TPW Expansion Discussion

As far as the second dojo league goes, I had actually thought about not having enough people to sustain a full one. BMG is obviously a lot larger than TPW, so maybe it would be better to halve it and make it the size of a normal gym league? If more dedicated members join, we could easily add 8 (or nine fuck yeah dark dojo) more to the roster to give more options. But if we could only handle eight, I'd suggest just doing the most popular gym types in URPG (though there are a ton of types with 2 gyms, so it'd be hard to pick which ones). But meh, I'm sure there will be a staff discussion on the matter if it comes down to it, but that's just my two cents.

 

lol dojos. We can't even fill up our normal gyms. APPLY FOR ETERNA, SNOWPOINT, TROVITA, or KUMQUAT!

 

Hi I'm putting in my two cents SO LISTEN UP YOUNG'UNS.

Dojo League is a bad idea. It created a rift between BMG and PE2K members that lasted quite awhile. So don't do it.

 

*cough* rift caused by elitism *cough*

 

Yeah, IMO the only rift was because of the predetermined hate a lot of pe2kers had before even coming. Also, any BMGer who went through the lame time where both sides hated each other isn't going to hate the TPWers for no reason. I think there are more pros than cons with a dojo league.

 

This made me feel old. But yes. We have learned not to be dicks to people. This we shall pass on to our newbies and our newbies' newbies.

 

The key to making any expansion successful is member retention. If we get all these members and no one is there to help them, they're never gonna get more than one mon. It's gonna take all of us making sure that our newer members get situated into the URPG.....family *chokes slightly*. This includes welcoming them, encouraging them to get AIM, doing basics, etc. It sounds like a lot but it would be worth seeing more members stick around.

 

Back in my day, we didn't haven no "Mentor/Apprentice Program" and no "Contest Section" and a never ending "PokePark Project"(Dat Bron...) that never got completed. I didn't need no help and I didn't get any neither. I TURNED OUT JUST FINE!!

Though honestly, from personal experience, the Mentor/Apprentice thread doesn't work. At the BMG branches' inception, I personally took several nubs under my wing. There was nothing official about it. All the thread does is make it MORE difficult for new people to get help. It assigns them one person, to whom they assume they must ask EVERY QUESTION THEY HAVE. If the mentor goes inactive, the apprentice could feel isolated and it might drive them to quit early on.

So yeah, what Webbie is saying there about a community effort is absolutely correct. Not that I'm against you being all "THIS IS MY NUB", but we don't need a program to make this exclusive.

 

I wasn't saying a mentor/apprentice thing was the solution. I was just saying that it's going to take all of us chipping in to help orient the new players we get. I wasn't trying to campaign for people taking on specific newer players. But yeah

 

I'll see what I can do about an easier Park Event for PW. The only problem with those is that Events tend to run slightly different than the Park proper, and that could throw off their perception of how to actually go on a run. I'm all for a Park Credits thing for the Shop again though. That's a newbie's biggest problem: the cash.

 

Dojo League could work, as long as it was a bit smaller like Roulette said. Get them used to having the responsibilities and and joy of owning a Gym early, and then when the Dojos come to an end, they might be more inclined to get a Gym (hence, we fill the open positions).

And ^ at pretty much everything that's been said about the park being intimidating. I had to get Buoy to talk me through it bit by bit. It's a lot to read for just one section, and I'm still unsure about stuff like MCL and damage calc and effects of moves and whatever. REFFING IS JUST SO MUCH EASIER :3

But yeah, also give the Contests some love. I think the inclusion of the Divisions will help dramatically, since it might make them more inclined for a "Get all the badges/ribbons" thing. I'm also thinking routine FFAs (not special rule ones, just regular and B/W FFAs to show the newbies how fun they can be).

I would also say cut down on the oldfag/newfag thing, but tbh, I can see that lasting for about 2 weeks tops :3

Ooh, maybe we could borrow the chains out of the Stories dungeon, and make the newbies unable to leave? Might need a bit of sprucing up to remove the blood stains, but I'm sure Graders are willing to put in the effort. ... no? Ok ):

 

That would be implying more than a handful of people have even earned the right to be elitist =P

 

Hasn't stopped people before, pretty much anyone who is ~6 months apparently has oldfag rights. What a warped world we live in ):

 

Am I an oldfag yet? :<

 

No, but you're a fag. :>

except i'm just kidding

 

So is BMGf going to be kinda abandoned in the same way PE2k was?

 

Don't see why it would be. BMGf still has active URPGers...

 

I'm in agreement with that. If I ever gave the impression I was against the dojos it was because I'm still true to my PE2K origins as you can clearly see by my outdated siggy that says "Challenge my PE2K GYM"

The idea of having a league exclusively for the newer members is a good thing I believe because it gives them a chance to start together and at an even level.

Also, while in theory expansion is a great idea, Jess was right and people would shoot it down, and I'm just gonna say that I'm one of those people. Well, I won't completely knock it out of the sky, I'll just throw a pebble at it and see what happens....
My reason is as follows:
If the URPG has little problems like inactivity in certain places, then it's better to acknowledge the fact and remove those people from those positions. IE the gyms.
Why create the illusion of activity? It's pointless and surely there are other members that would like to fill up those gyms.
Knowing how big BMG is, I still believe there is potential for the URPG to continue growing here. We can't realistically expand if we continue to ignore the fact that there are little problems in the system. If we can fix them and then advertise the URPG, we should be good to go.

For example, I remember when the mart and the trading sections had approval issues. Who doesn't remember waiting more than 2 days for those threads to be checked by an offical? I sure as heck do. So what happened? The problem was addressed and solved. This is what I want to happen with the rest of the problems that lay in front of us, before we actually go on and "expand" because right now, the URPG is a faulty system.

So what does expanding mean? To me it means actual growth and maintaining it. Not just having a spike in activity for a brief moment and calling it a day. <--That is not growth at all, that's just inflation to some degree. Sure you're letting more people join, but that merely provides a temporary solution. You're not getting to the root of the problem(s) which again, there might be more than I can think of. I just know that we do have them and that they should be dealt with even if its one by one.

On a semi-related note, and this is just my view, but the URPG Times seems to have brought back some life. I like it for being able to show that we're actually proactive in our little community.

Also one last thing, I'm not entirely against the idea of expansion, I just think it'd be dumb if we did happen to "expand" without fixing the issues we know about. I believe that without dealing with them, we're going to end up back at square one.
That's my bit of input.

 

That seemed to be the case in the past as well.

And I agree with TO on the temporary part. Expansion has always seemed to be our approach to revive our dying activity, which shouldn't be the case, but seems to be the only possible solution. Then again, at the time of the proposition (which was in August), activity was still booming.