ArmachiA

This isn't an unheard of scenario either, FFXI forced a split on it's biggest server when it got too congested. Players woke up one day on a completely different server than their I see you've been having deja-vu crica 2008 as well. The entire time I've been speaking of this, I've been having flashbacks to this event. THIS CAN HAPPEN TO US. Reopening the gates to Balmung will 100% CAUSE THIS. How did FFXI fare afterwards? Did it still do well for long periods of time? Barely a blip in the profits etc? Did it start the decline in the game? Considering FFXI is still running, and still has subs, and has been running for 15 years now? I'd say pretty good. As far as I'm aware FFXI is shutting down? Did I hear that wrong?

This is why I say WE - the Balmung community - need to throw our weight into supporting one server. We can't be neutral on it. It sucks, but it's the only way to give the community on a different server any validity. If -we- on Balmung push a certain server is our sister server, then people will feel way more comfortable rolling there. That's how -we- can help a community grow, we don't even have to move, we just have to tell people "Yes, go there. We recommend it." instead of just shrugging our shoulders and going "I dunno there are like 5" I'm not saying we need to make that decision right now, we should probably weigh the pros and cons of each server and their viability. But I think that's how we can help, at least.

Yeah, it doesn't really make sense to turn on each other and rage against a non-existent machine. I keep tabs on Nero's thread and the amount of RPers turning on each other over this is startling.

People have been very polite about it since 2010 though? I don't really recall people being rude to the devs, just venting frustrations on this forums which I'm sure the devs don't even read. Way back in the day, the devs got wind of us wanting an RP server and said they would think about it, but obviously went "Nah", and that's a very likely scenario this time. Doesn't hurt to try though, just have other plans and treat them adding as a contingency.

Drama follows anything. Don't even get me started on end game drama.

This isn't an unheard of scenario either, FFXI forced a split on it's biggest server when it got too congested. Players woke up one day on a completely different server than their friends. It's not above SE to do this. I don't see them adding another world to the Aether datacenter, but I wouldn't be surprised if they offered a free transfer to one of the lower populated worlds there. If they were smart they WOULD just tag an "unused" world the RP server, but that's a highly unlikely hypothetical. I'm concerned for both sides of the fence here. Balmung being locked (And probably locked for awhile, we need to stop saying it's going to be only a month or two, it's not. We all know it's not. Balmung is in dire straights, it's going to be longer) risks Balmung dying as a server due to people quitting and no one new coming in. That's the truth. That's the reality. We'll see a bunch of old blood come back for StormBlood, then people will get bored and quit - and MORE people will follow. No reason for it, that's just how MMOs are. People don't stick around. They have other things to do. SE is choking Balmung and promising it can breath again later. It may be dead by the time that happens. That sounds dramatic, but it is a risk. A new server has the disadvantage of not being well known and no one really deciding what the new server IS. Mataeus is being pushed here but I keep seeing Siren pushed on the official forums. The so-called leaders of each server need to get together and talk about what they are doing so new people feel comfortable rolling in one of the "Wild West" servers. The RPC can help, a lot actually, if we throw are weight behind one server, but we can also look like we're playing favorites too. If we don't care about how it looks, I'd recommend just throwing our weight behind something. Still, the truth is, most people know Balmung as the RP server. They want to be on Balmung. They don't to help build a community, they want to be in one already established. Harsh, but true. People are just more comfortable that way. That gives any server a disadvantage, especially if people treat it as "I'll just roll here till Balmung opens up". Gilgamesh gave it a good go, but thanks to leadership falling into drama (Which is why I recommend NOT HAVING A CENTRALIZED LEADERSHIP) everyone just transferred to Balmung. It's going to be hard to make it successful without some bitterness. It's just so much balls that people have to decide things RIGHT NOW because of what SE did.

Haven't seen any but that makes sense since Balmung is the server most adversely affected. We may see something from Gilgamesh though, since I think it's still the Reddit Server.

