by RyoKnetegawa 29th May 2015, 6:01 pm
Kira You will be missed. You were a great friend and someone I enjoyed RPing with.
Now as someone who has been around RP sites, and has read all of the above complaints let me first make a few things clear and suggest how to fix them.
Innactive guilds- There are plenty of inactive guilds. These are guilds that have maybe 3 to 4 active members at any time for a given 4 month period. There are a few guilds who qualify, In Legal, Dark, Neutral. SM idk where this guild came from, but the fact that it exists and another guild wasn't allowed to take root is both insulting and insane. It is a 5 person guild. 5 people do not make a guild. But of course you (You being staff) allowed this to happen when you allowed Tartarus to be like 10 people. BF has had 7 people active in the last 99hrs. They are stronger than SM and might be able to survive if helped. Black Rose is one of the more active guilds. ST, Lamia is easily the most active Legal guild. ES and BP are tied for activity, Tartarus seems to be the most active dark mage as the majority of their members have been on in the last 99hrs. Still Guilds should be checked for activity every 4 months to make sure records are accurate. Site wide activity should be once every 6 months to keep accurate records. Also what the hell is with Rune Knights? there are maybe 5 of them. Why not just allow Rune Knights to be a position you apply for? Like Slayers, or Magic council, or wizard saints? Why not do it that way instead of giving another guild a thing. It would work better. Make like 15 rune knights or even 10. It would work just as well because i count maybe 5 or 6 rune knights in existence anyway. So don't get rid of it just adapt it.
Guilds in general- Now Personally I think that ES should be moved to the neutral guild. They aren't really a legal guild, and they aren't really a dark guild. So they are a neutral guild. Either open up Tartarus to everyone or add in another Dark guild. Grimoire hearts for example. FT, LS, ST, and BP are the big four from the manga/anime. They are the four legal guilds. End of discussion that's it. No more than 4. Also no more than 3 neutral guilds at any time. And these should be heavily monitored for activity. However if you really wanna increase the guild activity simple. REMOVE GUILDLESS. Remove it all together. I understand the appeal i really do, but you get the same benefits as you would if you're in a neutral guild. You can be in a guild and not interact with it. Hell both of my characters are strong examples of that. I try to interact with my guild in ST here and it works out that I occasionally get some good stuff. However my LS alt has barely interacted with his guild (Though not by choice) and I can do anything i want pretty much and if something interesting is going down in my guild I get to interact with that too. Remove guildless and I promise guilds will have a spike in activity from our new players.
Rank Culture- This is an RP. This is a functioning RP. EVERY SINGLE RP EVER. Has a rule for powering up, leveling, ranking, whatever. You need a clear definition of who can do what and who can't. If you don't the RP will get out of hand. I have watched bigger sites than this die from lack of power defining. If you remove Ranks, if you remove the rules for what people can and can't do you will have utter anarchy, chaos, and this site will die. I will not let this site die on my watch. However it should not have to be stated IC. Your character sheet on the left hand side of all posts you have says what rank you are, what your magics are, and etc. It's obvious an H rank is faster than an S rank. No need to state it ever. It's obvious a D rank spell can't compete with a B rank spell. Relax. If it gets to be a huge issue ICly Staff can step in and resolve it. It really is that simple it doesn't need to be a huge issue.
Friends- Staff you need to be above everyone. You need to be able to take your emotions out of the equation and deal with things. If someone is being rude, disrespectful, or plain hostile to another guest. Warn him, Temp-ban him, and if it persists Perma-ban him. I have been knocked hard on other sites for things I say and while I disagree with some of them most of them are justified and i've acted right. A staff needs to be able to defend everyone. HOWEVER! It should be noted that characters don't have to agree, get along, or like each other. Being mean ICly might just be part of your character (Frederick is an example here.) while being nice to everyone who you know, or just in general (Myself as the example here) might be part of your character. These are fine, and outside of the RP Frederick and I get along great, and I think of us as friends. You need to be allowed to make the character you want while remembering This is a game. You don't have to be like that all the time. You are allowed to relax, smile, laugh, joke, and just goof off. DON'T TAKE THIS TOO SERIOUSLY! THIS IS A GAME! Life is serious enough without you having to add more stress and pressure on yourself. If you can't dis-associate yourself from your character in order to have good interactions with the community around you here then you have a problem.
Dungeons- Add them or don't. Simple. It doesn't take this long to add in what appears to be a relatively straight forward concept. They have been on the site for about as long as I've been here and yet nothing has happened with them. Time to make a choice. Either add them, or don't. You can add small bits and pieces here and there it doesn't have to be an all at once kind of a thing. Just make it happen.
Staff- There are inactive staff members, there are vacant staff positions. Fix it. Staff should never be inactive. EVER. If you go inactive you are removed from staff and if you return you have a chance to explain why you were inactive. At the very least you should do this, if not have some members on standby as temp staff members to cover any inactive staff members. I see two vacant moderator positions in the list of official staff. Fill it. It isn't hard. However I will say I have noticed an increase in Staff members being on the site. However I haven't seen a significant increase in productivity from all of them. IQ, Raven, Speed, Kihia, Aedre, and Nat. You guys are amazing staff keep it up, and work even harder if you can. The rest I haven't seen much work done from them. Also remember staff are here to help things progress as well as enjoy themselves. Please remember this it should be 50-50 you, and site. For every post you make for yourself you should make one for a member. I know you staff work hard, I get it. I've been a staff for a site. Hell I've run a couple of sites before. It is hard demanding work, but if you do it you'll see more love, happiness, and better site health.
Guys I usually never speak up like this. I really don't. You all know me here by now, and if you don't then you can find all my posts and such, but I am speaking up now because we are losing a great member here today, and I don't want to see more members drop. I don't want to be brought back to a place where I drop because this site just falls. I love this site and that's why I came back. I love everyone on here and you're all my friends you are the ones I came back for, and I have been happier since I've gotten back. However if some of these things aren't fixed by the staff and the community as a whole we will continue to lose great members Like Kira.
Please let's all do our part as a community to keep this site alive, fun, and a great place for all.
P.S. Yes there is more I can get into, but those are the big issues right now I feel. If we can get these handled then we can move onto something else.]
Edit 1: As for more socializing. How about making post Jewels for social threads worth more? like even 10 more? Or doubling it? Yes it would require a staff member to watch for social threads, but it is easy considering you can put on there social or not. Then just add more jewels to their account. It would help people buy new spells, weapons, or whatever they wanted and make them happier with their character, and encourage more story, and character development.