The Impending Crisis of the South (URPG)

Right so I saw Smores' post in the general thread, have heard complaints from others, and have noticed the general lack of activity myself. Some of the older members have tried to explain it away by saying something along the lines of 'well this is normal, you just were here during the explosion that followed the BMG branch'. However, even if this is normal, it shouldn't be. In addition to that, we DID just expand to another branch. We SHOULD have an influx of members. But we don't. On top of that, it's summer and WAR is going on over on PE2K. This is the time of year where, at least in my memory, there were always way more people around than normal. Lots of vets that came back to participate, new people not busy with school, etc. Instead, URPG is at the slowest I've seen it since I joined in April of 2010. The only active staff members (I define active as regularly posting, working in their professions, and hosting activities, not just being present online) are ATF and Roulette, possibly WTP. That's two mods and one official at best. Not many battles are happening from what I can see, the WC is slower than usual (which is impressive, from a certain standpoint), no AIM contests happening, and I'm not keeping a close eye on the forum but I've heard several people mention there are only a few rangers who are very active.

So what's my point? I have two for this thread.

1) We need to isolate the reason(s) why there's no activity.
2) We need to think of ways to increase activity.

Now I know that a lot of the inactivity of the staff comes from them being busy. Scourge, Kat, Chainy, FD, and Winter are in college; Jess and Emma are both older adults who have lives and work; Harry, Chris, and Monbrey are the same; Bee told us he left; When was the last time anyone even saw ST, Jr, or Jack?; WTP is somewhat around but preparing for college and has been out of state several times; and as for me, I've been doing four AP classes worth of summer homework, visiting family, and now am writing a book with an ex-URPGer.

I get it. We're all really busy. But, then, who the hell is running the URPG? Where did all of our normal members go? I see the same 15 people online on AIM every day, a fair portion of them idle and afk.

Before anyone jumps to defend themselves, don't. That's not the point of this thread. The point is, if we don't want to die off after these long, incredible 13 years, then something needs to happen, or change, or congeal, or metamorphosize, or something. Here are a couple of my suggestions, which probably suck, but I might as well lay them out bare.

-Become more immersed in BMG's culture. We've been on PE2K since the early 2000's and are a large part of that forum. They know us. Anyone who's an active PE2Ker that doesn't URPG has had the opportunity to join for years and has chosen not to for whatever reason. I love the community on TPW but they're a new, fledgling community. More people from URPG joined their RPG than joined ours. I think we've done the most we can do there to get new members. So maybe we should try to set something up with BMG?
-Offer benefits for returning members who've been gone past six months. I don't know how well this would work, but maybe people nostalgic over how they used to play URPG would see that they could get a little help getting started again.
-Spend more time training new members. I'm not saying we should have a whole new Mentor/Apprentice Program, but I've noticed over the time I've spent here that there's a way better chance of someone sticking around if they have friends and training in a profession.
-Advertise. Sure, we have no money. That doesn't matter. Put the URPG in your signature on another forum, if you're not embarrassed of us (I don't blame you) tell your friends, let's make a YT video or something and try to go viral. It can't be that hard. We just have to be as insane as possible and make it hard to figure out what we're advertising. It worked for Apple back in the 80's.

Sorry, but that's all I got. Anybody else got any ideas?

 

This thread has been needed. I agree with you. I see mostly the same people on AIM whenever I jump on. I will admit to having lost some of my activity because of some IRL stuff, but I want to change that. I've been around long enough to know that while the URPG has been through some hard times, this is one of the hardest ones. We need to at as URPG'rs to help increase activity. I also know that motivation is a big key here.

Just by talking to graders, I know alot of them dont have the motivation to do more than 1 or 2 stories at a time. Yes, we are getting new workers and such, but not many stay active. We need to get more people motivated to do their work and do their part in keeping this place active. Now, Im not trying to start anything by saying that, Im just saying my mind. Please dont be offended anybody.

As for battles, I dont know whats going down more. The refs that are willing to ref or the people that want to battle. Ive been on AIM a few times where battles just slide by unnoticed. This is one big thing that needs to be changed if we want to continue, battles are the heart and soul of this game, so battles are what we should do. FFA's as well, they don't happen near as much as they used to, and they rarely happen at that.

As for the park, Im the newest ranger, and I try to be active, but with some IRL stuff, I just cant be. The few rangers we have taking runs at the moment are busy, and some have so many runs to juggle its crazy. I know that we are all busy, but if the rangers came together and tried to divide up the runs equally, it could most likely become more active.

