Why do YOU play SAO-RPG?

[Baldur 0]

Hey Guys! You may or may not remember me. I feels like I've been gone a lot longer than I have (i appologise if my disappearance left you hanging in a thread. If I did, and there was a thread you'd like to finish, send me a PM with a link. I am trying to slowly work SAO back into being a part of my life. Baby steps).

Anyways, I've come back to SAO-RPG with a different set of priorities (as a player) than I had when I was here before, and it's gotten me thinking a lot about why I keep coming back to SAO-RPG, vs other forum RP sites I've been a part of over my decades (yes plural <_<) of forum RPGs. So I wanted to create a poll, because they're fun, but they're also enlightening. I have two goals with this poll.

1) As former (potentially again) staff, I find it enlightening to know why players want to play here, vs somewhere else. What do you enjoy... as in what brought you here, and keeps you here.

2) It can help you find other players who have similar interests and goals to RPing. This is really my primary goal right now. I want to do more personal, story driven threads, which is part of my I'm starting out slow. I've got one thread. I'm going to try and post in it once a day, and work SAO slowly back into being a regular part of my life, instead of diving in head first and getting overwhelmed again :P

To that end there are a LOT of options to this poll. And you can certainly feel free to check just one or all. But try to hit just what the MAIN ones are for you. The fewer responses you select, the more valuable the information is.

Hope you enjoy :)

[Hestia 0]

Nice to have you back Baldur. I wasn't here when you were around, but i welcome you back all the same. it is nice to see old members make a reappearance. If you ever want to do a thread i would be up for it.

[Shark 0]

Hey there bud! Nice to have you back. Funny story really... I actually found this site from a google search back in 2013 on the 2nd page or so. I never knew Erron before that. haha
Anywho, glad to see you make a reappearance! 

[Baldur 0]

Thanks! Hopefully it sticks. I miss it, and life is crazy, but i need something to break up all the crazy work stress.

[Vigilon 0]

Right...so I actually have notes to add to some of my answers, for a few reasons I won't be mentioning.

The whole thing of being able to create a character in a world like this seemed like a good RP opportunity. To be honest, this is the first Forum RP site I've ever been to. Having to become stronger seemed to be the primary task of my character, Vigilon, from since the beginning, and even the present day. I've been able to find bits of story I could throw in with that in mind, and the only thing I didn't like about this situation of mine, is the slow level growth my character has... I mean, it's not like I can be here 24/7, but I can't help feeling like I'm such a slow writer/not-so-great roleplayer/inferior when I see players who joined later than me, but they are already much farther in level than mine in, well, about a few months... However, I refuse to let those thoughts stop me(such thoughts were 100% entirely my fault, anyway). I might not have a Guild yet, but hopefully I'll get there... the stories I sometimes read on these forums are usually interesting, and occasionally inspire me slightly for future writing in my posts.

Excuse me for my rambling there... In short, this site, in my opinion, has more ups than downs, and I hope that we can all enjoy RPing in these forums as players, and as a community as the floor clearing goes on.

[Macradon 0]

On 30/3/2018 at 4:02 AM, Shark said:

Hey there bud! Nice to have you back. Funny story really... I actually found this site from a google search back in 2013 on the 2nd page or so. I never knew Erron before that. haha
Anywho, glad to see you make a reappearance! 

same

[Baldur 0]

4 hours ago, Macradon said:

same

That's actually how I came across the site too. I had finished watched SAO for probably the second time, and wanted to get into forum RP again, so I googled SAO forum RPGs and there were  handful, but this was the only one that appeared active.

Ironically, I almost didn't join because of how far along in levels the players were. I didn't think I could ever catch up and be one of the frontliners.

[Kaiida 0]

Snap Baldur-kun! :D

[Hirru 0]

Alright, so this is a story all about how my life got flipped-turned upside-down.  Now I'd like for you to take a minute, just sit right there.  I'll tell how I became the Jade Hunter of this place called SAO.

Memes aside, it was roughly June or July 2015.  I've been a fan of SAO since I gained a few friends from it while in the military.  Having been an avid forum based role-player before, I was apart of several different SAO roleplay sites before, but they all died from issues. (inactivity, site deletion, Admin forgetting their password...)  So, after some time passed, I was bored and wanted to get back into the roleplaying fun that I used to have with others.  However, I didn't want another OP character onslaught that the last few were.  I wanted something organized and stats based, like one of my favorite Naruto RP sites that I frequented as a teenager.

That's when I found this place.  I don't exactly remember HOW is found it.  Google may have helped or not, but my memory is quite fuzzy from then.  Too much alcohol, I presume.  Anyway, I looked in around the time that the 10th floor boss was finally being killed off and the 11th floor was opening up.  I didn't immediately join, as I wanted to read up on the rules and everything.  Read some of the RP's that were happening at the same time, too.

I think it was safe to say that I was hooked in from the stats based formula, as I wanted some sort of gaming capabilities that rang true to the series.  Though, the four man group in the tenth floor boss clearing house was probably the big winner too, since we didn't have the organization that we do now, I couldn't read the other boss threads as they were long hidden under mountains of threads.  

So, July 23, 2015:  Hirru is registered and posts his Journal.

The rest is history...

