Roleplay World - Post Count incrementation removed in Roleplays

[PonyEcho 1,610]

Aww, I was wanting to being to RP there. Now theirs less point. What's the problem with getting post counts for an RPG? Everyone can play. It is a valid section, unlike the forum games which is pretty much just posting useless spam.

 

Everytime I RP, the Character sheets and Development threads are business only. Nothing more that that. Everything else goes into PM.

 

well you should RP because you think it will be fun, not so you can get your post count up.

i love to RP but when i look back and notice that i would be a squirrle still if i didnt RP, my Bird badge feels undeserving and cheap.

[Mindrop 412]

well you should RP because you think it will be fun, not so you can get your post count up.

i love to RP but when i look back and notice that i would be a squirrle still if i didnt RP, my Bird badge feels undeserving and cheap.

 

Forums I have been on thought of RP'ing as a prestigious thing and encouraged it. Most of the top posters RP'ed. I am not used to this view of RP'ing.

 

I don't do it because it gets my post count up either, but to me, its a fun way to relax and contribute to the community, unlike forum games.

 

Removing the post count turns it into nothing better than the forum game section. Nothing of value can come from it other than fun.

Edited August 5, 2012 by Mindrop

[Twilight Sky 449]

Why is this forum about ranking up? I came here for people and community...which I am glad that I did. ^-^

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,526]

Forums I have been on thought of RP'ing as a prestigious thing and encouraged it. Most of the top posters RP'ed. I am not used to this view of RP'ing.

 

So... whether an activity is prestigious or not is defined by whether or not it increments a superficial number on your profile?

 

We've done an awful lot of work to make MLP Forums a great place to roleplay and give it more attention than "here be a place to pretend you're a pony," from implementing a custom character database to putting a dedicated team of skilled roleplayers in charge of maintaining Roleplay World.

 

The responses to this thread are tempting me to remove all the badges and make posts everywhere count, if only so that the "Post Count" would actually be accurate, in that it counts how many times you've clicked the black button under the editor. Unfortunately, we have a multi-step member screening system here that is dependent on content contributions to specific areas of the community, so that isn't a feasible option at this time.

[Finesthour 7,287]

The responses to this thread are tempting me to remove all the badges and make posts everywhere count, if only so that the "Post Count" would actually be accurate, in that it counts how many times you've clicked the black button under the editor.

 

No... please don't do that.

 

The badges took time and effort to make, and it brought great joy to people.

Don't take it away just because some people think post count is their entire life.

Peter, I'm your top poster. Take it from me. Posts don't matter anyway.

Don't let a few bad apples ruin it.

[Mindrop 412]

So... whether an activity is prestigious or not is defined by whether or not it increments a superficial number on your profile?

 

We've done an awful lot of work to make MLP Forums a great place to roleplay and give it more attention than "here be a place to pretend you're a pony," from implementing a custom character database to putting a dedicated team of skilled roleplayers in charge of maintaining Roleplay World.

 

The responses to this thread are tempting me to remove all the badges and make posts everywhere count, if only so that the "Post Count" would actually be accurate, in that it counts how many times you've clicked the black button under the editor. Unfortunately, we have a multi-step member screening system here that is dependent on content contributions to specific areas of the community, so that isn't a feasible option at this time.

 

Nope, I just have never had it not count in post count. I know and understand that each community has its views on prestige, and this one is not on post count. I am just surprised and still trying to understand why it does not count. (I am an anthropology major, I question everything. And this is one of those time I probably should not.)

 

I plan on hitting the RPG's after my summer term finishes shortly.

 

And sorry, I am not trying to stir up trouble.

[NavelColt 22,880]

Removing ranks to make everything 'fair' is a horrible idea in my opinion. I don't have the patience you all have right now to make a big lengthy post about it, but that's my stance.

[Starshine 16,333]

In the ancient times, we don't have any badges, post counts never matter, and yet lots of people here just love to roleplay with each other with blatant disregard on how spammarafic others are. They roleplay because it's fun, the end.

 

And now some people act like every roleplaying activity should be rewarded by a certain number. Thing just got flipped over, eh?

[Shift 4,272]

Meh, its fine. I'm a frequent roleplayer, but I can easily level up either way (if Roleplays count or not, i'll still level up). Not a problem...for me at least.

[Samurshy 708]

One thing I can't stand is when others act condescending and rude just because someone shares their opinion and it is not one that they have themselves. Really people? Someone can't have their own view without you making fun of it, being rude and condescending? Whatever, I should have kept my mouth shut to begin with, it really got us no where in the grand scheme of things.

[Sky 746]

Hey if post count doesnt increase in the roleplay world does that mean you can take away the 200 character stuff.

