[P2TM Chat] The Restaurant at the End of the Multiverse III

[Nejii]

Any good games that need players?

I have an anarchist type RP that I am working on coming out soon. If your interested...

[Irona]

Any good games that need players?

I have an anarchist type RP that I am working on coming out soon. If your interested...

That sounds fascinating

[Nejii]

I have an anarchist type RP that I am working on coming out soon. If your interested...

That sounds fascinating

Keep an eye out in the next week or so. It's nearly finished. The laughable irony is it's relatable to current happenings and I started on it last week.

[Ameriganastan]

Any good games that need players?

We're always open to new blood in Elementals.

[Talchyon]

Any good games that need players?

We have (I think) the only running comedy going. This is set in the Old West, and the plot right now involves a Machiavellian Texas town mayor conniving a fake gold rush in order to increase the town size. Also a bunch of fun quirky player characters. Called "Grand Theft Horse." We welcome all writers.

[Irona]

We're always open to new blood in Elementals.

We have (I think) the only running comedy going. This is set in the Old West, and the plot right now involves a Machiavellian Texas town mayor conniving a fake gold rush in order to increase the town size. Also a bunch of fun quirky player characters. Called "Grand Theft Horse." We welcome all writers.

I'll give them both a read! I used to be active three or four years back, and the new lockdown has given me the free time to get involved again.

[Nejii]

Any good games that need players?

We have (I think) the only running comedy going. This is set in the Old West, and the plot right now involves a Machiavellian Texas town mayor conniving a fake gold rush in order to increase the town size. Also a bunch of fun quirky player characters. Called "Grand Theft Horse." We welcome all writers.

I was this close to joining that when it was first posted but didn't. :/

[Talchyon]

We have (I think) the only running comedy going. This is set in the Old West, and the plot right now involves a Machiavellian Texas town mayor conniving a fake gold rush in order to increase the town size. Also a bunch of fun quirky player characters. Called "Grand Theft Horse." We welcome all writers.

I was this close to joining that when it was first posted but didn't. :/

You still can. We're just getting back into the saddle after an extended Christmas break.

[Hebi no seichi]

Well i would say this is a first for me,but i would be lying to myself

[Talchyon]

Well i would say this is a first for me,but i would be lying to myself

Welcome!

[Alaska Hawaii and the Aleutes]

Hi! What is a thread?

[Constaniana]

Hi! What is a thread?

A thread refers to a topic within the NationStates forum. It has a OP (Opening/original post) and replies.

[Ameriganastan]

I'm determined to get an RP set in the League Of Legends universe going. But the last 2 attempts fizzled out. I may need to rethink my approach.

[Forest State]

Posted a while back either here or on the other thread about having a concept for an RP but being unsure of things like the mechanics for it and also managing activity in this day and age. It's gotten me thinking - if you've been around the site long enough to remember that far back, weren't the older days a bit better? Where's my 2016-2019 gang at? Any of ya'll still kicking around actively and not entombed by college or lost interest?

Also, about things being better before, I've been interested in this subject for a while now and I have more data on it... I'd like to be wrong about there being a decline in activity on NS, but there's some numbers behind it rather than just doomer assumptions. I looked at the site traffic rankings on Alexa and I have both an old screenshot from last April and one from right now.

Google searches aren't quite as direct a way of figuring out traffic but the trends there fit the same narrative as the Alexa rankings.

Keep in mind that only a small fraction of NS players are active forum users compared to the overall amount of people that show up to the site and make a nation. In fact, I've even seen NS get brought up on completely unrelated sites and I've seen people stumble into it - but I've never seen someone who didn't already know about NS end up joining the forums.

I'm not just bringing it up to be a doomer out of nowhere and talk about the site dying - I'd very much like to be wrong about the direction it's going and for more RPs to have the chance to live long without sacrificing pacing and moving very slowly. But I think these trends have a big impact on how RPs have to be ran to help them last through the downward activity trend.

It's even harder if the RP in question is a more in depth style one where most of the posts are long and actions in the RP take more thought. Those require more investment from the players, so you can cut the available active player pool even further if the nature of the thread is upper intermediate to advanced. Personally I'm starting to think the only paths for success will be

A) Having an insular group already established and keeping the thread afloat through everyone having a preexisting investment in being in a thread and community together. However, this requires the group to have enough active members, because you can't rely on getting activity from people who aren't already in the group.

