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Post by Ginger on Oct 1, 2018 18:16:48 GMT
This is actually something that's bothered me since I owned a Kingdom themed Pokemon Roleplay, I had guests that complained my kingdom information were too long, so I made a short version that was literal 2 sentences, and got complaints on that.
Recently I found some people enjoy the idea of making 2 different kind of bios, and some people completely find the work too tedious.
---- I personally recently joined a Hero Academia site that I personally considered too tedious (it was the stat system), buut learned this site has nothing tedious compared to other hero academia sites. So What Is Too Tedious? At least to you.
Really what I am asking.
1. Would a secret sheet be more tedious than a stat sheet?
[secret sheet - character's personal secret info is stored like abilities, fears, history, gender, etc etc] 2. What is your Limit on "Too Much Information" Like 4 threads? 300 words? How much is "Too Much Reading"
3. Do you prefer to lay out all your characters abilities at once or build them over time?
At once: This is it, what I am sticking to this ability; no upgrading.
Over time: Okay I have this much money I'll like to buy this ability and improve this ability
I know once upon a time not sure of the name of the user, told me. "If the Guest isn't interested in reading your Information, than they really don't wanna join your site" AKA "Why should you care about them? They don't care About You the site?"
Note: This touches on the guests that cannot for absolute anything see large bold letters, word highlights, etc etc All over the place in your information sheets. Are they being lazy? Is it too tedious? Or are you the one who is screwing up having all this information?
//Sites aren't that detailed compared to DnD books, so Why is lots of Reading considered a bad thing?//
[I've thanks to this 1 guest YEARS AGO have always summarized all my writings into laziest format]
What is your opinion on this matter? What do you find TOO TEDIOUS?
And for those who don't wanna post, I added a poll for you to vote..
tldr;
----> What do you personally consider tedious when dealing with stats, abilities, bios, plot/lore reading, etc etc...?
Edits:
--- I went ahead made the questions easier to understand based on responses, many apologies. I originally wrote this at 3am, sorry.
--- I fixed the "you" portion since Iota had an extremely fair point about the quote.
--- response to responses: Genre, yeah def importance didn't think about that while creating this thread. Many apologies on that as well, but I love the responses so keep it up!
--- Sorry for making the polls tedious, I kinda wanted to shove everything into 1 thread versus 3 threads...
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Post by Deleted on Oct 1, 2018 19:07:28 GMT
You're not really going to please everyone, you have a small part of the community that loves lore and lots of info. Then the other half which understandably doesn't want to spend a whole hell of a lot of time reading up on pages of info for a setting. There was a similar thread about this not too long ago. The best option is to have the immediate info or td;dr info up as the primary source of information and then elsewhere have a more in-depth explanation if people find they have time/want to read it. But the tl;dr should be exactly what they need to know to make a character, no more no less. 1. I'm not entirely sure what this is asking? I've never seen a site need two bios, with one summarized. 2. I prefer more information the better, but my comment above pretty much explains how I feel it should be done? Mainly to try and appease to both sides who like a lot and don't. Lengthy depends on the person, I don't think there is a standard definition of 'too much' as it varies from person to person. I think it depends more on what you think needs to be enough. Meaning, if you were to make it as concise as you could, cutting out all the small unnecessary details to get your point across, then what's left is what's enough. Cut it to the bare-bone basics to get your point across even if they don't necessarily know why it is how it is. You can put that kind of lengthy information in another section, simply to know that "this is how it is" should be enough to make a character. (again, imo.) 3. Do you mean all your abilities in the bio at acceptance and no more or you can buy/gain abilities over time and only start with a few? If that's the question (if not, correct me!) I prefer to start with some skills, a max of three for example, and then gain/level skills over time. Personally I feel accomplished in doing so. As for your note, if there is blatant highlighted, large, bolded font that states what things are or how and the guest is still asking questions that are already blatantly answered. The guest is simply lazy and putting minimal effort into figuring it out and thus into their character. Though if the information is buried beneath paragraphs of information then I can't say that not reading lengthy information is part of someone being lazy as for some people they just don't have the time. Hence a tl'dr of exactly what they need to know to get started is, again imo, key. What I find tedious - Lengthy/heavy stat combat systems: If people have lengthy combat systems or heavy stats, I'm not interested. I can in most instances understand the need because there's always that one person who's gotta try and beat the system, or perhaps its mmo-eqsue and having stats against bosses makes it more.. exciting? But even then, I feel the stats should be as simple as can be. I have no desire to re-read the combat page a dozen times to make sure I'm understanding lengthy combat systems correctly. Crafting systems: I've seen a couple sites talk about doing this, haven't seen it implemented but I can say for sure a crafting system would just turn me away. It's so unnecessary. Personality/Appearance sections: I have the fc for a reason, to have a small area for bullet points for what deviates from the fc I'm using is appreciated but, I picked the fc for a reason. As for personality half the time when I join I'm just making the character and the traits I list as personality are loose and may not be what they turn out to be, or what their experiences on the site will shape them to be. So having a lengthy personality section or required word count is just a no. (PS. Forgive me if this is all over the place. I am so very, very tired.) |
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Post by Kuroya on Oct 1, 2018 20:33:50 GMT
1) i have. literally never seen anyone wanting to make two versions of the same bio. ever. like. why would you want to make more work for yourself just to play on a site? and if i saw a site doing this, like..... byeeeeeee. i ain't here for this "secret" bio crap. i can find somewhere else that will value my time and effort better lmfao.
