To OOC Room or Not to OOC Room (and Other Artifacts)

[Derp]

@krmbm said in To OOC Room or Not to OOC Room (and Other Artifacts):

@Derp If you leave the channel, you can't talk in the OOC room.

Right, that's what I was getting it. It then doubles as a quiet room.

[krmbm]

@Derp Got it. I have never, like, hung out in OOC rooms, so I wasn't sure quite what you meant there.

I don't really 'get' the idea of hanging out in a lounge room OOC and chatting with whoever is just rattling around; if I want to chat, I do it on a channel. But to each his own. @faraday seems to have already married these preferences.

https://www.aresmush.com/tutorials/config/channels.html#ooc_lounge_channel

[faraday]

@Derp said in To OOC Room or Not to OOC Room (and Other Artifacts):

Right, that's what I was getting it. It then doubles as a quiet room.

Yes, if you leave or mute the lounge channel (when enabled on a game), it effectively becomes a quiet room for you. It's just a channel you can talk on using regular poses/says when you're in the lounge room.

Ares also has an actual quiet room built in, which mutes talking and arrival/departure/connection messages.

[faraday]

Double post sorry but I missed replying to this:

@TNP said in To OOC Room or Not to OOC Room (and Other Artifacts):

And there are people - like me - who usually keep channels turned off. One of the biggest things I hated about Arx was the lack of an OOC Room. And I don't even make a lot of use of them.

No solution is going to catch everyone. Some folks turn off channels, some folks don't hang out in the OOC lounge (or are already RPing).

It's largely a matter of preference, but I do think there are objective benefits to the channel option:

• It is available to everyone on the game, no matter where they are.
• With the web portal and/or OOC player bit characters, you can keep the chatter away from your RP windows.
• With channel recall, you can catch up on what you missed later.
• Abuse is more easily reported and monitored because staff doesn't have to keep an alt in the room every minute of the day, and (on Ares) players can make use of the channel abuse reporting tools.

[sibermaus]

Big Grids with Player Builds - In some of the modern systems like Ares, you have the option of creating what is essentially a virtual temproom. How big of a grid is too big? How small of a grid is too small? With the ability to summon an additional space basically at the press of a command, is there a reason to still do player builds? (In my experience, they tend to clog the grids fairly rapidly, and often include rooms that never see RP anyway. I am not a personal fan.)

If the game provides a means for players to save the descriptions of "permanent" / personal builds somewhere (such as in room-description attributes on their character object) then I see no reason not to use temprooms rather than sites that hang around all the time.

Chargen 'Rooms' - Similarly, chargen and advancement can often be completed via a command that starts some kind of program, or possibly teleports you to some predefined area in which you can do the chargen thing. Is there really a need for a chargen room itself, if the chargen command comes with help files?

No reason not to offer CharGen that is universally available. My only request as an old fashioned MUXer is: Make sure all the help files are somewhere on the MU. I don't always want to have to open a PDF or a web browser to remind me how to use the game's CharGen.

[Derp]

@sibermaus said in To OOC Room or Not to OOC Room (and Other Artifacts):

My only request as an old fashioned MUXer is: Make sure all the help files are somewhere on the MU. I don't always want to have to open a PDF or a web browser to remind me how to use the game's CharGen.

Faraday makes that pretty easy on Ares. The process of creating the help file is part of the process of creating the plugin, which harbors the commands. So unless you're just being super lazy and skip it there's no reason that it wouldn't be on the game itself.

[mietze]

I think it would be a little harder to adapt for a permanent-grid-less game, for me personally, because I like being able to use rooms I dont have to create in order to seek RP, but for the right game I would definitely be willing to try and adapt.

[Derp]

@mietze said in To OOC Room or Not to OOC Room (and Other Artifacts):

I think it would be a little harder to adapt for a permanent-grid-less game, for me personally, because I like being able to use rooms I dont have to create in order to seek RP, but for the right game I would definitely be willing to try and adapt.

Well, yeah. The grid still serves a purpose. It shows you the layout of the world. My thing is more -- too big of a grid and you just start to dilute players and RP, really. So the question was 'how big is too big'?

One of the bit things on games lately is that people just aren't actually playing them, I've found. There are plenty of characters, plenty of places, ongoing plots -- and a ton of people just idling in the OOC lounge or private builds and not even bothering to try to leave to go find RP. I'm just curious if taking away some of the barriers/crutches that are used to avoid going out to the grid at large might ease some of that.

[mietze]

@Derp I only play on two games currently. Neither one is WoD, and I seldom have too much trouble finding RP with new people. I don't think either one has an ooc room but I could be wrong. But there are private rooms so it's not like people can't hermit.

I think if you can't stand people idling or being in a private room on your game, maybe just say that if you notice people constantly doing that you'll just kick them off, institute a quota for on grid or ic between two or more PCs posing that has to be done to maintain your PC, make sure staff is giving people lots to do, ect. I'm not sure that taking away (or providing) rooms is going to solve the issue of people logging in but never unidling or going ic. People will just make you even more crazy by doing their same behaviors in other areas, even if they're not a lounge and no one can have a bedroom. You have to put on the meany pants and cull the people whose behavior is disruptive to you, or offer them a carrot or something. You cannot really passively prevent this type of behavior, at least as far as I have observed.

A high bump on a log to dynamic RPer ratio seems to be standard on most games that I have played where there weren't culling of inactive (as in doing things on the game, not just logging in) people. But you also have to have a thick skin for dealing with people who dont play there screaming about it. People lose their minds sometimes even about sphere or population caps, pretty sure people will pop even more brain cells if a game removed characters from the game that staff deemed as useless/not contributing. But it might really provide both motivation and reward for people who hate idlers/chatter-only people?

