[Autumn]

To expand a bit on my previous statement, so that its crystal clear, the existence of people sitting around in their own social groups chatting, or roleplaying in houses does not currently subtract from the lack of roleplay I find being out in the public eye, as most people end up being very receptive to a simple hello or are capable of holding a conversation even if its meaningless square boasting or wall sitting at the arena, I could see why people wouldn't find that quite as engaging either so those people aren't even a demographic worth preaching to when it comes to areas such as the Badlands Arena or Cellsvich. Simply put some people just don't like those areas and that's completely fine, there are more than enough people to engage with who are.

Groups (More necessarily should not be called cliques as those do exist but not as people currently state they do) are not currently taking away from active roleplay given generally where people roleplay ends up being where who is active at the time, which rides on the coat tails of the audience is more assertive with where they roleplay. Which usually ends up in those bar areas or recreational facilities end up being.

More specifically some people end up going to an excruciating degree to find a reason as to why their character wouldn't be at a location instead of why they would be there, to a fault I might add since I do that heavily myself and it ended up impacting me greatly as an individual, and I still do as there's no reason why my teenaged mechanation would enter a bar, there's no reason why my Law's End gang member would enter a trading company and so forth.

One message I would like to send forth to more people that ended up helping me a lot in actually finding more roleplay is just to be a lot more assertive with yourself potentially, and try to limit how many characters you'd like to play, more people are willing to interact with you given some form of meaningful investment to be made, trying to take a bit more initiative is how I mingled with a few more people.

[Lewdcifer]

DISCLAIMER: I AM GENERALIZING AND I AM BY NO MEANS TARGETING ANYONE SPECIFIC.

I think that Sigrogana Legend 2 has been growing very, very stale overtime. Maybe a bit of hyperbole in my statement, but that is how I feel about it.

Sigrogana Legends 2 follows a very repetitive process of coming up with a character concept, making the character, grinding it to level 60 and obtaining gear to finish that character's build, then trying to find role play. For most, it is only a matter of time before they ultimately lose motivation or gain motivation for other projects and move on to them, instead of continuing on with that project -- rinse and repeat.

I am guilty of this, but it is a problem because it makes it feel as if those characters are just ephemeral, someone that will eventually not appear anymore, and this in turn makes role play experiences more shallow in perspective.

The other problem is finding role play. Because of the above, it is harder to find role play because people usually seek someone their character knows, and generate role play from there.
Besides this, there has been a reduced interest in publicly accessible areas, which is blatantly noticeable when you compare the player count to those present in public areas.

Finding roleplay or making things progress on that front, tends to be difficult, because a significant amount of the community tends to be OOC or mainly reactive.

Regarding the OoC part: The OoC corner is and has always been a publicly accessible social hot spot, and somewhat of a necessary evil, where people go and chat with others and just screw around in general, sometimes engaging in OoC spars too. Due to its social nature, it's really nice if you're just looking to hang out.
I do agree that being OoC is fine, and just wanting to chill is fine too, but some people find it discouraging to walk into the arena and see a good portion of currently online players just piled up in the OoC corner, instead of roleplaying.

Regarding the 'reactive' part: It is true. A great portion of the community has no desire to approach people they are not comfortable with or have no prior knowledge of. They would rather be approached, and even then, they are initially defensive about such approaches. This has, in turn, segmented the entire community into what are commonly called "cliques", an undeniable problem of which most of us (myself included) are guilty. I have never been a fan of the concept, but it is sadly what the community's state is like.

Player motivation across the community seems to be fairly low, as of late.
It feels like there's very little interest in making things better, mainly from the community.

Certainly. The SL2 community has displayed those on-and-off periods of activity, but lately, I have felt the problem has accentuated. I have a few ideas as to why this could be happening, but like Fern mentioned, the community as a whole is involved in it. People have found it comfortable to refrain from change, from shaking things up a little and risking it. People feel discouraged from the game due to the lack of public presence, the segmentation of the community into cliques, among other causes.

And yet, there is little interest to bring about change. No one wants to exit their comfort zone, to approach others and be inclusive. You will be hard pressed to find out where half of the online players in game are hanging out, because it is in a player house or some other undisclosed location.

