THE ROLEPLAY SYSTEM POLL!

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I'll say one reason why I at least have my OOC thread titled as such with OOC (and this is also probably why others do the same) is because as far as I'm aware, the alert system doesn't specify between an IC and OOC thread otherwise. Before the update I would have the OOC prefaced with Closed Signups and the IC as Heroic Fantasy; an alert would easily show which was which. But if they're both titled the same you wouldn't know until you clicked it and got sent to the corresponding thread. It's nothing major, but again it's an extra step of... hassle?

Fully concur with everything Jorick said as well.
 
Just to be for those who don't know: If you go into your roleplay resource and click on the thread tab, you'll see thread tools pop up. Click that and a drop down menu will appear. Click edit title and put in your desired tag :) (And yes, this will appear in your alerts). What is not allowed is editing the roleplay title through the resource roleplay settings.
 
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- What are the things you love about the current system that you want to KEEP and don't wanna give up?

I enjoy the tidier layout for RPs, and wouldn't give that up.​

- What are the things you are having a hard time with or find confusing to deal with?

I have a hard time with tags only visible once you're inside a thread, rather than from the forum/RP area. A few like content rating would be good to include on those visible outer parts.​

- What are the things you don't like OR don't feel is useful for you as a roleplayer/GM?

I can't think of anything, really. I love having a cast list separate from the summary, and both separate from the thread.​

- What is MISSING that you really wish was a feature?

Private, GM-only notes within each RP would be NICE to have. Not needed, but certainly nice.​

- If you are (or had to) work as a moderator for the roleplay sections, what are things that would be confusing or a problem for you?

Nothin's really confusing when I help with clean-up.​

- OTHER COMMENTARY!

KEEP ON THE AWESOME. <3​
 
- What are the things you love about the current system that you want to KEEP and don't wanna give up?
I love every single thing about the current system! I love it when everything are organized well and it's easy for me to find anything I want. I think I want to keep it all *hugs the system tightly*

- What are the things you are having a hard time with or find confusing to deal with?
Nothing at all. Well, at first, I was confused but it's easy to understand as I get used to it.

- What are the things you don't like OR don't feel is useful for you as a roleplayer/GM?
Nothing so far since I think I use everything provided for me easily (as long as I know I use everything, but I might skip some) Each of it plays their own role properly even though just a tiny one and barely changes anything.

- What is MISSING that you really wish was a feature?
I thought adding custom tabs will be wonderful, but now I think it's not necessary after I make my own navigation tools to help my players find their way. But, I still welcome custom tabs as new feature. Also, for the signup thread, I think it's better to keep it as 'tabs' instead of making a whole new thread.

Ah another one, though I don't think it should be put as feature, more like an automatic system? Deleting your dead roleplay from your roleplay list, soon... people will have a long list of roleplay they've created so far and the dead ones will stay there too forever. Or if it's not done automatically, people can choose which one to keep in their roleplay list, which one to delete (deleted from list not from Iwaku, stay in graveyard, away from the list).

Last two! Maybe Sorting the roleplay list? It's not necessary at all, but it gives me satisfaction when I can sort everything tidily ;_; Another unnecessary feature, just for my satisfaction and insanity, set my default font. I mean, I use Georgia all the time and I want to keep it as my default font, so I don't have to change it each time I want to make a post. Just as I said, it's unnecessary and unimportant... I'm just lazy, but want to keep doing it and keep nagging about it :'D
 
- What are the things you love about the current system that you want to KEEP and don't wanna give up?
The Tabs. <3

It keeps thing very organized and less of a mess in the OP.
+Makes it FAR easier to double check CS's.
- What are the things you are having a hard time with or find confusing to deal with?
I know the new way Roleplays are listed has thrown me off when I looked at it.

Though this is less of a hard time/confusing and more just an eye sore because it's so stretched out compared to the rest of the site.
+The Majority of GM's not bothering to add an image for their RP doesn't help.
- What are the things you don't like OR don't feel is useful for you as a roleplayer/GM?
The above mentioned RP picture.
But that's just because most GM's don't bother with it, so it's basically a large amount of gear icons.
- What is MISSING that you really wish was a feature?
Customizable Tabs.

