The importance of large grids for MU*
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My logical brain tells me a grid is largely unnecessary, and yet whenever I RP without one I do feel like something is missing. Not something hugely important, but something. I like the comparison of them to sets. It's just one more piece that helps with immersion a little bit.
I feel this way too. Though, I feel the same way about room ownership. If I went on a game and found that I wasn't allowed to own-on-my-charbit my own build project, especially if that included having to put in a +request any time I wanted to add or remove +views, change descs around, etc? Man, I'd be out of there so fast. I dunno if it's just because it feels way too control-freaky (no offense, IV, seriously) or what, but I'd just feel weird about it. Irrationally so, to the point I wouldn't enjoy myself there.
I've never really encountered what I'd consider good reasons for why things would be that way. Not that others might not find the reasons good, but me not so much. I don't really WANT to go idle in a quiet/idle room, especially since people tend to avoid paging when I do, and there's even odds I'm at my computer with half an eye towards responding if anybody does.
I generally feel like the crunch put on player ownership of stuff in general has been one of the more unfortunate trends over the years, but I also started on a place that not only let people own a bunch of shit, but encouraged them to build and learn to manipulate it in different ways.
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Log into TR - or any game, for that matter - and type +where and do the ratio ( 170 : 7 in this case ). Great, we have the virtual online recreation of Weeds and on every single game is this doing anything but bandaging people's self-serving irrational triggers?
So far it looks like the next games coming out better have a map and a room for each point on it, along with the allowance to build your own too, or nobody's going to play...
Heaven forbid people socialize unless it's on an impersonal thread system. Good gum. How dreadful an idea. We need to recreate us sitting at computers logging into third party nets like the Soapbox here just to log in to the games we play.
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The first game I played on in a MU format (not counting AOL games using Private Chat rooms with names of the location etc) was Anomaly Trek MUX which had a pretty detailed map for the station and some smaller ones for key ships -- and then removed ones for particular planets and a frickin' load up a desc for a place and store it holodeck system I loved. The thing is, I walked that grid to go places, I never @tel'd if I could help it unless it was to Planet Hell where an ST'd adventure was going to be going down. I even avoided just using the home command to go back to my quarters unless I absolutely had to go right now, I'd walk the ring to the turbolift, choose my floor, head down to my quarters and then log out.
The next place was Denver -- and it had a pretty big grid, and it had Car bits I could drive around the grid with. I loved that. I had numerous scenes RPing with someone as we drove around the city from one place to another and then kept right on playing as we got out and went into the Chantry or whatever. Again, I rarely just jumped -- I went through the city unless I was logging on for a scene starting RIGHT NOW being run by someone else.
One of the things I missed on TR was the culture of actually traveling the grid (AND MY CAR). I ended up traveling the grid a lot anyway because it was important to me to know the layout of the City so I could RP better about it. It was good for me to say, Oh yeah, the Tapas bar is here, by this... but if you want the best clock shop, you can go over here by this and check that out.
I like lots of places available for me to go to, it helps inspire RP ideas for me, but I understand the benefit of Temp Rooms, it reminds of the Holodecks on Anomaly. If you only play with a few people in limited areas, a big grid doesn't matter -- but I like open world exploration and a grid full of people's creations give me a chance to discover things ICly and OOCly, and I frankly liked that. Not everyone is looking for the same experience on a MU, obviously, and I can deal with the view that smaller is better and quick travel is king... but I won't lie, if your grid is huge and insanely over built and full of vast amounts of places to go that perhaps see RP in them once a year, I would probably love it because that appeals to my sense of immersion, and for some reason the five to ten minutes it takes to make a temproom and the describe it breaks off my feeling of the flow of RP while in transit, and I like RPing through my world, not just moving from set to set.
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With @Fortunae here. I don't like absolutely ginormous ones 'cause I get lost, but yes, the immersion, the RPing through the world, exploring, finding places that suggest lines of RP that I might not have thought of, etc.
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I tend to prefer medium-sized grids and attempt to keep to what I find desirable in a grid in mind when I am building for a game. Sadly, it doesn't always seem to work out, for example the last game I build on, and my grids wind up entirely too huge to facilitate RP.
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@BetterJudgment said:
I like big, well-written grids with places that are described as actual places. I even like grids whose rooms have hidden exits and are intentionally linked in ways that turn them into mazes. However, the only places I've seen with grids like that are ones that have been around more than a decade.
I started out on a place like that, and still really enjoy that grid style, also.
I keep pondering if there's some means of assembling a grid that combines that with hub area rooms for the ease factor, but I have the horrible, sinking feeling that it's the kind of thing that would require kicking it around on a server to accomplish, since it can be harder to plot that out effectively on paper.
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@Jennkryst said:
@Bennie Mummy: the Curse. It was out before Demon. But it breaks the conventional power stat/fuel stat of everything else in nWoD.
Mummy: The Curse is not second edition. It was out before Demon as the last corebook that came out before they started the swap. It doesn't use the rules from second edition (i.e. God-Machine Chronicles). Not only that, but it breaking the conventional Supernatural Tolerance/fuel trait, as you mentioned, make it incompatible with other game lines to the point that Mage looks like a welcome fit.
