<Snipped quote by MelonHead>

I wasn't but I suppose it's true that I didn't expect all five active members of the arena board to come give me a piece of mind. Some of you made good arguments. But I stand by my argument in favor of a lack of any other ideas to re-energize the board. So I remain of the opinion that having a tournament in the near future doesn't really give us much reason to maintain the forum as a dedicated independent sub-forum.

I'd like to (continue to) invite you to share your ideas about re-energizing the subforum so you can change my mind about how dead it is. I'd like to see arena revitalized because you guys were right in your assessment that arena RP is a vital part of roleplaying. So, please, if you do have the time, enter the debate in my thread/another thread about how you would prefer to see arena RP revitalized and how you'd ensure that it's an active community rather than a near-dead 5 playerbase community.

Those are just the people who showed up within twelve hours of knowing you were trying to prescribe massive changes to a section you know nothing about. Your language tells me you've already formed your own opinions of the Arena, I'm not particularly interested in trying to fix the ignorance of everyone I meet. No one has that kind of time.

I shall prepare my position.

@MelonHead@Rilla To be honest, I'm always open to the Arena being improved, if you remember it took some of us discussing improvements for us to get the ranking system, tournament stickies and my beloved battlegrounds thread official.

That being said, I get why people are angry, I believe Buddha's intentions are mostly good, but its hard to waft the stench of self importance when he and about 2 other people want the Arena (and Nation and Tabletop) thread tucked away because they think its obsolete/clutter when they haven't been around and don't know how things work round here. I think the best course of action is just to be humble and try and take the constructive criticism and suggestions in stride.

But at the end of the day we are clear, the Arena isnt going anywhere and no one but Mahz has any authority over that.

@Buddha

If you think arena fighting is about who can imagine the wonkiest attacks, then I surely hope you're joking.

Shit. You fucks woke Guru up

@Buddha

If you think arena fighting is about who can imagine the wonkiest attacks, then I surely hope you're joking.

I am. But in all seriousness, I didn't mean any harm by suggesting what I suggested. I'd like to see the arena get brought back to life a little bit. I know you guys are of the opinion that it's not dead, but I'm sure you guys all agree that more people = more fights = more good stuff. Perhaps consider this a challenge to come up with new ways to make arena into something worth bragging about, where rather than saying 'well other forums' arena's are even more dead than this one' you can say 'our arena is the best one on the internet.'

I hope that despite some annoyances that came out of this, you guys end up coming up with some cool ideas for this forum.

@Buddha

All righty, well thanks for being reasonable and asking us as well.

@Doc Doctor I didn't. That was @Dynamo Frokane who also changed my mind on arena RP being like 1x1 and made me realize it was a bit more special than that. Me personally, I'm not afraid of offending the few with my views. At least I drew a reaction, which is special to me, because it's rare to see arena RP'ers outside of your subforum. ;)

That's why you got an irritated reaction, the arena chat thread is here for anyone who has questions to come and ask everyone at once, you don't need to have a discussion without us in a different sub-forum, where few of us would even see it most of the time.

At least I drew a reaction, which is special to me, because it's rare to see arena RP'ers outside of your subforum. ;)

I'm going to peer in here for a moment and provide a statement about that because I feel that statement is a bit false. Mainly because I know about 3-4+ arena players that do play in rps outside the arena. I've been in an rp called Create-A-Hero with Melon and LeeRoy, both vet fighters. I'm in another rp with DJAtomika which is a Mass Effect one. I also play with Yoshua171 and Ganryu in Anima Manifest, again both that leap into the arena for fun fights and even have a thread to test pcs in a combat situation. I also know a few ex-arena fighters (which I didn't know they were until recently) that while they don't fight much, they have roots there and been playing in other area of forum.

That's like 5 I've listed already which sort of kills off the classification of rare to me. >_>

It's not to be rude by the way, I merely wanted to point out that saying it's rare to see arena players outside their subform is incorrect to me. Just because they aren't always active in a subform like the free and casual and advance, doesn't really mean they don't use it at a different regular rate. The advantage with those forums is they don't focus on a set rp method while the arena does and it's one that a notable portion of people here don't like, rp continually, or some other reason. That's the biggest difference to me and one that shouldn't be penalized because of it. I mean, it's like the old saying: you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

*politely bows out* I am still keeping an eye on this conversation.

