In a cataclysm known as the Nightfall, the worlds were almost completely destroyed by a harrowing surge of darkness.
In the shadows of the ensuing chaos a new group has taken shape. Led by an Aegyl named Kalos, the 11th Hour touts an esoteric knowledge of how to combat the darkness and restore the worlds. They might be the worlds’ best chance at survival; but nobody really knows enough about them to confirm or deny their claims.
On the brink of collapse, the universe holds its breath in anticipation. Of restoration? Of destruction? It is up to individuals like yourself to decide.
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I'm just going to suggest what's probably been on everyone's minds. You might hate me for it or think less of me for it, but Cadey's opinion of rebooting the plot completely seems the most sound to me. It's guaranteed to produce a shake-up if not a complete destabilization of what we've come to expect from the site, but a change of pace would be good for the future of this site. Yes, I recognize the disadvantages: player cliques becoming disbanded, entire histories being wiped. Going back to factory default settings is not at first glance an attractive option for many of us.
Yet, consider for a moment that there may be no other adjustment or fix that can cure this wave of inactivity. Trying to give the site CPR by offering incentives sounds good on paper, but it might not fix the glaring issue that the current plot is moving at a snail's pace. Adding side-plots isn't going to help because it'll just fracture the community further and displace them from the core issue, which is the site's main plot. There are issues concerning growth as well. People may not be joining because they see how convoluted the history is and they're too afraid to join. Or they might be afraid that they can't meld in with all the player cliques. Or they don't care for the post-KHII plot. I can't even begin to address the number of issues that crop up with timelines, and that's something the staff would have to sort out on their own.
For now though, I say this: let's do a plebiscite on the issue of rebooting the site. The members who may vote can be operationally defined as those with a certain number of posts or certain number of months/years being here, etc., with quorum (the minimum number of votes required for a majority) being 75% of that group. In brief, if 75% of this group agrees to reboot, the staff agrees to revamp everything and start anew - or change things drastically enough that the site has a new lease on life. But if more than 25% of the group disagrees, then things remain the same and we stay the same course. You're probably asking why 75/25 and not 51/49, and my reason is this: with critical issues like this, an overwhelming majority should be secured to make certain that a reboot is going to be the best decision for all parties involved. 51/49 is too even and leaves a lot to be desired.
That's my only suggestion, asides from an in-game item store that accepts some alternative currency other than munny and offers unique items to players. These items confer descriptive bonuses like resistances to spells and certain kinds of attacks. To promote character interaction, said items would only be active or effective in parties. The important distinction here is that the shop would be grounded in the context of the roleplay, not separate from it like a different board. These shops could be owned by Scrooge McDuck and would move from location to location like a traveling caravan, offering items during events. The key here is that no private messages or bland messages like "i want to buy X" would be allowed ... players would actually have to have their characters interact with the merchants. Site activity is NOT the same thing as roleplaying activity, so it's the latter that we need to promote, not the former!
You're completely missing the point. The incentive to reset the plot is because you can't improve on something that's frankly become incredibly convoluted and complex over the years. No, players aren't expected to know and understand every little event in this site's history, but you're asking them to make a pretty big leap by getting them to make characters and get involved in something that's so big and beyond their care and understanding. The same kind of history isn't there for those characters. They don't have similar kinds of attachments and bonds that would have naturally spurred them to care about "the main problem".
Let's set the record straight: when I was here two years ago, I didn't want to get near the site's main plot not only because there were too many characters involved, but also because Leiz wouldn't have known any of them. It'd be more of an adventure on rails guided by constant questions than a natural progression from being a bystander to being an active participant. I'm not interested in beating around the bush senselessly to find some sort of natural, seamless way to get into a plot ... roleplaying should be fun, not work. If you're going to inadvertently create a bunch of work for me to get involved in what should be accessible, then I'm probably just going to flip you the bird and do something that runs counterpoint to what you're doing.
If you want to do things the hard way and try to salvage what's left, this is what you should do. Don't be concerned about all the bloody sprinkles and trinkets you can add to improve the plot. It's not the plot that should be improved. It's the means by which players can get involved and interact that should be improved. Find a way to reduce the amount of friction that players experience when they try to get their characters involved in the main plot. Don't add incentives and bonuses for being a good player because they want to be involved. Give them a reason to be involved. Find an open thread that characters are in and piss all over their corn flakes with a villain. Give them a reason to get angry. Take something from them, break something of theirs, and you'll have them coming after you for as long as you'd like.