So no, no Mummy. However, I fully welcome you to start your own Mummy: The Curse game. While I'm not sure it would be all that popular, I'm positive the people who would play would thoroughly appreciate the opportunity, at least.
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@Bennie When a game reaches a certain size it NEEDS a larger grid and the ability of players to have their own spaces. Unless you're saying that you want to try to force people to RP with everyone else by virtue of having your 60 odd players stacked like cordwood into the four room grid you decided to go with. We're all, supposedly, adults here. We can choose who, when, and how we socialize with the general populace of a game. You're treating a large grid and the ability to own a build like its the DOWNFALL OF THE MU* or something. Chill out, man.
I've seen games with large grids (holy fuck the twisted nightmare of HM's Vienna + Hedge) and I've seen relatively smaller grids both work out equally fine. But nowhere have I seen people not have the ability to own a build. Even if its just one room. People like having somewhere they can go that's THEIRS. Even on a game. Why do you think Hearthfire was so popular on Skyrim? Or how about anything Minecraft? Strongholds on SWTOR? These things are popular because even in a game you want somewhere you can go where you can control every aspect, from what it looks like to who can come in. Its really no different than the RL want to have your own space.
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The importance of a large grid depends on the context and setting of the game. Ironically, the larger the scope, the less likely one needs a large grid.
For your average WoD game, I can understand why people want a GRID. Walking around the streets is a somewhat important element to the game that is often forgotten.
For a game like, oh, Mass Effect, you'd probably want modular places. On the Citadel, large areas like "the Zakera Ward" need no Grid; it's probably enough to attach rooms to that one room, and allow people to "Rapid Transit" between areas.
For a game like, oh, Dragon Age, you'd probably want to do the same thing as Mass Effect, but you could also add rooms to represent other "zones" in a region, wherein there may be pitched battles.
And then, if you have a space ship, you'd probably split the rooms into general floors/wings, with rooms sprouting off of them. Space stations, the same.
The game designers have to consider where they want the RPing to occur. If you want a lot of backdoor, small-scene, schemes, like in a Lords-and-Ladies game, having a detailed, large Grid would be helpful. If you expect there to be a lot of pew-pew-pew, with less importance on social scheming, then having rooms representing areas of larger scale is probably best. Take into consideration setting, and you should have an idea of how to lay out the Grid.
Note, though: being too abstract often leads to confusion, as occurred on Victoria Reverie.
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What I find fascinating (and I kinda suspected) is how we all have such very diverse expectations about having a large grid. Some of us are like me and just want the basic stuff, others won't really be satisfied without a full map-like representation. That's pretty interesting.
There's absolutely no consensus.
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@Arkandel said:
What I find fascinating (and I kinda suspected) is how we all have such very diverse expectations about having a large grid. Some of us are like me and just want the basic stuff, others won't really be satisfied without a full map-like representation. That's pretty interesting.
There's absolutely no consensus.
The best a game's staff can do is build something that is satisfying to everyone and that, at least in some way, manages to give everyone something resembling what they want. A grid for people who want a grid, a map for those that need it, and the ability to @tel and make temprooms for people who want that.
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@Coin said:
The best a game's staff can do is build something that is satisfying to everyone and that, at least in some way, manages to give everyone something resembling what they want.
I disagree.
A best staff can ever do is manage to have everyone dislike what they did about equally, or to have as many people like their implementation as much as possible then call it their intended demographic.
Staff that even tries to satisfy everyone will fail.
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I think you're just nitpicking terms to agree with the spirit of my comment.
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I hate tiny grids. They do not evoke the setting.
I hate gigantic grids. They do not invoke role-play.
It's easier to mitigate a gigantic grid with travel and map commands than it is to mitigate a tiny grid with temprooms.
In my opinion, it's best to have a grid that's just a bit too big. My favorite grid of all time ever would be Haunted Memories' because it was oozing setting out of every pore. It was too big, but I forgave it because of that and travel features.
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@Thenomain
Soon, your favorite grid will be ours. YOU'LL SEE. -
@surreality said:
I keep pondering if there's some means of assembling a grid that combines that with hub area rooms for the ease factor,
What about the ol' classic subway? Not the coded one with the moving trains and auto-emits deal, but the one where the 'enter subway' exit just takes you to a hub of all the rooms with subway exits. Replace with bus-stop, rickshaw, canal, whatever to suit theme.
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@il-volpe
Gonna have this. Just saying. -
It's easier to mitigate a gigantic grid with travel and map commands than it is to mitigate a tiny grid with temprooms.
This. Forever this.
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@HelloRaptor said:
It's easier to mitigate a gigantic grid with travel and map commands than it is to mitigate a tiny grid with temprooms.
This. Forever this.
Do you have to take the name out of the quote, HR? You're killing me, man.
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@Glitch said:
Do you have to take the name out of the quote, HR? You're killing me, man.
He does. Always. Even though you just have to hilite what you want and hit "Reply" and it will do the work for you.
@HelloRaptor, please do this. Please. Please.