I dont check contests much(rarely), but Im willing to put money saying that activity has dropped alot there too. Nobody has motivation to do contests.

As for your points:

1) Motivation. Motivation is probably one of the biggest reasons this place's activity is dropping. Its summer, everybody wants to go out in the sun. Hell, if it wasn't raining right now I'd be outside. Nobody wants to take time out of their fun in the sun to URPG. When winter comes around and people are stuck inside bored, motivation increases because more people take the time to do URPG. But as for right now, e need to think of reasons to gve people the motivation to do stuff.

2) There are alot of things we could do right now. I know that the Park has B2B right now, and the SWC just started. Im not sure on contests, but Im sure something is coming up for them as well. Other than WAR, we dont have much to get URPG as a whole together though. Maybe we could hold osme kind of community get toogether on AIM where its like an all day thing where we can hang out and do all URPG stuff. Also, not make it as big, but on PC, they have a community get together for wifi every saturday. I have participated in those myself, and they aree alot of fun.

We could hold our own get together thing. It would be a great way for us older players to battle, trade, just do all kinds of URPG stuff. It would be great for Newbies to, as they could talk to other players, make friends, and learn that URPg is really fun if you stick around.


Now I'm not trying to offend anybody by what I said. Like I said before, Im just speaking my mind. I agree with Alaska, this place has dropped in activity a TON since I joined in August 2010. We just need to come together and get it up and running again.

-Kanto

 

While I'm not 100% sure what exactly went on, I'm fairly certain that we slashed all our ties with BMG outside of URPG after HiPS left. It was apparently a huge deal that kind of left the mods not-too-chuffed with us. I routinely talk with people from The War Room on Skype about URPG, but the general consensus seems to be that URPG is THAT place of the forum. Said with raised eyebrows, a tut and slight disdain.

If I'm honest, I just think people in the URPG are growing up. As you said, mods are having to deal with real-life situations over the Internet - URPG is having to take a backseat in their minds. It's exactly the same thing with what happened to Pe2k - Ryan went off to college and Pe2k began to wilt without the constant attention. It's a case of monkey see, monkey do - if the older members are going around with this "can't be bothered" attitude, then any newer members will think "well, this place isn't worth sticking around", and even if they do stay, they will eventually adopt this mindframe.

 

I'll say it, another expansion. Yeah I know we just had one, but that was a dud, sugar coat it as you might but I have not seen one active member that originated through the TPW expansion.

There was all this hype over the expansion to TPW, people were excited by it, many looking forward to being on the other end of one, A few even came out of inactivity to see it through but all that happened was a big anti-climax. It's possible people dropped into inactivity because the best chance of giving the URPG a boost in activity had failed proving that inactivity wasn't gonna increase and jumped ship because they're bored with it.

I know many of you may be against it, and just dismiss this, But I feel it should definitely be considered.

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One change that could be made is post a Thread for the Dojo league over here on BMG, I don't see why there is none, but there has been just as much, if not more new members, joining from on BMG. They may be more inclined to stick around if they know right from the get-go. I'd wager not many of them know a branch on TPW even exists and so won't know about it.

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More Willing Refs, I agree there is an issue with not enough battles, but when there is a possible battle, there is no refs about to satisfy.

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More hookers

 

You guys are getting too immature. The reason I left is because you all are so cliquey and care too much about it. You're treating it like real life and its weird. I joined URPG cause the handheld games were too easy and boring. Once everyone stopped battling and the leadership went in the shitter there was no reason for me to be here. You log on to talk to eachother and you don't do any URPG activities. And christ, it seems like all you need is a pulse to become a ref. You guys have no one to blame but yourself. Quit using the URPG to make friends and treat it like what it is; an MMORPG.

I miss battling, nothing else, just the battling. But it never happens, so why bother logging on?

EDIT: Sorry if this came out as rude, didn't mean that.

 

I've talked to several people who are BMGers and not URPGers and to people from URPG who were pretty active outside of our section of the forum and this is more or less a misconception. Perhaps in some circles we are THAT section of the forum, but definitely not to everyone. I can't speak for HiPS or the BMG mods but I don't think they would refuse interaction with us because of something that happened over a year ago. After all, we're still here, aren't we?

While it would be great to expand to even more forums, I think part of the problem is that a lot of the other Pokemon forums don't want us. What are we bringing them? The only thing we could bring them is more activity, which... We don't even have. It would be nice to have the Dojo League over here, I'm sure someone move it shortly. Also, everyone for hookers say 'Aye'?

