Thoughts on Community Activities

[Hujisaka Natsumi]

Hey,

Since you guys voiced interest in us organising community activities for everyone to have fun with every once in a while, I'm opening a thread to expand on the idea. Though it was approved by the entire staff at your request, how we'll go about it is still rather vague so we're waiting on your input to develop the idea a bit further.

What we're aiming for are thoughts on how often we should organise these events, what types of activities we should partake in (whether they be games, visual novels, anime, etc.) as well as how we should communicate while the event is going on (normal chatbox, special chatbox, TeamSpeak, etc.).

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That being said, please keep in mind that your requests should firstly allow anyone to take part in the activity; shows or games that require previous knowledge of the universe (such as second seasons, game sequels, etc.) are a no-go unless everyone approves of it as we'd rather make sure any person can take part of the events without catering to a specific fanbase.

Secondly, your suggestion should be easily accessed by anyone regardless of their location in the world. Download or streaming that becomes complicated once we leave your territory (hello, Funimation...) shouldn't be considered as reasonable, as people shouldn't have to go through endangered security for the sake of participating in an event (I'm mostly thinking about the whole deal behind Hola! VPN).

Thirdly, unless you're willing to blow an entire wallet on every participant (which you shouldn't do), everything should remain free. Not everyone will want to spend money for an event regardless of how “cheap” it is and it's their right to do so without being excluded.

And finally, though they'll be occurring only every once in a while when we see fit, please make sure that people who don't have as much time as others get a chance to pitch in on their favoured date for the event considering timezones and schedules. Don't plan an event that's to occur in three days when others might have been caught up with work during that specific time period and didn't get to weigh in; that's not really fair.

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Now then, feel free to pitch in any ideas and suggestions you have on how we should go about organising these communities events! Once we settle how they'll be organised after hearing back from everyone, we'll be able to move onto planning our community events.

[Zuisho Ryuketsu]

Though i don't have a suggestion on a specific game, or what have you. I do think that a sort of regular feel could be put forward. Sort a once every month - to three month. Maybe for a set day or a week. The event could be selected via Strawpoll which i believe is available for all places. (Link provided at the end of the reply).

This way people can vote on the event they wish, if it's something with multiple things. There is also a way for them to choose something they prefer. That way everyone gets a say. It could be used for the time, and the game as well. Anyways, i just thought i'd give out my suggestion. And probably go silent and lurk again~.

Strawpoll Link

[Himegami Aisa]

Hm, what to suggest, what to suggest... I'd suggest we enjoy Tsukihime together, but it doesn't have the equivalent of Fate/Stay Night's Realta Nua, and I don't everyone would be up for reading a visual novel together. Could be wrong though.

It's a shame that since it'd be a lot easier to watch that as a group, but oh well.

Spoiler:

We could play Tera Online. It's an MMORPG with a pretty great combat system. It requires a decent PC, though.

There's also Elsword; we already have a guild there, after all. It wouldn't take much to get the newbies set up, they have a guild hall there now, so we have a place to meet up, and several of us higher level accounts we could use to guide the new guys.

Ah, and there's always the option of a three hour Fate/Grand Order grind fest... Hehe, that'd be fun.

As for anime, maybe we could watch Monogatari Series? It's just the first one that comes to mind, but it's a good show, so... On the other hand, we are an A Certain Magical Index forum, so we could watch A Certain Magical Index as well.

This one is more of a future suggestion, but Heavy Object (an anime adaptation of another work by Kamachi Kazuma, the author of A Certain Magical Index) is airing October 3, 2015 this fall, so a weekly, bi-weekly, or whatever get together to watch that as it airs could be fun, too.

I'm kind of tempted to suggest Phantasy Star Online 2, but that's just because I'm downloading right this moment, so I don't even know if it's that good, and there's the file size, too... I guess I'll come to back to this later.

Coming back to anime, we could watch (or we-watch, for those that already have) Durarara, since it seems that a lot of people have an interest in it. Or perhaps Baccano, since it's by the same author.