Give a new server the RP tag, free transfers, let people keep all their stuff (Give money back for houses because you can't guarantee that, realistically, BUT open up housing at a later date when everyone is settled to give everyone a chance at grabbing their old home) and then the RP community would probably consider a mass exodus. Really they are doing most of it, but not giving an tag. So close. I think Nero was really on the right track with that as the best case scenario, but I doubt SE will listen. As for the smaller RP guys, it is definitely something that needs to be discussed but I think them consolidating on one server is a legit good option. Not something to be taken lightly, and not the only options, but a good one. After Gilgamesh iso many have tried and and failed, it would be nice to see something grow for once.

I really do like the idea of Mateus, Siren, and Faerie all merging to just one consolidated server (whoever has the biggest pop for fairness) because that would really give that one server a real shot at being a stable server. I understand that the logistics make that harder however.

Still around, just got done with a move, staying low key till Stormblood.

This one? http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=1825 (if not, a link to the current thread would be handy!) If so, it has been moved to the Free Company Hall now. Please be sure to give it a bump/update post of some manner. Cleaning will happening Monday or Tuesday depending on my work schedule. That's the one! Thank you, really sorry I wasn't around to bump it.

I've been doing the GM thing in this game for 3 years now, so while everyone has answered I want to give my perspective haha. ~ Have a great hook. Just like music, have something that will draw in the players in. For me, that usually means a really elaborate, scripted opening scene with a few people who know the deal and a bunch of people who don't - something that really signifies "Yes this is the beginning of an arc". The beginning is what's really going to make or break a story, as you want at least 2-3 people interested. How you want to do it is really up to you, but I've found an actually Go-time scene helps get people immersed. ~ Don't script too much though. I usually only plan the beginning and certain hooks along the way, most of the time I only have a vague idea on how I was the ending to go but generally leave that up to the players. Let your players create their own hooks. build their own plot threads. Then take those and twist them to make plot hooks out of that. RP is a cooperative story, they should be building off of you and you should be building off of them. ~ Have NPCs! If you have some friends willing to help (Or if you are willing to not play your own character sometimes) I've found playing NPCs really helps with people's immersiveness. ESPECIALLY villains. If they can see the villain there, doing villainy things and talking all villainous, then it makes them want to take them down much more than a shadow figure you just talk about. I had a friend who only played villains to help advance our plot. He was the real MVP (RIP Denn). ~It's okay if not a lot of people are involved. I think this one fucks with people a lot, I've seen way to many people want to start a plot then get discouraged if only 1-2 people show up and they never finish. RPers are a bit timid, honestly. They hear plotline and they get interested, but they also think "Someone is going to control my character" and shy away. There's a lot of RPers who don't like relinquishing some control of there characters to people who they don't trust. What if the GM says their character dies? What if the GM makes them do something they don't want to do? You have to earn that kind of trust for more people to be interested later. You'll always be able to find some people who are willing to take the risk (Especially those who are tired of trying to find plot) but keep your expectations realistic. If it goes well, you're going to find like 20 people sign up for the next one (And that's a whole different monster...). ~Roll20 will be your new best friend. Elaborate dungeons and artifacting searching just aren't possible in game, same as bug epic combat with big epic heros. Roll20 is really great for those kind of scenes. Someone here said to create a system for combat and I agree with that. The NB has their own R20 system and the most popular one on here is called FATE (I believe). It makes it much much easier to deal with combat turns. Everyone else pretty much said the rest.

I was wondering if I could get the NB page reinstated? We were moving for like 4 months and didn't have access to the internet for two. Really sorry about that but there wasn't anything I could do .

