How do you feel about this?

[Other Space Kaiden]

[member="Ignus"]

Just like giving a passive aggressive, one sentence response to a serious discussion? My good sir, you can't begin to pull the opinion card and the stupid card after such action!


Anyway, moving on from that soon to be rage battle.


[member="Tefka"]

I still don't know about removing it from master, but I think the knight rank is a good thing. See where it goes, maybe I'll be proven wrong. Won't be the first time.

For now, I give support!

 

[Lethia Morow]

[member="Ignus"]

There are Masters who I could've beaten handily at, say, Combat, on day two of my chaos experience.
Because they just aren't great RPers.

If you were allowed to stick Master on any ol' character, it wouldn't make that much of a difference to me.
Because I don't care what the rank is.
I care more about the person wearing it.

 

[Grrwunhoooll Agaburry]

@Ignus

Im not sure what old days mean but Master rank doesnt really have a meaning either. Its a rank tag after all. Does not give a character more power to say just makes them accepted and even then that doesnt always happen how people want it too.

#IThinkCallingSomeoneABadRPerIsDumbToo

 

[Boethiah]

Welp, there goes the neighborhood.

Can I ask you why this is such a big issue? Like, in your words why do you think this is detrimental to roleplay?

I just don't see how it's going to cause bad things to happen.

 

[Tefka]

wrote a character that wasn't totally godmode, and you could be respected to not godmode with the rank of Master.

I love pvp.

I love roleplaying NFUs.

I too have been roleplaying for a long time.

And I've seen respected Masters godmode. Who didn't understand the Force. Others who were reviled for their behavior OOC. All at places where the rank was respected and was supposed to "mean something". The rank, regardless of how you obtain it - whether it be gifted to you from on high or obtained through gratuitous amounts of grinding/struggle - the rank has never been the problem.

It's always been a people problem, no matter what forum, no matter the rules.

The only difference that I have observed is, like many have said, more strict forums that pour more focus/grind into the rank have problems with corruption/elitism. To climb the ladder, you gotta "know somebody" if you catch my drift.

 

[Boethiah]

I had my master vote unanimously denied if I recall correctly.

 

[Judas of Vahl]

#CallingSomeoneElitistIsAsDumbAsCallingSomeoneAFascistJustForDisagreeingWithYou

 

[Kenrath]

I'm having trouble understanding how you fail to understand that I'm not referring to Chaos when I say I've been around for ages. It's astounding.

Around for ages as in I've been RPing since 2000. Literally the year 2000. On forums other than Chaos. Back then, earning the rank of Master actually meant something. It meant you exhibited a keen understanding of the Force, wrote a character that wasn't totally godmode, and you could be respected to not godmode with the rank of Master. It also meant you were a reasonable writer with focus on story instead of just "My character can beat your character because I'm a Master and you aren't, hur hur."

But now we just hand out Knight rank like candy. Next it will be Master rank.

I realize you are not referring to Chaos. You are not referring to Chaos in a Chaos discussion that applies to a Chaos topic and speaking as if you have a wealth of experience at Chaos. Hence why both Tefka and I are good naturally giving you a little grief about it.

Sure back in mid 2014 from my own observations and experiences here at Chaos it was a little more difficult for the majority of us to obtain Knight. However there were still a number of people getting Knight with blazing speed and ability. It is not something I have every really agreed with but never really made a public fuss about.

However as in my first post in this thread I simply "voted" no to the idea.


#exitthread

 

[Kamon's OOC]

[member="Ignus"]

There are Masters who I could've beaten handily at, say, Combat, on day two of my chaos experience.
Because they just aren't great RPers.

If you were allowed to stick Master on any ol' character, it wouldn't make that much of a difference to me.
Because I don't care what the rank is.
I care more about the person wearing it.

You've proven my point. It has no meaning anymore. That's the problem.

@Ignus

Im not sure what old days mean but Master rank doesnt really have a meaning either. Its a rank tag after all. Does not give a character more power to say just makes them accepted and even then that doesnt always happen how people want it too.

#IThinkCallingSomeoneABadRPerIsDumbToo

I didn't call someone a bad RPer, I made a generalization.

Can I ask you why this is such a big issue? Like, in your words why do you think this is detrimental to roleplay?

I just don't see how it's going to cause bad things to happen.

Take too long to explain and it's almost 11:30 and I have work at 8am.

I love pvp.

I love roleplaying NFUs.

I too have been roleplaying for a long time.

And I've seen respected Masters godmode. Who didn't understand the Force. Others who were reviled for their behavior OOC. All at places where the rank was respected and was supposed to "mean something". The rank, regardless of how you obtain it - whether it be gifted to you from on high or obtained through gratuitous amounts of grinding/struggle - the rank has never been the problem.

It's always been a people problem, no matter what forum, no matter the rules.

The only difference that I have observed is, like many have said, more strict forums that pour more focus/grind into the rank have problems with corruption/elitism. To climb the ladder, you gotta "know somebody" if you catch my drift.

I get that. If you told me you wanted to get rid of master's voting for master, I might be alright with that as long as staff still had to review the person. I've experienced the favoritism elsewhere too. But here we are, at a crossroads of rank being useless (I mean, if anyone can have it, why have them at all?) or the potential to allow it to have meaning, and you're staring down the path to uselessness rather than the path of Star Wars. There weren't a million Master's in the Star Wars universe. Most people died as a Knight if they even made it through the trials. It seems to me that the board is taking a turn for less of a Star Wars board to "We Want To Be Super Inclusive Best Friends And Maybe Have Lightsabers" Board.

 

[Boethiah]

Side note: Is this just going to be a discussion, or will a poll be added too? I know it's a staff decision, but frankly an "in favour" or "against" selection would be nice to gauge the collective standpoint.

