Stories from RhyDin & The Rings

JewellRavenlock wrote:
I also think most people can agree that just because something is what a person or multiple people want, doesn't mean that thing is what is best for the sport or the community as a whole.

I would agree with that, but ... the tile of this thread is
"What would you like to see in DoM or on Twilight Isle?"

I'm one of the somewhat alienated players that would like to see one night a week where Twilight Isle is open exclusively for DoM. It doesn't matter to me another sport is going on elsewhere that night. If you go back a few month in posts, you can read for yourself where I posed the question of whether or not the experimental combo nights had been made permanent or not because no announcement had been made at that time.
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As for the possibility of Fight Nights all the time or 4 nights a week, that's not so simple. I have encountered officials that either prefer not to or don't know how to call specific types of duels. While those might have been isolated circumstances of last minute fill ins, if I play on a Fight Night that I'm not being unreasonable in having the expectation that a caller will be able to handle any sport.

It's been pointed out that there is no caller issue for DoM having a night in its own setting because Aja has volunteered to handle it. Unless she needs to be reinstated after not calling for a while I don't see an issue. If there are reasons why any member of the DoM staff or RoH Admins prefer that she not follow through on that offer, I think it's time for the staff to have a sit down with her to address those reasons. Bluntly, I'm well aware that Aja can be hardheaded, but if no staff people sat down and said, "This is how it is and what you need to do to correct it," she can't fix what some people see as broken and she doesn't. If the staff is silently refusing her services as an official, they really ought to tell her why.

Bottom line: Will both combo nights be suspended until 25 August (Matt mentioned that date) and if so, what is the game plan for what, where, and who is calling?

I have said to Rena and to Claire.. and when I volunteered to call in the first place that I would call Magic or swords.

If that is getting ignored.. would love to know why.

PrlUnicorn wrote:
Bottom line: Will both combo nights be suspended until 25 August (Matt mentioned that date) and if so, what is the game plan for what, where, and who is calling?

LadyAjaBird wrote:I have said to Rena and to Claire.. and when I volunteered to call in the first place that I would call Magic or swords.

If that is getting ignored.. would love to know why.

There are established Tuesday night callers in place that so far have elected to stay where they are for Magic. In light of the split, we've found a DoF caller for the Fists side, through the summer.

Both combos will be suspended until August 25th, 2015. Posts have been now put up here: http://www.ringsofhonor.org/forums/view ... 422#171422, http://www.ringsofhonor.org/forums/view ... 423#171423 and http://rdi.dragonsmark.com/forums/viewt ... 875#207875 to alert players and in the event the headlines/playables posts drop off the main page by Tuesday morning, they will be reposted to remind. Claire & Jesse will continue their Tuesday night Magic calling while Scarlet takes the Fists through the length of the summer. Game plan after August 25th is dependent on any changes (scheduling or otherwise) made by the coordinators/administrators. Please feel free to reach out to myself or Rena if you need anything at all along the way and I appreciate you all taking the time to give your feedback.

Moar goblin strippers and consumable unicorn fart narcotics.

Resolute wrote:Moar goblin strippers and consumable unicorn fart narcotics.

ayyy seconded

There has been a long standing balancing issue in DoF/DoM in terms of scheduling.

The way I see from the standpoint of being a caller is advertising and attendance driving the balance.

I don't see as much emphasis on DoF thne I do on DoM and DoS. Granted we saw the Iron Fist recently, I haven't seen as many events for DoF as I have been in the other sports.

I do what I can to keep things going, but I have noticed a sharp drop in matches and attendance, even on Monday nights, since the weather improved.

It is also a bit discouraging to see a number of duelers in the lobby but not supporting the sport on the given night. What can be done to encourage participation?

That's what we need to do before we monkey with the days. We do have to encourage participation across all sports and see if the numbers support increasing the number of shifts.

There is plenty of push for Fists.
As Claire recently posted in the playables.. Hey. Fists is returning to the Outback on Tuesday... nice big headline.

Oh.. and BTW... magic returns to the Isle. (Not even clear if it's RDI or RoH side mind you) Not so much a headline there, huh?
I find that pretty interesting.

That is on the Staff that posted the headlines, Aja. And it is limited to a handful of sites (here, Greater Realms)

Either way, All Three sports need more of a push. We have social media. In posting a graphic for Madness on Facebook, we got a big influx of old timers (Abet for one night). We have plenty of members that use Tumblr, why not advertise on it? We've got resources available, why not use them to reach people?

I believe we need to make a push and use all resources to advertise for all three sports. Participation makes a big difference in making the schedule changes more viable. There's no point in making a volunteer sit in a chat room and no one is going to participate just to fill another shift.