Okay OP. I'm going to try to help you out. Hopefully you'll read this because it's going to be long. I call this essay: Why You Don't Want to Be George Lucas. BUT FIRST, Let's talk about Yuna. Getting inspiration from a different character is actually a great idea! In fact, I understand your love for Yuna because I myself designed Armi after her when I first started MMO-RPing. I made a lot of mistakes with her too, mostly that I was trying to copy her 1:1 in a universe where she didn't fit. It made my character completely unrelatable (remember that word, it'll come up later) and she wasn't really a person, she was just a copy of someone I wanted her to be. What do you like about Yuna? We may like different things about her, but for me if was her quiet strength. How she understood her role and chose to accept it, even to the point of never telling her friends how scared she was. She was brave, but she was vulnerable. I also liked the fact she was a Priestess and a Summoner. Summoner and Red Mage are too of my favorite jobs in the franchise so I was obviously drawn to that. Here's what we know about Yuna. A martyr who wants to do the right thing for the world, even if it means killing herself in the process. Quiet and reversed but also open to people she's very close to. A Talented Summoner trying to get all the Summons in order to get rid of Sin (At least for a time) Somewhat Naive. She constantly believes in finding the best in people even when she really shouldn't. Devout as all hell. Girl is a Yevon priestess through and through. At least at the beginning One of the things you can see here is I didn't list her appearance. Her appearance DOESN'T MATTER. To be Yuna-like you DON'T have to make her look exactly like Yuna. For me, I tend to keep her somewhat friendly appearance in Armi, but I don't make Armi look exactly like Yuna. You don't have to, that "Yuna Aura" will come across if you do it right. Now for the rest. There's obviously parts of that you should be going "Well, that won't work." There's no Yevon. There's no Sin. There's no world that need saving by one person (Well... Our Hero Mary Sue of Light I suppose...), there's no Summons in the way FFX has them. The rest are just personality traits, so those are easy enough.. but the others? You need to decide how important those are to you. If they are important, you need to be able to retrofit them into this world. Which leads us to: Keeping a character grounded. How not to be like George Lucas #1 The problem a lot of people are having is your character is... alienating. Unrelatable. There's no real way to relate to a Queen/Summoner/Race Changing Hyur-Au Ra. In Fiction, it's really important to make sure your characters are relatable. You probably found Yuna VERY relatable which is why you want a character like her right? But you're stripping the parts out of Yuna that make her relatable (Her weakness and her vulnerabilities) and stuffing things in that make her less so (Being a Princess who became that way because of dancing, race changes for no reason). Go watch Star Wars: A New Hope sometime. Then go watch The Phantom Menace. The first thing you're going to notice is how hard the latter lays it on us that Anakin is the super duper special. From the get go, we aren't really relating to Anakin as a character because he's only there to be "special". He can build robots, can race pod-racers, has all dem midichlorians, and may be the prophesied one! He just kinda goes with the flow too, he doesn't have much of a personality. His personality is "He's special" and that's what you're doing with your character. In A New Hope - Luke isn't some chosen one, he's reckless and has a temper and he makes rash as hell decisions. We don't really know much about his traits - we don't know if he's an awesome Jedi because it doesn't really matter. You always want to make sure your character is relatable. It's really important or you'll find yourself getting frustrated no one wants to interact with her. No one wants to interact with perfect. No one wants to interact with someone who is just "special" So we get the the harder parts - what can you cut out to make her less special and what do you absolutely want to keep in? It's cool so imma do it, How not to be George Lucas #2. In the Prequels, it just kind seems like whatever George Lucas thought was neat, he was going to put in - whether it fit or not. It made the trilogy feel like "Wow look at backdrop I thought of, neat huh?". He thought Jar Jar Binks would work, not even caring about the tone of his movie. He probably wrote the most forced romance in the history of media. Anakin was barely a character, and his direction on how Hayden Christensen should play him pretty much killed that kids career. Hell, he told everyone to have that sort of wooden robotic acting because he said so, and the only person who made it unscathed was, arguably, Ewan Mcgregor. You need to have consistency with your character. Don't throw in a bunch of stuff just because you think it's cool. Do you want to have a character based on a Queen or on Yuna? You can't really have both. Find the tone you're going for. Also for the love of god, please come up with a different way she became a Princess. Make her capable! Don't make it because she looked pretty dancing. You're killing me here. Listen to criticism, How not to be like George Lucas #3 The prequels were legit awful because George Lucas refused to listen to anyone when it came to his vision. He wrote the script for part one DAYS before it was to go into filming and he never let anyone look over it! WHY. You need to be able to listen to what people thinks and find a happy medium. Which brings me to - My idea for your character! Just stay with me here. She just just be an Au Ra. Straight up. She's from Othard, there's nothing wrong with her being an Au Ra. Just keep it. There's no reason to overly complicate that. Instead of a Princess, have you ever just considered her being a spiritual leader for her Tribe? This ties into Yuna being a devout follower of Yevon. You can come up with all kinds of lore for this tribe. Maybe only women of faith can lead it and she was chosen for next in line. She's a protector and a guide, and is willing to sacrifice anything for her people. Instead of... dancing... she became the next chosen because she somehow stared down the face of Ifrit and came out of that alive and... with an egi! So she's a summoner. You'd have to work out the details with people who know more lore about where she would have had to go to find Ifrit, but she could have went on a spiritual journey and came back with an Egi. This gives her agency and strength. Makes her capable beyond... looking pretty and dancing. None of this takes away anything you want to do, it just makes her more grounded in the lore of FFXIV. She's still like Yuna, she still a leader of her people. Really think on how to make things work. For the love of God, don't be George Lucas.