I have been doing my best to cause change from wherever and however I can, and I am sure others are doing the same too, but there is only so much a few people can do.

I have a genuine love for SL2, too. I have met great people, created so many characters, and I have come to enjoy the game play and the role play. I understand where Fern is coming from, because I feel the same way too, and I am glad that he decided to make this thread because I feel it is an opportunity to lay bare the feelings of everyone in regards to this matter, and an opportunity for the community to realize where it is and possibly work on it as a whole to try and get the ball of change rolling.

An idea for slightly alleviating the role play problem

There's not many ideas I have in mind, but off the top of my head:
- Create more public events: Depending on the events, I feel there should be other ways to bring the community together; such as hang-out events, festivals -- the sort of thing where people can just meet up and socialize. The problem is coming up with ways to incentivize it.
- Foment inclusion: Currently, the aforementioned "cliques" are rather closed off and initially defensive about those who approach them. This is not okay, and I feel people should be inclusive and considerate towards others in this regard, especially if it is a new player. Additionally, spread the word and encourage others to go to spots where the role play is happening.
- Public role play: I've no idea where half of the online players hang out, but I feel that there should be more role play in publicly accessible areas, where anyone can walk in and join in on the fun; easily approachable, pretty much.
- Determination: Don't worry about what they might think or what they might say -- just walk in there and get into the role play. It will be fine, and no one will mind.

[Sokuryoku]

Warning this is done by phone.

I had a giant post but then the forum ate it. So here we go again. My hot take on the game state. I feel that some of these points need to be addressed once more, with more input by other folks that experience them so without a long post, here we go.



Events

Years back we spoke about having eventmins in a few discord servers that no longer exist. As we believed that the lack of content in the game beyond player ran events and black doors. Hence why the arena was so popular back then. It gave the players its daily dose of conflict rp. Without the worry of character deaths from ganks and the like.

Currently we now have six within a position to change that way of life. However as its been pointed out, not every event is accessible to the public. Mostly due to players and eventmins having their pick of who's informed and who isn't. There has and forever will be, constant bickering between players, eventmins, and gms. We have had many popular players do the anime speech of doing good for the community. Myself among them, but what happens is we all still revert to the "crowds" that we wish to please over the public itself.

I believe that eventmins, as well as Gms, could look towards the game world over created plot lines. A popular function in most multi-player games on a level such as this is dynamic events. For a example of this, a game that does it well is Guild Wars 2. There is always some sort of event happening on the map for players to gather together. Im not saying host one off events every 3 hours on the game, but something along the lines of random one offs in high player activity, would be healthy for the community. 

It has also been talked about in a certain Stella discord, but creating more boss content from either an eventmin, or new group content from Dev himself, would easily boost activity and again be healthy for the community.

Public Rp

I personally chalk this up as a player problem. Mainly due to the fact that most will look at player houses and claim they suck up the community. What I see is another player, or group of.players, making role-playing happen in their ennviorment. Something that can be done by anyone of us. Wallflower want roleplay handed to them, while being too shy to put forth the effort to sustain the area around them in rp. Leaving is for the dreaded curse of statues of players just looking at one another for that ooc hour long silence.

OOC Corner

Most of the people who go within it. Are the kinds that are spoken about above. Wallflower, the others are just build testers. Thats both on them and as well as a fault for the games state. What do they have to do if the world is slice of life rp. With a hint of storyline given by a player created event. It will always be there. Or moved else where if complained about even if these issues are fixed.



Theres plenty more to go on about. But not by me on this phone. I'm sure everyone else will cover what other topics I'd bring up anywho

[Perdition]

This is going to be formatted sloppily since I’m also typing from mobile. Anyway...

To say I understand and resonate to this post would be an understatement. I’ve felt this way about the game for a while but I didn’t bother with voicing these concerns because it doesn’t feel like something that can easily change or that many people will agree on how to change it. In addition it didn’t seem like that pressing of an issue to others, but I digress.

I honestly think the majority of RP being behind private housing is one of the biggest causes for this. If that’s where all meaningful RP is and the average player is stuck in the public atmosphere around people that are OOC in dungeons then it’s not surprising why there would be little in the way of motivation.

