Community Challenge Discussion For Jan 2018 [Staff/Members Welcomed]

[THEFROSTHead Admin]

FIRST COMMUNITY CHALLENGE

A NEW CHALLENGER ARISES: COMMUNITY CHALLENGE TAKES THE STAGE!

Yeah, starting next month I'm going to be rolling out the community challenge. So, you might be asking yourself: "You crazy nigga, what in the seven seas of fuck is that?" Well, I'm glad you ask. Lemme break it down for ya:

The community challenge is a month-long event where we focus on a central theme for people to compete for. It can be anything from character building, getting more post out, engaging in the community, character development or whatever else have you. Additionally, there may also be weekly and bi-weekly challenges in order to further give people chances to shine.

As, more importantly, the community challenge is to allow others to shine through hard work and commitment.

Now that you have an idea of what we are aiming for, lemme ask ya sweet cheeks, what do you want from a challenge? What would make you get up in the morning, come on Platinum Hearts and be like: "IGHT, I'M ABOUT TO STEAM ROLL EVERY NIGGA BECAUSE I'M HYPE AS FUCK RIGHT NOW AND WANT TO DO MY GOD DAMN BEST!"

Leave that lovely feedback below and I want to see member/staff picks for what they want to do and how we'll do our first community challenge of the year.

Otherwise, I'll just surprise you all


Also, be sure to tell me what prizes would interest you and what is of value to you so we can actually give you shit you give a fuck about.

[YakshaExperienced Member]

Personally, I'd like to see some manner of event involving making threads with people you haven't yet rped with before. Something to encourage people to mingle on a greater scale. I personally know once you reach a certain point the possibility of a thread you won't enjoy makes any attempt to rp with new people feel like a risky investment. If you were guaranteed rewards whether or not it worked out, I'd certainly imagine a few people would be willing to step out of their comfort zones.

[HakaseStarter Member]

Alright, challenges. If it were me designing this, I'd set up an alternating schedule for them. Have some challenges for personal development, some for group development, some for artistic development, and some for site development. Let me elaborate on each category.

Personal Development: Stuff you can do by yourself. Focus on giving people tangible writing goals like "finish two training threads" or "elaborate on an event in your character's past in a flashback".

Group Development: things you need to get with others to do. "Thread with a member of your race who's opposed to your goals." "Thread with X number of different races." "Show your character making a lasting bond (good or bad) with someone of a different race." Once again, tangible goals for things that help people write different situations.

Artistic Development: Simplest category, really. Art contest, template contest, short story rush, that kind of thing. Get people to mess with different forms of expression than forum posts, expand their horizons and have fun.

Site Development: Not advertising contests, please, no. Those get stupid fast and make other sites upset. This category is stuff that helps the site. Earmarking threads for archival, rewriting old pages with clearer grammar and word choice, just general time-intensive, low-skill stuff people can do to make things nicer. The internet version of Boy Scouts fixing up a campsite, if you will.

I'm not sure what people want for rewards, but Awesome Points seem more valuable than Yen so they have my vote.

[ChiraisuEstablished Member]

War.

We need conflict. We need adversity. We need blood to be shed and bodies piled up in the town plaza. Ph has been peaceful for too long. This peace is as unsettling as it is boring. Motivate the masses! Spur the sloths into action! Incentivize those who don't fight to find the front lines.

Honor in death, For glory, for your Lord and liege fight! Fight until there is one victor, battered and bloody. This is just the prelude, the beginning of the serenade of strife.

Be it shadowfall, monsuta, vanguard of vastime. All will come together in this grand battle royale! Which side will you pick? Who will win? The future of the world may just change with the victor.

[HakaseStarter Member]

War is not a community challenge. You want a war, do it the proper way. Make the battle lines through RP, find a reason to fight, and do it. A big war would splinter the community instead of making it better, and that would defeat the purpose of a community challenge.

[SerenityThe Gotei 13 Advocate]

Well then.

I'm loving the feedback on this already and it's only just started!

@Hakase I love the amount of thought you've put into your idea. The separation of categories that PH could go through and try is fantastic. Getting the community involved in "cleaning site" sounds wonderful as well. You put so much effort into that, so thank you!

@Yaksha I see where you're coming from. That's an idea I support as well. It would be nice to see people spread their wings and give others a chance for threads. I have noticed some people staying within their own groups, but others do often spread out. I know I am ready to RP with just about anyone and people like @MWD have been very versatile and willing to expand their RP partners.

What I would like to see out of challenges is similar to both of these guys. Greater participation from members is always a wonderful thing. How about creating characters to join certain organizations/factions? Maybe get some spots filled in those places that don't have much.

As for rewards, I'm not sure what would be a good reward system period. Yen has seemingly lost its value and I actually don't know what awesome points are used for besides raising the blue bar on your profile. Karma points died years ago, so... Things that could be offered are free minor character upgrades, little updates to your profile (like change of title), maybe your own personal color on Discord? But some of these don't exactly go beyond one win.

[HakaseStarter Member]

There's an awesome points store with much better return on investment, as it were, than Yen. That's why I'd like those.

Edit for clarity: Automatically scale rewards based on the character they're being applied to by tying it to a currency with a defined value. Though minor upgrades being handed out would serve the same purpose.

[THEFROSTHead Admin]

Personally, I'd like to see some manner of event involving making threads with people you haven't yet rped with before. Something to encourage people to mingle on a greater scale. I personally know once you reach a certain point the possibility of a thread you won't enjoy makes any attempt to rp with new people feel like a risky investment. If you were guaranteed rewards whether or not it worked out, I'd certainly imagine a few people would be willing to step out of their comfort zones.