It could be fun to watch Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya, too. People not familiar with the Fate series might miss a few jokes and references, but overall I don't think it really requires people to have watched or read Fate/Stay Night for them to enjoy it.

I'm also half-tempted to suggest we play Touhou together, but I can't really see how that would work out...

We could also have a game night. And by game, I'm speaking about the traditional sort of game night where you break out the Monopoly board and stuff. Koyoko and them had fun with that the other day, though I couldn't take part since my Wi-Fi was acting up, so I think doing it again in a more organized fashion might be fun.

Mabinogi is another MMORPG that might be fun. It has a rather unique game system, and is definitely enjoyable, though it might not be to the taste of some people. Well, I can't lose anything (except some of my pride) by throwing it out there, so.

Also, regarding Zuisho's suggestion about Strawpoll, I agree. It'd be best to use that. We do have the forum's built in polls, but those aren't very flexible at all (at least in my experience, anyway) so I think it'd probably be best to use an outside resource.

[Kumokawa Maria]

So, I was thinking we could have like a community-wide Pokemon tournament. Now, I know what you're thinking. But Kohaku, I don't have a Pokemon game!

Not a problem. I have a solution for that little gripe of yours. Introducing Pokemon Showdown! This is basically a battle simulator which allows you to play Pokemon battles in various formats without having to make you go through the legwork of making a competitive team. You can generate whatever Pokemon you need with whatever IVs, EVs, abilities, moves, etc. you need for use in the simulator and store those teams in your account. Now, I know what you're going to say next. Some of you likely have zero experience team building or anything. That's where a nifty feature called Random Battles comes in. In this format, the server will generate a random team for you and your opponent and you will battle with those teams.

So yeah. Random Battle Tourneys. Think about it~

[Sir Alexander Beathen]

I don't exactly have any appetite in playing any games, or anything anime releated since I do those stuff elsewhere and I escape that by coming here.

However I suggest some more incoperation with the forum plot of how things are going, or something like the Omake which actually becomes canon. I would support those type of ideas.

[Hujisaka Natsumi]

However I suggest some more incoperation with the forum plot of how things are going, or something like the Omake which actually becomes canon. I would support those type of ideas.

Well, internal forum activities are something else entirely that we do hold every once in a while. The point of this is actually to step away from the Omake type of activities where people have to manage the thread and make sure they post, etc, to allow people to just have fun rather than be stressed by whatever they might dislike in the omakes.

It's also more welcoming for the people who don't have time (or our permission) for an additional thread, like our staff and our lesser active members, as well as those who don't really want to just join an Omake for whatever reason they have the right to have.

Regarding what you said, however, folding in Omake stories with our canon doesn't sound that feasible as the entire premise of Omakes is people getting to do what they want without canon limitations. If we were to actually start making them canon then it would break a lot than just timeline or whatever and would just be hell to manage for everyone on the forum.

It /could/ work for future Omakes if we started severely moderating them, but I feel it'd eat away at the spirit of the Omakes.

[Sir Alexander Beathen]

I don't mean something as crazy as love triangles to enter the main story line. What I mean is allow us to create an arc, which would be considered canon.

I hear you guys have completely original arcs in the planning or intend too. Correct me if im wrong.

But why not allow a process which is similar to how the Omake came about. but with more detail obviously allowing the members of this community to create a main arc. This would make members more engaged into the overall process. There may be problems incorperating in the overall story, sure, but there are many arcs in the index arcs which didn't focus on the overall picture of what was looming ahead. But served as a distraction so those dark forces could work there magic behind the seems.

To solve that you can give us the task of creating an arc, which incorporates a story point or two given by the staff members which would allow the main objective to fall into the next arc. For example those story points could lead into world war three, but the prelude to how that occurs will be completely up to the member and we vote on the best option.

Thats what I mean, not something like Love triangles.... I don't want that I think Alex died at the end.