I have no problems with people making friends, but yes, sometimes things get cliquey. There's not really much the Staff can do to change that. We can't be like 'okay, if you don't let this person play with you you have to go to the time out corner'. I do occasionally wish people would grow the fuck up (including myself). It's just impossible. As for refs, there are a ton of refs, they're just mostly inactive.

Kantomasta has suggested to me some sort of gathering that would be biweekly where we could hang out and do URPG things. I expanded on this by saying we could have a Block Party, like how we used to have Christmas and Halloween parties. For a limited time we could have bonuses for newbies who joined then to attract some or maybe co-organize the event with BMG mods.

 

First off, thank you Alaska, I think that was a rather mature post and it started off the thread well.

Second, why wasn't there a summer auction? Those are usually big hits. The answer is probably because the spring tournament fiasco, but that's so embarrassing that both finalists should just lose at this point, no questions asked.

Also, I mean I think an expansion is needed, but it needs to be carefully thought out this time. The Pokemon World was a good attempt, but just not sufficient. This time we should really just throw ourselves out there, the more lines the more fish. I've heard that we were sort of picky with which forums we asked to move to, and this just can't be the case. Pokemon communities are really large all over the internet, Serebii, Smogon, PO, Pokebeach, etc. There are a lot of forums that get a lot of activity. Even a forum like Pokemon Showdown, which is just starting off would be looking for something like the URPG, it's interesting, it's fun, and it's different enough from the standard metagame to not really threaten that activity.

Also yea, Captain Dude, the battling is honestly the best part, because it's pretty unique. As someone who has down the metagame for a few years I can say I enjoy the URPG far better, it's more strategic and less rushed in my opinion and offers a lot of stuff the other doesn't.

Overall, something needs to be done and I think the fact that ideas are being bounced around is the best thing right now and each idea looked at with an open mind.

 

URPG isn't ready for another expansion yet. It takes a lot of work and we don't have enough active staff right now to handle it. Also, we've ruled out or have been turned down by most of the forums you listed, and we would have to spend a lot of time asking around other places before we could even begin to prepare for another branch.

Another expansion isn't the answer right now. The TPW one wasn't at all what we had hoped it would be, so I think we've learned that we need to be a little more careful in the places we pick instead of just jumping on whoever takes us.

We need to focus on attracting attention to the URPG branches we've already established.

 

I think some advertisement is what we're most in need of. I'm sure that there are loads of people out there who'd love all the URPG has to offer - thing is, they can't find us, and I don't blame them. Something needs to be done to fix this. I've very often considered making an animation to promote the URPG, but that requires time (and quite frankly, some skills) that I simply don't have.

Sure, the URPG is in a decline right now, but such things occur naturally. I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything - the opposite, in fact - but there's no reason to run around declaring the death of the URPG just yet. I agree that the URPG is far too clique-ey, but to be honest I don't know if that can be fixed. I believe that we should definitely look at advertisement somehow. I don't think creating more event or offering incentives would help that much - if people left because of something in particular, these won't lure them back. We need to find what is wrong with the system and then fix that.

Personally, I've been less active in the URPG because the past three weeks has been my exam period, and now that I'm done with them I'm using video game therapy to recover. As soon as I have the energy to return to the high level of activity that I used to have at the URPG, you bet your ass I will. I don't know as much about the other jobs, but I've always told Rangers that Rangering has an ebb and flow effect. You take runs for a while, then tire and stop, then come back and start again. I wonder if this down-time is just that same effect, but on large.

tl;dr More advertisement, and research into why people aren't playing anymore.

 

I think it is just a domino effect of a few people dropping out, and then everyone else follows. I haven't been motivated towards battle for a long time; battles feel like more of a hassle then anything now. I have to find other people who are actually willing to battle, and then on the rare occasion that I find someone, I have to find a ref as well. Most of the time, refs are few and far between, and the ones that are on are idle, or just don't want to ref. I've often had to ref for other people when I wanted to battle, simply because I s the only ref on. Quite frankly, the fact that other people have given up/lack motivation is kinda making me want to give up too. The only people I see battling nowadays are newer members, who still find fun in battling, and I've rarely seen any older members battle in months.

I think that the issue with the URPG becoming to clique-ey is to do with this lack of motivation and participation as well. No one wants to battle or anything, and everyone just ends up chatting and messing around. I honestly think that one of the best ways is have a few more people put in a bit more effort, and encourage battling in the URPG, etc. If more people were battling, more people would get involved, and that might bring the activity up. Things like contests feel like their being rejected, and their is simply not the activity, or willingness, for a contest, or even an FFA nowadays.

