Well, that's something.

We should raid 'em and scary the newbies.

Suikiwiden wrote:

Real community, no real friends, are the ones that can sustain through thick and thin. Which I believe a number of us have done. I don't regret signing up to TSF randomly one day. I've met some pretty incredible people and have learned a great deal and that's something that I can't say for other forums I've joined.

Indeed.

And thank you - not just Sui, but all of you - for deciding to stick around even though you were given multiple opportunities to give up and move on. I'm glad one day in Spring 2012 I decided to start posting regularly on TSF, and that the return of a separate community around a year later - one of friends I had thought long lost to the sands of time a decade ago - encouraged me to open up further here, to be not just some random voice on the internet that just talks about what games he's playing or rages at another game not getting localized, but to be more honest about the person behind that voice.

Even if that meant admitting things about myself - specifically about where I am in life - that as a 30-year-old I'm pretty ashamed of. But it turns out I didn't need to be afraid to do so.

It doesn't matter who you are, where you're from, or where you stand in your path of life - you're one of us. That's the sort of message I've gotten from two different communities groups of friends in the past year, and it really means a lot.

I feel betrayed.

Maybe we should use the namco forums as a means to an end: shameless advertisement of Reservia.

Fuckin' knew it.

Went on there and saw the question I had was already asked...so I quoted it. >=D
Pretty sure we all know the answer

I went and posted something over on the official forums because I felt it needed to be addressed after all the recent posts in the Tales Forum thread.

There's no rule that bars people off from a place when picking one over the other, but there is an issue (at least with me) when people just drop everything and don't even bother working together on something when another area is less obscure.

Some of the people in that thread don't even really post over here. I have no idea why you felt the need to get on their cases.

^What Sui-chan said

I did rather make here our official forums than the NB one, also people are forgetting that TOSF was something more than Talk about tales, truth be told there were more people on GD, VG, Animu/Mango and Entertainment than talking about tales.

Arn wrote:

I did rather make here our official forums than the NB one, also people are forgetting that TOSF was something more than Talk about tales, truth be told there were more people on GD, VG, Animu/Mango and Entertainment than talking about tales.

Agreed.

This place has a great community (albeit it is less active than it could be), and I fear that if we were to migrate to BNGF it would perish. All of us would still be there, together, but it wouldn't be the same.

Would we swamp GD and the Tales section like we have here?
Would we still discuss all of those other games?

Granted, the BNGF are easier to notice, but we can use it as a means to advertise this place if we really want to.

I'm going to visit both places, but Reservia does feel more like "home" because of the cool people and the forum layout.

I can't see myself going over there because the new BNG forums are more about the games themselves and it doesn't provide enough (if any) avenues *anywhere* to discuss non-Bandai-Namco games or anything else. There's not really any room to discuss the rest of the culture *surrounding* those games, either - Japanese anime, Japan itself, the music, etc.

Plus we've got a section here (as we did on the original TSF) where you can talk about pretty much anything at all.

Over at BNGF it's games games games games all the way down - and limited to the games of one company at that! - at last for the moment? Even Off-Topic Discussion is "A collection of topics related to Bandai Namco Games that don't fit in any of our other forums." ಠ_ಠ

According to a mod in the thread, they're not exactly finished yet and are still trying to expand some stuff (they brought up possibly changing the Tales section to have subsections for each game rather than just one big Tales section). They haven't even advertised the forums as being back up yet for that reason. Perhaps they'd add other sections down the line too.

But really, I'd suggest staying here for stuff like that since we have some regulars from TSF here that used to post in GD a lot too. It's a familiar crowd to hang around. :3

Like Tenshi and Cute said, this place has a community-like feel to it that expands beyond just simply games. To me that's an very important thing that I hate to see disappear. D:

It's simply ridiculous that they expect such a long-running series to filter into a tiny all-purpose subforum like that. I mean the original forum typically needed about three "current" sub-forums for all the questions and discussions people had...Which we coincidentally have on Reservia, nice.

Too lazy to make a new account there anyways, and I've kinda grown onto this place.

cutepresea wrote:

Some of the people in that thread don't even really post over here. I have no idea why you felt the need to get on their cases.

This.

No one's ditching Reservia. But you gotta admit that Reservia's more like a club for TSF survivors than a place for Tales discussion (the ToS one aside, the Tales sections are pretty barren - it's the GD and VG ones that get the most activity). And in my case, I've never been much on the non-Tales side of the forum, even in the original one. I like Reservia because it allows me to see familiar faces, but my needs for Xillia discussions aren't met here. So yes I have a bit more expectations in an official, potentially more visible forum. It's still too early to tell, but if it does take off, yes, I'll be more active there. It's not like I'm really active here to begin with anyway; I lurk every day, but rarely have anything to say...

I'm on this like parasites on uncooked pork.

[Edit] Their announcement board isn't locked to Moderators yet! WOOOOO!

Yume Hanabi wrote:

No one's ditching Reservia. But you gotta admit that Reservia's more like a club for TSF survivors than a place for Tales discussion (the ToS one aside, the Tales sections are pretty barren - it's the GD and VG ones that get the most activity). And in my case, I've never been much on the non-Tales side of the forum, even in the original one. I like Reservia because it allows me to see familiar faces, but my needs for Xillia discussions aren't met here. So yes I have a bit more expectations in an official, potentially more visible forum. It's still too early to tell, but if it does take off, yes, I'll be more active there. It's not like I'm really active here to begin with anyway; I lurk every day, but rarely have anything to say...

