Roleplay Online with RolePlayGateway

[Angel_Melfina]

Fork Ninja, there is already a thread addressing this problem. Please see the following link for more information. After trying the solutions, please post in that thread if you're still having problems.

rather-strange-problem-t7172.html

[TheAlmightyForkNinja]

Oops, sorry about that...

[Vyrwolf]

Well, as advertised on the front page, you asked if I thought this site was any better than other roleplay sites. Quick answer:

No.

And now, to elaborate.

Reasons why this site is a step below RPG Chat at Gametalk.com:

1. Forum layout. You have far too much going on all over the site, spreading out users like dandelion seeds in a hurricane. Subforums being the main issue. A quick tip: you do NOT need to categorize every little thing. At the site referenced above, there is one forum, containing all posts ranging from chats to RPs. However, it is a decidedly smaller site, but that does not mean you need more than five forums and absolutely NO subforums. In my opinion, this site could be divided into four big forums, no more. Chat & Events, Original Roleplay, Thematic Roleplay, and Literay & Visual Arts.

2. Posting complexity. The message box I'm writing in right now has more text buttons than needed. Bold, italic, and underline are fine, but really, do we need to have THREE buttons dedicated to listing? All you have to do is use astrics as bullet points or numbers if you want that. Images, code, URL, and flash? How about you just paste in the URL of ANY of these, and let the recipient copy it into their address bar? OOC and IC? Really, is that necessary? IC is any text within a roleplay not specified as OOC. Specifying OOC is as simple as putting double paranthesis around the comment, or simply placing 'OOC:' at the begining of the line! As for alignment, that's fine, but it really is just more bells and whistles than needed...And strikeout? When will a person with half a brain use strikeout? At Gametalk, we only have a text box, bolding (by placing an equals sign at the begining of the line), and bullet points (by doing the same with astericks). It works perfectly well.

3. User interface. I DO like the control panel feature, and being able to see my posts and who replied, and PMing is great, but here's a few things that bug me: the information bar at the right side of the post. When someone types a single sentence, it should NOT leave a gap the size of California below, not including the signature. We don't need to know if you're a DM, who your characters are, how many posts you've made, your favorite game, or your self-important website status. You could easily make just one profile page, where anyone interested in learning more about you can go, instead of just being force fead the information each post. A user's tag should be limited to this: name, SMALL avatar, date of post, SMALL signature. That's all you need. And put a limit on the signature size! I don't need to see a full-size picture of Ichigo every five posts. Gametalk only gives you a name and date of post, and no one cares.

4. The entire idea of 'proposing' a roleplay. This is only for spineless people who don't want to stick themselves out there to see who's interested. You should just go straight to posting your RP, say it's open, and wait for people to join out of interest. You shouldn't have an entire thread dedicated to asking people if they want to roleplay with something specific. Seriously, just post your RP, and people will come. God knows this site's big enough. As for OOC discussion, that's what normal chat posts are for. That way, you can talk about both the current RP you're in and last night's episode of Lost without getting yelled at. Oh, you have something PRIVATE to discuss? I wonder if there's a messaging system for that...

As I've said before, simplify things down, seriously reduce the number of forums, and you'll find RPs will get done faster, everyone will know everyone else, and more variety of RPers will come.

Reasons why this site is a step above RPG Chat:

1. Site maintenance. You guys keep this site functioning, unlike at Gametalk, where glitches, security breaches, and scheduled downtime is abound.

2. Moderation. Much more attentive.

3. Private messaging.

4. More people (this can also be a downfall, however).

5. Editing posts.

So there you have it: my review of this site, top to bottom, after 'checking in' every now and then over the past few months. However, I could probably copy and paste this onto most every site on the web, and it'd still make sense.

[Remæus]

Well, as advertised on the front page, you asked if I thought this site was any better than other roleplay sites. Quick answer:

No.

And now, to elaborate.

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your views! We value feedback like this, and I am genuinely grateful that you have provided it.

Reasons why this site is a step below RPG Chat at Gametalk.com:

1. Forum layout. You have far too much going on all over the site, spreading out users like dandelion seeds in a hurricane. Subforums being the main issue. A quick tip: you do NOT need to categorize every little thing. At the site referenced above, there is one forum, containing all posts ranging from chats to RPs. However, it is a decidedly smaller site, but that does not mean you need more than five forums and absolutely NO subforums. In my opinion, this site could be divided into four big forums, no more. Chat & Events, Original Roleplay, Thematic Roleplay, and Literay & Visual Arts.

