Allowing People To Reserve Face Claims

I'm working on a site that allows face claims (you don't have to have one, especially seeing that some of the creatures in the RPG won't be able to use a human face) and I was wondering the pros and cons of allowing members who are working on their applications to reserve a specific face claim. Is it a good idea? A bad one? Why or why not? Personally, I'm the kind of individual who would rather people just post their applications with the face claim of their choice and the first person who gets in gets the face claim. However, I don't want to do anything that would turn a large number of people away from the site.

• 
  The way that I do this is by having people post in the actual face claim topic. If an established member, or someone who is in the midst of getting their application together, would like to reserve a face claim, they simply post in the topic stating which face they would like to reserve. They then have five days to have the application accepted- if an application has not been accepted within the allotted time, the face becomes up for grabs once more.
  
  I think the time limit makes it a bit fairer. If the original requester disappears or just end up lagging getting their stuff together, someone else who is actually active can come by and scoop up the face for their own. I've been at some sites where the reservation period is three days, but I find that five to seven is a bit more reasonable as people do have lives and can't be expected to log in more than once a week.

That's honestly going to be like the rarest thing that could possibly happen to your board. I've never once in my life had people fight over face claims or try to claim the same one simultaneously.

I wouldn't sweat it.

A lot of sites consider this standard practice, but personally, I don't bother with it. Reservations frequently get misused. What can tend to happen is that people reserve faces they think they might want to use, and then forget they did it - guests sometimes reserve faces before they've even concretely decided that they're going to join the site. If an opportunity is available, people will take it just because they can, as a 'just in case' measure. A time limit is a good idea, but even so, it ends up getting pretty time-consuming for the staff to keep track of when it's run out.

The way I see it is that having an in-progress application up is a reservation in itself. People do tend to glance through those before they get stuck into writing their own. On the last site I had (admittedly a couple of years ago), it was only once that we had a duplication issue where two people with unfinished apps wanted to use the same PB. I just PM'ed the latecomer to let them know that someone else had got there first, and unless the first person didn't finish their app, they would need to find a different PB. They were perfectly happy to find an alternative. That once was the only time we ever had a problem.

A lot of sites these days offer pre-opening reservations, even, but I think those are a really bad idea.

Personally, I don't like reservations. I've had them in the past, and they did nothing but cause headaches when potential players came in and said they wanted to reserve this and that, and then they disappeared. Back then we lost lots of players because we had to tell people that were interested that they had to wait for x amount of time before they could apply for the character they wanted, and there was nothing in it for us at all, because the first interested player had already poofed.

The way I see it, it's not my problem that a player loses a face or a canon they want because they are too slow to get up an acceptable application. It's not like it's a cutthroat competition with ten people clamoring over the same claim at the same time. There usually is only one applicant at a time, so they can finish at their own pace. Not always though, and it does become my problem when I lose perfectly good players because of someone who's not going to contribute anything to my game.

Having any sort of policy on face claims creates, IMHO, a strange focus on graphics and OOC considerations, for what is essentially a written game.

We do have some guidelines for avatars (give or take a few hundred years we prefer it to look historical), but nobody claims a real life person as her own.Our game is not so big that we'll forget who is using what picture. In theory if pictures look suitably different, the same person might be used by two players. In five years it nearly never happened though.

-shrugs-
I allow them, I even allow an unlimited claim. One of my members made a character for a plot expansion that might happen in june, and because he's made it already (we even have some threads ready to post) I don't mind that he reserved the face. I also made a character for the same plot expansion and then someone apped a character with that face, and then we decided to share when I make my character?
In general its just like...I don't really care. But I do know people are put off by reservations.

I'm fine with reservations so long as there's a time limit on them. Three days to a week (time to finish an app, that's it) seems effective to me.

I am completely okay with reservations -- but then I have always played on rather small games so it kind of never gets out of hand.

Now, limited reservations make little sense to me (again, small board) because with the millions of faces out there and the way the people I play with chose pbs the chance that they come up with the same one in the next two weeks is very low. Also, if I am already that close to making the character... then I would just make them (or start making them and post it as a WIP), two weeks don't make much of a difference.

I use the reserve when I have a vague idea of a character or plot idea and I know I don't need them yet or don't have time for them yet. I understand how to many people, pbs are a small thing but when I have a character in my head and it keeps growing and growing I find it terribly hard to change the pb afterwards. Sometimes it works but from the 3 times I tried, two characters completely tanked and the one only worked because the pb I had at first was more of an emergency fix anyway and the final one fit much better.

I also don't believe in the idea that it turns people off - if someone is turned off my site just because they can't play their favourite actress... well, then I don't think they wanted to be there in the first place. And if it means they can't import their favourite character, then maybe it's time for a new one.

^This.

I know in the past I have reserved faces and not used them, and want to prevent that from keeping a player in the face they want.

