Fail RP, Rep, and Forum "Roleplay".

[argonian 14254]

17 hours ago, monkeypoacher said:

^^^

First thing I thought reading this thread. Everything this guy is complaining about was 100x worse during the "Skype and Teamspeak" era.

 

 

Eh, I mean, I do think Discord has made it easier to rep-***** and also to bypass RP through how easy it makes things to organise (which in turn causes people to simply not log on if nothing is planned). We had this with Skype too of course but when everyone's shoved into one channel and you can't @ everyone, you can't rely on it as a medium to plan events in advance. It was great for getting people online ASAP "DWARVES IN VEKARO" but it was really Discord that allowed nation-running, rather than merely rallying or private plotting, to go totally OOC.

 

The main reason I disagree with OP is that we actually used to use the forums a **** ton in some of the early maps like Asulon, Anthos, etc. and precisely because the forums were a more significant means of organising things far-in-advance or spreading news after-the-fact back when Skype and TS were mostly only good for getting people on in a flash. Discord reduced the need for forum posts for a long time and I'm glad they've seen a Renaissance.

 

And rep-whoring is vastly easier now as he indicated, but while I think Discord aided in that (again through #announcements and @everyone), it was (1) not the necessary factor - there was definitely a few years' lag between Discord becoming the main platform and every big post getting +50 rep, and there was a slower trend towards that existed years before Discord too, and (2) I actually don't think people treat the amount of rep a post gets now as significantly as they did pre-Discord (possibly also because EVERY post gets dozens of +1s now, meaning the amount of rep and how much more you got than the other guy is less significant).

 

Sorry for all the words but just to bring this post more on-topic: 2014 and 2017 were both Skype years. That was the main text platform during both periods and we were all in our guild or army Skype chats at the time. Yet forum posts got **** all rep in 2014 compared to 2017 - I know for a fact because in 2017 the devs briefly released a feature that let you check the most repped posts for every single day of forum history, and the number one post of the day would literally be like +1-3 in 2011, maybe +3-+10 in like 2012-2014 and consistently +20 in 2017 (which is itself nothing by today's standards). That wasn't because of server growth. In 2012 we were already hitting the same peak time server counts as we would in 2017. It was just a change of culture. The switch to Discord in 2018 sped things up and let people spread rep-whoring beyond their rallies and key-retainers, but it's not a Discord-symptom at all. And I don't think the mere usage of the forums to host important information, let alone narrative RP posts, has anything at all to do with its usage as a rep-***** propaganda station. I believe the former is actually a good thing when kept within reason (which OP also touched upon).

[creamynoteblock 3256]

forum roleplay isnt real roleplay

 

Hope you enjoyed this comment!

[bickando 3967]

On 10/18/2024 at 9:32 AM, The King Of The Moon said:

Back in the day the forums were reserved mostly for OOC socialising and server pragmatism - lore, settlement applications and other player discussions -  whilst IC concepts on the forums were few and far between.

this is not true btw, you were probably just an illiterate child at the time and didn't use the forums

 

rp threads in asulon-anthos regularly got dozens to hundreds of replies

 

check yourself nooblet

 

[The King Of The Moon 7016]

6 hours ago, bickando said:

this is not true btw, you were probably just an illiterate child at the time and didn't use the forums

 

Except comparatively it is true. Though it's you I'm quoting in particular this response is aimed at most of the replies on here that seem to be missing the aim of this thread.

 

This post isn't claiming that the forums were completely unused for RP back then or that that would've been a good thing. It's about the weight given to these posts and the purpose behind them that has drastically changed due to the newer social elements. 

 

Forum RP - in geeneral but also especially in the context this thread is regarding - is also objectively more common now.



Go into either of these Subforums and the vast majority of these posts are bounties, trades and government missives. They also predate the global auction plugin (it didn't exist for much of this time and when it did every auction was nation specific) though there was overlap with PVP default and Nexus wherein item trading was far more lucrative and minas generally were far more important, and the forums were the main way to broadcast this. 
Shitposting, 'my character thinks you're stupid', memes and generic Fail RP rep farms were simply less present in the Roleplay Subforum. Ratio-ing was hardly a concept. People did not have the capacity to ping their posts in multiple chats nor pin them in permanent channels (though on occasion Skype was spammed, sure).

Now let's look to this map alone, noting that we have
 - Less players
 - A defunct economy
 - An aviary plugin
The Aevos Roleplay Archive, under Old Realms, currently only contains nonexistent nations. It also doesn't contain all of them.

Combine this with the currently active Aevos Roleplay forum

 

150,998 total posts.