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,526]

Hey if post count doesnt increase in the roleplay world does that mean you can take away the 200 character stuff.

 

The character minimum and post counter have nothing to do with each other. Just because a post doesn't increment a number on your profile doesn't mean we don't expect it to be a good post.

[Ice Storm 1,020]

 

The character minimum and post counter have nothing to do with each other. Just because a post doesn't increment a number on your profile doesn't mean we don't expect it to be a good post.

 

This, Exactly.

 

Just because the posts are not increasing the post count does not mean that the quality of what is being posted should go down. It's not a trade off, or a hand in hand trait. The 200 character minimum is there to make Role-players think about what they are posting rather than posting three words of dialogue and leaving it at that. I would much rather have no post than one line of dialogue that consists of three to five words with no support.

[Pinkazoid 3,493]

One thing I can't stand is when others act condescending and rude just because someone shares their opinion and it is not one that they have themselves. Really people? Someone can't have their own view without you making fun of it, being rude and condescending? Whatever, I should have kept my mouth shut to begin with, it really got us no where in the grand scheme of things.

 

Nope, you were brave enough to stand against a few members just for what your opinion was, you weren't ridiculed, they shared their opinions and the opinions themselves were the ones that made you feel ridiculed. The members here weren't rude or made fun of you, they've been here for long, and they've never had problems such as this before...

 

We all brought up good points, including yourself, but look what's coming to now, Feld0 was considering removing the whole badge system, which was supposed to be a gift for the members, just because of this, it's best to give this discussion a rest and get it over with >.>

[Jokuc 8,173]

The responses to this thread are tempting me to remove all the badges and make posts everywhere count, if only so that the "Post Count" would actually be accurate, in that it counts how many times you've clicked the black button under the editor.

 

Noes! This is not something I want... I really like the badges, and I do not want them to go away. I am pretty sure the quality of posts will not be higher even if they were removed.

[PegasisterTaco 318]

Meh. I don't really mind if the post count in the RP section doesn't count anymore. For me, RP is something to pass the time and to have fun. I could care less about the badges and fame. Yeah maybe a lil' fame here and there might be appreciated but my main objection is to have fun. I actually support this idea because I also feel like it's not fair to the ones who don't frequently RP.

You have my support here Arylett.

[Ice Storm 1,020]

Meh. I don't really mind if the post count in the RP section doesn't count anymore. For me, RP is something to pass the time and to have fun. I could care less about the badges and fame. Yeah maybe a lil' fame here and there might be appreciated but my main objection is to have fun. I actually support this idea because I also feel like it's not fair to the ones who don't frequently RP.

You have my support here Arylett.

When I just joined I didn't even know that the posts weren't being counted to begin with. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised when they started to count towards the counts. After what I've seen, I'm positively glad they aren't now. Role-playing, isn't about who has the most posts, period. It's about coming up with a quality post that can be easily understood by anyone that is reading the Topic, including members that have never even posted in it. You don't open a novel and expect to find only 2 pages of material, or watch a movie for a title screen and credits.

 

Bottom line, The quality isn't there, and Quality trumps Quantity. So measures were taken to try to fix the issue. The increase was a privilege that was abused, not a right to be given.

[Evilshy 5,090]

I have been RPing here literally since the day the forum opened. Well, maybe day two or three, the point is, I was an original member of what I believe was the first RP on the site, and the biggest for quite awhile. Back then, RPs were a part of cloudsdale, we had no badges, no character limit anywhere, and the post count didn't count anything in Cloudsdale. I, and many others, have thousands of posts that have never counted. Nobody really ever had an issue with this.

 

I can identify with you, bronynonymous. I quit RPing when the RP world was created, splitting it from the complete freedom and chaos of Cloudsdale and adding new rules and restrictions. I couldn't believe it. How could anybody apply restrictions to my creativity? I see RPs as collective story writing, and how can a good story be written when you have to follow rules? I actually quit RPing soon after that, when I mistook a good intentioned admonishment from Arylett as her telling me to never post OOC in the RP thread or GTFO.

But that whole thing is another story. I have since seen how and why I was wrong and have apologized, but that, again, is another story.

 

I came back to find RP world a shadow of its former self. Interesting RPs were dragged down by, to put it bluntly, idiots who don't seem to be able to string together more than a few coherent sentences. Abysmal grammar and spelling runs rampant. I found that, after swallowing my pride and no longer avoiding RP world simply because of a misguided crusade against its creator, I found I couldn't stand RPing here anyway because of this. I've tried multiple times to get into RPs, but I've always lost interest because it seems like the majority of RPers here don't know what they're doing. I've even considered starting RPs and then not joining them just to see what people would do with my ideas, but I'm scared that I'll become one of those RP elitists who gets pissed when they start an RP but it doesn't go exactly how they thought it would, or kick people out of the RP for having poor grammar or spelling.

