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Post by ja1cob on Sept 22, 2016 22:42:10 GMT
This forum has too many RPs (roleplaying games). If I want to search recent posts and recent threads for interesting discussion about the game, I instead see posts from an RP about aliens in space, superheroes, pirates stranded on an island, a broken down spaceship, a fantasy adventure, politics in a fictional country, an evolution game, a business game, an alien infestation, UFO bounty hunters, civilizations on a fictional planet, and another evolution game. As you can see the sheer number of them is a little ridiculous, and I think we will need to cut down on these and stop letting every person and their dog run one so that we can leave room for actual discussion on the game.
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RoboTrannic
Spacefaring
haunting deviantart
Posts: 1,005
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Post by RoboTrannic on Sept 22, 2016 22:52:00 GMT
but we as forum members like to join in or make them so i don't see why wwe should restrict them after all its there choice
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Post by mitobox on Sept 22, 2016 23:05:04 GMT
I don't really see RPs posing any threat to more Thrive-centric forum activity, especially given that they are confined to their own section of the forum.
Not to toot my own horn, but I sort of "instigated" RP activity here (which could likely be a source of bias in this post). I don't think it was expected for them to gain much traction; I sort of just looked at the Sporum (which owes a lot of its activity to RPs) and figured the same could work for the Thrive Forum.
For my own proposal, cracking down on RPs will not encourage on-topic posting. For us to post about Thrive, we have to have engaging threads to post in. Something as simple as news or discussion swiped from the Development Forum could serve as this encouragement.
For example, a quick look at the Development Forum shows recent developer discussion about pili and mélèe combat in the Microbe Stage. Here on the forum, we could take that and discuss anything from how us userbase folk think it should work, to related big picture issues, such as gameplay vs. realism.
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Post by StealthStyleL on Sept 22, 2016 23:21:14 GMT
I think you are incorrect with your first point. There are not too many ongoing RP's: right now, on the first page of the recent threads, only 7 out of 30 are actually RP's. That hardly seems like too big a number to me.
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Post by ja1cob on Sept 23, 2016 2:03:02 GMT
Actually stealth style, 7 out of 30 is a lot. That's about 25 % of all discussions on Thrive's forums that are RPs. That's actually a lot. And especially since a lot of text there in the thread's it can make searching for topics very very hard. If we could do it by word count, I would argue that over 1/3'd of text is on the RPs. Which means finding stuff is harder. Also to those you want to compare it with Sporum, I'd like to remind you that Thrive's purpose is to go BEYOND what spore was and is. So if you want the RPs, go to the sporum. Here at Thrive we should be more productive/on topic. Cracking down on RPs would make it so those people who want to post about anything will be forced to post about content related material, and it would encourage the people making content to actually make it since the people will be waiting.
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Post by mitobox on Sept 23, 2016 2:34:30 GMT
Actually stealth style, 7 out of 30 is a lot. That's about 25 % of all discussions on Thrive's forums that are RPs. That's actually a lot. And especially since a lot of text there in the thread's it can make searching for topics very very hard. If we could do it by word count, I would argue that over 1/3'd of text is on the RPs. Which means finding stuff is harder. Fortunately, thanks to good forum design, each subforum has its own search function, making this a complete non-issue. Another advantage of giving RPs their own subforum. Also to those you want to compare it with Sporum, I'd like to remind you that Thrive's purpose is to go BEYOND what spore was and is. So if you want the RPs, go to the sporum. Here at Thrive we should be more productive/on topic. Cracking down on RPs would make it so those people who want to post about anything will be forced to post about content related material, and it would encourage the people making content to actually make it since the people will be waiting. Again, just cracking down on RPs won't encourage more Thrive discussion. The devs are quietly yet dilligently doing their work, so what is there to discuss? The RPs are a sort of pass time; if we weren't doing those, we'd just do something else leisurely. In fact, given that there wouldn't be something bringing us back to the forum multiple times a day, I doubt we would think of Thrive as much. Not thinking about Thrive means not thinking of potential discussions. Also, if anything, RPs help strengthen the community surrounding Thrive. It's something for us to do together, and makes the Thrive Community Forum feel more alive.
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Post by Moopli on Sept 23, 2016 2:37:00 GMT
You have good point, however this forum is a community forum -- one of the main purposes is to sustain the community of Thrive fans. We have a lot of loose fans who occasionally post somewhere (here, reddit, twitter, facebook, the website's comments, etc), but we also have, and want to cultivate, a proper community of and for fans of Thrive (and developers, too!).
While Thrive is still small, we want to cultivate a place where fans of Thrive can stick around, and in a small community without a continuous influx of new things to talk about, the best reason to stick around is having friends to talk to.
If we crack down on RPs, we might drive enough people away that the volume of discussion drops enough that other people (people who stick around for the discussion, like you presumably) will have less discussion to keep their interest; and thus we might end up with a death spiral.
What I think is more important is figuring out self-sustaining ways to increase the amount of discussion that keeps people like you and I interested.
Oh and I don't even have any sentimental attachment to RPs, in fact I don't even step foot in there anymore; I just think they still have value in cultivating that sense of community.
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Post by ATP Kraken on Oct 7, 2016 1:34:02 GMT
Should we have a filter for "Recent" that only searches The Game and Meta? As a non-RP/Forumgame-er, I may be slightly biased against them, but they can still exist. I just would rather look at recent posts that solely correspond to thoughts about the game. Also, these RPs generate discussion much faster than Thrive-based threads, due to their conversation nature, thereby occupying space where I would want to see how people suggest and bring news.
Disclaimer: I may be slightly biased against them, but they can still exist.
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Post by Moopli on Oct 7, 2016 15:21:44 GMT
There's probably a plugin for that, so I can take a look at setting something up that does that (I agree that it would be useful), but in the meantime you could use the search function to filter.
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Post by tammio on Oct 7, 2016 21:48:39 GMT
ja1cob well I wouldn't agree with claiming the site has to many RPGs. It gives us something to do and a reason to hang arround the site while we wait interesting discussions to happen. Take me as example: I'm no great biologist, frankly I know just as much about evolution as any old jerry from the street. So while I'll gladly join in a discussion on not-very-techincal stuff you propably won't see me beginning a discussion simply because I don't know enough to know what questions to ask. (and you'll just as rarely see me in a discussion "under" the aware or even society stage) And please don't say I could brush up my knoledge or learn programing or smth in order to be able to begin or participate in more technical discussions, because I neither have the time, nor do I frankly have the interest to do so (in a more than casual manner). I'm an Economist (ok I'm studying to be an economist) and thus my interests are there. However Microbes have no use for Cobb-Douglas functions or utility curves so I have a discussion were I can participate (see Cultural something, Traderoutes or Economic fluctuations thread) but I wait with in depth discussions until I know were the problems are and have a more than vage Idea of how the Economy is going to be simulated. Until then I'm glad there is something that motivates me to come back to this site once in a while and if thats RPGs or creativiy threads ir the Misc thread, thats just the way I pass the time until I can participate in some discussion somewere.
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