[Y1] GUILD FEEDBACK/COMMENTS

[Shadow of Miracles]

Please post your comments and/or feedback about your experience with our guild. We have been around for 3 years and we are trying to make a change for the better so we would like to hear everyone's opinion ^^ it will help us moving forward with our discussion.

Thank you guys!

 

[murruelecreuset]

Can't believe it's been 3 years. Anyways here is my feedback for the guild.

I have a few points;

1. School Setting / Classes


I've always liked the school environment when it comes to Pokémon. Though with a school roleplay I tend to join it for the school aspect. Sadly, I felt like classes were too short. Even if everyone was active (which if they weren't I totally get moving the day along) we never had enough time to be involved in the class. It felt like you mostly posted in the class for attendance purposes and nothing else. Leaving me to wonder why I should bother when I could have spent the time doing other things instead of a post that really didn't matter in the long run. So long story short my advice here would be to make classes interactive and with active keep the class going for a bit.


2. Employee Characters


Next, I felt that employee characters were really restricted from what they could do. When first starting out I know a number of people had plans to make connects. Though they couldn't because they were only allowed to post in certain places at certain times or were restricted from interacting with certain characters. It just makes it not worth having one because you don't have freedom. Sure, I get limiting the active compared to teachers and students but without freedom the will to use a character just isn't there. You're more likely better off with generic NPCs. With myself I found being the school nurse was useless because even if someone came by just to help their Pokémon they just used a random NPC instead of interacting with my character. In short more freedom and interaction would be helpful.


3. Limit to Pokémon / Pokémon Available


Moving onto the more Pokémon points. I'd like to bring up that I didn't mind there being a Pokémon limit. However, with a limit it doesn't feel like anything changes. Your team stays pretty much stationary, with in this case only rare candies to help with showing any difference. My personal opinion is; either have a limit to how many Pokémon you can catch, or have only a select few Pokémon appeared at one time, not both. With things as is though, I'd say just changing the Pokémon more often would be nicer. Given that when you can only catch a certain amount you kind of set your sights on certain Pokémon. Waiting around you aren't very likely to get them even if you have a rather large list given that the rare sightings Pokémon aren't changed out more often. It would also be nice if we knew what Pokémon weren’t going to appear on that list so that people don’t wait around hoping for something that will never come. In short more rotation in Pokémon and more information on more or less restricted Pokémon.


4. Pokémon Battles / Contests


Finally, my last point. I felt like the battle system made a lot of attacks useless or unhelpful. For instance, Protect with the system was not overly helpful and was better off being discarded as was Confuse Ray. However, in moments were suddenly the system didn't apply it would have been helpful to keep. Truthfully, I feel the system for battles and the potential contest system took away the creativity a roleplay should have. It was the one reason I loved contests in the anime but hated them in the games. On another note I felt battles were never given enough time to be played out. Tournaments were in a lot of ways a mess because they were rarely ever finished. For those that had an ability like Blaze that were made to increase the last move of that type, could be used in such a way that they could post right before the dead line for the match to end. Whether the battle was completed in full it still counted, leaving the other person out of luck to retaliate. Battles outside of tournaments never happened much due to not having time also, that also includes during class. In short more time and some tweaks would probably help a bit.



As for some added suggestions;


a) Making use of forums for things that are being requested through pm will help keep everyone in the loop. It also keeps everything in one place so if you and/or crew members see someone doing something you can check to see if it was approved. For instance, if someone wants to teach their Pokémon a move you can have a thread where you can post a request and then it can be approved there so that everyone knows its been cleared.

b) Letting people be more informed on how long a school year actually is. As much as mystery is fun not everything needs to be so secretive. It just creates stress for some who like to be in the know so they can plan things better. Even knowing the general plot for a roleplay can be helpful so that people can be more involved. Not to mention not feel forced to be involved in a plot they my not understand or necessarily enjoy.

This ends my feedback hope it helps.

 

[DJ Double B]

I have service so I'm sending thoughts

"Hey, so I have thoughts on the guild as a whole that I wanted to share with everyone. One of the more prevailing things is that with having these characters for so long, it's been very difficult to maintain interest in playing characters so young. A lot of the reason I had initially left was because it felt as though things were not going anywhere, people weren't active, and it felt almost pointless to plan for the future with the characters because year 1 took 3 irl years to complete (i joined this rp as a college freshman and I'm about to be a college senior now...)


As far as my comments and concerns, i feel that one thing that hurt us was the sheer number of rp'ers. It can be difficult to plot with everyone and get things moving in a timely manner with a ton of characters. Furthermore, if you plot a lot with someone and then they drop - which happened to a lot of us - it can be difficult to reintegrate back into things going on. I sometimes felt as if i had no clue what to do with Ava and sometimes Nirav because everyone else seemed very wrapped up in a diff plot going on that i had no involvement with. I feel like keeping the rp to a small number of rp'ers, maybe alloting character slots based on activity and time in the guild would help create a lot of things going on without relying on as many people to keep things going.


