The Cadmus Project

[King Fenii]

Well, I'm very glad to hear that. Gives me the feeling my work is being appreciated. I've also made a preview of all the trophy categories. This'll give everyone a proper understanding of how the Trophies will be like ^^

(Click on the attachment to enhance the image)

[Aerif]

Good news, the description writing is coming along well, and provided that my descriptions are all accurate and used, Inferno and myself have managed to write the descriptions for 50% of the character section... Yay for self-motivation!

Looking at the list reveals that there a lot of intresting trophys, and enough variation to keep every fanboy and non-fanboy happy!

[King Fenii]

Okay, for the new system, there has to be some new additions to the forums themselves. This way, spam will be evaded, and people can focus on the 'fun part': Trophy collecting.

But, no Gil can be awarded if there is no interactivity or any effort.

So here are some ideas for some possible new interactivity methods:
- First of all, a new Forum named the Citadel of Trials, where one can find every piece of information about the Classes and discuss these things here.

- Four Clubs WILL be made for the pioneers in each division of the Classes. This will allow (many) Role Play Battles between these four clubs using the characters based upon the member's current class and statistics. Also, within these Clubs, Role Playing will be a lot easier, because you go on an adventure together, with people you have a lot in common with.

- More attention will be put in the testing of ones knowledge of a Final Fantasy. Certain scenarios will be played out, and this can be seen as a challenge: people then post how they would handle the situation at hand and the one with the most originality and effectiveness will receive an extra amount of Gil. So if someone has cleared a lot of Final Fantasies, he can post in more of these challenges and try his skills more and more.

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These are the basics of the concepts, I need some time to work this all out. Yet, I can give some extra refinement right now:

What needs to happen is that certain people need to become like semi-moderators. They won't have any actual power regarding the removals of posts and such, but they will be important nonetheless. For instance: the people making the assignments for the scenarios: they need to write something good, what will make the people want to reply.

So these people DO have a certain responsibility. Of course they will receive a Special Class and will be recognised as icons here on the forums. The same goes for the four division leaders. They will be nicknamed the Four Kings: The Power King, The Speed King, The Mana King and The Fortune King. The titles themselves will be nicer of course.

These people will need to create the order in this whole 'Cadmus World', because if they do not, the whole system WILL collapse, because the people cannot make assignments for themselves, or just create battles between Clubs for themselves. Thus, no Gil can cleanly be awarded, and that will make the REAL Admins and Moderators kinda cranky, which will lead to the end of the whole project.

This also means, that the Moderators and Admins must keep an eye on these key people, to not see it turn into a chaos.

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The Titles and tasks of the key people:
- King of Dragons, Head of the Citadel of Trials, named after Bahamut in Final Fantasy who upgraded the classes of your heroes. His tasks: to answer all of the questions regarding the Classes and eventual upgrading to Unique Classes. In the beginning, I will most likely take this title upon me, seeing everyone has to learn how the system has to work.

- The Four Kings, Leaders of their divisions and Leaders of their corresponding Clubs. They can be challenged for their titles, but their responsibility is rather high. Their tasks: arranging activities between and within the four Clubs: RPBs, RPs, competitions, challenges, even simple discussions between Clubs. The Leaders are actual leaders, and will gain the respect and will be seen as highly unique.

- Final Fantasy Masters, the title really says it all. Because not everyone knows everything about EVERY FF, these Masters will be named to come up with the assignments for the each different Final Fantasy Section. If one has great knowledge on more than 1 FF, than he can cover them, or which he ever wants. Either way, an UTTER MAXIMUM of these Masters will be 11, because those will be the Final Fantasies we will cover.

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In the beginning, your truly will arrange special events to name all of these people, and maybe even auditions need to be held. I'm looking forward to all this, and I hope there are people determined to have these kind of tasks. But then again: If you like the sound of the whole Cadmus Project regarding the Trophies and Classes, then this will surely tickle your fancy.

Okay, tell me what you think...

[Mistress Sheena]

Well, for one thing. I'm not sure about those clubs. You don't need clubs to make RPBs.

We already have enough factions as it is. BOD, Seekers of Illumination, Masters... the dead SOM..

Albeit said current factions aren't really RPB active anyway. So.. I guess it's okay. Just cut back on the chit-chat and keep it to club business, is all I have to say.

And the four kings better be good, because as you said, if they don't do it correctly or do things for themselves, well.... yeah.

Edit: And when you make those clubs, please register them. I don't care if you say they "Will" be made. Register them anyway like everyone else.

[Andromeda]

Four clubs >.>, I think that is a little excessive. It will pretty much kill the activity and divide it up into four parts. Not to mention as wowed as people are, they are less likely to be active in clubs, and even more so RPs and RPBs. And giving them responsibility, I've seen that in the past. And they have all died pretty quickly. It'll go well for a few months and then something happens, it pushed things off, and then more and more. Until nothing is being done, people lose interest and its dead. Personal experience speaking here.

While I have nothing against you making the clubs, I would prefer it to be one. And even then, I'll tell you now, don't get your hopes up. We've had a number of Roleplaying based clubs in the past. And the remainings are barely carrying themselves around today. Most of them have died out, whether in a few months or longer, interest disappeared. Clubs are not what they used to be, the activity is not there anymore.

And a whole forum for this? Well I guess I got a whole forum for my card shop. So its not really that different. But even I thought it was a little silly me having a whole forum for something that only needed a few threads. This would be simple to do in one thread. But that is something to discuss with Loco. That is also much further down the road.

