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Future of Kingdom Hearts: Arcana



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What should happen with KH: Arcana?


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Mason Stark

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Hey, everyone!

As you're probably aware of, Kingdom Hearts: Arcana has been at a standstill for months. I've been fighting to figure out a way to get the roleplay moving again, but I've been at a loss on where to go or what to do.

As much as I would like to see this roleplay continue, there's a strong possibility that this roleplay won't continue as it is now or even at all. I've been trying to figure out where to go with this, but I figured that now would be a good point to discuss what becomes of this story.

So, here's a poll for everyone! Would you like to see KH: Arcana continue or should we scrap it altogether? I'm going to leave this poll up for about a week or two, but the results of it will decide what becomes of this roleplay.

Thanks! :D
 

Noel

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I'm voting for a major restart. As tedious as that sounds, It'll be for the better. I also think we need an incentive system for posting. Yes, we get GOT ABILITY after an event. However I mean like a little knickknack or something that is decorated on our profile thing on the left of what we post and if we do not post, it'll decay and we'll lose it.

That won't solve most of the problem, but we should have more maintenance on this section. So if you Rena or Waferbar, can't be active as often, you'll both have a small group that you can send a group PM to, then they all can have an initiative. I'm sure that everyone here that has been role playing for a while won't be god modding or being unfair in their posts. So as much as we do have Admins, Mods, etc, they'll be busy checking the rest of the forums for trolls or 5 year olds. If we could have like an Arcana Staff or something along the lines of that, being able to know what needs to be done in the story, what events we can do, and perhaps create non-canon events. We can keep the threads and the posters happy/busy.

There are some details that haven't been looked on with this whole Roleplay Forest Power Ranger Idea, such as if you've been behind on posting, and there are literal pages (I have mine set on 50 posts per page) and you feel disheartened to read every wall of texts, some ranger can create a recap thread of the situation.

Just offering my two cents.
 

Chromatic

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I wouldn't mind a restart. On a personal level, I found myself losing my grip on my own character. I'd like another stab at it.

That won't solve most of the problem, but we should have more maintenance on this section. So if you Rena or Waferbar, can't be active as often, you'll both have a small group that you can send a group PM to, then they all can have an initiative. I'm sure that everyone here that has been role playing for a while won't be god modding or being unfair in their posts. So as much as we do have Admins, Mods, etc, they'll be busy checking the rest of the forums for trolls or 5 year olds. If we could have like an Arcana Staff or something along the lines of that, being able to know what needs to be done in the story, what events we can do, and perhaps create non-canon events. We can keep the threads and the posters happy/busy.

This would seem to be an optimal idea for management. Just establish a small team of players that can act as management. At best, and if possible, they could have isolated moderator permissions specifically within the Arcana forums.

From the organizational standpoint, I still confess myself unclear on how we actually intended to set up the KH worlds in this RP. It seems that we were drifting more towards individual event threads. To the contrary, I always felt that it would be more easily managed by establishing a world list, setting up overarching threads for each world and letting events play out on them. Events can be used as a means of calling everyone (or most of everyone) to a single place at a point where it seems action is winding down on most of the world threads. The manner in which I would see to manage this is that staff members would be assigned to their own pool of world threads, keeping journals on the goings-on in each one so that people just entering can have a sense of what's been happening where. We can have a master journal on the main discussion page too.

As for posting incentive, one thing that I would think of is, perhaps, setting a sort of contribution quota for threads and events that must be met in order to glean the rewards. IE, you must post X number times within an event, or contribute in such and such a fashion in order to get the reward for it.

I would also dare to say that putting some sort of RPG-type growth system for spells, abilities and such might be a good thing to have if it wouldn't take too much effort. I've long been a fan of the sort of set up of this particular system (you'll have to scroll a bit to the info spoiler). Basically just starting everyone off with the same general potential for skills and such, and allotting chances to grown based on posting and whatnot. But then, maybe it's too limiting.
 

OmniChaos

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This would seem to be an optimal idea for management. Just establish a small team of players that can act as management. At best, and if possible, they could have isolated moderator permissions specifically within the Arcana forums.

While not a bad idea in and of itself, considering KH: Arcana has only a fraction of an already relatively inactive section participating in it, I find it highly unlikely that more people will be made staff just to moderate this section. If anything, it'll probably just be a small team of a few mods and a few non-mods, with the former enacting anything agreed upon by the group.

