Welcome to Gaia! ::

Re: nuking characters, I'd rather not see that become an option, i feel like it would have the potential for people to serially kill off/get new characters whenever they get bored with them, also would be made kind of irrelevant if you did away with the one raevans per person rule

Forum - As of right now, I prefer to keep it on Gaia. Gaia has a pretty good system going on already. Only when Gaia really is threatening to shut down, we'll look into alternatives.

Money making - This will be primarily done off-site. Either announced on Discord and/or on DeviantArt itself. I find Tumblr very limiting communication-wise. I will think about the trading thing a bit more, but the plan is, if we ever allow trading at all, would only be allowed to trade in between Raevans. (ie, trade Raevan for Raevan) and only for Raevans that had been acquired via RLC. (semi customs, future Raevans etc) Not applicable for Raevans gotten through Free events. (like flatsale, raffle etc)

World Building As Kota puts it, I don't feel like we need to make a new world setting for the Lab to exist. The Gaia world in Lab-verse is pretty independent on it's own already I think lol.

TO BE CONTINUED

Profitability

We don't make much from the current semi custom RLC system, really. It's a one-time payment for many stages of art. Doing just one or two per year just doesn't cut it anymore. The Lab is not a super profitable breedable shop. I've seen some more profitable breedables/adoptables and I know it can be done.

If Raevans are sold off-site on DA, it is the owner's prerogative whether to join the Lab-verse or not on Gaia. If they choose not to, it will just not be mentioned in the Lab-verse. I do not find a need to explain away IC-ly when these Raevans do not exist in the IC-world. If an existing fel essence was used for the Raevan, the fel essence will just be assumed to still be kept and not used.

I might skip the bottle/fel essence stages altogether for some of these new Raevans that will be sold off-site. Unless it's like a fel essence sale, then no art, new owner decides the soul choice. If it's a soul bottle sale, then lineart, no colors.

Option to update character art is a good idea tho!

On the RP portion of the discussion relating to RLC

I'm not eliminating the RP system entirely from the shop, I'm just making it optional. If you want to keep RPing your Raevan like usual, go on ahead, we are not stopping you. I'm just opening up the option to grow Raevans without (or with minimal) RP if the owner so chooses. This new RLC system will not eliminate Gaia flatsales altogether. I will still hold Gaia free events. So don't worry about that.

So let's say, Rapid wins the next flatsale on Gaia, (yes with the one Raevan per person rule lifted, ya'll can enter the next flatsale) but she realizes that she has no time for RP anymore. So she opts for RLC growth. That's totally fine. However, since the new Raevan is a Gaia FS Raevan, (free to obtain) she can't trade away the Raevan even if she doesn't 'connect' with the Raevan. If this is the case, Rapid can opt to just leave the Raevan be, treat it as a collectable or something lol.

So yes the Lab is going to try to encourage a little bit of collecting, which is essential to keeping the Lab running! We need new blood! We need new interest!!

Also I would say no to nuking characters as well. Please see explanations from people above me

Oh boy, lots to catch up on and consider this past weekend. I think I've caught up on everything, and thank you all for gathering your thoughts here.

Let me start by saying I agree with everything Atma and Kota brought to the table, Kota's points in particular are really mirroring most of what I was going to say anyway.

RP/Activity Requirements definitely need to be optional at this point. We're all adults, we have careers and responsibilities and financial burdens that just take up entirely too much time, among other things in our lives. As much as we love our characters and the stories we're writing with each other, most of us just can't keep up anymore. Punishing for activity anymore seems really counter productive when the shop needs continued dedication. It's also, I'm sure, a huge turn off for new blood. I think a forgiveness for past inactivity (not those who voluntarily quit) would be a wonderful idea and probably help in a bit of shop revival.

