Best posts made by Apos

I kind of think the term 'first offense' is a misnomer, as far as these games go. Unless a staffer is totally unfamiliar with someone, pretty much everyone has at least some kind of pattern of behavior that can be established really easily. Like, I might not have RP'd with Bob, but if Bob talks in public about how a lot of women irl make false claims, refers how he posts on the redpill, says he gets into fights irl all the time because people can't handle how alpha he is, is consistently confrontational... I mean, if someone that has never caused a problem before said, 'Bob made me uncomfortable', I don't think asking for a log is really all that necessary, Bob is gone.

I mean, maybe that's unfair and all, but if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and makes constant microaggressions that perpetuate a culture were harassment can flourish like a duck, then just get rid of the damned duck.

@Derp Let me share something with you that will make you a better person and also probably depress you. Virtually every woman you know has been harassed and to a far greater extent than you realize, or you would not be posting the way you are. The things they are talking about are not the exception to the rule, they aren't wild stories, they are common and they are pervasive. Asking for evidence is well and good, but these claims are no more unlikely than someone saying they drove in rush hour and ran into delays due to traffic. This is particularly awful to do when no such evidence can exist except for actual testimony.

The reason why someone says, 'you are part of the problem', is because talking about terrible shit that happens to you, then running into disbelief about it, isn't exactly fun.

Now one important thing for staff. You'll hear through the grapevine about people quitting for wildly hypocritical reasons, absurd reasons, reasons based off of things factually untrue. I never think it's worth it to argue your point of view to anyone that's left for any reason. Never chase people. You can think about their concerns, work to address ones you thought were valid underneath the vitriol or hyperbole, and dismiss the ones that are unreasonable.

I never chase people, though I do try hard to look at it from their perspective, and more often than not it can still be thrown out.

@Ghost said in RL Anger:

@shangexile said in RL Anger:

@shangexile If someone can tell me how to delete my account, I will. Can't seem to find the functionality.

• Change your password to random key-presses that you aren't paying attention to (ie. I3i38fbfjqoqoo3jebfhcui)
• then logout
• then delete the bookmark
• then lose the fucks you give.

Yeah, @Ghost gives solid advice, but just in case that's too tough, we can streamline the steps needed to take in order to pull it off. It can be tricky, so be sure to follow close on how to quit a forum, and don't be afraid to write it down and try it a few times until you get the hang out of it. Okay, so here's the step by step for how to quit.

Step 1: You stop posting.
Step 2. You do something else.

Now, you might find when you forget about step 1, then people call you creepy for being creepy, but it's okay. Just carry on to step 2, and sooner or later, you'll find you don't do step 1 anymore and then everyone that shudders in revulsion at you will stop, and everyone will be happier. We believe in you, you can do it.

@arkandel said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

@apos said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

Other PCs think that the reason it's not a slap on the wrist is due to homophobia, and want the Sheriff to sweep it under the rug. What should he do?

Opinions on what the Sheriff should do may vary, and for good reason.

What I want to see is the Sheriff's player not being forced into an IC action due to OOC reasons, such as reactions by other players. Especially if staff doesn't give him a direction and leaves the player to face the backlash.

There's not a lot of good options for that staff side, even. For example, a leader does something bold/risky. At what point is dogpiling on it inappropriate? If you have 60 characters that all have Strong Feelings about it, that player is going to be well and truly miserable by scene #7 of someone bringing up how they Strongly They Disagree, let alone scene #60. Or do you just tell people they aren't allowed to RP about something? Do you then oocly punish players that persist, even if they just don't got the memo, or make some passing reference to a storyline that has an IC authority figure about to quit the game?

Let me be blunt, @Collective - it is VASTLY more common to use edgy themes as an excuse to beat up IC authority figures than it is to bully PCs of that type. Like it's not even close. And I'm telling you that the whole, 'someone called a character a slur' isn't even on the radar of most players and staff because a single edgy player is not even remotely an issue. What IS an issue is someone trying to create a story that can be argued either way, and then players getting feelings about it.

Here, let's give another example. Old West storyline. A black PC goes for a job as a deputy, do you punish the sheriff for saying no?

@collective For clarity, I meant people wanting to RP racist/sexist/whateverist characters in the edgy quip, in the whole, 'I'm playing an asshole' mindset that enjoy disruptive RP. I don't include anyone who would rather not deal with those themes at all in that. I don't even include people that -do- wanna deal in those themes as that, unless they go out of their way to involve players that have zero desire to touch on it.

And, in agreeing with you, this is a huge problem in that people just wanting to play a gunslinger in a wild west game don't really want to deal with the problematic themes they find zero fun to RP. A lot just want to play a gunslinger shooting bad guys, not deal with racism, sexism, homophobia or whatever, but other people do want to play those themes almost always from the sense of overcoming them and I think the only fair answer to that is more games- purist historical vs ones that don't touch those themes at all. I'm usually in the later camp, but the problem is more people really liking one part of a game and hating another part, and wanting to change the part they hate even if it would make a lot of other players miserable that do like that part. It'd be a whole lot less of an issue if there were clearly different games that appealed to different tastes.

