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Post by Sarah on Jun 4, 2011 22:54:03 GMT -6
Alright, lets just throw stuff out here.
First business is deciding where out characters will have to go...
Most of our characters will be left without their other supporting characters, so I think we'd have to basically jump the plot up a year or two forward and essentially "start over" the characters we have left. Not back to the beginning, but with a little more history under their belts as we all start with fresh plot slate.
Some characters will probably just have to be put aside or abandoned. For instance, there's no reason for me to keep Crystal without a Terence on the site, since she was created specifically as a character to flesh his life out.
Others could technically be rebooted if they didn't interact with any of the other characters still in play (thus affecting their history). Mai (and Sonya) could potentially be rebooted back to Corus, since we no longer have a Blu (the main link between them and reason they're off-planet), or we could come up with somewhere else they've ended up and write Blu out of it, etc.
Others, we just write up what antics they've been getting up to in the past "year or so", and it'll be relatively easy. I can just land Sol and Olive on a planet somewhere, etc.
That's not even delving into changes I could make to the site itself, the extensive advertising we'll need to do to get other members who will stay and help build, so on and so forth...
Thoughts? Ideas? Evil plots of mass destruction? Anyone?
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Claire
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Post by Claire on Jun 8, 2011 21:08:36 GMT -6
Hm, yeah. It wouldn't make much sense for some characters to still be kicking around when their purpose is essentially nonexistent.
Magdalen could make an fairly easy return, and I could even incorporate such things as her brother. Thankfully you settled her in such a way that it leaves any potential alternatives wide open. In fact I'll probably come up with something dramatic. It'd be ideal for her to run into Sol and Olive again however.
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Post by Sarah on Jun 10, 2011 22:42:16 GMT -6
Yeah, maybe that would make most sense back on Terra, unless you think she would have likely ended up on a different planet? (They wouldn't be hanging out on Nox for any length of time, though. Obvious reasons on Sol's part, haha.)
I think another interesting one to figure out would be Eli and Skye, since we no longer have Titus, the link between them, but the fact that he still remains a common link is important. We'll have to see what Sunnie thinks when she can stop by in a week or so.
As far as my other characters go:
-Some of my other characters were essentially ones to wait around on planets for other characters to show up (ie. Saphira and Shaw), or characters to flesh out Terra (Mac), so I think they still have a use, but obviously won't be in play right away unless we have other characters there. I did finally claim Genevieve from my sister's list of characters, but never got to using her at all, so I might put her as a "Stand-by" character too, to pull out if someone needs a player on Nox.
-Characters I loved playing quite quickly, like Alex and Perrin, definitely wanna keep them, but I guess they need to wait for other players as well.
--I know I'll definitely drop Krystal. And Mai is an interesting one since I was having difficulty really fleshing her out and finding something to connect with, which made writing her a bit of a chore, so I might just scrap her unless maybe she comes in handy either with Corus or re: Sonya. I think she was the victim of me wanting a mermaid character, but not necessarily knowing where to go with it at the time, so she was "a character made for the sake of making a character", rather than true inspiration, lol. Oops.
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sunnie
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Post by sunnie on Jun 21, 2011 12:21:46 GMT -6
Hey guys! Yay reboot!
Okay, so as far as characters go:
-Strangely enough, Sonya was the exact same thing for me as Mai was for Sarah, I really wanted a Mermaid character but didn't know what to do with her. Unless anyone really wants me to, I probably won't bring her back.
-I really liked Rebecca's character, but I felt like I wasn't doing very good with developing her. I'm not gonna bring her back right now, but maybe sometime in the future if I get more time on my hands.
-Angel didn't really have a plot, but was just there for other characters to interact with if they went to the Painted Lady. In the interest of keeping my activity up, I'm really trying to limit myself to one character for now, but Angel could remain on a sort of standby in case anyone needs me to bring her back in her former capacity.
