Feature Request Thread

[Isaac]

I wouldn't mind a bookmark function. I realize we sort of have a rudimentary one. Each post has a link to it, so you just need to save that link if you ever want to pick up where you left off. But RPs can be complex things where posts don't always happen in order. It would be nifty to be able to flag posts so that you can come back to certain ones later. Maybe to read something that doesn't pertain to what you're character's doing at the moment.

I'd also like some control over notification settings. Stuff like getting notified for just IC posts or when certain users post in a thread.

@BrokenPromise

We do have the follow topic button or subscribe or whatever! That also stores every rp!

[BrokenPromise]

Mmmm, yea, but this would be more for specific posts. Notifications tend to disappear regardless of how many posts on a page you've read.

[Isaac]

Mmmm, yea, but this would be more for specific posts. Notifications tend to disappear regardless of how many posts on a page you've read.

@BrokenPromise

Hmm, maybe this can be taken a step forward...maybe it can hold post chains as well.

[Dark Cloud]

Longer expiry time for dead spam threads, you killed my meme threads. D:

[Jen]

I'm newish, so some of these may be things I just haven't discovered/figured out yet. So, apologies in advance if that's the case.

-Email notifications for PMs. I need things to yell at me so I don't miss them. x.x
-Ability to have a PM be in reverse order -- I'd love to be able to have the newest post at the top of the first page.
-Additional folders for PMs. It would be cool if we could make our own or have one for IC and one for OOC for sorting purposes.

[Carlyle]

Bumping this to make sure it doesn't get locked so people can continue to send feedback.

[Dark Cloud]

RPG should setup a Twitter page, FB is a bit old school.

[Carlyle]

RPG should setup a Twitter page, FB is a bit old school.

@Dark Cloud

RPG does have a Twitter page; 2, in fact. One that Mahz used to run and also a more recent one that was managed by a former staff member that resigned awhile back. Both are, at this time, dead in the water, however. Given that RPG generally doesn't have a solid or stellar track record for social media, events and other such things (as we can see with Guild News or even the Writing Contests, for examples) for various reasons of their own, I wouldn't get your hopes up for a revival any time soon. I'd love to see more community/social-related aspects on the guild myself, but I've accepted that those don't really exist on RPG as of now outside of the RP spectrum.

[KrystalKleo]

I would like to add a suggestion for font sizes. I enjoy having various size options in font for various reasons. Larger for things like CS's, louder talking that's not quiet yelling. Smaller print for whispering or mutterings under the character's breath. I know we have the 3 different header sizes that get bigger and bigger. But I would like something for smaller and smaller.

header 1

header 2

<-- but opposite.

I don't know if other users would use this function or if I'm just unique.

[Vec]

Justified text alignment. Please.

[Dark Cloud]

BB code for glowing letters. It's been done on Bay12, it should be possible to do so here.

[Dion]

<Snipped quote by Dark Cloud>

RPG does have a Twitter page; 2, in fact. One that Mahz used to run and also a more recent one that was managed by a former staff member that resigned awhile back. Both are, at this time, dead in the water, however. Given that RPG generally doesn't have a solid or stellar track record for social media, events and other such things (as we can see with Guild News or even the Writing Contests, for examples) for various reasons of their own, I wouldn't get your hopes up for a revival any time soon. I'd love to see more community/social-related aspects on the guild myself, but I've accepted that those don't really exist on RPG as of now outside of the RP spectrum.

@Kuro

I think this is kind of telling for the state of RPG at any rate and has become increasingly more telling as time has gone on since the last few years. I enjoy RPG for what it is and I have put my two cents in at times but ultimately kind of feel like it's not very useful. The features that are being requested in this thread are, at this point, legacy features that should've been included 3-4 years ago. We're asking for QoL features that you can get for free as PnP plugins on free forum hosting websites. I mean fuck, we still don't have an actual in-text editor like free forums that are focused on writing smut do.

I don't mean to look a gift horse in the mouth, just to disarm that argument before it gets thrown my way for the umpteenth time; I do appreciate that Mahz has made this forum available for us, and has continued to do so for ages long past the actual expiry date of this forum, but god, is it not frustrating that my favorite writing forum has slowly but surely died off, with multiple people sounding multiple alarm bells about it as time has passed and be ignored and/or put aside as trolls.

The people who have tried to breathe new life into the forum do have a pretty shit track record at keeping things running. I can't really blame them. Cliqueyness is rife on any sort of roleplaying forum and RPG is not an exception to this rule, and moreover running any sort of community event is a fucking thankless job that nobody really gives a shit about. We all want it; nobody wants to participate; and even less people than that want to actually host it. Multiple people have asked for more community stuff, official or unofficial, too, and were pretty consistently shown the door for it in the discussion/suggestion space. Consistency was never RPG's strongest suit either way. We can learn a lot from other roleplaying forums when it comes to this: they have welcoming commitees, design teams, moderators, janitors, admins that can actually control the forum as needed and, probably most noticeable, a head admin that is active and consistently making changes or, at least, present on the forum to remind people he exists.

