Ideas to Boost Activity

-ahem-

Regarding your question about what the board's goals are, honestly we're just looking to host an environment that we can all have a good time on. I don't care if that means changing even the core fundamentals of the site if it means a better time for everyone.

As for your ideas, normally I'd shy away from changes to the core "plot" of the site but considering we're rather early in this remakes life and there are only a handful of people currently active I think that this could be a good thing. I really like all of your ideas to push the AUness...limits...? Particularly your idea to involve the Bijuu.

I'd like to know what everyone else thinks about possible plot/backstory/setting changes? This would impact anyone with a completed character obviously, as most of us would have to rewrite our histories to some degree. If you like the thought, what kinds of ideas do you have and what would you like to see? Please feel free to share these ideas as well as any others you think could help out.

First off, as someone playing a genin character, all I have to ask is: where are the village rosters? I understand that it's still rather early in the game, but the village rosters we had before were pretty integral to the Naruverse and the village system. Not having them around anymore is a little... Weird I guess? Though that's not really the word for it. I WANT CUTE GENIN TEAM ANTICS WHERE ARE THEY. We have all these jounin running around but no genin for them to rear? (Also, what are these insane ryo prices for upgrading your character? They're kind of a turn off to anyone shooting for younger, lower ranked shinobi, I think, and to be frank, they're half the reason my Kiri genin was brought back as a Kiri t.jounin. I also want to discuss the whole issue with E-ranks on higher leveled shinobi and having to unlock other skills, but that's for another day when site mechanics ever get brought up?)

Second, concerning the plot, I think it'd be better either to go pure sandbox or have a long-standing set site plot that may or may not be influenced by how the characters react to it? I don't really know what's happening right now. I'm aware there's some sort of plot to this site, but it feels like it's not really... integrated? Or really long-lasting, to be honest, since it's just people disappearing and stuff, unless there's something bigger to it. Having staff play all the villains is cool, but having members drive that side of the plot too would be awesome as well. And there isn't really much to push the characters to start plotting together (side eyes the lack of rosters and plotters) so... People are more likely to come up with their own plots to drive the site if they know they have the freedom to do so and that it won't interrupt anything, I guess... And I mean, yeah, it's only the beginning and all, but I've seen excellent sites go down simply because their promised site plot events started too late into the game and if that's going to be the case, then... //shrugs (Also people might be more motivated to create plotters if they get rewarded for them or something, just a thought.)

As it is now, it just feels kind of meh to me. Missions are literally the only thing driving us at this point, and that's not really a good thing? More staff involvement would definitely be nice, even if that might be a little too much to ask for at times. Having a site reset might be something to consider since it kind of feels like we're restarting something with a few missing pieces right now... It's like bringing back an old site with a different atmosphere, and that's kind of... I mean yeah I guess we already had a reset but it still just feels off, kind of, you know what I mean? It doesn't feel the same anymore, even if we're kind of trying to make it go back to the way it was. But that's probably just me.

Um, another thing, I think it'd be cool if you gave each of the villages their own quirks or something? Or even had the staff make clans and stuff to give the villages a push in the right direction, since we don't seem to have as many clans running around this time. Konoha and Kiri are really booming, partly because everyone knows them really well, so taking advantage of the AU-ness and building on the villages that aren't really well known might populate them some more? Having like a village gathering event every few months or so would also give all the village shinobi a chance to mingle with the other villages in a peaceful way. (Something like the clan gatherings from the Warriors series or something, you know?)

But um. That's really all I have to say? It's just a feeling I've had for a while now.

Mitsuru Tsubasa
Feel free to bring up any questions/concerns/problems you have with the site mechanics in this thread. Especially if you feel like they're part of the reason some people are turning away. If we wait until after we have lots of member to change them it becomes more of a burden and much more difficult to do. Now might be the best time to set things on a different track.

As for your first questions regarding rosters, we removed them this time around because that is where a lot of our previous inactivity occurred. Forcing 4 people to roleplay together works fine so long as that is what the people had in mind for their character but what we saw was that a team would start a mission and would either not finish it because one or two people would disappear or because members of the team were busy role playing in their own sub-plots elsewhere. It was our intention to leave the possibility of starting genin teams up to the individuals, so that you aren't forced to be a part of one so you can actively roleplay with anyone while still allowing you to group up should that be what you want to do. I think part of the problem this time is the lack of members/genin more than anything.