 

Yes, I am aware there is wiggle room there for older nations - mostly racial capitals - which have retained posts from past maps.
Though again, the volume isn't the issue here; It's the quality. No-one is advocating there should be less forum roleplay and I'm sorry if I gave the wrong impression there.

 

What my thread hopes to highlight and challenge is the OOC weaponisation of the RP Subforum through a change to the rep structure, a change in player mindsets and stricter moderation on malicious non-rp posts.

 

We can go back and forth on numbers all day but you need only look at half the conversations in this thread to see Fail RP, Metaplay and Toxicity are rampant. Yes, these were issues that existed in 'the Skype days' but the Roleplay Subforum wasn't the place for it, and it still  shouldn't be.

Even if you're going to argue 'oh but actually everyone was toxic on the RP Subforum'... Why would you want to excuse it? As I said in my initial post this isn't a nostalgia-bait thread trying to revert us back to some unreachable, misunderstood past. It's a post to promote change.

Why is the removal of rep - and other steps people are suggesting - a change you'd want to resist? Are you content with the current situation? If so, why? 

-

On an unrelated note, @Venomous_Pup my status update mentioned in the original thread wasn't aimed at you. It was aimed at the crippling reality that any and all roleplay we did in that conflict was immediately overshadowed by frost witches trying to ratio us, instead of actually coming to attack us.

I do not think your roleplay or your post in isolation was invalid nor do I think that this was your intention, though I do believe the conflict generally (specifically between our two groups, not between our or your group and the third or fourth parties we engaged with) lost steam because of the actions of players using the forums as a crutch and a tool to show off "my group better than their group" to the rest of the server rather than actually engaging with eachother in RP. You need only look at the instance of our group kidnapping a princess and inviting the world to come and save her, only for a post to be put up saying 'stop copying us!!!' in response, as an example of the forum rep > server roleplay mindset in this conflict. It didn't create any narrative or drive any interaction, it just served to as a platform for green numbers to OOCly demonstrate the popularity of each group. This was one example amongst many that left us asking 'what's the point if this is the "roleplay" we're going to get out of this?' and in the end led us to abandon it for other pursuits that made more sense in the context of the RP we'd had on the server. I left this explicit example out of the initial post because I didn't want to go on a holier-than-thou tirade calling out your group, knowing full well that the group I myself was involved with had some of its own problems unrelated to the context of this thread.

This was the broader context of my status, and from this thread I can see others have felt similarly about their own nation/ religious conflicts. You caught a stray, and I should've been quicker to soothe your concerns when you replied to my initial status update. For this I am sorry. 
 

[Venomous_Pup 2978]

2 hours ago, The King Of The Moon said:

On an unrelated note, @Venomous_Pup my status update mentioned in the original thread wasn't aimed at you. It was aimed at the crippling reality that any and all roleplay we did in that conflict was immediately overshadowed by frost witches trying to ratio us, instead of actually coming to attack us.

I do not think your roleplay or your post in isolation was invalid nor do I think that this was your intention, though I do believe the conflict generally (specifically between our two groups, not between our or your group and the third or fourth parties we engaged with) lost steam because of the actions of players using the forums as a crutch and a tool to show off "my group better than their group" to the rest of the server rather than actually engaging with eachother in RP. You need only look at the instance of our group kidnapping a princess and inviting the world to come and save her, only for a post to be put up saying 'stop copying us!!!' in response, as an example of the forum rep > server roleplay mindset in this conflict. It didn't create any narrative or drive any interaction, it just served to as a platform for green numbers to OOCly demonstrate the popularity of each group. This was one example amongst many that left us asking 'what's the point if this is the "roleplay" we're going to get out of this?' and in the end led us to abandon it for other pursuits that made more sense in the context of the RP we'd had on the server. I left this explicit example out of the initial post because I didn't want to go on a holier-than-thou tirade calling out your group, knowing full well that the group I myself was involved with had some of its own problems unrelated to the context of this thread.

This was the broader context of my status, and from this thread I can see others have felt similarly about their own nation/ religious conflicts. You caught a stray, and I should've been quicker to soothe your concerns when you replied to my initial status update. For this I am sorry. 

