The elusive yes-first game.

Arkandel

@Arkandel How about "yes-first after there's a means of determining whether or not someone is capable of playing well with others".

Of course, it's even in the original pitch - if someone is causing OOC issues staff have to get rid of him. The "yes" is to IC matters, not OOC ones.

One of the goals this has is to reduce staff in size in order to hopefully make it easier to get a tightly knit group of like-minded individuals to run the game without internal politics or conflicting gaming philosophies, reduce the burden of administrative tasks on them as much as possible, and let them focus on only two things: getting story served to players and getting bad ones out of the game.

Sunny

@Nein said:

Have we just hit a point in the hobby where we've whittled down to 50-80% people with cluster-b personality disorders who keep things going by swapping games/abuse circles? Because I keep seeing a steady drop in an already long out-dated medium, and it seems like the majority of people holding on are either doing so to maintain social connections with friends, or are just too entrenched in malfunctioning behavior to stop beating a dead horse.

No. The hobby does not have a new massive steady decline of players. The genres most frequented by posters here (WoD old and new are the big ones) absolutely are, but other genres (such as MLP, apparently) are picking up. I know 5 people that have been mushing less than one year on a game I play on. There is new blood coming in. There are old people quitting. It's a much smaller hobby than it was in the late 90s, but the population leveled out a few years ago and I haven't seen evidence of a hobby-wide trend downwards. I do see certain genres dying out, but again, that does not make the hobby itself a dead horse to be beaten.

Cirno

@Misadventure said:

Hey guys, let's play MLP where we recreate the feel and stories of MLP. Except my pony is a Dominant vampire pony who secretly rules Equestria.

People would go for this.

The same people that roleplay as Vampire Ponies on FiMFiction and Neighvada Nights.

I'm serious. I've been saying we should have an MLP WoD game for years now.

Cirno

@Sunny said:

It's a much smaller hobby than it was in the late 90s

I haven't seen evidence of a hobby-wide trend downward

Pick one.

Sunny

@Cirno said:

@Sunny said:

It's a much smaller hobby than it was in the late 90s

I haven't seen evidence of a hobby-wide trend downward

Pick one.

Did you miss the part where I said the population leveled out a few years back, and since then there hasn't been much of the stated trend?

Ghost

@Sunny said:

@Cirno said:

@Sunny said:

It's a much smaller hobby than it was in the late 90s

I haven't seen evidence of a hobby-wide trend downward

Pick one.

Did you miss the part where I said the population leveled out a few years back, and since then there hasn't been much of the stated trend?

Someone's fiesty today.

Damn, @Cirno , you should have heeled when she told you how everything is.

When someone tells you to french fry, you DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES PIZZA

@Sunny , please answer his question since he asked politely. There's no need to be rude.

Cirno

@Ghost said:

@Sunny said:

@Cirno said:

@Sunny said:

It's a much smaller hobby than it was in the late 90s

I haven't seen evidence of a hobby-wide trend downward

Pick one.

Did you miss the part where I said the population leveled out a few years back, and since then there hasn't been much of the stated trend?

Someone's fiesty today.

Damn, @Cirno , you should have heeled when she told you how everything is.

When someone tells you to french fry, you DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES PIZZA

Sunny can fite me IRL if she doesn't like my Pizza. I don't care if she's a girl. I'll fight both boys and girls.

I'm kidding. Plz dunt downtoke meh.

*also brohoof for helping me out BRO /) *

Ghost

@Cirno you're just a mean person who doesnt know anything right, arentcha?

ACCURATELY AGREE WITH PEOPLE BEFORE THEY POST DISAGREEING WITH YOU OR SUFFER

Arkandel

@Ghost Could you guys take this argument off the thread please? It's supposed to be constructive.

Cirno

@Ghost said:

@Cirno you're just a mean person who doesnt know anything right, arentcha?

ACCURATELY AGREE WITH PEOPLE BEFORE THEY POST DISAGREEING WITH YOU OR SUFFER

mfw I am getting downvoted for not accurately agreeing and conforming

Ghost

@Arkandel will do. I am trying to be constructive, but I think what's happening here is some people are disagreeing and with differences of opinions inevitably comes some kind of you're dumb response.

I agree that there is a steady decline in the old guard of mushers who are focusing on established IP gaming. There may be more MLP players, but the core demographic of WoD/Star Wars/etc gamers has either plateau'd or has begin to trickle off in favor of other media.

Cirno

@Ghost said:

@Arkandel will do. I am trying to be constructive, but I think what's happening here is some people are disagreeing and with differences of opinions inevitably comes some kind of you're dumb response.

I agree that there is a steady decline in the old guard of mushers who are focusing on established IP gaming. There may be more MLP players, but the core demographic of WoD/Star Wars/etc gamers has either plateau'd or has begin to trickle off in favor of other media.

We...we should make a thread...about the population of MU*ing from 1990 - 2010.

Ghost

@Cirno or create a thread for people to tell others what that population is and then scold them for not freezing in place at their infinite wisdom on the topic. snort

Cirno

OH SHI TOO MANY DOWNVOTES RUN FOR IT

Arkandel

@Ghost said:

@Arkandel will do. I am trying to be constructive

Thanks, I appreciate that.

I honestly don't mind disagreements - I wouldn't be on MSB if I expected a place where everyone agrees with me. Y'all are allowed to be wrong. What I mind is infertile discussions as that kind of does rub me the wrong way, and I don't consider my skin to be that thin.

When a thread like this essentially says 'hey, we've been doing things one way for a while, is there a different approach maybe that could work to improve things?' and some responses come down to 'no, we are all horrible people barely kept in check by the iron fist of empowered dictators who'll smack us back in line if we don't toe it and we'll turn on each other the moment that stops happening' it's... disheartening. Not because I think that's the case - I don't - but because that makes me wonder what their own view of the hobby is. If it's that bleak what are they doing here? If they're that burned out... why?

I've burned out before on games or even on MU*ing. I left until I felt more like it. I don't recall going around those games' forums telling people how much everything sucks - it's like WoW where some folks keep popping up to tell everyone else how horrible it is. Why are you paying a subscription then, dude?

<shrugs>

Ghost

Well, you definitely started a dialogue, which is cool. I think it's great you're trying to make something for the better.

Let's get back into topic. Are there any particular ideas with this liberal yes-first game you want help conceptualizing?

Apos

@Arkandel Everyone agrees that OOC problem players need to be contained, so I'd move past that generality that's not particularly helpful. So let's focus on a yes-first game idea and what actually would be constructive towards it.

I think that OOC violations would have to be dealt with far greater severity than most MUs. I wouldn't even bother to give warnings. I wouldn't even talk to them. If someone is being at all disruptive, site ban and move on. That's that. And the reason is simple- the more collaborative an environment with the greater degree of interaction, the more important keeping a very non-toxic environment is. For most MUs that are not yes-first, they are gated constantly in small ways, but if you are just doing audits, the player base has to be as reinforcing as possible for positive behavior and have no tolerance at all for OOC bullshit. It would only take an extremely small percentage of players a very small amount of time to spoil that. In any of the cases @surreality gave, I would ban without conversation or warning. I think it would be incredibly dumb to drag it out at all and incredibly destructive to fail to act quickly and decisively. I'm honestly curious how many of those real world examples she had were banned in the same night they were first reported.

I belabor this because most MUs are NOT quick and decisive. They are anything but. They hate to be the bad guy and let problems linger on, and on, and on, constantly allowing a toxic environment that drives off players to linger because they are terrified of looking like a dictator/bully and have mean things written about them on boards like this. A yes-first game would have this amplified, so it would have be the far, far, far other side of it.

Arkandel

@Apos said:

I think that OOC violations would have to be dealt with far greater severity than most MUs. I wouldn't even bother to give warnings. I wouldn't even talk to them. If someone is being at all disruptive, site ban and move on. That's that.

There are two reasons I disagree with this and one for which I don't.

I don't see why an IC liberal game would attract or tolerate more jerks than the more traditional organizational model. What about strict CGen or XP spending justification guidelines is it that has stopped them before? The Mage on HM (I forget his name naturally) who turned out to be a serial creep pushing female players into mind-controlled TS with him, he didn't put a "serial rapist" description on his +sheet, you know? It all emerged much later on.
People like that are very good at covering their own tracks. They won't leave a paper trail, their pages will never be too explicit or incriminating... they are careful. It comes with the territory. Other players who happen to have a bad day or phrase things badly won't be - this is likely to get legitimate folks banned more than it'll be keeping infringements down, IMHO. It's that often-seen phenomenon where trying to pre-emptively catch the bad guys fails to do so but penalizes everyone else.

However

Nothing about this design says you can't do that for a MU*. If you want to be extra hard on MU-crime, go for it. It's entirely up to a game-runner's discretion how far and hard they want to land on anyone found 'guilty' of being OOC fools.

Apos

@Arkandel If someone puts in a CG background that's incredibly creepy and a gigantic red flag, with a standard game someone might question them on it and veto it. With a yes-only MU, they won't be questioned, but assume that if they act in a way against OOC rules they will be punished. This is has a core problem:

If you stop someone from entering the gateway, their toxicity never hits the player base at all. If you wait for them to fuck with people, then likely some people quit, say screw this hobby, and never come back even if the guilty party is punished. So with an auditing approach, you absolutely allow terrible things to occur rather than prevention and this costs players. This is why I think a very severe approach for OOC problems is critical, rather than just recommended.

I understand this can just be seen as a cost and trade off for permissiveness, and that can even be fine and justified. But I think it can't be amplified by a cautious approach to problem players. At the very least, I would make the equivalent of whatever report or GM call or whatever code you use require an immediate response to harassment, not something that can be investigated later.

Nein

@Arkandel said:

When a thread like this essentially says 'hey, we've been doing things one way for a while, is there a different approach maybe that could work to improve things?' and some responses come down to 'no, we are all horrible people barely kept in check by the iron fist of empowered dictators who'll smack us back in line if we don't toe it and we'll turn on each other the moment that stops happening' it's... disheartening. Not because I think that's the case - I don't - but because that makes me wonder what their own view of the hobby is. If it's that bleak what are they doing here? If they're that burned out... why?

I'm out of the hobby right now and just sitting on a server and tinkering with code here and there, uncertain what to do with it. Your post got me thinking about that space, and while things do look pretty bleak, I'm still dumb enough that hope springs eternal for another game (something something insanity doing something over and over again and expecting different results, etc.).

Here's why I'm burned out right now: I'd join a game, make a character, enthusiasm was high. Within one to three months, the following would happen:

Chargen takes a month and is filled with needless busywork that serves no real purpose.
Chargen design is poor. I'm underpowered or the entire game is overpowered. I can't figure out what is expected of me, or I'm immediately pounded for being underpowered.
Theme is scattered, inconsistent or missing entirely.
Policies are either so open to interpretation as to be useless/abuseable, or are so restrictive and ideologically heavy-handed that I dare not speak or move the wrong way, either IC or OOC.
One or more staff members is suffering from some manipulative, maladaptive behavior and hamstrings plot, fun, character approval, etc., and starts making drama for me or others.
The game is an idle-fest for old friends to hang out and chat with each other over lunch and maybe RP once every 2-3 weeks in a rushed clustermess of scenes clearly intended for their characters only. If you're new, screw you.
Someone starts a simmering rumorfest that explodes weeks later like a popped zit, causing everyone to leave or someone to start a new game, or people I was trying to RP with to get banned.
New game starts somewhere else, everyone leaves.
Code is confusing, broken, badly documented, used for spying, all-consuming, or nonexistent.
Game is based on an RPG I have to download, buy, research, and spend hours of time I don't have reading just to know what the hell is going on.
People RP as if they are on twitter or facebook. Nonsensical disjointed posts in 140 characters or less plox
YOU WANNA HAVE SEX WITH MY CHARACTER RIGHT WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T DO THAT CAN'T YOU MAKE AN EXCEPTION
A Queen Bee and her flying monkeys descend on me like plague rats.
Can't find anything to do after a couple of weeks. No one wants to RP unless someone has a planned scene/event/plot run by an ST.
Some toxic person begins to grind me down over a course of months until I can't stomach logging onto the game anymore.

It could just be me, but there's a laundry list of burn-out reasons you can autopsy and mull over at your leisure. I still have moments of hope for making a new game, but right now, it seems like it's not worth the risk.