@Ganymede Hey man I feel you, I was horrified when I played WoD briefly and saw channel chats. But I don't really think that's a matter of players so much as constant, relentless vigilance and every staffer being on board with being the bad guy and being called hitler for telling people they can't passive aggressively whine someone didn't RP with them or make fun of someone else's RP decisions or imply someone is wrongbad or any of a million things. Really only takes one staffer to be like, 'Aw Bob was just kidding when he said that Sarah's character was better off dead and her RP was stupid' to undermine it. And I think you know better than most that pretty much everyone wants maximum leniency for themselves and their friends and maximum punishments for people they personally dislike. I see it as a given that someone will think it was too harsh for us to call someone out for something problematic, while others will think we gave them a pass by not immediately banning them.

Characters that speak only in rhyme, meter, with a specific literary device, or only using grandiloquent phrasing. It's easy to fall in that from like having a few hour scene where every pose is only in alliteration or whatever, and then it's like, 'hey I bet I could make a character that only does...' no, don't.

@kitteh said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

I think this is the real issue more, and it reflects your overall story structures. What use are negotiators when our enemies are demon generals or demon pirate kings or demon-elves or... you get the picture. Oh, also all the foreign nations are run by evil sorcerer kings/dragons.

I think there's a misconception there that state of play will be permanent and that there will always be an other that's isolated and monolithic, distant, and immune to influence. That belief is contrary to my original planned story arc for the game and so far I don't see anything taking it off that path currently, so diplomacy will likely becoming increasingly relevant as time goes on, and it's not a coincidence that I'm working on it now rather than later.

@faraday said in Social Systems:

3. It's personal. Nobody thinks poorly of an action hero who takes a round to the shoulder and soldiers on. But the sap who gets conned? He's a sap. Players empathize too much with their characters. It's bad enough to lose, but to lose in a way that makes your character look like an incompetent idiot? That pushes peoples' buttons.

In my experience, way more players are comfortable having their characters die in a glorious /impressive way than they ever are with even the smallest embarrassment, tolerating a slight, or looking foolish. I'd say the majority of ragequit, 'Write me out and kill my characters' come from embarrassments, from my recollection.

So with caveats about everyone having different tastes and interests, and there being a huge range in good implementations and bad implementations, I think there's a few general categories that can have systems or minigames rub people the wrong way:

1. If the minigames feel required, or pressure is put on someone to participate in something they have no interest in. Doubly so if they are grind-y. And particularly for game runners pressured to implement things they don't want and don't interest them.
2. If they replace RP or get in the way of RP. Like if someone would have a fun scene about A Thing, but instead a coderun is done that makes it unnecessary. Or even if it occupies players in a way that makes them inaccessible for RP.
3. If they create a competitive environment that is unhealthy and quickly turns toxic due to resentment and ooc frustration. This one is particularly meaningful to me, even with my very limited implementations the majority of people that got super oocly antagonistic or problematic for me on Arx came from RPI backgrounds where there was pretty much no IC/OOC separation for them in competition over alternate coded systems, like resources.
4. If they break immersion by acting in absurd ways. IE, someone oocly forgets to wear clothing objects, so their dignified and intelligent character is now randomly streaking. Someone forgets to do a code run for eating, so their experienced survivalist character starves to death. Or games randomly giving flavor emits that make no sense to the character, like a Bioware conversation wheel option that isn't anything like what someone expected it to be.

That's what I see as the broad categories of drawbacks, and what I'd have to keep in mind whenever making something or adding it to the game. For me, I personally distinguish between a mini game and a full system just by degree, and whether I see something as a core component for game play that will almost certainly be part of someone's experience, or whether a player could have a solid roleplay experience without ever really playing with the system.

My list of pros, for why I'd add a mini game (or a full system), if I didn't think it would brush up against any of those pitfalls would have at least one of:

1. Adds immersion or flavor to the RP experience, helps inspire or foster RP, gives characters reasons to act together, or throws out plot hooks or minor touches of the game world that give people something to play off of. Can create a lot of organic RP by random, unexpected events.
2. Anything that's fun and engrossing that lets players feel like their characters are building towards something, producing something, that gives them a feel of progression or dynamic change in the world.
3. Automates things that would require a great deal of staff work to track, and adds richness to the world, where if it didn't exist there would be a lot of handwavium and stories about it would die or be so vague they lose meaning. Helps players feel like their characters actions have more consequence and it's not immediately lost at the end of a scene or a story.
4. Fun activities that creates a feeling of community between players by giving their characters reasons to play off of one another.