stats + powers is an entirely different animal though. since it's not just flat out "ew gross stats" and that's it. you have to consider the genre and the purpose of those stats - for example, putting stats on a slice of life romance site doesn't really actually add anything to the site or fit with the genre or if you're stratifying out that digimon site so you have to start rolling 3 times for each move you're doing and keeping track of 5 different numbers just to exist, imo, you're making way more complicated than you necessarily need to.
basically for me it boils down to a delicate balance. each roll or number i have to track has to actually serve a definitive purpose and not just be added difficulty - and even then i carefully evaluate whether the purpose actually means anything (ie, it doesn't really serve a whole lot of purpose allowing a pokemon capture attempt to fail, in my opinion, so i don't really deal with it; conversely, having an actual hp system means that now i don't have to deal with figuring out when i lose a battle or getting "that guy [tm]" to stop using his super special mega dragonite to beat up everyone else since "i don't think it would have fainted yet"). but then i always am super careful about stats just because 1) i hate rolling stuff or tracking a bunch of numbers, so the less i gotta deal with that, the better and 2) i hate playing with min-maxers because my soul is not here for them doing everything they can to max the system out to their advantage, and since they follow heavy stat systems like catnip, avoiding one tends to avoid the other.
2) this is something where no one can put a number on it since imo different people have different thresholds and even different genres have different thresholds. for me, if i open a regular kind of slice of life site and i have to read 20+ pages of information or 10+ threads of lore just to be able to make my character and exist in the most basic general sense, sorry, but i'm out. like. cool, great, you have a really expanded lore area, but i don't want to really deal with a site that i have to read a small novel just to be on. if you want to separate some of that out into optional reading, okay, that's fine.
and again, genre does matter, since imo, i'm going to be more understanding of 10+ threads if you have to explain for example, how to catch and evolve pokemon or all your mmo crafting mechanics. but it's another thing that you have to balance out too since imo you want to not turn away people who have only a basic grasp of your fandom just because of how dense your lore is or how close you cling to it (ie, with the marvel + dc site i run, we make sure to give a quick crash course for world-level events for people who might not be perfectly up to date with every single superhero movie).
honestly, i just. build out lore length and such to be attractive to what i, as a guest, would be willing to sit and read. if i'm looking at what i've written and going "yeah nope bye i'm good not reading this brick just to exist on the site," then that means i've failed in explaining things well, especially if that's just the quick summary.
3) i'm not really sure what you're asking about here since it's not really clear.
if you're asking if i'd rather have a powers section be a constant wip from earning them or a powers section being a default upfront...... well........ the answer is the second. i'm not a huge fan of having to re-review someone's app 5000 times as they get new powers since to me, that's just a waste of staff time and effort. and it's a lot better in the sense of knowing immediately off the bat whether what i have in mind would be possible (aka, if i'm doing someone with probability manipulation as a power, i can know whether i could do it and to what limits) rather than making the character and then finding out a few months later that i'm gonna have to change their entire concept just because what i wanted to do wouldn't work.
honestly, again, with guests missing things, it depends on what's being asked. if they're missing a piece of information that shows up once in the middle of a block of text that's part of a long post? yeah, no, that's not their fault - they might have genuinely read it but didn't comprehend it because they had so much else to digest. if it's something that's in five different places in the lore, bolded, in giant text..... yeah, no dude, i have no idea how you missed that one cuz that's on you, not me. aka me with people who to this day ask whether or not we accept ocs despite indicating it clearly in 3 different lore threads, including the rules and faq
essentially, like was said.... really, there is no right balance since imo some people are going to be willing to read more than others just because some people prefer those really expansive settings where others just go "yeah yeah i don't care about custom zodiac signs why the heck am i reading this just to join" or "yeah no bye i don't need to spend 4+ hours reading through the extended history of this entire site just to join." you can't please everyone. write your lore in a way that you would be willing to read as a guest, and you'll attract people of a like mind to roleplay with.