B) Making something very simple that anyone can post in without much investment, and hoping the ease of joining and the low time investment required for posting keeps people active.

C) Move at a slow pace and work around the fact that you might only have a couple posts per week between the entire RP or even go weeks without a post. Obviously some RPs have managed to stay around by slowing down and doing things this way, but I think it's obviously not the most attractive option for those looking to keep things moving. I've also seen people lose interest and wander away when it's too long between anything happening.

So yeah - thinking about those things is part of why I haven't made a new thread yet. I think a lot of OPs will have to ask themselves how they want to try handling it, in the future. And maaan, maybe there's some rose tinted glasses involved but sometimes I wish I could experience older NS but with the, well, skills I have now. Lot of people that made big contributions that aren't around much or at all anymore that I would've liked to write with; Shy, Aona, Van, Game, Soni, Doc, FELI, there's some other names on this list too but those are just some ones off the top of my head. Also, I'm not exactly dissing newcomers either and saying people who were around years ago are automatically better. My point is more like, what do we do when we haven't replaced everyone that's left or been tied up with life?

[Northern Socialist Council Republics]

-snip-

Between this and my previous account I’ve been on NationStates in some form of another since 2014. It’s been a significant part of my life these past few years. The prospects that the site might be dying is... depressing to think about. What am I going to do with my free time after P2TM fades quietly into the dark?

I wonder if there is something about the site that makes it less appealing to people today than people a few years ago. Is it a decline in the concept of Internet forums in general?

And do people know other sites that offer a similar roleplaying experience that NationStates P2TM does?

[Forest State]

-snip-

Between this and my previous account I’ve been on NationStates in some form of another since 2014. It’s been a significant part of my life these past few years. The prospects that the site might be dying is... depressing to think about. What am I going to do with my free time after P2TM fades quietly into the dark?

I wonder if there is something about the site that makes it less appealing to people today than people a few years ago. Is it a decline in the concept of Internet forums in general?

And do people know other sites that offer a similar roleplaying experience that NationStates P2TM does?

Honestly outside of a couple nation RP things that saw their heyday a long time ago, I can't think of anything too similar. And that didn't reflect the P2TM experience as much as the II one. I've seen some other places but they seem to fall either on the very casual end or the other end of the spectrum where things are kinda stuffy feeling with a focus on longer posts but not too many threads moving frequently compared to P2TM and not as much community feeling.

As for this site, though, I think part of it is the forum not being advertised. There's actually a rather large amount of overall players that join NS, for a niche internet game that's mostly discovered through organic traffic. However, there's not much indicating to check out the forums and that there's more to do on the forums - a lot of these people join, make a nation, answer some issues, and eventually let their nation CTE when they get bored with it. Some people end up getting involved with region stuff or the WA. But I'm sure there's a lot of people that might have been interested in the things on the forums, in being able to go more in depth with their nation and do things such as fight wars, or check out what's available on P2TM, if they had known what was here.

I don't think the subforum or the site will just fade into nothing, though. There's still daily activity. And even some new people joining every now and then. Problem is, we might be in a time where threads are more of a crapshoot than they ever were before and the only ways around it long term might be... Planning differently or having a very low barrier of entry and hoping that making it very easy to join and post allows you to go around the usual activity problems RPs can have. I'm not quite sure what planning differently involves yet.

[Galnius]

Posted a while back either here or on the other thread about having a concept for an RP but being unsure of things like the mechanics for it and also managing activity in this day and age. It's gotten me thinking - if you've been around the site long enough to remember that far back, weren't the older days a bit better? Where's my 2016-2019 gang at? Any of ya'll still kicking around actively and not entombed by college or lost interest?

Also, about things being better before, I've been interested in this subject for a while now and I have more data on it... I'd like to be wrong about there being a decline in activity on NS, but there's some numbers behind it rather than just doomer assumptions. I looked at the site traffic rankings on Alexa and I have both an old screenshot from last April and one from right now.

(Image)

(Image)

Google searches aren't quite as direct a way of figuring out traffic but the trends there fit the same narrative as the Alexa rankings.

(Image)

Keep in mind that only a small fraction of NS players are active forum users compared to the overall amount of people that show up to the site and make a nation. In fact, I've even seen NS get brought up on completely unrelated sites and I've seen people stumble into it - but I've never seen someone who didn't already know about NS end up joining the forums.

