We Should Talk About The Title Scene

I don't think anyone would be against a rule that states a belt is made vacant due to unexplained inactivity after a certain length of time, if the length of time is fair, or other certain guidelines of that nature.


I do think many people would be against rules or suggestions that would stipulate how long you can hold a belt, who you can and can't work with, or one that says you HAVE to work with certain people, or just in general anything that hampers your ability to do your stories the way you want, with who you want.

Alexandra wrote:

Fuck the belts.

Stop worrying about them. Stop craving them.

I know someone is probably already posting an angry FUCK YOU, but listen to me. The titles are nice end goals, but they shouldn't be your main goal. Getting a title shouldn't be the main reason you're here or the main reason you're writing and roleplaying with others on the site. They're nice to have, sure, but here's the deal. There's a lot of people on AFW, right? And matches move pretty slow, usually. If everyone is focused on getting belts, then it's going to end up a messy situation where either no one gets them or you're forced to sacrifice story to hurry up and shuffle it off to the next person begging for a belt.

Fuck the belts. Worry about writing great stories and great threads. Work on reaching out to people you don't usually work with. Reach out to new people and try to do things with them. Work on making AFW a better, more inclusive place, instead of complaining about belts and complaining about veterans not working with newer people. It's cliched, but you have to be the change you want to see.

This is important and got buried. This is why I dont go for titles at the moment. I'll go for them when Im ready to retire. ......So I'll never go for them. By they arent that important, to me at least. And shouldn't be such a big deal

Just to add on to this, there's really three kinds of rules you could add.

The first is stuff like the "Unexplained vanishing for six months will vacate your belt" stuff, which adds only a small, but useful, rule, that doesn't change anything else.

The second is stuff that is just...well, kinda pointless to make a rule, because it should already be known to everyone as it is. Like making "You should contact a title holder to see if they are willing to do a title thing with you if you want one" rule. Why does that need to be an official rule? It's pointless to make that an official rule, because that's how people already know how to do things and are doing things.

The third is stuff that railroads and restricts people regarding what stories they can do with a belt, who they can or can't do them with, forces a time limit on how long they can hold a belt, or who they have to drop it too, and other such things. These are bad ideas. They basically suck the creative freedom and fun out of rping a title reign, might force you to work with someone you didn't want to work with, for whatever reason, leave you unable to do or enjoy the stories you wanted to do with the belt, and turn things like title matches into nothing more than unwanted chores and obligations.

Why did I come back to 77 notifications just from this thread? I figured it would have slowed down by now.

I think it's time to unsubscribe from this thread.

Well, this is a new record. This thread was made last night and already has 18 pages. That's crazy... O.o

Where the thread should of ended-

LtLukas wrote:This. This. A thousand times this. I don't mean to victim blame, but the messaging system is a bidirectional sort of thing. I don't have any data in front of me, but I would wager that very few of you asked for a title shot directly. It seems to be as if many of us are introverts, and that shyness has extended into the white space, so to speak. It is as if you are all pretty girls at prom, waiting for some cute boy to come and pick you up. I don't mean to victim blame, nor do I intend to call anyone out specifically. Alex is a fairly amiable dude, and he had this problem. Bluemouse was far less amiable, and she had the same problem as well. Sometimes the mountain comes to Muhammad, and sometimes Muhammad must go to the mountain.

I can't speak for others, but I got involved in this to, as the poll questions suggests, simply come to the conclusion there is a problem. What the titles actually mean (Alex and Indigo) and what changes should be done (pretty much everyone) is a whole other thing. We aren't gonna solve this problem with firing loads of suggestions here and now in a desperate aid to fix the problem quickly. Especially given this thread has reached the point people have just lost interest.

We've addressed there is a problem, that is all that is needed to be done. Whether it is the vast majority voting they hate the system, or even one guy, we should make efforts to fix it. Change the whole site and bow before a possible minority? Absolutely not. Try to reach a fair conclusion? Plz fam.

Maybe we don't even need change, like I said earlier, just the idea of newer people being allowed to ask for title involvement is a big thing IMO, maybe we just need to explain why things are.

And if you still think there isn't a problem, then jesus christ. This is page 18 of a day and a half thread.

scorn53 wrote: Change the whole site and bow before a possible minority? Absolutely not. Try to reach a fair conclusion? Plz fam.

Maybe we don't even need change, like I said earlier, just the idea of newer people being allowed to ask for title involvement is a big thing IMO, maybe we just need to explain why things are.

