism, if you end up with a lengthy prison sentence, you are forced into solitary, which means you are doubly locked out of RP, because you can't even RP with other prisoners.

I'd also wager a guess that some of the downturn is that now we have event-admins, groups are now actually able to have their events with a bit less focused planning, which leads to people being busy with those and RPing around those, coupled with the state of the world and other things coming out to drive people's attention elsewhere.

[Perdition]

In regard to the above post, something Eternia does is essentially “lock” scenes once they begin so no one else can interrupt after conflict has already began. Basically, imagine 3 people are camping. 2 people playing as bandits show up and go “Never should have come here!” From there the scene would be locked in that the only combat that would then happen is between those 5 individuals. Others are free to show up as the situation progresses to spectate, but they can’t jump in to the fight. This way even if someone calls all their buds on discord they can’t just show up for free back up.

I guess exceptions to this could be made for guards only if this shit is happening in broad daylight in the middle of a city or something but in my opinion, and this is a hot take, I don’t think the guard role is even needed or conducive to RP. I don’t know what you’d replace it with, but the more I think about it, the more ridiculous it is that someone can just ping a guard on discord if anything is happened and then you’re fucked. It happens even outside of towns and cities too. It’s like having 24/7 access to a legion of goons.

At the very least I don’t think guards should be something accessible via discord. Someone should have to leave and physically find one in game. Maybe this would promote guard players to do actual patrols or something. Rather than them just being an alt someone hops on after someone puts a hit on whoever is causing trouble on discord.

[Killah-K12]

Okay so I've given this a few days to stew and I've triangulated my thoughts, Ran it through all the tests and experiments, Spoken to the experts and have had my relaxing slice of pizza and big brain soda. I'm ready to do this.

Let's go back in the past. How far back we going? We're talking Pre-G.R. Days. We're talking back when the only other place you could go to was oniga. We're talking back when verglas sucked, we're talking before hyattars and liches were a thing. We're talking back when we thought it was a good day when we had fifty+ players. We talking ancient unga bunga times here and yet with our limited space and much less polished product. We still was able to come together as a community and make things like bloden's attack, We had yearly festivals, We had a unisex beauty pageant. We had holiday specials, Chimera Enterprises made so many crazy events at that time. We even had a supernatural hot-spot besides darkside and on top of that we had the arena where the ooc corner was a tiny section of the lively place. It was literally a blimp in the other wise giant rp/battle hub that was the arena We made all those things and many more mean something both icly and occly.

Now if we fast forward to the present. It seems to be the exact opposite. The game-world is bigger, the game is getting updated on an almost bimonthly basis now. The player count had doubled from the 50+ peaking to now 90-100+ plus peaking in these last couple of months. When we reach those numbers ya know 50-100 players numbers however We can't even find a tenth of that on the map at times. The arena which was once a place where friendships were forged, rivalries were started/ended and all sorts of unforgettable memes were made, Hell a place where love has bloomed on many an occasion has now become the ooc corner placeholder. Why? Why is this?

We can all come to a bunch of different issues and have a bunch of different solutions for said issue. But for those of you who've spoken to me privately or I've stated this in a discord or two we share, Every time I bring up this fact we'll disagree on everything but this one fact. The main problem that currently plagues SL2 rp is that many of it's players have either lost, decided to stop pretending to have or never desired to rp in good faith. Let me put this in one sentence for ya.

THE ABILITIY OR DESIRE TO ROLEPLAY IN GOOD FAITH IN A ROLEPLAY MANDOTORARY VIDEO-GAME HAS BEEN ABANDONED BY TOO MANY OF IT'S PLAYERS!




We have to talk about the people like this who will get on a public forum and claim they wanna help and that they want dev to put new things in the game to help with rp. But are fully ready and willing to just cut-off people's rp in a major or minor story arc just so long as their character gets their moment in the spotlight or worse they have an ooc dislike/disinterest of the characters getting involved so they say screw'em.

We have to talk about the people who when trying to address the problem on the in-game ooc they'll tell you things like this:

Or (read the lower half of this post): https://neus-projects.net/forums/showthr...p?tid=6604

Or read the attachment file I left for you guys. Read that entire log.

People who when new and old players are asking the questions of where is everyone at? They'll tell you things like:"You just gotta find them, You gotta make some friends, no our clique /guild isn't excluding people even though people both icly and occly in said guild will talk about how they don't who's in the guild and everyone outside the guild talks about the heavy gatekeeping of said guild."

Heck we can even talk about hardcore rp. Remember hardcore rp in the middle of the summer it just popped up and an majority of the people was excited about it. Most of the community seemed to be on-board with that and it got to the point for at least like three weeks where every new character you saw was an hardcore character. But how many hardcore chars do you see now? Barely any at all now right? Wanna know why? About 95% of them weren't rping in good faith at the end of the day. They were out in the public for a little bit and then they did same thing with their hardcore characters that was done with their non-hardcore characters. They hid away to a house and locked the door to have these private rp sessions with their buddies. And now that's all they do in their little group now. 24/7 rp with their buddies and that's it. Now if you have some ic implications that require you to take some time away from the public that's one thing. I'd be the biggest hypocrite in the world if I said that was the problem. The problem is when 24/7 rp with your buddies in a locked house is ALL you want to do and currently at least half of the community has decided to stop roleplaying in good faith and follow this path.

And before it's even asked and before any accusations is thrown. The reason why I name dropped and i gave y'all a few receipts. Wasn't just to prove my point. For a year and half it's been an issue. This post that fern has made has been me for a whole year of that time. I tried to help people through their "Anxiety", I've tried reasoning with people. I've tried being as politely diplomatic as I can be. I've tried being as encouraging as I can be, But when you're dealing with people who will be obnoxiously disingenuous enough to come out and say that the reason why the roleplay currently in this game is at it's lowest is because it's not like the top game of byond or former clique rpers who can't get into cliques anymore come out and make their case while knowing they want but can't be apart of the problem or people who are the problem just throwing in suggestions like they aren't in someone's else locked house right now having a one piece story arc:

NO! NO MORE!

The game is looking better than it's ever looked in every other department but the roleplay and that's not dev's fault, that's not the event admin's fault, That's not even the gm's fault. That's a community problem. That's a player-problem. The roleplay of the roleplay mandatory game is going to be at it's lowest because at the end of the day at least half of the community decides to not rp in good faith and the other half tip-toes around these people instead of addressing these people and getting to the bottom of this. we keep skirting around that fact and I for one am done doing that.

[Fern]

I will make a quick clarification since there seems to be a misunderstanding. Mostly on this bit:


And its file name:


Here is what I had mentioned to you, Killah-K12, when you had approached me about that post:


Personally if I wanted to cut off others from getting involved with that, I would've not made this particular thread.

Or requested an Event Staff to announce said thread:



I had also mentioned that if other people were interested in partaking in those events from back, they could approach us and we could sort it out. The people I had mentioned in that screenshot were not the only ones to ask and be given an opportunity, either.

Just clarifying on that since there is a misunderstanding.