Wow, that's a crazy amount of work!
Without wanting to derail the thread, maybe this kind of thing could work better crowd-sourced. Spread out the task of looking at Beast - anonymously - through the populace maybe. Better to have a few more Beast given out when they shouldn't than need so much manpower just to keep up with a never-exhausted pool of requests.
Yeah, 3+ hours just to process xp every week is harsh. Nevermind all the other systems, for territory/influence/etc.
RfK had a lot of good ideas, but some of them are just too 'big' to really work on a MU.
@coin: https://github.com/ccubed/RFK/blob/master/Beats Code.txt
Also, the game was not closed due to any specific work load. The game was closed due to a disagreement staff side about a specific rule regarding staff PCs. As some of the staff we had recently brought on were unwilling to follow it and Neither Becca nor I could devote the major time needed to keep the game going, it was decided we would close it and work on a new project. The server remains open until we're ready to close it for the ~15 minutes it will take for me to start up the new game based on Mu2.
@Arkandel said:
Wow, that's a crazy amount of work!
Without wanting to derail the thread, maybe this kind of thing could work better crowd-sourced. Spread out the task of looking at Beast - anonymously - through the populace maybe. Better to have a few more Beast given out when they shouldn't than need so much manpower just to keep up with a never-exhausted pool of requests.
You need a spellchecker badly. 
this would probably be much more palatable for staff if you had more than just one person doing it. 2-3 would make this a lot faster, I suspect. I do like it. I can even see it working fine alongside passive XP (taking out some of the categories listed above).
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
I dunno - it seemed like they DID work, for a while. Vampire's the most popular game-line, it seems. I suspect one of the less popular ones that had the same amount of care in the systems (GMC Changeling, please GOD, GMC Changeling) could be sustainable for quite a while. Especially if (and this probably isn't a popular idea, but what the hell), there was a game cap at the point where staff felt they no longer could continue to expand.
I will say that I think the Staff PC policy was one of the things that kept player trust in staff pretty high, at least when I was there - I didn't see the constant paranoia about staff that I was accustomed to seeing in other games, and even when I didn't agree with staff decisions, I never felt (or saw other people say they felt) that those decisions were being made to favor staff-alts. In the occasional +job asking for player feedback about the policy, most players seemed to support it to one degree or another.
@Arkandel said:
Without wanting to derail the thread, maybe this kind of thing could work better crowd-sourced.
AetherMUX, 1998-2002. Crowdsourced 'recc' review. It was a lot of work, amounting to about 2 hours of work a week with 12 and later 7 people (so 24 and then 14 man-hours), and when the active player base waned, it stopped being a viable system.
@Alzie said:
@coin: https://github.com/ccubed/RFK/blob/master/Beats Code.txt
Also, the game was not closed due to any specific work load. The game was closed due to a disagreement staff side about a specific rule regarding staff PCs. As the staff we had recently brought on were unwilling to follow it and Neither Becca nor I could devote the major time needed to keep the game going, it was decided we would close it and work on a new project. The server remains open until we're ready to close it for the ~15 minutes it will take for me to start up the new game based on Mu2.
Er. Some of the staff, not all.
Has anything been happening with Eldritch's neighborhood system, @coin? A streamlined kind of territory/influence system that actually has teeth, somehow, but isn't a headache to manage for staff and doesn't require things being done nonstop could definitely be fun. But the task of finding the balance between actually mattering, not causing issues, and not being work-intensive seems to be hard to find.
@Pyrephox, it seems like a game cap wouldn't be that poorly received. I find it hard to believe so many people think Eldritch's sphere caps are okay, but would riot over a full-on game cap. You'd need a 'good' way of handling your limited openings, though.
@Arkandel said:
Wow, that's a crazy amount of work!
Without wanting to derail the thread, maybe this kind of thing could work better crowd-sourced. Spread out the task of looking at Beast - anonymously - through the populace maybe. Better to have a few more Beast given out when they shouldn't than need so much manpower just to keep up with a never-exhausted pool of requests.
Up until recently, it was deliberately not crowd-sourced as it was one of Shavalyoths most valuable tools in keeping up to date with what was happening IC.
@Pyrephox said:
I dunno - it seemed like they DID work, for a while. Vampire's the most popular game-line, it seems. I suspect one of the less popular ones that had the same amount of care in the systems (GMC Changeling, please GOD, GMC Changeling) could be sustainable for quite a while. Especially if (and this probably isn't a popular idea, but what the hell), there was a game cap at the point where staff felt they no longer could continue to expand.
