What drew you to MU*?

[Tinuviel]

@mietze said in What drew you to MU*?:

I'm not sure that I would want to encourage mu players to treat of the staff of the games they run with the same entitlement that some people have towards the big gaming corporations about games they bought.

True. Though I feel the idea was less about the company itself and more about the evolution of the game that company made. In essence, the MU* community would be the "company" and the complaints would be aimed at the changes we have made to the environment and the games that we create and participate in now.

I think. It's five am, I haven't had my coffee yet.

[Paris]

I really miss Pern games. I don't miss the politics and how weyrs could turn into little feifdoms, but there was a cyclical rhythm to threadfall games that always gave you something to do. A dragon needed healing, a fall needed fighting, weyrlings needed training, etc.

[mietze]

@tinuviel I can kinda see that--but that still doesn't super work, at least for me. I think it's an attitude that can get one into big trouble, and needlessly hurt people. I do see that a LOT of people, myself included, tend to operate on some level of nostalgia when it comes to things that annoy us/encourage resentment in us. But I see that much more of a "check yourself before you wreck yourself" moment, rather than "OMG this suck because you people have changed things too much.", even though it's a lot easier to do the latter than the former.

[mietze]

I do think the attitude on all sides can be more easily linked to smaller (non big time corporate supported) games and loyal followers.

My husband is the sole developer (it's not his property, but he's the only developer that's working on it at this time, and it's been this way for jeez, like over 10 years now. It's a clunky PC historical strategy game. People just really don't play these types of games much anymore. But it has a devoted small following of a surprising age range of people. (Many MUSH similarities here). Nobody is making a lot of money off this game (hence why the current people who own the rights will only pay one developer and one artist to work on it, ect).

Most people are cool, understanding, excited about mods they themselves can make, enjoy it immensely despite the olden days format, ect. They give good feedback as various things are rebuilt, not to turn it into an MMO or anything, but to make it with more options, updated campaigns, some graphics updates, a lot of behind the scenes engine updates, ect.

But there are a special few screamers that are really horrible. Vomiting all over the forums, harassing people, always with a major entitlement complex about how things aren't moving fast enough, how they're not getting big corporate look/upgrades for this inexpensive and old school game, insulting my hubby by name because he's on the credits (and he does take the time to respond to people on the forum, because again, small community of pretty much fun/nice/quirky people from all over the world, ect) and treating him like garbage because the features that the team has decided to bring with the $$ they have available doesn't line up with what the screamer wants, ect.

We have SO FUCKING MUCH of that in MUSHing. I really don't think we need to encourage more. Enjoy what is, give your input once and constructively or at least respectfully, if it doesn't change in a way you can abide, move on.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@paris
I sometimes wonder why Pern faded away as a (for MUSHing) pretty huge genre while WoD has endured. I wonder if it wasn't as much consistently available code to set up a game as much as anything else. FS3 is certainly the key reason there were a succession if bsg games. While I don't think time has been super-kind to the books, that can be said of a lot of source material.

[Paris]

@three-eyed-crow I think that it being an older property (where are all the amber games, etc), combined with Anne passing away and the books by her son being pretty bad, is part of it. WoD has been updated over the years, and nWoD gave it new popularity; iirc oWoD was starting to decline, too.

Pern could be kind of problematic re: LGBT issues, too, since Anne's concept initially was pretty forward-thinking for the time (a mostly gay airforce in 60s fiction?), but became pretty outdated over the decades (you don't become gay from bottoming, and you couldn't have a leadership role and be gay). I don't think that was the main reason but the grumbling about it increased over the years.

[Paris]

@three-eyed-crow Re: code, that wasn't necessarily true, H'kar coded most of the systems for my old game and then made that available to others (we were basically his test platform), so anything on MUX (especially in MUX's early days) had access to pretty much a full suite of pern-oriented code, channels, mail, etc etc etc.

[Arkandel]

@mietze said in What drew you to MU*?:

We have SO FUCKING MUCH of that in MUSHing. I really don't think we need to encourage more. Enjoy what is, give your input once and constructively or at least respectfully, if it doesn't change in a way you can abide, move on.

I think it's a combination of entitlement but also painting with a wide brush.

On one hand it's 100% entitlement. We're getting services which would cost a lot of money in the real world; Theno could have make bank as a developer for the number of hours he's put into coding. Similarly staff are doing a lot of work on maintenance and support we usually expect from experienced personnel - and we demand more of that, for nothing, else we get upset. That's crazy, and wrong.

On the othe hand staff in many games have failed so much, so often that it's almost comical how we label all game runners the same, like they should be collectively burdened (or punished!) by what happened on other games they had nothing to do with or didn't even know existed. Are you trying to run a single-sphere Vampire MUSH? You can - in fact, you will - get saddled with criticism over how those MU* failed which might not even apply to you, yet you're expected to answer for.