[Jack Nightingale]

Regarding how the event should be organized, communication is probably an issue that'll have to be sorted out after we choose an activity. Since depending on what we do, one mode of communication or another might be superior or altogether unsuitable.

And in regards to frequency, I agree with Zuisho. Making it a semi-regular thing would be best, since otherwise it might end up as 'that cool thing we did once' or 'that one thing we do every once in a while'. Once a month sounds like a decent enough rest time, but depending on how the first one turns out, perhaps doing it bi-weekly would be possible too.

[Sir Alexander Beathen]

Why not Guild Wars 2? It's currently free as of the recent expansion announcement, you can play the base version for free which is basically a massive MMORPG and depending how you see it this can be really fun. Playing these type of games are great with others and you can basically roleplay also your own character. There is no faction limitations so you can be any race and play with each other. It's diversed and many fun events, your level also scale to the current zone so even if you have a high level character you can play with others.

And again the base game is now free to download and play.

[Hujisaka Natsumi]

A little note to those who are hesitant to post for any reasons including fear of being redundant with what others said: Speak up anyway!

I'm still looking for inputs from everyone's part and it's even better if you state whether you agree with previous ideas or not, so don't fear being redundant as reaching an agreement is the point of the whole thing, yes?

[Sogiita Gunha]

I'm kind of tempted to suggest Phantasy Star Online 2, but that's just because I'm downloading right this moment, so I don't even know if it's that good, and there's the file size, too... I guess I'll come to back to this later.

Huh.

Spoiler:

I'd suggest more sandbox-type games if you wanna talk games though; PSO2 is like 8gbs and is blocked for people in Southeast Asia (unless you have a proxy like me)

I wouldn't suggest Minecraft because of the natural creative vs survival argument that would occur, and the only other sandbox I know with multiplayer is Trove.

Also I don't like pokeman tournaments :<

[Yamaguchi Hiromi]

I share Jack's idea of watching an anime that has a chance to be to everyone's liking. I agree with his suggestions too for the same reasons that he mentioned. Heavy Object and Baccano would be a good choice.

For android games, instead of Fate/Grand Order, I suggest a To Aru game, either Struggle Battle or Puzzdex, in case some members might not be familiar with/don't like fate universe.

As much as I would like to suggest reading Light Novels... I have no idea how that would work out: reading + talking? xD Is that possible?

The idea of playing Elsword seems nice too. Specially hearing that you already have a guild there? It means a guild for the forum members right? If yes then that's cool!

As the initial question was about organisation, I will give my opinion about this too. I personally think once a month or once every two weeks is the best option. That way, it it gives chance to busy members to participate in at least few of them if they skipped some others because of their schedule, but it also won't get in the way of the forum activity itself like if it was more frequent.

Also, I have a question. I didn't understand how we are going to talk exactly. With what software? Using text or voice? etc...

I have to mention though that I won't be participating in all of them, specially during school year I imagine I won't have enough time for them. But I will try to participate whenever I can, if it coincides with a holiday or a day off or something.

[Matsuma Yugoro]

As far as potential gaming goes, I would like a situation in which we can all party up and adventure together for a few hours. Unfortunately, most adventure games online are big, and the good ones have high requirements, etc. PSO2 would be good, though it'd be a get-together-and-chat with avatars, due to non-massive party size maximums. This goes for all the adventure games as well.

As far as watching anime goes, any anime that has action as a recurring and important thing is alright with me. As far as how? Well... I said earlier on the chatbox, but I'll post it here. Just set a mean time (GMT/UCT), everyone syncs schedules according to their time zone. We gather all at once at a chat of some sort, skype (for voice), the site chatbox (for text), whatever. We link the anime episode to all present, maybe just state the anime and episode and everyone finds one available to them. The organizer says go, everyone watches and comments. We move episodes at the same time, as quickly as our slowest watcher and/or finder. And all in all hope it goes smoothely.