I would not suggest saying semi-moderator, since the name implies something that the you are not intending. Your titles will do the job. Since all they are just regular members. Though I'd be worried finding enough people with the work ethic to see things through the long haul. Good work ethics is something that is heavily lacking on the internet in general. I'm guilty of it myself at times. Though there is a different between being late, but following through and not at all, the latter tends to occur a lot. People have other lives outside of the forums, which will usually take priority. So while I believe in the good in people and know that usually they are not neglecting something intentionally, it does happen, but we cannot fault them for having a life.

[King Fenii]

Well, I agree about the people keeping up their work. That is factor nobody but that person himself can keep track of.

And no, four Clubs are not over the top. Activity will be held, because the thing driving the people is the acquisition of Gil, which can be obtained more easily through, guess what, high activity. So there will be a difference between former Clubs and these Clubs, as these will have some foundations, and won't just lose activity. (The foundations are the Classes and the Gil-thing)

And of course there should be a whole new forum for this. If at first I hear a whole drama about the whole project not being optional and such, well, then I wouldn't want to mix it with other already exisitng forums. Also, a new forum for this, will make the whole well-organised, and will give it a nice overview. And I believe this is the best way to increase the activity, but maintain the quality that we have now, because we stay true to these principles.

[Silver]

While I have no idea how this will turn out, I must say I'm looking forward to it. From what I've seen, it appears that a lot of planning has gone into this, and the artworkery such as the trophies are intense. I sort of wonder how you get the time to do so much cool work.

My only concern is the increase in lag some users like myself who have really bad connections might get on top of what already currently happens. But then again, I feel like it'll be worth it to see all the pretty features. And hell, some of those trophies looked shiney. That could hold my attention for a while.

Anyways, keep up the good work...

[Merlin]

I hereby name thee "Trashy Whore Mod". I have always been against all this crap being added to the forums, all the way back when it was a wet dream in Fuzz's mind when vB came out. You can label it optional all you want but that's just a facade. Just because you don't bother to edit the current styles to show the stuff doesn't mean it isn't still using multiple queries for useless features. Actually, that's just lazy. If you want to make it optional you need to have that built into the Profile Options so that people can choose to see it on any style, not just your trumped-up color swipes.

The core problem with this hack, RPG Hacks, and any other gizmo-hack is that they all deter from what bulletin boards are designed for. Not only that, they look unprofessional, trashy, sloppy, and are insanely server-intensive. TFF's most active days had no hacks whatsoever other than style improvements. Hacks artificially inflate activity, nothing more.

I've got a hack idea that will greatly improve TFF:
Stage One: Cut out the the EXP/HP/Mana system, ibProArcade, uCash, vbBux / vbPlaza, vBSEO :: Sitemap Generator, and Geek Article and Review System(unless its used for site integration, otherwise nuke it). Its all crap that eats up space, hogs bandwidth, and adds nothing useful to a BB other than trash.
Stage Two: Create clean, professional layouts focused on textual content, minimizing and eliminating all elements that deter from the core of bb design.

The most popular forums on the internet have no hacks. Hell, some of them have no layouts and are nothing but B&W text. Why are they so popular? Because of the content. Its about time we cut the crap out and focus on making TFF better for real. Hacks won't ever give you the result you want.

[Mistress Sheena]

See? I told you so. =D
Merlin always knows what's right. (When it comes to stuff like this, that is.)
Nobody listens to me by myself, but here's the best explanation of what I couldn't explain. =D

[Merlin]

And before someone claims that I should back it up and make these newfangled layouts, let me point out that I already made several clean layouts which were then butchered by hacks behind my back. I'm not going to waste my time creating layouts for others to trash. Sorry.

Note: I also am no longer an admin of these forums, so while I bring up ways in which these forums can successfully improve, it is no longer my place to implement them. I have large projects that I am working on for actual companies at the moment.

[psychosyd]

Yeah, that and with all the extra hacks and things you get people who just come to spam up a whoreload and do it so they get the gil and junk to make themselves look pretty.

You take away the fluff you break it down to what is nessecary, and why people want to come... communication.

Is TFF really active anymore?

[Merlin]

Holy mother... its YOU! Howdy long-lost friend from ages past..

As for your question, its not exactly brimming with activity. If you look at the guest count, 400 of those are Yahoo Spiders so its kinda an inflated number. I myself have been gone about 2 months and right now all I do is participate in writing-related stuff.

Anywho, this forum could use a good clean sweep. Clean out all the hacks and make it pretty again. It all distracts from the necessities. I could care less what trophies you have or what your Class is. I want to know about you, how you think, what your interests are, etc. I'm starting to sound like eHarmony or some shit...

[psychosyd]

Well hello Merlin.

Honestly, the only reason I even POSTED in this topic was for an excuse to say hi to you without actually saying it. Its good to see you too... after 2 years im back.

If i'm not mistaken, the idea of "Clean sweep the site" has come up before in the past 6 years (wow... we have been members for 6 years!!) 6 years of my life chronology recorded here at this very site. Wow

Clean sweeps come up over and over again

edit: come to think of it, this site has seen its struggling low activity momments... just a natural cycle maybe? Except, people from the "old days" are gone

Im going to go find that wayback machine and read the old day and be a crotchety old member who says things like "back in the old days of TFF" in every post

[Merlin]

Clean sweeps never end up happening because some joe blow whines that hacks are better than sex... or something...