Let's Play Archive, Claims and Rules ver. 4.0 - Read Before Posting!

I would like to add a couple reservations for Starflight and Starflight II. Both of these games are quite long so at least should be interesting.

Barkley 2 isn't out yet.

But when it is, I am going to LP it.

Even if I become homeless, insane, and dead. I will rise from the grave and yell at all the realtors I see in a language of my own devising until they let me into a nice quiet suburb and give me Internet access.

I would like to reserve Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu. It won't be for a while, but I do plan on making it happen at some point in the future.

I'll take the last spot in December and do a quick LP of Police Quest (EGA)

Still trying to figure out how to get DOSBox to capture sound with Sierra's SCI engine, so you'll have to wait for QFG4. Sorry

When you make the January list, put me in for that Final Fantasy Legend 3 LP. I'm probably crazy, but it might just be what I need to stay sane.

You're never gonna survive unless you get a little crazy.

If you push it far enough you'll wrap back around to sane! (hopefully...)

Okay, I think the two initial posts are all up to date!

As always if I missed anything let me know!

I'm still listed as having reserved FF12, even though I kinda already started and finished that LP. Also, my alias is for some reason spelled Skyrender instead of Sky Render in the list of completed LPs for FF12. Other than that, looks about right to me.

Fixed!

I checked the reserved games list, and it's still listing me as reserving Breath of Fire even though I finished that thread a couple weeks ago. Just a heads-up!

please remove my reservation for circle of the moon

done

and done

Thunderbirds X:Com is GO.

Eddie, I love you, but you gotta stop putting the colon there.

You've got yourself a deal mister!

Hey guys, I was wondering if we could have a discussion over the future of the TT LP forum. This is not a critique of the forum, nor the LPs currently running, nor the great person that runs it (Falselogic).

I have, what I believe, are some practical suggestions that could help this board evolve and thrive. In the end, it all comes back to one goal: getting more traffic on the forum. More traffic will help everyone's LPs! If anyone else has any other comments or suggestions, I think it'd be good to throw em here too.

My three suggestions:

1) Remove the Queue. The LP queue served a purpose when everyone and their dog wanted to LP something. We don't seem to have that problem anymore, so I would relax it. It right now merely serves (as far as I can see) as a barrier to LP participation. Consider that right now (and again, this is not a criticism about individual people), Brickroad has booked a slot for this month that will not "happen" until January anyway; it's literally preventing someone from starting a new LP.

That we might (perhaps) get 5, or even 6 (or even 10!) new LPs a month does not concern me; these LPs will draw new readers, who will feedback into the forum. The lifeblood of any LP is it's viewership, and I worry that keeping the queue now will only hinder it.

If you want a new rule, make it one where every new LPer has to make a "test post" in the Suggestions/Feedback thread before they can start an LP, and get them to record how long the update "took" so they have an idea about the commitment involved. And if threads are abandoned? Well, that's okay. They'll get pushed off, never to be seen again.

2) Get rid of Youtube Threads. No offense to people like Smiler or Brickroad, but the Youtube threads are boring. I'd much rather see each LP'd game get a separate thread, especially because then I'll know what I'm getting into.

I remember that one individual managed to link the Youtube videos straight in the thread; is that still possible? Maing a post with a video and a "new update!" note would be much preferable, and (hopefully) very easy to implement. Imagine if Brickroad's Shiren LP was in such a format here; I think we could have gotten a lot of discussion about tips and tricks!

3) Let's make a bigger effort to support the LPs that exist on this forum. Is there a better way of promoting our forum on the main forum directory? Is there some collaboration that can be done with the Gamespite Fun Club? Is it possible to get a quick blurb on the telebunny main page each month highlighting new LPs? Cross promotion on the Bronto forums? We should explore every available option.

Questions? Comments? Criticisms?

- Eddie

But the thread shortage!

I'm not sure what you are suggesting here. Are we condensing youtube LPs into a single thread where you can post a "video up" when updating, or are you saying that we should just not allow video LPs at all?

I'm not advocating a mega-thread. I'm advocating a different thread for each game. Part of the trick is drawing people into the forum. Again, not picking on Smiler, but which does it more effectively:

"Dead or alive, you're coming with me: Let's Play Robocop!"

OR

"Smiler's LP couch cushion fort".

Guess which one I'm more likely to read/watch? And I'd be willing to bet that a separate thread would be more likely to bring someone from the forum index, and almost certainly draw more comments, even if it's little more than a embedded Youtube video.

(although I'm not advocating Youtube dumps; in progress LPs are okay, but not "here's 70 videos of my FFT solo Archer run")

He's saying that instead of having one thread for all of Brickroad's video LPs, there would be one for Cave Story, one for Shiren, one for Myst, etc. Ditto Smiler's megathread, and a few others.

As long as they're labelled "Video" in the thread title.

Er... why?

Yeah, no. At any given time I have two different LPs running on YouTube. Am I expected to start and maintain threads for all of them? A new one every 20 or 30 days? Most of which probably wouldn't generate more than a page or two of discussion? I don't even make "hey guys I updated" posts in my megathread now as it is.

Mentally, I have my TT LPs in one box and my YouTube LPs in another one. They're different styles, different processes, and different rules. I don't even treat my megathread like a traditional LP thread anymore... to me it's more of an extension of my YouTube comments. The proper way to get my updates is to go to YouTube and subscribe.

I'm suggesting that it would be voluntary; if person X wants to start a video LP on Youtube, that's fine. If they want to "advertise" it here, then start a new thread. I wouldn't force anyone to create new threads on TT because they started a new LP up on their YouTube account (as you said, your Youtube LPs and TT ones are fairly separate entities).

And even if people wanted to keep the existing video LP threads (because there wasn't a rule against them when they were created), I'm okay with that. I just think they do more harm than good from a forum-building perspective, so would rather just stop any more from being created.

So I know not to bother clicking on them.

I second deregulation of the forum. All it does now is create work for Falselogic.

Partial deregulation would make sense. If nothing else, the claims system should be kept in place. But yeah, the LP forum isn't having people lining up to LP left and right any longer. The queue rule should be relaxed for the time being.

I agree with the claim system staying unless people are okay with multiple LPs of the same game going on simultaneously (which I honestly think is okay assuming the different threads have significant enough differences) but seeing as how the queue barely fills up as is I don't think its necessary right now.

Anyways we were talking about this the other night in IRC, Eddie just wants this place to become more popular as an LP destination and his suggestions are based around that. I really like the idea of high quality LPs getting a mention on the front page of the blog, maybe False could consolidate a post for Parish every month or so? I realize that "high quality" starts to create a divide but lets be honest, some are better than others in both update quantity and quality. I'm not saying we should start ripping up lower quality ones, more like offer up honest advice and critique and get the median quality up in general. Why yes, I do realize what I haven't touched mine in quite some time, why do you ask.

BEGIN LP FORUM ADMINISTRATION MESSAGE

Anyways my New Years resolution is to finish god damn BOF2 before Don't Starve is released because I'd like to put in a claim for it, while dropping Binding of Isaac. I just can't think of any good ways to make it interesting while keeping the active nature of the game preserved in video. Maybe once I get some more feeling for how to be entertaining from the screenshot format I'll revisit the idea but for now I'd feel better letting someone else take it.

This is a really good idea, although perhaps something more akin to a newsletter ("Here's what's starting, here's what's finished"). I'd be willing to chip in and write it; False does enough work around here!

I support any plan that keeps this forum alive and kicking, because this forum is awesome.

And I'll do my best to make my FFL3 LP one of the good ones.