Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce

[Ganymede]

@Tempest said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

How about an update to 2e?

This.

[Arkandel]

The upper staff echelon (no offense @Sonder) is what kept me before from joining Fallcoast, and what continues to.

[Lithium]

Broken 1E rules that are HR'd to hell and back is what keeps me from trying it. That and the power bloat of existing PC's.

2E and a new offshoot grid for new players to start on would be swell though. I might consider that having no experience with the staff there really.

[Lisse24]

I'm not generally a member of a clique, so I come into a game on my own. And as I said on another thread, as a person who comes into a game without a pre-made RP group, the ability to locate and find active RP partners, esp. through utilizing an active public grid, makes or breaks a game for me.

On MUs, RP is either accessible or its not, and for the most part, on Fallcoast, it's not. RP happens in temp rooms or private rooms. I need to be able to log into the game and see scenes that I could potentially join while I'm getting my feet under me.

[The Tree of Woe]

I quit because I literally could not get anyone to talk to me there, and I had played on the game in one form or another for a couple years. I hadn't even done anything pernicious - just nobody there was speaking to anybody else, like a huge WASP family reunion.

[Rook]

As a general note... this is the reason that I have checked games out in the past, found nothing happening, no friendly conversations, no RP hooks to pull me immediately into someone's plot/clique/group play... so after a few days, I give up and leave.

I am not alone. I have spoken to several people who did the same thing.

CharGen, especially on a WoD game, or any game that requires approvals, is a huge mountain to climb for the rare person that is coming into the three-decades-old game system. Most WoD games that I've seen are very much of the mind, publicly, that "if you don't talk the talk", you get ignored or left without help.

Is every WoD game out there so fractured and fragmented that there is stagnation? Is there literally no movement on the game outside of bar-rp or slice-of-life? I get it, it's hard to not have huge, earth-destroying types of plots long-term on WoD games, given the power levels of even mid-level characters in almost every one of the game systems (races)... but damn.

Characters seem so powerful that challenge is rare to find, hard to not overcome in a single scene or two, and tends to be very race-specific.

[Lisse24]

@Rook Yes it's an issue. Just look at all the threads discussing various aspects of this.

RfK has a lot of goodwill among its former players because it managed to avoid this and give its players plenty to do. However, the people building new WoD still seem to model them after the current games instead of looking at what made games like RfK work or how games in other genres manage to keep players involved.

[Ganymede]

@Rook said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

Is every WoD game out there so fractured and fragmented that there is stagnation? Is there literally no movement on the game outside of bar-rp or slice-of-life? I get it, it's hard to not have huge, earth-destroying types of plots long-term on WoD games, given the power levels of even mid-level characters in almost every one of the game systems (races)... but damn.

Stagnation happens for many reasons, and I believe the fact that the age of active players is going up is part of the problem. The good news is that the players, as a whole, have matured rather nicely, and the new players to the system as a whole seem to not only be receptive, but also fairly mature.

I really like Fallcoast, and its predecessor, the Reach. I had great times there, but, like @Lisse24, I haven't gone back because getting RP was like pulling teeth. Plus, I've no interest in playing 1E-hybrids any more -- yes, I know I'm at F&L, shut up -- and would prefer if games moved to 2E.

That said, generally, I'm personally trying stuff on F&L, and am spread out on a couple of other games. All I can do is try to assist when asked, try to be open and accommodating, and try to be welcoming. Everything else is up to everyone else.

[Tempest]

@Lisse24 said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

RfK has a lot of goodwill among its former players because it managed to avoid this and give its players plenty to do. However, the people building new WoD still seem to model them after the current games instead of looking at what made games like RfK work or how games in other genres manage to keep players involved.

Please stop bringing up RfK.

Until you can find me a staffer who is going to dedicate 10 hours every single day to RPing NPCs and running plots for everybody on their game. And 5 more hours on that same day handling various +jobs.

All while not playing an actual PC on their own game.

Any game will "succeed" if you have staff slavishly running stuff 24/7 for players.

As for what @Rook said, personally I put a lot of the onus on WoD players and MUers in general, more than the games.

The vast majority of MU'ers appear to be incredibly lazy and entitled when it comes to making little effort to get involved in things and expecting everybody else to feed them story. And it has to be a specific kind of story usually, or they'll complain about how it doesn't fit their character.

Character 'power level' is a problem tied to MUers being spoiled brats. You literally do not ever need 100+ xp in 2e nWoD, yet I constantly see players talking about how they need like 150 xp to 'finish their character' or some absurd shit. Yes, at 100+ xp, any character in any splat is basically god.

Around 50 xp, not so much. The main exception I'm aware of being a Mage who drops literally all their XP on getting gnosis5, and arcana to 5, and another arcana or two to 4. (I don't know Demon or Beast, maybe they're as bad.)