As for the subject at hand, whether we continue as is or start anew, I disagree with completely scrapping the roleplay, or, at the very least, the idea of this "main" roleplay. It's brought together people who, under normal circumstances, don't regularly roleplay together, due to differences in taste or some other reason. A good chunk of the roleplaying community came together to partake in this, and that alone makes it worth still fighting for.
 
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Chromatic

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While not a bad idea in and of itself, considering KH: Arcana has only a fraction of an already relatively inactive section participating in it, I find it highly unlikely that more people will be made staff just to moderate this section. If anything, it'll probably just be a small team of a few mods and a few non-mods, with the former enacting anything agreed upon by the group.

As for the subject at hand, whether we continue as is or start anew, I disagree with completely scrapping the roleplay, or, at the very least, the idea of this "main" roleplay. It's brought together people who, under normal circumstances, don't regularly roleplay together, due to differences in taste or some other reason. A good chunk of the roleplaying community came together to partake in this, and that alone makes it worth still fighting for.

I'm just speaking in my idealistic outlook I guess. I suppose that with enough mods already participating in the RP, enough coverage is there for maintaining threads and such. I'd surmise that with another two to three people helping out with what they can, it'd be set. But by what means can we keep peoples' interest?
 

Noel

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Each thread that gets completed, you gain a 1x1 pixel for your Avatar. o.o

Seriously, the best thing I can say is some decoration for bragging rights. Which in turn if said users post in other sections. It'll generate interest, meaning more well. People.
 

KingdomKey

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My two cents thus far:

Realistically, how many of you are really willing to stay online every day to help Arcana run? This means like using your spare/free time to stay atop of people to post, keeping ideas flowing, and going through the trouble to help keep each of the worlds events from falling apart, communicating as a group to come up with new ideas constantly, and actively posting each day instead of whenever you feel like it, and not missing a single day to post. Arcana isn't like the average RP, where you can post when you feel like it or leave it inactive for a brief time. Because obviously it fell apart when everyone did leave or lost interest. It's bigger and requires constant maintenance and responsibility. This isn't going to be like KH: Traces per se. So please think about this carefully because, it'll be quite upsetting to restart it and see all of you who voted for it to restart it to end up backing out of it. Including making excuses to not post or simply leave for months on end, which ruins events in said world or not enough people post to keep the story going. (Which is understandable when it comes to real life, but again, it causes problems like the average RP with inactivity.) Furthermore, I feel like what you're all signing up for will become more of a chore in your eyes instead of something to post freely in, because of how much work Arcana needs to stay afloat. [Which is why my vote is for scrapping the RP.] Including keeping a story or event going.

As for those of you who pointed out that Arcana requires more than one person to keep it going are right; It can't be done on one person's shoulders alone because, the burden is too great, and it needs a better system in place to help make Arcana easier to run. Therefore, I'll be impressed if anyone besides a mod will help out and take on that responsibility. Furthermore, please do not sign me up automatically just because I was apart of it before. I'm sticking by my vote on this one guys. And remember the burden you're putting on mods should you choose not to help after voting to restarting it. This isn't entirely a fun responsibility and you have to consider the negative aspects of it.

And please don't get me wrong. I have no problem with gutting Arcana for a more improved version in its place. If it does get restarted, I think there needs to be roles established instead of randomly making up whatever character(s) you want because, it'd help improve the story and make it easier to enjoy instead of running around with screws loose in our heads without a clue on what to do, or what the next event should be. For an example: KitKat is princess of heart of so-so world, Noel is the new Xehanort, and Chromatic is the keyblade wielder with OmniChaos as a fellow sidekick. Something like that might be a good idea. So, maybe the no keyblade thing should be lifted. Maybe take a note out of Traces as a way to better Arcana? Idk.

Oh, and I do agree with what Chromatic said the most! Last but not least, I needed to say my piece on this and wanted you guys to know what you're signing up for or signing the mods up for.
 
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Cassette-Disk

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Incoming Negative Nacy

So when Arcana first started, I was already wary of how it would go. I'm more cynical than I like to let on and, not having been part of a single RP that's been fully completed on this site, thought having an 'main' RP would be asking for trouble. Still, I held out hope that I would be proven wrong and joined up to show support. Hell, I even wanted to do more and further help and started a pseudo mission-based request board so members could PM with me and partake on a solo RP experience in case they got bored while waiting for others to post. I'll be the first to say it was a half-assed idea and I quickly stopped caring, but the general feeling I got from Arcana as a whole was that it was going to need as much help as possible so I hope I did more good than harm. It's easy for me to assume this as well because of the lack of real interest (three or so people PMed me) that was shown, as well as the fact that shortly after I closed the request board down, someone else took its mantle and, as far as I'm aware, never got a single PM or request to send a PM for a request.

