Things Have Been Rather Slow Lately

i, for one, am actually late to writing a paper as i read this thread, and have a midterm in the morning.

i should stop being on the forums now i've endangered myself as it is.

remember me.

and call the ghostbusters wtf the post above me

 

Its just some internal thought really. For some reason i view it as negative. 'Tis just one of the many labels my head puts on things.

But thinking this over has made me realize this is just some form of natural selection in a way. Competition for whose most successful, and all the tricks along the way. Honestly if there were no other ideas, the 'subliminal advertising' could be of great use. The only issue is figuring out when to use it or for what to use it on.

 

Except it's not really subliminal advertising, I don't think.
It's just attaching a link to your website and saying, "Hey, check us out!" rather than, "YOU WILL CHECK US OUT. YOU WANT TO CHECK US OUT. YOU WILL CLICK OUR LINK." interwoven between content.

 

Here's the factors contributing to why the numbers are low:

• People are busy; it's school-time for a good majority of people, and real life always lucks out.
• Starbound has not updated in eons. The material is, for lack of a better word, lackluster now. We're sitting on our bums waiting for new material while trying desperately to think of some ourselves within the confines of our own canon.
• Starbound's fanbase has declined immeasurably or simply gone into hibernation for new updates. As a result, less people sign up, and the ones who do have a habit of not measuring up to the set standard we have for applications. Less users joining as a result.

Here's what's going to happen, in order of occurrence:

1. The community will shrink until there are a core group of roleplayers in the community. This has already happened, and will continue shrinking up until the new update. Worst case scenario is that everyone leaves; however, that would take years for the numbers to whittle down to an absolute 0.
   
2. The new update comes out, Starbound gains popularity and attention again. Former players and new players alike rush to the updates, and a substantial boost occurs. This boost has a somewhat likely probability of being greater in size than the previous turnout; either way, those numbers trickle down to us. More people sign on, which gives the opportunity of more accepted entries, boosting our numbers.
3. Due to the update, we're forced to restructure some things and how they work. More input from more people means more ideas, which lead to more team efforts and cohesion in the community. This is where the community will pick up the steam it had again.
4. Due to the amount of new material, people will stick around more this time because there's more lore to digest and roleplay with again, filling the well of ideas. Afterwards, the numbers will slowly dwindle again when the ideas run out, which can take anywhere between a year and two years. In the event that this happens during a given school year (Sepetember - April, since most of everyone slacks off starting May and June), the numbers will dwindle more rapidly due to real life responsibilities taking more immediate precedent. If the updates are timed in the summer, the effect of population erosion will be less substantial.
5. The cycle repeats until yet another update comes out, repeatedly, etc, etc.

As for this:

This has never happened. At most, the community has been in the 50s within it's peak. Something to also note is that every community is seeing dwindling numbers for the same exact reasons I just listed, up to and including Galaxy Citizen. It's not as obvious in GC because their numbers are larger, but the effect is still visible.

 

Mhm. With school comes a lack of players.
There's more on during the weekends.

 

Back in my day we didn't have all these thingjig update mechanics. When you got bored of playing pong you just kept at it until your brains turned into maple oatmeal or put it down and played with glue bottles and pocket lint for fun instead. Kids these days don't apprecimicate nutin.

 

Well as one of the people who disappeared for a while but started playing again is because of school and other things after school such as work. I finally caught a break and now have more time so I can play again, yay :I (Because of school and activities I even missed all of NC's upbringing and destruction e-e)

 

You should put a smiley at the end of your messages like this. It makes them come across as less passive-aggressive or mandating.

 

YOU ARE ALL ADEQUATE.

 

you are all vermin

 

I shall poke my head in for a bit, hoping to do something before the Swarm comes (Next Update, School Over). Maybe set up a New Hong Kong? Or just try to find people. Probably just try to find people.

 

Reasons why I did not stick around as a new player:

• The application process took a long time. This is a rather petty first complaint, seeing as it was addressed exceptionally quickly and I was apologized to, but it is a minor symptom of the underlying problem with the moderation team.

• The moderating team doesn't seem equipped to handle players and in fact exhibit maturity issues themselves; they cater to the idea of "not hurting feelings" instead of listening to what people are saying, even if they are being brutally honest. There are QUITE a lot of threads addressing bad moderation issues that are dismissed.

