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    Posts made by Apos

    • RE: Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

      @Kanye-Qwest is a better story teller than me, and frankly better with people. That might be hard for you to swallow, but it's the truth. I get lost in minutiae, and she has a far better macro perspective- and she can recognize that talking some assholes down from ledges is a mistake, if they are toxic to the game environment and just not a net contribution to the game.

      I feel like your compliments of me are disingenuous, and are only said in a backhanded insult towards her. Arx would not survive without her, and I kindly ask you to stop. And if your only interest in the game is to try pick at someone you have a personal beef with because she's embarrassed you here, then please do not play.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
      Apos
      Apos
    • RE: Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

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

      Am I going to stop pointing things like this out just because one staffer can't handle negative feedback from someone she doesn't like? No. Sorry. Arx is a fine game designed by a fine and level-headed man. It needs some serious work on its educational files (is there anything explaining the "reflection" or whatver the nickname for the land beyond death is yet?), but he knows this. He's failed to insult me, has talked me off the roof, and so I trust his judgement.

      I clearly don't mind you making this about me, @Kanye-Qwest, but you really should stop. The game doesn't need this much defending, and certainly not from me.

      It's not my game though. It's our game, and I include players in that 'our' too. Anyone that is contributing and collaborating on the story and investing their time is part of that, and by any metric @Kanye-Qwest are enormous and are a reason the game is as popular as it is. She spends all her time creating RP for other people, and constantly thinking of ways to help people with their stories, going out of her way constantly for people she doesn't know, and sure you guys flame each other on message boards but that doesn't make that any less true.

      And I think her point is valid since she's protective of people being wrong-funned out of doing something, and it's so damned easy to do it in this hobby since everyone just runs on enthusiasm. Like for example, saying, 'I am not a fan of that color scheme. It's hard to read and don't care for it'. That's unobjectionable and even helpful. Saying, 'That is horrifying, never do ansi again. It is bad and you should feel bad' is mighty objectionable. Replace 'ansi' with writing or roleplay and you suddenly have people who hate each others guts and are chased out of the hobby and it's just so unnecessary.

      I'm fine with people being extremely blunt in criticisms of me, but I would definitely ask people in game not to do it to others, and have. Like I see it all the time, and fortunately not much on Arx, but oh lord does it happen. Someone runs PRPs, they get bitched at, they stop. Head staff start out with the best of intentions, they run inclusive events open to everyone, they get bitched at, they retreat to private RP with just their friends and shut out new players. Head staff quit because of negativity. And so on. I'm not going to change how i do things because of people bitching at me but of course I'm sensitive to it since I see how incredibly destructive it is when people have to be practically begged to put themselves out there, and retreat the moment they get chided.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
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    • RE: Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

      I'm pretty okay with someone deciding where a roster character falls on the Kinsey scale as long as it doesn't invalidate past RP and makes sense in the overall context of the character's story. Not that big a deal to me.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
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    • RE: Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.

      @Pyrephox said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

      @Apos said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

      tbh if someone logs into Hello Kitty, Island Adventure and says that the lack of rape and sexual assault themes just ruins their immersion, maybe the problem isn't the game.

      Sure. And if the game is WWII, and the game says, "By the way, there's no antisemitism in this setting," and that breaks people's immersion, maybe the problem isn't the players.

      If that's in their intended scope, sure. But It doesn't have to be the absurd example I used. If someone wants to have a game intending to run for a few months just about the Battle of the Bulge and nothing but the battle of the bulge, and a player wants to tell a story about auschwitz, then the problem still isn't the setting. It can just be a matter of not wanting to tell those stories at all, and whether they say, 'this is an alternate world history where there was no holocaust' or just refuse to address it doesn't really matter if that's not in the scope of their focus.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
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    • RE: Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.

      tbh if someone logs into Hello Kitty, Island Adventure and says that the lack of rape and sexual assault themes just ruins their immersion, maybe the problem isn't the game.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
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    • RE: I'm out

      I have you on skype and literally have no recollection for why or when we ever talked.

      posted in Tastes Less Game'y
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    • RE: Newbie-friendly L&L MU*?