Moving Forums is a really bad idea, I feel. That seems to be off the table for now and I'm grateful but I just wanted to add reinforcement that I think it should absolutely only be considered if and when Gaia is truly in danger of shutting down. Especially if that meant completely overhauling the setting. I really love world building myself, but I don't think I would be able to rebuild and commit to a new place in the same way. All of our records are on here, it would be a massive undertaking to just get up and move existing stuff let alone cut out a niche for new folks. It just makes the most sense to stay where we are for now.

Character Cap I'm echoing Kota's suggestion of just allowing new raevans to be acquired once the previous one reaches Valsaros, it makes the most sense especially from a roleplay management/personal funding standpoint. People can still collect and just do the stage payments if that's how it's going to work, but they also won't be completely overwhelmed with options or juggling raevans as they would be if they had two freis and a sigel, for example.

Nuking Characters is something I'm extremely iffy on. Atma brought up really important points. I think there should be a limit on this, because I do understand sometimes your best laid plans just do not work out. Maybe a time limit sort of thing? Not real time, but if you've met such and such amount of raevans in roleplay or you've done x amount of roleplays/solos overall, then there should be a cutoff so other people aren't negatively impacted and have to account for other people's writing decisions. Being a community, it's really important to consider how all of our decisions affect each other. Alternatively, maybe each raevan should only be allowed One nuke, if things really are that broken, so people aren't doing it willy nilly. I don't know but I really think people need to take everyone into consideration when they do their plots. Our characters and stories don't exist in a vacuum here, so all of our choices can and will affect every other raevan even in really small ways.

Sustainability is a pretty complicated thing to consider overall. Personally, I think the most important thing to do before thinking of expanding is taking care of the existing players and existing raevans. Inactivity forgiveness could open a lot of doors that were closed before, and revitalize things in the immediate. I also strongly think that growing all of the existing bottles as soon as possible should be a priority so that the people who want to play to their fullest extent can do so. That would be a huge help in the short term, and that's as much of an issue as the long term.

I'm also echoing Kota's concern about these changes coming off as pay-to-play. Compensation is extremely important, and I know Kyou's clarified that most payment will be optional and there will still definitely be free sales and such. I just want to stress how absolutely crucial it will be to find a balance between the free writing to grow option and the payment to grow option, if that gets implemented. Writing would of course be more work but the RP requirements should and would need to be heavily simplified for this to seem fair at all, when the current turnaround for writing growths from frei to sigel can be a few years.

Quest fairies sound like a wonderful suggestion, it's worked really well in most other shops and it would absolutely encourage more people to quest at all? As it stands, for a long time Lab has sort of garnered a reputation of making quest threads feel pointless to newbies, both due to the time between sale or custom availability, but also because it's so much more likely to get a raevan through a pre-determined sale rather than a 'dream raevan' as it were. That's not necessarily a bad thing on its own, but compared to other shops where most quests get a lot more freedom and likelihood in achievement, it can come off as very discouraging to new people who aren't used to Lab's format.

In terms of writing I think the bottle stages might be a bit outdated at this point. I understand their use and they made an incredible amount of sense at the time and in the story, but item stages are often a huge roadblock for writing-based B/Cs these days. It basically just serves as a limiter; like you're "in" when you have a bottle but what you're able to do is not far removed from non-owners. I would suggest considering phasing the bottle stage out, not in plot or even in art but in practice. People could still write soul captures if they would like, but requiring it just feels like a roadblock going forward.

Profitability I'm not really going to say much on. There's other folks who are more well versed in the dA sales climate of adoptables and other things than I am and would offer better insight. I'm basically for everything Kota suggested, I think it's all very important to consider. I do agree that paying per stage seems like the best option for real profitability though, and if people are going to exclusively be paying and not playing at all I really think those should be separated, conceptually, from the canon Lab-verse.

Everything else has been touched on pretty well. Thank you all again for sharing your thoughts, and staff for offering us this opportunity to talk some things out to try and make Lab better, more user friendly, and hopefully sustainable going forward.