Feelings of not being wanted...

[Roz]

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

I think the best way someone can remedy this if somebody feels like maybe this is happening to them is make an effort to RP ABOUT other people if you're in a scene, rather than themselves. Like, ask about somebody's IC job or how they feel about that thing that happened ICly or whatever. I feel like this also helps in the being inclusive thing. I don't mind people who pose less-than-perfectly, as long as they're engaging with me and not expecting it to be All About Them 100% of the time.

100% this. I always tell people that the best way to get attention is to give attention. It won't always work, because some players are pretty self-centered and don't really play off other characters well. But a good amount of players will note when others are playing about them or expressing interest in their character and will feel goodwill that tends to get returned. And the playerbase at large notices it in logs.

@Thenomain said:

The second is that all new players are introduced to the game. I want to mention the AetherMUX quiz and casual newbie channel again. They also had reccs read by other players, so everyone had a chance to see everyone saying good things about everyone else. The game did not just expect a positive atmosphere, it created one.

I am interested in learning more about this!

[Arkandel]

@Roz Ugh, don't even get me started about trying too hard to grab attention.

Have you met the guy who gets into scenes with no shits given about what's already happening in them? Like, he marches in and shoots out a massive multi-paragraph entrance pose where he just tries to take over the entire thing?

Oh, or the sphere channel people who spend thirty minutes circle-jerking each other about how awesome that scene they had last time was and how fantastically intriguing their characters are. When they write their novel they'll definitely put that PC in there (this is no made-up example either) because that's how special he/she is.

I don't have a huge list of peeves when it comes to roleplaying but attention whoring irks me.

[surreality]

@Ghost said:

So before you chargen a character who has no interest in dramatic scenes, combat, roleplaying around sad characters, or wanting to follow military protocol might not be the right fit for the game, and that's not anyone else on the game's fault that it doesn't mix. You have got to ask yourself, during cgen, how the character will fit.

In addition to this, paying some attention to the culture of the game itself OOC counts for one hell of a lot. It can go beyond just the character choice in a lot more subtle ways that ultimately tend to have a much bigger impact on how well the player is themselves rec'd.

Being the hardcore aggressive PvP-focused player arriving on a game with a long-standing PvE culture, for instance, is not necessarily going to win you a mountain of friends at record speed if you proceed with the philosophy you came in with. Slapping porn links all over the channels of an all ages game, similarly, is probably going to rub some people the wrong way (pun not intended) in the same way showing up at Shang and freaking out any time people start talking about sex would.

[Ghost]

Trying to be constructive here, but when another player has done things that come across as disruptive to the scene (or attention whoring), have any of you asked them politely to tone it down a notch? Any first-name experiences with trying to work through that kind of behavior?

I personally can't think of any examples where I've tried to mitigate the situation diplomatically to keep the scene somewhat sacred. Now that I think about it, I've often just gone ugh and treated it like a problem without trying to fix the problem, which could be part of the problem in some cases.

I mean, what if said EXPLOSIVE ENTRANCE character is run by a player who has had some good feedback for that sort of thing and is just trying fuckall hard to get noticed?

[Arkandel]

@Ghost The last one I was in staff had to be involved since the person used NPCs in a way he shouldn't have. @Sunny may remember my annoyance at the time.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@Ghost This is so hard. See, in my experience, people with technical writing issues (spelling/grammar/or just style things like the people from forums who pose in past-tense), they will know there are areas they can improve in and they will get better - sometimes very quickly - if they RP with other people they can kind of copy. And like I said, I will RP all day with folks like this without complaint.

The guy who's problematically self-absorbed thinks they're an awesome RPer and doesn't need to improve, so what do you say to that?

[Tat]

@Roz said:

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

I think the best way someone can remedy this if somebody feels like maybe this is happening to them is make an effort to RP ABOUT other people if you're in a scene, rather than themselves. Like, ask about somebody's IC job or how they feel about that thing that happened ICly or whatever. I feel like this also helps in the being inclusive thing. I don't mind people who pose less-than-perfectly, as long as they're engaging with me and not expecting it to be All About Them 100% of the time.

100% this. I always tell people that the best way to get attention is to give attention. It won't always work, because some players are pretty self-centered and don't really play off other characters well. But a good amount of players will note when others are playing about them or expressing interest in their character and will feel goodwill that tends to get returned. And the playerbase at large notices it in logs.

@Thenomain said:

The second is that all new players are introduced to the game. I want to mention the AetherMUX quiz and casual newbie channel again. They also had reccs read by other players, so everyone had a chance to see everyone saying good things about everyone else. The game did not just expect a positive atmosphere, it created one.

I am interested in learning more about this!