To your second point regarding high cost for upgrading your skills, you have a good point. While I'm adamant that we should continue to have the cost of upgrading your skills into A or S-Rank remain the way they are I think reducing the cost for E to D and D to C Rank could help encourage (or at least not discourage) people to make lower ranked characters. My initial concern when increasing the costs was that some of our more prolific writers last time around easily jumped up their ranks without any restraint at all, while also being able to purchase weapons, jutsu and rare abilities such as senjutsu, all within a couple of months. Forcing locked in E-Rank skills for non-primary skills and having a higher cost to increase the ones you do have was designed to combat this problem.

Finally, speaking to your comments about plot integration. Initially Elysium was designed to be a completely freestyle (as in no stats or limitations on what you could do besides the standard rule against god-modding) sandbox experience. Over time stats were introduced because it seemed like an easier way of gauging a person's skill level. The sandbox element remained for a short time but as more people got involved it seemed like certain individuals wanted to have a larger plot going on in the background. Something they could be a part of if they wanted but not something that was forced on them. So that's kind of where we ended up today. I agree that the whole set-up is kind of a mess and perhaps just wiping the slate clean and starting fresh with one or the other might work best for the site. We're considering this because quite frankly, at this moment in time even I am finding it hard to be active IC because there is very little going on.

Devro Ishiyama
When you suggest that the villages could be going through a "renaissance" are you speaking to a general rebuilding of the current system with new elements or were you thinking something along the lines of a complete restructuring with a completely different setup?

Tatsu
This was initially Mitsuru Tsubasa's point but I wanted to address it along with some of your suggestions. RE Village incentives, I like it. Though I try very hard to avoid handouts in the form of just raw money or IC items, this seems to be what people want more than IC incentives such as unique role playing opportunities. I do have some ideas regarding this and I'll post a little further down about them. Not sure what people are looking for in a village so if anyone has any other ideas on incentivizing recruitment I'd love to hear them.

I also like the idea of village reputation as far as the idea goes. However, in application I'm concerned that while it might be great for spurring activity at first with a little friendly competition it could result in one village eventually always winning due to things that an individual can't control, like another members activity. This could be frustrating for members from other villages as they literally cannot do anything about it. This would also cause some new members to want to be a part of the winning team, essentially compounding the problem. To counter this we could make the reward for winning something less important but then we run the risk of a lack of participation. I'm worried that in the long term this system could do more harm than good. If anyone has an idea to implement something like this though in a fair and balanced way, please feel free to share.

Also, there you go offering your help again. One day you will regret that because I'm more than happy to put people to work

Anywho, regarding my own personal ideas. I wanted to share a couple of them with you to give you guys an idea of what I have in mind for the future. Some of these are extensions of the ideas you've already provided here so if you see anything you want to contribute to or think wouldn't work/should be changed make sure you say something here.

- With the introduction of a more in-depth backstory we could add certain elements to make the village dynamic more interesting for role players. Improving the villages for me would essentially be a three step process. The first step would be to introduce more interesting villages. Speaking hypothetically, if several of the villages were destroyed or wiped out in a war or other cataclysmic event (natural disaster brought on by some crazy badass shit) we could start off with two or three canon villages with the addition of one or two completely original villages. These new villages could be hosted in new or crazy locations such as floating fortresses, in the Great White North (Canada, my homeland), completely underground? Or they could simply be remakes of current villages that tend to not attract as many members, such as our Kumo or Suna. Same place, new branding. As for the canon villages, we'd have to keep these interesting too, so we could change up their dynamics. Have one being operated as a dictatorship? Perhaps it is a village that was almost destroyed and the shinobi there are essentially living in ruins while they work to rebuild? Essentially, I'd like to make it so that new members aren't so inclined to see the shiny missing nin positions and jump on board there. I want them to feel like being a part of a village again. So that's step one. Enhance the initial appeal of the villages.