RfK staff never made decisions based on what they believed would be popular, there were in fact many many requests for us to cap the game. The main reason it wasn't done until very recently was that Shavalyoth didn't feel comfortable with the idea of turning down potentially awesome players from playing in her game, especially when less great players were already present which you can't kick out in any way that's remotely fair or ethical.
Any future project has a loot of good lessons to learn from RfK in regards to keeping a game manageable.
What is obvious to you may not be obvious to me and vice versa.
@Coin said:
You need a spellchecker badly.
A spell checker (which I do have) wouldn't help with typos like Beast/Beats. I don't always proof-check my posts when I'm at work (i.e. 99% if I'm posting on MSB 
) which lead to those mishaps. Sorry!
@Groth said:
Any future project has a lot of good lessons to learn from RfK in regards to keeping a game manageable.
I've never played there. Could you come up with a list (ongoing as you think of things) what these lessons would be? Thanks.
@Thenomain One of the biggest things on a coding side was that one person came in and made the initial code. This person didn't really know code and so made things in the way that a beginning would.
Then the second coder was a coder who knew code but didn't know softcode who attempting to apply real world coding practices to softcode (which you can't, really, it doesn't work out). Nodens was great though, at least he could code.
Then I came along and was stuck trying to bridge the gap between the original guy who couldn't code, Nodens who could code but didn't really understand the specifics of softcode and myself who can code and knew softcode.
Lesson: Having multiple coders making your core systems is a pain.
@Alzie said:
Lesson: Having multiple coders making your core systems is a pain.
It worked for Reach. The only core system that was a true and utter pain was coded by one person.
From the point of view of one of those 'new staff' (Q'yth-az, experienced at staffing, new on Kingsmouth), the issue was: god staff wanted a game run a specific way and she was AMAZINGLY popular at running it which pulled in more people, which caused more work, repeat, repeat....until it was overwhelming. Shava made allowances for new staff, one being an issue I specifically asked about before stepping into staff: allowing a Staff PC to gain and fight for their MORTAL influence spot (a rule which was approved and posted on the wiki). Later, Shav proposed a new influence system, set it in motion gameside (changing player stats), then disappeared for two weeks. Gone. Lyth, another new staffer with experience, stepped into a leadership role and began organizing what information we had (And, no, we did NOT have all the information...I made multiple job errors because partial information was available and players corrected me, which caused me to go back and ask to get relevant information not on any records). We had two new influence staffers that worked with us to get the new influences levels written out, using the 3 sentence descriptions Shava left as a guideline. This took approximately 1 week, 3 hours a day minimum. In the meantime, Lyth worked to get the jobs moving, the plots organized and staff morale boosted. All staff dug in to see what we could handle with the information we had. Shava returned. The new influence was implemented. The new influence change brought the issue of Staff PC holding and defending mortal influence to the forefront. There was 1 Level-5 slot which was being competed over because the shuffle had put my Staff PC into a conflicting situation with a PC. A reversal in the ruling which allowed me to play my PC as a PC was made, which caused me to decide to step aside (Staff PCs will step aside for any Player PC).
The breaking point mentioned by Shava in her post was a suggestion being implemented that those within the influence realms who lost or stepped down from their influence status due to this staff-implemented change (merging of some status realms caused 3 conflicts), would receive 1 XP. Shava refused this, Lyth insisted that it would assist with player morale (I would have waived it for myself because, meh, 1 XP), but there was no discussion. After the announcement of the game closing is when I returned to my computer (dratted work!) and stepped away from staffing, not aware at that point that the decision had already been made.
The provoking situation was that the staff PC would not automatically step aside for the player character in that spot. The argument is that since it was a Rank 5 influence spot, which only one person could hold, that was automatically a position of power-- and that was the crux of the disagreement. Some felt it was not a position of power, some did and that a staff-PC shouldn't hold it. But Shava has always been very clear about her preferences on boundaries between staff PCs and non-staff PCs. It was one of the things that drew me to the game, after being burned by questionable staff ethics and actions on so many other games.
It is true that coming in as a new staffer on an established game in which 70% of the game was in one person's head, and the new folks left with no training or minimal guidance, was difficult. There were some attitudes towards the new staffers coming in that were worrisome, both from the player and the established staff side. New staff put in an incredible number of hours trying to play catch up, field complaints and try to rectify a situation that had been simmering for awhile. We worked our asses off and while I'm sad, I'm also proud of what we did do.
But the reason for closing the game was not over the 1XP reward.
Wow, that's a crazy amount of work!
Without wanting to derail the thread, maybe this kind of thing could work better crowd-sourced. Spread out the task of looking at Beast - anonymously - through the populace maybe. Better to have a few more Beast given out when they shouldn't than need so much manpower just to keep up with a never-exhausted pool of requests.