That's why you got an irritated reaction, the arena chat thread is here for anyone who has questions to come and ask everyone at once, you don't need to have a discussion without us in a different sub-forum, where few of us would even see it most of the time.

The goal of the discussion thread wasn't to discuss arena thread. If I knew that you guys would hijack my thread for the next 4 pages I'd have wisely shut my mouth because the entire subforum existence isn't that important to me. If it exists or not isn't really important for me personally is what I mean. I was merely questioning the need for it to exist independently, because it doesn't seem to get a lot of activity (tournaments supposedly being the time when it does get activity, but I'm not holding my breath for that).

It just came up. I knew it'd never happen, but I was merely saying that I would think it to be a good idea. I'd rather see it become active but I still feel like you guys don't have the answers (and any acknowledgement that arena roleplay is slow comes hissed between teeth and that's not really helping us make arena RP more alive).

@Fallenreaper I'd argue that 5 out of 200 peak users isn't that much. Furthermore, there is indeed a sort of in between classification for people that do both arena roleplay and other roleplay, hence I might not associate them with arena necessarily. I know both Yoshua and Ganryu and neither of them strike me as hardcore arena roleplayers. So, in my mind, they don't come up. They still don't.

But I suppose you raise a fair point.

But I remain of the opinion that arena RP is too inactive for it's own good and have yet to hear anything that strikes me as a good idea when it comes to fixing that. Saying that the tournament will improve that is meaningless when there is (as Melon stated) 7 months between this one and the last tournament. Arena RP moves slowly, very very slowly. Perhaps this is not an issue to you, but it's certainly not doing you any favors, which is why I had also suggested something like a tournament master function with a title for people who want to help make arena more active by hosting tournaments (because tournaments were cited as a period when arena became alive again).

There are also individuals who are still active on the site who were marque members of this section. Individuals like @GreivousKhan come to mind, though I’m not sure how “prominent” they were. These are people I have talked to for over a year who in our rare conversations about arena they admit that they don’t really think about the section anymore and have no intentions on returning to it. I only make this point because some of these users are still on the leaderboards you mentioned as a valuable asset to your forum. When was the last time that half of your leaderboards were active out of genuine curiosity?

I am aware Doc Doctor certainly still is, but compare his activity to that of Innue who seems to have either left the site or just outright retired from role-playing.

The leaderboard only consists of people who've chosen to make their arena stats public, so it isn't really a gauge of activity or users in general.

But I remain of the opinion that arena RP is too inactive for it's own good and have yet to hear anything that strikes me as a good idea when it comes to fixing that. Saying that the tournament will improve that is meaningless when there is (as Melon stated) 7 months between this one and the last tournament. Arena RP moves slowly, very very slowly. Perhaps this is not an issue to you, but it's certainly not doing you any favors, which is why I had also suggested something like a tournament master function with a title for people who want to help make arena more active by hosting tournaments (because tournaments were cited as a period when arena became alive again).

And as I said, it's not as simple as slapping an arbitrary title on someone and watching them host tournaments. It's a difficult skill and it requires a lot of personal time and effort invested, more so than the vast majority of people are willing to invest. Imagine it like GMing any other roleplay, except the story is only yours in the loosest sense and you rarely get to participate in character, but instead have to do all the far less interesting mechanical work behind the scenes to an even greater extent. It's like GMing a RP but with far less of the fun parts, and with far more emphasis on making important judgements and having a very broad working knowledge of the format of T1 and how RP fighting, and indeed real life fighting, works.

Not to mention, you literally can't over-saturate the forum with too many tournaments, because unlike an ordinary RP that may only require four or five more players, for a tournament to work you need at a minimum eight, but usually around sixteen. It is a difficult balancing act, because players are often reluctant to join two tournaments at once for lack of free time.

@Fallenreaper I'd argue that 5 out of 200 peak users isn't that much. Furthermore, there is indeed a sort of in between classification for people that do both arena roleplay and other roleplay, hence I might not associate them with arena necessarily. I know both Yoshua and Ganryu and neither of them strike me as hardcore arena roleplayers. So, in my mind, they don't come up. They still don't.