I hold no hard feelings over it, I just assumed something given the timing of it, but to further explain I do believe there was meant to be a bit more of a follow up regarding after that post but due to concerns, Dio wasn't really interested and that ended up falling through to focus on other things then a bit of a schism formed due to an OOC situation. I'll admit full well that persona is something of a cowardly sort which is why I have them rely on missive posting in some situations but I also understand some of the frustrations you highlighted in regard to what you mentioned as meta baiting. The mindset I always try to operate off is trying to create something compelling for both myself and putting myself in the shoes of the other, them as well, I don't think it would be compelling in any sense of the word to have missives contain the entirety of all the information my persona knew about Lumbridge to give other groups the ability to have every 'reason' to know about your group and KOS your people, its playing a game rather than telling a story. Unfortunately that fell through as I mentioned and it isn't like a book where I can 'delete' what has happened in order to rewrite to better suit the changes that happened, but nevertheless, that shit sucked and why I try not to hold people to mega high standards, given we're all a bunch of nerds essentially acting and writing all in one take. 

Looking over the other points you detailed above, I definitely agree, and it is partially why I just find myself despising a lot of the situations that unfold, as you can sum up the new 'meta' of conflict as basically this.

There is no real 'meat' behind conflicts recently, literally just "You're cringe and I can rally more than you so die." Having been roleplaying for ages, LotC is the only server I think I've struggled to integrate with in terms of mindset given how divisive the community is, some people to me treat it basically like a factions towny PvP server with some light RP elements, while others yearn for complex story lines you might find in big novel series, movies or TV shows. There is a lot more I would say but to prevent myself going into a complete tangent, I think LotC needs to decide what community it wishes to cater to as it isn't sustainable as it is, and on the smaller scale of missives, how should they be handled in future given their incredible ease of access with how unbelievably effective they are as an OOC weapon. I believe more moderation is a step in the right direction, but do we think trying to 'gamify' missives a solution by actually making people have to post these things in game rather than a flick of the hand wave birds and couriers and this gives people the ability to counter it in game by taking them down preventing people from reading it, maybe for JUST for RP posts hide the rep ratio rather than outright removal so only staff can see it, what further rules should we include for missives in regards to what you mentioned prior 'meta baiting', I've personally had a distaste for missives that have included screenshots of letters to show they weren't forgery or evidence, as it treats missives more akin to Facebook/Twitter than an actual piece of paper mass produced, do we make people have silly lil in game builds to represent printing presses before they can send out missives, etc. I think when it comes to a revamp of how missives are handled we need to juggle the RP sensibility of it, along with it not being overly complex to post a missive.

[argonian 14254]

2 hours ago, The King Of The Moon said:

Except comparatively it is true. Though it's you I'm quoting in particular this response is aimed at most of the replies on here that seem to be missing the aim of this thread.

 

This post isn't claiming that the forums were completely unused for RP back then or that that would've been a good thing. It's about the weight given to these posts and the purpose behind them that has drastically changed due to the newer social elements. 

 

Forum RP - in geeneral but also especially in the context this thread is regarding - is also objectively more common now.



Go into either of these Subforums and the vast majority of these posts are bounties, trades and government missives. They also predate the global auction plugin (it didn't exist for much of this time and when it did every auction was nation specific) though there was overlap with PVP default and Nexus wherein item trading was far more lucrative and minas generally were far more important, and the forums were the main way to broadcast this. 
Shitposting, 'my character thinks you're stupid', memes and generic Fail RP rep farms were simply less present in the Roleplay Subforum. Ratio-ing was hardly a concept. People did not have the capacity to ping their posts in multiple chats nor pin them in permanent channels (though on occasion Skype was spammed, sure).

Now let's look to this map alone, noting that we have
 - Less players
 - A defunct economy
 - An aviary plugin
The Aevos Roleplay Archive, under Old Realms, currently only contains nonexistent nations. It also doesn't contain all of them.

Combine this with the currently active Aevos Roleplay forum

 

150,998 total posts.

 

Yes, I am aware there is wiggle room there for older nations - mostly racial capitals - which have retained posts from past maps.
Though again, the volume isn't the issue here; It's the quality. No-one is advocating there should be less forum roleplay and I'm sorry if I gave the wrong impression there.

 

What my thread hopes to highlight and challenge is the OOC weaponisation of the RP Subforum through a change to the rep structure, a change in player mindsets and stricter moderation on malicious non-rp posts.

 

We can go back and forth on numbers all day but you need only look at half the conversations in this thread to see Fail RP, Metaplay and Toxicity are rampant. Yes, these were issues that existed in 'the Skype days' but the Roleplay Subforum wasn't the place for it, and it still  shouldn't be.

Even if you're going to argue 'oh but actually everyone was toxic on the RP Subforum'... Why would you want to excuse it? As I said in my initial post this isn't a nostalgia-bait thread trying to revert us back to some unreachable, misunderstood past. It's a post to promote change.