In short, what am I saying? Bring the adventures to the players instead of making them work to get involved. You'll probably have more success that way.
May 10, 2013 1:20:25 GMT -4
Last Edit: May 10, 2013 1:24:06 GMT -4 by leizryada
This leaves me to wonder if you've read this thread at all.
We have been creating threads all through the forums inviting people into plots. From small, world-based plots to organizations meant to rise against the Darkness, we're giving everybody the chance to join the main plot by doing something so simple as looking at a flier.
Seeing as we don't create your story, my only advice is that you piss on your own cornflakes.
Meanwhile, Ansem and Xemnas are destroying Worlds and capturing Hearts for their own reasons. This is above one little character, OC or not. It's about interspace as a whole. It's the player's choice if he wants revenge for his losses, because Xemnas isn't going to take the time to troll some random person in Traverse Town because he's bored.
Doubting whether I've actually read the thread is not exactly convincing me that you need help. But I'm going to bite again one more time. It might be the last thing I'll say in this thread since I seem to just be inspiring resentment rather than thoughtful discussion.
I'm not asking you to write people's stories for them. I'm saying that if you want more people to get involved in the main plot to push things forward, you're going to have to do more than put up pretty little fliers about the new event thread and wait for people to get involved.
Don't get me wrong. People will get involved. However, nine times out of ten, it's more or less the same group of players. If you want more people on board, you're going to have to go a step further and pull other threads into the narrative weave of the plot when the opportunity arises. This involves networking with people who have open threads already and taking the opportunity to meet them halfway. If you can't bear to do this, then fine, keep doing what you're doing. It's going to be just as effective as throwing mud at the wall to see what sticks.
Speaking from experience, activity can only come from engagement. Whatever it is you think you're doing isn't engagement. It's a platform for engagement, but just because there's a stage doesn't mean there's going to be a play. Take the steps required to put players knee-deep in it from the get-go and you won't have a problem getting them to be involved to keep the site thriving.
I believe if you cited more specific examples instead of arrogantly throwing around half-baked metaphors, it would be far easier to take you seriously.
However, I like theatre, I'll use the last one. WD has a venue, a set, casting directors, Given Circumstances (I hate to use the traditional term "book" here because we function as both actors and writers), props, costumes, and even a bloody stage manager who duel functions as a lighting and set designer. However, even the stage manager can't make her actors show up on time if they choose to take the late train into town. And unlike union theatres, we can't cast understudies. I think what you are TRYING to say, is: You believe WD also needs a director.
Even that's unclear, since you said "Cadey's opinion of rebooting the plot completely seems the most sound to me," and conversely, "It's not the plot that should be improved." You go on to say, "Don't be concerned about all the bloody sprinkles and trinkets you can add to improve the plot." and also suggest, an,"in-game item store that accepts some alternative currency other than munny and offers unique items to players."
I see you are trying to help, but I am having trouble wading through your contradictory statements. What I'm (possibly) getting is:
1) You don't like the plot, but you also think it should be left alone in favor of working on other structural issues. 1a) You don't like the plot and think it should be completely rewritten. 2) You want someone to read every thread and give blocking (as it were) by saying things like, "Go to thread C because something is going to happen there."
I am feeling annoyed because you structure your posts as though you were on the offensive, which in turn, makes me feel like fighting back. Even if you have a valid suggestion, it is not only difficult for anyone here to actually ascertain what it is you want, but also harrowing to even try. If you state your suggestions in a way that invites us to read and discuss with you and I believe you will get more positive results.
I'm suggesting alternatives because I can. A shop is an interesting idea, but it's exactly what I would have claimed it to be earlier. A trinket. Something fancy. I knew that if I only spoke about resets/do-overs that people would just bash the one thing and not have anything positive to take away from this debate, so I'm trying to give you guys the benefit of additional suggestions.
But you want examples about the difficulty of getting into main plots? Look back roughly two years ago.
Case #1 (No Engagement): Port Royal was being attacked by the Dark XII, but in an event thread (I think?). It wasn't something you could be a part of unless you wanted to awkwardly saunter in and ask for permission to be there. Not many characters would have a good reason to just waltz in out of circumstance. Leading up to this thread, there were constant hints being dropped that the Dark XII were after the world heart. Eventually it just kinda collapsed in on itself and they walked away with it, no problemo. Staff's reason: "oh, I guess nobody cared enough about the world heart". Oh, piss on that. I never even fucking knew about the world heart being in danger in the first place, not that my character would have done anything anyway. The de facto case regardless is that there clearly weren't enough opportunities for characters to get involved with the looming danger facing Port Royal because there was no one there to stop the Dark XII. And it goes back to what I was saying in my last post - a platform for engagement is not the same thing as engagement. You have to find a way to directly involve players first.