There are avenues for easily accessible, public RP but it’s all trivial. Someone used the term glorified chat room and that’s honestly what the majority of people that public RP feels like. It’s nothing of substance. Some people are more than content with that. That’s fine if they are, but it doesn’t make for a compelling game state and the concerns expressed in this thread are why.

I come from DBRP mostly, I lightly dabbled in Naruto RP and had a short stint with Eternia. I even played Bleach Last Horizon when that was around, so I’ve been around the block as far as Byond RP goes. In those games, they have their issues but the overall complacency and apathy that SL2 is experiencing was not often one of them. I have my own thoughts on why that is, and they are such:

SL2 has little in the way of stakes. There’s no conflict. There’s no reason for there to be any. A majority of the characters are friendly with or neutral with one another. There’s no real incentive to try and be a meaningful antagonist nor are there particularly any means to. The aforementioned games got around this by having factions more or less. There were always different groups at odds with one another. This inherently creates tension and conflict. It breeds more interesting RP than sitting around the square bullshitting with the same people day in and day out.

Secondly, there weren’t nearly as many alt characters on those games. In fact, alts were usually frowned upon if anything. I actually think this is a huge weakness as far as SL2 goes but it’s so ingrained in the community that it’s not something that will ever go away. One above poster mentioned characters feeling ephemeral and that’s exactly why I feel this is a weakness. You never know if someone you RP with will even show up again. I’ve often found myself managing to engage in a very interesting RP with someone only to never see that character again because it was just a one off alt or something. So, why get invested if you don’t even know who you’re investing in will return?

Perhaps they will return, but it could be so sporadic that the scenario loses meaning quickly because that person may be juggling 10 other characters. Moving on, I also think players had more tools to do things in those games on their own. For example, in many of those games players could apply for ranks or positions that gave them privileges or advantages. In return they were a source of RP. They were a driving force for whatever narrative that game had. A rank might make a character much stronger than other characters on average, but that character usually served as a high ranking member of a faction.

With that power they could make plays, they could antagonize properly or serve as some kind of coveted teacher or master that passes on exclusive skills to others who would then further the narrative. If one was made a high ranking demon on a DBRP game for example, they could take a dull moment into their own hands. They could gather henchmen on the fly and antagonize the good guys. There was no need for an event. These moments also often made windows for other characters to grow, in which they would then apply for perks or something to show for that growth. A way to turn the tables against that high ranking individual perhaps.

Which leads me to another point: the game doesn’t feel very rewarding. In all of those other games you could apply for things that were clear progress for your character. You can apply for things on SL2, yes, but it’s mostly just fluff. Honestly, I’m not one to think every player character needs to be equal. Some could, and even should be better than others if they have the effort to show for it. It feels satisfying to see the work you put in toward creating good RP be returned in the form of not having to feel like everyone else.

That’s part of the stagnation. Characters quickly reach a peak of power. As others have said, you get your gear, grind to 60 and LE if you really want to min max and then you’re done. You’re at the plateau. Nothing you do will make you any stronger. You can now join others in sitting around the square or bar and doing trivial shit. Or if you have a clique you can RP behind closed doors with them with the average player base being none the wiser to anything that you’re accomplishing or doing.

There are other things I feel causes the problems addressed in the OP but these are the main ones. I honestly think changing this in any meaningful way would require a large upheaval of how rewards and exclusivity work in SL2. It would be a large undertaking because it would require a change of a long ingrained culture. That’s my take, anyway. This is not something I see changing any time soon.

[EthanGreen]

Hey Ethan, Sigrogonian Here.

You might've known me as that guy that did some things and dissipated due to a lack of interest. But, I might as well lay my hand on this topic given my experiences. This post will be quite long but gives my opinions. These opinions are through my brief experiences over a period of months. Opinions are opinions at the end of the day.