Now, why have I stayed so long, regardless of many MANY absences?  I love this community.  I would say this is the largest community that I have stuck with for nearly 3 years now.  Raising a character from nothing, and making them into what they are now.  I've loved every moment of it, and I don't want to leave it.  Even if I'm not as active as I once was, I'm still around for those that need it.  For what little that may mean, this place is another home.  Another family.

Thank you, everyone!

[Tristan Delaney 0]

An interesting topic to see while having a glance at the site while on lunch break.

I'd trace it back to some years ago, when I had a nigh epiphany in the world of roleplay, starting with a section on it on the classic Minegarde forums, long dead now but infamous at the time. I did a few roleplay stuff, nothing special, but it lit a spark. From there I had during May 2014 discovered a different RP site, which I used to be on a LOT. I didn't like the rules there much but I made several friends and my writing addiction to roleplay my fantasies practically exploded. I accrued several thousand posts there in the bursts of activity I had, both in long and small posts. However the nature of the place meant while RPs could start easily, they died easily too. I needed longevity and development.

During the summer holiday of 2014, amid stress with job searching having finished school and otherwise wasting my life away playing Destiny and such, I read SAO the light novel, for the anime was famously crap and I wondered what the hype was all about. Meh read, it's basically the famous shitty YA of light novels. But I've always loved making my own stories, and SAO was a great universe to do it in. Lo and behold, I did a google and found this site.

I actually came at a really interesting time as it was relatively close to the arse end of the switch from phpBB to Invision Board. As an more experienced programmer now, I can only dread Erron's job of having to deal with the shitshow that is MySQL, PHP itself not being that awful. MySQL can go die in a fire, all hail the Elephant. Anyhow, a lot of the site in links and guides were broken, but there were a few passionate players and I was super keen to forge my own story. I'll admit, I was quite a cunt about it, but it was fun. I am generally open minded, but I get terribly headstrong sometimes over my own fantasy world ideas and it is terrible of me. But, I had passion and somehow managed to get to be a PST, along with a reasonable tank. The system was frankly slipshod and very easy to exploit, but it was better than the earlier no system, and I know what it's like to make and balance this stuff. However work at the time got really busy and it killed my motivation after a while, so I took a hiatus from the site for I think a year or less, memory is fuzzy.

Wind forward to uh...2015? 2016? I don't even bloody remember anymore. Anyway, I came back, apparently flew completely around some staff explosion, as they sometimes do, and decided to RP again. I got sick of the little change that happened and bulldozed ahead to try and bring more, with mixed success. But as I had most of the time no job and was busy with UK college, which I was sailing through (I got a Distinction in IT Practitioners Level 3 from that 2 year course last year :D), I had energy to RP and did so. Was great fun, many ups and downs, many clashes and so much thinking and stress, but it was great. After a while though, I burned out, a mixture of stuff not really going how I assumed or anticipated it to and a job at the time while in college made me eventually quit again, as I felt I had run the Tristan story through its entire course and done near everything I wanted. Honestly, I'm happy seeing work being still put into the site and how that has all been going.

Now whether I'll return to RP here, I don't know. I'm somewhat unsure where to go with Tristan but really don't have the energy to make a new character. Personality switch may be interesting though. Because of twice now also getting involved in the system, one time wholly revamping it with aid from Zero, I also have a burning curiosity constantly at what is being done under the hood and get messy with it. Alas, I'm not a staff member :P To add to that, my roleplaying has been mostly consumed by regular Thursday and Sunday RL tabletop games such as D&D 4th edition (the most mathy of all D&D but I love it because [censored] Vancian casting from all other D&D), Alternity and Numenera.

That...was more wordy than intended, but hey ho. I hope the site thrives well.

Edit: I feel to an extent this retrospect explanation is also warranted. For what it's worth despite my efforts of trying to make a fairly balanced system at the time, that still adhered as much as possible to the canon, I was at times at colossal cunt or obstinate. I won't reject that and I won't reject that especially in the early game, tanking was indeed quite OP and various other stuff. There were intents for many of this, tanking was actually scaled down from what it could have been due to seriously wonky curves (before reworking) that meant tanking viability fell off at later levels and I had to consider the generally low damage output of tanks too. My solo or not with a DPS threads were sometimes stupid long and tired me the [censored] out eventually because I was getting so bored while stabbing for little damage. I still feel I wish there was better class focus to "not be everything" eventually, but SAO as a canon outright didn't have this for what it's worth and mostly depended on equipment and "What you spent the skill points you had on", see broken Kirito. A lot of time and consideration went into my choices and I wouldn't go back on many of them, but understand also there is so much more I would have done if this forum had automated maths over trying to make it possible to figure out in your head. I'd certainly use percentiles far more for one. I won't apologise for it all as that's dumb and vapid, honesty is key. But I will say, I wish I could have executed it better. There's a lot of things I just wish I had more time to think on and develop. I mean frankly for one, a lot of what I was given to work with before releases was....minimal and many spreadsheets and the like had to be figured out and slaved over to make some sort of coherent sense out of it. In a weird way, I suppose I always wished to be like a Kayaba and not have to focus on the game part of it because I wanted to work on the mechanics so much.

Edited April 4, 2018 by Tristan Delaney
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