The Ad Campaign.

Heyoo. So I've been at work, hence why I haven't been able to see or discuss anything in venting. Gomen.

Anyways, so this is the way it was since the beginning, but obviously that wasn't made clear. A member came up to me earlier in the day asking me to clarify if it was 10 ads per character or 10 ads in total. So I then clarified for them that it was 10 ads per character. That h aving been done, I had to of course let everyone know as it hadn't been clear enough in the beginning.

All my sites have always had an advertising incentive, and I've been roleplaying for some 18 odd years. I apologize that it wasn't made clear right off the get go, and will correct that moving forward for future Activity Checks.

As for 10 ads being a ridiculous amount for 50 exp, I have to strongly disagree. 10 ads basically gets you a free life skill. Increase that to 10 exp per add, and we're giving away a free combat ability. It makes things too easy, too much of a 'cheat'. We're not forcing anyone to do the advertisements, it's something you need to want to do. If you don't want to do more than 10, then that's totally fine! Just chose which character you would like the reward on and that's that. If you don't want to do any? That's fine too! this is free exp we're handing out, we could just not give out any reward or advertising incentive if it's going to cause issue.

To finish, the advertizing incentive on my alternate site has members doing this:


Great for the site, but imagine giving 10 exp per advertisement? He would have racked up 500 exp for doing NOTHING in character. This exp is meant to be as a little thank you, not as a significant boost to your characters as we want you to be able to develop them more naturally through the RP you write.

Adding to that, what AIM said is very accurate. If we just give the exp across the board, then it just causes people to create more characters to earn more exp, which increases the likelyhood of someone somewhere playing the system (converting their free exp into EP then using it for other characters, etc etc).

I assure you that none of this was done with any ill intent, and I apologize that it has sent you into a fury. I will be more cautious with these clarifications in the future.

No. Literally not how this works. EXP is not transferable outside of starter packs, so if you have 4 characters, each one, individually, earns 50 xp from this. That exp is stick to them permanently (outside of starter packs which shouldn't be abused for loopholes). Having more characters does not earn you more exp as a whole, it just means each character is treated fairly. That exp can't be pooled on one character to empower them, so having more characters all getting 50 xp dosn't give you more it just means... all your characters are kept equal, and you don't have to choose which of them is a priority. Personally this is why i hate when I have to choose wich of my characters goes into an event, cause i have to decide which of my characters is a bigger priority to progress. If the rewards were transferable i'd understand, but they aren't, so this rings of a false argument of 'being fair'. If your just punishing people for having more characters by making it harder for them to maintain all of their relevancy in terms of power level.




Okay so. I'm not too sure what you're displaying here? Did they HAVE to do 50 or did they choose to for rewards? Either way, this is YOUR site. If its the minimum there, your argument feels like 'consider yourself lucky', which is always a frustrating argument. This is your site. You set the rules. Whether you make it harder or easier is your own decision. There's no reason to compare.

On the other hand if they did that by choice... fine? Whatever system allows them to do that, he went the extra mile, that hard work is his, and you chose not to have that system. Entirely fine. It just feels like there was no reason to bring him up.



Its also about 5% of a B rank. Or half a decent thread for most people I rp with. A life skill may also be unwanted by most people. I only even started getting them cause my characters are 'settled' combat wise ALL THE WAY at 8000 exp total. And even then im justifying it to myself as letting other people catch up before i start saving for A rank. 50 exp is a nice, healthy chunk, but you have the opportunity to be generous, and your just flat saying no. If your argument is "Your getting more exp", technicaly, maybe, but as stated above its character locked, so it's just fair to those who have more characters to help them keep all their characters 'level'.

Oh and while i remember-



No. Again just a flat no. It costs 2 ep per character. To put it in terms already put here, thats 5-10 activity checks worth of exp PER new character you want, with no exp spent on your characters. 50 posts of 1000 words long, with again, none of tha tput back into your original character to gain more. You CAN have as many as you want, but it is in no way an easy thing to achieve.