State of the Game

The main problem with the state of Sigrogana is it's conflict of identity. The game can't really decide what it wants to be, does it want to a video game first and a role play game second? Or does it want to be a roleplay game with video game elements? Naturally, this conflict of identity has surfaced for quite awhile. Most of us are in for the RP game, yet the Dev hasn't really focused on RP game. Instead, he has been developing the game play of the system by introducing reworks of classes or creating new classes entirely. I understand that the Dev is a mostly one-man army when it comes to coding and functionality of the game, this isn't to downplay his efforts. The point is that the Dev has not been making strides to foster the growth of RP, and as such the aspect of the game people want the most suffers.


The problems due to the state of the game.

The game needs conflict most definitely. Now, the nature of conflict people have on this server is relatively minimal. The most conflicts usually exist of the following in SL2.

    Event admin tailored stories to specific groups of people
    Seto Kaiba normal summons his Black Wolves to attack a town's life points directly and triggers Sigrogana's trap card -- several armed vagrants to beat him up.
    A black door phenomena.
    IC disagreement, most likely due to booze or just conflicting ideals.

The current conflict list is rather minimal and small, and usually inconsequential. Events are usually bragging rights that "I stopped this guy." But the most important thing to note here is that life never changes, even if a conflict arises. This is what I believe is one of the main reasons that people get turned off from SL2. Our characters need conflict, they need it in order to grow and to become another living piece of the lore itself. But, this doesn't happen. The reason I left SL2 back in the day is because nothing I did meant anything. Everything is peaceful, and nothing changes. The world needs to be able to change due to someone's actions. I feel like the best example of this is the in-lore assassination of Onigan Emperor Tennou. Because he was assassinated by magic, it eventually led to the ban on magic itself. If I had assassinated Tennou, then I would feel as if I had meant something to the development of the world itself. Naturally this example is rather grandiose, but you should get the point at what I'm trying to do.

We create out characters and roleplay with others as a way to live this character's life. Their history shouldn't be something along the lines of "I went to Stella's Bar and got hella drunk every week." or "I went to the Obenque and hung out a bunch." If people want to live mundane lives and just be a slice of life character, then they can perform it. If you aren't that type of character then you will naturally struggle with want you want to do.

I agree with Sokuryoku and Perdition, the world needs conflict more than ever.

What I believe needs to change
As for the aforementioned conflict, I believe something needs to happen about the handling about the development of SL2. The Dev needs to continue working on the gameplay as it is, it's flawed and needs improvement in many areas. However, the Dev needs to delegate the duties of the lore to his fellow staff members in developing the lore of the world. Rather than creating single events that would infringe on the eventmin's toes. These admins would focus on adding onto the world's lore and causing global conflicts or events to arise that would change the world based on the player's decisions. Maybe Elias would organize a force to reclaim Mallus, a series of events would take place in order to remove the source of the haunted armors and then rebuild the town to it's former legacy. Then Mallus would become a place where people could enter and roleplay there, due to the actions of a group of players. Said group of players would feel like they've contributed to the world. This is an example of what could happen, not what should happen. These style of events should be more precise and planned out than normal eventmin events or else it could jeopardize the world itself. I feel these type of events would freshen the staleness of the bread and give players what they want from the RP game.

I know this post is rushed and probably flawed in many areas, but I hope you get the gist of what I was going for. I may have missed certain aspects of the game due to my limited experience, but I hope my opinion is worth something. I do agree with the points made on this thread, it's a chore to make characters because you have to expect that eventually you will get to a point where you will have to duke it out with somebody. I have two characters in particular that are half-way grinded and need to go another extra mile. But I don't feel like LEing again just to do it all over again. The grind mostly depends on the character itself, but your character needs to have some sort of combat ability.

Typically, my day with SL2 usually goes like this.

Want to finish a character
Grind
Feel unmotivated
Go to OOC corner
Rinse and Repeat


It usually takes about two LEs and the Black Blood quests to max out your character, now keep in mind that after you LE. It's a commitment to get back to level 60 so you're in fighting shape. As a player, I feel like I have an obligation to get to this level in order to have the best chances of leaving a successful dent into an RP PVP encounter (these don't happen often but still). It is for this reason that I don't have any characters RPing out in the world yet, namely because I'm still grinding.

That's my opinion on this rambly rant of a post I made, Ethan out for the count.