That being said though I'm already aware that this is a work in progress.
- If you are (or had to) work as a moderator for the roleplay sections, what are things that would be confusing or a problem for you?
Nothing from what I've seen.
It all seems simple enough.
- OTHER COMMENTARY!
Congrats on surviving as a Tribute this long. :P
 
Things I LOVE

1) Tabs (i.e. Overview, Rules, Cast List, Thread...) -- these are really handy and keep everything organized
2) General Layout -- everything feels cleaner (to me, anyways)


Things I Don't Like

1) Lack of proper roleplay advertising
2) Loss of the genre options (i.e. apocalypse in modern, high fantasy in fantasy, etc.)
3) Unable to expand the text boxes when creating new resources
--This is very frustrating to me in particular because I like being able to see the "big picture" when typing up my overviews.
4) Unable to preview all tabs
--So far (correct me if I'm wrong) I've only been able to preview the Overview tab; I would like to be able to preview all of them.


That's about it for me. Other than that, everything has been great! My main thing is the roleplay advertising, as that was my old method of finding roleplays to join--as well as get my own off the ground.
 
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I'm going to be completely honest. I miss the old system. I've posted a couple RP threads looking for 1x1 (The ones in my signature) and the only ones who responded are the ones I personally commented links to on their profiles. Back then I could post a thread and get responses immediately.
 
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- What are the things you love about the current system that you want to KEEP and don't wanna give up?
I like the current organization of the main page, I think I've seen a couple different main page layouts so far and this surpasses the previous.

- What are the things you are having a hard time with or find confusing to deal with?
There's nothing really "hard", but, before the update, the front page was organized by colors which made it faster to scroll and get where I wanted to go, I thinking using the current layout but separating things by colors would be an improvement.

- What are the things you don't like OR don't feel is useful for you as a roleplayer/GM?

I have nothing to point here.

- What is MISSING that you really wish was a feature?
1 - more color options on the prefixes schemes for pms, I use that a lot to organize stuff.
2 - On my inbox, when I have a conversation there it shows the icon/avatar of who started the conversation, I think if would be more helpful to show the avatar of who's on the conversation besides me, seeing a huge list of messages starting with my avatar does not help much XD.

3 - When creating a new RP thread, I'd like an option to select who can view and post on it.
Something like:
Me - read[y] write[y]
GM - read[y] write[y/n]
Visitors - read[y/n]
Members read[y/n] write[y/n]
People who I follow - read[y/n] write[y/n]
Specific member list- read[y/n] write[y/n]

So I could for example create a RP with, let's say 4 persons, that only those 4 persons could post, everyone I follow and GMs could read, but it wouldn't be visible to other members or visitors.
Or I have a work in progress and don't have time to finish writing, I set "No" for everyone to read and write so that only I can view it.


- If you are (or had to) work as a moderator for the roleplay sections, what are things that would be confusing or a problem for you?
I'd never in my current life scenario have time for that so I can't even start to think about it.
 
- What are the things you love about the current system that you want to KEEP and don't wanna give up?
The rating system and roleplay resume under a button, all I can really think that I can say is really cool.
- What are the things you are having a hard time with or find confusing to deal with?
Finding new roleplays, everything appears cluttered, crowded, and filled with fluff. To this day I still don't know where my RP is placed, I just go through my email because it's more convenient.
- What are the things you don't like OR don't feel is useful for you as a roleplayer/GM?
Larger thumbnails that hardly anyone actually uses when selecting a thread because it's unnecessary (and those that do, it's just difficult to convey what a story is about with an image, words are powerful and as roleplayers we use that power, images are just fancy cherries on top in this type of hobby), a rating system that on all of page 1, 2, & 3 of fantasy roleplays has 0 rates all combine. Nobody is using those, chop those out and suddenly the thread list takes up only 25% of the space and is easier to read. This falls under the fluff problem, if people aren't using it you don't need it.

