Tier Discussion

So, I realized that a few people on this site don't really like the tiers. I respect the revamp and how to clear out OPness and all, but, in one site member's (I don't wanna bring them into this if they don't want their idea out publicly) quote, "Some sites can have either too little control or too much". Like I said, I completely understand why we want to get rid of the OPness, and I'm alright with the Abilities and whatnot creation templates, but I think the tiers are.. too difficult to understand. So I was hoping maybe we can discuss this?

Lets start with what is it you don't understand?

Difficult to understand is only part of it. Yes, it's impossible to get a general impression of unless you discuss it personally with a staff member that knows their way around, which is definitely not something suitable for a site aiming towards a decently sized audience. Not only that but it's way too outstretched. It's trying to make things balanced without forcing a lot onto their members. Sure, it will be balanced. But it's far too strict; taking away a lot of freedom that comes without such a system.

While yes, it would be nice to have a completely balanced and smooth running forum, that's not how things work. Not in this dimension anyway. Characters were overpowered, but only the characters (or their reboots) that had been there from the beginning. We were doing a fine job of keeping new, fresh characters from inheriting that OPness, courtesy of Sly. It merely seemed like everyone was op because it was a majority of the site at the time. (Put aside those who hardly roleplay.) When we become more exposed to the public, more characters would be made and would heavily outweigh the amount of OP characters.

I don't think a system is a bad idea. In fact, I encourage it. But the one we have right now isn't going to work in the least. Lighten up the restrictions and make some exceptions for previously existing characters (the ones that were actually used, of course). Some character's abilities are things that define them. Such as Yuuki. Now, she has to go through hell and back to get that ability again. And even then, it won't be nearly the same.

Right now I'm just quietly watching the site catch dust from the sidelines. I'm not going to bother to touch the situation it's in right now. It'll blow over soon. Trust me. It won't stay this way for long. Either that, or the admins will refuse to let it go and put the last nail in the coffin for this site. I'll just have to wait and see.

Everything that Zer0 said is exactly what I mean.. But what I'm confused about is everything about the tiers, really. And I think a lot of other people are, too. But... I honestly don't know what else to say because Zer0 put it all in a nutshell. There are some things that are too organized that you barely understand, and I think this is one of them.

I don't understand why we need them to regulate abilities and such. You don't need tiers to be able to say that blowing up cities is overpowered. Maybe I'm just being stupid here, because I have never been an admin on a site with more than five people, but still.

Also, I think it puts down too many restrictions. You can do a lot of stuff on a site like this, but, the tiers make this harder. I think they do more harm than help.

I agree with Night and Zero. I know that you had good intentions, but...

I agree that the tiers are too confusing. I had to have, like, an hour discussion with one of the admins to fully understand it. We need to simplify the system so it can be easily understood somewhat quickly by new members. It would also help if we had an official topic that explained the tiers thoroughly, and with examples, making sure to do things in a clear and concise manner: Giving a good intro that gives the basis of the situation along with the main points and really eases the reader into the subject material, then getting into the nitty gritty in the body, and finally summarizing things again at the end to hopefully either hammer in a point or reveal to the reader if they don't understand something.

Hey look, y'all have a mod to add to your conversations. ;3 #LianaIsBestMod

Anyway, the reason I'm drawing away from sites with this kind of system is because most people are so damn focused on gaining power, no one actually has any time to do some fun, relaxing, developping stories. Sure, the only way to level up is through stories, but then everyone is pressured to make long posts. I started roleplaying because it was fun and you didn't have to spend thirty minutes or longer on posts.

I, however, don't care about the restrictions, since I didn't come to a website to have power. In fact, I like that power is limited. Gives everything a more realistic vibe. However, this is coming from a site that had space monkey people, godzilla, immortals, gods and levaiathins, etc. Not the most realistic place

So... yeah. ;3 Like, I posted an event topic and not one person has replied to it.

I would, but I have my own idea that I'll get around to sometime this summer...hopefully. Just four more weeks.

Aero's thinking out her own system. I think she wants to keep tiers, but not force a hard reset at everyone tier 9. I not sure, so let's be patient w
And wait to hear what aero says.

I was gonna leave because I didnt like the system but now people are rioting and rebelling! WHOO

Yeah, I don't really like that there are a lot of restrictions. It seems that levelling up relies heavily on writing skill now as opposed to having fun and developing character. Not to mention having seventy million different apps get very confusing to work with. I also don't like how you HAVE to start at tier nine, since many people wouldh have been trained by the military or someone else and in teh end people are gonna end up as op as they used to be, albeit take longer to do so.

