(05-17-2017, 09:48 AM)Aegir Wrote: What does "the RP community has grown too large to sustain itself in a healthy manner" mean? Is there something wrong with too much RP happening on one server?
Yes. It's an endless sea that is impossible for some to navigate. There are so many RPers out there that get frustrated daily because they struggle to find what they're looking for. They're 'lost as sea' so to speak. They go to events, public RP hot spots, and so on, but still can't get what they're looking for. They either get anxiety from there being too many people or they in some cases get outright ignored (not necessarily on purpose, mind you). That's not healthy. When Rpers get frustrated to a certain point, they just give up. They either leave the game or just leave RP and just 'exist' in the background doing other game things. And nobody really seems to care because they have their own ship with their own crew, so they're good to go. And they see plenty of other ships out there, so 'everything must be good' in the grand scheme. But there's another picture people are quick to disregard or ignore. Just because there are 'a ton of ships out there' doesn't mean they're all doing well and it certainly doesn't take into account the tons of other ships that sank without so much of another ship coming to their aid.
Think of it like an all you can eat buffet. That's what Balmung is right now. And people are so excited about that because it sounds great on the surface. But in reality, everyone is so engrossed in their own plate that they're not realizing what's actually happening to the larger buffet behind them. People have so many options that they don't even touch some of the food, even if the food is actually really good. A lot of the food goes to waste and gets tossed out. And if nobody ever eats the mac and cheese, then the chefs eventually stop making mac and cheese altogether.
Balmung has actually hemorrhaged a lot of good RPers over time. People just don't notice it because they're engrossed in their own 'plate' of food. And there's still so much more coming to the buffet table so it's even less noticeable. With the lockout now, there's nothing more coming to the buffet table now. You have to eat what you can get or leave the restaurant (Balmung) for a restaurant that no doubt offers less.
Talking about what SE should have or could have done is pointless. They deemed the overpopulation a problem and made a decision. There's nothing we can do to change that. Until Balmung stabilizes (if it does), it will remain locked out just as character creation has remained locked for as long as it has. Thus, people need to look internally to keep RP going instead of relying on the vast amount of transfers that have been coming in to keep it sustained. That's the point I'm trying to make. There's a huge buffet table of food already on the table. We need to pay attention to it and stop gorging on the same plates of food. We used to have things like our own internal mentor program for the RPC that helped get these 'just existing' RPers out into the open more. Lately, we've done little in this department. Balmung's hemorrhaging is going to be much more noticeable now without the newbie transfers to hide it...
I know my thoughts are probably all over the place. But as the person who initiated the RPC and has watched it grow since its inception, it frustrates me to watch people be completely oblivious to the reality of the many RPers we've actually quietly lost and just keep using the argument that 'people are constantly coming to Balmung so everything must be okay!' People are just too engorged in their individual plates of food to see the reality around them. And eventually, it's going to hit a breaking point and the buffet is going to disappear without notice (or the options are going to greatly diminish without notice).
