MelonHead

Arena Chat Thread

Arena probably has a bad reputation, but ultimately, a lot of the shit talk, the banter, the ego, that's literally what you get in really competitive atmospheres and that's a large part of what the Arena is at its most fundamental. It's opposing sides fighting with words, like debate, to win a contest. We could probably butter it up, ease people in, but in the end they will have to face all of the negative sides of competition at some point or another. The people that come out the other side fired up, ready for the next one, they stick around. Some people aren't cut out for it, they roleplay for collaborative story telling in a safe atmosphere, not an antagonistic contest of wits and argument. That's fine too.

Arena Chat Thread

<Snipped quote by ImportantNobody>
Perhaps egotistical boasts [though I assume this was a joke] would not be the best way to promote Arena.

Also, I used to specifically moderate an Arena subforum on another website some years ago, maybe you shouldn't be so cocky.

@Inkarnate

Might as well get used to it, the arena section is about 40% ego, it fuels us, makes us strongaaaah

Arena Chat Thread

I want its antlers, for a thing, a thing I need to do.

Arena Chat Thread

Seconded. Much text, much agreement.

Arena Chat Thread

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

@Doc Doctor

I think Jackass covered that

Arena Chat Thread

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).

@Buddha

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.

Arena Chat Thread

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.

Arena Chat Thread

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.

How can we help improve RPGuild? Community suggestions and discussion.

@MelonHead Do you think a solution would be the creation of an additional 'tournament moderator' or 'tournament host' role would benefit arena RP where arena RP can, with help of moderators, pick a person or two, three that are experienced and capable of hosting tournaments, and whose only power _is_ the hosting of tournaments, that that would help?

@Buddha

I think we could use another moderator with the same powers as Rilla, because he can't be as active as he used to be because of his small creature he calls a son. I don't think it's really possible to appoint people as tournament hosts, the skills required to run a tournament vary wildly from that of a moderator, beyond a similar level headed mentality. People just have to try and run tournaments more often, which is a big ask, because running a tournament is a lot more work than simply GMing a RP.

How can we help improve RPGuild? Community suggestions and discussion.

Tournaments are hosted in different venues, the arena community is a transient one and tends to move around a lot to clash with other communities.

The last tournament prior to this one hosted on RPG was poorly managed and designed, it was about seven months ago I believe. Before that there was the Black Mountain tournament that went relatively well, that was about 11 months ago. Before that there was the ranked system, which brought a lot of extra activity in. The official RPG tournament before that was also poorly designed and managed. Unfortunately, not everyone is cut out for running a tournament, but the only way to find out is to try.

I don't believe this tournament will be the saving grace of the arena, I know that it will bring about a surge of activity because they always do. The Arena doesn't really need a saving grace, the players are all still around, they communicate and for the most part are friends and frenemies. Arena isn't for everyone, it's an intense and competitive atmosphere that turns a lot of more casual roleplayers off, and so it will always be a small but necessary place on this forum and many others. However, as Vordak mentions, taking it off the front page will simply reduce that inflow of like-minded individuals even further. Hell, even the current tournament is being hosted by someone offsite and brought in about ten new players, who may never have even seen it if it was melded with 1x1 as you suggest.