-Step two to village beautification. Make each village unique when compared to the others. This will be partially completed in step one with setting and backstory but I want to take it a step further. Instead of the current genin-chuunin-jounin separation that exists as the sole distinguisher between village members I want to introduce an organization/group system. Because I'm pretty lazy right now I'm going to pull directly from canon and use examples like Root and the Police Force from Konoha, or the Shinobi Swordsmen of the Mist from Kiri. This feature could be tame, offering an avenue like the Police force to just give you a chance to interact with others and take on unique missions and role playing experiences. Or we could go completely crazy and introduce something more specialized, such as a powerful cult-like sect that uses forbidden jutsu or a completely new type of technique. For members who show up without an idea in mind, these could inspire them to join up and get involved immediately with other role players in the same element. Further to the organization/groups someone mentioned staff created clans. This could be done as a supplement to this, offering even more "pre-made" environments for people to be a part of. Expanding even further, the whole village could be unique, with some form of special trait that distinguishes their shinobi from others in the world (either a physical trait or something to do with fighting style, objective, personality, et cetera). Though this could force something on players creating their characters so I feel opinion on this would differ greatly from individual to individual and could hurt villages that utilize it. 

-The final step involves making interactions between villages easy. Currently we have a very vague village alliance system that wasn't meant to be utilized until further into this sites life. However we could build on this by simply using IC interactions between villages and their members to determine these relationships. With a little bit of staff intervention to prevent rogue members from starting all out wars, this could end up maximizing not just your opportunities to role play with people from other villages but give people a sense that they own their actions and the consequences that go along with that. Certain missions or plot points could be devised to utilize these relationships or to intentionally strain them and the decisions of those involved would ultimately reflect the outcome of that particular thread. We talked about the reputation system earlier, and while I'm not sure a system based in numbers or something like that would be a good idea, I do think we need some sort of tangible connection between them and this is sort of my answer to that.

-Onto my thoughts for a plot. We've already talked about a potential event that wiped out some of the less cool villages but to elaborate on this point I think we should have something that isn't directly from the Naruto canon be the catalyst in this. Possibly some ungodly evil? Perhaps totally-original-and-in-no-way-related-to-the-land-of-iron-samurai samurai decided to stage a military campaign? I'm also in favour of mother nature or whoever she chose as her Naruto stand-in taking a beating club to the entire shinobi world, leaving much of it in ruins and opening us up to tons of potential plots. I think that a good way to implement bijuu in this would be to have them either assist in the destruction or be a part of the defense against whatever cataclysm shapes our site. This could result in the Jinchuuriki having a place in the future of the site (as much as I hate to let only 9 members be that cool). At the start of the plot, where we as role players would take over, I think there should be one entire village that acts as an antagonist for a plot arc. This stops just one member from controlling the entire plot and lets anyone participate if they choose to. And without having to read up on hundreds of other posts. They know they're jumping into the hot seat and they can take it from there. Alternatively, we could take a less conventional approach and drop us into the middle of the backstory, where whatever horrible thing that destroys the world is still happening. 

-Side bar regarding the plot. I also really like the idea of wiping out the villages and instating a "survival of the fittest" rule that results in lots of small clans and groups of members banding together and fighting each other. But with that said, I feel like we're crossing from pushing the AUness of the site into "holy shit, what's a shinobi?" land if we take this approach and while this might appeal to more general fantasy role players overall, it would hurt the original Elysium members that wanted to be part of the more standard Naruto-but-not-Naruto site so I am opposed to it for this reason.

I've got more ideas for bits and bobs here but because I've rambled for more than most people are going to read I want to summarize with just some insight about myself. I prefer to do role plays that are heavily plot driven and are completely free style in terms of creation and your character's power. I don't typically do stat based role plays and the introduction of money as a role playing component is fairly new to me as an Administrator. This is largely why I shy away from using these kinds of things as rewards and try to stick to IC rewards (such as cool things to do or interesting groups to be a part of). I realize that less and less people tend to enjoy these elements and that this style of role playing (at least in a fantasy or fan-series setting) is going the way of the sword. With that said I'd like to find a healthy balance between my preferred style of role playing and the role playing that I know most of our members enjoy. This is why I think having a strong plot based site using mechanics that mesh well with the Naruto universe would be the best choice.

So yah, sorry for the lengthy post. Let me know what you think about these ideas. Let me know if you think we should build off of these or if you think I'm heading in the wrong direction. It seems that most of the people voting want to see more events or plots that they can be a part of and there seem to be at least a handful of us that would like to see another "reboot". This is the direction we're leaning right now so please make sure to contribute if you have anything you'd like to see or want to say about these topics.