I'm not just bringing it up to be a doomer out of nowhere and talk about the site dying - I'd very much like to be wrong about the direction it's going and for more RPs to have the chance to live long without sacrificing pacing and moving very slowly. But I think these trends have a big impact on how RPs have to be ran to help them last through the downward activity trend.

It's even harder if the RP in question is a more in depth style one where most of the posts are long and actions in the RP take more thought. Those require more investment from the players, so you can cut the available active player pool even further if the nature of the thread is upper intermediate to advanced. Personally I'm starting to think the only paths for success will be

A) Having an insular group already established and keeping the thread afloat through everyone having a preexisting investment in being in a thread and community together. However, this requires the group to have enough active members, because you can't rely on getting activity from people who aren't already in the group.

B) Making something very simple that anyone can post in without much investment, and hoping the ease of joining and the low time investment required for posting keeps people active.

C) Move at a slow pace and work around the fact that you might only have a couple posts per week between the entire RP or even go weeks without a post. Obviously some RPs have managed to stay around by slowing down and doing things this way, but I think it's obviously not the most attractive option for those looking to keep things moving. I've also seen people lose interest and wander away when it's too long between anything happening.

So yeah - thinking about those things is part of why I haven't made a new thread yet. I think a lot of OPs will have to ask themselves how they want to try handling it, in the future. And maaan, maybe there's some rose tinted glasses involved but sometimes I wish I could experience older NS but with the, well, skills I have now. Lot of people that made big contributions that aren't around much or at all anymore that I would've liked to write with; Shy, Aona, Van, Game, Soni, Doc, FELI, there's some other names on this list too but those are just some ones off the top of my head. Also, I'm not exactly dissing newcomers either and saying people who were around years ago are automatically better. My point is more like, what do we do when we haven't replaced everyone that's left or been tied up with life?

I'm still very present.

Gametopia is also in an rp as we speak. Doc sadly it's unfindable been though. FELI be existing as well.

[Forest State]

snip

I'm still very present.

Gametopia is also in an rp as we speak. Doc sadly it's unfindable been though. FELI be existing as well.

Good to see some of us still around. I've actually talked to Doc on discord since the last RP me and him were in but that thread was a while back. FELI I have added on discord but last time we did something in a thread was like... 2018 I think. He wrote some of the best content in the thread, too. But life got in the way pretty quick, RIP.

[G-Tech Corporation]

I can't really comment as to folks' personal experiences - but as an old fart, I've seen NS be through no less than three different activity cycles. 'tis the way of the world. Almost every single person I began my NS life with when it comes to RPing no longer frequents this forum, and the people from more recently too. But more come back, and such is the way of things. Oftentimes we get big bumps from election years when politics aren't that exciting, as people want to do their own thing and fantasize.

[Forest State]

I can't really comment as to folks' personal experiences - but as an old fart, I've seen NS be through no less than three different activity cycles. 'tis the way of the world. Almost every single person I began my NS life with when it comes to RPing no longer frequents this forum, and the people from more recently too. But more come back, and such is the way of things. Oftentimes we get big bumps from election years when politics aren't that exciting, as people want to do their own thing and fantasize.

I hope we get a post election bump up, lol. I thought that was going to come earlier last year from quarantines but it never seemed to happen even with everyone stuck sitting around bored.

[Northern Socialist Council Republics]

I hope we get a post election bump up, lol. I thought that was going to come earlier last year from quarantines but it never seemed to happen even with everyone stuck sitting around bored.

To be honest my own NationStates activity hasn't changed much despite getting a lot more free time due to the lockdown. NS-posting is what I do on my scrap time. If I have a solid 5~6 hour afternoon with no obligations I'd rather just pop on a video game or something. So I've played a lot of video games and read a lot of internet fiction these past few months, but not that much NS-posting.

I imagine it's not that different for a lot of other people, too. NationStates is what they do when they don't have quite enough free time to schedule something else.

[Lavan Tiri]

I can't really comment as to folks' personal experiences - but as an old fart, I've seen NS be through no less than three different activity cycles. 'tis the way of the world. Almost every single person I began my NS life with when it comes to RPing no longer frequents this forum, and the people from more recently too. But more come back, and such is the way of things. Oftentimes we get big bumps from election years when politics aren't that exciting, as people want to do their own thing and fantasize.

I was gonna say--I've been kicking around since 2013. Things come and go.