 

 

 

Anyway, this is a good idea. It will probably weed out anybody who was using RP world primarily for post count, which will likely reduce the amount of people making shitty posts. That can only be a good thing for those of us who actually want to have quality RPs without just saying "only these three users can participate because they're my bros and I know they don't post shit."

 

Also, the primary function of this site is NOT RPing, so I don't see why anybody should feel entitled to gain ranks without participating in the actual site enough to rank up.

 

Also also, do any of you think the famous posters here are famous because they have high post counts? No, they're famous because they post a lot of quality stuff all over the site. People recognize their usernames and say "hey, he posted some more cool stuff! I like this guy!" Okay, sure, having a brony badge contributes, but it by no means makes you well known and respected on its own. If RP posts had always counted, I'd be a brony at least 2-3 times over. But I'm still a unicorn. People recognize me because they see my posts in various places, and I generally am able to post things people like, not because I have OMGSOMANYPOSTSDUDE!

Edited August 6, 2012 by Evilshy and His Own Ego

[AnonyPoni 564]

A really well made post by Evilshy

 

That made a lot of sense, actually. I will be honest, when I started RPing and created the insane "The Good King" RP (I use it as an example because I feel like we followed ALL the rules and it turned out the way Arlyett envisioned a perfect RP... I could be wrong), I didn't know that we didn't gain post count in RP world

 

When that DID happen, my rank started to go up. I will be blatenly honest, I would not be my rank without the post count in RPs, but the Quality of my posts I feel never changed (well... they did get better, but that was when ponies said I was a good writer ). My posts were still as well thought out as ever. I haven't been a part of many RPs, but the RPs I have been besides TGK are generally a lot faster and have shorter posts (I tried to make my post smaller for them... but I still made giant posts...). There is nothing wrong with that, They just did their story differently. I tend to think of RPs as baby fanfics, and if they are good enough we should formally write them up and put them on FimFic (that's the plan for TGK, but I have been in another RP where that is the plan as well).

 

Now, I wont lie, some of the RPers like to do short posts. Whether they are spamming or not is up to them. The point is that RPing to me feels like I'm writing a story with other ponies. I don't think of it as a place where i pretend I am a pony and say my lines, It's a place where WE give create ideas and characters and put them in situations and see what they do. Eventually, a (hopefully) story forms.

 

 

And Going off what Evilshy said, the badges to me aren't important for popularity. Evilshy is pretty popular to me because when he posts, he does a good job at making GREAT points. I think Jadefire (random example) is really popular despite the fact that he's a bird, because he spends most of his time in Cloudsdale and makes a LOT of posts there. (I don't really know how popular I am It would e cool if I was, but didn't know it.) I personally LIKE the badges. I think they look really cool. I don't think that I'm BETTER than muffins, parasprites, or birds because I'm a Phoenix, I just think it's a cool thing to have. I treat all the members on the forums equally to the best of my ability. That's why I came here! *Squee*

 

I do think it's REALLY cool to make a post, and to see that your badge has changed. It makes my day.

 

So... RP post count.... I still stand by my original point that if you make really good RP posts, you should get post count. I'm just saying in this post that the Badges aren't important in judging members, but more for judging yourself.

 

(That makes sense... right?)

[Arylett Charnoa 4,919]

I would like to have one last point in this, just as a general response:

 

The reason I gave post count in RP World was BECAUSE I felt that good RP World posters should be rewarded for their detail. At the time, there were a few of those around. Longer posts describing amazing things, that looked like fanfictions all on their own. I thought, we have a fanfiction section: it counts. Why not RP World?

 

Then I was sadly mistaken, and I found out that the short posts that are constantly made in there lack quality and imagination. This is not what I envisioned when I created RP World. My intention was to improve upon a chaotic system and make it better. To use organization to encourage roleplayers to put more thought and detail. My vision has been sorely derailed, and I am aware that my section is one of the lowest quality sections of these forums.

 

Is it elitist to say so? No. There is a difference from being elitist to having standards. Being an elitist is only allowing a small select group of people to do something, as well as acting like a snob about it. I don't want to be a snob. In fact, I consider my own guidelines rather lenient as it is. It'd be nice if you just even made so much as three or four sentences in most posts, but I wouldn't mind an occasional shorter post. Good spelling/grammar makes it easier to understand. It makes the site look better, it makes more people come, and it creates good and cleaner posts. Some people may not have a preference for that, and if that is not their preference, I respect that. They may find many other types of roleplaying sites or chats (probably the latter) that they may join in if they are not satisfied with what I attempt to provide. (Which isn't me saying: LISTEN TO ARYLETT OR GO THE HELL AWAY I'll listen to suggestions, I did listen to the suggestion to remove RP World post count from several members. If you have a good point for improving RP World, I won't just reject it. But that's neither here nor there.)