I am also super interested in learning more about this. I really, really like to think about ways to create positive atmosphere. I remember when I was a new player on Second Pass, for example, I found the comps people gave to award XP really helped me feel a part of the game and showed me what was working with my character. So it's an idea I stole for the game we run now. And I love reading what other people enjoy about a scene or a character that I'm not involved in. It gives me a sense of the pulse of the game.

[Tat]

@Ghost said:

Trying to be constructive here, but when another player has done things that come across as disruptive to the scene (or attention whoring), have any of you asked them politely to tone it down a notch? Any first-name experiences with trying to work through that kind of behavior?

Yes, although /usually/ not in the scene as it is occurring. Generally people have to build up a pattern for it to be bad enough to get called out (speaking as staff). But I've had frank conversations with people about the ways in which they are not sharing the story nicely, or in which they may be (sometimes unwittingly) stepping on other people's story by, for example, trying to insta-solve a problem the other person clearly wants to be a major plot point for their character (this comes up with money a lot).

I've also said something in a scene when, for example, people have brainstormed some cool reaction on channel and then a character other than the player who came up with the idea goes and poses it. I mean, that's just not cool. Don't steal other people's cool ideas.

Reactions to this? Mixed bag. Sometimes passive aggressive butt-hurt. Sometimes dismissal. Sometimes actual productive change (less often). The total freak-outs have actually been very rare, but maybe I'm lucky. Or scary. IDK.

I've also had conversations about grammar and spelling and improving those to get better responses to RP requests. Somewhere round about the last game I feel like I sort of (along with my fellow staff) got a lot blunter and just started saying things that we didn't used to. I don't know if it's better that way, but I do think it's at least less stressful on staff, strangely. It's nice to feel like if you know someone is struggling simply because they don't bother to capitalize, you can just tell them so, and then they know. And they either address it or they don't.

[Sovereign]

I've found there are simply too many personality types in games for e eryone to get along and play together. I don't think I've ever felt welcomed by a game at large; rather, I feel welcomed by my small slice of it, and largely ignore the rest.

[AmishRakeFight]

@Ghost It honestly just I think it comes down to the player's intentions and overall theme grasp. There are some players who think dramatic explosion entrances are just a way to flag ST attention or honestly, they think they're being hilarious and don't understand how tone deaf or showboat-y it is. A gentle pow-wow about how its not actually funny or that they have the STs attention because they're in the scene in the first place, is enough.

There are some players who enter scenes like that because they honestly don't grasp the game they're actually playing in versus the one they think they're playing in and that's a theme issue:

The guy who drags a sword everywhere in a modern first world city where people get strangely freaked out about people showing up at Starbucks with their claymore?

The guy who chronically wastes ammo by firing his guns into the air for dramatic effect when ammo is really hard to come by in the game?

The magic user who is slinging fireballs around a shopping mall in the middle of the day, where magic is a veiled/shadow society sorta thing?

That's a theme issue that staff really needs to address and if the player won't amend their actions, they need to be prepared for imposed IC consequences. Sometimes, I think the only way some of these theme refusers learn is the hard way.

[thebird]

Whenever I've generally felt unwanted on a place, it tends to come back to two or three things for me :

1. I'm shy as hell, both online and off, and its really hard to get out there sometimes, especially if it's a big, intimidating place. (Looking at you, TR/Fallcoast)
2. I've had a bad day, so everything sucks
3. My schedule to be around tends to suck, so that makes planning anything tricky

As such, I try to keep that in mind when I start feeling down and mopey about a place. Is it the place, or is it me being weird/having a bad day? I tend to apply that to others as well, with the idea that yes, there are people behind the screen.

Guess my point is, it's nice to see a constructive thread like this. I think discussing these things can go a long way to helping the dwindling community as a whole.

(Also, not sure who said it about engaging others and not being self centered about rp but... there are few things more frustrating for me when someone RPs with you, gives you /nothing/ to respond to in their two lines of pose (even though you've been trying to lead them in to things for a few rounds, after they've asked for rp), yet they still seem to get All The RP while you're floundering around in Cricket-Ville. Maybe I've just pinned my Elitist badge on a little too hard, these days, but jeez... Talk about feeling unwanted.)

/ramble

[Ghost]

@Three-Eyed-Crow Some people you just can't reach. I think, like a lot of people, I try to figure out if someone is being disruptive/explosive/attentionwhoring or if it's just the player trying to write some kind of quirk into roleplay. Ive found in some cases, the person is playing strange for a good reason and I end up applauding them for it. In other cases, maybe most, it's a roleplayer trying to steal the show and isn't polite enough to ask how anyone feels about it.

I've had some horror stories come my way. I've been paged with verbal lashings for not roleplaying the response they wanted. Sometimes it's gone to staff. It's hard. Some people are just either kinda fucked up, or maybe the person is just being a troll who assumes it's a free, anonymous internet service and he/she doesn't give a damn if they cause a huge stink and get kicked off of the game.

