Disclaimer:
This post was written by both Aiwendil and Lhaa and all you read below has been agreed upon.We voted
no.
For several reasons, some already mentioned in this thread, questioned even.
Let's see...
Basically, what we want to know is if there's people out there ready to participate.
First and foremost, there are NO people out there ready to take on with an OSP area. There are not even enough players online most of the time to make one of them busy (considering 75% if not more of the players are training/mining and the count at
peak times hardly goes over 100). This whole thread sounds as we're talking of a massive playerbase and that's too far away from what we have now to make any sense at all.
If you ask whether there are enough ideas to have a contest, then sure, we're aware that so many players want their ideas to be put to practice and many contestants will turn up.
Now, what happens when those players win the contest and
must put it to practice themselves? How many committed players (committed enough to stick to the OSP rules) do you think there are to run an area?
Guess we should present some data, since it seems like this is something we can really talk about.
- The RCO has now a list of chars that goes past 40 members.
- The RCO has, to the date, kept to all OSP rules, breaking none at all.
- The RCO has now recently run its 4th monthly event.
- The RCO has, to the date, had trouble to run every single event regarding staff numbers.
- The RCO members have, in a high percentage, got busy in RL and have no time anymore for it.
- The RCO members have, in a high percentage, simply left the game since they joined it.
- The RCO members have, in a high percentage, dropped their interest in the OSP.
- The RCO struggles every month to keep up with the OSP rules, thus find enough players up to help staffing for events or even regular Den shifts.
- The RCO has, for the most part, no staff other than Managers up to run a shift in the Den often.
- The RCO struggles to recruit new members who do really want to contribute.
- The RCO is one of the current two OSP members.
Seems like the player support isn't that impressive, or is there something we're missing?
Let us see what instead is the average PS player interested in (logs from the last fashion parade's intermission):
(23:36:09) [Tell] Player A tells you: I take it the entertainment is reward enough?
(23:36:10) [Tell] You tell Player A: [auto-reply] [Sorry, in the middle of an event. Will take some time for me the answer]
(23:36:39) [Tell] You tell Player A: [Sorry..don't get it....reward for who?]
(23:36:56) [Tell] Player A tells you: ((The attendance of the fashion show))
(23:36:57) [Tell] You tell Player A: [auto-reply] [Sorry, in the middle of an event. Will take some time for me the answer]
(23:37:14) [Tell] You tell Player A: [LOL...why should they get a reward? We do a show for them 
]
(23:37:20) [Group] Aiwendil says: ROFL
(23:37:33) [Group] Aiwendil says: got a tell from Player A if there is any reward for the audience
(23:37:36) [Group] Lhaa says: LOL
(23:37:41) [Group] Dalgin says: LOL
(23:37:42) [Tell] Player A tells you: ((Heheh))
(23:37:42) [Tell] You tell Player A: [auto-reply] [Sorry, in the middle of an event. Will take some time for me the answer]
[ Barely five minutes later.... ]
(23:42:19) Player A nods, "Yes, she seems quite busy at the moment"
(23:42:54) Player B smiles "Fine well then we go on and train."
(23:43:06) Player A nods, "Alright"
(23:43:20) >Player C nods in agreement.
(23:43:37) Player B takes a sip of her beer
(23:44:00) Player B smiles "Well lets go."
Now you know
As counterpart to GM events, OSP events are meant for
player entertainment through RP. They are no race to type the first line that will give you this or that item, they are no dueling contests, they are not even wit contests, even if presented as one. They are simply events made to entertain the player and his/her character by providing
roleplay. A large amount of the PS playerbase can't figure this out, though, which means you can't count on all that large amount of the PS playerbase for something like this. You'll get nothing out of them.
player run everything is great!
Of course, player-run everything is great until
you have to run it.
Where are the players who will run this?
The consistency of the poster makes for the reliability of the message:
http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=35574.msg409590#msg409590 I vote yes. While i agree with what the no people said I think having maybe 4ish OSP guilds total would not much harm. Spreading OSP too much wouldn't be advisable but I also think that we could afford a couple more OSP guilds/organizations.
The question is, how many people can and seriously want to spend 2-3 daily hours into the OSP?
I would say focus more on reinforcing the existing OSP projects before creating more.
While they are doing great, the number of RPers in game is fairly small. I would worry that
adding more OSP areas might weaken the existing projects by dilluting the population that
has started to form.
This comes from somebody who has worked in such OSP areas and knows what's cooking there. He has, just like us, seen the problems we run into and how hard is it to fix them when it comes to finding the right people for it.
We can only agree with his words.
Are there really enough players online
ever to have 10 RPing at BD, 10 RPing at Ojaveda, 10 RPing at Gugrontid, 10 RPing at Hydlaa's OSP place 1, 10 RPing at Hydlaa's OSP place 2, 10 RPing at Kada El's, 5 RPing at Harns, 5 RPing at Trasok's, 5 RPing at the Magic Shop, 5 RPing at the library?
That makes 80 players IG dedicated to roleplay, which is more than 50% of the PS population at any time of the day. This, that can hardly not be taken as a joke, is something that won't happen even in our sweetest dreams.
Taking this into consideration, and the fact that about 75% of the actual RPers have either an RCO or OL character, meaning one only OSP project struggles while using most of the "resources", we think it's safe to say that unless we're speaking of smaller enterprises or single player proposals this will hardly ever work out. And as things look like now, we don't see more than one, maybe two players who could succeed.
Another mistake most of the posters committed and that shows what confusion there is yet about the whole OSP thing is mentioning the Stonehead Tavern. That is no OSP area and doesn't have to follow the same rules as any of the OSP members:
3. Each semifinalist guild shall receive a maximum of 10 minutes in order to present their ideas to the Jury, after which they will have to answer the questions of the panel. These presentations will be open to the public.
There wasn't any presentation of the Stonehead for the OSP Jury. The Stonehead is sponsored by a Vigesimi and works different than the OSP areas.
2. All proposals must be RP oriented. Originality and functionality will be major factors to determine the winners. Winning guilds are expected to hold events on a regular basis and involve the community in them as much as possible. They must announce their events in the In-Game RP Board of the PS Forums and work actively to involve as many players as possible in them and promote good RP.
The Stonehead has to do nothing of this. They don't have to run any events to keep their privileges. The OSP members did plenty of such events already. And everyone who wants to apply for the next OSP event should be aware that this is a requirement. There is this
thread that explains how it has to be done.
Examples of such events:
5. Winning guilds will receive money, items and even the buildings their proposals require but they will not be given any special treatment beyond that. They will be solely responsible for the organization of their events and the completion of their projects. GMs and Devs will not assist them nor give them special powers or access.
So whoever applies for the OSP need to be aware that they won't get any kikiris renamed, special knives for their cooks or other things that need GM involvement. We tried to get a shovel renamed to "Broom of doom" for some funny RP to wipe out the drunkards when we close the doors. That was rejected. We also wanted some Job-offering posters in Hydlaa...like the once of the Stonehead that are up for about 4 months now in all towns and only got one in front of the Den. So we can only repeat that the Stonehead should not be taken as example for the OSP members. It's not a OSP member, it has not the OSP privileges but many more, and it has none of the OSP duties to fulfill thus some completely different rules apply to it.
- Aiwendil
- Lhaa
Poll