Now when Arcana first started there was plenty of interest for it, but that interest quickly tapered off as the first event went on, and when the event ended and people went their separate ways, things hit an odd bump. I've talked a little bit about this before but even though people (myself included) want to have creative freedom to do anything they want, when presented in a sandbox-like mode where nearly everything goes, it's hard to come up with anything. When you don't have direction things can really get muddled down unless a clear objective is given to them, and here's where things seriously started to falter. Throughout the course of Arcana we've had various times when our GM went missing and while this is totally understandable since real life happens, it isn't totally understandable to drop the load on someone else and hope she can deal with it when all she really offered was help with the RP every so often, which was then largely misinterpreted. (I was going through the OoC to look for the exact post for that point, but couldn't shuffle through 30+ pages to do so. Please excuse the lack of a source on that.) The exact 'transfer moment' is confusing at best, but since Rena became more and more distant with Arcana due to outside forces, reigns of the RP were handed to KitKat and though she managed to catch up with the goings-ons, it still wasn't enough to keep the ship afloat. One moment that definitely stuck out, however, was somewhat near the beginning of her taking over when a user commented on how things were going, taking a jestful jab at KK. It was a joke and the person apologized and made things right, but it still goes to show how quickly and easily we take things for granted, especially when this is supposed to be our 'main' RP.

So as we (or 'they,' I should say since I was largely off-board at this point) went along as best they could, two things started happening. Two interesting things. The first 'interesting' thing was also the last nail in the coffin for me and it was the template of a new user who, funnily enough, never actually went ahead with posting in the RP. Right off the bat we had another member (who I honestly deeply respect) point out various flaws the character had. The thing is, it worked. The member recognized the flaws and changed them in a way he thought would be acceptable, but there were still a few problems to iron out, which that same first member pointed out. At the same time, I also decided to pitch in and help balance things out, as did KK since the new member didn't seem to fully understand how RPs worked. But someone important was notably missing from this exchange, which is jarring considering I'd assume the 'main' RP of KHI would mean helping newer members learn the ropes of how to RP from the people who are running the show. Oh, I also want to point out another member calling out my criticism. I thought it was cute and reinforces my earlier point of easily taking things for granted.

The second interesting thing that happened was the return of the well-received "Traces Of" series! Finally, we can have a 'main' Kingdom Hearts Role Play on Kingdom Hearts Insi--wait. I doubt I was the only one who thought it odd that Traces of Aftermath appeared while Kingdom Hearts Arcana was, for a lack of a better term, bleeding out. (Please note the date of posting of these posts and those surrounding it for these examples as they coincide with the date Traces of Aftermath's OoC thread was create by Rena on August 3, 2015. Ex. 1 was created on April 13, but didn't seem to be going anywhere anyway so we'll give that one a pass. Ex. 2 was posted on July 29, and the next post for that thread wouldn't come until a month later, August 30th. The third example needs two links since they exist on separate pages. Ex.3-A's post was on July 20 and wouldn't get a follow up until August 3 [Ex.3-B]) This is very odd because while I understand her not being able to keep up with Arcana, I can't understand her beginning another Kingdom Hearts RP instead of returning to her first one first in order to make sure it could sustain itself, especially when it's supposed to be our 'main' RP. This, along with the fact VMs were sent at the beginning of Traces of Aftermath's birth asking people to join it drained Arcana of its userbase for a more safer choice. (no link/source for the VMs. This would be a powerful source, but I'm not willing to wade through dozens, if not hundreds of VMs to prove it. You know if you got one and if you didn't feel free to ignore that point.) If Aftermath is getting this much love, shouldn't this be the 'main' RP of KHI instead?