[Miller]

I've noticed a large decreasing trend in public roleplay in particular personally; this has honestly been something that has been noticeable for more than a few months. The reasons as to why this has been the case has been echoed several times over the course of this thread. But instead I'd rather list my own personal reasons as to why I think this is the case.

1) Roleplay on SL2 is repetitive. 
Roleplay has been generally restricted to a few hubs and while that isn't a bad thing; there's a distinct lack of variety in roleplay environments as a result of this. LFG has alleviated this  somewhat but this leads into another community-related issue that is worth mentioning. As another reason as to why this is the case in my opinion; the gameplay loop is extremely repetitive from a roleplay perspective with most posts within a BDP devolving into IC jokes, small comments or silence.

As a side note: There is nothing wrong with RP hubs or preferring smaller groups/one on one roleplay.

2) Lack of Active characters
The lack of approaching is quite noticeable and I'm equally guilty of this, a lot of players tend to either wait for a post or don't try to push too hard for further roleplay. Being a reactive character isn't inherently bad, but there's a very clear imbalance between the two. 

3) Mechanics and IC
This is my own personal take but I've personally found mechanics to be a huge detriment to roleplay at times and part of the reason why SL2 can be so repetitive. A lot of events that are treated ICly are a bit hard to justify in my own mind, for example; Black Beasts attacking cities and the like for several OOC years without any variance in monster variety. Another example would be people worrying too much about being PVP capable or representing their character ICly with a build and avoiding going IC because they fear getting into conflict or feel uncomfortable without a build set in stone.

4) Lack of changes to the world encourages stagnation.
I honestly find this to be a boon and bane, large scale changes often make players feel like they've missed a lot and feel left out of the action. But the lack of changes to the world environment tends to leave players feeling like they can leave little impact on the world. A system I saw proposed in a suggestions thread that would alleviate this, was adding news boards to each major city that'd update with new information on current happenings; this sort of system could be managed by both GMs and Eventmins to give the feeling that there is some change going on, just not entirely tangible for all.

5) Events
With the recent addition of Eventmins, I've been personally feeling like there hasn't been much change; while events have been generally fun when they do happen, I personally don't think they solved one of the pre-existing issues I've personally had with these kind of events; the lack of organic flow + pre-planned nature of these events. 

The blame doesn't lie with any Eventmin, but a stance I would like to see more is dynamic events to encourage roleplay and unique roleplay opportunities that are otherwise impossible to present normally. Rather than requiring a player to approach an eventmin which often feels inorganic, I'd rather see events take a more proactive approach; where an eventmin may pop up and ask if they're fine with putting a spin on current happenings. (IE: Campers getting attacked by bandits or monsters, IC BDP divers encountering a unique monster.)

6) Lack of Roleplay Roles
I don't mean this in the sense of Water Sourcing / Head Doctor, but the amount of roleplay role opportunities supported by lore are few. Players are restricted to minor nobility at most without GM supervision/permission and the Guard / Geistritter are the only open opportunities for roleplay presently. This seems to be changing in recent times however, so it may be a matter of waiting and seeing until this is alleviated.

7) SL2 feels really impersonal.
It's hard to illustrate what I mean by this, but it frankly feels like SL2 IC interactions are usually only surface levels interactions on repeat without too many opportunities to explore how a character acts or why they act that way. This may be a result of players shifting and balancing from character to character, but it's something worth noting.




There's a lot more on my mind but I think this illustrates a decent chunk of my personal thoughts on the subject. No hard feelings if anyone disagrees with my own opinions.

[FancyCyclops]

SL2's a sandbox where all the sand is concrete.

[Fern]

I just want to say thank you all for all your contributions to the topic, I really appreciate it. I believe everyone here has raised valid points, honestly.
 
I would to quickly chime in and comment on a few things. (Please bear with me I don't know how to properly use the quotes system)
 
Ethan commented on the following: "The main problem with the state of Sigrogana is it's conflict of identity. The game can't really decide what it wants to be, does it want to a video game first and a role play game second? Or does it want to be a roleplay game with video game elements?"
 
I have felt very similar for a good chunk of the years I've played this game. It doesn't feel like SL2 has a strong sense of what it PRIMARILY wants to be. I have often gotten the impression that the game is meant to be a video game first, and a roleplay game second, but whether that's on track with Dev's own wishes or not is not something I'm certain of.
 