[Thenomain]

@Roz said:

@Thenomain said:

The second is that all new players are introduced to the game. I want to mention the AetherMUX quiz and casual newbie channel again. They also had reccs read by other players, so everyone had a chance to see everyone saying good things about everyone else. The game did not just expect a positive atmosphere, it created one.

I am interested in learning more about this!

I've mentioned this a few times in a few threads, so the simple version:

At the end of chargen, you put a room with a quiz in it. The questions are like:
"Werewolves bite people to determine their supernatural species." (Answer: No.) Or: "Which Changeling Seasonal Court is about Wrath?" (Answer: Summer.)

What this does is determine if the person has been paying even the slightest bit of attention to the game they're applying to. It was easier on Aether because the racial theme files were maybe 10 pages if you printed them all out, 15 if you included the stat system, but it said, "Hey, are you ready? Do you need more help?" And if the player did need more help, they would reach out to the newbie channel, where someone would respond without handing them the answer outright. "Check out this page. The answer's there," they would say.

So we have told the newbie that 1) people on this game will help you out, 2) but they won't hand-hold, and 3) how to use the on-line resources. Really, the more I think about it the more brilliant I think it was, even if most of that brilliance was by accident.

--

The second thing was the recommendation or "recc" system. Most of us have seen "recc" systems before, but how Aether did it was like this:

You could always +recc someone for an awesome scene, but only once per month for that player. At the end of the month, a gathering of ten players (this is important) and one staffer got together and would see all the recc's for a certain character. They would then vote "meh, yes, ohmygodyes" based on the comments people made for that player that month. Based on that, the character would get 0-3 XP (including percentages) based on how their peers voted.

This meant that different people every month would see how awesome people thought other players were. There were the occasional negatives, but since staff could always see who submitted the recc (the peer voting group couldn't), they could advise the current vote group to avoid it or that it was legit.

One benefit is that we always knew what was going on from the player perspective. The better benefit was so did other players. They were always exposed to the positives.

That's not to say that there weren't hiccups and drawbacks, but this system worked exactly as intended as long as it could be maintained. It won't be for every game, or even most games, but it was glorious while it worked.

--

And I'm pretty cruel toward systems that don't do what they intend.

[lordbelh]

Quite often if you're feeling unwanted, you probably are. Or if not directly unwanted, at least not highly (or as highly as you would have liked) valued right at this moment.

This isn't the end of the world. Don't take it personal. Not everybody likes everybody else equally.

I think it is Staff's responsibility to leave plot and story accessible for everybody, but beyond that its the player who has to give enough to the game to be wanted in return. If you can't get into one group, try another. If one character fails, perhaps try another. Change it up so that you have something to contribute.

If you want people to invest in your enjoyment, you have to invest in theirs.

If you don't have the time, you have to have quality, or being friendly, or being funny, or whatever.

And even if you're perfect, sometimes RP becomes a zero-sum game, in which case a particular player can only phase you in if he or she phases someone else out, because there's only so many scenes they can fit into their schedule, and that's not about you so much as them.

[Cirno]

@Arkandel said:

Look, I don't play multiplayer FPS. The reason is that I suck at them; my twitch reflexes are just slow enough for assorted teenagers across the globe to effortlessly shoot me in the head. There's nothing wrong with the games themselves, I'm just not that good at them.

You should play with me sometime. I used to game semi-professionally, when the Cyberathlete Amateur League was still a thing; my mains were Counter-Strike and BF1942.

I used to be in a clan, then I progressed to becoming clan leader, until my parents convinced me that videogame tournaments would never actually become a thing.

Now that Major League Gaming and Twitch Championships are a thing, I feel really dumb for listening to them. Just a fad, they said. It'll never last, they said. Had I followed through and gone pro, you could have been hearing about Cirno, instead of Jonathan Fatal1ty Moron.

However, on the other hand, I'm 25 years old and I destroy the anuses of teenagers and small children in Battlefield 4, Call of Duty, and so on, from experience borne of playing Counter-Strike for five hours a day everyday when I was 13.

Unless I'm facing up against a clan of 4 or 6 people all working in team tactics with each other, I'm just leaving a ruthless trail of kids and teenagers with gaping anuses in my wake.

And don't let's talk about what happens when I'm high on stimulant-like drugs or amphetamines and I decide to play some FPSs. I turn into a robot - an Unmanned Weapons System that exists only to destroy mankind.

My kill/death ratio is usually good, with a 2:1 or 3:1, and when I really get cracking, I stand on 4 kills to 1 death, or 4:1. Occasionally I'll get through a match without dying once, but these are, as you said, kids and teenagers, not pro leet MLG dudes.

Anyway, it's not really about reflexes. It's about tactics. I can teach you my moves so that you can also destroy people's anuses.