-Lastly, my idea for Skye and Eli is that since we left Titus descending into the Below anyway, we could simply say that he didn't return. Skye's reaction to this would obviously be to flip out and both literally and metaphorically cling frantically to the nearest warm body (or cold body, in Eli's case). In previous threads, Blank made it clear that Titus had made provisions for Skye in his will. We can assume that this provided enough money to allow Skye and Eli to continue living in the apartment and buy food etc. Some things to consider: How did Eli react to Skye breaking down and begging him to never ever ever leave her? What is their relationship like at the current point in time? What has Eli been doing for food? (If he and Skye have become close, maybe she is providing for him, if not how/where has he been hunting?) There are probably other things I am missing as well, please feel free to pose more questions.
-All of this is open to corrections, add-ons, and completely different ideas.
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Post by Sarah on Jun 21, 2011 23:59:36 GMT -6
We'll definitely have a stand-by list at this point... also I wonder if we should focus hardcore on advertising before opening up RPing again, in hopes of gaining a few more members who are willing to start with us. Then they're at the beginning instead of trying to jump into something we've already started. (Obviously this is after we do some clean-up/archiving/revamp of existing site stuff.)
Re: Eli and Skye I definitely agree that the obvious choice is having Titus been killed, and them living together, but I'm not so sure it should be immediately after where we left off.
First: the task for Titus in the below was super easy, so it would be pretty lame of him to be killed off during that. I think it should be during a more risky mission, maybe where he was sent to kill someone seriously dangerous.
Second: Since he'd only just met her, not enough time had passed for Eli to give a rip about Skye. He saw Titus as an immediate ally (and some sexytimes lol), but in that moment is thinking she's more of an annoyance and only leaves her alive out of the need to keep Titus on his side. Given more time to get to know her, he'd at least figure out smarter ways she could be useful to him, if not grow a little attached to her on a personal level.
Third: I think it'd give us more to work with if we had whatever happened... happen right before we start RPing again. Then we can RP reaction and aftermath. Gives us plot right away for them, rather than figuring out how to RP the mundane life they've fallen into.
Here's an important question for both of you: How far to jump the site ahead by? Is one year enough, or should we even go two years? Two might be too much (esp when it comes to the younger character's ages), but is 1 year enough time?
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sunnie
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Post by sunnie on Jun 22, 2011 11:34:36 GMT -6
-Eli & Skye: You're right, it would make a lot more sense for whatever happened to have just happened, and for Eli and Skye to have had time to develop more of a relationship. We should probably find a way to develop more of a back story for said relationship though. (Did/how did Eli gain Skye's trust? Does/why does Eli like Skye so much? etc.) But first it's probably more important to get the site back on it's feet.
-Advertising: I like the idea of having a few more members to start up with us. In order to do this we should maybe add a little something to our add about the site restarting and opportunities to be part of that. I have to admit I don't know much about advertising or about coding, but if their is any way I can help I will gladly do that.
-Timeline: I do think that a year would be enough time, a lot can happen in a year.
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Post by Sarah on Jun 23, 2011 23:11:17 GMT -6
Well, first and foremost, Eli looks at "what's in it for him". Initially, Skye would be seen as the continued link to Titus' money and apartment. After that, I'd need some time to figure out what else he'd care about on a personal level, but we can get to that later.
I think I'll have to revamp the ad again, for sure. I still want to rewrite the "site synopsis" up in the top corner as well. I was pondering that long ago, but was unsure of where to go with it. I just wanted to omit what I kept feeling was kind of cheesy every time I read it.
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sunnie
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Post by sunnie on Jun 24, 2011 22:12:20 GMT -6
Sounds good. Let me know if there is anyway I can help.
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Post by Sarah on Jun 25, 2011 22:42:57 GMT -6
Alright, what if we started in January again, of the next year (2431)? That way we're switching over to the new year number right away, but as early in that year as possible. That's essentially a timeline boost of 10 months. Sound ok?
Also: Claaaaaaiiiiire...?
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sunnie
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Post by sunnie on Jun 26, 2011 9:30:23 GMT -6
Works for me.
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Claire
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Post by Claire on Jun 26, 2011 20:58:07 GMT -6
A year sounds reasonable enough, and I definitely agree that we need to make advertising our main focus for the first little while.
