Alternative Formats to MU

[Auspice]

@roz said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@auspice said in Alternative Formats to MU:

If you want Discord-style 'chat' for your roleplay, why not just go and start roleplaying there? I mean, people have been roleplaying in places like that for a while now.

Single-sentences, rapid-fire RP. 'Mary giggles.' 'Bob smiles.' 'Ryan says, 'Let's go.' 'Mary says, 'Okay.' 'Bob goes over there.' 'Ryan follows.'

You too could be part of that engaging environment!

If an interface of buttons and drop-down menus is what you need for the future of your roleplay, it's out there. If you need avatars, it's out there, too. There's MMOs with roleplay servers.

I just happen to think the crux of MU*ing happens to be the actual writing aspect of it. And the more we obsess over what buttons we're clicking (or not), the further we drift away from that.

And maybe I'm alone in that thinking, which makes me kind of sad.

I think this is a pretty unfair representation of the conversation going on. We're talking about how and why to develop a better, more user-friendly experience for the kind of RP we already have. No one is saying the writing isn't important. We're saying that the user experience of getting to that "actual writing aspect" could be improved in a way that would make it easier to use and more welcoming to new people who might enrich the hobby.

People do not read:
http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/many-college-students-are-book-virgins
https://www.sott.net/article/354868-Book-virgins-College-students-who-have-never-finished-reading-a-book
https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2016/04/why-many-college-students-never-learn-how-to-write-sentences/

They do not write.

You are trying to bring people that do not exist into a hobby by alienating the people that do.

You want to add ultimately pointless bells and whistles to things that will eliminate the people that phone MU.
You want to cut out the people that prefer (or can't for health reasons) not to use a mouse just to RP.

All to gain the one or two college kids that actually do enjoy reading and writing?

[surreality]

@sparks said in Alternative Formats to MU:

Heck, I think (as I'm sure everyone on this board is painfully aware by now) that even just putting your bboards on the website is a huge leap forward in usability; you can then read boards without logging in, you can read them without cluttering up your scene / logfile, etc.

Apropos of almost nothing, I am weirdly relieved that I am not the only person who has 'La la la this is a test' written all over things being tinkered with.

(Also, that is very neat, obviously.)

@RnMissionRun I only tinker with graphics once in a blue moon these days, and can still grind out a look for a wiki or similar inside a week with whatever custom graphics it needs. Wiki is a little fussier about such things than html, too, since its built-in looks are stubborn to scrub the heck out to get to the 'clear but functional slate' point. It is a very doable thing, though.

[Sunny]

Like, I know you guys are hearing that he's anti-better-UI, but I promise, @rook straight up means what he is actually saying, rather than what people have been inferring. I know he's actively been working on this type of thing for ages. He's one of a handful of mush people I know that in these types of conversations, he does actually put his money where his mouth is and has the skills to pull it off. So.

[ThatGuyThere]

@roz said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@rook I think you kind of have to accept that UI is important to every other person out there, and that your feeling that it's not important is unique to you as an internet user.

Not every quite probably most but not every. Since my view is pretty much the same UI doesn't really matter to me either, as long as there is a basic help system in place.
Of course I say this as someone who has yet to see a UI that wasn't a pain in the ass until I learned it except maybe Excel.

[Rook]

Pages/Conversations in a clickable widget form:

• This is doable. I am taking notes on what I think this would entail, how it could be built.

Clickable map:

• Again, doable. Both from a 'peeking' perspective (if the game allows) and an @tel perspective. The map could also have a heat-level sort of feedback on the number of players currently there/active.

Forms for <CharGen | whatever>:

• Easily incorporated. What what I am envisioning in my current project, would even be easily made modular so that games could publish their own forms. The kicker here is the validation code would need to be included in the form (non-trivial, means work for the game admins) and the error-feedback methods from MU to form to show user what didn't work and why.

Notifications:

• Standard, pretty easy to do.

[Meg]

@auspice Why would this need to eliminate phone MU? Or using not a mouse?

Actually, with AngularJS, I can implement so much more in terms of touch-responsive UI. I could, hell, integrate a swipe left, swipe right, swipe up, swipe down motion to move your character through the grid. How fucking awesome would that be?

[surreality]

@meg ...I can't be the only person who just pictured fumble-dropping my phone and stumbling into the middle of somebody's steamy TS scene like that, so I'm sharing that spit-take inspiring thought with the rest of you now.

[Meg]

@surreality The possibilities are endless! Code is amazing!

@Rook One day, I will. But that day will be when I am much further along to where it isn't really fucking shitty when I start that thread and get a bunch of people not suggesting improvements or possibilities, but just 'this is a horrible idea; it will never work for MU*s and you are horrible for wanting a web-based UI'.

[Auspice]

@meg said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@auspice Why would this need to eliminate phone MU? Or using not a mouse?

Actually, with AngularJS, I can implement so much more in terms of touch-responsive UI. I could, hell, integrate a swipe left, swipe right, swipe up, swipe down motion to move your character through the grid. How fucking awesome would that be?