Even if we start advertising and bringing in more members from BMGf/TPW or wherever, it won't do us much good if they don't end up participating much in the long run either because none of the older members are participating. I think the change needs to start with us, putting in more effort to get involved in the URPG and battling, before we should start thinking about getting new members. How can we expect newer members to stay and be active when, like someone said, they only see us older members not getting involved and doing anything?

 

A complaint a lot of the time is inactive staff. Simple solution, get some new staff.

In the same way that Rangers have stand-ins if they are busy, get mods to find someone to take over their duties while they are away.

Also, I think there should be more of the "pay 3K and hope for a great prize" events. Maybe have a weekly raffle in the Times.

I do think that if we had more Times editions people would be more interested.

Maybe it might be an idea to find a better way of catching Pokémon. After all, you can only take 4 Pokémon out of the Park for months of hard work, stories are often viewed as too hard to write, and we've had the big argument over marts and basics. Maybe have other things like pictures or poems, to help those who have different talents. I guess that more battle events would help too, but I respect how difficult those are

 

That isn't a simple solution. Also we just added new staff, and can't help if some people don't show up all the time.

 

Most of the Staff are still around, just somewhat less than usual. I really like Pokemaster's statement - us oldies need to put more effort in. I have been inspired by his post - starting tomorrow, I shall endeavour to be on AIM a lot more and start battling again. EVERYONE SHOULD BATTLE ME

 

The old staff is great, they're just busy. Everybody needs to work to get things going again. Even if all of the staff was really active, if the other members weren't, we'd still be just as screwed as we are now.

The Times would go out more if more people created content for it. You can write articles or make comics or whatever and send them in. You get paid for it.

We were working on an art forum and I'm not really sure what happened. It was very near completion, so hopefully it'll be out there soon. Poems don't take enough effort, I don't think. Stories aren't really that difficult either if you're going for something under Hard rank and the Park doesn't have to take months as long as you update regularly.

I agree that Pokemaster makes a good point.

 

Pokemaster hit the nail on the head, basically saying what I was trying to say when I said "you have no one to blame but yourself." If Chainy is serious about battling more then I'll log on tonight and battle as well.

Also, more officials/mods is a terrible solution. If anything, they should clean up the staff.

EDIT: Ya know, I was always quick to joke about a "Pidgeocracy" several months back. But after doing some thinking, I think thats what we need. We need someone to step up as a leader and grab URPG by the throat.

 

In the late 90's, a group of Pokemon geeks came together on Yahoo Groups. They decide that, while cool, Pokemon was far too limiting for their tastes. They wanted more. They wanted to change it up.

They created the URPG.

This is Our Game. Our Hobby. Our Community. We, like our founders, desire a place in which we can share in our love of Pokemon and engage in a level of play not seen in the gameboy games. Pokemon, to us, is so much more than 4-moves a mon and a single, built-in ruleset. What technology limits in Red, Blue, Black and White; we expand and adapt with human ingenuity.

We do it because it's more interesting. It's more exciting.

It's Fun.

So if we're bored, let's change it up! If we're tired of the same old, let's create something new! If we are looking for the next challenge, let's innovate!

There are no developers here, because we are the developers. We do not need to code, do not need to market, do not need to wheel and deal to release a product. If we want something done, we just do it. That's how it is. That's one of our best features.

So what if one of our branches isn't doing so well (it's not like this hasn't happened before). So what if we have a bit of lull in activity. So what if the system is a little stale.

It doesn't matter.

We have the power to change it. We have the power to create our own fun and excitement. To create our own adventures and events. To create our own challenges and goals. Because we literally control the system.

So let's start innovating! Let's start figuring something fun to do! It can be a time-tested idea or something completely new. Heck, it can even be something crazy. And if there is anything we know how to do, it's be crazy. URPGers are some of the weirdest people I know!


Why not have one of those 100+ FFA's? Always a popular draw and anyone can participate!

Or maybe something a little more battle-oriented? How about getting Champion Pidge to fight 20 people? AT THE SAME TIME!

Want more say? Let's take a vote! Perhaps WTP and I could have an epic duel with our Pokemon. But instead of us choosing our strategies, you can vote on our moves/actions!

A festive approach could work. What about a Summer event in which members can go to each gym leader and collect a "coin" that can be exchanged for money/prizes at the end?

Or open up a truly bizarre (and temporary) gym league in which each gym's rules... are random or just don't make sense! Random Types each round! Or every Pokemon battling must have the letter Q in its name. Or both battlers pick three Pokemon, but one Pokemon on each side is swapped with the other! The possibilities are endless.