However, I believe what was really driving potential members away was the fact that their characters would be limited to one area/planet until they've come up with a plausible reason and a means for them to travel elsewhere. So how do we fix that? Allowing members to ONLY create and play characters on Terra seems extreme but effective. Or we could create more areas within Terra to make it more appealing. So how would we strike a balance?
Also, do you plan on doing a face lift on the layout as well? Or are we keeping that the same?
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Post by Sarah on Jun 26, 2011 22:36:06 GMT -6
Yeah we could focus just on Terra for now... most of our major characters will be started there anyway. It will limit some character choices in some ways, but probably less so than the original rule of "make a human character first", since this includes humans as well as any of the species that have also joined humans in space. It would likely only restrict the creation of the rare-to-cooperate Goblins (which, by the way, I think I want to rename as Orcs since I think it's less confusing of a term), and most obviously the Vampires (which are NOT going to be running rampant in space when humans can't get near them often. If they do get off the planet, I want that specifically and logically RPed-out to control the numbers of off-planet vamps). I really wanted Terra to be the most fleshed out anyway, being that it's open to SO MANY possibilities. The other planets have more simple civilizations, while the humans have filled every crevasse of their planet with continually expanding city and technology. I mean honestly, filling an entire planet sized city could easily be it's own RP and still never be filled with the number of characters everyone could come up with (thinking of all the ages, careers, species, etc), so I think it's actually far less extreme a restriction when you get right down to it. Not sure about the layout. It took me forever and a half just to finally be satisfied with the colour scheme, hahaha. The aim was to try to get something not too extremely gendered (as many layouts out there are extremely feminine, since most of the decent makers are female), since I wanted to appeal to everyone, plus trying to mix in nature-esque feel with sci-fi technology feel at the same time (to represent the contrast of planets, etc). So it's slightly floral (capturing both nature/feminine), but with more of a "metal" colour scheme (tech/masculine) with just a hint of colour since grey on grey on grey was suuuper boring. Yes, I most definitely thought out the layout to that kind of extreme! But, if we can track down another idea/scheme that keeps those concepts in mind and isn't totally eye-blinding, I'm open to new suggestions! I haven't touched any of the serious coding in about 2 years, though, so I might be kind of rusty... ...I used a lot of brackets in this post. Whoa.
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sunnie
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Post by sunnie on Jun 27, 2011 9:57:44 GMT -6
Ok, so I know this is not by any means up to me, but I'd just like to add my voice to the discussion.
While I agree that new members characters just sitting there is a problem, I really don't think that restricting posting to Terra is a good solution. I actually think new members would be very disappointed to discover that they cannot create characters on other planets. Plus, if we restrict posting to Terra as well, that means we cannot RP any ships out in space or docking on other planets.
I know this isn't a perfect solution either, but here is my idea for what it's worth: We could simply explain how characters created on other planets tend to have to hang around a bit before they can actually begin RPing. We could say that because of this we recommend that a member's first character begin on Terra. This way there are no surprises when a new character has to do a bit of waiting around, but posting is still open everywhere. Also, we leave the decision up to the member rather than restricting them which (having in the past considered joining many different RP sites) I know can be a big turn-off for prospective newbies.
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Post by Sarah on Jun 29, 2011 19:45:11 GMT -6
Good point on the ships being out of play then as well. Hmmm, maybe a "suggestion" is more the way to go. Moreso to point them in a direction with a head's up, rather than force it?
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Claire
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Post by Claire on Jul 13, 2011 14:35:04 GMT -6
I guess that seems the fairest way to go about it. Just make sure you place a disclaimer somewhere in the main information warning new members that if they do in fact choose to play some select races, they may be stuck on their own for a little bit until others join them. And that the safest thing to do would be to play someone on Terra first until the site becomes a bit more active.
What else needs discussing? Are we going to be adding new locations to certain planets? Expanding or editing the descriptions of said locations? Will you be changing the character biography format at all?
These are just little things off the top of my head that may need to be addressed.
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