I can see reading the novels, if everyone has access to a copy and we all use voice chat on Skype, and take turns reading parts of chapters. It'd be pretty awk if we enforced an everyone reads rule, rotating volunteers would be best. Also the option to vote off readers who are confident but too slow should probably be a thing, after their read of course. It won't be audiobook quality, but it'd be cool, I think. Obviously not everyone would need to have voice chat, but like anyone who wants to volunteer should have voice chat, obviously. People without voice chat can still have a fun time following along with the story.

[Hujisaka Natsumi]

I've gathered some interest here so I'll be moving onto the planning phase of it all. The thread will remain open for whoever wants to pitch in last-minute, though.

Now then, time to reply to the suggestions! First things first, I've already decided on what we'll be using to communicate as it offers both voice chat and text chat, as well as some other nifty features Skype and others lack. Look forward to the discovery.

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Frequency of activities: I guess once or twice a month can work, yeah. Excluding the occasional exceptions where we might be too busy to organise events, of course.

Strawpoll: It's interesting so I'll see how we can incorporate this, though I was kind of aiming for a more "explain your reasoning" approach for suggestion submission, so I'll need to fold that in since it could be quite messy otherwise.

Tsukihime: Go away, Jack. [= This suggestion doesn't belong in this thread.]

Fate/Stay Night Material: Go away, Jack. [= This suggestion doesn't belong in this thread.]

TERA: Hmm... MMORPGs are usually the go-to for group activities, yes, but I think TERA is a bit overkilll in terms of PC capacity. Again, I'd prefer something that is readily accessible over something that will take 12 hours to download on the most unfortunate internet connections of the forum members and kill their PCs along with it, lol.

MMORPGs in general: The usual go-to of group activities, so please keep those ideas for when I'll be taking input on what we'll do next and make sure it's something that can be easily installed and played.

Monopoly: ...The intent of these activities is bringing the community together. Not rip it apart.

Boardgames: Why not.

Pokemon Tournament: Doesn't really belong in this thread since it's a suggestion, but wynaut. It's quite appealing to those who suffer from Pokemon Nostalgia anyway so it's as good as any other suggestion. No, Hyokas, you won't be forced in ACAU's Pokemon Tournament, worry not.

Anime: Sounds fair.

Volunteers reading LNs out loud: Genius idea, Yugoro. I hadn't thought of that way to allow people to read LNs together. This could also potentially work with VNs with a bit more organisation.

[Yamaguchi Hiromi]

I have another suggestion!
I was thinking, why do we not make a time capsule?

We each write a letter to each of the other members, and then we burry what we received where we each live. Then after a few years we meet online again and we open those letters and we read them to each other.

How many years? I would say 10 years? Or is that a lot? 5 years? What do you suggest?

How do we send the letters? While sending them by mail and writing them with our handwriting is the best, it might be hard to do, so we can type them and send them in PM or something, and then each of us prints the letters they got without reading them

So what do you think of the idea guys? xD

[Himegami Aisa]

By golly, I never thought I'd see the day. Someone actually remembered the community activities? And posted in it, at that? I'd assumed no one remembered, and that no one would remember until I finally remembered when I wasn't sitting in class hours away from being able to remind anyone else!

Just regarding the time, I'd say yes, ten years is a lot. A whole, whole lot. Even five might be too much. Three would be the practical max, and one would probably be ideal.

Moving onto the idea itself, wow. Never considered something like that. There are various issues with it, unfortunately. Mailing would require the dissemination of our addresses (or the acquiring of a PO box at a post office, however that works), so that's almost certainly a no go. And as for printing and emailing, while that is indeed a significantly more viable solution, there's the issue of how one can avoid looking at the document they print. And about burying it, I'm sure at least a few members may not have a good place to do so, and it's likely that a good portion of our members won't be living anywhere near where they buried it when the time comes to open them.