That's the difference between our classifications. I include anyone that does play in it, even rarely, as part of the activity. Mainly as you need to recall that there are rps out there that can play bi-monthly or longer, and still thrive. They also happen in the Advance and Casual, though the latter I haven't seen happen very often. Pace is also something to consider as honestly, I'm not a player that would continually fight in an arena thread every day and likely make weekly or even monthly posts instead depending on the counter I have to make. Should that hurt the forum because I like taking my time, reasoning out my options, taking breaks, etc like any other rp rather than just post every week/day? I hope not.

To be honest, I feel like you're trying to create space that we won't use and feels that's a bit of a dumb idea. This wasn't the most active sub forum (as a friend pointed out) when it was created but it didn't hurt anything being a separated subforum. Mainly because this

But I remain of the opinion that arena RP is too inactive for it's own good and have yet to hear anything that strikes me as a good idea when it comes to fixing that. Saying that the tournament will improve that is meaningless when there is (as Melon stated) 7 months between this one and the last tournament. Arena RP moves slowly, very very slowly. Perhaps this is not an issue to you, but it's certainly not doing you any favors, which is why I had also suggested something like a tournament master function with a title for people who want to help make arena more active by hosting tournaments (because tournaments were cited as a period when arena became alive again).

This sort of still comes back to the original point I made: You can lead a horse to water, but honestly you can't make him drink. We can likely come up with all sort of ideas, but if the users aren't interested in playing in combat focused rps... I don't honestly think it will do any good. That's my thoughts over it. Namely as this has been tried several times already by the active here if you look in the history of this thread as this topic has been brought up at least 2-3 times over the existence of this thread.

Honestly, I've had ideas but not confident in applying them due to my lack of experience and having my confidence in my fighting common sense crushed terribly. Even when both of us had no hard feelings, that honestly I'm sad to say left a mark I'm still trying to recover from and currently feel like I'm not a very good fighter at all- save in pre-plotted stories. So yeah... that's my two cents and I apologize if it sounds negative or upset anyone.

Personally, I don't see why we need to lump together all the lower activity forums when we are just creating space we really aren't going to use and just makes the forum look more bare bones to me. It doesn't promise more activity or that any changes will be drastic, it only gives that illusion of 'activity'. Having the arena separate isn't hurting anyone then why do it? It did fine as a separate sub forum in the last guild version after all.

That's just my thoughts again.

Whelp, what's the next topic? How about midget on midget combat?

Whelp, what's the next topic? How about midget on midget combat?

Far too short of a battle for my liking. :P

Whelp, what's the next topic? How about midget on midget combat?

I think Jackass covered that

Literally the only way to improve the Arena is to add more people to its userbase, because people fall into a malaise when gameplay gets repetitive. Small groups work for organized roleplays but not everyone here has the same tastes.

So push comes to shove, the Arena is dead because of Guildfall. A ton of old players from before then never came back, and those that did have slowly drifted off. Leaving behind only a few players from back then, and the stragglers who stumble upon us. Those people that do stumble upon us wind up leaving too, because the community is so small. When they've grown bored of us, they'll duck out.

It's an infinite cycle perpetuated by boredom.

SORRY FOR WALL OF TEXT... But, if you know me, you seen this coming. XD lol

I believe I have read through all your post Buddha. If I have forgotten any, I apologize. I just wanted to get a good idea on where you stand before replying with my thoughts on your opinion.

First of all, and not to try to sound rude in any way, it is indeed a bit aggravating trying to defend against your 'opinion' when you have no actual experience in using the arena or arena's of other sites. So, I'm going to try and break this down quite a bit to give you a better picture. Because, while I have went out of my way to try and understand your point, I hope that you can come away with this with a better idea of how the arena works, so that perhaps you can help formulate a better solution to your proposed problem. Not that I am agreeing with you, that it is a complete problem. Though, I will acknowledge some things, and those will be presented to you shortly.

Let me start off with your side of things first. I love playing Devil's Advocate. It helps me think outside the box. An excellent creative tool, as well, might I add. So, let's say we go with your idea. Be Put the Arena into 1x1s. What are some things that could be improved by that.

-It could potentially make our community look bigger and more active than it is.

-Guest to the site might be more likely to stay because they don't see areas of the forum that don't look as if they haven't been posted in for a few days. I can understand that. I've seen sites I've personally been to where I have seen areas that look like they haven't been posted in for a long time and kind of cringed.

