Roleplaying is something that the Feralheart community was built on, back when I was still a fresh face and on regularly, I would itch to join the greatest roleplays and I made incredible friends the same way. Since the new update, a lot of the older members have left and the game is in a sense stumbling in the dark a little, it's difficult to find groups that still host the beautiful and long-term intensity that packs like The Ebon Circle and Benevolent wolf pack used to have. I think people have lost touch a little which is sickening as there's nothing better than the challenge of evolving your roleplay style with a community whose members are so invested they mature in a visible way.
I was deeply saddened to see that Feralheart was going through another rough patch, even more so to see the moderators I had known since I was knee-high of a grasshopper go. But I won't dwell on the private affairs of staff but after reading through the forum posts that came about after recent events I couldn't help but find something that made me concerned.
Discussion of bringing back General Chat (which I'm not opposed to) or an Advertisement only channel (which I have my doubts about).
Advertisement channel:
1. The idea of this channel being on a timed system. This idea can be fatally flawed if it is coded in the way I'm imagining it to rid the game of movie spam, this essentially being that there is a 1 minute to 30 second gap that any one group can post in meaning that if there are 5 groups trying to advertise there is a battle royale about to occur in typing speeds to ensure an advertisement is pushed out in time for it to beat the competition. This is horribly flawed.
2. There is no way to get rid of spam, this is a fact. See above.
Think of it this way, the more people are online, the more Roleplays there will be, seperate groups with seperate stories that appeal to different crowds, I have been online when no less than 15 separate groups were fighting for screen time in the Movie channel which only makes us mute the chat and risk missing the only group that has any potential interest for you. Even if the timer rule is applied to be that each group is allowed to post an advertisement within a minute since they last posted, this would mean that the very dedicated or desperate-for-members groups will end up posting, and this could potentially mean 90% of the advertising groups which still leads to unavoidable spam because they're all competing.
However this being said I'd like to introduce the concept of a potentially life-saving, time-saving system.
Essentially it runs on groups having a pre-typed advertisement and a prompt box that can allow them to select whether or not they are recruiting or not. What this could be is that the group panel on the userface could have another sub-panel added that leads to a dialogue box similar to Group Bio. This would be the space where a short, to-the-point advertisement could be pre-typed and edited. The sub-panel onto which the Group information appears, this meaning the group name and the option to disban could have another button that gives the Group Administrator the option to toggle between recruitment mode or not. This means that once recruitment mode is switched on, the server and system combined will pump out the pre-typed advertisement from the other sub-panel at timed intervals (should this idea remain to lessen the blow of Spam). These advertisements would appear in their own new channel, meaning the Advertisement chat channel, which means people are still capable of muting it.
But let us take this concept of making roleplay recruitment one step further.
As we are all aware groups can either require a Sample from you or not. Those of you who have run a Roleplay group before know that with the luck that your advertisements kick off and you are seen as a popular choice, your whisper is SPAMMED with questions and RP samples that make it difficult to catch each potential member at times. I know I've overlooked a few whispers once or twice because the chat gets overwhelmed. And what if you go 'AFK' for a while and your second-in-command is left to do the rest?
Perhaps, another prompt button could allow group members to choose whether or not they would like to accept samples for their group or not. Members wanting to join will then access the group panel where when Requesting to join, if the RP does not ask for samples, it will only require administrator authorizing. However if the group does require a sample, a dialogue box appears wherein the member types up their sample (which has a word limit too) and it gets sent to the group admin which appears as a notification in the group panel (like a friend request) where admin can read the samples and accept from there in their own time.
Not only this but allow the Admins of groups more options to choose how their group is managed, to stop the over spamming of recruitment accounts being created and abandoned, give group admins the ability to give other users in the group 'Moderator' powers, which can include the ability to toggle recruiting, accept new members etc given the admin has selected the correct permissions for them.
Feralheart is a stunning game, it's won my heart and I will always try pop my head in when I can but the issue is, it's getting outsmarted by IT servers who are creating new interesting ways to modernize the game and unfortunately Feralheart is still in stages where we think a major update is getting a new map. Thing is, the best way to draw in a new crowd or even bring back the curiousity of the older one, is to give the game a bit of vroom that might just tip it over the edge of being 'safe' to having a little extra that makes people love it.
Thank you all for reading my useless ideas, and whilst I know they won't come to season, if even one person gets a little bit of a trigger thought like "Yeah, that's a cool concept" I'd be happy.
Hope everyone enjoys their night, I'm up for some banter on the subjects above as well as criticism.
Squee.