But most importantly and IMHO, a point that is equally as important as the fact that Mahz is not here: people on other forums actually give enough of a shit to martyr themselves and take roles upon themselves. Nobody on RPG or the spaces around it is offering to do things or even considering doing things for RPG. Because there's no reason to, because we all know it's thankless, and because frankly the forum is on life support and we all know it.

The "we don't actively moderate/govern the website" attitude that is so prevalent among staff here that it's basically become a life motto has really, really hurt the website I feel beyond just giving people more breathing space to be toxic shits than needed (and yes, I count myself among those toxic shits; I should've probably been shut down ages before the big ol' hammer swung my way anyway). But beyond moderation, there's also no incentives to keep people actively on here and, when numbers start to dwindle, there's even less reason to come onto this site. We can't exactly reverse this.

A shitty QoL feature that is at this point outdated far enough that it's offered as PnP plugins for forums isn't going to change this. Nor is a twitter account, haha.

I'm just happy to be here, dawgs, whether we get a single new BB-code thing added or not.

[Dark Cloud]

@Dion the whole issue is nobody can do jack except Mahz and well..Mahz ain't coming back in my opinion.

[Dion]

@Dark Cloud I think that that is an oversimplification. It's not just Mahz not being here. The community has overall gotten less pleasant, moderation is more or less absent, this place is a wild-west. People have gotten away with saying vehement shit in the Discord for ages even when Mahz was here, lol.

[mickilennial]

Yep, Dion's pretty much correct here.

The community is shrinking and apathy is exponentially growing by the day; there's less user engagement and people feel less concerned about building community between each other. As awful and ridiculous as past spats were, we still had a lot more community agency and unity in a way. It's more than Mahz stepped away and new features can't be added--those are just bells and whistles. Those don't bring new users in and retain them nor does it convince those who are basically on their way out from RPing as a hobby from keeping themselves from retiring outright.

[Dark Cloud]

I mean your not wrong but the problem is the people running this site. Or rather should be running it, aren't in really any capacity. Only Mahz can actually change the site, and fuck if I can understand why that is when your absent for two years. I've been here for 8 years and even back in 2015 the sites moderation were barely active.

The issue may be apathy but it's more likely Mahz's fault for being a flaky admin. I've seen forums currently with far more activity recently that kind of leave me wondering when the site was last updated or changed cause fuck if I remember. I'm basically just reiterating what TGM said.

But let's just be fucking straight up, Roleplayer Guild is dying.

[mickilennial]

Solely blaming the administration is an easy excuse, in my experience. While I agree that the way Mahz has designed the leadership policies (and not being active consistently) is a factor in the larger community's dissatisfaction but I think the problems are a little more than that. RPG is stable and it has a lot of baseline features needed to roleplay, but the lack of community can be put on us at times as much as it can be on Mahz's policies. People who had the drive to do community events were driven out. People keep shuffling out due to the hobby falling out of their hands and we aren't retaining many new members who do public roleplays. The discord server is basically dead. Contests have less engagement than they used to. Off-Topic Discussion on site has gotten tepid.

Not every single issue can be laid to blame at Mahz or the staff's feet. As Dion said:

A shitty QoL feature that is at this point outdated far enough that it's offered as PnP plugins for forums isn't going to change this. Nor is a twitter account, haha.

@Dion

The only thing that is going to change RPG is a new influx of members that stay, feel welcome here, and want to roleplay. Do the staffers even want to solve that issue? No, they've been told they are janitors and nothing else. Otherwise those of us who remain will just try to keep doing as we do until the site inevitably fades into the annals of internet history. The only way [without a influx of new members] we can revitalize RPG is to roleplay and do the community engagement ourselves, which is being way more optimistic than anything else.

[Yankee]

This has kind of gone away from the topic of feature requests...

As a feature request, maybe it's possible to add "zeroth" posts to test threads?

Or if you want to be sneaky, you can type up the draft, replace it with a blank space, and then reference your draft in the secret Revisions page (roleplayerguild.com/posts/<postID>/revisions). You can only see your own revisions though ;)

@LegendBegins

Is it possible to be able to see revisions of your own posts outside of this? Like how the revision section shows on zeroth posts. Might also be useful for GMs to be able to see revisions made in their threads, idk.

[mickilennial]

This has kind of gone away from the topic of feature requests...

As a feature request, maybe it's possible to add "zeroth" posts to test threads?

Is it possible to be able to see revisions of your own posts outside of this? Like how the revision section shows on zeroth posts. Might also be useful for GMs to be able to see revisions made in their threads, idk.

@Yankee

The only thing I really want that is near a "need" is tabs in PMs so I can RP cohesively in PMs without 2-3 different threads. It'd, frankly, extensively improve my 1x1s.