SilverRain

You rent a shared apartment, and when you go in for the first time, the profile pic above is your new roomate

Is that... ants? *sprays*

Mahz's Dev Journal

Update: Nerfed ghost-mode

Ghost-mode no longer displays "Invisible".

Instead, it simply says if you've been on within the past 12 hours.



If it's been more than 12 hours since you were last online, then ghost-mode doesn't apply anymore and the forum shows an accurate timestamp.

Also, the friends list now correctly checks if your friend has ghost-mode enabled.

@Mahz

Yay, Ghost Mode! Thanks Mahz! :D

New user experience -- suggestions thread

I like the idea of the points system @SilverRain had, but bribing people to help almost feels shallow.

BrobyDDark

Oh, I meant the points system would be applied to everyone, including newbies. It's just an incentive for them to become more active before the excitement dissipates. :)

The grandmaster knights were also often respected members of the community and generally pretty nice people (until I became grandmaster knight, ofc). It gave me a pretty good reason to be active there, because I looked up to these guys and wanted a nice looking lance to go under my name.

Budda

Thanks - it's titles like Grandmaster Knight which makes me want to become more of a member. The time spent online as a measure sounds good too.

New user experience -- suggestions thread

How about a 'Newbie RP' area? Brainstorming here, so this needs to be tweaked. Essentially, a free for all, do whatever you want forum stickied/tacked onto the Introductions forum. It's aim is to bring out the RPer in newbies and get that engine running. Everyone here has very few posts - it's to make them comfortable and not be daunted by those with 1000+ posters. Easy-to-join threads for Free/Light, Casual/Medium-length and Advanced/Long-length. Eventually, those who have gotten themselves comfortable can start to check our real RP forums. Caveat: we might get a huge clump of newbies becoming oldbies staying in the new section. It could be a very general thread idea like "You come to a door, what do you do?". I have no idea how to handle the diversion of plots within however, so build upon this or take it apart. :)

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A tangent that might also help in the onboarding:

On an old forum I visited, I was very motivated by the leveling system they had. 10 points = Soldier, 50 points = General and so on. I was no longer the newbie with 5 posts. I was someone reaching the Soldier rank. So I talked and participated more. It helped develop my forum's persona instead of letting me waste away in silence. The cherry on top was that our ranks were colour coded and had picture associated with it - like those strips you see on the Navy's shoulders. The visual picture element meant that we could instantly see each other's ranks. It was a fun rank - nothing competitive.

Other smaller ideas was a points system where you could use your post count to buy armor. It was just text. E.g. Under my name, I had the equipment of kitty ears for 20 points and evening gown for 50 points. It was more boring, but some of us like the cosplay element.

Things I'd Never Do If I Ever Became an Evil Overlord (#121 I will not attempt to use an artifact that I know can only be used by the pure of heart)

Kita, in her housecat form, felt the warm sunlight upon her face. She woke up and did a kitty stretch before sitting up and licking herself clean. She quietly sat on the window sill, watching the world outside and batting at the occasional bug. From here, the land was vast and everything looked so pristine, but she deep down, many of her kind as well as fellow creatures were being hunted relentlessly for sport. The heroes call it 'gaining experience'. The Felinians called it target practice and torture. What made it worse was that the heroes would not stop with their crusades. There were seemingly endless waves of them

That is, until the Evil Overlord came to reign. The number of heroes started to fall and for once the Heroes' future looked glum. But recently, there was another surge and this time there were few places for her kind to hide. The Felinians lacked in numbers and habitual land. They hid in the forests and navigated the mountains, but the time had come to put an end to the heroes. And what better way than to join the forces of evil?

It wasn't long before Kita had finished her breakfast consisting of a fresh catch of fish. She changed into her catgirl form (opposable thumbs are important), and went on to check yesterday's traps for caught heroes (they didn't finish before the timer ended). A 100% capture rate. Their mutilated bodies lay strewn across the spikes, male and female, young and old. After sifting through the mess, Kita pulled a lever on the wall and everything was exhumed. The machines began to churn and roar, hissing and grinding. The meat turned to ashes and any metal left was melted down. After going through the rest of the traps. Kita scribbled down today's harvest of humans and made a note to ask the Evil Overlord what he wanted to do with the melted metal this time. Should it be turned into spikes? Cursed with demons? Or simply vanished?

With today's report recorded, Kita went into a quieter room so that she could work on designing a new trap. A ball of yarn lay on her desk as she started to sketch. Some mini-models were on a shelf in the back of the room. For each trap Kita would imagine what it was like, but of course a few heroes would need to be to be thrown in as a test. It was always funny when a hero gets half embedded into a wall. Their painful looks of struggle and fear was priceless...

*blinks*

Oh... Yarn!

Things I'd Never Do If I Ever Became an Evil Overlord (#121 I will not attempt to use an artifact that I know can only be used by the pure of heart)

@Dawnscroll Kita is curious and wants to ask the Dragon how he's going to fit into the meeting room(s).

Things I'd Never Do If I Ever Became an Evil Overlord (#121 I will not attempt to use an artifact that I know can only be used by the pure of heart)

@Dawnscroll Macro economics... I've been brainwashed by my job and thought 'Wow a Dragon using MS Excel - who would've thought?'. :)

Also, I noticed behind the pile of gold is the size of an entire town. That's a nice 'n' big dragon.

Things I'd Never Do If I Ever Became an Evil Overlord (#121 I will not attempt to use an artifact that I know can only be used by the pure of heart)

But if we are to lose, we will do it in a blaze of glory!

@Andreyich

Only to regenerate at the last save point...

Don't worry. We'll camp.

Things I'd Never Do If I Ever Became an Evil Overlord (#121 I will not attempt to use an artifact that I know can only be used by the pure of heart)

The heroes would probably need some sort of mascot too. Kidnap Pick an animal.

Things I'd Never Do If I Ever Became an Evil Overlord (#121 I will not attempt to use an artifact that I know can only be used by the pure of heart)

I believe we needed a tank character for the heroes.

Apart from the Overlord, we so far have 2 characters on the evil side and 2 on the heroes side.

@Lady Selune Yay!