no but also real talk, appearance sections are stupid, it's such a waste of time and i'll immediately close out of sites who have them just because sorry not sorry but i have a faceclaim for a reason and i can add notes of those changes in a post where they actually matter (y'know...... having different outfits...... like a normal person.......).
but also personality sections can die in a fire since imo that's all subjective anyway and history is a better indication of who a character is going to be than personality (and sometimes i forget the exact personality i had in mind originally as a character evolves to better settle with how i play them). and i'm so glad we got out of roleplay samples, like, thanks but no thanks, i'm good, you can see how i play the character and how i roll literally by the bio i just wrote, i'm good.
required word counts aren't really tedious for me as much as it is a reason to sigh since. y'know. quantity doesn't equal quality. i've seen people get more done and leave more to build off of in a one-liner than in some five plus paragraph posts. it's 2018 y'all get rid of the word minimums for posts and modernize.
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Post by Kitten4u on Oct 2, 2018 4:00:43 GMT
A lot of these things vary a lot depending on my personal interest in the genera and how well the info's written, so this is just a general gist of how I feel about things.
1.) I feel like this is two questions, so I'm going to address them both
Character Sheets
Because I still refuse to call them apps. I'm in favor of secret sheets, I've seen people do pretty neat things with keeping some info that should still be checked over by the admin to make sure it fits with the setting and what-not secret from the general playerbase. It's lead to some pretty great reactions. And then there's the occasional site that needs something like this, whether it be because of a stat-based site that needs to keep player stats hidden for one reason or another or because it's a mystery site or some kind of site where secrets are important then yeah, secret sheets are pretty much required. For everyone else, I think they can add an element of fun if they're optional because trying to make up something to keep secret when there's no need is legit tedious.
For character sheets themselves, the only time I find them tedious is when they either get redundant or ask for completely useless information. If your site requires FCs there's not much need to have a required appearance section. I appreciate having an optional one so I can put in details that may not be obvious in the FC, particular stuff like the character's height, but otherwise? Annoying. You should already have an idea of what my character looks like. Similar when people require a full written personality and personality traits and that kind of thing. The other half is stuff that is either irrelevant to the character or just not really important. This is stuff like requiring an RP sample or requiring a favorite color or something. This stuff is not going to get you plots, so it doesn't need to be on the character sheet. The character sheet is just meant to be a basic outline of the character with enough information to springboard into threads (I do not use plotters, so my character sheets tend to be more detailed because of it). Including anything else for the sake of it is just annoying.
Systems/Stats
I think everyone's sick of me gushing about how much I like systems, but there are actually a fair number of them that I find completely pointless and thus tedious. To me, the purpose of systems is to provide players an additional way to interact with the setting and plot while providing opportunities for the players themselves to be surprised. They're supposed to serve as writing prompts to give players ideas they never would have thought of on their own and expand plot opportunities, as well as tools to push the plot forward. If they don't do that, I consider them a complete waste of time and would rather just do freeform. This is why I always express a lot of distaste for pure progression systems (EG, you are rank E, you need 50 exp to get to Rank D and they leave it at that) or systems that only focus on resolving combat (what happens after the combat is the important part man, how did the fight change the setting? What did it do for the characters involved?). So those I find tedious, and it's why I generally list them as dealbreakers because sites have to be pretty dang perfect for me to consider joining one with a system like that. Even if there's numbers involved, I'm here to write stories and derp around with characters, not vomit numbers at people.
2.) Short answer is that there's no thing as too much information...once I'm invested. I backread all of the IC posts (and often the OOC ones) on every site I join. I read everyone's plotters and character sheets. I love reading all the things. But until I'm interested in your site I'm not going to do that. I'm going to be skimming for something to latch onto. Unfortunately, a lot of sites have a lot of trouble with that. They might setup this neat history, or a cool gimmick for an original world, but what am I supposed to do in it? What's going on? What's the common ground between characters that gets them to go interact? How can I toy with the world and get it to change?