Also, the rp feels like it's being torn between being a slice of life school genre and a more serious plot driven genre that happens to take place at a school. I was personally kind of confused by the youth stone thing that Moses was talking about? Why would a school have that? It seemed a bit disconnected from the more slice of life stuff that had been going on. I understand there's a backstory about missing children and such but considering our characters can't know about it, it seemed superflous to everything else going on, from the standpoint of someone who hadnt been on crew for almost all of my time here. I feel like it should either find a better balance between the two or pick a direction to go in. It can be based in a school without having the school portion as the main focus.

Going off of Murr for a bit...
I agree that the classes, aside from just attending, felt like just an activity check and nothing more.

I agree on having more pokemon available/letting people know what is possible to catch this year. Rp'ers should be able to plan somewhat!

Also i do think we should let the people in the rp not be as in the dark. As someone involved in the theives plotline, the reveal even to me felt a bit confusing. The mystery is fun, but it means that rp'ers can't be involved in impacting the plot as much as they are in other roleplays. There are ways to make things huge surprises while still letting people know about the plot in general (or even in specifics) -- maybe random events while posting could allude to things? Passing the headmaster and overhearing something, etc?  

[JubiJujubi]

Hey so this might be piggybagging a bit but I figured I'd give my 2 cents.
First off I really like the fact things that make the guild unique. I like roleplaying characters from an early age and get to build up the charaacter and develop it. I also really like the plot-or what I've seen of it.
As someone who plays a teacher I really like the chance to plan the lessons and really make them interactive...which I guess brings me to my first point.
Having a small attendance was hard but having the students barely post in class really hurt the roleplaying experience.for me. The fist example I can think of is the assignments on egg groups I wasn't able to roleplay the students presenting.
This was also partly due because of how the classes are scheduled and like DJ said how little we know about how long the school year actually is and how much time we have.
I think maybe making a group chat for teachers might help. This will also help with lesson plans that need VC/Mod approval. I sent a few PMs about some plans for the lesson but never really got a response.
I'd also like it if there was more interaction between the teachers and adult characters. I feel like a lot of the other people with teacher characters rp only wiith each other. Allowing the adult characters a bit more freedom like Rue said might help that lthough I might mention I'm okay with Aislin's current rping guidelines. But mostly activity itself is the guild's main issue imo.

More activity overall from everyone could go a long way.

I understand why the clubs have to be left up to the students but it's led to even the set clubs ( like battling, coordination, friendship) barely do anything. Organizing events with and between the clubs maybe even with the counselors ( which is how they work in actual schools) might help with that.
Examples can be short torneys in the battle club, performances for coordination, maybe joint events between photography and research or photography and coordination ( the photography club takes pictures of pokes in the wild or getting ready for constests)

Further I'm not sure how having a three day week is working. When you have like two days to fit so many club meetings it can be hard. Also set days for when the clubs all meet so students/rpers who want to roleplay it out are able to do so.

I'm doing okay with the current limit on pokemons but it's definetely a bit of a stress figuring out teams...especially for those of us that don't nessesarily play competitevly and therefore have less experience putting together teams/like a lot more flexibility. I understand not wanting a student with an army but maybe allowing more than six pokeballs would help? Even if its a few more it'd ease the whole what-if-I-get-the-wrong-pokemon feeling. You'd still have more pokeballs left over, even if it's just a few.

One last thing, cutting the battle for this even short for the hiatus Killed whatever momentum we had gained. Cutting off events without warning is just really bad for the roleplay experience. I can't tell if it's happened before but a word of warning can go a long way.

Overall I really enjoyed the experience of roleplaying my characters, even when it was slow and enjoy the people in this guild and plotting with them. I'm really looking foward to the next year.  

[DJ Double B]

Juubi-Kira no Ryuu

One last thing, cutting the battle for this even short for the hiatus Killed whatever momentum we had gained. Cutting off events without warning is just really bad for the roleplay experience. I can't tell if it's happened before but a word of warning can go a long way.

I just wanted to second this. Ive understood that things were gonna be changed for next year but did not expect a sudden hiatus ending everything. It killed a lot of momentum and doing so will drive people away. Maybe in the future, have a vc or crew continue the event while everyone else focuses on the planning? Or maybe, split the crew/VCs into groups. Some do the codework and graphics, others post for the events, others do planning and announcements? You dont need to have everyone focused on doing one thing.

I also had an additional thought. Is there a way the rp'ers could be more in the loop on plot events, or even suggest ideas to do? While the real people would know about em, itd be surprises for the actual characters. I think it would make things feel more interactive and involved, rather than just being tugged along for something i have no clue whats happening with

Thats all again. thanks for reading!