Because how often do we actually remember to make things backwards compat? Or fully inclusive?

Or do we just focus on the 'new-new'?

Two decades of MU* and behind me are dozens of half-finished, abandoned projects that largely got abandoned because the 'new' part got 90% done, the backwards compatibility never got finished and all the people who needed it left, so the overall project got ditched and... so on.

The other big thing to consider: inclusivity. I've known a lot of people over the years who MU* because they are blind and it's a game they can play. How many of these shiny new things could they utilize with the same ease? Screen readers could pick them up, but not as fluidly as a MU* client's screen.

[Lotherio]

@meg said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@auspice Why would this need to eliminate phone MU? Or using not a mouse?

Actually, with AngularJS, I can implement so much more in terms of touch-responsive UI. I could, hell, integrate a swipe left, swipe right, swipe up, swipe down motion to move your character through the grid. How fucking awesome would that be?

MUD Client apps for phone come with movement buttons already, I don't know if they swype or touchscreen yet, but I imagine its something the MUD folks are doing already. I'd be more surprised if this wasn't utilized on some level by MUD client developers, even if only in the works.

They have swipe scroll wheels for word banks so I can string command lines for whatever MUD I'm on (like get all from *; where I make user generated contanct on the swipe wheel for 'corpse' so I can loot by swyping after I kill mobs).

[Meg]

@auspice said in Alternative Formats to MU:

The other big thing to consider: inclusivity. I've known a lot of people over the years who MU* because they are blind and it's a game they can play. How many of these shiny new things could they utilize with the same ease? Screen readers could pick them up, but not as fluidly as a MU* client's screen.

Actually, inclusivity would be improved, likely.

See:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA

Because web developers have had to think about these things a /lot more/ than when MU*'s were first designed.

[Roz]

@auspice said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@roz said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@auspice said in Alternative Formats to MU:

If you want Discord-style 'chat' for your roleplay, why not just go and start roleplaying there? I mean, people have been roleplaying in places like that for a while now.

Single-sentences, rapid-fire RP. 'Mary giggles.' 'Bob smiles.' 'Ryan says, 'Let's go.' 'Mary says, 'Okay.' 'Bob goes over there.' 'Ryan follows.'

You too could be part of that engaging environment!

If an interface of buttons and drop-down menus is what you need for the future of your roleplay, it's out there. If you need avatars, it's out there, too. There's MMOs with roleplay servers.

I just happen to think the crux of MU*ing happens to be the actual writing aspect of it. And the more we obsess over what buttons we're clicking (or not), the further we drift away from that.

And maybe I'm alone in that thinking, which makes me kind of sad.

I think this is a pretty unfair representation of the conversation going on. We're talking about how and why to develop a better, more user-friendly experience for the kind of RP we already have. No one is saying the writing isn't important. We're saying that the user experience of getting to that "actual writing aspect" could be improved in a way that would make it easier to use and more welcoming to new people who might enrich the hobby.

People do not read:
http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/many-college-students-are-book-virgins
https://www.sott.net/article/354868-Book-virgins-College-students-who-have-never-finished-reading-a-book
https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2016/04/why-many-college-students-never-learn-how-to-write-sentences/

They do not write.

You are trying to bring people that do not exist into a hobby by alienating the people that do.

You want to add ultimately pointless bells and whistles to things that will eliminate the people that phone MU.
You want to cut out the people that prefer (or can't for health reasons) not to use a mouse just to RP.

All to gain the one or two college kids that actually do enjoy reading and writing?

I find this to be a really arrogant, patronizing argument. You're positing the idea that all of these people who are doing text-based RP out there in the world not on MU*s are all terrible writers. That's not actually true. There are tons of really quality people out there who would absolutely flourish with the type of RP we do on MUs. I've seen plenty of them do just that: flourish. What you're doing right now is gatekeeping on the idea that those of us here are the real writers and that clearly no other quality writers exist who haven't found us. Like. What? I've seen the success that comes from reaching out to different RP communities and watch them adapt and flourish. And you know what? A lot of them are young. You don't do anything for the hobby by basically insisting that the potential here is "one or two college kids" except limit the hobby's own potential.

The idea that new technology is not going to be able to do things like support mobile usage is weird. I mean, right now the capability to MU* on a phone is pretty painful. I know that some people mostly use a phone, but they're managing despite the technology. You have the chance to make that a whole lot easier.

Instead of saying "you want to exclude people with disabilities," you could be saying, "Hey, here's something to keep in mind when you're developing new tools." The first sentence is lobbing around some pretty hurtful accusations out of nowhere, whereas the second is actually constructive and helpful for the people who are actually looking into building new tools.

[ThatGuyThere]

@meg said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@auspice Why would this need to eliminate phone MU? Or using not a mouse?

Actually, with AngularJS, I can implement so much more in terms of touch-responsive UI. I could, hell, integrate a swipe left, swipe right, swipe up, swipe down motion to move your character through the grid. How fucking awesome would that be?

