[quote=@AndyC]
A bit of real talk, something that I've been thinking about and that I'm sure has been discussed before: are we placing too much pressure-to-perform on ourselves?[/quote]
Yes.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say 'almost entirely'.

[quote=@AndyC]
Don't get me wrong; you guys are incredible writers, and I really do love reading your material. But at least from my experience, the pressure to keep up with you all and live up to my own standards means I end up taking longer and longer to get posts out, and I start to develop a mentality of "no post is better than a bad post." That starts becoming a whole negative-feedback-thing, where I feel bad for not posting, so I start writing a post, and then I burn myself out trying to make it perfect, then I end up not posting it, and then I feel bad for not posting, etc.[/quote]
I stopped aiming for an unattainable perfection long ago.  But conversations with others...  I'd say this hits the nail on the head perfectly.

[quote=@AndyC]
While I'm not suggesting we lower our standard of quality, maybe we reduce the expected quantity. Say, five to seven paragraphs per post, something you can knock out relatively quickly and keep the pace going (and make it easier to post multiple times per day). That would hopefully reduce the pressure of feeling like one has to write a chapter of a novel every time one logs in. It'd also hopefully encourage more interaction and collaboration, getting everyone out of the proverbial gates a lot faster, and might allow for more emergent storytelling rather than feeling like we need to have whole complex plots laid out from the start.[/quote]
I think this will fall short, because I suspect its self-driven and more a case of people trying to 'keep up with the joneses' without factoring in the fact that many of us are harsher with ourselves, than assessing the works of others and/or have higher expectations for ourselves after seeing what others do.

This isn't the situation in my own case, its just been entirely lack of personal time as other aspects of my life grind me into the dirt.  But it [b]HAS[/b] been the case for me in the past when I was younger.  The perfect being the enemy of the good.

In all honesty its a personal problem for each and every one of us, rather than something that could be fixed by rules at the outset, however well-meaning.  Because people don't compare their work and production to the rules minimum in most cases, and rather their impression of the works of those around them that they've been reading.

People just need to be aware that everyone would rather read and see something that surpasses their own personal standards which keeps the RP moving, then read the works of an RP which becomes consigned to the scrapheap in a month or two.

And then once you realise you're just appealing to peoples own standards... which are entirely subjective in nature... ultimately, volume becomes more valuable than a handful of masterpieces which appeal to our own sensibilities before the whole thing collapses under its own lack of momentum.

I'm an old man and I've come to realise my bullshit is my bullshit, and at some point I've just got to get over it.  Get the thing done.

Or, as a wise Southern philosopher managed to say in more concise terms than I am capable of mustering...

[h1][b]POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOST![/b][/h1] 

[quote=@AndyC]
I'd also kinda like to see a more focused scope, having all of the player-characters be in roughly the same place at the same time. If, say, everyone's already a denizen of Gotham City, or a member of the X-Men, or what have you, it might be easier to jump in and start jamming with each other than when everyone has to spend weeks or months establishing their particular lore before venturing out to cross paths. More often than not, that leads to less of a group roleplay and more of a collection of individual fanfics with the occasional crossover.[/quote]
This is one of the things I liked seeing about one pitch I saw someone working on.

Not even necessarily JUST one city, either... but yeah, limiting the world in scope.

One thought I had was a world with three major cities, and GM posts addressing specific cities in addition to whatever character posts those GMs have.

I'll need a few weeks to get a handle of stuff in my own life, move house and get settled, but yeah, stuff to think about.

[quote=@AndyC]
While I'm always gonna be the type to hyper-obsess over how I'd reimagine every detail of Superman or Spider-Man (even though you bastards never pick me when I apply for them), I'm also seeing that the familiar approach pretty much always leads to me burning out fast and then feeling bad about getting burned out. Once upon a time, those of us who came over from the old Superherohype forums were able to sustain games for a year or more at a time, and a lot of that was a more rapid-fire output of short-form posts only punctuated with the occasional big one. I think the key to sustainability is the ability to make something a routine, and I think recalibrating to shorter (but still high-quality) posting would be a lot easier to make a routine out of.
[/quote]

I don't disagree with anything I've seen, with the possible exceptio of thinking 'smaller minimums' as a set rule would actually have an impact.

Most of the issues have been pressure applied by the self-driven nature of things.