We need to get the word out more.

Aaliyah wrote:There has been a long standing balancing issue in DoF/DoM in terms of scheduling.

The way I see from the standpoint of being a caller is advertising and attendance driving the balance.

I don't see as much emphasis on DoF thne I do on DoM and DoS. Granted we saw the Iron Fist recently, I haven't seen as many events for DoF as I have been in the other sports.

I do what I can to keep things going, but I have noticed a sharp drop in matches and attendance, even on Monday nights, since the weather improved.

It is also a bit discouraging to see a number of duelers in the lobby but not supporting the sport on the given night. What can be done to encourage participation?

That's what we need to do before we monkey with the days. We do have to encourage participation across all sports and see if the numbers support increasing the number of shifts.

^-- This. 100%

Participation and promotion should be where you're putting a large amount of your concentration. If it's a dueling night, and you have nothing better to do with your lives, consider even taking your role-play to the venue where dueling is happening.

Role-play is good! I'm always pleased to see a large number of people playing in the dueling venues. Have your character take another character on a spectator date or something. If there are people in the room, generally other people will show up. Generally.

Another thing I've noticed that helps pique curiosity and interest is to have your characters talk about dueling in the other role-playing rooms. Hanging out at the RDI? Know somebody in a sport? Talk about an upcoming challenge! Spread the word! Advertise with your involvement!

Personally, giving DoM it's own day isn't going to encourage me to do more DoM. If that were true, I'd be doing more DoS and DoF, too, but I have honestly dropped my actual dueling activity in favor of more RP and writing lately. If DoM were the only sport available Tuesday nights, no offense but I'll be sitting over here, somewhere else that isn't the Isle, writing other things, maybe even watching a movie. To be fair, I haven't been doing DoF Tuesday nights either, in large part because I'm not a fan of the Isle as a setting, but even though DoF is moving back over to the Outback I doubt I'm suddenly going to start dueling on Tuesdays again. Other things to do...

Hard truth is that not everybody thinks DoM is interesting, and no matter what you do to it you're not going to be able to make it interesting for them. As an example I can tell you that I absolutely have zero interest in sports, period. I can't imagine a single thing that could be done to baseball, football, soccer, or what-have-you that would suddenly make sports interesting to me. Unless it was to-the-death or something, but I'm morbid.

I imagine people are experiencing a lot of duel burnout, too. We just recently finished Madness. Before that, IFL. Now this new Ragnarok has started up. Upcoming is Hydra. So many large scale tournaments! Not to mention the cyclical Talon, Warlord, Panther's Claw, and Diamond Quest tournaments. People challenging left and right. There might just be too much going on. Please note I am not suggesting we pare things down.

I don't think you need to necessarily change anything or add anything new to the sport. But I definitely think you could do with more positive promotional activity and less complaining that there is not as much participation as there is in the other sports. Complaining about lower participation levels isn't going to improve participation levels.

Another thing, and again this is my own personal opinion... I don't find the cutesy pet and plushie prizes for big events to be very enticing. I've signed up alts just for the +WoLs and have been so happy to have not got first place. I'm not too keen on DoM being turned into text-based Final Fantasy, either, with Boss Battles and the like. Just doesn't do it for me. Maybe it's just me, though.

BardGallant wrote:
I imagine people are experiencing a lot of duel burnout, too. We just recently finished Madness. Before that, IFL. Now this new Ragnarok has started up. Upcoming is Hydra. So many large scale tournaments! Not to mention the cyclical Talon, Warlord, Panther's Claw, and Diamond Quest tournaments. People challenging left and right. There might just be too much going on. Please note I am not suggesting we pare things down.

Dris is right. Too many tournaments will kill desire to duel on a regular basis as it burns people out.

Right now... In case you haven't looked out a window. Spring/summer is here. Weather gets nice, Real Life gets a heck of a lot more busy. Family get togethers, outdoor activities get picked back up, kids are off from school. So. There is also that. Free time is precious to some. They may not always be on the computer during these months.

Oh, Aaliyah... I am aware it's the staffs job.
Since Claire is taking care of magic right now.. I wonder if she's suddenly doing Matt's job too.

It's summer. There's usually a drop in dueling during deep winter and summer time. There's nothing wrong with players not wanting to duel. There's nothing wrong with players talking in the lobby instead of dueling. There is nothing stopping anyone from posting events or advertising on facebook/tumblr/aim/etc. This is a community and not all should fall on the shoulders of coordinators. If you're a caller and you're not seeing much activity? You could always ping your friends and see about them playing. I've sat through countless shifts with events going on over on RDI where my duel could would be 0 for the day of calling.

