Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!

[krmbm]

@Auspice Having a variable flag that allows scenes to stay open longer than an admin wants defeats the purpose, no?

If I want my game to favor live RP and not have aging scenes, I need to be able to make that decision as the admin. If you want a game that favors asynch RP and having aging scenes, you need to make that decision as a player.

That's kind of the root of my point: Ares isn't making these decisions; WE are.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

It might be instructive to compare this less to what exists on Ares now and more to Arx's "flashback" system, which you can play via web as well as on the game and are designed to be asynchronous.

I think my biggest struggle with engaging in those/remembering I'm in them is, if I'm not online to get the @inform when there's a new pose in them, I frequently totally miss that there's been activity in them. Like, I'm someone who does pretty well with the Ares scene system but mostly can't manage flashbacks so idk exactly what the difference is. It might just be a matter of how much they're deemphasized on the Arx website (you have to click through your character page to get to your flashbacks and then into the flashback itself). Also might be a cultural thing, idk.

[Auspice]

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

I think my biggest struggle with engaging in those/remembering I'm in them is, if I'm not online to get the @inform when there's a new pose in them, I frequently totally miss that there's been activity in them. Like, I'm someone who does pretty well with the Ares scene system but mostly can't manage flashbacks so idk exactly what the difference is. It might just be a matter of how much they're deemphasized on the Arx website (you have to click through your character page to get to your flashbacks and then into the flashback itself). Also might be a cultural thing, idk.

I hate the flashback system. And I say this as someone who likely uses it more than most. The @informs aren't the issue for me. I check my informs religiously because hey! might be something fun! But if I'm posing regularly in one while online? I might not check my informs that day and then the next day be like 'oh that's all from the same day.' I COULD fix that by checkin the @inform every time but.... lolno.

It's the 'reload the page every time' interface for one.
It's the 'have to do some commands on game, some on the web' for two.
I've heard some people complain that since they can't change the look of it (the bright white), they dislike it (I know there's Chrome extensions that let you change these things yourself).

But yeah, the hassle of accessing flashbacks makes them harder to engage in, too.

[Pyrephox]

@Three-Eyed-Crow I have forgotten every flashback I've ever been invited to. I pose while I'm on, but as soon as I log off, I forget it exists. I'm so sorry to everyone I've let down on those, but...yeah.

[faraday]

@Pyrephox said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

I pose while I'm on, but as soon as I log off, I forget it exists. I'm so sorry to everyone I've let down on those, but...yeah.

That's how I was with google doc scenes.

[Coin]

@Pyrephox said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

@Three-Eyed-Crow I have forgotten every flashback I've ever been invited to. I pose while I'm on, but as soon as I log off, I forget it exists. I'm so sorry to everyone I've let down on those, but...yeah.

@faraday said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

@Pyrephox said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

I pose while I'm on, but as soon as I log off, I forget it exists. I'm so sorry to everyone I've let down on those, but...yeah.

That's how I was with google doc scenes.

It's kinda how I am with portal-only scene son Ares, too, though.

Lol.

[Pyrephox]

@Coin Weirdly, the Ares portal doesn't bother me at all. I usually have a bit logged in on the webclient for chat, and then another tab open for the scene in the portal, and that really works for me.

But! Related back to the original premise:

I think games on Ares (and other platforms with this kind of variable scene structure) who want to try and make it easier should set some expectations on 'How To Get RP' and 'How To Advertise for People To Join Your Scene'. Because although I love Ares and it works for me (tm), I do sometimes want to set up scenes that aren't exactly private, but not exactly open, but feel like 'Limited' doesn't quite scratch my itch, either. Although I should absolutely used the Limited tag more often.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@Pyrephox said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

@Coin Weirdly, the Ares portal doesn't bother me at all. I usually have a bit logged in on the webclient for chat, and then another tab open for the scene in the portal, and that really works for me.

