So, here we are again. The site has more or less fallen inactive, mostly because the staff went inactive (not pointing fingers at anyone, I am not any less guilty for this). Good news, at least Graven popped up a few days ago, and we are considering of taking him into the staff team - if he is interested and active.

Back to the idea of this topic, where did we go wrong? What could we do otherwise?

1) Plot. Canon and Alternate universe was too big of a bite for Bleach Story to swallow. We simply didn't (and we certainly don't now) have activity required for it. We are sticking to the Alternative universe as the only playground available. Plot-wise, a few changes will occur, but mostly, it will remain the same.

- The plot will start out from Oleg [Only admins are allowed to see this link]'s arrival in Soul Society, rather than from him finishing the gateway between the alternative and canon universe. He will then proceed into beginning to build the portal, which will be finished at whatever point we think we have enough activity.

- Because this is not a full plot arc potential, there will be an arc in Soul Society, that is not tied to Oleg [Only admins are allowed to see this link]'s appearance directly. We were discussing about an insurgency against Gotei 13, in form of terrorism, rather than an armed conflict - an underground network of people, who have a grudge or hatred for Gotei 13's military regime. People, who were wronged by the shinigami, and who work to bring it down. We need to discuss this a little more, however.

- Hueco Mundo will be in the brink of Civil War after the events of Karasu's castle. This is the same plot as in the current alternate universe. No changes here.

- World of Living will have the war on crime plot, Yakuza vs. S.A.D.

2) Simplicity. Our applications is too long, simply put. Our grading system comes off as if we are the experts of writing and justifies us to give a grade to someone's work. Our monetary system, which has been stated already in the past, does not offer simplicity. So, let's just drop everything, and I mean everything, irrelevant and unnecessary, and focus in making this a fun place to roleplay, rather than adding rules and restrictions.

- Plotter/Application could be a good addition? I will post more on this at some point.

3) Activity. Mini-profiles, skin, site design. We need a do-over for Bleach Story. As much as I hate to say this, we look plain with this skin, and plain sites are less attractive to members. This is the first step in bringing activity back. Then comes advertising, and more importantly, affiliating, with other sites, active sites. But first, we need to make us, the staff, active again.

We had a good start with this list of things, that each is working on individually. It worked for a while, until everyone stopped using it and eventually no one worked on anything. We need to bring this back and we need to find motivation to resurrect the site and keep it alive. The site has been through worse, and we will surely be back in the play in no time, but we need to work for it.

As a side note, the tournament is not going to fly. There is no one to play it out. Let's start from reforming the systems into simpler and easier for new members to get.

Most excellent. Time to burn down everything that doesn't work! REVOLUTION!!!

I have many many ideas to restructure. For now I think it might be more efficient if everyone who is still around....or currently around to take on a task and then present it to the group in like a week or two. Then as a group we can work on each one, prioritizing and finalizing things posted in order.

To respond in a general sense before any of that I think that as with anything, there is a lot that we could improve on. I don't think that it's really an issue of activity level to determine whether we can have a canon/alter option. The canon if done properly can just be something that functions on it's own because Tite did the work for us already. All we need to do is make announcements about what arc we're on. It will be an attraction for anyone interested in the canon that way. Maybe something along the lines of "no killing key characters, no interfering with plot development, etc.etc..

Applications totally need to be re-worked. IMO we shouldn't stress length so much. We do want effort to be shown obviously, but length isn't the only way that effort takes form.

One of the most interesting things I've ever seen on a forum based RP site was a system for techniques and abilities that didn't include a banned list, but allowed for RPers to have anything they wanted so long as it had strengths and weaknesses. Strengths and weaknesses, at the most basic level, relied on a list of considerations. There are three things that should be considered when making a technique across the board: potency, range, and duration. An RPer list these in the order of most considered to least considered or negligible. So say Mayuri's poison cloud for example would have wide potency, moderate range, but the duration isn't that long in terms of exposure. I won't get into too much detail cause I'm at work but you get the general gist I'm sure.

Revamping is a good idea, but we also need to be mindful that if we do this too often that it may deter people from coming as well. I'm not saying we don't do this. Don't get that idea. I'm just saying lets do this and try to keep the changes longer than just a few months. I agree with working on shortening the app process, but we also need to make sure that with that being said that the player does not just put in random things and expect that to be accepted. We need to make sure that what is put in the app will make sense and flow with the character. We have shortened it a bit by consolidating some areas. I say we shorten down the looks and history. Those seem to be some of the harder areas. Other hard areas seem to be the techniques themselves. I don't think there is not much we can do there for that however. I do agree, however, with Cirujano about the keeping both universes around is a good thing but we need to bring them both aware of each other until the site is more active. Make it an incentive in a way. Just my 2 cents.

Also, I wanted to say. I do hope that we will decide to go with the number of threads acting as experience for gaining tier, tech, and ability additions as opposed to single training threads and cooldowns.

I've begun typing up an idea that would allow for all types of powers to be permitted and automatically balanced according to what their creator wants. That should be done soon.