I think where they go wrong mostly is people getting excited about something in the latter pros and missing (or being biased and intentionally ignoring) something in the former cons, particularly when it's a matter of taste.

@packrat said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

One of the annoying peeves I always had with the code on Arx was that +task/work was not automatic if you end the week with unused task supports, you could actually miss out on not insignificant income/resources through forgetting or not realizing you could spam a command a couple of times on a Sunday.

Yeah, I get that it's annoying.

The issue is I really do not want any kind of passive income tied to characters, because it really creates dinosaur issues with inflation a lot more than people would expect. But what I dislike about task work is it really doesn't engage someone at all, there's no feeling of satisfaction at remembering to do it or anything like that.

So in the rework, task/work is still as simple of a code run, but it has an AP cost, and it has a skill check based on the type of work someone is doing, and is modified further by social skills and prestige and so on, and it might feel more meaningful. I think generally speaking, I want to replace anything that feels rote with something that has choices, however simple, since I think that is more likely to feel satisfying or meaningful.

@kay said in What Is Missing For You?:

At this point I would give a kidney for a completely original superhero game. No DC no Marvel but really original with all OC characters.

Yeah, if I make another game, it'll probably be that. Original universe superhero.

I tend to think in terms of what story I can drive with what characters, how I can be entertaining, who needs what. I'm most comfortable on male characters I can be funny with, whether it's making fun of themselves or a character that quips or whatever, because it's no fun to play characters incapable of changing the mood of a scene that's obvious no one else is enjoying. It sucks to be on a character where it would break character to be anything but a passive witness to a scene that everyone else finds a drag, and you know you could change easy.

And I guess I kind of judge people, in the sense of seeing problems coming from miles away about what headaches a concept will generate and thinking the person either doesn't care to fix it or won't. I try to give the benefit of a doubt till I see it but it's so very rarely wrong, and such a shock when someone is super chill about the incredibly obvious consequences that come from the storylines a particular character generates. Like the honest truth is the vast majority of people that say, 'I am totally fine with all the consequences of my character acting like X! Hit me! No boundaries!' are totally full of it. I've seen that statement like dozens of times and I honestly can't think of a time that didn't blow up.

I've had so, so, so many conversations start with, "Hey, I'm cool with there being consequences to my character's IC actions but" and almost none with, 'Oh yeah I'm fine with whatever.'

@carex said in Let's talk about TS.:

@roz said in Let's talk about TS.:

This whole scenario will just end up in game-wide civil wars and terrible toxicity the first time there's any sort of disagreement among the playerbase.

I'm sure they said something similar about having democracies instead of kings. Giving up control is always a horrible, unthinkable idea to people who have power.

Ya but pretty much every single person that replied are players rather than staffers, so they are the powerless in your analogy, and think your idea is awful.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeah. Anyways, as was just thankfully illustrated, there's wildly different expectations for what is fine, and that's a problem. Like, some people are just going to see sexualization as inherently part of theme and don't think it's a big deal. Some aren't comfortable with it, but their friends might be like, 'Naw man it's a political game, don't worry about it', and then find that the political meetings are happening in the middle of a bondage club that has an orgy going on. And that might cause just a little bit of friction.

Creeps generally are all about taking advantage of ambiguity, and if there's okay'd sexualization of scenes in public RP then it's better to have more clarity that can't be taken advantage of by the super creepy.

@three-eyed-crow said in @Arx: Anonymous Messengers (Answered):

@crysta said in @Arx: Anonymous Messengers (Answered):

Yeah I think Arx Twitter does enough shaming for silly things.

Condemn doesn't work for the same reason no one likes downvoting on forum threads.

It definitely doesn't work and I don't want it back.

What I dislike currently, though, is that serious thematic issues don't receive a blink a lot of the time (murder a dude with an heirloom weapon? Go about your life, nobody really cares) while people freak the fuck out over ultra-minor shit. It makes a lot of thematic things in an honor-bound society feel like they don't have any actual weight, while being paranoid about saying something 'wrong' in journals.

IDK, I honestly wouldn't mind seeing more stuff that impacted IC reputation but I'd like there to be an OOC gate on it, which is probably too much work for staff, so whatevs I guess.

Funny you should mention that.

So a long time ago I decided on a replacement, and how I thought I could implement a system that reduces toxicity while underscoring thematic disapproval of things, and I'll talk about the ones geared towards player control (with staff oversight), that I think will probably do it.

I'll ultimately implement Issues of the Day and Vox Populi that's far more player influenced, but how it works will be important. PCs will show their approval or disapproval based on a specific organization, like say that a Thrax Prince challenges a commoner to a duel, wants to fight as his own champion, over the commoner criticizing the Thrax Prince for being a crafter and selling his own wares in a shop. So the prince is breaking three different thematic taboos.