On the same token, the lack of subforums can result in topic floods, as seen on Gaia Online. It is virtually impossible to catch a new thread when this is the case, or even respond to topics that you're currently involved in (unless you're using the "subscribe" feature).

We started out with a very poor forum structure, with way too many forums and way too many categories. What you are seeing here is a result of three years of adjustments and pruning, and it is by no means finished! I do like your idea of re-categorizing the forums, but finding a good solution to this that will satisfy the community is a very challenging task. I have proposed that we adopt other forum structures in the past, but the widely varying views make it difficult to pick a specific structure.

As a result, I am working on a tagging system, so the hierarchical nature of the forums will have a trivial effect. Users will be able to filter and search based on topic "tags", or keywords that portray what the content of that topic is about - so it will not be particularly important where the topic is actually stored.

2. Posting complexity. The message box I'm writing in right now has more text buttons than needed. Bold, italic, and underline are fine, but really, do we need to have THREE buttons dedicated to listing? All you have to do is use astrics as bullet points or numbers if you want that. Images, code, URL, and flash? How about you just paste in the URL of ANY of these, and let the recipient copy it into their address bar? OOC and IC? Really, is that necessary? IC is any text within a roleplay not specified as OOC. Specifying OOC is as simple as putting double paranthesis around the comment, or simply placing 'OOC:' at the begining of the line! As for alignment, that's fine, but it really is just more bells and whistles than needed...And strikeout? When will a person with half a brain use strikeout? At Gametalk, we only have a text box, bolding (by placing an equals sign at the begining of the line), and bullet points (by doing the same with astericks). It works perfectly well.

What I've done is offered a simple, button-less quick reply at the bottom of every page that is entirely free of this clutter. The users have the option of going into this full posting mode by clicking the "post reply" button, but in fact most users use the quick reply box. The extended functionality offered by RolePlayGateway can be manually entered in the quick reply box (if you are veteran enough to know the BBcode!), and if you can't quite remember how to make your text bold or how to align it to the right, then you can switch into the full post reply panel.

One thing I'm against is clutter, and if something must be cluttered - an immediately available interface must be available without the clutter. Ayenee suffered from this before they did a revamp of their site last year (Tebo is doing a great job so far, I'm impressed by his work), having just about every site feature known to mankind available. This is simply unnecessary, and I totally agree with you.

3. User interface. I DO like the control panel feature, and being able to see my posts and who replied, and PMing is great, but here's a few things that bug me: the information bar at the right side of the post. When someone types a single sentence, it should NOT leave a gap the size of California below, not including the signature. We don't need to know if you're a DM, who your characters are, how many posts you've made, your favorite game, or your self-important website status. You could easily make just one profile page, where anyone interested in learning more about you can go, instead of just being force fead the information each post. A user's tag should be limited to this: name, SMALL avatar, date of post, SMALL signature. That's all you need. And put a limit on the signature size! I don't need to see a full-size picture of Ichigo every five posts. Gametalk only gives you a name and date of post, and no one cares.

I've been pondering removing this, as I don't like to draw the attention away from the post. I'd rather shift this to solely be included on their profiles, which would shift focus towards player profiles - which is a good thing. Another item on the same page would be the vertical height taken up by signatures. This disgusts me, and I'm planning on making an overflow box (with a scrollbar) that will hide signatures above a certain height. There is no need to have 10 images plus 2 quotes in your signature.

4. The entire idea of 'proposing' a roleplay. This is only for spineless people who don't want to stick themselves out there to see who's interested. You should just go straight to posting your RP, say it's open, and wait for people to join out of interest. You shouldn't have an entire thread dedicated to asking people if they want to roleplay with something specific. Seriously, just post your RP, and people will come. God knows this site's big enough. As for OOC discussion, that's what normal chat posts are for. That way, you can talk about both the current RP you're in and last night's episode of Lost without getting yelled at. Oh, you have something PRIVATE to discuss? I wonder if there's a messaging system for that...

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree with you here, as well. I can't stand when people post private things on public forums, and I can't stand when people post roleplays solely for the purpose of interest check. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to come up with any feasible approach to prevent these things from happening without creating new rules, which I feel would trample on our approach of "Roleplay Your Way". I continue a campaign of strong suggestion (PMing these users to suggest alternative behavior), and I will do so until I can come up with a better solution, or until enough people see the error of their ways and it becomes less common.

If we allow something to happen on a site, it will continue to happen and new users will observe and learn from that behavior - be it good or be it bad. So it is imperative that we make sure good behavior is rewarded and unfashionable behavior is looked down upon, so that the community will continue to grow in the direction of our ideals.