[tl;dr for below, the overview and thread tabs are the classic example of "just because you can doesn't mean you should." Why are we not combining them?]
The tabs for overview and thread are also just a fancy feature that is honestly just there to say we have fancy things. When it happened I deleted everything under overview and put it straight back on page one. I believe the information used to discuss the roleplay should be in the thread to discuss the roleplay, it just makes sense to me. It also serves no real function in my eyes since the page 1 marker is always in display, even if you are on page 7,000. As a GM I like to pop straight back to page one to refresh my mind on what has been implemented and page 1 is where some extremely important questions are, something I, as a GM, failed to mention or even consider, that lets me remember how much I've put into this world. As it is, I pop open a new tab and bam, there's everything as it was when I made it, I already know how it was. Now as it is I would have to tab over to page one, open in a second tab the overview, and that's adding 1 more tab to my browser that is already probably full of tabs. 1 for the IC most recent post, one to the OOC most recent, page 1 of the OOC, overview of the OOC, probably my photobucket since my particular roleplay is filled with monsters, and knowing me there will be more, that varies by the day. It would be much nicer to put the overview and the OOC page 1 together because then I can simply scroll down. Now, this is indeed what I have done with my own roleplay, but every time I go to someone elses that uses this or didn't change theirs, I walked away because I quickly thought everything was too spread apart. I know this is coming off as me complaining people aren't catering to my desires, but that's really not it, it's just really easy to lose interest in something when you don't get very much information at one time and not every GM can neatly put everything straight into the overview. I can because I have GM'd enough to know the kind of information that should be added, but people who don't know these things won't throw them in, and that's fine...if all the information is still in the same place. When I first saw these tabs I thought to myself "KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!" Then I remembered it's data and I can't burn the servers down. There is no reason to spread everything so far apart, keep it close and well formatted.
- What is MISSING that you really wish was a feature?
My problems aren't that something is missing really, just that there's way too much going on that people don't need, and therefor don't use.
- If you are (or had to) work as a moderator for the roleplay sections, what are things that would be confusing or a problem for you?
Thread navigation is difficult. As I said, to this day I don't know where my Rothendust roleplay was moved. I just go into my bookmarks and find it there, or hopefully I have a fresh alert about it in my notices, but then those sometimes don't work (I know the problem, it's on me so I won't complain about that bit.) I can find each section super smoothly, but then comes finding a roleplay...
- OTHER COMMENTARY!
Simple is good, I didn't read very many other peoples comments but I saw one saying they were confused at first but got used to it, however a new member has no attachment to this site and if they try navigating it and get confused, they will just leave. If it's all simple and laid out nicely people will want to stay and/or come back, hopefully many more times. It's been confusing enough that I've closed my roleplay because once that dies or finishes, I'm moving on and going somewhere that appeals more to the people rather than the system. For now though, I love the people I have participating in my story and I won't give up on them.
 
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To be honest, while I love the organization and GM tools afforded by the new system, I have been having a terrible time actually finding roleplays to join that I haven't been expressly invited to because it's so annoying to sort through them all.
 
Not gonna lie, as pretty and streamlined as the new system is, I miss having threads.
 
-1- I liked everything ^_^.
-2- I'm not having any difficulty on anything.
-3- Well... I don't use too much stuff and like I said early, I liked EVERYTHING.
-4- For me there's nothing missing, I'm a someone that adjusts itself with anything... really anything. Like If I find a problem I deal with it myself without the help of anyone.
-5- Everything... I don't know how to moderate anything... neither use that BBcode stuff (I don't even know if it's the right name... >.<) But if I get used to it and learn with my mistakes I, like any other normal person, would be a not too bad neither not too good moderator.
-6- I really liked those new settings and stuffs, it's easier than before and I really liked it ^^ Hope I've helped on something... >.<​
 
I wasn't going to do this because my opinions aren't nice, however Jorick asked me to post them anyway so here I am shitting over everything.

- What are the things you love about the current system that you want to KEEP and don't wanna give up?
I like tabs for organisation within a roleplay. It'd be nice to have both IC and OOC threads tabbed in and custom tabs would also be nice, but this basic idea is good.

- What are the things you are having a hard time with or find confusing to deal with?
- What are the things you don't like OR don't feel is useful for you as a roleplayer/GM?
Where do I even start?