[Forest State]

snip

True. Maybe the numbers of more dedicated posters is one of the things that goes up and down, too. There's always been players that mainly drop in for a bit without ever spending too much time around the site, yeah, I feel in past years though there were a higher number of players consistently active that made a point of showing up.

Like, it's anecdotal evidence but I remember it being far more common for people to ask what happened in an RP because they had been absent for a little bit and there was a bunch of new progress. I've seen this with shorter post RPs where things were moving super fast because the posting requirement wasn't high but I've even seen it happen when the requirements are more medium level in terms of length and such.

How many things around have those kind of posting rallies anymore where you could move things along with your character for a bit and head to bed on it and get up and check out what else moved since there's a bunch of new posts since then? I can remember multiple threads being around at the same time that were on like their second IC thread because they had already filled one up, and their second or third or fourth OOC thread. Granted, Discord replaced the OOC thread thing in a lot of ways so I won't complain about that since I think it's an improvement in a few areas, but there's still less... IC productivity.

Right now like the only one that can pull off the hundreds of pages of progress thing is the US political RP, and well, good for them - their kind of thing isn't my style but I can respect them making a success out of it. But I remember that kind of thing being common, before, instead of limited to one rare outlier. Not to mention RPs that never achieved 'hundreds of pages' levels of progression but were still pretty active for the time they were a thing.

It actually made me curious and caused me to look back wondering if this dynamic was because of genuine activity or if this is just some idea I came up with after the fact and in reality we were shitposting back then and just filling up hundreds of pages with poor quality one liners riddled with broken grammar and godmodding etc... And honestly, that's not even the case. There's some things I would improve of course - it's been a long time and I'm a more experienced writer - but I'm not seeing like, some dramatic quality gap between older and more recent stuff except for maybe a tendency to just post character actions/dialogues without much accompanying prose in some of the older stuff I was in. In one of the threads I looked back on I actually think the writing held up enough that if it had been created in 2020 it would be considered one of the best threads out there right now even though the writing is from years ago, actually.

Anyway this post turned out to be a longer one than I was originally going to make, but your post did get me thinking about something - how many people consider writing on NS a hobby in and of itself (or more likely, consider writing in general a hobby and use NS as an outlet for that since there's not too many other places like this around) and how many people stop in from time to time to use it as a time waster. I feel the ratio has an impact on the results. IMO you need a core of dedicated players to make something work long term, who will hold things up even if more casual people put the thread on the backburner for a time.

[Constaniana]

Posted a while back either here or on the other thread about having a concept for an RP but being unsure of things like the mechanics for it and also managing activity in this day and age. It's gotten me thinking - if you've been around the site long enough to remember that far back, weren't the older days a bit better? Where's my 2016-2019 gang at? Any of ya'll still kicking around actively and not entombed by college or lost interest?

Also, about things being better before, I've been interested in this subject for a while now and I have more data on it... I'd like to be wrong about there being a decline in activity on NS, but there's some numbers behind it rather than just doomer assumptions. I looked at the site traffic rankings on Alexa and I have both an old screenshot from last April and one from right now.

(Image)

(Image)

Google searches aren't quite as direct a way of figuring out traffic but the trends there fit the same narrative as the Alexa rankings.

(Image)

Keep in mind that only a small fraction of NS players are active forum users compared to the overall amount of people that show up to the site and make a nation. In fact, I've even seen NS get brought up on completely unrelated sites and I've seen people stumble into it - but I've never seen someone who didn't already know about NS end up joining the forums.

I'm not just bringing it up to be a doomer out of nowhere and talk about the site dying - I'd very much like to be wrong about the direction it's going and for more RPs to have the chance to live long without sacrificing pacing and moving very slowly. But I think these trends have a big impact on how RPs have to be ran to help them last through the downward activity trend.

It's even harder if the RP in question is a more in depth style one where most of the posts are long and actions in the RP take more thought. Those require more investment from the players, so you can cut the available active player pool even further if the nature of the thread is upper intermediate to advanced. Personally I'm starting to think the only paths for success will be

A) Having an insular group already established and keeping the thread afloat through everyone having a preexisting investment in being in a thread and community together. However, this requires the group to have enough active members, because you can't rely on getting activity from people who aren't already in the group.

B) Making something very simple that anyone can post in without much investment, and hoping the ease of joining and the low time investment required for posting keeps people active.

