With the Captains suffering casualties and heavy injuries on their side, all hope seemed to be lost... until Shinji Hirako appeared, along with the rest of the former Shinigami. Though the aid of the Vizards certainly helped to draw the battle in their favor, it seemed Aizen's power alone proved too much for them.
Post by Shiarimatte on Apr 19, 2010 17:13:56 GMT -5
Do we have a Help Board? Like, for just general questions like "Would I be able to do this..." or "Is this a good idea?"
I think it would help cut down on having to "put-down" peoples' ideas in their apps. Original ideas, I mean. You know, ideas that would be controversial and what not, since theres a whole list of creatively-locked powers that may or may not be accepted.
And general other questions, like, "Where would this topic go" or "I want to do this but would anyone join it/support it?"
Post by Rebel Raven on Apr 19, 2010 18:34:51 GMT -5
Our "help" area is the Xat Chat, really. It's easily accessable, and relatively quick, and even the non staff might offer enough help on where topics go if you can't get a hold of a staff member. All we ask is you take a few minutes to register. It's a fast, and free process to boot.
Further we also have a LOT of guides! We, mostly Kyra, worked hard on them! Use them! They'll likely have the answers!
There's a slight problem in the idea of having an area of the board where people can ask about powers. Well, actually several, really:
The area will quickly become the most used area because from my experience in holding someone's hand in making powers is that we have to compromise almost every step of the way much the way we do in our app reviews currently. With that the Staff's workload would increase immensely, and will never decrease, really, as we have to compromise with people every step of the way, and our post counts would skyrocket.
People offering ideas don't always give the WHOLE idea when they ask. That's a reason the staff say "We'd have to see the application" so we can see an idea better thought out than "Can I have Time powers if-," and "can I dual wield?" and so on in brief questions that offer us no idea what they're actually planning.
Those "Locked," and "restricted" powers are -always- a gamble no matter what. They're locked/restricted because almost NO ONE can balance powers based on them, often even with staff help because they want their powers to be "badass" but won't take the checks, and balances against those "badass" powers. A lot of times they just give up after the first review, but that's still time that could have been saved, and is saved thanks to the locked powers list. Further the way things are cut down on rejections.
Truth be told, it all boils down to the application, how it's worded, and the quality of the application. I dare say it's possible to have locked powers if one can word it properly, but again, the percentage of people who can actually balance locked powers are so few they're beyond making a fraction of our applications, so we locked/resitricted them, and if anyone asks, we point them out to the guide and/or say they can try, but there's no guarentee. This makes people think about the power, which is what we want.
If we had a help area for powers, they might just end up with an easy button where everyone else figures out a power for them which is just wrong on many levels, imo. Worse yet is they might get bad advice, and just make more problems as they get a power they think is cool, and spin it all wrong. Non staff might give -bad- ideas. I've seen it in Xat many times, and it'll only be amplified on the board.
In other words we'd have to do mini-reviews on people's application parts that they ask about.
Personally, I use applications to help understand things about a player, honestly. I think I can understand a lot about a person when they make an application, and that would be corrupted by people getting advice elsewhere before they make an application. Just what do I learn? If I said that, it might corrupt the process.
Honestly, it's all completely redundant to have a help section where people can ask if something is possible as far as a character goes. They'd ask here, we'd review the power/what they're asking about, they'd make changes, and ask again, and so forth. We do that in application reviews, and almost never outright deny an ability, though we do have less tolerance on locked/restricted powers.
On a personal note, I feel if a person can't balance a "controvercial" power, they don't really need it to begin with unless it's an idea for a plot/event character that'll be used only temporarily.
Again, general questions go on Xat, more or less. Plot stuff has it's own area.
Post by Shiarimatte on Apr 19, 2010 19:05:46 GMT -5
Well, I meant the help section not to just be for app questions. Also, I noticed that, of all the members on here, not everyone has a Xat account, and I'm not so sure they would make one just to ask one question.
And also, in my short experience on the Xat, questions don't exactly get answered when you ask them. They'll get shot off or paved over with a louder person or a previous conversation, which would get really annoying if you really needed a question asked.
And I assume the members would have access to the Help forum, so they could answer the questions as well, out of their own experiences. I'm not saying it has to be all app-related questions.
For instance, I've noticed a lot of forums on here with odd names and explainations that aren't really helpful. If someone didn't know what these forums were for, or if they wanted to know if a certain topic would belong there, they could ask there.
Or even questions about the coding on here. Its not exactly the same as a number of other sites on the web.
And, quite frankly, the FAQs and Guide didn't really hold much answers, especially for questions I had, which I had to solve via trial and error. As well, the Guide is extremely long, and some parts are down right confusing, and would consume a lot of time to look for the answer to one question, even with the break-down it is currently in.
Post by Rebel Raven on Apr 19, 2010 19:13:27 GMT -5
We have a PM system that allows a person to leave a message for the staff.
Likewise Xat has a private chat system allowing one to send a message directly to a staff member.
I'll bring up the notion with staff members, but odds are good that it'll be severely limited in terms of one's ability to ask questions concerning applications to prevent the nightmare scenarios listed above.
No promises, though.
Last Edit: Apr 19, 2010 19:15:55 GMT -5 by Rebel Raven
Post by Shinigami Kyra on Apr 19, 2010 20:39:47 GMT -5
The Suggestions Area has commonly been used as a 'Ask A Question, Get It Answered' section, thought not so much recently because a lot of people have used Xat to ask the mods questions since there's always at least one around. However, I have now turned this section into a General Help Section, as well as its original Suggestion area. You may post questions, and a staff member will be more than willing to guide you through to find the answer.
The board is split up into three major sections; Two Out-of-Character sections, located at the top and bottom, and the In Character section, located in the middle. The top portion is mostly for Rules, Announcements, Story lines, and Character Development/Applications. The bottom section is a more general area, out of character, fun stuff, suggestions, help, staff forum, so forth and so on. The middle section is then split into three separate sections; Soul Society, Earth, and Hueco Mundo. These three areas are for actual Role Play of your character, the more 'serious' section of Role Play.
Of course, above that, there are a few other sections, a Dojo Section, which is a bit out of character, just general Fighting role play, though it does not retain to the storyline of the board. Then, the OOC section, where you don't have to abide by many rules, hence the 'out of character' note; it's just for fun. Then, a journals section, which is basically a journal or diary, or even a flashback section, normally, just for one-shot type threads, where you're just writing up some extra background stuff that wouldn't really fit anywhere else.
In accordance to the joining a thread or anything like that, we do have a subforum for that; In Character Plot Discussion. You can throw up a post in the 'Who Wants to RP thread?' or reply to one, or create a small story of your own if you'd like. Most of the people use Xat, however, to start up their own Role Play threads.
As stated, however, if you are uncertain of anything or need further assistance, you may now use this subforum for your inquiries.