Same. I'm usually playing both on my browser and in my client , because they both do certain things a little better, but if I'm only playing solely on web I don't tend to lose track of those scenes like I do the flashbacks. The ability to check notifications on my phone probably helps as much as anything else, but I also just approach them with a different mentality, so it may be back to a culture thing. I don't do any RP on Arx via the web outside like my two flashbacks a year, so I just don't habitually check them.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@Pyrephox I'm going to have to agree on that. A page on a game's wiki detailing that particular's game preferred takes on how to get RP, how to include and be included, and so on, can only be a good thing.

I'm not sure how much difference it'd genuinely make -- since new people are likely already swamped in infodump and may not find it -- and old people already know the local culture. But it's still a declaration of directions from the game runners -- a statement of desired game culture. I for one would read a lot into such a page, about how the game management views new players, asynchronous players, and inclusion in general. And this, indeed, is not a bad thing.

[Griatch]

@Ifrit This thread have more steered towards Ares implementation and use, but to reply to the original post - a scene-system would work well to implement in Evennia and would of course be useful to have as a contrib. Some, like Pax, already considered/worked on it but I don't think there is a complete system available at this time.

... But even so, Evennia and its contribs tend to be more developer/toolbox-centric. If the goal was more Ares-like plug-and-play one would need to release things as a gamestyle-specific Evennia game-dir (like Arx did for Arxcode, but with a bit more polish for reuse).

[TNP]

@faraday said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

@Lisse24 said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

If someone is on the portal in a scene, but not logged into the game, they don't show up on +where.

I mean if that's a big deal, I can add a "In Web Scene" section to +where...

With people logged on through the portal not showing on +where in scenes, you don't know who's in that scene. Maybe someone is there you're avoiding. Maybe +where shows 3 people but when you get there it's actually 7 because there's 4 portal people and it's too large a scene for you. This is one of the things I dislike about Ares.

[faraday]

@TNP said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

With people logged on through the portal not showing on +where in scenes, you don't know who's in that scene. Maybe someone is there you're avoiding. Maybe +where shows 3 people but when you get there it's actually 7 because there's 4 portal people and it's too large a scene for you. This is one of the things I dislike about Ares.

That's a good point, and I can certainly look into that more.

The reason it works that way is because +where is traditionally designed to represent WHERE people are in the grid. The web people aren't really ON the grid.

So you can either:
a) Not show them in a room on +where (current implementation -- they show up at the bottom)
b) Potentially show them in MULTIPLE rooms on +where based on what scenes they're participating in. (ETA: which opens a can of worms because even people who ARE on the grid can also be in other scenes).

So in this example below:

• Sara and Faraday show up with a location of "Web Portal" because they're web-only.
• Sara and Ryan are participating in scene #3 too, but Sara is not actually in the room and Ryan is offline, so they're not listed.
• There may be other active scenes that aren't listed.

+==~~~~~====~~~~====~~~~====~~~~=====~~~~=====~~~~====~~~~====
                                  Ares Demo                                   
-----[ Open Scenes ]------------------------------------------
#3    Sharkey's Bar                      Cate

-----[ Other ]-----------------------------------------------------
      Web Portal                         Faraday[Web], Sara[Web]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
        3 Online                    1 IC                    7 Record         
+==~~~~~====~~~~====~~~~====~~~~=====~~~~=====~~~~====~~~~====

In Ares, the scenes command generally gives you a better view of what scenes are going on. It shows you the scenes, status (private/public), who all is in them, whether they're online, when the last pose was, etc.

+==~~~~~====~~~~====~~~~====~~~~=====~~~~=====~~~~====~~~~====~~~~====~~~~~==+
Scenes
-----------------------------------------------------
#3 <Open*>                                 Organized By: Faraday     Social     3m
Sharkey's Bar (Temp Room)                  Players:  Faraday, Sara 
Hanging in the bar.  Come one come all.
Notes: Test
-------------------------------------------------------
Scene views: scenes/open, scenes/all, scenes/unshared.
+==~~~~~====~~~~====~~~~====~~~~=====~~~~=====~~~~====~~~~====

I think the scenes command is better for finding RP. Yes, it's different, but c'mon, it's one command: scenes versus where.