EDIT:

I'll give you a few tips:

• Do not run around in the center of the map. Stay at long range, unless you're using an SMG in a close-quarters map. Your targets should be no more than dots in your gunsights. And if your reflexes are as bad as you imply, you have no business using an SMG. Stick to Assault Rifles, Designated Marksman Rifles, or Sniper Rifles.
• Don't squeeze your trigger in a death-grip. Squeeze off a few short bursts at a time. Ideally, you should only be releasing 1-2 bullets per squeeze.
• Do not let people see you. Staying out of sight gives you a huge tactical advantage.
• Stay behind cover. Move from cover to cover, always keeping a solid wall or object between you and the enemy.
• Crouch or go prone as often as possible.
• Hold your position. Don't go towards people - let them come to you. Shoot them as they approach.
• Grenades are useful for scaring or damaging the enemy, especially if they are behind cover.
• Get high. Height is an advantage.
• If you absolutely must run around, run behind another guy. Protect that guy - but it's not important that you do so. Basically, you want the enemy to shoot him instead of you, but in an ideal situation, you can protect them from being killed.
• Check your corners. Look left, look right.

EDIT2:

You know how people always say, "Videogames don't make you a better shot in reality!"

Well, when I turned 21 and started buying real-life firearms, I found that I was quite proficient at shooting them in the range. I was also familiar with the basic methods of gun handling.

I'm not trying to imply that I am Citizen-Soldier Extraordinaire, Solid Snake, or anything. Just some food for thought.

[Arkandel]

@lordbelh said:

I think it is Staff's responsibility to leave plot and story accessible for everybody, but beyond that its the player who has to give enough to the game to be wanted in return. If you can't get into one group, try another. If one character fails, perhaps try another. Change it up so that you have something to contribute.

Agreed. And you know, even in games which ultimately failed I can't help but think players were expecting staff to hand-feed them entertainment a bit too much, and gave up too fast.

A game launch is a very peculiar time - player interest is at its peak since everyone wants to see if this place is fun so they look for plot... but it's also the exact time period in which staff are often able to pander to them the least because there's suddenly a huge influx of +jobs, characters in CGen, questions needing answering they never considered before, stuff which needs deciding, etc. So it's disappointing to see people walk away because they couldn't find things to do right away, especially if they didn't try to generate something for themselves or even answered calls for RP over public channels.

One of my most memorable frustrating experiences was on SHH where a player was saying she was bored on a channel, so I mentioned she could come to the +event I was running in an hour. At first she didn't want to - it wasn't official, was it? Did I have permission from staff? Ooookay, well, I explain I did happen to have permission (I had discussed it with Ruin beforehand) but it wasn't needed as it was an exploration fact-finding scene. She ended up coming over - and left within the first twenty minutes because there were five people there herself included. Too busy.

Now, I get it. It's nice to have nice things given to you. It's nicer to have the exact kinds of things you want custom made and given to you. But we as players need to manage what we want versus what we offer back in return, too. Even the best of us aren't god's gifts to the rest of the community so we can maybe adjust our expectations about everyone else's need to entertain us a bit.

If you want people to invest in your enjoyment, you have to invest in theirs.

Absolutely.

[Roz]

@Arkandel I swear to God, any time someone announces how bored they are on channel, I lose a layer of enamel on my teeth from grinding them.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@Arkandel said:

Agreed. And you know, even in games which ultimately failed I can't help but think players were expecting staff to hand-feed them entertainment a bit too much, and gave up too fast.

One of the (many) reasons I think I'll never staff again is how intolerant I've become of players needing to be hand-fed entertainment. Passivity irritates me to almost irrational levels these days (this is not a good thing to be irritated about if you MUSH). I realize players often have their reasons for it - both bad experiences elsewhere and just personality - but zomg blargh.

[Miss Demeanor]

Devil's Advocate for a moment... I've left scenes of 5 people (myself included), not because its too busy but because it was taking too damn long for other people to pose. Everyone multitasks these days, I get it. But if I have 2 hours to do something and time between my poses is 20-30 minutes? That's not a very rewarding way to spend my time. In 5-6 poses, you're generally just getting past the initial 'startup' bs for a scene. I don't always HAVE 4+ hours to devote to a large scene these days, and I don't think I'm the only one. So I tend to not be able to get involved in plot since I often have to leave just as things are getting started. Mind, its not anyone else's fault that I don't have the extra time to devote... but conversely, its not MY fault that other people are so caught up in the other thing they're doing that its taking them 5-10 minutes just to get a pose out.

[Roz]

@Miss-Demeanor Sure, I've certainly bailed on group scenes because I found I just didn't have the brain to keep up that particular day. But it didn't generally follow me whining on channel about being bored in order to rattle out an invite from someone.