      @Calibraxa Hm, we might fit what you're looking for in Arx, possibly. Have 104 players on right now as I post this, so might avoid some of the pitfalls with a smaller playerbase in terms of creating RP, but it's still a work in progress and I certainly wouldn't say we're perfect.

      posted in MU Questions & Requests
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    • RE: Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

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

      @Kanye-Qwest Nah. She types better than Apostate.

      i dno't know waht you're tlaking abuot.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
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    • RE: Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

      @Thenomain While that's kind to me, the game would be nothing without the rest of staff I have absolute and total faith in. Hellfrog in particular has an incredible talent for cultivating the kind of atmosphere that the game is being praised for- that is far, far more her work than mine. While you've had your problems with her, anyone that has spent time with her sees her immense talent in this way, and why the game has such a healthy and vibrant community, and moreover why I have complete faith in her maintaining that.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
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    • RE: Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

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

      @Glitch True, but the system could do much more. I honestly think it can do what Tasks does, only better. Right now, it feels a bit more of a 'I am investigating this', roll, get result, wait another week to investigate again. Letting the dice mechanics provide little RP hooks would be fantastic. It could be extended to requiring certain missions (GM-ed plots) or even use the task system, only instead of giving resources it gives a new clue.

      Agreed, 100%. And this is very much intended. Keep in mind, we definitely don't see them as finished systems. A goal of beta is, 'Put in a basic, workable model. See how it goes while adding in next basic, workable model for core missing systems' and then continually refine before we go live. So I see investigation right now as that, its most basic form, and a lot more layers of complexity and RP incentives should come as time goes on, though it probably won't be revisited until at least after Dominion and Dynamic Exploration. Just no harm in discussing ideal, 'This is what I'd like to see' until then.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
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    • RE: Shadows Over Reno

      @Arkandel Only if they have no idea that was the plan.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
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    • RE: Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

      @Ominous That's a pretty good one, and I like that, though I'd have to think about how to implement it in ways that don't give a significant advantage in conflicts- some of these are designed to be very, very dangerous to look into and so on. Will need very careful tweaking.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
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    • RE: Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

      @Ominous It actually -does- work that way. To date, no one has combined them to get a 'revelation', the second tier up. For clarity, that's how the difficulty numbers work, in the same category they combine for an aggregate where if you pass a threshold you get a big thing for the category. Three tiers total, though it's designed to have mini tiers if necessary.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
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    • RE: Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

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

      If I've noticed something, it is the amusing irony of all the silver of all the orgs in the game seem to be flowing into the crafters. These commoners who are making bank beyond any noble. Since there's no actual competition or pressures on them, or costs, they're probably gonna own everything soon.

      I was concerned about that myself when designing the system but I think the sinks are working better than the perception of it might be. There's one commoner in the top 60 or so for money (at around 40th), and no others in the top one hundred, though one low silver character that has done basically all the tasks ever and is sitting with more economic resources than anyone. But neither of the two outliers has bought anything, and it's important to remember that most of the money spent is deleted, not transferred.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
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    • RE: Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

      @Wizz Yeah I'm def willing to say 'my bad' about that.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
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    • RE: Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

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

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

      Yes, arguing with players can be a huge red flag. But let's also not forget how many games croak run by super sweet and nice people.

      False Dichotomy

      Bro you are literally the person that posted saying requiring email validation is moronic on a forum that requires email validation to register to post.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
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    • RE: Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

      I respect both of you a lot, and I get what you are coming from. This hobby has not done a bang up job of producing really stable environments. This, in turn, makes a lot of people pretty damned wary of staff, worrying that their time investment in a game can be completely flushed by someone losing their patience and freaking out, or acting unfairly or unreasonably. I get that. I'm really sympathetic to it. I'm really conscious of it when something is testing my patience.

      But it doesn't do us any favors to expect someone to bend over so far backwards they are basically the equivalent of a poor customer service rep dealing with screaming customers. That kind of thing might feel safe and reassuring, knowing that person probably won't lose their cool, but it also means that they are the softy afraid to say no that any unreasonable person on a game will try to exploit. I think most players would feel unsettled by any display of a temper by a staffer, even if it was completely justified. But they will absolutely leave a game that's taken over by unethical players exploiting a doormat that is completely unwilling to push back enough to maintain a healthy, positive atmosphere. Yes, arguing with players can be a huge red flag. But let's also not forget how many games croak run by super sweet and nice people.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
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    • RE: Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

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

      @Kanye-Qwest said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

      @Thenomain You didn't shit on the game, you said that anyone who thought there was a valid reason for email requirement to play refuses to see/use logic.

      So what is the logic behind an e-mail requirement? I mean I am like @Arkandel and have a game e-mail that has nothing close to my RL info attached to it so I will play on games with that requirement, but I have yet to see a sound reason to require an e-mail.
      It can't be to prove identity because it is super easy to have multiple e-mails with different identities as both Ark and I show.