Games need to limit advancement more often. People don't need infinite XP and it fucks your game up. Players need to stop being whiny bitches 'wah wah what about my character growth'. Fuck literally anybody who's ever said that. Your character's "growth" is not limited to XP spends, and it shouldn't be infinite.

Pick a power level you want your game to be played at, and set a cap there.

Players need to be more willing to consider running their own stories and be more involved in the ones that are already available.

Plot breeds RP and staff aren't the only people who can do things. And they shouldn't have to shove story down player's throats.

The entire MU community feels very 'passive' lately.

[Lisse24]

@Tempest said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

@Lisse24 said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

RfK has a lot of goodwill among its former players because it managed to avoid this and give its players plenty to do. However, the people building new WoD still seem to model them after the current games instead of looking at what made games like RfK work or how games in other genres manage to keep players involved.

Please stop bringing up RfK.

No.

Until you can find me a staffer who is going to dedicate 10 hours every single day to RPing NPCs and running plots for everybody on their game. And 5 more hours on that same day handling various +jobs.

I think the consensus is that RfK did a good job at encouraging player interactivity and driving RP that was not dependent on an ST to create engaging stories, but struggled because they did so in a way that required a lot of staff intervention, didn't scale well, and led to staff burn-out in the end. However, just because RfK couldn't scale doesn't mean that there are no lessons to learn. Game creators should be asking themselves if they could possibly innovate on and implement one or more ideas from RfK without it leading to a massive uptick in jobs.

I personally think it's completely possible, but it would require a lot of front-end coding, and there's a lack of coders in this hobby, and so you'd have to get one of them excited about the project.

For Fallcoast, I don't think there's much they could implement this late in the game, but they might try something like eliminating the OOC room, adding cost to maintaining buildings, especially when private, and tying xp to public RP or RP with someone new, or possibly other small nudges that would push people on to the grid and into activity.

[Ganymede]

@Tempest said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

Please stop bringing up RfK.

You left before the game got interesting and mostly managed by the players. The last few months of the game were excellent, and that's when things were very hands-off.

Until you can find me a staffer who is going to dedicate 10 hours every single day to RPing NPCs and running plots for everybody on their game. And 5 more hours on that same day handling various +jobs.

Why? It has to be repeated that, while Shav did a lot for the game, she wasn't as active in running plots in the end. And, even at the end, there were people clambering to take over.

Any game will "succeed" if you have staff slavishly running stuff 24/7 for players.

This is untrue, and you know it.

As for what @Rook said, personally I put a lot of the onus on WoD players and MUers in general, more than the games.

And that's fine because this is why RfK worked. A not-so-small number of players on that game "slaved away" in the RP mines generating an immense amount of activity, the likes of which I haven't seen since.

The vast majority of MU'ers appear to be incredibly lazy and entitled when it comes to making little effort to get involved in things and expecting everybody else to feed them story.

This is neither a reason to discount past successes nor a reason to become one of these incredibly lazy people.

[Tempest]

@Ganymede You are seriously fooling yourself if you think an RfK-style game would work without a staffer who has massive loads of time to devote to a game she isn't playing.

Like that was pretty much the entire reason behind any success RfK had.

Go quit your job and start spending 12 hours a day playing 'judge' on a vampire game where you have no character. Bam you made a good vampire game.

I'm not bashing on Shav. She did great.

You guys going 'why isn't anybody trying to make a game like RfK' are missing the obvious issue though.

Didn't Shav eventually shut it down because nobody else wanted to staff and have political restrictions on their characters? Nevermind not playing characters at all. Yes, people wanted to 'take over' but not at the expense of their IC funtimes on their character.

[Rook]

Question: If staff involvement is so damned critical to the success of the game...

...why do MUDs have magnitudes more players connecting to them, having fun?
...why do MMOs find success?

I fail to agree that staff intervention and chaperoning a game is a required element for plots, story and RP. People RP without staff support on Shangrila, and even have long-running actual RP plots with multiple people, generated entirely from RP.

The difference is, I think, that a WoD game is so over-powered that serious game destruction ability is in the hands of most of the average players.

[Tempest]

@Rook said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

Question: If staff involvement is so damned critical to the success of the game...

...why do MUDs have magnitudes more players connecting to them, having fun?
...why do MMOs find success?

I fail to agree that staff intervention and chaperoning a game is a required element for plots, story and RP. People RP without staff support on Shangrila, and even have long-running actual RP plots with multiple people, generated entirely from RP.

The difference is, I think, that a WoD game is so over-powered that serious game destruction ability is in the hands of most of the average players.

1. Because MUDs and MMOs have 'things to do'? I can't go kill a hobgoblin on Fallcoast by typing 'n, n, n, n, w, open w, w, w, d, cave, n, n, kill hobgoblin, get all corpse'.

