Best posts made by Apos

Yeah dinosaurs are always a significant issue, though I'm not sure it'll be as big a danger long term as it might seem, since I am intending to add in a lot of small cost sinks, and I don't think it'll be overwhelming by the time other sinks come into play. I could be wrong, but offhand rough math with the anti-dinosaur cost scaling means it would take 56,250 xp to raise each available skill to 5, which at 30 xp a week would take 1875 weeks or 36 years of play. And then the character would die of old age and the xp would be gone.

Funny numbers aside, I always will be concerned about dinosaurs and making newer characters feel overshadowed but I think it might not be as big a danger as it seems at first glance. I still intend to address it to make certain it doesn't scale in a way that's too disruptive, and I don't think it's gonna be nuts before those systems come in.

What's jarring and incredibly immersion breaking to one person will be easily handwaved and tossed aside by someone else. It's a moving target and I don't think there's anything you can do but pick a point, make it a communal standard, and anyone above or below that point is nudged towards it. Obviously the closer to a standpoint of needing expertise, the more niche it will be, but the further it moves from it the harder it will be for it to be satisfying for anyone that's an expert in the field.

@thenomain said in RL Anger:

This one is truly an RL concern of mine, though anyone active on the forum today can guess where it stems from. Well it's more than that.

It's okay if someone hates something that you like.

It's okay. They are just one person. You are allowed to like things that other people don't. They are allowed to not like things that you like.

Yeah, but it's the same thing to me as telling someone, 'it's okay to be rude'. Like, for example, we know it's rude to go up to someone and say, 'I don't like your friends and family' or 'I don't like your religion' or 'I don't like anything that you value deeply and define yourself by'. There's common courtesy that dictates that if you tell someone that you dislike something that's deeply meaningful to them, you do so in a way that's conscious of that, or you are willing to deal with them being pissed off about it.

Like, there's a balance of burdens in people not being offended by someone's opinion, and other people wanting to be abrogated of all responsibility in showing a shred of thought in courtesy about whether what they are saying is hurtful to someone else. And a lot of people are tired of allowing people to be rude through thoughtlessness, and while that's certainly better than being rude through intentional, willful cruelty, it's still not great.

@mr-johnson Hey as long as it's something you're excited to do, can create stories for, and give people a platform to do the same and treat them fairly, you'll do great.

@templari But it's just not a political view. I'm a moderate and it would even be a stretch to say I'm center left on a lot of issues. It makes me uncomfortable when people make trump jokes outside of the political forum. But whatever man, if you say being polite or showing like basic courtesy to people falls on the hard left then I dunno what to tell you.

Tumblr, roleplaying forums, slack, discord, MMO roleplaying communities, facebook groups, etc, etc. There's a ton of roleplayers out there, and most of those formats dwarf MUs as a hobby in size. All the formats have their strengths but none really duplicate the same large scale interconnected stories thing that MUs do well. I think Evennia and Ares will really help in making it accessible, though there's some other issues even aside from telnet and that most people have never heard of MUs.

I'm not wanting to start a fight, and as sad as it is, I think this is a hopeful good thing. But if you look back 2 years ago, on page 96 through around 112 or so, in this very same thread, we had a big argument about believing survivors due to someone posting a thing about someone being harassed pervasively in gaming. I think its noticeable even here that people are more willing to believe survivors now, and I take some comfort in that.

@faraday said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

@lithium said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

The how is important because it helps make the world feel /real/, at least for some

I get that as a preference thing. What I'm saying is it doesn't resonate with me. I don't know if it's because I'm a coder and I automatically see behind the curtain on everything, or if it's just how my brain is wired or what, but I feel no immersion while MUSHing. So it's like trying to explain color to somebody who's color blind. I just don't get it. Like the folks who like an IC message system. I understand those people exist, but I don't grok that either. Just use pages or mail. I don't get how it makes a difference.

But yes, to OP's point - it absolutely unequivocally does make a difference to some segment of the MU population.

I've been thinking about this particular point all day, and it's one of those things that's so hard to define that I think it merits it's own thread where I can talk about maybe some aspects that might make it more accessible to people that don't feel that way. And just from the context of even people that don't care about it at all can maybe see the minor easy ways to implement around it rather than worrying about the massive manpower intensive design choices (like creating huge grids).

Their forums were significantly more hostile than MSB's, imo. It pretty much was a half dozen game owners that loathed each other posting regularly.

@faraday said in A new platform?:

As you say, though, the immediacy is forced by the tool itself. There's nothing technical stopping it from working more like discord/slack/etc., where folks could be @-tagged and see responses later. We just need to make it work that way. Sometimes culture drives a tool but in this case the tool is driving the culture.

