Posts made by Arkandel

@thatonedude said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:

In a discussion about this last night there was something said that made me laugh, while being a bit sad but also rang true. The comment was something like: Tiered XP is great because I can play the character I want right out the gate before the game dies/shuts down.

There's something to be said about that. Many - most - games don't last nearly long enough for a small trickle of XPs to let you play a powerful version of the character if that's what you have in mind.

Of course not all games should allow let alone facilitate this, but it ought to still be possible somewhere.

What's much harder to implement - and in fact, perhaps counterproductive to - is allowing anyone to actually be more powerful than most. It's the difference between "I'm a great and powerful wizard!" and "I am a greater and more powerful wizard than you conjurers of cheap tricks!".

@bobotron said in Flat/starting competency on MU*:

So I have often wondered what the standard WoD crowd would do

Riot.

To make up for this, there is a starting competency level that all characters have to distribute... and that's it. No XP, no nothing, just... roleplay. I have seen it done on various themed MU*s like Transformers and such, but don't think I've ever seen a statted supernatural MUSH take this track.

More seriously now, for the nWoD in particular it comes down to powers (as in, Disciplines, Arcana, etc) and not attributes or stats. For most characters getting a +1 to their Dexterity won't make a noticeable difference, but for a similar cost upgrading their Glory from 3 to 4 could make a definite jump up.

Either way, I like statless systems. But what are you looking to achieve with this change? I think you should start with that before we can chip in on whether it would work or not.

There is no such thing as 'too much' in a vacuum.

When you make a game you decide what XP is for, and what power level - and variance - you want from your characters... and why. Then on top of that different spheres are more or less powerful at certain XP ranges, players like different things, etc.

There's no one-size-fits-all approach; if there was we'd have discovered that secret recipe by now and every MU* would be using it. "Hey I noticed on TR when people had 220 XP everyone was having a blast, no exceptions! Then we awarded 50 more and boom, it went to shit".

If only it was that easy.

What I like about Superman is how flexible a character he is. He isn't hopeful because of the things he does - lots of heroes since have been, well, good guys (and girls) - but what he specifically represents is cooler than just that.

Superman, at his core, owes us nothing. He isn't even from around here, he's an alien! And he has all the power he'd ever want, simply given out to him. If he wanted, and in some Elseworld stories we've seen it, he'd have turned evil, corrupt or authoritative and really could anything else have been expected from him?

Instead he shoveled shit at the farm as a kid, grew up to be a working stiff like millions of others and just wants the same things we do - or that we're supposed to. As Garth Ennis put it, he's the ultimate immigrant.

Hey, I ran into this quote by Grant Morrison today and I wonder how y'all feel about it.

"We’re all Superman in our own adventures. We have our own Fortresses of Solitude we retreat to, with our own special collections of valued stuff, our own super–pets, our own “Bottle Cities” that we feel guilty for neglecting. We have our own peers and rivals and bizarre emotional or moral tangles to deal with... Batman is obviously much cooler, but that’s because he’s a very energetic and adolescent fantasy character: a handsome billionaire playboy in black leather with a butler at this beck and call, better cars and gadgetry than James Bond, a horde of fetish femme fatales baying around his heels and no boss. That guy’s Superman day and night. Superman grew up baling hay on a farm. He goes to work, for a boss, in an office. He pines after a hard–working gal. Only when he tears off his shirt does that heroic, ideal inner self come to life. That’s actually a much more adult fantasy than the one Batman’s peddling but it also makes Superman a little harder to sell."

Also, this video.

@bobotron said in Shadows of Paradise: help wanted!:

Beast suffers from some dissonance though; the original pitch was that they were actively inflicting their horrors on humanity as a sort of pseudo-punishment and to 'teach lessons'

That's kind of the Lancea Sanctum, minus the Christian bits.

@ganymede said in The Basketball Thread:

They can't. That's one of the things people talk about, but they can't.

They also said Vegas wouldn't contend for the Stanley Cup.

After the fleecing the Kings got by the Celtics I don't see anyone trading first-round picks unless they are pretty damn sure they know what they're doing. Teams keep finding gems - look at Kuzma, the guy was picked 27th. Or Donovan Mitchell at... I think 12th?