 

[Tefka]

I understand many of you who disagree with this proposal view this as a devaluing of the respect of the rank, and I respect your opinions on it. And there's nothing to say that this can't be reversed in the future if it all goes to hell.

There is no malice behind this proposal. Most of ya'll know how I feel about transparency and corruption and elitism, etc. We've crossed proverbial oceans to excise that kind of stuff here, because I watched a previous community I attended suffer from it first hand.

This is a good step in moving forward to combat it, as well as to combat the community overhead I've promised. Many people, when they come here, are surprised character bios aren't judged. That's not how the communities of yesteryear did things - yet an overwhelming majority of people enjoy it now.

Many people, when they come here, are surprised you can just create a faction at the drop of a dime. That's not how the communities of yesteryear did things - yet an overwhelming majority of people enjoy it now.

This isn't exactly the Wild West. We have rules, and we have expectations. But we also have a lot of freedom. And I view this as yet another I can give to the community while also achieving many other goals.

I view it as a win/win for everyone.

 

[John Ash]

My feelings on this issue is that the rules need to be tweeked more than they need to be removed for knight rank. As most have said, knight rank currently has little value to it. This is due to a mixture of reasons, and I feel that one of them is that the acolyte/apprentice/padawan rank basically offers the same perks as a knight in how it is generally handled ICly. I know many people feel that the community will do plenty of self regulation, which there is much that is true in this opinion, but I have seen too many "godawans" run around just performing on the level of a knight/weaker master and yet nothing is really done to correct this behavior. If anything they are often given knight rank as if it is a reward which just encourages their behavior further to be continued. That is not healthy for the rank system nor for the site as a whole in my opinion.

The other issue is how it currently is based more on counting either posts or threads involved in. That is not such a bad thing if the quality of each posts in good enough but this system gets exploited by the same types that tend to fit that "godawan" type from before. There are plenty who do short posts that rarely extend past two paragraphs at most for the threads they get involved in which causes their post count to sky rocket. They also tend to spend a lot of time in the OOC forums making posts there that also inflate their post count. They will quickly find themselves with a large number of posts under their belt but very little actual content to their character. This further disrupts the system and makes the division between knight and padawan ranks to be rather minor. This is not fair to the people exploiting the system nor to the rest of us dealing with people being rewarded for these terrible posting habits.

While there are many reasons I can think of to allow someone to skip right to knight rank, I feel it would be better to adjust the current system rather than just remove it altogether. If it could address these previously stated issues of exploiting how things are now that diminish the way people view the difference between padawan and knight rank then that would be the best middle ground. I do get that there is a campaign to try to streamline many of the more restrictive rules that hinder RP on the site right now, which I appreciate greatly with the factory changes as a prime example, but this aspect of the rules I feel does more to foster RP than it does to truly hinder it. It is just that it could do a better job about it if it got some attention.

 

[Onith Trill]

But here we are, at a crossroads of rank being useless (I mean, if anyone can have it, why have them at all?)

Rank is nothing but an element with which to tell stories. This is not a game, and having a rank does not mean that a writer possesses +10 responsibility or +8 writing skill. Perhaps you want to play a teacher of the Force. You're a new writer and you don't have experience. Does that mean you don't deserve to write a teacher because you haven't been doing it for however years with whoever people?

 

[Tefka]

will a poll be added too

Polls can be manipulated, I'd rather discuss it and just gauge your interest while Staff votes. Trust me, they're emulating a very similar divisive discussion.

 

[Boethiah]

Got it.

 

[Grrwunhoooll Agaburry]

Rank tags = Cosmetics.

Their not a need when it comes to RP. SWRP:Chaos spoils us writers. I used to RP on forums that didn't even have pictures.

 

[Judas of Vahl]

Just like giving a passive aggressive, one sentence response to a serious discussion? My good sir, you can't begin to pull the opinion card and the stupid card after such action!

 

[Lark]

As someone who's really only been active here for about a month or two, here's my post-exam pre-Spanish composition late night Monster energy enhanced take on things.

I think it Abyss said it best when he said the rank of Knight isn't valued enough. I personally think that training threads are actually a great way to introduce and ease people into things, and those threads are where I've met the majority of people I've been roleplaying with. I feel that skipping from Padawan straight to Knight disrupts the fun of things. Perhaps I'm in the minority that has enjoyed building a character from scratch and have him go through different arcs and journeys. I realize there will still be people who choose to start from the bottom, but that's my take on that aspect. I like that satisfaction of progressing, I don't want to skip steps in the story of a character I've become so attached to. I also have to disagree that Rank Titles are meaningless. I see them as a sign of how far someone has come, as an indicator of what they can do.

I'm reminded of the Oprah meme. "You're a Master, you're a Master, everyone is a Master!" That just seems a bit ridiculous. Knight/Master is something that should be earned.

Anyways, that's my take on things. Sorry if my thoughts seem jumbled together, I'm probably not in the right mindset to make a post like this.

 

[Kamon's OOC]

Lord/Master is more than a rank tag, @Saverok. I have not once in this thread been talking about rank tags, but the actual rank itself.

This is not a game

Yes it is, actually. It's a bulletin board based RPG.

 

[4ND-R0]

In my experience, I have this much to say. I find the rules both aggravating yet necessary. Think of it like this. The characters who are in the Witch class line. To my knowledge, there are few witch elder characters or someone of that knowledge level to take a Witch apprentice and train them to the Knight level. In my case, this aspect is frustrating.

Yet, how it currently stands, it allows for there to be a character arc. A young, meek student grows into a stronger adherent to the Force. It's a pillar of story telling.