If these last few paragraphs feel as if they're a bit aggressive, then that's probably because I strongly disliked the outcome of all this and I'm a little disgusted and depressed at how it all went down. To a lot of people this place (The RP section and Creative Writing section) is just a site to have their kicks. They come home from school or work, write up an RP post or two, have a good time, and that's it. It's largely the same for me but it's also a kind of home on the internet. When I first boot up my browser, this is the link I initially click. I post all of my writings here even though I only get one or two responses for them and I largely doubt I'd be writing at all if I didn't join this site way the hell back in 2008/2009. As a result I want there to be quality role plays here, especially if they're coming from respected long-time members. Instead what we got was, what I feel to be, a half-baked idea that was largely left to the community to sink. And yeah, I know this was because the creator had real life issues to take care of and it most likely couldn't have been averted, but if this was supposed to be KHI's 'main' RP, shouldn't there have been safety nets already in place in order to prevent something like that from happening? Looking back in, I can't see myself ever returning to Arcana for various reasons, one of the largest ones being the lack of trust I feel. If I'm going to join an RP I want it to last long enough for me to enjoy myself--I don't even ask for the RP to even finish, just that the entertainment value outweighs the time and effort placed into it by all members. So my thoughts are that if Arcana is going to continue, or restart, or whatever, there should be genuine care and attention devoted into it.

And that, in the average word count of a single update of one of my CLASSIC story posts (with just as many grammar and spelling errors, I bet), are my thoughts on Kingdom Hearts Arcana. Feel free to hate, flame, and take anything and everything I said surprisingly personally.
 

Taochan

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I'm just going to give a heads up that I'm going to be removing inactive subsections and merging the threads back into main sections either in November or December, so the fate of Arcana will need to be decided by then.

And I just want to say that if this can't be maintained or needs to be adjusted to be smaller, that's fine. Let me know what I can do if that's the case. But if it keeps going and it ends up that it still can't be kept up then that's something that everyone just needs to be honest about, because I don't want to just see it be abandoned or have the responsibility given to another mod or the members.
 
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OmniChaos

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But by what means can we keep peoples' interest?

And that, my friend, is the million dollar question that has eluded scientists and scholars for centuries. Up there with "Does God exist?"

In all seriousness, this is the exact thing I have been trying and failing to figure out for the last several years. No matter how good, interesting, or fun something may be, no matter the incentive you dangle in front of their face, people always seem to lose interest or just quit halfway through. And in the end, when you really get to it, it all comes down to people's attitudes.

Sad to say, people often just stop or quit because they become bored, rather than make an effort to change it in some way to make it more interesting for themselves. And I'm not pointing fingers here; we're all guilty of this at some point or another. The only way things will ever change around here is if people's attitudes change and they make that extra effort to try (at least on a slightly more consistent basis). Until then, this section will just continue being a collection of unfinished adventures and great stories that will never be.

Realistically, how many of you are really willing to stay online every day to help Arcana run? This means like using your spare/free time to stay atop of people to post, keeping ideas flowing, and going through the trouble to help keep each of the worlds events from falling apart, communicating as a group to come up with new ideas constantly, and actively posting each day instead of whenever you feel like it, and not missing a single day to post. Arcana isn't like the average RP, where you can post when you feel like it or leave it inactive for a brief time. Because obviously it fell apart when everyone did leave or lost interest. It's bigger and requires constant maintenance and responsibility.

This is a very valid point. Arcana is in a sort of anti-goldilocks zone, so to speak. It's too big for it to be taken in a relaxed pace with minor maintenance, but too small for it to be somewhat self-maintained with regular posting on all fronts by numerous members. While I am willing to divert more effort into sustaining Arcana, KitKat is 100% right in stating that everyone else participating will have to do the same.

Feel free to hate, flame, and take anything and everything I said surprisingly personally.

Yeah, I won't be allowing any of that, so don't worry.

I'm just going to give a heads up that I'm going to be removing inactive subsections and merging the threads back into main sections either in November or December, so the fate of Arcana will need to be decided by then.

Never quite understood how it warranted a subsection in the first place, to be honest. If we had a bunch of active roleplayers, and twenty to thirty people participating, it'd be one thing, but with like only ten or so, it felt like this could have easily just been something sticked, with each finished world un-stickied, closed, and archived in the main thread.
 

Mason Stark

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I'm just going to give a heads up that I'm going to be removing inactive subsections and merging the threads back into main sections either in November or December, so the fate of Arcana will need to be decided by then.

And I just want to say that if this can't be maintained or needs to be adjusted to be smaller, that's fine. Let me know what I can do if that's the case. But if it keeps going and it ends up that it still can't be kept up then that's something that everyone just needs to be honest about, because I don't want to just see it be abandoned or have the responsibility given to another mod or the members.
Thank yew, Taochan! :D If this continues, then I'm not sure if the subforum will be necessary at all, but we'll figure it out and go from there. I'd much rather downsize this than keep the subforum, to be honest lol.


