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Magellan · **09-24-2013, 10:48 AM**

@ Vito: I agree! OOC/IC lines can be really problematic. My character Claire last night came across a tribal male Miqo she haaaaaateeed. But OOCly I absolutely loved it xD. So much 'grrr' between the two of them! Rivals can be so much fun!

But in my case, it was like Rose's: a fundamental difference of opinion that I feel people were unable to keep an open mind about. Just because you don't always agree on everything, doesn't men you suddenly treat them like they don't exist.

@Rose: hang in there! I bet your char and your FC will do great things! ^_^

Rosekitten · **09-24-2013, 10:56 AM**

Â Magellan - I hope ^^; i mean i have met some great people through it.. so i hope all bumps in the road are smoothed out for a while at the least.

FreelanceWizard · **09-24-2013, 11:49 AM**

The IC/OOC thing is part of the reason why, if one of my characters is being especially unpleasant, I always let the person know OOC that it's nothing against them -- it's just my character.

I'll be frank: there's always going to be drama. Sometimes, as an FC leader, you can defuse it, sometimes it blows up in your face, and sometimes you have to take disciplinary steps (especially if said drama turns into godmoding, metagaming, or OOC harassment). It sucks, and it'll make enemies of people -- even more so than being an outspoken person on these forums (my usual way of making enemies, you see Smile

). It's just the way of things, unfortunately. The only advice I can give is to be the better person and just let it go. If they're going to be two-faced jerks, you probably don't want to interact with them anyway. There's always more RPers about, after all.

Asyria · **09-24-2013, 02:01 PM**

I'll echo what others have said and say that yes drama is 100% normal.
Not just on Balmung but on Gilgamesh as well, and on every server in every game, on every corner of the internet and hey even in real life.
Wars are waged over drama.
I'm not even kidding.

The real question is... what can you do about it?

Vito · **09-24-2013, 03:27 PM**

(09-24-2013, 10:39 AM)Rosekitten Wrote: edit:Â

Vito - i dont think it even had to do with my character o-O they just suddenly out of the blue hated me as a person. We were all good friends till.. um yeah something happened? I mean there are characters i dislike but i woulnt Â hate the person.. I thought that was common sense >.>; Heck i might go as far if i dislike the person i might still enjoy the character xP

Yeah, I guess I got a little overboard with my own rant, but there's no denying it. People will find any excuse not to socialize or confront you, either it be over IC or OOC stuff, or perhaps leadership choices you've made. I can't explain to you what caused them to leave your FC because I really have no clue why and I'm not going to assume why. I've just made my own observations about people who just.. leave, or run away. They will never explain themselves to you. They won't even give you the option to repair it. They just talk about you in a negative light, not wanting to fix the situation. They simply want to complain and bash.Â

BUT! Don't ever give up on your character because of how immature people can be. You put a lot of effort and emotions into your little dude, so I don't want to see any of that negative shite about trashing him/her. They are an extension of you that requires a lot of responsibility and nurturing. There's tons of new friends to be made with your cool character.

Sigyn Shieldbreaker · **09-24-2013, 03:50 PM**

I think I've found this issue arises in games when I try to lead a group -and- try to stay on top of issues with my guild members. I have a tendency to care about their real life situations and the more you know someone OOCly, the more issues can arise when you realize you're not of the same mindset. The closest thing I've experienced to drama lately was two of my members having an issue with their combat (which always arises and is one of the primary reasons people hate IC text-based fights) and it took until our second actual event for this to even happen once. Pretty proud of that. The situation was settled, so far as I knew, but was brought -back- up by someone who wasn't involved. A good point was raised which I need to bear in mind, by this person, but nevertheless, the result was losing one of the members I most cherished and enjoyed.

I tend to do my best to be tactful and to let each person see the other person's side. That's what arbitrating is. It's very difficult to do when one or both people involved think that you are biased towards the other person. I talk to my members OOCly, I try to make sure none of them feel neglected, and I want them, most importantly, to communicate -with each other-. All of these things tend to help circumvent issues.

