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Metas, RP events, things with more than intrinsic prizes to encourage people to come back and play. We have a lot of existing players who haven't played/had motivation to play, so we should focus on them instead of on strictly new people.

Perhaps even a matchmaking thing, where characters are randomly/semirandomly matched together and have quick prompt-based PRPs that give them points towards an event reward?

Or a mentoring thing, where higher level characters rp with lower ranking ones and do stuff?

A tournament could be nice too, especially if you want to test out the potential new battle system you guys are working on.

Perhaps This could come into play? I started an interest thread in the plot forum a long time ago for a marketplace/trading center/event sort of idea and I think it might be translatable into something that could bring up activity?

Equipment makes for great player character rewards, especially since the rest needs major overhauls.

We've actually recently started talking about a meta idea and hopefully we'll be able to build it up and run with it. The main reason we didn't do one this summer is because things were so hectic with us all. Brolis hasn't been around much, Fluff has work, Uke had school and now work and I had work and had never run a meta myself and wasn't about to be able to do it alone. We talked to Brolis and the rest of staff about it and he agreed that it'd be best to not have one this time around and substitute the summer with a large event with games to keep people going. So yeah. That's what's going on with that.

As far as reqs go, they are a bit daunting but so are some other shops I've been part of, and Magesc does offer unique lines for every single stage, so put into perspective, they aren’t too bad. I do agree that the reqs for civis is a lot. It's probably one of the main reasons I've never created a
civi. We may discuss it amongst staff and look over reqs to make civis more appealing, since they really shouldn’t be prejudiced against or extraneously difficult. Its something to talk about.

I'm not sure what you mean by status? I do know about drama though, and it's sad. But every shop has to deal with it. Hopefully it hasn't tainted the shop and we can move past everything and get it back up and going.

And hopefully we can come up with some things that will drag you back into being interested in the shop. It's good you've found someone to RP with, though. Makes things more enjoyable for sure. We’ll be moving towards having more prompts to hopefully encourage different people to try interacting with each other, since at the heart of it all, RP is about at least two people creating a story together with their characters, and it’s no fun to be on your own all the time. We really want to give our players an environment they feel comfortable reaching out in and engaging each other. Thanks for taking the time to speak up!