C) Move at a slow pace and work around the fact that you might only have a couple posts per week between the entire RP or even go weeks without a post. Obviously some RPs have managed to stay around by slowing down and doing things this way, but I think it's obviously not the most attractive option for those looking to keep things moving. I've also seen people lose interest and wander away when it's too long between anything happening.

So yeah - thinking about those things is part of why I haven't made a new thread yet. I think a lot of OPs will have to ask themselves how they want to try handling it, in the future. And maaan, maybe there's some rose tinted glasses involved but sometimes I wish I could experience older NS but with the, well, skills I have now. Lot of people that made big contributions that aren't around much or at all anymore that I would've liked to write with; Shy, Aona, Van, Game, Soni, Doc, FELI, there's some other names on this list too but those are just some ones off the top of my head. Also, I'm not exactly dissing newcomers either and saying people who were around years ago are automatically better. My point is more like, what do we do when we haven't replaced everyone that's left or been tied up with life?

I'm profoundly grateful I managed to luck out doing option C with my RP. Elementals has survived having months-long gaps between posts, to the point that me leaving for 2 years to serve as a missionary didn't kill it, although I had Zark direct it to an ending and put in a 3-year time skip when I finally started it up again. Then again, that's only because I lucked out with having a remarkably dedicated core of players, and I knew a good chunk of them from Elfen High. The problem with that newer folks probably can't pull that off if they don't have other successful RPs to get to know fellow posters in.

snip

True. Maybe the numbers of more dedicated posters is one of the things that goes up and down, too. There's always been players that mainly drop in for a bit without ever spending too much time around the site, yeah, I feel in past years though there were a higher number of players consistently active that made a point of showing up.

Like, it's anecdotal evidence but I remember it being far more common for people to ask what happened in an RP because they had been absent for a little bit and there was a bunch of new progress. I've seen this with shorter post RPs where things were moving super fast because the posting requirement wasn't high but I've even seen it happen when the requirements are more medium level in terms of length and such.

How many things around have those kind of posting rallies anymore where you could move things along with your character for a bit and head to bed on it and get up and check out what else moved since there's a bunch of new posts since then? I can remember multiple threads being around at the same time that were on like their second IC thread because they had already filled one up, and their second or third or fourth OOC thread. Granted, Discord replaced the OOC thread thing in a lot of ways so I won't complain about that since I think it's an improvement in a few areas, but there's still less... IC productivity.

Right now like the only one that can pull off the hundreds of pages of progress thing is the US political RP, and well, good for them - their kind of thing isn't my style but I can respect them making a success out of it. But I remember that kind of thing being common, before, instead of limited to one rare outlier. Not to mention RPs that never achieved 'hundreds of pages' levels of progression but were still pretty active for the time they were a thing.

It actually made me curious and caused me to look back wondering if this dynamic was because of genuine activity or if this is just some idea I came up with after the fact and in reality we were shitposting back then and just filling up hundreds of pages with poor quality one liners riddled with broken grammar and godmodding etc... And honestly, that's not even the case. There's some things I would improve of course - it's been a long time and I'm a more experienced writer - but I'm not seeing like, some dramatic quality gap between older and more recent stuff except for maybe a tendency to just post character actions/dialogues without much accompanying prose in some of the older stuff I was in. In one of the threads I looked back on I actually think the writing held up enough that if it had been created in 2020 it would be considered one of the best threads out there right now even though the writing is from years ago, actually.

Anyway this post turned out to be a longer one than I was originally going to make, but your post did get me thinking about something - how many people consider writing on NS a hobby in and of itself (or more likely, consider writing in general a hobby and use NS as an outlet for that since there's not too many other places like this around) and how many people stop in from time to time to use it as a time waster. I feel the ratio has an impact on the results. IMO you need a core of dedicated players to make something work long term, who will hold things up even if more casual people put the thread on the backburner for a time.

I'd consider writing on NS as an outlet of my writing hobby. I had the idea of Elementals in my head for a long while before it first became a RP on here, but I enjoy letting other people into the world in my head and see what they do with it. I enjoyed the other RPs I participated in when I had more time in my younger years, but I seem to have a much harder time mustering the creative energy required to spread myself across a few projects like that nowadays.

[Northern Socialist Council Republics]

It's February, which is slow time over here for me. Anyone have any upcoming RPs on the pipelines that I might be hyped up about?