Some people commented on the stagnancy of the world. I agree. I have always agreed with this sentiment, and I have desired for it to be different myself. The world being a "sandbox that is made of concrete" alludes to the idea that SL2 is a video game first and a roleplay setting second. And if a video game does not have much replayability material, then people are more likely to feel they don't want to care about it anymore.
  
I, by no means, am trying to offend Dev by mentioning these things. God knows I cherish Dev for giving me a game that's had such a positive impact on my growth as a person. I plan on playing SL2 for a very long time regardless if I can help it. I respect Dev's ability to be a one man army with the game's development, even if I don't think it's the best idea and I can imagine he has his own reasons for not wanting to work with other people.
 
As much as I can say, "yes there are glaring problems in the game that should be addressed before they cause the game to rot..." I can't really say I have the perfect solution for any of the things I've mentioned, or the things I've seen get mentioned. The idea of more public events, as I had said, was a thought for a slight alleviation of the problem. I understand that they are not easy to make, I have been there and know how it feels well enough to say that I can empathize. I've been trying my best to get the Falcon stuff sorted out in a way that can be enjoyable to people and I really, really hope to get that rolling soon even with all the setup difficulties, regardless of the state the game is currently in.
 
When people talk about shaking up the world and making it feel more alive, I don't think they meant Eternia's perpetual war events. You can make an environment feel more alive by making it feel as if something is actually happening in it, whether that's combat related, political conflict or perhaps group movements of some kind. But they also don't expect a "one-off" and then not again for a long time.
 
Off the top of my head, the only times I can say that I have felt as if the world had been given some life to it were two, and both of them were mostly conflict:
 
-Most of Bloeden Het Droog, the notion that Bloeden actually had a chance to attempt assasinating the Emperor Elias S. Erachial and that something came out of it was pretty exciting. Dev's responses towards Bloeden's stuff, on top of actually adding crows to Law's End and RPing with us even if it was through the forums made it EVEN MORE exciting and interesting to keep track of. If you're a newer player and wonder what all this is about, the long story short is that Bloeden had made it seem as if Oniga wanted to start a fuss with Sigrogana by sending forth man-made mutated monsters to Cellsvich, claiming to battle for the Tennou if memory serves right.
 
-Black Falcon's destruction of Cellsvich, I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, of course. Long story short for anyone unaware, but Black Falcon is a terrorist organization whose leader has a fierce hatred for the Sigrogana Emperor and wants to put him out for good, so he can take over the throne and apparently 'set things right' (which doesn't really mean good things for anyone, really.) At one point during... 2017 I believe? We had made arrangements to perform a raid on Cellsvich because Arael (the leader) wanted to obliterate it in order to send a message to the emperor. Cellsvich ended up being ICly destroyed and some player characters died (not by force) in the process. A forum post of the aftermath was put up, and later on a new Cellsvich Map (the one you see now) designed by LatentSparrow was implemented by Dev. This map has quite a few graves of people that died during the Cellsvich destruction in its graveyard.
 
These are the only examples of "world life" I've experienced, off the top of my head, in the 7 years I have played this game. I feel this sort of thing is extremely scarce, and it doesn't really have to be a war conflict every time like I had previously mentioned. World life in SL2 is considered so unlikely that when I was talking about the idea of the Cellsvich destruction, people kept telling me it was impossible to do because it wouldn't be allowed. I honestly had asked Dev for permission fully expecting to be shot down but I wanted to try anyway, and I was very happy when he approved it.
 
I didn't really try to professionally structure this post and it ended up more of a ramble so I apologize for that, but I hope my thoughts are easy enough to understand.

[Balor]

For everyone's sake I will drop my opinion here in the most condensed and easily readable format.

1.Player Motivation being low can also be accounted for the fact that 2020 is probably one of the least motivated years I've ever witnessed in my near 30 years of being on this earth. I know a lot of people who are still motivated to play the game, but I also know a lot of people who at the start of quarantine did nothing but play this game, and now are likely burnt out.