Nothing is stopping anyone from hosting tournaments. Nothing is stopping anyone from starting duel related playables. If you feel that there is something missing that could be promoting the duels, then go ahead and try and pimp them out like you would a two dollar hooker.

Spell wrote:It's summer. There's usually a drop in dueling during deep winter and summer time. There's nothing wrong with players not wanting to duel. There's nothing wrong with players talking in the lobby instead of dueling. There is nothing stopping anyone from posting events or advertising on facebook/tumblr/aim/etc. This is a community and not all should fall on the shoulders of coordinators. If you're a caller and you're not seeing much activity? You could always ping your friends and see about them playing. I've sat through countless shifts with events going on over on RDI where my duel could would be 0 for the day of calling.

Nothing is stopping anyone from hosting tournaments. Nothing is stopping anyone from starting duel related playables. If you feel that there is something missing that could be promoting the duels, then go ahead and try and pimp them out like you would a two dollar hooker.

All of this too.

If you want a change made in your community, make the change. Don't put it all on the shoulders of your coordinators. Offer to help. Advertise. Word of mouth. Tell your friends. Post on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter... If you see an event scheduled but no Playable...? Nothing's stopping you from making one!

The callers and coordinators are all volunteers. We don't have to be doing these jobs. We choose to because we like the game and want to encourage more people to participate, too. If there are no callers, there are no duels. If there are no coordinators... chaos ensues! No standings. No approved challenges. No nothing.

It is not Claire's job. She's not getting paid to do this. She volunteered. She gets too stressed out? Guess what. She can quit. Remember that.

Typing from my phone so unable to quote very easily, please excuse any typos in advance. Just gonna address in order of what I've seen since my last post.

I don't feel this is the proper place to discuss DoF's pitfalls currently, however I know that Matt and Kheldar are both incredibly open to listening should anyone wish to either speak with them or even start a DoF related conversation on the DoF OOC board here. Additionally, nobody is proposing an *increase* in the number of shifts, simply how they're allocated.

Next. Magic is staying on the Isle (whether that's RDI or ROH will depend on a few factors including IC change ups to the setting and will be set soon once I have some free time) so those playables were to highlight the fact that DoF would be going elsewhere. Magic isn't "returning" to the Isle because it has been there the whole time. Now DoF-ers won't show to the Isle expecting Fists duels.

The Rhydin City tumblr regularly promotes the duels as they see them, which is great. I'm not sure who is behind that Tumblr, but great work, it's hugely appreciated and I'm glad to see someone promoting not just dueling but Rhydin and DM as a whole on another site.

Whether you duel, roleplay, promote, or even just talk about the duels with your friends, thank you for contributing to the community. This is a team effort and is not on any one person or even a small group of people to do.

DoM may not be interesting to everyone just as DoF and DoS may not be interesting to others. I have characters that exclusively do one of the three or maybe even two of the three sports based on their individual preferences. To each their own, we can only do what we can to make the Isle (or any other venue for that matter) as enticing as we can.

Regarding RP prizes in events (primarily DoM), those are optional and have been mixed amongst duel related prizes like elemental gems, the spirit staff, and archmage powers. All placing higher does is give someone prime pick from x amount of RP prizes and x amount of dueling prizes.

Dueling burn out is definitely something to contend with. There are some that choose to take part in every tournament and team league while there are others, as mentioned above, that only do certain sports. The variety of tournaments in events is an attempt to give people the ability to choose what they want to do without feeling they're being left out due to preference for certain sports over others.

I am the one who took the initiative to propose the switch back for the summer. I am the one who made the arrangements and decided on the logistics. And I am the one who felt it was my duty (because of the above) to take the time to promote those changes via headlines. Please do not imply that any of it was due to lacking anything on any other coordinator's part. This was my doing.

Finally, if anyone feels they have an idea for promotional activities or an event or even a tournament of some sort, pitch it! We're all players at the end of the day and we all have the ability to impact the community.



And last note, please keep all discussion respectful and civil. I'm excited for all that has been thrown out and discussed so far and I'd like to make sure it can continue without issues.



Also, I may edit this later because it's probably a hot mess. Sorry again about any errors.

Oh more popped up while I was writing my novel. My bad. I've only been here 3 summers or so counting this one and yeah, I'd say with the exception of the Hydra-boom my first year, it gets really slow. Nice weather, ya know?

BardGallant wrote:She's not getting paid to do this. She volunteered.

pay me 25 bux in gift cards a month and ill advertise as much as u ppl want

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this post is satire plz dont get mad