Yeah there's a tremendous amount of MU habits that are the tools driving the culture. Like we can give a ton of examples of MU habits that are based on tools:

1. People having no idea who is typing, or who is posing, or who is really idle or not. Most modern messengers have indicators for who is typing.
2. Screen scroll defaults mean spam is disproportionately annoying, with tons of cultural habits around spam because of how things will scroll that can't be ignored.
3. Mavs happening because of lack of clarity in conversational channels.
4. Constant small little fights because of ambiguity in who was informed of something or not, with no easy way of checking.

etc.

@Pandora said in Favorite Youtubers?:

@Kanye-Qwest said in Favorite Youtubers?:

@Pandora There are 3 secret societies but if you don't go Illuminati you are doing it wrong.

Quoted for damn truth. I've literally only done the intros for the other societies to see their bases.

I literally am just playing through the game off and on now to see all the KG comments on every mission completion.

@thatguythere said in What does Immersion mean to you in MUs?:

So I guess to try and put it in a simple phrase an adaptive world that also forces my PC to adapt to it. that is what makes a game world feel real to me. Now code can certainly help it or make it more difficult but in the end it is the interaction between world and character that does it for me.

That was going to be the second thing I think of immediately when people talk about immersion, but I think it might be a little bit wider than that. I think it is both seeing the world reflect the consequences of actions, an adaptive world like you said, and also interconnected permanence.

What I think drives home immersion is some kind of mechanics or ways for actions of any characters to have influence or effect on the game at a whole, or vice versa, and then also players feeling confident that whatever happens sticks, and isn't limited to the ability of players to self-police and keep track of what happened.

What I think destroys immersion for many players is having something that would cause some major response or shift in the world, and then it just failing to do so. Or anything that would cause permanent change in characters or storylines, and just not sticking because it isn't written down anywhere, or shown in any mechanics, and is just gradually forgotten.

By contrast, what reinforces immersion can often be unexpected reinforcement, by getting news of what happened in something players had no personal involvement in, or seeing storylines overlap accordingly, or having the world respond in unexpected ways.

It's hard to think of a game system I actually get excited over that isn't implicitly tied to a setting that I'd find interesting. oWoD Demon single sphere, Ars Magica, Earthdawn as examples that come to mind. I can't say any system by itself would excite me, though some I just wouldn't enjoy and might make me avoid a setting I'd be interested in.

@Ganymede said in UX: It's time for The Talk:

I'm a bit confused about your point, because my entire argument is "make shit simpler" and "things could be simpler". What is there to disagree with? I'm not saying don't add new features, don't innovate or try new things. I'm saying that if you're gonna do it, don't make it a complete mess that needs 5 help files to explain how to use something.

You're presuming that people want it simpler. This is not always the case. People may want to simplify how things are done, but this doesn't necessarily mean keeping "things simple." As an example, people on Arx seem to want to add complexity to it.

I think it might be fairest to say people want tools to effect meaningful change on the game world, and are willing to tolerate the added complexity to get the coded tools to do that.

@zombiegenesis said in Dead Celebrities 2020:

Tiny Lister

I'm really sad about this one. Great character actor.

Mmm, I think that having something as a coded accessible construct means that people knows there are inherent rules with how people will treat it. Like if an NPC has a bit or does not, and is referenced only inside a pose, yes, by terms of the world they are equally as real, but players will react differently because the unspoken or spoken rules of how you interact with them are different, and so are the consequences.

So basically, the only way to have the same feel, would be to impose the same kind of consequences to PCs from things that don't have coded constructs, and people won't do that. Like I can't think of any well run, popular game that's going to arbitrarily kill a PC off because they mouthed off to a nameless npc given as background contextual flavor, and in order for PCs to treat codeless constructs the same way, that would be necessary.

I'm by no means great at it. Anytime someone is able to identify me by writing style, I feel like I've backslid and didn't try hard enough to make a character have a unique voice. That said, I usually try to think of mannerisms unique to the character, and try to build a unique voice there. I tend to try to incorporate that not just in the language the character uses, but the overall poses and emits, in thinking of phrases and wording that fits the flavor of the character, for a style that really fits them.

A thug might get a very curt, simple, low brow style of writing. A pretentious and arrogant academic might get a grandiloquent one. These can definitely be overdone and I try to not be overwrought but I think it does help to try to come up with a number of different styles that fit overall archetypes.

Immersive tools are greatly underestimated. Every one I've seen added has created a lot more activity than I expected for something fairly small and trivial.

@deadculture said in RL Anger:

I think you defeat that sort of lapse in rationale with good arguments, not mockery.

Mockery only serves to infuriate and dig one's personal view further into a trench.

I actually disagree. If someone has a fundamental lapse in understanding then it is frankly easier to jar them out of a comfort zone with shock, particularly if they think they are being reasonable and adult and are speaking from a position of false authority that is patronizing and they are doing real harm without realizing it.

@seraphim73 Yeah the lack of permanence means it's difficult to refer to things that other characters should contextually know, which impacts RP.