I'll reply, Liana, when I get the time. If Aero does plan to keep the tiers though, then why not just get all the abilities, armor, vehicle, and companion creation in the original character application? They'd have to be optional, of course. And about the character development and levelling up thing, why should that rely on making long posts? Some people don't have strong writing skill (like me), and if one's skill are better than someone else's, then wouldn't that be kind of unfair? Like, what if the person who struggle to make long posts makes actually, like, 15 rpg replies that they worked hard on but ends up being about 3 short paragraphs... Then there's the skilled person who only makes about 3-5 long 1,000-word posts and they level up faster than the other person did. Isn't roleplay just about playful fun, not being professional?

I've only been roleplaying for a year and it's kind of an on-and-off thing so I may just be being an idiot right now. I know good intentions were meant, but..

I think we need to compromise instead of doing one thing or the other 'cause if we do that, then we'll never fix any problems. How this is supposed to work is fix a problem, causing other problems, fix those problems, rinse and repeat until the problems are bearable or not to big of a deal or the problems that are there have nothing to do with what was fixed. But enough rambling. Possibly, characters could be judged by the admins based off their character/pet/weapons/abilities/etc. app (after they get approved) for what their tiers should be. Now the problems with that is that someone might try to make their character more powerful, or people might try to test to see how much the admins are willing to accept in order to get the most powerful character. It would be ideal if new members didn't know about this so they wouldn't be able to exploit it, but even if we don't make it public on the site someone could easily tell the new member. But that's getting into quite the theoretical situation and may not happen or be a problem at all. Something more likly would probably be people doing that when making alts, as they would already know about this. Also this problem may arise for the old characters that haven't had their app remade yet. (Not pointing fingers and I actually qualify in this category as well.) It might not. Who knows. Maybe I'm just thinking too much and over complicating things. I tend to do that a lot. If anyone has any suggestions/tweaks/solutions/etc. On my long winded ramble then that would be great! Or any at all on this topic in general really. We all need to gather at a giant table in rivendell and talk about the fate of the ring. (aka the tier system.) Yay! council-meeting-thingies!

I actually quite like that idea. That way, instead of having a character you wanted to be quite strong or powerful being weaker than an average human (why dude why did you make it like that, yeah you changed it but i mean still dude), they would be just as strong as you wanted. Sure there'll be one or two people who decide to exploit this, but I feel like you could have rules such as 'you cannot start above X tier' or whatever. Sure, people may not be happy having to level up to get the abilities and weapons they want, but this way it'll be much more of a Creative Freedom site like it used to be. Because having a million restrictions doesn't seem very freedom-ey to me. It's almost as much freedom as Donald Trump becoming president would give you guys. That might be exaggerated but I mean still.

I hope you guys listen to this conversation, as I see it as important to take other people's ideas into mind.

I happy you like the idea. Another thing that just popped into my mind was whether or not one should be able to upgrade their character at all if we do that.

Problem is, the admins don't listen to the majority of opinions and simply carry on with what they personally want in the site.

I think I'll leave this site anyway and turn my old site into something close to this, in case anyone wants a little bit more freedom (of course, restrictions will apply).

The biggest problem I have with this new thing is the ten thousand word count thing. Seriously, it took three weeks for me to write 8,000 words for a story. Although I am a very big writer, i still struggle to write long things. And most people would end up writing ten thousand words of nothing, since its turned into quantity over quality.

As well as this, many characters have already progressed vastly, and starting them off as a normal human (hahaha godzilla being weaker than most humans) seems extremely unfair.

Minea wrote:I happy you like the idea. Another thing that just popped into my mind was whether or not one should be able to upgrade their character at all if we do that.  

As for this, I still believe you should be able to level up characters, since people might want to start off slightly weaker and work up to their final form (dbz?) and that people might want to change their characters over time.

I respect that this idea is to get rid of overpowered characters, but like I said before, you've turned 'creative freedom' into 'creative restrictions', and this site into an RPG (the game kinda one). I kinda liked the idea at first but I mean this site has changed a lot over time, and honestly, I prefer when we had full freedom over our characters. I still think the tier system would work, just maybe don't hard reset on their abilities.

For example, when you approve a character, you could tell them what tier you deem them to be, tell them their strength and speed, and all the other new things that involve ranks and numbery stuff.

seriously though why do we have a billion different apps to fill out.

I dun know why. XD And it may seem like they're doing nothing, but they're just trying to brainstorm a solution and communicate to each other to get their ideas approved by the other peeps. They're having a hard time right now because apparently Navi resigned or balied or something of the like and they can't get a hold of Areo. I just wish they would make some things public so everyone would be a little more informed. That would help a lot. I just think there should be some sort of buff you get at the beginning and have the word count on the other thing be more of a way to prevent people from being lazy instead of forcing people to do a lot of work. Maybe a 1,000 word minimum. That takes me about an hour or two to write, what about you guys?

1,000 is much easier for me, and that way, people aren't stressed to do WAY too much.

On another note, I just want some indication that the admins are at least reading this discussion...