Teams have come to realize the last couple of years rookie contracts are gold. You simply get great return for the value, and that's before you get super lucky.

Kevin Love's a great player but his stock right now is low - no team wants a power forward who can't play good defense badly enough to send serious pieces back.

Then don't ask for serious pieces. Ask for cash or picks.

Sure, but consider LeBron's timeline. The guy isn't 22 any more, he wants to win now. He doesn't have time to teach some 19 year olds how to play the game and wait for them to get their shit together through the playoffs; sure, some are just too good and too mentally tough (Jason Tatum... wow, that kid) but most will take 2-3 years to pan out. He doesn't have 2-3 years.

LeBron got Tristan Thomson and J.R. Smith paid, and they have two and one years left on their contracts IIRC; would you trade anyone good for these guys if you were a GM?

No, so don't ask for it. Ask for cash or picks.

No one giving jack shit for these guys. TT is way, way overpaid - his contract is poison. Teams will want sweeteners just to take that contract off their hands on at all (say, future picks of Cleveland's plus TT for an expiring), and J.R. Smith... yeah, you know.

Korver's out. Hood? Serviceable. Nance? Workable. But they work, can contribute 8-10 PPG, which is just fine and higher than what Thompson brings on a consistent basis.

Yeah, true, those are roleplayers though. To beat Golden State (hell, to go through next year's Celtics or Sixers since they are going to both be way stronger) LeBron will need stars around him. We just saw what happened when he played with basically the equivalent of a WoW random group.

That said, LBJ on Toronto? Very possible, and they have the sort of lineup that caters to him. You'd make an instant 3-star team, with a potential fourth star in Ibaka.

Sure, the option is appealing... but come on, you're making me say it again. Salary cap Toronto doesn't have nearly enough room for a max contract without getting rid of at least either of Demar or Lowry or most of their pretty good bench plus Ibaka.

IMHO the options are these:

• Houston. They'd need to take paycuts though, for sure, and get rid of some players. Capela is a restricted free agent this summer too, and the guy's gonna get paid.

• San Antonio. A Pop-led team of Kawhi and LeBron is super appealing so... maybe that's the sleeper hit.

• Los Angeles. With Paul George and maybe Boogie? That's not a bad roster.

• Sixers. Sure, and they have the salary cap space, but can he and Simmons fit on the same team since both need the ball in their hands and neither can shoot?

• Dark horse candidates. Pelicans?

@ganymede said in The Basketball Thread:

If LeBron ends up back in Cleveland, it will be because he's done seeking a ring with his friends. It will be because the Cavaliers jettison everyone older than Clarkson for draft picks and young talent. Because the only place I see LeBron is one where he is surrounded by that kind of talent, and lots of it.

They can't. That's one of the things people talk about, but they can't. Their salary cap and contract situation is dire; they have one good draft pick but it's a front-loaded draft; no one after 4-5 is projected to become a star.

Kevin Love's a great player but his stock right now is low - no team wants a power forward who can't play good defense badly enough to send serious pieces back.

And those are the good news; from that point it's all shit, all the way to the bottom. LeBron got Tristan Thomson and J.R. Smith paid, and they have two and one years left on their contracts IIRC; would you trade anyone good for these guys if you were a GM?

The rest... Korver is going to be 37 years old, Hill is almost always injured and his production wasn't great, Hood forgets to show up and he's hardly a piece... Nance Jr. is trying hard but he's what he is, a jumper with no range.

Who can they move to make room? They are the most expensive roster in basketball, well into luxury tax territory. Hell even in LeBron leaves they are still going to pay luxury tax! They are screwed.

He gone.

What I love about the NBA is how much fun the off season is. And where LeBron signs will define the free agency.

But there are so many other questions too.

• Around Christmas Boogie was definitely getting a max offer from the Pelicans. Now they might not even keep him since Mirotic did so well... but who will take the risk and where will he end up at?

• CP3... 'nuff said. Coordinating with LeBron to get to the Lakers? Snatched by Philly? Something else?

• Kawhi has one more year, but there's no way the Spurs will let him walk away for nothing next summer if they can't get a guarantee out of him. What do you trade for a top-3 player who hasn't played in eight months?