First, it looks cluttered. Having pictures just makes the thing look cluttered. The image is taller than the text. Pretty much twice. I mean that's no good. And why do we have the active authors tab? Nobody cares about that. Why is there an option for viewing the top user of a certain tag? Why do updates exist in the first place when subscribing to a topic and alerts already do the same thing but better? What functional purpose does that serve? And why, if there is a tag that actually has a defined meaning, is there an information button linking to a black page with the information that already shows up on a hover? Space is a wastin' and makes it look disorganised. Then there's the featured roleplays, while I understand their function... Just... no. Why not just have a quick link to a FAQ that details the roleplay creation? Same function, same amount of clicks, less clutter.

Speaking of organisation, why aren't my subscribed and created roleplays under the same tab of my roleplays?

Then there's the usability. The category filter takes, at the very least, two clicks, where just having a forum takes only one. Instead of a click-and-go forum style system where threads that are active get bumped, it's based on updates of all things by default. No matter how active a roleplay is it will get buried. Going strong for two years but need a few players? Well you're SOL because nobody looks at players wanted and you're all the way back on page 250. The filter function and organisation are shitty and well... This alone makes it a downgrade from forum roleplay.

I could go on for a while on other things, but I'm sure you get the gist.

- What is MISSING that you really wish was a feature?
More tabs. Custom tabs. Organisation. Limited tag-options so they can be more organised and categorised. Subscriptions to a roleplay should subscribe you to both IC and OOC automatically (possible change in options but then I don't have to sub three times) and also automatically tag topics as IC or OOC so I don't have to get confused about what got updated.

- If you are (or had to) work as a moderator for the roleplay sections, what are things that would be confusing or a problem for you?
I either covered it already or don't know.

There is so much that needs to change, I doubt there's the time and money to do this all at once. New systems are fancy and cool but if they don't work at least as well as the old ones, they shouldn't be implanted for the sake of novelty. I think Iwaku gets a lot of things right and has many venues for expression, but the current roleplay system is not part of it.
 
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STATUS UPDATE:

Because multiple custom tabs is a huge desire, I looked in to that first. There is already a custom tab mod out, (which would work if we kept the current system OR reverted back to the old one), but it only allowed for 1 custom tab added. I commissioned custom work to have them make MULTIPLE custom tabs work, but unfortunately they ran in to complications and were unable to do the project. >:/

Right now we are going over suggestions and comments to see what we actually can do and what may not be possible. This includes consideration of scrapping the system and going back to the old one. I am not going to go down point by point with everyone's suggestions, since we haven't made any solid decisions about what is going to be done yet.

IMPORTANT NOTE! WE CANNOT MAKE WELL INFORMED DECISIONS WITHOUT MORE MEMBER INPUT. OVER 1000 MEMBERS POST DAILY ON IWAKU, WE NEED TO HEAR MORE VOICES.

Don't be afraid to say you HATE how something works, even if a bazillion others say they love it. O__O You might be saying something important that we did not consider. Don't be scared to hurt our feelings, we WANT to make sure things are working for you. As long as you're not being an offensive asshole about it, you're giving us useful information. It also doesn't matter if you are echoing the opinions of people that already posted, we still need to see numbers and faces. If you have to, you can quote other people in the thread and just say "I AGREE WIT DIS." Just don't let other people speak for you and do the "several people agree with me". That does not give us accurate stats and information about the community. Your opinion is not going to count unless you actually GIVE it and we can SEE you giving it.



And for the love of balls, please have patience. ;___; If it was easy to get things just right exactly when we want them, there weren't be so many shitty sites out there. 8D
 
It also doesn't matter if you are echoing the opinions of people that already posted, we still need to see numbers and faces. If you have to, you can quote other people in the thread and just say "I AGREE WIT DIS." Just don't let other people speak for you and do the "several people agree with me". That does not give us accurate stats and information about the community. Your opinion is not going to count unless you actually GIVE it and we can SEE you giving it.
In staying true to the suggestion here I have to echo this point to people.

Across multiple forum sites I've seen a popular mindset of "Saying the same thing as something else is useless and isn't contributing!".
That crap just hurt's the conversation, for like Diana said knowing how many people agree with something is important.
If everyone went by the reasoning of echoing something = useless then the second one person said something everyone else would go quiet.
Discussions would die, ideas would die, and people would have no way of judging how many people actually agree or disagree with an idea.