Case #2 (Terrible Execution): I'm making a new point here. During the same period, there was the Gummi Ship battle for Atlantis - a convoluted mess of a skirmish that took months of planning and playing. I swore it wasn't going to frickin' go anywhere. From the time I showed up to the time I quit, they were pretty much still at it. I know what you're probably thinking - that things had to be that way and whoever was involved should have sucked it up. I can't definitively say what the alternative to that skirmish should have been other than consistently breaking it up into mini-threads to move things along quicker. I know that other players who weren't in the planning process weren't going to be allowed to participate in the Atlantis defense event, anyway, so you're probably wondering what my point of contention here is. My issue is that large, overblown threads and events like this don't really give us a good name. People look at these events and say, "gee, I guess that's what event threads are like", and no, these threads are not at all representative of how event threads usually proceed. This leads to players distancing themselves further from the main plot and not wanting to get involved.
Of course, I'm speaking from my own experience being here in 2011. I don't have the time to sift through every event to tell you whether things have changed or stayed the same, but I'm making a good educated guess and saying that things are probably the same way because we're facing many of the same issues - a main plot moving at a snail's pace, characters not getting involved due to large, overblown threads or, more simply put, a complete lack of engagement. I've already told you how to get the player's engagement, so I don't know why you're arguing with me and telling me I'm not inviting people to a positive discussion when I've given you more than enough criticism to work with.
I hate being accused of just being on the offensive and the implication that I'm not being helpful when I've made enough of an effort to reach out and touch on some critical points. Forgive me if I'm being overtly blunt, but being treated to a two-sentence response lacking content and then being accused of not reading anything in the thread and being told to piss in my own cornflakes sounds like someone else is on the offensive. Not me.
May 10, 2013 15:50:01 GMT -4
Last Edit: May 10, 2013 15:51:56 GMT -4 by leizryada
Case 1 was actually the majority of the site in agreement of throwing the World away to replace it with one that would be used more often. It wasn't supposed to be a battle. It was supposed to be an ending. And who has the power to make Worlds disappear? None other than the Heartless. Ienzo took that World's Heart to Ansem himself, as I remember.
Case 2 was an experiment, from my point of view. There's never anything wrong with experimenting, and sometimes they go awry- there's no perfect way to do things, but it's not like we purposefully make it difficult. We take suggestions and requests and attempt to cook them into something feasible. In this event, we wanted to play out Atlantis' story much like the game does- by merging it with the Kingdom Hearts universe.
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Honestly, you shouldn't assume things are the same- it's not as if we don't know how to fix problems. The only issue is there are many ways to approach the problems, and finding the right one that would benefit the Roleplaying experience most is a hard decision.
to piss in my own cornflakes
And excuse me for using your own metaphor to make a point. But then again you should probably learn from it- if you were offended by it, that should tell you not to use it next time. Capiche?
Well, I can definitely see the points from both sides, but can we all just settle down and stop slinging mud at each other?
I'm okay with a site reset, as my character hasn't been around long enough to really matter to me. Alternatively, I understand there is a lot of history to this site and it is my main goal to get myself involved in this plot. There's been a lot of set up on my part, but I'm slowly trying to integrate Zephyr more into the site plot. That's me doing this, I'm not silently hoping important people will bust in my threads. In all honesty, I don't really want that. I've reached out to certain individuals with certain plans, and they're being well met. If I want my character integrated in the overall site plot, I'm going to make the effort to do this myself.
From what I understand, Leiz wants big names to come in and cause terror or whatnot in random threads. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do like the idea, however, sometimes doing so can step on toes with people who have plans for that thread. Entering willy-nilly will cause problems.
I don't want to self-advertise, but has anyone taken a gander at my Heart Fragments plot idea? That makes everyone a target, and involves folk whether they want to or not because, like I said, everyone is a target. Maybe we need a few more keywielders, light and dark side, to balance things out in terms of the gathering fragments, but I dunno. I really think it's something we as a whole can get behind.
I'd like to hear opinions, maybe!! *flutters about*
I'mma gonna lock this for the time being. Things are getting a bit heated - kinda why I requested that no discussion take place in this thread - and I think everyone needs to take a step back and cool down.
If you all want to continue this discussion/debating of ideas, please do so over PMs for the time being.