Why is the removal of rep - and other steps people are suggesting - a change you'd want to resist? Are you content with the current situation? If so, why? 

-

On an unrelated note, @Venomous_Pup my status update mentioned in the original thread wasn't aimed at you. It was aimed at the crippling reality that any and all roleplay we did in that conflict was immediately overshadowed by frost witches trying to ratio us, instead of actually coming to attack us.

I do not think your roleplay or your post in isolation was invalid nor do I think that this was your intention, though I do believe the conflict generally (specifically between our two groups, not between our or your group and the third or fourth parties we engaged with) lost steam because of the actions of players using the forums as a crutch and a tool to show off "my group better than their group" to the rest of the server rather than actually engaging with eachother in RP. You need only look at the instance of our group kidnapping a princess and inviting the world to come and save her, only for a post to be put up saying 'stop copying us!!!' in response, as an example of the forum rep > server roleplay mindset in this conflict. It didn't create any narrative or drive any interaction, it just served to as a platform for green numbers to OOCly demonstrate the popularity of each group. This was one example amongst many that left us asking 'what's the point if this is the "roleplay" we're going to get out of this?' and in the end led us to abandon it for other pursuits that made more sense in the context of the RP we'd had on the server. I left this explicit example out of the initial post because I didn't want to go on a holier-than-thou tirade calling out your group, knowing full well that the group I myself was involved with had some of its own problems unrelated to the context of this thread.

This was the broader context of my status, and from this thread I can see others have felt similarly about their own nation/ religious conflicts. You caught a stray, and I should've been quicker to soothe your concerns when you replied to my initial status update. For this I am sorry. 
 

Eh. I'm not sure you can make any conclusions based on the archives.

 

Skype:

 

Discord (2 most recent maps for anyone new):

 

I actually remember talking in Arcas about how in the early maps, every single random footman would write up a big narrative PK post but that in that map, even very significant characters would often make none at all.

 

I'd support removing or limiting rep but idk why you're linking it with forum activity more broadly. Narrative posts are nice and I'd rather new users not think the server is dead from seeing tumbleweeds roll through the forums like I remember from some older maps.

 

The rep thing is probably also only tangentially related to people not doing anything IRP. People used to do both. I think people shitting themselves at the thought of actually following the **** through with anything is another cultural issue. Hopefully removing rep will help with that but I'm doubtful.

[Samson Option 9652]

I appreciate the discussion being had here and I personally support removing reputation from the forums.

 

I do want to engage in a related discussion and perhaps ask for clarification on your position @The King Of The Moon:

 

Do you think narrative posts are harmful to server culture?

 

I've always utilized roleplay that I've done in server to help fuel storytelling in the form of narratives. I say this not at a jab at anyone in particular, but I personally see players tend to approach LotC in two ways: LARPing vs. Creative Writing. I see myself in the camp of the latter (and I am not claiming it is the superior camp by any means, to each their own). I interact with players on the server to set up creative scenarios with which to riff on with my fiction-writing skills. I actually credit this as part of the charm to the infamous Teutonic Order I founded in the 1.0 Aegis map which was buttressed by one of the longest narrative-post threads probably in server history. We would roleplay different storylines & scenarios and then essentially write narrative posts that creatively "filled in the gaps" that invariably exists when, at the end of the day, the server is literally just 1-many avatars typing chat logs to one another + PvPed.

 

I would still engage in the fictional writing process even if I'm not seeing likes and green-shaded boxes with numbers inside them. Reputation had nothing to do with my narrative writing, I simply enjoyed the exercise & hobby of fiction writing.

[Venomous_Pup 2978]

10 hours ago, Khodafiz said:

Do you think narrative posts are harmful to server culture?

 
I think that can be answered by the following he said above.

 

16 hours ago, The King Of The Moon said:

Yes, I am aware there is wiggle room there for older nations - mostly racial capitals - which have retained posts from past maps.
Though again, the volume isn't the issue here; It's the quality. No-one is advocating there should be less forum roleplay and I'm sorry if I gave the wrong impression there.

 

What my thread hopes to highlight and challenge is the OOC weaponisation of the RP Subforum through a change to the rep structure, a change in player mindsets and stricter moderation on malicious non-rp posts.

 

We can go back and forth on numbers all day but you need only look at half the conversations in this thread to see Fail RP, Metaplay and Toxicity are rampant. Yes, these were issues that existed in 'the Skype days' but the Roleplay Subforum wasn't the place for it, and it still  shouldn't be.