You definitely have some valid points, and I agree with most of them.

I too would like to see and participate in more (High Level) Tales Discussions.

But you can't say that any of us have really tried. Most of the people who have participated in the tales discussions have an account over here as well (95%~ish), but they just started lurking, are waiting for the others to show up, or migrated to tumblr. If nobody shows any initiative it's not going to happen, whether we try it over here or over at the official forums. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to attack you or anything of the sort.

Heck, I'll probably frequent both forums myself. I'd be fine with having the Tales Debates over there and the community over here. But at the same time it also feels a little like nobody is willing to put in the effort to have forum debates over here. Is it because we need new faces to reignite the spark?

I don't know.

But I want them back.

Like I said, I don't want to attack anyone or have anyone feel like they are being attacked. I just wanted to throw my two cents into the group. If everyone is just waiting for the activity to go up again or for someone else to start the discussions you want to participate in, it's not going to happen. You need to put in the effort.

Slivendiferious wrote:

Heck, I'll probably frequent both forums myself. I'd be fine with having the Tales Debates over there and the community over here. But at the same time it also feels a little like nobody is willing to put in the effort to have forum debates over here. Is it because we need new faces to reignite the spark?

Correct. The pool of Reservia posters is fairly small to begin with, and most of the active members either aren't particularly passionate about Tales or aren't the debating type. Lemme go through the Member List's Top 25 posters...

Suikoden: Very mellow, more interested in having a good time with friends than debating unless it's something especially important (see: her getting involved at the new Namco forums)
Sliv: Interested in debating, but has few to do it with
Falcom: Doesn't do serious conversation all that often, more interested in just having fun
Taiyz: Can be argumentative sometimes, but doesn't have as many to argue with here as he did on the old Tales forum
DylDawg: Has become largely disillusioned with Tales and doesn't post about it much anymore
Moontoon: Way too easygoing a person for debates
Tenshigami: See Suikoden
Emil12345: Enjoys Tales discussion, but seems more about casual conversation
ShivKH: Another person whose mellow and easygoing nature doesn't lend itself to debating
Abicion: One of the more active debaters during the old days, but has no Kenny or Lunar to argue with
Txn: I'm not sure, really.
warriorangel01: Don't think she's that big on Tales
Harbinger: Another laidback Reservia guy more interested in shooting the breeze
Arn: Don't think he cares enough about Tales to engage in much conversation about it
Jazzeh: Don't think she cares about Tales outside Symphonia nostalgia
Bo Staff Kanata: Might be interested in the occasional levelheaded debate
BlazingFiddlesticks: Mellow Reservia poster Specimen 863
Zwei.0: 864
Drake: Seems to enjoy debates in general, though not sure if he cares enough about Tales specifically to do so
HCSteven: Doesn't seem the debating type
DreamSword: See Emil12345
cutepresea: She seems the type who'd enjoy a nice civilized debate.
Yume Hanabi: See above.
Dr. Casey: Too lazy.
TimeFactor: See DreamSword

So really, the largest issue there is that the majority of Reservia's most active members either don't care enough about Tales to engage in extended conversation about them, or simply aren't the debating type period. That list comes out to about seven people max that have the personality and the Tales fandom to engage in High Level Tales Debates.

The solution? Bring Scrawlers back. Well... that actually probably wouldn't solve anything since she's just one member, but I love reading her posts so she should come back anyway.

Kenny drove Scrawlers away from Tales forums forever, unfortunately, so there's little chance of seeing her back... ><

I'll try to get some discussions going. I suck at starting topics, but I guess that if I don't do it, the Xillia section will forever stay empty XD;

Nice list Casey!

The symphonia section group (saeko, vlightndarkv, meowzy, sistaofpeace, soryuu, etc) have mostly moved to Tumblr I guess. It would be nice to have them back to discuss symphonia related things at least. The Symphonia section was the reason I originally joined the old forums in the first place.

Yume Hanabi wrote:

Kenny drove Scrawlers away from Tales forums forever, unfortunately, so there's little chance of seeing her back... ><

WHAT?!

Well, I guess I kind of drove Kenny off so...

It might be safe to ask her to return?

Yume Hanabi wrote:

I'll try to get some discussions going. I suck at starting topics, but I guess that if I don't do it, the Xillia section will forever stay empty XD;

Thanks! I'll try to spend more time debating as well.

To be honest the last 8 weeks have been very hectic for me, but that'll be pretty much over after the next two weeks. My activity should increase again.

I doubt she will, I mean she came to Reservia.1 because I convinced her to give it a chance, promising it wouldn't be like TSF, and we all know how that turned out... I'll at least relay the message ^^

If you guys want HLTD over the NB forums don't expect much.

Well, I guess we can at least thanks Namco for reviving my forum motivation XD

Fear not, Sui, I can do both and will try to get some Tales discussions going here. Reservia ain't dead yet

Yume Hanabi wrote:

Well, I guess we can at least thanks Namco for reviving my forum motivation XD

Fear not, Sui, I can do both and will try to get some Tales discussions going here. Reservia ain't dead yet

"I'm sorry for confronting both you and the others in such an impulsive manner."

"I value both our people and our kingdom greatly."

"....So I can get a little...impassioned at times."

"So I hope you can forgive me."

"You'd be willing to forgive me, right?"

"Geez, talk about being socially awkward..."

(Sorry fer the huge ass skit protraits, guys! But I needed to make it!)