As I've said before, simplify things down, seriously reduce the number of forums, and you'll find RPs will get done faster, everyone will know everyone else, and more variety of RPers will come.

Again, I extensively thank you for the time you took to write this review. I welcome you to work with us in the future, and I encourage you to continue giving this kind of feedback.

[Thepyromaker]

I think being able to access your subscribed threads more easily than doing the four or so click to get to it would be helpful.

[TheAlmightyForkNinja]

I wanted to congratulate you on all the new improvements. I like being able to see who many words are in my post without having to paste it on Microsoft Word, and I like how posts aren't stretched to infinity and beyond because someone's listed every roleplay character they've ever created in the "roleplay characters' section.
I do have some suggestions though...

1. Would there be a way to make the bios viewable on the profiles?
As far as I can tell, it’s not possible to view them at all. I think if they’re not viewable, it’s kind of redundant to have them as an option to fill out...

2. Would it be possible to add a spell check function?
I usually use Internet Explorer, and sometimes it is rather aggravating to have to spell check in Word and then paste my posts into one of the reply boxes.

These were just two ideas that I had. I just wanted to throw them out there…

~TheAlmightyForkNinja

[Moblin Killer]

General Error
SQL ERROR [ mysqli ]

Can't create a new thread (errno 12); if you are not out of available memory, you can consult the manual for a possible OS-dependent bug [1135]

BACKTRACE


FILE: includes/db/mysqli.php
LINE: 76
CALL: dbal->sql_error()

FILE: common.php
LINE: 206
CALL: dbal_mysqli->sql_connect()

FILE: search.php
LINE: 17
CALL: include('common.php')

This happens every time I go to the "View you posts" button, yet has worked for me before, only messing up this morning on July 24, 10:00pm eastern american time. Whats going on?

[Angel_Melfina]

Moblin. We have multiple thread addressing that issue, including yet another one that was created yesterday. Please refer to those in the Help forum to resolve your issues.

[Fractal Resonance]

Greets,

Okay, so, like, I'm here to make another stupid suggestion. After many hours of my beautiful mouse's nice little wheel for scrolling through web pages being made worthless by overly log signatures with little scrollbars that last forever (this, of course, is all a gross exaggeration but is the only way to correctly convey how much this actually annoys me), I was wondering: is there a way to disable all signatures in all of the in character forums, please? I don't care what your colour is, or if you're Sephiroth, or if you have a really cool quote. It's just bloody annoying. Though undoubtedly you've heard this request 20 times before.

[Angel_Melfina]

I totally agree, Fractal. I'm a member of another forum where signatures are disabled in the Roleplay forums, and it's absolutely glorious. There's no point for them to be there when RPing, and it would make it so much easier if they weren't there.

[Remæus]

You can enable and disable signatures, avatars, and a few other things on a global basis using the Display Preferences in the User Control Panel.

Unfortunately, it can't be disabled on a per-forum basis (currently). With some of the future expansions we have planned, we will be able to distinguish between the multiple types of forums and apply logic based on that, which will be necessary to allow per-forum preferences in the future.

[Zero-Genesis]

Ummm.... a submit button for chat? for people not using computers.

[TheAlmightyForkNinja]

I original posted this idea in the discussion topic about the new "Roleplayer's Wanted" section, and Myrin thought it was a good idea. She said that I should submit it to you, Remæus, so here I am, doing that... >.>
I think that maybe you should create a new section just for 1 X 1 roleplays. This would put them all in one place and would make several people happy who are extremely mad about there being 1 X 1 roleplays in the regular forums.
I am a 1 X 1 roleplayer, and I use the forums instead of private messaging because it is easier to read and scroll through the posts that way. Giving them their own forum would kill all the arguing, and would also make it harder to hit them when looking for a good group roleplay in the other sections.

You could also add a subforum for 1 X 1 requests. : )

[Driney]

I think it would be great to be able to watch the chat while typing a post or something. I sometimes amuse myself by watching the chat, and sometimes I get into a conversation but I also want to be able to post. So if when you clicked the button for chat to go up if we could scroll down farther to be able to see the writing thingy down at the bottom. It would just be great to watch chat and be able to type on the quick reply thing.

[Vexar]

Just click post reply, that gives you enough room, instead of using the fast reply all of the time.

[Village Alchemist]

for people not using computers.

Uhhh...huh?

Are you viewing this website using psychic willpower?

[Zero-Genesis]

nope using Ps3

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