Once someone either mentions in cbox who their face will be or places it on their WIP app, we consider it theirs. No need to reserve. If the application is left in a dormant state for more than two weeks, the face becomes available. This tends to leave time for small real life emergencies that do happen, and we aren't super-strict, down to the minute, about removing the face.

We also have some faces reserved for NPC's we have further down the story, but if someone said they reallllllly wanted that face, I am sure it could be very easily arranged and freed up.

I wouldn't bother with a reservation list at all. Like Fluff stated, having reservations for face claims does seem to make it more about the pictures than the writing.
Having lots of restrictions on the playbys is just another source of drama and discontent. Just another place for people to whine because their favourite hottie got taken and now they can never play there because "teh sexeh" is taken. (Which perhaps is a good thing at times... Othertimes it just inconveniences good members.)

Our policy on playbys is that we don't keep track of them, we don't enforce reservations nor do we care if the same playby is used multiple times. And that we will not enforce someone to change their playby because someone else is using it. We also don't tolerate people forcing others to use playbys. Nor do we accept people giving grief if others are using a playby they want sole rights to use.
If they use a playby and I don't know who it is/where it came from then I'd ask them, since using people's pictures from facebook would be fairly creepy and that's something I would tell them to change. If they wanted to use their own picture... Another no because then it's far too easy for OOC and IC to blur. Plus there would be people who are going to make comments about the images/looks (some of which may be pretty offensive. And it's incredibly hard not to take offense when the image is you.)

Though if you absolutely feel the need to have play by reservations... I think it would be fair for reservations to only last 1 week from the date of the claim. So this way if they posted a claim on March 15th but never finished the character sheet then on March 22nd the claim is automatically freed up. So you'd record it like:

This way you'd only have to update the claim when someone made a new one. Not every time one expired too.

I'm not awfully concerned when it comes to face claims. I do like play-bys, but they're not a requirement on my boards at all. There's no need to reserve a play-by, because you just post on the face claim list AFTER your application has been approved. It's more of a list for my own personal reference than THESE FACES ARE TAKEN, YOU CAN'T HAVE THEM.

I haven't had anyone try to use the same face someone else is using so far (well, my Dark Angel board is different, because there's clones and all), but depending on the setting, I would be sure to let the players with the same faces know 'hey, you might get mistaken for [character], which could lead to some interesting roleplay and plot, you should consider that!'. I mean, c'mon, on my Supernatural board, a hunter and a demon with the same play-by would be great fun. Mistaken identities, all that great drama. I'd love my players to run with something like that on their own, but even if they didn't, I'd be sure to stir the pot a little and cause some mayhem with it.

I don’t let people reserve face claims as I really don’t see a point. Instead, I put a play-by field in the application (optional, of course) and then when the application is approved, I manually update our face claim page instead of requiring people to reply to it. I emphasize the point that even though this field is there in the application, their play-by is not claimed until the application has been approved.

Since I’ve changed to this system (I used to require people to reply to the face claim thread, but it was too much of a hassle) I haven’t received any complaints on it, and I feel that I get the job done a lot quicker than requiring applicants to do it themselves.

If I’m applying to a site though, I don’t know…it really depends on the site’s general rules for reservations, but I probably wouldn’t bother reserving someone as I tend to choose really unknown PBs.

I allow them. It is very important to some rpers to reserve the perfect face, and without a reservation, some have said they feel rushed in posting and completing an app.

I do put a time limit on reservations, though.

I have experienced two people registering within hours of each other and wanting the same face so the rule I have is first come first serve. Basically, once you have your bio up for approval, you can post your face claim cause it's not neccessarily your fault if we don't approve it immediately. So once that is accomplished, it's whoever posts it first who gets the claim. I make this very clear. And if you fail to claim it (even when no one else is wanting it), then it's not yours.

I do allow people to reserve faces if it's for a want ad (both characters if both aren't finished) cause over a certain amount, we have time limits on when you can make a new character. But we only allow reserves in this instance.

This. I mean, really, if the FC is so important to you that you won't join a board, are you there for the writing? Don't get me wrong, I love my FCs and using them for my characters, but I haven't not made a character because OMG SO AND SO IS ON RESERVE.

There are thousands out there as is. So reserve away!

Besides, I'd rather reserve than make the character based on a FC (IE: looks, or maybe I have an avatar that shows off the personality I'm making), then get the whole thing done, someone else beats me to the claim, and now I have to go find another FC (which I would do but still) that fits what I now have in my head.

Personally, I believe that if you put in the time and effort to complete your app first, you deserve the face claim. I have never done face claim reservations. It just isn't fair to those who come in just a little after but have more interest and drive for your site. So for me it's always first-come first-serve.

I've never encountered a problem with letting people reserve face claims early. We allow them to reserve a face for two weeks, and they can only renew their claim once before it's up for grabs again. We're pretty generous with time, though I was on a site once where they let people reserve up to a month. I think that was a bit much.