[Derp]

@mietze

Not talking about WoD specifically. This is also the case on some non-WoD games that I've seen/played. This is really just more of a general question.The game I am currently working on isn't even WoD.

I don't mind people being in private rooms. People need to be able to have privacy. As most people who have RPed with me can attest, if I can't find at least some mode to have a decent one-on-one without getting dogpiled, I get mighty cranky.

I'm just concerned that letting the grid get too big with permanent rooms doesn't really do anyone any favors. As someone who started their staff life as a builder, I can't tell you the amount of times that I've had someone request 10+ room builds because clearly the bedroom needs a master bathroom, that's gonna see a lot of RP, and then people get so proud of their little build that they don't ever go anywhere else. I'm not sure that some kind of punitive solution is really the way to go, though. I'd much prefer the carrot, or to just design it with the intention of drawing people together in the first place, which is the ideal.

I've got a pretty thick skin when it comes to people screaming about something. I'm sure that this game will see a lot of that anyway, really. We've planned for it so far as to put up a Vision file that basically just says "yeah, we get that it isn't for everyone, but this is what we are shooting for."

I guess the meat of the question is -- what game-design patterns can be instituted that can meaningfully draw people out of hiding without having to beat them into submission to do it?

[mietze]

I think the most surefire (and also the most costly and difficult thing to maintain) way to do that is to have a staff heavily invested in proving a lot of entertainment and not relying on the "make your own fun" factor. And frankly also a population cap.

[Auspice]

@Derp said in To OOC Room or Not to OOC Room (and Other Artifacts):

As someone who started their staff life as a builder, I can't tell you the amount of times that I've had someone request 10+ room builds because clearly the bedroom needs a master bathroom, that's gonna see a lot of RP,

I've been build staff on a few WoD games now and I limit people by Resources.
'Oh you have Resources 1 but you want a 10 bedroom mansion? HA HA NO'

I dislike huge grids. I know some people love them, but when a city is broken down STREET BY STREET what I see a lot of is each street having 0 or maybe 1 point of interest on average and then most of those that exist being defunct.

Grid a city by district. It's SO much easier to navigate and you can then cluster together the points of interest.

But I can count on my hand the number of times I've had a 'street room' scene and have fingers left over.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

Why does any PC need more than 1 room, if the issue is grid bloat?

If it's a house that has multiple characters living in it or the PC also has a business that serves another purpose, sure, but the 'I need 10 private rooms' thing seems a like a different problem/a problem that can be solved by staff saying 'you actually don't need 10 private rooms, no.'

[Auspice]

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in To OOC Room or Not to OOC Room (and Other Artifacts):

Why does any PC need more than 1 room, if the issue is grid bloat?

If it's a house that has multiple characters living in it or the PC also has a business that serves another purpose, sure, but the 'I need 10 private rooms' thing seems a like a different problem/a problem that can be solved by staff saying 'you actually don't need 10 private rooms, no.'

Sadly, on some of the games I've played, Staff is just as guilty. So then you're there as the Builder like 'I think we need to restrict rooms' at the same time they're like 'HAY CAN YOU BUILD OUT MY TWENTY ROOM MANSION FOR ME PLZ'

[GreenFlashlight]

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in To OOC Room or Not to OOC Room (and Other Artifacts):

Why does any PC need more than 1 room, if the issue is grid bloat?

Wish fulfillment.

[mietze]

I kind of liked Eldritch's system of small # of grid squares that represent huge areas, with smaller builds (such as houses or businesses or other relevant spaces) branching off so you didnt have a shitload of street rooms to walk through. People fussed a lot on chan about that, but I bet there's be less griping about it now.

[surreality]

This is generally my take on it, too. Have a neighborhood/area/part of town, vs. street layout.

Re: why you may need more than one room: everybody assumes that if you're in your home with someone on +where, you're fucking. It doesn't matter if you're fucking, it doesn't matter if you're picking navel lint and chatting OOC about your favorite TV shows, people are going to assume this. If you're just in 'Jane's House', people are going to assume this more than if, say, you're in 'Jane's House - Ritual Library', when 'Jane's House - Bedroom' is something that would arguably exist.

This doesn't mean -- barring communal residence or business -- you probably shouldn't make a one room permanent build for the property and then temproom up your kitchen/bedroom/kinky sex lair/whatever else, but that's one reason I understand too well as a reason to want more than one room.

(tl;dr: assholes assume shit and act like assholes on account of that assumption, that isn't fun, this hobby would be vastly improved by a lesser quantity of assholes and assumptions)

[Auspice]

I only have sex in my ritual library.

[TiredEwok]

I like having a division between OOC and IC as far as grid goes. If I am always on the IC side of the grid I wind up feeling pressured to RP when I might not feel up to doing more than OOCly chat with friends. An OOC room allows me to do that without the 'omgmustrp' pressure sitting in an IC room can bring about.

[friarzen]

Hmm... This topic is timely to a game design issue I discovered after my last Section14 post. I was planning on just building out a traditional grid based on my first couple plots, only to realize that would lead to a sprawling set of used-once-or-maybe-twice-at-most locations that would then just rot. In my head, the game is fairly episodic, with only a couple of small recurring locations (like the secret base where the players reside between missions and the "generic" supply depots/storage-dumps/oubliettes that per-mission resources get pulled from or sent to), and the rest of the grid would be temporary-ish rooms used for part of a "Season". Right now, I'm working on just giving the players a set of commands to "re-skin" temporary-ish rooms as needed for scenes or PRPs.
I guess I'll need to think more on what that design means for privacy/ooc issues, though.