So far as I know, I'm not hated. I don't know if I'm respected by any means but my LS people make me feel at least a little appreciated. The problem in RP communities is that people, even very good people, tend to separate into cliques. When your friend has a problem with someone else and they're having a negative emotional reaction, whether it's sadness at not being understood or anger or anything, people tend to want to step in and say something in that person's defense.

So many people throw around that they don't want to sugar coat things or they don't want to be pretentious and the issue therein is that they're confusing 'sugar coated' and 'pretentious' for empathy and tact. When you cut right to the chase, you leave out a lot of the details that would make what you're saying sound vastly different than you intend.

The issue, again with cliques is that if one person in the clique thinks you are saying something that you don't intend whatsoever, the rest of the clique uses it to fuel their proverbial flames against you. You can't know what they're saying about you or how they're taking your words, intentionally or unintentionally, and presenting them to others. Communication breaks down and you'll end up looking like the bad guy. The best thing to do is to nip those situations in the bud, dragging everyone involved into a group and cutting through the BS to get to the heart of the problem. The more you wait and watch to see if something bad will get worse, the harder it gets and the worse you look. I've seen it happen where someone has a bad opinion of someone else and they seek out others they think also have a problem with that person, feeding them junk that is unrelated to their issue out of spite to make things worse for their target. This is... I can't put it any other way... a rather bitchy high school mentality that too many people have.

So, basically.

1. Cliques are the bane of RP existence because when a problem arises, it's 'you're with me or you're against me'.

2. Communication is key. Being empathetic and understanding doesn't make you weak. Being straight forward and refusing to compromise doesn't make you strong. Flexibility is far better trait than rigidity-- but there's a vast difference between being flexible and wishy-washy.

3. The better you know someone, the harder it is for you to be unbiased. A lot of people who you don't know you might judge much like you would in real life-- on what you see from them and what you can relate it to in your past. Learning from past experiences are great and all but giving someone the benefit of the doubt as their leader is a necessity, not a frivolous option.

4. Respecting people and trying to see their side of a situation instead of using your own to judge them will get you a lot farther.

5. As a leader, you do NOT need other people to validate your points to your members. Don't have conversations where everyone can see them, take the people involved or the people who will inevitably be involved and take them into a group or something to discuss whatever it is that needs discussing. Just because 90% of your friends agree with you doesn't mean they're being unbiased or objective.

A lot of people, not just RPers, are way too willing to cut people loose because they tell themselves over and over 'well I'm paying for this game and I want to enjoy it so I don't need to deal with this'. That's fine, I mean it makes sense. But when you do it about everyone and you've got no desire to try to understand others, you'll eventually run out of people to talk to and if you're RPing alone, that's not really RPing.

"Haters gonna hate" should be the mentality only after you've done everything in your power to prevent or remove the problems.

Rosekitten · **09-24-2013, 04:06 PM**

Pretty much after dealing with and trying to talk to each of the three people it has come down to haters going to hate. There is nothing more I can do in my power to settle things back to where the group of us are friends as they seemed to have already made their minds up.Â

As a leader I do listen to everyone's side of things and I keep a close tab on the skype chat my group is in. As well as the FC and LS chats. I ask people to come to me or a officer or the other leader if something, anything bothers them. This issue I had could have been avoided ages ago and maybe solved in another way altogether if they had followed that one simple request...

Pretty much now from the members I still have I get told that I can't please everyone no matter how hard I try. It is true and I know it is but it still stung a bit that this was just so suddenly and seemed to be something that could have been taken care of easily if someone had spoken up sooner instead of letting it bottle up and explode.Â

As far as cutting yourself off from people, that was one of the members who left issue. They seemed upset at the thought that our FC might get new members... Riddle me that on why someone would be upset to make new friends but they flat out told me that they would not get along with anyone new due to past experiences. O-o;

erosskye · **09-24-2013, 04:17 PM**

Have had no issues on Gilgamesh with this yet.

Mateo · **09-24-2013, 04:34 PM**

Coming from a non-RP background there are a lot of dramatics that go on in the RP community, way more then other servers. People are so deeply invested in their characters that if they get sideswiped they go all "Christian Bale" on people. It's interesting.