Staff involvement isn't critical to success. Certain types of staff involvement (running side plots/etc multiple times a day for individual players) are sure going to make your road to success easier though.

Example, I played a Gangrel on RfK briefly. I wanted to get a crocodile (or alligator, I forget) as one of my Protean animal forms. Shav randomly offered to run me a scene of my vampire hunting down and wrestling a crocodile. It was great.

1. Players love that kind of shit. It makes them feel special and like they're the star.
2. Almost none of us have the patience or desire to constantly be running that kind of 1-on-1 shit for mediocre players we don't know. Most of us (literally 99.99%) don't run that kind of shit ever.

[Arkandel]

@Rook said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

Question: If staff involvement is so damned critical to the success of the game...

...why do MUDs have magnitudes more players connecting to them, having fun?
...why do MMOs find success?

Not everyone wants to roleplay; most people just want to log on and blow shit up.

On a tangent, even just the act of typing is too much for many players. I've been made fun of before in MMOs for using punctuation and ending my sentences with periods.

[Lisse24]

@Tempest said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

@Ganymede You are seriously fooling yourself if you think an RfK-style game would work without a staffer who has massive loads of time to devote to a game she isn't playing.

Like that was pretty much the entire reason behind any success RfK had.

Go quit your job and start spending 12 hours a day playing 'judge' on a vampire game where you have no character. Bam you made a good vampire game.

I think you're fixating on that too much. I don't think staff has to abstain from playing entirely. I disagree that Shav's lack of a character is what made the game work. I think Shav did do a lot that other staff could learn from. I think she was incredibly warm. She was wonderfully encouraging to players and their concepts, but I don't even think those are necessary for a game to succeed. I think a lot of what Shav did could have been automated OR turned over to a panel of players.

If you get out of the mental rut of "Well no one will be Shav, so thinking about RfK is useless!" maybe you'll see some possibilities.

@Rook said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

Question: If staff involvement is so damned critical to the success of the game...

...why do MUDs have magnitudes more players connecting to them, having fun?
...why do MMOs find success?

I fail to agree that staff intervention and chaperoning a game is a required element for plots, story and RP. People RP without staff support on Shangrila, and even have long-running actual RP plots with multiple people, generated entirely from RP.

The difference is, I think, that a WoD game is so over-powered that serious game destruction ability is in the hands of most of the average players.

I disagree entirely with @Tempest, I don't think staff babysitting is necessary at all for long-term RP either in WoD or other genres.

[Ganymede]

@Tempest said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

You are seriously fooling yourself if you think an RfK-style game would work without a staffer who has massive loads of time to devote to a game she isn't playing.

And your basis for this conclusion is your non-experience of being present and active on the game during this time?

I'm telling you, the political games moved with little to no involvement. Shav did not suddenly shut down the game when she could not be on for 12 hours a day; she was not as actively running things long before she closed the game.

Didn't Shav eventually shut it down because nobody else wanted to staff and have political restrictions on their characters?

Your ignorance is showing. Shav closed the game because she did not want anyone else to have what she invested so much time into. She did not want to watch it fall apart. I literally offered to take it over, and would have dropped my PC if I had to. And players willingly surrendered their privilege to hold important pieces of power towards the end to help Shav out. I didn't initially surrender because my PC had become a lynchpin in the power structure, and pulling him out would have probably done more harm than the good I could do behind the scenes.

[Tempest]

@Ganymede said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

Your ignorance is showing. Shav closed the game because she did not want anyone else to have what she invested so much time into. She did not want to watch it fall apart. I literally offered to take it over, and would have dropped my PC if I had to. And players willingly surrendered their privilege to hold important pieces of power towards the end to help Shav out. I didn't initially surrender because my PC had become a lynchpin in the power structure, and pulling him out would have probably done more harm than the good I could do behind the scenes.

I think you have some rose-tinted glasses on or something, because this was not at all the discussion that was occurring back when the game actually closed.

RIP WORA.

[Lisse24]

Hey @Tempest, I feel like @Ganymede and myself are saying the same thing. You don't need a full-time dedicated staffer without a char to run a game like RFK. Yet, you upvoted me and are arguing with Gany. Out of curiosity, are you seeing some nuance in the way that we're wording our answers, and if so, what do you see as being the key difference in them as to what does and doesn't work?

[Caryatid]

@Tempest

You're wrong. I was in the conference call, on my phone in voice chat with the other staff and Shav when she made the decision to shut the game down. People were willing to take over the game. Shav knew this. She chose to shut it down anyway because she did not want others to take over her baby, as was her right.

You're also letting your hate-on for a game you played very briefly to blind you to the fact that there are aspects of RfK that, if adjusted and supported by the right code, would make an incredible single sphere vampire game. People are not saying remake RfK and run it the way Shav did. They are saying "take these elements and incorporate them into other games".