Even if you're going to argue 'oh but actually everyone was toxic on the RP Subforum'... Why would you want to excuse it? As I said in my initial post this isn't a nostalgia-bait thread trying to revert us back to some unreachable, misunderstood past. It's a post to promote change.

Why is the removal of rep - and other steps people are suggesting - a change you'd want to resist? Are you content with the current situation? If so, why? 

The quality has drastically decreased where I've seen a recent post in which the veil between IRP and OOC was completely obliterated by the inclusion of a Discord screenshot and an artist depiction of their persona at a computer in a reply to a missive. While I do find that post funny, it goes entirely against this in the Roleplay Standards.

 

 

I can understand given the situation in that post it could be considered 'justified' but the rules shouldn't be bent over subjective interpretations of if someone deserves to be clowned on IRP as I believe it leads to a slippery slope and results in the community feeling fractured as it is now. And I agree with what was said above, why should we in anyway excuse toxicity, poor roleplay or whatever? We should actively be punishing people that consistently break rules and go out of their way to be disruptive with low effort RP, and encouraging people that legitimately want to enjoy the server to do better over crashing out. 

Focusing back on the matter of narrative posts themselves, they'll simply always be a tool, and like such that can be used for 'good' and 'evil', effectively or amateurly. The main issue lies under intention of the poster, are they trying to create an impactful narrative or simply opt for the 'effective' route and clown on the player/group until they give up/quit the server. The biggest problem when it comes to moderating these posts is it is impossible for staff to look at someone and instantly determine if the intention behind the post was good or bad unless it is so blatant (though some would argue some of the more recent posts, are that blatant). I should perhaps ask for you to clarify by narrative post do you mean a post detailing Roleplay that has occurred, or any RP based posts such as missives and personal RP experiences? If you mean the personal RP experience I believe they are mostly fine, I have a few hang ups but they're mostly minor, it is more so missive posts because they can be incredibly demoralizing entire player bases on an OOC level when they see an overwhelming number of people starting to clown on them for something they likely didn't even personally partake in. 

[Samson Option 9652]

On 10/20/2024 at 10:38 PM, Venomous_Pup said:

 
I think that can be answered by the following he said above.

 

The quality has drastically decreased where I've seen a recent post in which the veil between IRP and OOC was completely obliterated by the inclusion of a Discord screenshot and an artist depiction of their persona at a computer in a reply to a missive. While I do find that post funny, it goes entirely against this in the Roleplay Standards.

 

 

I can understand given the situation in that post it could be considered 'justified' but the rules shouldn't be bent over subjective interpretations of if someone deserves to be clowned on IRP as I believe it leads to a slippery slope and results in the community feeling fractured as it is now. And I agree with what was said above, why should we in anyway excuse toxicity, poor roleplay or whatever? We should actively be punishing people that consistently break rules and go out of their way to be disruptive with low effort RP, and encouraging people that legitimately want to enjoy the server to do better over crashing out. 

Focusing back on the matter of narrative posts themselves, they'll simply always be a tool, and like such that can be used for 'good' and 'evil', effectively or amateurly. The main issue lies under intention of the poster, are they trying to create an impactful narrative or simply opt for the 'effective' route and clown on the player/group until they give up/quit the server. The biggest problem when it comes to moderating these posts is it is impossible for staff to look at someone and instantly determine if the intention behind the post was good or bad unless it is so blatant (though some would argue some of the more recent posts, are that blatant). I should perhaps ask for you to clarify by narrative post do you mean a post detailing Roleplay that has occurred, or any RP based posts such as missives and personal RP experiences? If you mean the personal RP experience I believe they are mostly fine, I have a few hang ups but they're mostly minor, it is more so missive posts because they can be incredibly demoralizing entire player bases on an OOC level when they see an overwhelming number of people starting to clown on them for something they likely didn't even personally partake in. 

 

I realized I had not yet responded to you, my apologies.

 

I completely agree with the gist of King of the Moon's speaking out against people using missive posts & some varieties of narrative posts as Trojan horses to sneak-diss their opponents. Usually my narrative posts have been in the form of describing just-past events in a storytelling fashion. I believe my track record and forum activity can be canvassed, but I've never cared to use my storytelling abilities to mock or denigrate any players. That being said, if say I am writing a story based on a duel that may have occurred between my character & Character X and I had won in RP, I will write the story reflecting my character having won the duel but not with any blatant or underhanded language mocking the player behind the keyboard controlling Character X.

 

Some of my more storied narrative posts are in my signature in case I need to make my form of storytelling clearer. I don't really do "missive" posting as they typically feel more bureaucratic & essay-like as opposed to fiction & prose-like.