2.Mechanically however I feel like we need more than just Water Monitors and Blood Drives. Neither of which inspire the playerbase to RP with one another, at the moment it's up to Eventmins to either make shit ourselves or support the playerbase when they make shit.

I am currently working on a RP space with approval from Dev to make it, and that's where my motivation is. Mine raids inspired some actual RP out of the community for a while, and even the Loyrwell Tombs did so as well. I feel like we could really stand to have more interesting locals to visit and RP in and explore outside of the major cities just to give people things to do that aren't one of the four cardinal directions of SL2.

>Sit in square for RP to degenerate into sexual topics.
>Hunt around in BDP's for RP.
>Go to bar LFG so you don't have to sit in a square for six hours.
>Test builds in OOC corner.

4. But on the other hand, it's not just Dev and a lack of fundamental support to the RP side of things and player effect on the world without permission. A lot of the community will come out in arms to state what they don't like and point out where they want the RP to be. But never actually make a difference or invest in the means to remedy it. A lot of the big guilds don't host public events with the clout they carry. A lot of old players don't RP with newer people (Which I GET. You only have so much time in the day to gamble your hobby away.)

It inevitably won't matter if Dev gives us more tools to play with, if no one wants to play with eachother.

CLOSING NOTE: I enjoy the game as it is, it's a passive experience at times and I don't have to stress overmuch about what is happening, how often I need to log in, or anything really. I get the RP I want when I want it, I get the conflicts I want when I want it. It just so happens it's rarely with any of the people posting here.

[Mewni]

There is a really good reason why people seclude themselves within groups, especially as of now. I speak from experience.

No matter how hard you try, even if you strive to simply be the supportive role in someone's story, no one will give a shit. They WILL simply ignore you no matter how important or not or how badly affected your character got in a plot, in favor of focusing on their friends only.
Doesn't matter how much effort you put into it.
No matter how true you stay to the actual consequences of things happening.
No matter what others do to you or not.
and hell doesn't even matter something should have repercussions or not from the actions others did, as long as the higher-ups on a big group couldn't care less and the one doing it to you is their friend.

The issue is not a lack of roleplay, the issue is that people only care about their circle, hyperfocus on that, and to hell with everyone else.

After I pretty much had my main character dismissed completely after horrible things were done to them (Without even the courtesy of being told anything about how the situation developed on the events that was lead after it was done to them, among more disheartening things) even if I kept myself 10 hours a day logged with being aware I was around. And even being told "I wasn't aware Mewni even logged in anymore, I never see them." Which made others point out that, indeed, I logged in and stayed on all the time. All of that mind you, done shortly after all the work I did put in 1 year of DAILY presence being completely ignored, and IC actions and worries being completely shrugged off in favor of "A friend asked lol" without any rhyme or reason ICly.

A lot of 'loud and prominent' figures of the community simply ignores any character building, their own character feelings, and are extremelly hypocritical on their mindset or the results of the things happening around them, simply because of friendship they built, or because they have something to gain from it.

Then what happens, you ask?

Well, people either feel extreme desolation and stop playing, or they avoid these people or groups (aka kindly named 'Cult' by many) because no matter how hard you try, or how much effort you put into something, nothing matters as long as others oocly don't want it to be so, and only their own stuff matters, nobody else.

Said character of mine, completely destroyed by the lack of caring, just runs her hospital and, is only logged on to do stuff related to that.
So I made a new character, put a challenge on how they would be built (won't go into details) and ran with it. And i had a lot of roleplay happen, my character wasn't important to many people's stories, but they were aknowledged and had constant RP thrown their way, that gave a breath of new life to the complete "hopelessness" I had, and all occured once I stopped trying to fit in or attempt to have IC things happen in a place that only the simply put, circlejerk mattered.

No one will put effort where they know it will be glossed over, no one will give the time of day after being smacked down so much by others and completely discarded once not needed anymore.

So once I stopped being around and only known in the groups that have 'protagonists' and the friends of said circle (Which expand to their many alts) I had quite a bit of my will to roleplay revigorated, because RP does exists around quite a lot.

People are just avoiding those that made/makes them feel like garbage, and that their creative efforts into having a breathing, living character doesn't matter.