Okies, here's what I've gathered from everyone's comments (I'm sorry if I missed anything!! Lemme know if I did and I'll add that on here):

If we continue the RP:
• All of the characters would need specific roles (like one character is a Princess of Heart, one is a Keyblader, etc.)
• There would have to be designated staff (a group consisting of moderators plus non-moderator members who just help run the roleplay)
• There could be an incentive for posting/finishing roleplays (good idea, but not sure about that lol)
• There would have to be several members who would always be free to post and help keeping the RP active (which might be nearly impossible lmao)


Okies, so, I'm honestly torn between keeping this and getting rid of it entirely lol. KitKat is right -- this thing is very hard to figure out how to manage, plus it cannot be left alone for a period of time because it will fail and people will lose interest.

I'm cool with completely gutting this whole thing and starting over with a better system and everything, but for that, I would need everyone's help, both for preliminary planning and keeping the roleplay active. If no one can completely, 100% promise that they can be active for the majority of the time, at least at the start to get things rolling, then it may not be a good idea to pursue this again. We have to have enough people who can keep it active by posting several times a week, or else it will fail like this version has.
 

Chromatic

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All of the characters would need specific roles (like one character is a Princess of Heart, one is a Keyblader, etc.)

This is an aspect I really can't bring myself to agree with. If what we're going for is a more open-ended, sandbox world, then there should only be a few designated roles. Obviously, for a Kingdom Hearts RP, things like Princesses of Heart and Keybearers are roles that do need to be moderated, and I think we already pretty much had that going for us anyways. But beyond that, people should be free to establish their characters in whatever capacity they see fit.

Now that I consider this over again, I feel like with Traces up and kicking, running Arcana would be kind of redundant. And perhaps transitioning Traces, or something along the strain, into something central to the section would be a better option if we wanted to keep the "main RP" Kingdom Hearts-based.
 

Mason Stark

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Hey, guys -- the poll will end on Wednesday, just so you know! After that, based on the results, we'll plan out what's going to happen with this RP and what will happen with any future RPs, should there be any.

If you haven't done so already, please vote! Thank you~

Right now, the top choice is to start the RP over, so that's going to be the most likely thing to happen. If that does happen, then the following will happen:

  • A smaller scale version of this RP will be created -- it'll be a little bit like a step-up from a usual canon roleplay, possibly with multiple threads and stuff for multiple plots and everything
  • The Arcana board will be taken down completely
  • The board *may* be used for initial planning and everything (not sure about that -- we may just do planning on the main RP section)
Also, quick note about this, though: If there's any long period of time where nothing is happening in the planning stages, I'm shutting down the roleplay completely. We have to be active and consistent for this work, even if it's just quick little discussions back and forth. This roleplay will NOT work unless everyone is active and, if that becomes a problem during the planning stages, then we won't go forward with anything.

We'll figure out the finer details later, but this is just what I have in mind for everything at the moment. That's pretty much it, but I'll keep an eye on the voting and everything and we'll figure out where to go once the poll is closed. Thank yew lots for voting and discussing this!
 
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OmniChaos

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I personally think, before any additional planning concerning the reboot or plot begins, we should establish this core group of roleplayers who are to be responsible for the upkeep and continued activity of Arcana. I plan to take a more active role in this roleplay, which means Rena and myself will cover the moderator section of this group. As for the rest, I nominate the four members who voted on restarting the roleplay. A group of six, core members would be enough to sustain the roleplay in even the shallowest of activity.
 

Mason Stark

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Hey guys! I'm sorry that this has taken so long ;~;

So, we have our winner for ze poll! (If you can even call it that? lol) The roleplay will be restarted and we're going to start working to get everything up soon. My plan is to get everything setup by the beginning of next year or even earlier by next month. We'll see how it goes~

Over the next few days, I'll get the next part of the restart under way, but in the meantime, I've got a quick thing to bring up.

As part of this whole thing, we are going to downscale the roleplay and post threads in the canon roleplays section. This means that the Arcana board will, at some point soon, be going away. I'm going to talk to Taochan about everything involving that once we start figuring out where to go from here, but for now, if you need to save anything, please save it now! I will be moving and locking all of the roleplay threads, so everyone still has access to them, but all of the character template threads and most of everything else will be gone.

But yeah, that's pretty much it for now! I'll link to the next thread once it's up on here, but thanks for voting and discussing this, everyone! I really appreciate it ;w;
 
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