Im gonna admit... my thoughts aren't the most coherent. Im british. it's 10 pm after a long work day and i just spend 2 hours minding my siblings and putting them to bed, but ultimately people feel ripped off, cause yes, it wasn't communicated well and as stated, if you can use the same 3 threads, why not the same 10 affiliates across all your characters.

I appreciate the response, Crimson. Same with everyone else who has responded, thank you for adding your opinions.

I agree a lot with Yumi and J's opinions here, though I feel I have to add one thing from myself. The fact that this wasn't made clear up front you've apologized for and I accept that apology, however I don't think you're grasping just how insulting it sounds to be told "You didn't do enough voluntary effort, sorry." and then to be shown someone who did 50 of these ads like "Look, see what they did? Isn't that special?"

To borrow a phrase from David Mitchelle: "It's like showing a very tired mason a whole cathedral."

My point doesn't really align with the discussion about characters or EXP or whatever, my concern is more just how insulting it is to give away your time to do something for a site and then get told you didn't do enough. To give an analogy, it feels like I've give some money to charity, gotten a keychain in return, a little keepsake, then had that keychain taken away from me, cut into three pieces and then told "Sorry, if you want the other two pieces, that'll be three times the price."

Can you see why this seems so ludicrous? Can you see why I'm so pissed off?

Not only is it a lot of mind-numbing, boring work for 50 EXP, which as Crim pointed out is enough for a Life Skill even though technically Life Skills are, or at least feel like, 100% optional content but also the fact that you linked a page from another site basically saying "Look, they did it, it's not hard." just adds so much fuel to the fire.

As such, I'm sad to say I feel like your response to this situation fails to clear up anything and only seems to rub salt in the wound. I respect the fact that you apologized but it feels more like an apology that I got upset, more than an apology for the issue at hand.

I'm distracted by extreme offline difficulties right now, so I won't be able to respond with a big wall addressing each and every point or any of that. Forgive me.

First off, I want to point out that my first reaction to the announcement was not of approval. Even just skimming it (only a sentence helps with that) showed me that it is, in plain terms, Not Good. Advertising is not an easy thing to do, particularly when you're competing with other people; finding sites which have not been advertised on can be difficult, and tends to shrink with every activity check. And then there are instances of accidentally posting twice on the same site, which can sometimes result in complaints from the site that we've advertised on. Considering that this announcement came right after such a site complained and warned us, calling it poorly timed is understatement.

As for it itself... I have been roleplaying for at least 11 years, and I have seen these advertising incentives before. I haven't spared the time for them, partly because I didn't know how to advertise. I support the idea of such incentives despite that, but at the same time... 50 exp for one character? That is just horrendously low. It is a free life skill, which is nothing more than flavor. This is not an award worth the effort, not for one single character, and it's really a thank you at all to someone that has multiple characters.

 There's so many things wrong with all this I wouldn't even know where to begin. Thankfully, most of it has already been addressed and i see no need to just keep beating the subject to death. I wholeheartedly disagree with mass ad campaigns the way this site seems to do it, which only encourages spamming. You'd be better off rewarding members with 10 XP a month for creating a single ad, preventing adfests like this one and allowing every member their fair chance. My main issue with your argument is this:



 This seems to have been a general misunderstanding, people who understood the way you expected it to work have been minimal at best. Creating ads takes time and effort, you have to actually look for sites, make sure they qualify as "active", and then you have to read their advertisment rules and often sift through pages of recent ads just to make sure nobody has recently placed another there. It takes too much effort for the person in charge to simply come along and say "sorry, that was a mistake, you actually need to make 10 more for every other character"

Anybody who went to these lengths and recieved such a response has every right to feel furious. If 50 XP really is as meaningless as a single life skill, then receiving that as compensation seems like a fair tradeoff, instead of having their rewards denied on technicalities.

 You're the owner of the site, so own up for your mistake.