Board Thread:Suggestion Box/@comment-3058106-20140216065540

Lately I've been talking with a few others about how so many people have been creating an influx of characters the past few days. It's gotten a bit out of hand and I've thought that perhaps we need to start doing a small character limit. Well, it's sort of small since we give you enough room to create a lot of characters. Anyways, I think that putting a character limit of 20-30 characters would be good enough. I think 20 is almost too many for one person to handle, but since some people would disagree, 30 would be a good compromise for all parties. Having a limit to 30 would still leave users enough room to create good characters that they like while also making it to where users cannot have more characters than there are days in January.

Another thing is character creation limit. It's become obvious that some users are creating characters just to make a character or save a faceclaim. In order to stop this hoarding, we should have a small character creation limit. I know someone suggested we do it to where you can only create two characters per week, but what if you have a plot idea and need to create 3-4 characters? Why would you want to wait one entire week? So, I propose that we make the limit to two characters for every 24 hours. If you're planning on making three siblings, you can create two of them one day and then the third the next. I know this seems like a kind of silly rule, but it's been getting ridiculous how some users are creating anywhere from 4-6 characters per day. This used to not be a problem and it'd be fine, but so many characters every day? It'll be hard to keep up with all of them after a while. By making it to where you can only create two per day, you can make sure that you actually want that third character the next day. I know that myself and a few others think it's getting ridiculous how many characters are being created by people every day, so putting a small limit would be helpful. Plus, if you make like 5 characters every day, you'll end up making all of your 30 characters in less than a week.

Now another thing I wanted to point out was the whole problem with the male to female ratio on the wiki. It used to not be so bad, but lately everyone seems to be obsessed with creating female characters. That's fine, but really? We need some more testosterone in this place. Quick little fact: the male category page has a mere five pages of characters while the females have 10 pages. Do you see the problem here? The men are basically only half of the female (well they actually are because of their XY chromosomes so they are literally half female but that's not the point.)

Anyways, the point here is that we need more male characters. Some people mostly only have female characters and sometimes only 1-2 to male characters, which is what causes this problem. I was thinking to try and help add a few more males to the wiki, we could start to enforce a rule for however many females you have, you have to have a certain number of males. For example, for every 3 female characters, you need at least 1 male character. Obviously you can have far more males than that, but it would be a good ratio for users who rarely make male characters. So, let's say you were going to create some characters and you made three females and were about to make your fourth, well it couldn't be approved since you would have to create a male. I know, that sucks, but we honestly just have so many more females than males that it's become ridiculous. I know I usually try to keep my own male-female ratio even (like right now its 7-7 woo), so I think it's important that everyone else does so too. I know I'm also not the only one who thinks this.

Now, the last thing I'm going to say and I'm terribly sorry for making this so long, is that we need to actually think about our characters before creating them. I know some people are just like "Oh I love this faceclaim! I want to make a character for them" so they go and make a character just for the hell of it. They put barely any thought into the character and then the character become one dimensional. We need more thought proking character forms to get people to think "Do I really want to make this character?" before they make it. So, in order to do this, we should add a few more things to character forms for when people apply to make new characters. It will also help them figure out more about the character before actually creating them. Here's my idea for the form: I also think maybe adding a prompt or two could really make them think more about their character's personality. Maybe have a section where they answer questions in character. This example I'm going to give is extremely dumb, but just go with it.
 * Gender
 * Birthday/Age
 * Faceclaim
 * Family/Housemates
 * Address
 * Personality - perhaps have them write at least two sentences so we get to actually know their character. It can't be just like "Nice, kind, funny" but instead would be something like "Bob is a nice guy who is very kind towards others. He often likes making jokes since he's very comedic."
 * Background/History - at least two sentences again so we can get to know their character's background. It would also help for when the user is creating the character profile so they don't really have to fill that part out and can just copy and paste it and change a few pronouns and verbs.
 * One word to describe your character from your point of view - this is just simple since its just one adjective and it basically let's us know how the roleplayer thinks their character will be like the most. So I would say that Bob is comedic.
 * One word to describe your character from their point of view - this is also simple and let's us get into the thought process of the character. They could be like "Bob thinks he's heroic." Obviously they don't have to include the sentence, they couold just put heroic and let it be like that.

See, that really gets you into the thought process of Bob and let's you figure out more of the personality, so you can go back and edit the personality. If we answered a few questions like this in the form, then it would really develop the character. Also, it would take a little extra time to create characters and while you're making them, you can sit there and think to yourself "Do I really want this character?"
 * What is your greatest fear? My greatest fear is being attacked by a shark while I'm swimming in the middle of Kansas in a small swimming pool. I'm always worried that one is just going to jump up out of nowhere and start eating my leg. Then after it eats my leg I'll get out of the pool but low and behold there's satan standing right there laughing and forcing me to become a satan worshipper. Then I become a satan worshipper and summon demons and become a cannibal and move to an island in the Pacific Ocean to live with other cannibals and I'm sorry, what was the question?

So, I think that's it. I might have left something out, but maybe not. Good job for reading this. Here's the joke, go back and read the answer to What is your greatest fear. That's the joke you get for reading this. Although, if you read this entire thing then you already read the joke, so I guess you really don't get a joke for reading all of this. Haha. Sucks to be you, loser.

Questions, comments, concerns, and suggestions are highly welcomed and recommended since this will be a huge and awesome change if we go through with it. Also, excuse me for any and all grammar and spelling mistakes since I've been writing this for the past hour and it's currently 2 am and I really don't feel like reading over any of this. 