This can be as broad as heroes vs villains (villains try to do things, heroes fight them for JUSTICE! or whatever, it's a thing that'll get plots going), or as narrow as 'high school students are trapped in a spooky building, figure out how to escape before the monsters get them.' It doesn't even have to revolve around conflict. A lot of slice of life sites do this fine. If you join a site that centers around romance, you know you're going to be there for romance plots, even if you do other things on top of it. If you join a Harvest Moon-esque game then there's probably going to be farming and small town shenanigans, even if you decide you want your character to be an artist. It's fine, there's something to latch onto there. But then I see these people create these big open worlds with ~creative freedom~ and I have no idea what to do. The plot is just as important as the setting. Give me something to latch onto, something interesting to do, and keep it...at least reasonably short. Probably under 1000 words. Because once I have that thing I'll read anything, but I really need that thing in order to get invested.
3.) I don't really care. It depends on the type of site. I do a lot of superpower sites, so a lot of the specific aspects of the power are decided up front and the 'level up' aspects are more going from boom to bigger boom rather then developing entirely new powers. It doesn't have to be like this though. If the site was more about learning ritual magic, or something like Harry Potter where everyone can do everything with practice, then it might make more sense for people to develop completely new powers and skills over time. So I don't think this is something you can put a blanket statement over. The site should pick the mechanic that suits their setting and the kind of gameplay they want to promote.
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Post by 「イオタ」 on Oct 2, 2018 9:53:19 GMT
I didn't vote. Didn't get some things and felt multiple things were too tedious I discovered I could select up to 3 choices, so I voted since I could vote for multiple tedious things. XD But I would have voted for more , pft. Hahah
Too tedious for me:
• Nitpicking apps to death
• Too many unrelated races (angels, vampires, mermaids, robots o' my)
• Stats
• Lots of words (as soon as I see a wall of text, my brain shuts down. Bit different for site lore, tho)
Updated:
1. I think giving the person the option (i.e. free form section) to fill that out if they want is great, but shouldn't be mandatory.
2. Depends on how it's divided and what's essential to function. People like cultural tidbits.
3. I'm not a fan of progression systems where I need to buy shit to gear up. I'm fine with post count = levelling up, but nothing else. I also like having the ability to start out at a higher level (doesn't need to be level 100 to start) as opposed to being a weak level (level1) every time I make a char. Believe it or not, people will (including myself) have some chars start out at lower levels of their own volition.
This is true for both me as a potential member and for people I've seen join sites I've staffed at; however, I wouldn't say "they don't care about you," I would say they don't care about your site. (if they join your site, get to know you, and still shit on you then you bet your booty they don't care about you.)
The ones who didn't bother to read or had me hold their hands through the process have never stuck. There will be people who did read the info and not stick as well, but the ones who didn't read never stick for me. (And I, personally, can't even be bothered to join a site if I can't be bothered to read the info.)
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Post by Deleted on Oct 10, 2018 22:29:40 GMT
1. Would a secret sheet be more tedious than a stat sheet?
[secret sheet - character's personal secret info is stored like abilities, fears, history, gender, etc etc]
Not particularly though i wouldn't see the point in it unless it would actually have some relevance to the site. To me a lot of that kind of info would be stuff I already keep in my head anyway because you never know when that kind of thing is going to come up. I don't mind having info stored somewhere to be accessed where needed for actual site stuff but if its a site where stuff like my character's biggest secrets won't end up meaning anything for actual participation then why am I filling it out?
2. What is your Limit on "Too Much Information" Like 4 threads? 300 words? How much is "Too Much Reading"
Top be frank I do not want to read like 3- threads. Ain't got time for that. But I don't mind three or four or even a couple more as long as the must know info is compacted and makes it easier for me to get the idea of the site and setting. I don't really care about further information until I know the place is something I want to have more info on. I don't care what the intricacies of your warrior race are if i don't like your warrior race to begin with. I find the summary> in depth > extra details route usually works best because it makes it easier to shift through the info and find what ou want and need for right now and as the rest become relevant to you you ca go grab it later instead of spending 3 days shifting through stuff before you even make an account.
3. Do you prefer to lay out all your characters abilities at once or build them over time?
At once: This is it, what I am sticking to this ability; no upgrading.
Over time: Okay I have this much money I'll like to buy this ability and improve this ability
Mix of both. If a character is say, older and had their ability quite a while I expect to have it be reflected in their initial write up however I believe one can always improve even in their old age and would like ot have the ability to see knew developments occur while rping. Unless 'upgrades' are being defined right off the bat and access to them is granted over time in which case i can roll with that too. I feel like having the ability to expand on your ideas also helps keep things interesting whereas having to stick with just your initial run through of it can make the character feel stale and old and undesirable over time.
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