If people aren't telling you what people are saying beyond "THEY ARE SAYING BAD THINGS THO." ignore them. They obviously don't care enough to tell you specifics so you shouldn't care enough to listen to them.

This is a bit of a red flag to me. Why is your FC going through so many people? In my experience, you'll get the odd temperamental sort or someone that never fits in, but never a bunch. You may want to take a good look at your recruitment policies to see what kind of people you are pulling in. There may be a mismatch between how y'all seem on paper vs. how you are day to day. Also, if you recruit everything, you're gonna get everything... good and bad. As for the attack on your tavern, yeah it sounds like basic immature revenge. Could be a larger FC? The Night Blades ballooned up to 100ish members last year and we have a pretty big revolving door on people jumping in to the FC because it was large, but leaving a few weeks later because it was large haha. I'm glad we downsized though, it gets to a certain point in FC leadership (ESPECIALLY RP FCs) where too many people has diminishing returns. As for your issue, People are going to talk shit. That's the truth. I've been running an FC since 2003 and one of the things I had to learn was to get a thicker skin because people will talk a lot of shit. I've heard rumors about my FC in this game (Mostly we're elitist's who hate the community and we suck) but you gotta let it roll off your back. The best advice I can give is, while you can chant "Haters gon' hate" all day, actually look into the rumors and see if anything is somewhat justified. There are always avenues you can improve your guild and how you run it, but people tend not to tell you that while they're in it, they only tend to throw criticism once they've left - not really helping you at all. If the rumors are completely unfounded - ignore them. They don't pertain to you. They're ultimately meaningless ramblings of an angry former guildie. If there is some truth to them, then make a mental note to do better next time. You don't have to address the people spreading them (In fact, I'd advise against it) but you can make a note for next time to do things differently. Also, Haters Gon' Hate.

Queen Amidala. Checkmate Liadan! :lol: But in all seriousness, do you mean Conjurer or the actual title of White Mage? Also all of Liadan's questions.

I thought it became an interesting discussion about the inner workings of an FC. Potato/Potahto though *shrug*

Hey Faye has a point here, I provided to very specific examples of keeping drama out of my FC and basically got accused of lying lol. post for reference. Again, because of the way we are in FC, this actually isn't how to weed out drama but more to weed out more sensitive types but you can't TELL me that wouldn't have been drama in the future. EDIT: this isn't a dogpile I just didn't like the accusation that we all know we can't weed out "drama" and we're lying to ourselves if we think we can.

The misconception is that you're doing it for drama at all. I'm really not doing it to weed out drama myself, drama is human nature - it doesn't matter how many times you vet or how many people you get in who fit the mold, people are naturally dramatic. Who hasn't fought with their friends that they've known in real life? We all have, nothing stops drama. I have stories of drama from all aspects of my life - this game, overwatch, work, friends. That's how people are. I don't do it for that reason. I do it to make sure we get people with the same kind of RP style as us (Low powerlevel, able to take criticism, lore complaint, like darker themes and long plotlines, like to do OOC game stuff, etc etc) than to stop "drama". Our app doesn't even have a "Tell us about yourself" section, it has a "Tell us about your goals" (As an aside, I also hate the word drama, because some people take EVERYTHING as being drama, when it's just humans being humans yall)

I haven't seen anyone here imply or say that vetting solves drama forever.