-We could split the arena into more segregated sections that might be beneficial to new writers who might like to spar with someone with less than average writing and linguistic abilities. And those who want more thought out fights could find those in a "Advanced" section. This could also work if we split them by our current levels rather than into 1x1. Either way, it'd get rid of the arena section.

-Perhaps doing so could make others that don't typically play in arena fights, more apt to give them a shot if they happen to see them in 1x1s and not feel so forced to make it completely about the fight. I admit, I see that as an issue at times. Where arena players can tend to skip the story and only feed you a tiny portion of what it could be in the midst of pure battle.

I think the above are all great points. Points that you or others who have agreed with you have spoken about, in addition to my own input. A great start to a conversation. One that certainly needs to be discussed. Some of this has been in the past, others have been just passing thoughts that might have been brought up now and then, but left idly aside as we continue our pursuit to glory.

Now, this is the part that might put an itch on you. I apologize for that. If I need to elaborate on something more fully, please feel free to question me on it. Now, I shall not look at the benefits of keeping the arena as it is, cause I'm sure we can all agree that some changes can be made. But some of those changes are bigger than just our section. They are site wide, but I'll get into that later. For now, I'm going to explain why your proposed changes are actually damaging and or not helpful. I suppose the best way to start this is by deflating all the great and well intentioned points above.

-While it might make our community look bigger and more, active. It actually isn't. And in all actuality, it would make it smaller. The more you hide the arena, the more you are simply going to do to extinguish it in it's entirety. Cause if a new user decides they want to Roleplay a battle. First off, a majority of those are going to stop immediately when they see there is no arena section. Point Blank. Don't agree? I can guarantee you. I myself have visited sites where I have simply not even bothered because there is no arena section. Was there some hiding in there somewhere? Possibly. But they would probably have been buried under all the other RPs and or died out cause no one thinks they actually exist. Sure. We don't post a lot. But we do post.

-The second point only solidifies my above point. There are always areas of a forum that are less used than others. Any Roleplay site you go to. Matter of fact, the Arena is like that on MANY sites. Let's see. I just checked Roleplaygateway. And at the time of writing this, the last post was on Thursday. That's 4 days ago. And let me give you a better idea of why I brought Gateway up. Gateway is actually one of the most populated Arena's on just about ANY roleplay forum. Just about any Arena fighter that has been around for any given time has heard of Gateway, either on this site or another RP site. Cause Gateway used to host tournaments that would attract a lot of players from different sites. A few individuals on this site have even participated in them. And yet, their last post is 4 days ago. Yes, Arena tends to go slow. It always has. And it will have times that it peaks. It always has. So, to say it's dying it very far-fetched. It is going plenty strong, as far as Arena fighters go. And many Fighters will take breaks between Tournaments. Cause I'll be blunt with you... It's freaking exhausting sometimes! You aren't just telling a story, like any other Roleplay. You're trying to cleverly and continuously outsmart your opponent. On top of making some of the most precise character sheets in any Roleplay. Ask any of these guys. I'm sure they can all pop out a character sheet they have, longer than most advanced RP post right there on the spot. All of them reading this right now, probably have the exact character they are ready to share with you, cause their laughing at the excruciating amount of time they spent on it. Not to mention, I can't begin to explain the amount of time, I myself have spent researching for Arena RPs. You can't just slap together anything for an Arena RP. You will find yourself googling the strangest things. Many of these fighters could explain all sorts of real life combat techniques and the physical properties of metals, they spiritual aspects of nature, as well as microbiology, and quantum mechanics, because these things are things they have researched JUST FOR THE CHARACTER. SO YES... I'll say it again... Arena RPs tend to move VERY SLOW!