 

People abused that privilege. They gained badges at rates that left me stunned and annoyed. I can just imagine that the reactions of non-roleplayers were the same. I bet some of them grew to disrespect them. "Who the heck is this guy and why is he a Phoenix? Probably one of those spammy RPers pretending to be a pony." I did not want people to get that impression of RP World, because that is completely the wrong impression.

 

It was a privilege I trusted my RPers with, it has disappointed me to see it come to this. But it is one of many necessary measures. This is only the beginning in improving the quality of RP World. And I will not stop until I get that section to a level where at least, a decent quality roleplayer can post. That's really all I want. Not just high-quality, but at least decent.

 

I understand somewhat considering post count important. It doesn't feel good to not see that little number go up. It makes you feel like you don't count. Well, don't worry. RPers: You DO count. Maybe not to the rest of the site, but to me, you count. If we didn't consider RP World so important, we wouldn't have me, a mod who is dedicated to checking every single topic everyday for rulebreakers because nobody reports anything. We have high expectations of you. We gave you a Database (which Feld0 bought, using his own money), your own OOC section, and your own specialized moderating team. There's even a little button on the top of the forums that says Roleplay! I say that's a hell of a lot more than most forums that don't even focus on RPs attempt.

 

Just because something as trivial as post count doesn't count, does not mean you are important. You are, very much. And that is why I am dedicated to fixing this issue. It is important to me to see every one of you improve, because I know you can be so much better. In the end, it's better for everyone involved.

 

NOW I'm done. Yay, Wall of text.

Edited August 6, 2012 by Arylett Dawnsborough

[NavelColt 22,880]

Since I joined the forums have changed from a safe haven to a slowly impending nightmare. Because of this I think I will be taking a break from the forums until or maybe a bit before season three comes out.

 

You're going to disagree with things, and you're going to see things alter, anywhere you go online. I seriously cannot understand your reasoning for leaving, if it's simply because the change is bothering you. Sure, change not in your favor isn't awesome, but this place isn't any less professional and full of friendly people than it was when you first got here, all that's changed is some of the way certain things are done. Frankly if you're attached enough to a community, you get over it, and cope, realizing that in the grand scheme, you're still able to come onto a great forum and interact with people in the same way you could before. So, I personally hope you reconsider, but if not, I guess we'll see you once season 3 hits, dude.

 

Sorry, don't have much comment for this thread in general. I don't agree with ranks being done away with, as that's going to cause problems as well as solve others, but asides from that, I'm happily playing a neutral party in this for the most part. Again, I personally don't care whether RP posts count or not. I don't RP much, but even if I did, I post all over the board, so even if post count did matter to me a lot, it doesn't matter. For those who only roleplay, well, maybe you should reflect on how you can engage yourself in discussion, and come out of roleplay seclusion. There's a whole world of stuff to talk about, and it seems like a huge waste to shrug it off and say you're here just to RP.

 

/Thoughts

[Glaceon 793]

Yes! Finally! Now when I hit Unicorn roleplaying won't ruin my badge!

400 posts to go.

In all seriousness I agree with removing this. The rank speed on roleplaying was insane.

[Sky 746]

Yea roleplaying was to much of an easy way to get your post count up. Which is great that you stopped it counting for me.because that means when I get phoenix Ill be stuck with it for ages.

Edited August 6, 2012 by Sky

[rainbovv dash 110]

Noes! This is not something I want... I really like the badges, and I do not want them to go away. I am pretty sure the quality of posts will not be higher even if they were removed.

 

There's somebody who cares about the badges? What are we, little children?

 

Even if I am *insert whatever the f**k I'm right now* forever. I couldn't care less, I think all this badge stuff is stupid to say the least and I can't understand how a badge gives anybody fame or whatever they're supposed to give.

 

About the post count, I don't get why you would stop to count the posts in any section (same here, I don't care about it) but being here to RP it seems like I haven't posted for ages to people who check my profile.

 

Maybe it's just me but I think Mods and users are overreacting at the whole badge / post count thing.

 

 

I don't understand that multi-step screening blah, but I guess you mean that users without a certain amount of posts can't join the RP world and life advice forums. That's useless too, if people want to join the RP world they'll be making stupid posts everywhere else to get into the RP / advice section they care about.

[Mindrop 412]

Okay, now I get it. If no quality posts are coming out of there, then no need to increase post count. If your all is not given to the fact you are writing a novel, then its really just a game.