SURP Players: Share Your Ideas!

[Paddy]

↓The staff team needs your insights and ideas!↓

We are currently in the process of ushering in some major changes for SURP's mechanics, navigation structure, and plot. However, we recognize that everyone who has put time and appreciation into their characters has a stake in the way things are around here!

About The Poll: Pick what you think the staff team should focus on during SURP's revamp! Where do you think the most effort should be applied, or what should we focus on first?

    *1 vote per player! Connected accounts will be considered duplicates, and therefore 1 vote anyway, so please vote with your most active character account.

    *No matter what you vote for, please leave an explanation for your pick in the thread. While you're at it, let us know any ideas you have regarding any part of the site (Community, Mechanics, Structure, or Plot)!

Here are some questions that you might discuss in your post. You don't have to answer these, but they could be a guide or spark discussion in the thread!

    1. What did you think of the layout and navigation when you first joined?

    2. Why did you join the site, or vice versa (if applicable), why did you go on hiatus?

    3. What is your favorite, or least favorite facet of the game?

    4. How would you implement change on our game?

    5. Do you have need of accommodations that could be realistically supported by the site?

Feel free to discuss here with your fellow fans and players about the direction that our game should go in. The staff will take everything on this thread into consideration, and we will do our best to make sure everyone is content with the structure of the game we have all come to enjoy! If you have other related questions and concerns, feel free to ping me on Discord or send me a PM here on SURP!

njrk97 7XB

[Light]

1. It was confusing at first, but it is easy to get used to it. I suppose it can scare away some new players, but there is not much else I can say about it. I never really considered this a real problem.

2. This story is simple and short: I started watching SU and I have never before anticapated in any kind of roleplay before I joined. After searching for "Steven Universe Rp" in google I found this website. There used to be more players at the time, I decided to give it a try. I stayed because of people I met and a chance to improve my english. 
Why did I go on hiatus? I would say school, responsibilities, lack of time, but there is something else: motivation. Like I mentioned before, I stayed for people I met. It was hard to move on when a lot of people with passion and ideas left.

3. I need to say, I kind of hate how they are not a lot of events, special threads with main plot elements. However, because of the lack of anything going on regular players were pushing their limits. We were making our own main plot. It is obvious that we all have our own little plots. But we were able to connect and make something bigger and better.

At some point there were nearly no Crystal Gems active (not much changed). My char and Forge Master Para were preparing for the war, we were creating the special army for Crystal Gems, it was made out of golems with corrupted gems as the power source. We were also creating weapons and our characters were supporting each other in their struggles. But we were not the only ones... Morion while staying loyal to his Homeworld become attached to humans in Empire City. He helped them and showed them the way. Before he left, he made a ship that worked as Noah's ark: He took a handful of humans and animals, works of art, etc so all of this would survive if Pink diamond finished her colony. There was also a certain Fire Opal (who is sometimes visiting this place and will hopefully read this) who was a part of many stories and saved many people. He was also the one who would often stop villianous "broken gems" and their questionable activities.

The point is: the website gave us freedom to make our own big stories. Stories that connected many different players. And this was good... but it would never survive without destination, without an actual main plot. I have had a lot of ideas with Para, but most of them never saw the light of the day (second reason: they left soon after becoming a moderator... I hope they are also reading this.)

4. By doing anything that will make players feel important. At first I wanted to say that we need more plot... but we also need to create a bigger community! I think we should create more threads about the main plot were different players will be able to to join. Everyone wants to be a part of the story and that is the best way. It doesn't havw to be anything big. "Define a Melody" was suppose to be a simple story that would introduce a new character, but NJRK used this as an oppurnity to also talk about the Diamonds. We didn't learn anything spectacular, but it showed us something new and exciting. In a way, it was just a small detail which is a part of something bigger. That is how you interract with players, do it more often! Talk about the upcoming war, corruption, leaders, anything! 

[Chip the Fire Opal]

I really believe we need a functional system of "factions" with player leaders and GM assisted events. So both Homeworld and Crystal gems should have a player leader, who will lead the faction, plan major moves, could accept and kick gems from it etc. I think that might help this site a lot.

[Mad Azurite]

1. [What did you think of the layout and navigation when you first joined?]

It is confusing to say the least, really hard to find really important stuff and the giant section taking up the front page makes scrolling around a chore, somehow I even get lost sometimes rofl.

2. [Why did you join the site, or vice versa (if applicable), why did you go on hiatus?]

I’ve been rping since I was 12 and I am 26 now lol, I had taken a break a few years ago, but then I felt the urge to return after watching some SU eps, and came back to it, it just so happened I found this one as the first to pop up in the search board so haha here I am!

I've recently been on hiatus, working a new job and some general stress stuff from past events make motivation and overall mental health/quality of life really hard so I tend to avoid peeps and certain stimuli.

3. [What is your favorite, or least favorite facet of the game?]

My favorite thing probably lies in the theme of the site itself, SU is a really interesting story to explore. So this brings interesting story concepts and more! I really love the plotting down by the peeps here and def like it when their changes to environments and things of that nature can be reflected in others threads!

My least fav thing is the lack of growth in both the way character development works on the site and the mechanics of character growth in general, with plotting and things of that nature aside, the power system is a bit weird and almost disconnects a bit of the quality of immersion via how its implemented, like at first despite the explanation of it, I was still intimidated when it came to people with higher Power levels and rping with them as I was scared to what it might imply on a powerplay level despite the disclaimer in the rules. I'm not sure how to fix this though, creating a growth system like expanding powers and abilities can be difficult to balance when power play is taken into account.

4. [How would you implement change on our game?]

I've had a couple ideas haha:

Skills Section
One thing that I think could be added is a skillset section to the profiles, this way people can define skills outside the realm of abilities and such that their characters may be proficient in. An example is how, since Hema’s been around in Japan since the late Heian Era, she has learned a lot from humans like sewing, creating shinobi/samurai gear for herself, and tinctures and tonics for helping humans and other useful things that can open avenues towards creative directions for characters.

Ability Expansion
This one is a little weird, but I feel characters can grow in more than just their personalities and that can be reflected in their abilities, maybe not upgrading the abilities we start off with, but instead adding to them or developing new abilities that may tie into the nature of the character. And this is where it becomes essential, it would be interesting if characters could evolve abilities based on the nature of their gemstones or the role they play as a character (or a combination of both), in fact some of these abilities may not even be inherently good for combat, maybe as characters increase in power or pay with post, they can gain access to add sub-abilities and new abilities that connect to their own or run it through an admin to gain an ability that seems analogous to their nature. This is to promote abilities meant to make things more exciting than to just create abilities that will help them in combat situation. Of course, this should have a limit to how many abilities and sub-abilities could be learned, but this up to the admins of course.

Major Events for the Site, and a Community Event Section
Major events would be awesome, though require some DMing from the staff, but what I would really like to see is a community event section or recent events from players who may have had a major effect on an area, I.E some gem robs a store, the player can post this up in the event section so that when others go to their threads, they can reference these things or ask if they can get involved or expand on it in some way, I think that can make for a really interesting system, though some control will be needed as peeps my try to go to far, like blowing up a city or something rofl

5. Do you have need of accommodations that could be realistically supported by the site?

Iunno lol, I’mma have to get back to you on this one.