• I visited Team Speak. I'm a female, and there was a good number of people present. Someone actually had the audacity in front of a whole group of people to speculate if I'm using a voice modifier or not. Yes, they were serious. Yeah. Gordon Ramsay's coming off my television or my male roommate's voice in the background -- these things are magically untargeted by my voice changer, right? No one said a word. A moderator was present. This "lololol female" nonsense continued.

• Edgelords supreme rule this server. There is no doubting this. They do not want to deal with IC consequences. Nothing is being done.

• I am baffled as to why the moderation team has not addressed the edgelords or boys playing women purely for ERP. When I can count five guys doing this as flora the first day in a relatively small server, there is a problem.

• Why does this still exist? If I were a moderator I would be ashamed this is on my forums. Why was this not addressed?

 

I'm less than active at the moment, but I'm gonna address a few things from my viewpoint, and ask for some clarification. Keep in mind that I am not saying you're wrong, I'm just trying to understand the parts of this that I do not understand. To be blunt, I agree with the statements regarding moderators. They are all good guys, but I can agree that there are many situations where moderators are trying too hard to be nice, mostly in examples of poor roleplay.

Regarding your teamspeak issue, I don't have the same perspective, since I'm a male, but I can say with almost complete certainty that they were joking and simply took it a bit too far. To be blunt, there really aren't that many women on the server, let alone the teamspeak, so they were likely just surprised.

On the topic of ERP, I have been here for roughly seven months, and have hardly seen anything that can be considered ERP. There have been one or two instances, but the most vulgar I've seen it get are instances of barfly roleplay, which, while it can be lewd, is not ERP. Where did you see this as an issue? I don't know how long it has been since you were last on, but perhaps naming a planet(s) would help; no names, though.

 

I can assure you they weren't joking. I'm not an idiot. I am not socially impaired. They came off as completely serious and I'm still one hundred and ten percent convinced they were serious. Do they think that they're clever? Do they think that I haven't heard the same, tired old joke a million times? It's obvious this is a thing on the internet and it has been for years. I think this boils down to the overall maturity of the server being at a level that just doesn't mesh well with what I'm aspiring for. I can be pretty immature myself but I think any guy with half a brain who uses the internet realizes that maybe this is one of the women who has heard the same tired old thing a million times. There is no excuse for it. Don't make one for them.

As far as ERP: I was propositioned quite a bit. Should I have reported them? Absolutely. The thing is, if it's not direct PM's it's inappropriate actions IC. It's inappropriate characters that should have been addressed by the moderators long before they acted this way towards mine, characters that the moderators were aware of as per threads I read over in the forums. I realized at that point it's fruitless to report them and that I should just go find somewhere that fits my needs better because these are characters that have been around long enough to be dealt with and are well known. You have to deal with these sort of things at the source when they pop up, not rely on players to send in reports repeatedly. Successful leadership involves a balance of these two: the moderators being proactive while the players reporting this type of behavior. There's an imbalance in one here; I'm sure you realize by now which imbalance I think is present.

Gramps was one of them, as well as several other floran female characters that act like children with a low sex education who are created for obvious reasons. I don't need to name them all, the community is aware of them. The moderators are aware of them. They aren't my main focus. It's just bad characters that shouldn't have passed applicationship or be allowed to continue on the server. The ones with a toddler-centric personality who are made to be sex toys are a minor subset. I think edgelords are a larger percentage of the problem from my observations and what friends have told me, I'm just detailing my personal experiences being a female and playing a female character.

 

So asiding Petal-Spike, who i can admit was a dumb character. who else are we talking here? What I do behind closed doors with my RP partner is usually between us, no one else. as for IC actions? Are you talking about Gwen? SweetTooth? The long dead Sharptooth?

 

Your female characters are a walking, talking shrine to your sexual fetishes and you put it on full display to advertise so you can gain these "behind closed doors" RP sessions. You know what you are doing. The moderators know what you are doing. Everyone knows what you are doing. If there is anything worse than someone who can't keep his penis out of his RP, it's someone who tries to deny it and purposefully acts innocent.

Stop role-playing my gender.