      The short answer from what I said above is it's to automate letting people wanting a roster character get one easier. Since they log on a guest and don't have a character bit, it's just a simple way of telling them, 'you have character A, here's the password' so we wouldn't have to be on the same time, and we don't have to make throw away character bits just for that purpose. If they don't have an email or don't want to give one, it's fine, we can do it by hand, it's just faster and easier.

      @Three-Eyed-Crow The webpage isn't a wiki as such, there's no real distinction between a character ingame and the webpage, and they use the same login credentials automatically since it's the same DB calls. All the character information there is just populated automatically from attributes on character objects and so on.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
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    • RE: Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

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

      More difficult? Well, like I said, Mush-likes can create characters from the login screen. I had no idea that this was difficult for Evennia. It honestly shocks me. To me, having something that reads emails and creates a character that way sounds far more technically complex. This shocks me enough that I'm going to look into it, because using email to trigger an automated system that I at least feel could be built-in sounds, well, silly. Implementation differences, I suppose? But still, a bit of the head-scratcher.

      I'd say it's like 30% technical and 70% trying to future proof from an administration angle to avoid problems with scale. For example, in evennia you probably notice that every bit has both a player object and character object associated with it, rather than a single object, and this is designed to allow easy puppeting for games that have that. That sounds like it would be ideal for a roster game, but it has problems there, in that you want the transference to be permanent and eradicate any previous links, so that becomes a big headache where you really want to transfer accounts- and that means you'd need some form of master account, then a player object, then a character object, meaning that it's easiest to largely ignore the player/character objection distinction and make them 1:1 anyways and not try to do roster stuff as a form of puppeting. So then we go back to some form of master accounts even past player objects, and man, having an email (or a dummy string field) for that is way easier than a lot of other options. And that brings us to the administrative future side I mentioned.

      And that's pretty much exactly what @Sunny is thinking of there- if we created just throw away accounts, that means an automated method of pruning them, because otherwise you get this ongoing gigantic list of dead accounts just from anyone stopping by to browse rather than guest accounts, with all the name validation pita therein. These aren't insurmountable, but I do think it's a lot more work than email.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
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    • RE: Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

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

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

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

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

      They have an easy application

      They want an email for application. That's an instant "nope!" here. On two grounds:

      1. I don't know them from a hole in the ground. I'm not going to hand them my email.
      2. If(f) they think this somehow "secures" things they're too stupid to staff.

      I don't know (or care) if #2 is true or not. #1 is sufficient grounds for turning and walking away.

      I am honestly confused how anyone could ever imagine that an email would be anything more than a convenience for automating the application process so that a GM doesn't have to be on hand.

      Because there have been several times in the past where people have taken those email addresses and abused the trust of the people who've asked for them. We here, esp. us dinos like WTFE and myself, have been over this and we can't come up with a considerately valid reason why having the email in the first place has more benefits than risks.

      I'd be happy to waive it if someone is unwilling to provide an email, though I'd wonder why they wouldn't just google 'temp email' and save both of us time.

      There is something that saves everyone even more time: Not needing s system to validate over email to being with. This is how Mushes (et al.) work.

      As a coder, I would then be able to get other things done. If the email address is used for "is a person" except then you're ignoring fake email addresses, then it's helping nobody. It's a hoop that nobody cares about. So why have it?

      I don't suspect the answer is much more than habit. It seems like a very Mudlike requirement, though I honestly don't know why.

      Because the alternate implementations are worse, more cumbersome, and unnecessary when the few people that have issues with it we could just manually make exceptions for? I can understand people that have been doing this for eons having a ton of baggage with weird stuff that's happened, but like I don't see the point in designing unbelievably arduous workarounds when I can just say, 'yeah sure I can do that for you manually' instead and skip an email by hand. If you're designing a system where staff and a player applying for a roster character don't need to be on at the same time, you can just automate mailing out a confirmation email saying you're good to go... or you can make a giant account based system where anyone even guesting to the game has a brand new account, track characters to each account, design auto pruning so there's not a horribly unmanageable scroll of dead accounts, probably protect the accounts with false deletes, make sure an internal mail system accommodates them, and so on. Or you can use an email. If you wanna say it's more logical to do the Giant Catastrophe Option for the 2 dudes in the world that are scared that I'll track them down through their fake throw away email, okay man, whatever you say.

      posted in Mildly Constructive
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