Well granted Iwaku has the rating systems.
But personal feedback > ratings because it still shows the individuals own line of reasoning for it.
 
And for the love of balls, please have patience. ;___; If it was easy to get things just right exactly when we want them, there weren't be so many shitty sites out there. 8D
But Diana, surely, Rome was built in a day!

But seriously though, thanks for the response. I appreciate the status update.
 
I'm new, so I can only comment from a newbie standpoint the issues I had.

I liked that everything was in convenient tabs - This made it very easy for me as a newbie to figure out if I wanted to join an RP and what it was about.

I have no idea how activity is structured - I'm new, so I was looking for active RPs to join in. However, I would click say "sci fi roleplays" and not know which RPs are active and when the last posts were. Is it possible that they be sorted by their activity level i.e. recent postings or something along the lines? If it is already like that, I struggled to see the correlation.

There were no resources for me - Nothing told me about this system in place. Even the "read first PM" didn't seem to have information on how this system worked. I mostly figured it out by lurking and looking around, but it isn't intuitive and most certainly I could imagine people looking elsewhere for a more intuitive system. If I missed some newbie information about it, do let me know. I may just be unobservant.

Looking for an RP to jump in felt awkward - Apparently there was some kind of advertising system earlier? Maybe it might be a good idea to bring it back- I have no idea how obnoxious it was so it might be more trouble than it's worth. I had to resort to trawling through the whole group-list-thing, which I feel I shouldn't have to do as a newbie looking for places to play. I ended up just not bothering entirely and sticking with RPs that started in the interest section or something that was just made in order to avoid trawling through the list.
 
If you have to, you can quote other people in the thread and just say "I AGREE WIT DIS."
In that case, here is a list of +1's I think I didn't cover in my own post.

Ok, on the mobile version, creating and editing the overview of a thread is next to impossible.
  • Being able to allow co-GMs access to the thread.
I REEEAAAAALLY miss genre prefixes! Even for one on ones!
I think forcing people to have 1x1's in this same format is useless and nonsensical. When it's only two people, the level of organization that is given and useful in group roleplays simply makes everything look bulky and uncomfortable.


I don't like that every time I post an update, it posts it into the main thread
I have zero use for the "unread watched threads" page. I always click right to "all watched threads" -- the thing I'm looking for. It would be nice to be able to get right back to that again.
Speaking of which, it would be nice if the "edit roleplay" button could be broken up by tab, so that, if I want to edit the character list, I'll have the button for that right there, and then I'll be able to just that -- instead of needing to go to the overview to click "edit roleplay" and then scroll down to the right editor box.
KISS is your friend.
Fracture in the roleplays. I still go to "watched threads" to find my roleplays and yet we're using the "roleplays" system now instead of the thread system, yeah? I find that on my phone it's the worst experience because you guys didn't actually make the mobile version capable of accessing the watched threads tab and so my roleplays can't be found by my players on mobile devices by sinple means.
This is largely because the big rectangular link buttons look chunky and awful. To make it worse, the buttons come in three separate sizes: one size for the In Character link button is one size, the View Roleplay link button is another size, and the six link buttons under the Creating Additional Threads heading are yet another size.
I have a hard time with tags only visible once you're inside a thread, rather than from the forum/RP area. A few like content rating would be good to include on those visible outer parts.
Deleting your dead roleplay from your roleplay list
4) Unable to preview all tabs
--So far (correct me if I'm wrong) I've only been able to preview the Overview tab; I would like to be able to preview all of them.
 
Also, I don't think that there are any jump in rps left on this site after the update. I've been wanting a good jump in for a while and I can't find them anymore. I know to look for the weird prefixes but where would they even be?!
 
Also, I don't think that there are any jump in rps left on this site after the update. I've been wanting a good jump in for a while and I can't find them anymore. I know to look for the weird prefixes but where would they even be?!
It could appear in any of the group roleplay categories, but the prefix system isn't super clear for straight jump ins. They might say 'bio and jumpin' for roleplays where you just have to post a bio and then can jump in, or 'no bio required' for pure jump ins with no character sheet or bio required.
 
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