-Splitting the arena does nothing but exactly that. Split it. Makes it even smaller. The goal in the Arena whether just beginning or whether you've been here a long time... is to get to the top. It always has been. We debate and argue so much, and yes, unfortunately sometimes we catch the nasty side of some of our fellow fighters, but at the end of the day, we all walk away with utmost respect for one another, cause we're all trying to constantly improve. Our biggest line when a new person comes in and wants to join in on the arena and wants to learn... every single person reading this will tell you.... "The best way to learn it, is just do it." We've always been about adapting and growing. That's the most unique thing about the arena compared to other sections of ANY RP site. And the best way to do that is to fight. It doesn't matter how much better they are at it. How long they've been doing it. You learn the ins and outs fastest and most efficiently by just fighting. You'll learn what you need to describe and when. You'll expand your vocabulary just in a single fight, because you'll find new ways that you never thought your character could be exploited just by simple words on the page. Yes, you need a bit of a backbone in the Arena. That's just an unfortunate part of it. Everyone wants to win, but someone always wins and someone always loses. And we will argue tooth and nail about it till a judge comes in and makes the final decision in the most unbiased way they can. And I have literally NEVER seen anyone really argue with a judge on a fight. Cause we all know that just how it works. We take our wins and we take our losses and we move on. And we simply understand that we will not always agree. And honestly, some of the best fighters are those that know when to take the loss, even without a judge. Cause they take it, adapt, and evolve. Period. Splitting it really doesn't do anyone any good.

-This is an interesting one. Cause already, tucking it away hides it... and thus hides it from the populace, and just as I mentioned above... makes people simple not seek it out. But, the other part of that is what I'd like to touch on more. Some fights, are less story oriented, but in all honestly, many of them are not. They can just sometimes seem like it from an outside perspective. Arena tends to have a multiverse type of effect. Many of our characters have fought multiple battles and evolved a story over a series of post. I would like to see more post that are more strictly story based about each of these characters. I think that would be awesome to see. What a fighter does when there is no one to fight. But, many of us simply don't fight without some kind of story. I for one, have NEVER started a fight without creating some kind of backstory, that folds into my character's continuously growing story as to why I'm even participating in the fight in the first place. For many of us, before we are opponents, we are allies. We work together to make our stories stick. Creating new plots and twist that lead to these epic moments where our characters first confront one another. My first post in every one of my fights, is ALWAYS my favorite. But anyone that ever has fought with me or has seen my fights, already know this... I tend to go all out on my first post. I create these huge vivid stories that are often on the receiving end of jokes about, "Guru just wrote a novel length post, guys" Not that I mind at all, and i know others enjoy them... cause they create a story behind my character and his appearance on the battlefield. And some people just like the battle bits, cause they want to get through it and get up on those ranks. That's ok too. Not all of us do it for the same reasons, but none of them are wrong.

How we can improve the Arena... Well, honestly, the Arena isn't really THAT much of a problem to begin with. It's a niche' Forum, I admit, but putting it Somewhere else does it no justice at all. Our Arena is actually fairly busy compared to a lot of Arenas on the net. And as I said before, it does go slow. Doesn't make it inactive or dead. If anything, I'd like to see more story oriented stuff that doesn't stick strictly to fighting, but still allows that as an option, if for nothing, but background on our characters and a way to get the stuff in our heads out in the open so we can continue to evolve it. As far as activity... A LOT of that is based on Guild activity in general. More people on guild, more potential members in Arena. But never expect Arena to hit those numbers like the rest of the forums. The Arena is NOT for everyone. That's why it's niche'. There is A LOT that goes into Arena Fighting, and most people... even in advanced sections... don't want to give it that much time. Cause they just want to create a story. The Arena has it's stories as well, but as I've previously mentioned... it requires A LOT more than that. And it's a headache. That's why you see a lot of us disappear for a while, till we can come back with a refreshed vigor. But we enjoy it.

It made me laugh when I seen your post. Cause, I already knew what was coming. Arena people don't shy from arguments or discussions at all. No, we're probably the most loud and vocal group of people on Guild. Cause that competitiveness is in our blood. That's why we love the arena. And why we keep coming back to it. And I apologize for some of our hot headed individuals. They are just very spirited, and love this section as much as you care about the guild as a whole, otherwise you wouldn't be trying to improve it. But Arena section, outside of what I mentioned, doesn't really have any problems outside of what any other forum on this site has. We're just smaller, cause it's not something for everyone. But as small as we are, we have an extremely strong and tight-knit community here, and anyone that wants to come in, provided they have the thick skin it requires for this type of RP, we welcome them in.

We're loud and we're proud. Arena for life! :P

(And yes, as Melonhead said... Not everyone displays their combat stats, so really... the Leaderboards aren't accurate at all. And not everyone even participates in ranked. That's optional.)