Also, players who like to grid-camp can still plant a flag in that list by opening a scene with a summary like the one above. "Hanging in the bar. Come one come all." Which I feel is better than just seeing somebody randomly on grid and not knowing their intentions.

[Lisse24]

@krmbm said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

@Auspice Having a variable flag that allows scenes to stay open longer than an admin wants defeats the purpose, no?

If I want my game to favor live RP and not have aging scenes, I need to be able to make that decision as the admin. If you want a game that favors asynch RP and having aging scenes, you need to make that decision as a player.

That's kind of the root of my point: Ares isn't making these decisions; WE are.

I've given this some thought over the past couple of days and I feel like I want public scenes to time out rather quick. This is where people should be going for immediate RP right? But with private scenes, I'd be willing to tolerate a much longer time-out.

[faraday]

@Lisse24 said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

I want public scenes to time out rather quick. This is where people should be going for immediate RP right? But with private scenes, I'd be willing to tolerate a much longer time-out.

Open scenes can be slow paced too. @Auspice for instance ran slower-paced event scenes that spanned multiple days. There'd be nothing stopping players from having a longer-running slow-paced open BarRP scene that people could drop in and out of throughout a week.

While some folks may object to the existence of slow-paced open scenes on principle, I think the larger issue is that it's not immediately apparent from the scenes list which scenes might best fit your preferences. I'm working on making that better, but it's complicated by the fact that RP doesn't neatly fall into categories of "slow" and "fast". Everyone has different gauges and preferences.

[Lisse24]

@faraday Not saying there can't be. I was more musing on the idea that it would be counter productive to have different types of scenes timing out on different paces.

I can see, for what I'm trying to do, wanting public and private scenes to have different activity requirements.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@faraday Tempted to suggest changing the terminology to 'live' and 'asynchronous' instead. That way, the key isn't how fast people pose, but whether you should be able to expect a response within fairly short time, or within a day or two.

[faraday]

@L-B-Heuschkel Yes that's similar to what I was prototyping.

It's still not quite ideal though. There are two "axes" of pacing...

• How fast you can expect poses to come in. For some people, anything more than 10min between poses is "too slow", whereas others might still consider 1-pose-an-hour to be "live".
• How long you can expect the scene to run. Many folks can handle a same-day slow-work-RP scene but would balk at a multi-day one because it mucks with their inner sense of continuity.

I really don't want to have TWO different settings for each scene - that's too complicated.

There's also the consideration of whether people would use and respect the settings in the first place. For instance, Storium has a 'pacing' indicator that's roundly ignored. I've been in several games marked as "Normal" (one SCENE per week) and it's lucky if you get one POSE per week.

So yeah... culture is complicated. More code may not be the right answer.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@faraday Alternatively, a box similar to notes, but named Pace. Tolerance for pose time, essentially. Dropdown menu basically going
30 minutes
1 hour
2-3 hours
12 hours
24 hours
Hit me before the heat death of the universe

I dunno. Might also just be people needing to just communicate. It's not a problem I run into a lot personally, because I make it very clear in my OOC comments when setting what kind of pace to expect if joining.

[Lisse24]

I'd argue against making anything too complicated, because there's a good chance when introducing anything new that people won't use it until it's been reinforced enough to be part of the culture.

It's also why my initial thought was just to build-in different timeouts to the already existing scenes (not that I'm sold on this being the best way). People already know to pick a scene type and this would nudge towards faster/slower engagement without the user having to worry about remembering one more thing.

I'm all about easing the burden on the average player as much as possible.

[Lotherio]

@Lisse24 said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

I'd argue against making anything too complicated

This, everyone thought I was arguing or stupid or trying to put people out earlier in the thread. But seriously just a tab for synchronous and asynchronous activity so folks can look for what they like would be very helpful. I can see at various times the type of activity quickly that way and determine if its for me or no.

I get noting the pace, I always look for pace on a forum game (1 pose a week vs 2-3 poses a day or whatever), it helps me decide. Just an easy way to sort activity would be good without going complex.