The ideas can go on and on. A murder mystery. Find the Park Warden's missing teeth. A tournament in which every participant has to be a Pokemon character (like Ash or Misty) and can only use Pokemon they've been shown to have.

We can create other ideas, better ideas. We can do all sorts of things and if members think they're fun, I think it's safe to say the staff will support such entertainment/insanity.

This is the URPG spirit. The Pokemon spirit. The idea that, if you drive forward with all your might and heart, you can achieve anything. Let's then find our passions and use it to create a memorable summer together.

We're a community created and run by us. Which means we can literally do anything we want. And in this case, if we can do anything, I think we should choose to have fun.

We should always choose to have fun.

 

I pick these.

 

LETS DO A BATTLE FRONTIER *shot*

 

I think one of the problems is that the URPG is too big for its current userbase. I'm not suggesting we should cut off or close sections. What we need to do is focus on the basics, as has already been mentioned. Battling, stories, roleplaying. The foundations of the URPG. Introducing new ideas to those sections is fine, but now isn't the time to expand anything. URPG is massive - but it's basically a ghost town. Expanding is only going to spread us thin, unless we are GUARANTEED of a MASSIVE increase in members.

As for the inactive staff, I agree to a point. A lot of us aren't as dedicated as we could be. However half the URPG is already some form of staff, approver, official or mod. There's not a lot we can do in that regard. We always keep an eye out for people we think deserve a chance to lead. But with no intention to offend anyone, we don't see it particularly often, and everyone has their own opinions on who deserves that chance.

I agree with Chainy, the staff could do more to be actively participating in the URPG, and not just manage it. But I also agree with Alaska - we're busy. We have real lives, and we can't always dedicate the same amount of time to the URPG as we used to. Hell, some of you probably remember when I ref-botted for a while. Other people put in that same level of dedication to their areas. And we do burn out. I lost interest in the URPG after a while. I still enjoy the community and I help manage the URPG, but I lost interest in participating. Battling, for me, became very stale and boring in the later stages. I enjoyed basic battles with 2v2's much more than I enjoy a 6v6 defensive switchfest. Having a counter to everything is boring.

I don't know what else to suggest. I just don't think shitloads of new features are going to help things.

 

I joined URPG back when it expanded to BMG. Back then there were plenty of people to battle with and the refs were pretty active. After a few weeks I even got my girlfriend and my sister to join, YellowMagikarp and WhiteWove Cleric respectively. Yellow and I are back and intend on staying for a while and my sister is at least showing some interest in URPG again. In addition to that I just introduced a friend of mine to URPG last weekend and he said when he gets some time he may actually join.

Now, I am more than willing to do my part. I know plenty of people that would enjoy it here, but I don't want to be that guy that invited half the active users. So one good place we could start for more active users is think of your friends that you haven't told about URPG that would be interested. Give them a tour of the URPG and help them get started. Introduce them to other players.

As for the activities, I have seen some great ideas here. And that is a chunk of what we need right now is ideas. Then, we need to follow through on these ideas. Instead of just talking about what we can do to fix things we need to also go out and do them. I know I am willing to do my part to increase activity. When I came back to URPG a few months ago I told myself that I would jump in and be as active as I can and pull my weight in the community. So that is what I intend to do.

If more refs are needed I will do all the studying I need to to become a ref. If we need graders I will dust off my writing skills and take the grader test. I intend on trying my hand at the National Park soon. And if Contests need activity, I suppose I will dress my Pokemon up and apologize to them later for making them go out in public dressed like a dandy. If the URPG Times needs more people or submissions, I see what I can toss in.

We all need to pull our weight and get active and get more people to join. That's what really needs to happen. As was said before, we can choose to do whatever we want to do here and we should choose to have fun. But after we choose, we have to do. Otherwise it is like buying a book and never reading it. It sits on the shelf looking nice but never actually doing anything.

Now, for an obligatory suggestion, right before I went inactive for two years there was a huge Forum FFA. It wouldn't be a bad idea to have one of those again. More people tend to join those and they are more fun because you never know where the attacks are coming from. Beyond that, I seem to remember quizzes happening more often than they happen now.

As for new and exciting things, the Ultra Frontier should have a place on the forums and be a real thing instead of just a group sitting in people's signatures. We could toss in a new way to get Pokemon. As was mentioned, the core here is battles, stories, and role playing. Stories and role playing directly get you new Pokemon. Battles get you money which can get you Pokemon. What if we have something set up where you can battle someone that instead of using one of their Pokemon uses a random "wild" Pokemon rolled from a list. Pay it like a 1v1 and if the challenger wins they get the Pokemon.