Touch screens are the devil, the single reason I do not own a smart phone.

[Tez]

@auspice

I expected better than this level of old man yells at cloud gatekeeping from someone I RPed with when we were young and stupid too. They said that about our generation. C’mon.

RPers are out there. I RP with college kids today — yes, on a MU; this stuff can be taught, though it’s hard — who give me hope for this hobby. There is love and energy out there that people are just shutting down by acting like the next generation is too stupid and flighty to take part in this.

We’re not that special. We’re not that unique. Is the argument against really “kids these days!”? We can do better.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

There are plenty of other kinds of text-based players out there who will defend their format as "the one true writerly way" (the levels of elitism in journal RP, my God) and would say MUSHes are still too gamey/that the real-time format reduces quality of composition. I don't agree, and prefer this type of play because of the way it makes me write/interact with other players, but this is far from the only place you'll find "We write the bestest."

[Sunny]

I actually read an analysis thing the other day (I don't remember where, haven't found it again yet) that said the youngins read considerably more than the oldbies. It's something like 67% of people younger than 30 have read an actual book (not necessarily a physical copy, digital counted, but it was a book) in the last year compared to something significantly lower than that for people over 30.

[Auspice]

My argument is that you are not going to win over college kids with 'Look! We made a slick and cool iPhone app that's just like an MMO to roleplay on!'

By and far, college kids aren't reading and writing like they used to. This is fact.

It's not a matter of 'Kids are reading and writing, we just need to put on cool sunglasses and win them over, guys!'

We're standing around trying to design a new logo for an outdated product when they don't want the product to begin with. This is Marketing 101 and we are failing. If they want our product, they will find it, regardless.

Improve the product for the people already using it, not a userbase that doesn't exist. And don't give the middle finger to that userbase. I hate using a mouse. I do and structure everything I can to avoid using one; I always have. It sets off cubital tunnel issues that have only gotten worse over the years. So yes, I am going to rail hard against people going (more or less) 'I want this button and that button and to click this and to click that and to have to click things for everything except my poses.'

Phone screens are big, but the idea of swiping this way and that doesn't seem like it'll save much territory on top of scrolling by typing exit names? It's just 'new for the sake of new.'

The core of MU is roleplay. None of this enhances or speaks to that core. What would bring people in for roleplay? What are barriers to roleplay? It was brought up earlier, a few things:

• Difficult CGs (a web form only gives this a new interface; it doesn't make the core of CG easier)
• Long wait times for approval (this is on individual staff)

Those are just a couple that have been brought up in this thread. Once people get past the 'shiny and new,' what's going to keep them around? It's not the bevel on the buttons. It's the roleplay and the people on the game.

[Rook]

@meg said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@Rook One day, I will. But that day will be when I am much further along to where it isn't really fucking shitty when I start that thread and get a bunch of people not suggesting improvements or possibilities, but just 'this is a horrible idea; it will never work for MU*s and you are horrible for wanting a web-based UI'.

You know, I liken this thread to someone walking into a developer meeting and sitting down, raising their hand when the team lead says "We need innovation. What are everyone's thoughts on how we can spice things up, punch it up a little?"

There's going to be some pushback from those of us who don't immediately glom onto your vision. Someone's going to hand you a marker and say "Whiteboard this for me, I don't understand."

If you want to find allies in bringing an idea to life, you're going to have to endure that. It's no different than someone going into the Announcement forum and starting a thread where they say something as ground-breaking as: "I'm starting a MUSH where everyone gets Wizard bits, there are paid, professional Storytellers and it'll be free for the first 100 players to get through CharGen."

People are going to clamor with questions, nay-saying and demands to discuss how you plan to do all this without fundamentally changing How Things Work on the game. It's a fair and valid conversation to have when you're designing something new.

Conversation is needed to sow the seeds of any new idea, especially here. Someone has stepped up in front of the Shark Tank and proposes a New Way to MUSH. We? We are the Sharks. You are the one with the idea, and if you want buy-in, you have to convince at least a few of us that your (not @Meg specifically) idea has merit from a feasibility and viability standpoint. I think we have the opportunity/audience standpoints well laid out, at this point.

EDIT: Also? LOE vs ROI is a real thing.

[Sunny]

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/19/slightly-fewer-americans-are-reading-print-books-new-survey-finds/

There you go. There's a breakdown, even.

Specifically:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/19/slightly-fewer-americans-are-reading-print-books-new-survey-finds/ft_15-10-12_whoreadbook/

So apparently it didn't take digital books into account.

[Meg]

@rook Full stop, no. This is the same shit that happened to @surreality when she posted for /one question/ and then people were criticizing shit for a game that was nothing about what she asked and she hadn't even opened yet.

Legit, no. No. You may think this is all fine, but it's not. It isn't like walking into a developer meeting and raising your hand and whatever. Someone asked a question, specifically, about what people had tried in other formats. They suggested an idea that they were tinkering with.

They didn't ask, 'please list all the reasons you think I am wrong for wanting to develop this thing'.