It's all a bit crazy, but as @Tinuviel just pointed out, to run a MU* you need to be at least a little insane to begin with.

[Misadventure]

A large issue with Blizzard and any other large game company is that people want a lot to do, and rewards along the way, so this is either what you want or a grind.

Likewise, they have telemetry that tells them what percentage of the players ever do various things, and they use that to design play. Other than selecting what activities you want to pursue, you are in a game designed for millions of players, where some of the littlest things take hours or days for an employee to create.

Automated delivery of content (programming) pulls a lot of the mystery out of play, and the internet makes sure of that.

[Tinuviel]

@misadventure said in What drew you to MU*?:

Likewise, they have telemetry that tells them what percentage of the players ever do various things, and they use that to design play.

I don't want to sound snippy, at all, but this line here reminded me of Arx actually. Specifically when @Kanye-Qwest is slapping down @Tempest, but the Arx folks certainly seem to use a similarish methodology. Is that something MU*dom is going to start doing more and more, given that it clearly works in Arx's case?

[Paris]

@tinuviel I imagine that if you have a lot of automated systems and design a game around them, you're going to invest your time in what people are actually playing. Especially when this is unpaid volunteer work.

[faraday]

@tinuviel I think that's pretty much game design 101. If a significant percentage of people are interested in X, staff is probably going to do more X. If hardly anyone is interested in Y, staff can either try to figure out why and adjust it (if it's something they think has value) or ditch it. That's not something unique to Arx or Blizzard.

[surreality]

Having gone off on a few manifestos of grar regarding the state of things as I see them, I'm the last person who would tell someone to refrain from doing the same.

Every time I've done it, I've been surprised to see how many people agree with or recognize some of the things I described, at which point something that may have been overlooked before begins to be taken more seriously and at least becomes a topic of discussion, and also how many people can provide reassurance through example of how other things are not as dire/bleak/shitty as they seem to me.

It's not fun shit to read. It's not fun shit to write, either, and the state of mind someone has to be in to get there isn't exactly fabulousness incarnate. Shit may never get back to a fabulousness incarnate headspace, but at least in terms of my personal experience, it's shifted my perspective from believing there's nothing but a hopeless abyss.

[Tinuviel]

@faraday said in What drew you to MU*?:

If a significant percentage of people are interested in X, staff is probably going to do more X.

That bit, yes. I'm talking more about the actual telemetry, rather than relying on more traditional feedback that we usually do.

[faraday]

@tinuviel said in What drew you to MU*?:

That bit, yes. I'm talking more about the actual telemetry, rather than relying on more traditional feedback that we usually do.

I don't understand what you're objecting to re: telemetry. Gathering metrics about who actually uses/does what as opposed to just trying to gauge it with gut feel?

[Tinuviel]

@faraday I didn't actually offer an objection? I was asking a question.

[mietze]

@arkandel I think that failure as a term in mushing is meaningless.

Failed=closed?

Failed=scandal laden but still open?

Failed=Hired That Person I Don't Like?

Failed=Fired That Person I Don't Know I'm Not Supposed to Like?

Failed=I cannot get RP no matter how much I demand it on channel or try to put myself out there?

Failed=I see people getting stuff I dont know how to but want so they must be cheating/staff favorites?

[surreality]

@mietze ...more:

Failed=No one picked up on all the clues being thrown out for plots even when handed them directly.

Failed=Staff got overwhelmed and couldn't keep up.

Failed=People not recognizing 'there is nothing going on!' is not the same thing as 'I am not personally interested in the things that are going on right now'.

Failed=Someone else was getting attention I wanted.

Failed=Instituted a policy/house rule I dislike.

Failed=Was <larger/smaller> than X players at any given time.

[Apos]

@faraday said in What drew you to MU*?:

@tinuviel I think that's pretty much game design 101. If a significant percentage of people are interested in X, staff is probably going to do more X. If hardly anyone is interested in Y, staff can either try to figure out why and adjust it (if it's something they think has value) or ditch it. That's not something unique to Arx or Blizzard.

Yeah I mean, there's a ton of stuff in Arx that I have no personal interest in, but I know people do, so I make sure it's supported. Every staffer and game runner is just going to have their own metrics on whether something is worth it, and how much they are willing to deal with to support stuff they don't personally care about. It's just pretty basic stuff, though I think we see a lot of clashes over people upset that a game runner isn't making a niche interest or pet project part of their core design when it's obvious the runner doesn't like that stuff.

[Ganymede]

@mietze said in What drew you to MU*?:

Enjoy what is, give your input once and constructively or at least respectfully, if it doesn't change in a way you can abide, move on.

In my old age, I have embraced this.

When I was a younger lawyercatbot, I was much more vociferous as to "what is to be done about this issue."

Now, I simply cannot be bothered.

Sex isn't always great, but it's still sex.