And if you still think there isn't a problem, then jesus christ. This is page 18 of a day and a half thread.

Newer people were never not allowed to ask.

Newer people, ask away. At least now you know you can.

The minority comment makes me chuckle though, since im from california, where minority percentages are constantly trying to demand the majority bow to their will.

Put me in the screencap fam.

Sorry but i think if either read this thread wrong or some people misinterpreted what was said by some of the users. If not can someone point out to me where someone typed that chance must happen as i must have missed that comment.

Another thing that struck me as odd was the fact that plenty of people just typed that if you want to get a title shot or a match with someone that you should just send them a pm and take the risk. And i could agree with that statement if not for the fact that while most of the people i have meet and bin doing matches with do reply when you send them a pm. On the other hand their are also does who don't reply and while that may be annoying if learned to accept it over the three years if bin active

The title scene can make an story go from average to amazing if you take the time to think about it and plan ahead. The only example i can think of in my situation is the story between one of my characters vs one of Maxy which started out with my intention on making one of my heels become a proper heel and turned into a 3 way roleplay between myself , Xalex and Maxy at the moment.

One of my opinions is that maybe adding an title or two would not be a bad thing. In friction i know what most of the belts stand for besides the Entropy championship and from what i have gathered in this thread it a sort of 24/7 belt. While in Tension we only got 4 belts and to be honest i don't see the appeal in the 24/7 title all that much. Personally if another belt would be added i think it should be for tension and would hope it maybe be an cruiserweight title of some sorts but from what i can tell i doubt it will happen.

scorn53 wrote:And if you still think there isn't a problem, then jesus christ. This is page 18 of a day and a half thread.

These were exactly my thoughts when reading through this thread. And on top of that, believe that it was mentioned that such a complaints aren't new.
So, there is basicly reoccuring problem with huge thread and yet, you're all so blinded and convinced that everything is ok.
Just because some of you are long time members of afwrpg.com, it doesn't mean that you should act like some kind of untouchable gods.

-The number available and the diversity:
The very least that can be added are some extra belts for Tension, since it's quite behind the friction regarding amount of belts and popularity. Maybe having more belts aviliable would encourage more activity there?

-No established rules/pre-requisites:
Well, my initial thoughts to this were "no way, that's horrible idea". It would just encourage people to revolve threads around getting a belt instead of developing a story and having fun. However, stated actual examples makes lot of sense.

• no user having multiple titles on their character roster at any given time
  
• the age of an account before a user's character is ready to challenge for a championship
  
• the number of matches a character has fought before they can compete for an accolade
  
• a title holder needing to defend their championship within a reasonable real life time frame or be forced to vacate it

I mean what's wrong with this list? You already have belt - don't be greedy bastard and give others a chance. 2nd and 3rd point and great barriers for new users, so they can't get belt right away. And for last point - take the responsibility about having a belt. If you had a feeling that you won't be active than don't go for a belt; simply like that. Now, i know that rl stuff can kick in and we would understand that. But keeping a belt forever just because you can is simply a dick move.

- It's not what you know, it's who you know:
Now this is in my opinion most important point and thing that require most attention. I heard some reasons through the thread from "veterans" and most of this sounded like a lame excuse.
"PM us if you want a match..." Well guess what. We send pm and get rejected/ignored. Than we try again and same thing happen. And again and again.
"I almost never got asked for belt/match..." Related to first point. After a while we (or at least me) gived up asking self proclaimed veterans for matches. Why bother wasting time reading through all character bios and trying to find nice potential match when there is 90% chance of getting rejected/ignored - waste of time. And about not being asked for title match - that's the biggest bullshit excuse i can hear. Even getting match or RP is hard and now you expect us to just walk to you like that and ask for belt?
"We don't need to PM you, you need to PM us..." Or Your Highness can stop showing arrogance and start communicating - you know, another point that was mentioned in thread.


I understand and support the fact, that you're going to forward belt to person you want, but what is wrong is circle of users that are getting a belt.
You all guys are "trapped" in comfortable circle of friends and RP buddies and refuse to let others in. You refuse to give us a chance to proove. How can we gain trust from any of you to be worthy of belt, when you're always busy roleplaying with other "veterans"?

And how many times did any of you offer constructive criticsm of how could we improve? Yeah, just choose easy and lazy way and ignore all the requests instead of actually working toward improving community as whole by offering some advices of how could we improve.