^ Pretty much this. You have to make sure people are going to fit with your group. I don't think I present my group in a negative light when I say ours is not a hugbox. I LOVE that about us, I love the fact we can discuss characters and storylines with frankness and humor. However, if someone thinks that saying we aren't a hugbox is negative - they won't fit in. And it will be a really negative experience for THEM. Sure, it sounds like warning you away from the guild, but I don't want people to be miserable in a guild they dislike because they were looking for something different. On /gkicking - I've never had an instance where someone got in and said something blatant where the decision was easy to kick them. Ever. That would probably be nice, honestly because I would kick them really fast. It's always the ones who seem pretty nice at first but eventually start letting things show where it looks like they might cause drama later, but we aren't really sure unless one of the members make a complaint. And "Drama" isn't always some insidious thing either, sometimes it's as simple as an RP disagreement or someone is feeling left out. I don't kick for just "drama" (Unless of course it's listed on our "No go" list in the rules), I watch behavior. My officers always ask pressing questions about the Characters of the people applying and we've noticed that THAT actually weeds people out pretty well. We asked one applicant if they understood having the Echo and being a Summoner was rare - he took it as "You can't be a Summoner" and flipped the hell out. We knew that they didn't like to be questioned and they were rejected. Another applicant didn't like us asking about his power level because it was ridiculously high ("How did he get to be a master so young?" was the question, for reference), so he got uppity and got rejected.I don't want to say exactly what questions are asked, but we ask to see, mostly, how people react. Yeah you can't weed them all out (We did have someone lie on the app before) but you can TRY.

THere's a lot of diplomacy behind a /gkick and it can be tough to navigate. If that person has allies in the guild you're going to have to justify yourself over and over again and even then you still run the risk of those people leaving, causing morale to drop and make even MORE people leave. If you /gkick too much, people will assume you're too heavy handed and leave in droves anyway. Sometimes, as a guild leader you don't really realize there's a big problem with a member because guildies don't actually tell you what goes on when you aren't around (They don't want to be "that guy") so people who should have been kicked long ago can sit in a guild for months. We always try to let people know they are causing too many problems and bring them into the office a lot, but after awhile we start realizing they aren't working, but that can take time (Assholes rarely show themselves immediately) and we still try to use diplomacy so we don't have to kick them outright as it can look bad. Honestly, it's easier to try to weed them out beforehand.

We're only trying to catch the shadiest flies.

Our application process is pretty involved due to people in the past basically lying to get in, which made us have to get stricter to try to weed that out. But for us it comes down to: ~ We want to make sure you're lore compliant. Lore is fun for US, but it doesn't have to be fun for you. If the idea of that seems restricting, there are other FC's out there. NBD. ~ We... one time one of my guild members said, quite rightly "The NB is 50% shade, 50% getting injured in RP." We aren't what I would call "nice". We're good people, but we aren't a hugbox. We like to keep the mentality that RP is basically a TV show - which includes people shouting at the screen. We will make fun of your characters, we will make fun of the for "doing something dumb", we will discuss plot lines and sometimes it won't always be polite. It's not out of malice, we really like our stories and our members' characters, but no one is exempt from (what we call) Bad Decision Island. We find a lot of people say they can handle it, but then don't like their characters being questioned at all. Some can't handle that atmosphere and we've taken to constantly reiterating "We throw shade at all characters" constantly before anyone gets in. No one is exempt, even my character has the nickname "Knife rack" OOCly. ~ We make sure characters aren't too above others in Power Level. So that requires a lot of questions. It's actually really hard to know if someone is going to vibe with any guild, really. You're always taking a risk of upsetting the current Status Quo whenever you bring ANYONE new in and, especially for RP guilds, that is a risk that could lead to the death of a guild. So we tend to be more careful than social guilds because we have more to lose. I can see the app process being annoying as shit if you're just looking for some chill times, but you gotta see it from the other angle.