I think I may keep that in mind with what I'll end up doing based on the feedback I get in this thread. I don't think I'll soley center the challenge around it, but I will end up perhaps doing something like giving them extra rewards for RPing with people they normally don't.

Alright, challenges. If it were me designing this, I'd set up an alternating schedule for them. Have some challenges for personal development, some for group development, some for artistic development, and some for site development. Let me elaborate on each category.

Personal Development: Stuff you can do by yourself. Focus on giving people tangible writing goals like "finish two training threads" or "elaborate on an event in your character's past in a flashback".

Group Development: things you need to get with others to do. "Thread with a member of your race who's opposed to your goals." "Thread with X number of different races." "Show your character making a lasting bond (good or bad) with someone of a different race." Once again, tangible goals for things that help people write different situations.

Artistic Development: Simplest category, really. Art contest, template contest, short story rush, that kind of thing. Get people to mess with different forms of expression than forum posts, expand their horizons and have fun.

Site Development: Not advertising contests, please, no. Those get stupid fast and make other sites upset. This category is stuff that helps the site. Earmarking threads for archival, rewriting old pages with clearer grammar and word choice, just general time-intensive, low-skill stuff people can do to make things nicer. The internet version of Boy Scouts fixing up a campsite, if you will.

I'm not sure what people want for rewards, but Awesome Points seem more valuable than Yen so they have my vote.

I like all of these ideas. You get the Frost Seal of approval for these. I'll most likely do osmething based around Group Character Development. That is, focusing on having goals related to your characters growth. "My goal is to have my character go through heartache, make a new connection with someone I never RP'd with" and etc

War.

We need conflict. We need adversity. We need blood to be shed and bodies piled up in the town plaza. Ph has been peaceful for too long. This peace is as unsettling as it is boring. Motivate the masses! Spur the sloths into action! Incentivize those who don't fight to find the front lines.

Honor in death, For glory, for your Lord and liege fight! Fight until there is one victor, battered and bloody. This is just the prelude, the beginning of the serenade of strife.

Be it shadowfall, monsuta, vanguard of vastime. All will come together in this grand battle royale! Which side will you pick? Who will win? The future of the world may just change with the victor.

Ehhhhhhhhhh, that's more of an event. It's not a bad idea, but not suited for a challenge like others said.

You should go here instead:

https://www.platinumhearts.net/t8341-event-creation-sign-up-template

https://www.platinumhearts.net/f290-unchecked-events

Well then.

I'm loving the feedback on this already and it's only just started!

@Hakase I love the amount of thought you've put into your idea. The separation of categories that PH could go through and try is fantastic. Getting the community involved in "cleaning site" sounds wonderful as well. You put so much effort into that, so thank you!

@Yaksha I see where you're coming from. That's an idea I support as well. It would be nice to see people spread their wings and give others a chance for threads. I have noticed some people staying within their own groups, but others do often spread out. I know I am ready to RP with just about anyone and people like @MWD have been very versatile and willing to expand their RP partners.

What I would like to see out of challenges is similar to both of these guys. Greater participation from members is always a wonderful thing. How about creating characters to join certain organizations/factions? Maybe get some spots filled in those places that don't have much.

As for rewards, I'm not sure what would be a good reward system period. Yen has seemingly lost its value and I actually don't know what awesome points are used for besides raising the blue bar on your profile. Karma points died years ago, so... Things that could be offered are free minor character upgrades, little updates to your profile (like change of title), maybe your own personal color on Discord? But some of these don't exactly go beyond one win.

@ your org idea

We've done those in the past and we aren't against using them again. Those are usually just recruitment drives like this.

https://www.platinumhearts.net/t18149-are-you-tired-of-being-a-powerless-broke-schmuck-apply-to-be-a-monsuta-contractor-today

[GammaVeteran Member]

A little late and I apologise but I missed this. Anyway onto my input which is the important part. First to address Chiraisu, war is something that is inevitable but the site simply cannot support war at the moment, the orgs of the site are barely filled with active members. I think a goal that needs to be achieved is raising the activity of the site, yeah we've had activity and advertising bursts but I am talking moreso about not just going around and posting an ad and then pissing off to the come back and claim your rewards. Role-Play forums are already not very popular and bleach ones to hence why a lot of them fail. It's honestly amazing in my opinion that PH has lasted so long however we need growth to really expand.

I'm not suggesting advertising, I am suggesting gathering more members. We should put more focus on gathering more members to hopefully help expand the amount of members, meaning more orgs being filled which can lead to an event that Chi is talking about and overall make the site bigger and therefore make more plots happen and all, not that we should all ignore site-related stuff but I feel a goal regarding bringing members and those members sticking around that can help promote more for the site.

[THEFROSTHead Admin]

[adm]After gauging the feedback in this thread, I'm going to go ahead and do something like a Personal Group Development challenge. The first challenge of Jan 2018 will be one that is based around getting characters of all faction and non-faction to focus on moving the plot/development/story of other characters related to their faction, race or whatever else have you so the site can come together to otherwise develop our characters and mature our writing.

As far as prizes go, I will allow the person who is able to win first place select their own prize, sit down with me and discuss what they want and what will help their character grow.

The rest of the prizes will be skill/tier orientated more than likely with awesome points.

I'll have something written up on the first.

Props to @Hakase

I'll also be saving some of your ideas @gamma @yaksha @serenity for other mid-term projects as well. [/adm]

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