And beyond that, while this issue is somewhat more anecdotal, there's the problem of what to write. Story ideas? Asking if Li ever returned? Wondering if Arc 3 or False Error ever finished, and then going "Just kidding. No way that happened, lol"? A personal letter to the forum? Unless we can come up with some kind of topic, I foresee much writing block plaguing the future of this idea.

...By the way, for remembering this, you're a freaking angel, Hiromin. Go you.

[Tougane Masaru]

Since Werewolf (or something, whatever it is called) is popular among forums (at least where I have seen), I'll just leave this here if you people want to play among yourselves..... You can host a lobby or create a lobby to join a party, I guess .... But it doesn't really seem like something that promotes reconciliation.

Town Of Salem

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Description: Town of Salem is a browser-based game that challenges players on their ability to convincingly lie as well as detect when other players are lying. The game ranges from 7 to 15 players. These players are randomly divided into alignments – Town, Mafia, Serial Killers, Arsonists and Neutrals. If you are a Town member (the good guys) you must track down the Mafia and other villains before they kill you. The catch? You don’t know who is a Town member and who is a villain. If you are an evil role, such as a Serial Killer, you secretly murder town members in the veil of night and try to avoid getting caught.

[Hayama Kenji]

Hi. Don't know how much this is being considered still.

1) How about watching someone stream a game? I myself like watching someone play a game for the first time, and I usually stream crap I do for others.

2) Also, though I hear not many are a fan of dice here, what about a Pathfinder campaign?

3) As for board games, there's a really awesome game on Steam called "Tabletop Simulator" where I regularly beat Haze and Natsuki in Candy Land.

Let me know of any interest, I'm willing to host any of the above suggestions. Do keep in mind I am Eastern Standard Timezone, so planning around everyone's schedules might prove to be tough.

[Vita Vesta Caesar]

Ah~ It's kind of fallen under everyone's radar. That is to say, thanks to this and that, people forgot about it... Well, it's hardly been called off or anything, though. People remember it every now and then and come up with ideas and such, so it's not as if it's dead either. (Though the fact that no one has mentioned this in the box or responded to it after nearly a week may very well give you cause to think I'm mistaken. (；一_一))

1) Eh, I'm not really into that sort of stuff. Well, if it's one of us doing the streaming that'd be a different story, and others might be more interested.

2) From past conversations on the subject, it's less that people aren't fans of it, and more that they just have zero experience. There's interest on several people's part (including mine), but you'll have to help us along and teach us the basics. Teach Us, Aniki-sensei~!

3) People'd have to buy that, so unless we have a significant number of people here who already own it, that's probably not the best option.

[Erin Lightheart]

Pathfinder sounds fun, though I'd probably be interested either in a light campaign with a focus on story, or something not too serious, as i'm more of a roleplayer than a rollplayer.

As for games that all of us could theoretically play without issue or having to purchase anything, there's always "boardgame online", but it would likely require to be on non-mobile browsers to play. I'd still recommend it, however.

[Hakusho Tsuru]

Personally, I'm always down for a tabletop RPG. Just so long as no one minds me doing the first thing that comes to mind most of the time, and that's usually something pretty stupid. The hard part would be finding someone willing to GM.

[Mugino Shizuri]

I guess some might know that I'm the issue child in regards to community activities, but I will just voice my own thoughts here.

1) I don't really enjoy streamers at all. Especially the ones streaming in English. Dunno, but I hardly even follow any English Let's Play channels, because it feels weird to me. Strange things, eh.

2) Hmm, wouldn't it be kind of strange to do a RP as a community activity on a RP board? To me at least it'd feel quite out of place, since it'd basically be more RPing on top of RPing. And if not for that I'm simply gonna bring forth the issue that this is a pretty time intensive activity, meaning it'd be a mess to deal with in context of time zones. You could do only short sessions, or you exclude those that live in a different time zone from you. Thus, unless the European members don't mind being left out when the Americans do it or vice versa, I'd say it'd be bad.

Thanks for the attention.

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