Asyria · **09-24-2013, 05:33 PM**

(09-24-2013, 04:34 PM)Mateo Wrote: Coming from a non-RP background there are a lot of dramatics that go on in the RP community, way more then other servers. People are so deeply invested in their characters that if they get sideswiped they go all "Christian Bale" on people. It's interesting.

Yeah, we know. Tongue

It's all because for RPers a character is more than just an avatar in the game world, it's a creation we use to channel our creativity and share an interactive storytelling experience!
It's like going Christian Bale if Christian Bale also wrote his own character on top of playing him. o_O

ArmachiA · **09-24-2013, 05:55 PM**

(09-24-2013, 04:17 PM)erosskye Wrote: Have had no issues on Gilgamesh with this yet.

Yet being the key word here. Something will implode. You'll either know about it or be a part of it, but something will, inevitably, implode.

Sigyn Shieldbreaker · **09-24-2013, 06:48 PM**

(09-24-2013, 05:55 PM)ArmachiA Wrote:
(09-24-2013, 04:17 PM)erosskye Wrote: Have had no issues on Gilgamesh with this yet.

Yet being the key word here. Something will implode. You'll either know about it or be a part of it, but something will, inevitably, implode.

Chances are it's happening it's just not happening for you yet. I know it's not happening for me on Balmung yet so I'm in Eross' boat at the moment.

Faye · **09-24-2013, 07:18 PM**

There's drama everywhere. To put it short, a lot of people are assholes, and that side of people tends to come out even more online than it will in real life, especially in competitive communities like MMO's. The being said, I don't find RPers to be any more dramatic than other people. The only reason RP servers may have a bit more drama than other servers is that along with the OOC drama that exists everywhere, there's also the occasional person who let IC drama bother them far more than they should and turn into OOC problems. That, and the RP community is small--I've already found people here who know each other from other games and are holding grudges against each other still about things that happened in previous games. All in all, though, the drama llamas are everywhere. They can't be avoided. If you like to RP, you're still better off staying here and suffering the one or two extra drama llamas. Online "drama" can be hurtful at first, but when you take a step back it's all really asinine and it's not worth letting it bother you.

Sefrah · **09-24-2013, 07:48 PM**

In my time in MMOs I've had the worst of Drama in my past MMO, TERA. The problem is the word popular and my name appeared all too often. It was annoying, because of the people it brought out. During my time as a guild leader there were people who joined my guild SOLELY to 'Hang out with Sefrah'. It hurt. They fought with each other over who was Sefrah's 'Favorite'. People left the guild over this stuff. A wise friend put it bluntly, "Welcome back to high school, and you're the popular girl."

In short, what I've seen, is either 1. People want to be the center of attention, or 2. They want to get approval from someone who gets the attention. I'll be honest: My strange popularity I didn't handle well. I wasn't used to it, and thus, I created tons and tons of unnecessary drama. Friends didn't help either - more than once people placed me on a pedestal because I'd draw attention.

My advice to people who seem to be surrounded by drama, or seem to have a bunch of 'stuff' around them -Â Separate your friends, and everyone else, out. As a friend told me, "There's your friends, and your fans. Your friends are who you spend time with. Your fans are people you smile, wave, give them their moment, and move on."

I have no idea if anything I'm saying is helping, but just, enjoy the game! Say hello to people! Be nice and don't be afraid of meeting people! Faye's jiggling is not that intimidating! You never know what'll happen!

Rosekitten · **09-24-2013, 07:57 PM**

Actually it made sense what you said. Though I wouldn't call myself wanting to be center of attention or popular ^^; (least in my mind I could be wrong?) But I think the ones who left were those types in some way or another... it seemed to be when I disagreed with them or didn't give them the attention a sudden outbreak of drama happened =/Â

Little I can do to change that though as I won't bend myself backwards to agree with someone on something I disagree with. xP I would rather come to some midway point in that both sides have their own thoughts but can accept that each other has such and such point in their views.

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Drama and lots of it ~

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes