[Eldritch] Sphere Caps & Waiting Lists
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@Glitch, we're pretty much ready, we just want to be sure. And like I said, it's an interesting discussion to me.
I can say we've all flipped our opinion at least once, so there's no bunkering down at all.
Hell, I'm prepared to accept, even enjoy, "first come, first served" at this point, which you may see me leaning toward at the end of my otherwise not-really-but-actually-really-pedantic post.
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@Thenomain said:
That is, someone with a supernatural slot, someone who is engaged and helping the game but would rather take a different supernatural slot, would be at a disadvantage. This is something to consider while fussing around with ideas.
If your game only allows one Sup and you really want a specific sphere...don't app into another sphere with a Sup? It seems more like the person who takes up a slot elsewhere and then expects to be able to keep both has the unfair advantage.
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@Creepy said:
in an ideal world, you've got 30 players in one sphere, an admin staffer and lets say 2 STs (staff ST). There's 2 really solid players that are dependable which you can ask to run smaller scenes. Give us an example of how you'd operate and link it back to why you'd need to set a sphere cap utilizing that normal operation method. That analysis may better inform your policy (or at least entertain me).
From my perspective, I think it’s really so simple that the specifics of your example don’t even really need to come into it. Essentially it’s just ‘can staff handle the needs of the current playerbase with the time that they have available to devote to the game in a way that is satisfying for most everyone involved?’ If we can’t then we probably have more people than we can support, and if we can we’re either at a nice equilibrium point or might consider opening a few more slots. I mean, neither @Coin nor myself have any vested interest in keeping people from having fun, but over time I have been convinced that it’s really not fun for anyone when a sphere has more people than its staff can support. YMMV!
I may be reading too much into things, but based on your earlier comments I feel like part of what you’re asking is ‘is there a point at which, with the right combination of staff and player support, you wouldn’t need sphere caps at all?’ And to that I would say no, I don’t think so. We’d adjust up and down depending on the situation, but I think there will always be a maximum amount.
@SilentSophia said:
I do like the idea of giving priority to someone who doesn't have their 1 supernatural alt. Alt-madness tends to cause problems. Like, I dig the idea that one wants to play a variety of things but it rarely ends well.
We talked about this too! I think everyone is still of different minds and still on the fence over all, but my argument against doing this (which @Thenomain kinda already brought up) is this: Bob and Suzie show up and both want to play Werewolves. Werewolf, however, is at cap and closed. Suzie is flexible and decides that, while she would rather play a werewolf, Vampire is open and she can still have fun playing a vampire. Bob decides that no, he will ONLY play a werewolf and so he doesn’t app anything. Over the next month, Suzie plays her vampire and is great and contributes to the game by being entertaining and a delight to RP with, while Bob sits in the OOC room while RPing on another MU* and waits for a post about werewolf to go up. So, while I don’t think Suzie should necessarily get a benefit for being flexible and contributing to the MU* by being an active and delightful player in the interim, I kind of feel like she shouldn’t be punished for that either, especially as Bob is not enriching anyone’s experience here but his own. As someone running the game, I appreciate that she is playing here and being fun and being flexible about how that happens. Theoretical Suzie is awesome.
As far as what @Wizz said about people taking up other super slots... I think honestly this depends and is hard to answer in the abstract. What if there is no waiting list for the super sphere they’re in, for example? What if they’re contributing to a pack or a coterie while not denying anyone else a chance to have fun, and their having to suddenly dump their character is not going to benefit anyone else and will, in fact, just detract from the fun of the people they’re currently playing with? I think this is only really a huge issue if we end up with a waitlist for every kind of supernatural, which I think is probably a big if/unlikely.
@Glitch said:
The impression I'm getting is that these big requests for discussion go up, but they've already hunkered down. They certainly don't need anyone's approval, but it's the impression I'm left with and I think there's too much cart before the horse decision-making in the name of "preparation".
I guess I can only profess that, no, I really wanted to hear what everyone thought about this. It’s true that we’re coming into this discussion having been talking about the issue privately for weeks, so we have already formed opinions... but at the same time, the /reason/ I poked at @coin to post about it was because I never felt like we got to a place where I was like ‘That’s it! Problem solved!’. Also I’ve abandoned the way I originally thought we’d probably do it as a result of this discussion, so... it’s been helpful and has made a difference.
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@Eerie said:
What if there is no waiting list for the super sphere they’re in, for example? What if they’re contributing to a pack or a coterie while not denying anyone else a chance to have fun, and their having to suddenly dump their character is not going to benefit anyone else and will, in fact, just detract from the fun of the people they’re currently playing with?
But isn't that also kind of a shortcut around any sort of alt cap at all? Put your name on one list, play well and get along with others in the other sphere, and boom, you've got two supes. Maybe it's the long way around and maybe not everyone could pull it off as easily as I make it sound, but it still doesn't seem very fair especially since Suzie didn't have to app into another sphere as a Sup while waiting. She could have played a ghoul or stigmatic or vanilla mortal, but she chose to play a vampire, just like any new player hypothetically makes their one choice.
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You'll get a lot more mileage out of alt-caps than sphere-caps.
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Sometimes I hate being a slow apper or finding a game too late. But I guess that's how the meatball bounces.
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If you're going to have sphere caps and waitlists you should just stick with first come first serve from the waitlist (that's what a waitlist is), and just make the number of people on the waitlist visible. In fact I'd say let people go through chargen and have their app waiting somewhere in a queue, so that as spots open up you can just approve people off of the waitlist.
Bob goes through chargen. Bob hits submit. Bob gets an @mail or a @pemit to him saying "You are number 300 on the waitlist, staff will check over your app when more spots open up".
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@Eerie said:
From my perspective, I think it’s really so simple that the specifics of your example don’t even really need to come into it. Essentially it’s just ‘can staff handle the needs of the current playerbase with the time that they have available to devote to the game in a way that is satisfying for most everyone involved?’
It might just be my own mileage talking although I doubt it is and that chances are other people's experiences will reflect the same thing; the "current playerbase's needs" are a fictional thing, because what overloads staff and leads them to the bottle isn't the more or less regular load of day-to-day +jobs. Those peak right as an influx of players come in for whatever reason (the game opens, an entire coterie apps at the same time, etc) but with some help from automation code for spends it's usually something an experienced admin can take care of without too much trouble. The problem, in other words, is not 90% of your players 90% of the time since they will rarely do more than ask to spend some XP or ask a question about mechanics or the such.
No, the trouble comes from the other 10% of those players, 10% of the time, when shit hits the fan. When there's a problem player ruffling people's feathers and you need to talk to those overexcited adults, when several people really, really want to be Sheriff and they are at each other's throats so you need to get to the bottom of it before the channel explodes. That sort of thing. It's the sort of situation that inevitably comes up, more so since there's so much shared baggage between games going back years. And it can't be delegated like say, plot can be to non-staff STs, it's all yours, baby.
It's not something sphere caps will help. It's not even something you can prevent - I pity @Corruption on SHH already having gotten just a glimpse of Changeling players snarling at each other, and that game hasn't even been opened for more than what, a month? I bet if you asked them they'd find most of their +job load is dealing with that crap, not people asking how the Eternal Spring 3 Contract works or whatever. Even if they had instituted a cap, unless somehow all those players happened to app late and were in a waiting list (doubtful; usually the types more likely to engage in that are by far the most involved) it'd have still happened.
Alt limits are a good idea though. However I am admittedly biased since I'm not a big alt-person myself, so there's that.
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@Admiral said:
You'll get a lot more mileage out of alt-caps than sphere-caps.
You'll get a lot more mileage out of both than either.
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I pity @Corruption on SHH already having gotten just a glimpse of Changeling players snarling at each other, and that game hasn't even been opened for more than what, a month?
News at 11, Changeling sphere has devolved into vicious drama and nastiness on an OOC level within a month or so of the game opening.
"We were shocked to hear of this.", said every MU* to ever host Changeling, old or new, dripping so much sarcasm that towels were required.
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After much consideration and continuing discussion both here and behind every scene on our
Super-Private-CliquePlanning Forum, I think we're going to do this with waiting lists: Not have them.While I enjoyed the back and forth, and I learned a lot and got to think about things I normally don't, for now I think the complexity of many proposals outweighs the benefits of what they're meant to do.
Of course, we could change our minds before we open.
Or some time after.
Any time, really.
And if someone abuses the spirit of what a game is for, it's up to staff, not code nor a fine-tuned policy of exactness and legalese, to work out the best solution to that.
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If it makes you feel better, Theno, I concur with that decision.
Set reasonable alt limits. You'll be fine.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@Ganymede said:
If it makes you feel better, Theno, I concur with that decision.
Set reasonable alt limits. You'll be fine.
+1.
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@Ganymede said:
If it makes you feel better, Theno, I concur with that decision.
A bit. I am not afraid to explore less simplistic options if information can be discovered, or a better methodology planned. In this case, I believe the exploration has confirmed that there is no easy answer, and so (at the moment) I prefer the socially accepted levels of unfairness.
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As a suggestion, you (being all those working on the Eldritch game) may want to at least note somewhere that if a sphere (or spheres) become too crowded that staff will at least temporarily close said spheres to new applications until they feel they're able to take on more people.
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Um...
... duh? -
Sphere caps are staying. We're just not using waiting lists.
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@Coin, I think she means that we should write down policies, maybe put code somewhere. I had some more written about her suggestion, but some of it was bitterness when she yelled at me on her game for not reading the one thing that I was never told to read, but at least it was written down somewhere? I think there needs to be more to it than that, but given the long history of people yelling at players for not doing the one thing they weren't told they had to do, I can understand the fear of something not being written down.
(Games I've been yelled at for not doing something I wasn't told to do, or yelled at for doing something I wasn't told not to do: The Reach, Haunted Memories, Dark Metal, Shadowed Isles, Start Your Engines, Ashes to Ashes, I think the only WoD games I've played on where this didn't happen to me were Paris and NYC, where someone talked to me first.)
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I don't know who you think I am, @Thenomain, but I've never had a game. I've only ever staffed on one, and YOU were the Headstaff there at the time telling ME how to run a sphere I was TL'ing for.
