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

FreelanceWizard · **01-28-2015, 04:33 PM**

So, I said I had some thoughts on the issue. Mysterium is a fairly specific concept; it's about adventuring mages, which while a very common thing in Final Fantasy, are not especially common in Western fantasy. D&D, for instance, makes a big point in several editions about how wizards would much rather hang out in a tower away from the world and pore over books instead of going out and Being Big Damn Heroes. Most adventuring characters in Eorzea seem to define themselves as adventurers generally, not as a specific "class," so to speak. Naturally, this shrinks the potential player base.

While I freely admit part of what made Mysterium work was being prepped here during Beta 2 (first-mover advantage is significant in RP communities), there are some other things that help if you've got a specific concept in mind, I think:

Stick to your guns. You don't want to get a core group of people together, then have them leave because you've altered the concept from what they signed up for.
Keep recruiting. Always keep the doors open. Listen for people asking about groups and, if you think you might fit, talk to them. Player churn is an inevitability in MMOs -- now more than when EQ and UO were the only games in town. Your ultimate goal is to achieve what I like to call "critical mass," where the interactions among characters are self-sustaining. Critical mass seems to be around 15-20 active players with 8-10 on during "prime time."
RP in the open. I realize griefers are a pain in the ass, but some of the best and longest lasting RPers we've had are ones we literally just bumped into during RP in public. Remember, the RPC only reaches a small subset of the RP community, and even then, some people here are shy. (37.8% of RPC registrants have never posted even once. 66.6% have posted five times or less. A mere 300 users -- 5.8% -- have posted 100 times or more. We are a community of lurkers here. )
Don't demand exclusivity. This is a bigger issue in XIV, where the community tends to lean towards "LS for RP, FC for content." Don't force people to leave where they are to join you, because that cuts down your options even more.

Zhavi's comments are, IMO, right on the money, too. Building a group takes work, and the more specific your concept is, the more work it takes. Once you've got critical mass, you can reduce the amount of work you're doing, but initially, it's a lot of effort and it's easy to get discouraged.

To Graeham's point, Making Connections is a useful tool (I'm told), but it does take some effort, and not everything will pan out. I've posted in several threads there to the effect of, "yeah, I think we could get some RP together," and only once so far has it panned out. Think of it like a personal ad -- it's really a fishing expedition for RP opportunities, not all of which will materialize.

EDIT: Oh, right, I suppose I should answer, "what happens if you don't get critical mass?" It just means that you need to put in more work to keep the RP going. That means events, RP nights, spending time hanging out open for RP instead of doing instances, etc. Also, the number is an estimate; it depends on how many active (versus reactive) players you have, how much they RP versus play the game, how long they're on at any stretch, etc. YMMV.

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