A vox update on the prince starts, and people link it to specific org principles (respect), in whether the person is taking actions that are contrary or supporting those principles, and that would (if successful) cause a gain or loss in respect to that org. Similarly, if they are causing harm or helping an org, that could cause a gain or loss in org affection. As I'm defining org reputation as actions that reflect on a core principle for an organization is the 'respect' score, while actions that help/harm the org members on a personal level is the 'affection' score.

These would run for an extremely long time (a month, probably), and it would not need to be about a single issue at all. So if during the time he admits to illegitimate children, fights in the street, scoffs publicly at the crown, steals a goat, that can just be added to the running count with different orgs who very deeply and passionately care about the growing scourge of goat theft.

So I'd manually define different principles of every single org in the game (Blackram will have to get goat theft as one of their principles now, I hope everyone realizes), and people would select from the list when they register approval or disapproval, and I'd just look over every vox at the end and delete any that aren't applicable before I do rolls.

ETA: By design, many core principles of orgs would be contradictory and create a web where gain in one would usually automatically cause a loss in another.

@sunny said in MU Things I Love:

@admiral

While I do agree that more folks can behave maturely and in a relaxed fashion than can't, I don't agree that it's always due to favoritism issues. I think that it's just that most people are not the awful beasts we make them out to be a lot of the time, and if you have high expectations, people tend to meet them.

Yeah it's a trust thing really, if an environment starts to feel like as long as they are chill they'll be treated fairly, people respond to that. Certainly the opposite is true, and it takes a long time for people to overcome their bad experiences and give a place a chance, but a lot do.

@faraday said in Learning how to apply appropriate boundaries:

@mietze said in Learning how to apply appropriate boundaries:

I agree , when expressing discomfort or dissatisfaction is used to try to "win" and get your way.  But I think you can have situations where that isnt the case (which is what I assumed Faraday meant) and so if you want to negotiate and are up for that ooc, starting off with "change or leave" may not be the best approach.  Because that can and does trigger people who would have perhaps worked with you to find something more agreeable or mutually agreed upon to just say "ok then, bye."

Its like starting off a disagreement or annoyance with your spouse or partner by throwing in a "we can just divorce or break up then!"

Yeah that's what I was trying to get at. Maybe my example wasn't the best.

Yeah like I get that this is more the root of why a lot of people are reluctant to say something. A lot of times, they like the RP except for X happening, and aren't sure if they can politely ask about X without offending the other person and losing the entire RP dynamic. I get that, and I don't think there's great answers. But I would encourage everyone to go on the assumption the other person is reasonable. If they aren't reasonable, and they don't respond to a very gentle, very polite, very respectful nudge, then it's probably a time bomb and as much as it sucks to lose that, it's still probably better off.

@faraday said in What drew you to MU*?:

@tinuviel I think that's pretty much game design 101. If a significant percentage of people are interested in X, staff is probably going to do more X. If hardly anyone is interested in Y, staff can either try to figure out why and adjust it (if it's something they think has value) or ditch it. That's not something unique to Arx or Blizzard.

Yeah I mean, there's a ton of stuff in Arx that I have no personal interest in, but I know people do, so I make sure it's supported. Every staffer and game runner is just going to have their own metrics on whether something is worth it, and how much they are willing to deal with to support stuff they don't personally care about. It's just pretty basic stuff, though I think we see a lot of clashes over people upset that a game runner isn't making a niche interest or pet project part of their core design when it's obvious the runner doesn't like that stuff.

@thenomain said in criticism not allowed in ad threads is only enforcing a false positive, prove me wrong:

No game creators should get a free pass from criticism. No criticism should get a free pass from criticism. The problem with Soapbox is when it becomes unconstructive, and what we consider unconstructive will always waver.

I had a shitty experience on a game. 90% of that was my fault, but the 10% that wasn't was confirmed by others. Should I not say anything, knowing that there's bad actors lurking on a game? (In before people tell me that I should be better at saying so. Thanks, I know that.)

I think the 10% is extremely generous to yourself, and while it's gracious for people to always say, 'everyone involved could have handled it better', I honestly do not think that is likely the case there. When I heard about a problematic guest on SL and why, like 4 people simultaneously correctly guessed it was you. Yes, you are saying it's mostly your fault, but this is almost uniquely you. This isn't a 'both sides erred' thing, this is you were problematic, and you were asked to go, and they were right to do so because you would have continued to be problematic. The last part is important, because saying you own this is great but if you repeat the behavior over and over what does it change? They have no way of thinking you aren't going to be difficult in the future, and they would be right to part ways with you. I know that's hard to hear but I think it's a lot healthier to reflect on that than start giving yourself a little bit of wiggle room with, "well they could have been nicer."

Sure. They shouldn't be though. They were right to be strict. Being gentle gains them nothing but stress for no advantage whatsoever.