Ok first of all, before your eyes bleed from the horrible Engrish, remember this is not my native language. 😆

Ok... so as it has been since the beginning of Jan when I got officially appointed as Lulu's Manager, I've been RPing my ass to get the business going stable enough (with stable I mean having a decent appearance of bartenders around, and a couple of dancers if I am lucky) and I am glad to say that its running fine so far. I must thank part to this to the automatic inviter on the bar, makes things easier (I have a RL as everyone in here and I can't be 24/7 in-game to keep on with the invites to the group). It's a great system, besides the trickiness of pretending there's a NPC Manager hiring people, or blaming on poor bar management, causing that sometimes Mark doesn't know who are his workers... but its a good system nonetheless.

Here comes the part I want to discuss though, we are in dire need to have active leadership on the other business fronts as well. We could get probably an auto inviter for each of them (by now shouldn't be a problem I want to think) but that won't solve the problem that we need people to give the business a RP guidance. For example for me Lulu's is Mark front for his drug dealing business, he's basically a drug lord which uses the heart of this city for his means... but the problem is that we have barely any factions and front ends for Mark to have deals with. So far we have:

* The Jokers and the Pierrots (both biker gangs with active leadership).
* The hospital (which I've seen very busy as of late *thumbs up*)
* DEPD (I still have my doubts that DEPD has a RP guidance, but this part might be ignorance of me).
* DE Daily (somehow there, not as active as it used to be when I started RPing, but I've seen seldom appereances of reporters and editors)
* Red Herring (They just started, so far its been great though).
* And of course, Lulu's.

And in a nutshell... that's DE factions and front ends so far. Having active RP leaders of each business front, can enrich greatly the RP of every business, by giving a feeling of "bigger picture" storylines. So far in my experience in this past months, a lot of people just seem to get bored out of their minds at how simplistic the RP in here can get (lack of cohession in storylines and community feeling) and they just leave, therefore why we have a LOT of new visitors, but a thin regular player base. Obviously this is not the only reason why they feel not motivated to make DE their main RP sim, but its one of the important ones.

Dead End somehow is a fitting name for our current situation business-wise. We have a lot of business which remain dead, they are just like ghost places. The result of this well, lots of people gathering on the only active place (in this case either Lulu's or the hospital), and the new faces think all they can do as a job in here is either be a cop, nurse, bartender or dancer. And that's not the case right now, we have automatic inviters in the pool place, Crave (not sure on that part as I am writing this) and others.

New faces (which are actually a lot on a daily basis, I get to RP everyday with someone different) could get a little bit more of OOC guidance of the things they could do on DE. Kinda like a OOC area, I think Oaf before she had her net issue and had to leave SL, was building some sort of OOC area with this info on the lobby of DE. I think this could do wonders, I remember on the old build, on the old lobby we used to have this portraits with the main business fronts and if you clicked them it would give you a NC with the back story of it, and who was running them. For me in personal that was a great way to know DE, which places know, and which to avoid, and who to talk if I was interested (this way I got to meet Myth, and get hired as a bouncer, all started from that 1 year and a half ago). I know its not necessary to overwhelm the players with options even before they have started RPing, but its nice to offer them in case they want to get more immersed them... just as optional OOC info, useful to know the basic RP structure of the sim. Actually a lot of people don't like to work on a business front or being in a faction, and take it more for the loner style, which its perfectly fine, but for the others it would be fair to present them with this information.

Ok.. in case you are like "ZOMG Wall-O-Text" lemme sum quick what I just said. We urge to have active leadership on the business fronts, so we can get more bold RP stories going for those of us who are regulars and active in the sim. We really need to stablish some sort of mechanism to avoid this "Business-dead" syndrome that we have in here, its fairly common to hear new players IC say "I wanted to go to X place but it was closed" or "seems like lulu's its the only place to have fun in DE". Also it would be great if players were given a bit of OOC info about the existent business fronts in the lobby.

I am only presenting the problematic that I feel there's around and not actual solutions (well except the lobby thingie)... that its up to discussion as well, and possibly will reply as well with some ideas of my own...

Also its important to mention that this is not a new problem, and actually its quite a very old one that has persisted on DE.

Anyway enough rant.. what do you think fellow RPers?.