For each post? No thanks. 1,000 words a post is way too much. I'm not wasting an hour of my life on a post. Besides, 500 words is actually quite a lot, if you look at it.

The 10,000 word thing is not required.....it's a contest/event thingy...or at least was. If you didn't want to do it, don't. Idk why you are trying to word count other stuff.

I'm here reading this and taking everything into consideration. And I don't know of this 'can't contact Aero thing,' we have Skype.

That's what I interpreted from a conversation. I probably interpreted it wrong. Oh, and One. I meant 1,000 words overall. Not 1,000 words for each post. I checked how many words people's posts were and most of the time they were in between 200-500 words. That's 2-5 posts if you just write normal posts. Then there's always the option of just writing a short story. BTW: Is it okay if I just use the random Minea things I wrote in my Roleplay with Sly for this. I worked a long time and put a lot of effort into it so I would love to see it be canon. It's 6,666 words long all together and it shows parts of Minea's past, Minea's feelings, Minea and Kurisu's relationship, what exatly happens to Minea when Kurisu in in control, and other things.

Aero Dynamic wrote:I'm here reading this and taking everything into consideration. And I don't know of this 'can't contact Aero thing,' we have Skype.

Thanks for clarification. Sorry if my comment seemed somewhat backlash or sarcastic, i just really wanted to know if someone in authority were reading this. Thanks for listening to us :3

Minea wrote:That's what I interpreted from a conversation. I probably interpreted it wrong. Oh, and One. I meant 1,000 words overall. Not 1,000 words for each post.  I checked how many words people's posts were and most of the time they were in between 200-500 words. That's 2-5 posts if you just write normal posts. Then there's always the option of just writing a short story. BTW: Is it okay if I just use the random Minea things I wrote in my Roleplay with Sly for this. I worked a long time and put a lot of effort into it so I would love to see it be canon. It's 6,666 words long all together and it shows parts of Minea's past, Minea's feelings, Minea and Kurisu's relationship, what exatly happens to Minea when Kurisu in in control, and other things.

I understand the amount of effort you put into those backstories . But the problem is that this existed well before the revamp and Sly would not be as strong as he was then. What I can do is permit everything you wrote of Minea while Kurisu was controlling her body as part of the 10k words thing, but beyond that, nothing will count. This will mean nothing I wrote there will count for my 10k words .

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As for the tiers discussion, I have taken all this into consideration and am working on lifting those restrictions. What I have on the table is this:

Upon approval, characters can choose one of the two following starts:

• 6 tier points to distribute across physical strength, speed and energy. However nothing can go beyond tier 5. (E.g. from a 9/9/9 start, you can distribute it as 5/7/9, with tier 5 being strength, tier 7 being speed and tier 9 being energy. You CANNOT start with something like 3/9/9 or 4/8/9.)
  
• Double the starting money to $20,000

What this will do is not only lift the restrictions, but also allow characters to specialise in certain roles to make them more unique than an average human. This is still in development and is open to discussion.

As we have established, characters are separated into their own "character tiers" pertaining to their rank or how well developed they are. Default character tier for all of us is 3, and can go up to 0. Going up in this tier lifts more limitations on how many or how strong your abilities can be. For now, here is the list of what I proposed (and I am trying my best to make it easy to understand):

Character tier 3

Tier point limit across physical, speed and energy is 9. Tier limit for these is 4.

(This means that you can only go up in tiers for the three strengths for a total of 9 times at this character tier. However, none of them can go beyond tier 4. E.g. Say Sly started off with the distribution of 9/7/5. Thanks to his start, he had already expended 6pts of the 9 he is limited to due to his starting character tier. He can add a further 1pt to energy and 2pts to speed, giving him a final distribution of 9/5/4. He CANNOT put 2pts into energy because that will bring his energy tier beyond 4. Now that he has expended all 9 pts, he must upgrade his character tier from 3 to 2 in order to have access to more tier pts for his e strengths.)

Character tier 2

Tier pt limit across the three strengths increased by 3. Tier limit for these increased to 2.

Character tier 1

Tier pt limit across the three strengths increased by 3. Tier limit for these increased to 1.

Character tier 0

Tier pt limit across the three strengths increased by 3. Tier limit for these increased to 0.

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Overall, in the end, you can have an absolute maximum of 18pts out of 27 across your three strengths (9 per strength). An average Joe may have a distribution of 3/3/3 (6pts into all 3 strengths), or a speed specialist may have 9/0/0 (9pts into speed and energy)

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I hope all this makes sense so far. Still they are work in progress and I will need to add number of abilities and maximum tier of abilities into these categories soon. Let me know if you have any thoughts about this.

It is likely that I am going to hide these tiers and review each app abilities and strengths under discretion with these tier lists (for sake of simplicity) because they are pretty difficult to understand.