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Kk, so I know I've been a member for 4 seconds and everyone's going "wtf who is this n00b ;[" but here's my two cents.

On sites I've been on before I've noticed that the main thing which causes activity to trickle is simply a lack of variety. No matter how many members there are, RP sites are cliquey. I was on a site with thousands of members before and everyone just RP'd with the same people. Yes it was fun, but it starts to get old after a while. We need a way to encourage people to branch out, come together, and create storylines. Threads for the sake of threads just die out and doesn't inspire anybody to keep posting. You can't rely on storytellers, or threadmasters, or whatever to come and use plotkai on your dwindling muse.

Events are nice.
Promotions are wonderful.
The staff is amazing.

But at the end of the day the heart and soul of the site is the members.

Really there's only 3 things I can think of and even they aren't end-all solutions. There doesn't need to be a plot, a designated "big bad", or bargain-bin sales on jutsu and equipment and whatnot. Gimmicks will only keep a site afloat for so long.

Here's what I got from my personal observations.

1 ) More emphasis on "teamwork" - Ninja rarely work alone. This has been established canonly time and time again. And contrary to what you might hear, people don't want to RP alone. The fun of roleplaying is interaction with different characters. ENCOURAGE people to come together. Genin have teams, Chuunin have squads, Jounin have students and lead squads, ANBU move as a unit- very few people should be off wandering by themselves. Even akatsuki, the most dangerous assortment of criminals in the world had 2-man cells. Think of ways to reflect this on the site and reward it. This'll get more people to start RPing together.

2 ) Concise procedures Can I be honest here? I almost didn't join. Why? Because it was a hassle trying to find everything I needed to find and read [as well as retain] everything I needed to read. I literally had about 15 tabs open. There's a ton of updates cluttering up the place, so much so I couldn't really tell what was "important" and what didn't pertain to me, and spent about 10 minutes looking for the ban list. I'm not trying to sound like I'm complaining. I'm just saying there should be one thread with links to everything a new person needs to know pinned up and announced. Not even the side-bar has everything I need because those links lead to more links that need me to find more links to understand them. I shouldn't have to play musical links for 20 minutes just to finish my character. That's ridiculous. Keep it simple. New members will appreciate it. I don't even know what's allowed, what isn't, how often I can do what, because your rules for everything complicated and all over the place. I'm a seasoned RPer of eight years, been on here a week reading things all day everyday and still barely have a grasp of everything I'm expected to know. Normally I can get going in a couple of hours. Here I need days to actually study before I even attempt something. I feel like if I were given some sort of NRP standardized test I would flunk out. Its very discouraging to say the least.

3 ) Member-creativity I dunno why there has to be a limit on customized creations, such as jutsu, clans, BLs, and other things. The argument of "we may get too many" always seemed silly to me. The site doesn't have a "quota" to maintain. There's nothing lost except for maybe board space and even then- this site is free. Nobody is paying by-the-thread. Half the fun of RPing is immersing yourself into the universe. The other half is putting your own creative spin on things. "Caps" on custom things isn't a logical concept. If you ban a village then the average lazy-guest is either a) not going to join the site, b) simply revamp their character to be from that village once its unbanned which only makes more work for the staff since they have to re-approve essentially the same profile twice, so they'd might as well not had the cap/ban to begin with. See what I'm saying? For canon things its fine. But things like which villages you can be from, how many techniques you can make a month, unique bloodlines- things that don't affect the site as a whole but rather an individual? I think it'd be fine to loosen it up considerably. If I had a really cool idea for something and I couldn't even attempt it...well...it doesn't inspire me to want to RP here.


....>_>; so yeah...my two cents. Sorry if this sounded curt.

::Drops mic::

::slinks out::