Where the hell is everyone?
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@Coin said:
@Arkandel said:
When I was playing on a MUD it was simply called mudsex.
Which makes way more sex than the hilariously named "tinysex", I mean... come on!
Yes. It makes tons of sex.
Fuck you!
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Apos said:
The Reach was the first game I played that I saw people mention how much they hated social RP, and that really surprised me when I started. Then I came to the disappointing conclusion that what they REALLY meant was, 'I hate RP that won't go anywhere', and that social RP was code for that. It was the first time I played where social RP was largely without consequence, and I just wasn't used to sandboxes doing that.
I became one of these people very fast when I came back from my hiatus and everything had moved to NWoD and PrPs and scheduling and a whole different vibe. I was finding that spontaneous grid RP was thoroughly dominated by people who were aggressively interested in relationship RP. So I withdrew and stuck to playing with people I knew, or people who demonstrated OOCly that they were interested in story. It kinda worked out on The Reach, in that I always felt unsatisfied but was able to find people for personal RP. When I moved to Fallcoast it seemed to be entrenched right from the start -- I was running a lot of stuff across two spheres, but finding RP with my characters was such an awful grind that I stopped playing altogether. I miss writing, but I don't care to suffer through a gauntlet of thirsty basement-dwellers in the hope I can find and claw out a diamond or two from the rough.
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@Arkandel said:
I believe most of the phenomena and paradigms above can be broken down to the fact we're losing more players than we're getting. Roleplay in MU* unlike what we find on table-top is largely dependent on - usually a small minority of - players who are able to create, as opposed to carrying on and expanding, plot threads which can then be picked up by others.
For each such person who burns out, has been caught up by real life or simply moved on it's increasingly difficult to replace them simply because one of the main factors in being able to do what such flagship players do is experience; so as the number of folks who've been playing for years and have the ability to do so diminishes newer ones with the potential and talent to replace them never find the same circumstances and opportunities which existed, say, in the late nineties or early 2000's.
There's a chance we're on a slow downward spiral. Another way to see it though is that we're going through a slum until the paradigm changes to allow for our hobby's resurgence.
This reminds me of the fall of Elendor in the early 2000's, and now I'm sad. Jerk.
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@VulgarKitten said:
Elendor
I've never heard of that game before. Care to elaborate?
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Sessurea Yeah, and that's a depressingly common sentiment I've heard echoed a lot. I don't really think the demographics of MUs have changed at all, but the people looking for meaningful character development on a grid get elbowed out if there's not any kind of strong draw bringing people back there to have grid rp happen in an organic fashion. It's a really important design element that I think is dangerous to ignore, where staff can just shrug and say, 'whelp, up to players to get out there and make RP'.
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@Arkandel said:
@VulgarKitten said:
Elendor
I've never heard of that game before. Care to elaborate?
Tolkien theme. Got really big when the LotR movies came out, then slowly died.
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@Apos said:
@Sessurea Yeah, and that's a depressingly common sentiment I've heard echoed a lot. I don't really think the demographics of MUs have changed at all, but the people looking for meaningful character development on a grid get elbowed out if there's not any kind of strong draw bringing people back there to have grid rp happen in an organic fashion. It's a really important design element that I think is dangerous to ignore, where staff can just shrug and say, 'whelp, up to players to get out there and make RP'.
I don't really get it because, why not go play on Shang? I guess that it could be having an established theme, or you've probably got a lot of people who ARE on Shang but are eager enough to spread it anywhere they can get a login, I dunno. They vastly outweigh the STs and engaged, proactive players. Banning TS is ridiculous and ineffective, so what other way is there for the few people who do want story to find each other, connect, play, without having to be perma-braced for the text-only version of unsolicited dick pics?
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@Sessurea said:
I don't really get it because, why not go play on Shang? I guess that it could be having an established theme, or you've probably got a lot of people who ARE on Shang but are eager enough to spread it anywhere they can get a login, I dunno.
That's a question I often ask and there's no real answer. My best guess is people don't want to think of themselves as the kind who're mainly in it for the TS and/or they want to find partners they can 'seduce' to their hawt kinks (without always checking if they're okay with the other person) who don't usually do that sort of thing.
Or something.
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@Sessurea To answer seriously I think there needs to be a fundamental drive to make grid RP meaningful and provide incentives for doing so, particularly when the game is not a sandbox and can have significant consequences for acting like a tool in public. I don't think the player bases of most MUs are all that different, but like if you take a sandbox where people can feel like they can say and do whatever they want in public, and take a side-by-side comparison with a game where you have social pressure that causes creepy players to feel alienated or punished if they show their creepiness, you see the proportion of players that would be incredibly creepy either stop playing or tone down their behavior.
I think this is more of the responsibility of staff to set the right tone and environment (positive reinforcement while weeding out truly disruptive elements), but if players are playing in a game where staff obviously does not care about it enough to enforce it, the most players can do is rp intentionally in public as a group and welcome strangers while continually vetting every new person that tries to join. That's excruciating and slow, and imo should never fall upon players to do this.
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@Sessurea said:
so what other way is there for the few people who do want story to find each other, connect, play, without having to be perma-braced for the text-only version of unsolicited dick pics?
...or, sometimes, three offers+ of actual dick pics daily. For no apparent reason. I'm gonna go crawl into the shower and scrub that memory off, now.
Oh fucking well.
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@surreality said:
@Sessurea said:
so what other way is there for the few people who do want story to find each other, connect, play, without having to be perma-braced for the text-only version of unsolicited dick pics?
...or, sometimes, three offers+ of actual dick pics daily. For no apparent reason. I'm gonna go crawl into the shower and scrub that memory off, now.
It's like the dickpic version of that dialogue from Snatch:
"Dyelaikdeks?"
"Whut?"
"Oi sed, dyelaikdeks?"
"Wha' is he sayin'..?"
"Deks. Deks. Laikputteminyapussdeks!"
"OH. DICKS." -
I feel bad because I want to RP more, but my job is just killing me.