And so on.

@thatguythere "BBHF"

Our backups filled up the partition they were being saved on since apparently 30 days' worth of them got larger over time. Who knew.

We'll be storing them on a much, much roomier partition now. Of course nodebb shit its pants at all this, so I took the chance to upgrade it as well.

Sorry about the unscheduled downtime on a Friday night. Please let me know if anything I'm not looking at is on fire.

Edit: In case anyone wondered what super duper new features this latest version brought to your screens, read and be amazed! https://blog.nodebb.org/whats-new-in-v1-9-0/

@admiral said in Good or New Movies Review:

But what do they do? Ghostbusters... but with WOMEN!

Ocean's Eleven... but with WOMEN!

Even so, do these things. I'd watch the hell out of a new good Ghostbusters no matter who the cast is.

Just make it good, dammit.

And the problem here isn't that they made a bad movie - tons of them are made every year. It's that it will be framed in a particular way - it's just how Hollywood works. Do they make Batman and Robin and it bombs? "It's superhero fatigue" versus "it was a shitty film". I can even place Solo in that category without even having seen it - "too many Star Wars movies" as opposed to "this latest Star Wars movie was bad".

Now the same thing will be said - gently, given the current political climate, but it will be - for female casts.

@jaded said in Good or New Movies Review:

My review of Ocean's 8:

Stuff happens. You won't be bored enough to fall asleep. You might forget the movie by the time you hit the parking lot.

Meh. Just like Ghostbusters, if this doesn't do well it will be attributed to something about all-female main casts as opposed to it being a bad movie.

@sunny said in Managing Player Expectations:

Managing player expectations is one thing. Dealing with the VERY SMALL number of people who are interested only in X type of RP is another.

I agree with the general principle but with this caveat; it's usually the edge cases who represent a lot of the work needed to put those expectations at ease, so by bringing them up we can perhaps discuss the traits that make them edge cases, and whether they have a point or not.

Or to rephrase with a non-TS example, the number of players who complain about STs not custom tailoring plots for their specific needs, or who go to staff to protest they're not allowed to invent the asphalt and lay roads on their fantasy game, is small. However those are often still the ones who cause headaches and burn people out, so I thought it was fair to bring them up even though they're a minority.

Does that make more sense?

@sunny said in Managing Player Expectations:

Why is it so hard to believe that someone might want BOTH types of RP?

It isn't. In my example though I was referring specifically to someone who wants mostly TS, and doesn't intend to play the overall game either way.

Let's not let TS distract us here though (since it tends to take over conversations - perhaps I shouldn't have used it at all) since it was just one example.

@thatguythere said in Managing Player Expectations:

I can see this one for a couple of reasons, one Shang to me (never player there) seems very disjointed on a character level not a lot of continuity between scenes, not this could be totally wrong but it is the impression i have gotten over the years especially things like that ice cream character.

Shang has continuity (or used to), it's just that some people preferred doing their own sandbox stuff in private rooms.

The second obvious reason would be if vamps are their thing, why go to Shang to sort through everything to find what you want when it is likely easier and less effort to go to the vamps game and search for others wanting sexy times there.

That shouldn't be an issue. For starters you can create any character you want, including vampires, and since it's statless and there's no CGen process you can literally hit the grid in minutes. As for searching for others wanting sexy times, I don't need to explain why that would be easier on a game where +kinks is a coded command, right?

My only explanation (other than accounting for jerks) is poor self awareness. I.e. players who want mainly TS but tell themselves they're after metaplot, depth and all the other trappings of a non-TS game so they log on those to look for the former anyway.

@faraday said in Managing Player Expectations:

I agree with this 100% but I will point out that a lot of people take that same attitude even outside of MUSHing. I mean we've all seen people rip creators to shreds because a video game, TV show or movie wasn't to their liking. Not even because it was objectively bad, but because it wasn't what they thought it "should" have been.

There's a very big difference between the two however which we need to keep in mind.

When people bitch at a TV show or video game which otherwise has good ratings, the writers, cast or developers might be perturbed (everyone enjoys some appreciation, after all) but they are otherwise compensated for their labors. There is some real incentive for them, and future others, to go into the genre and work even if they need to turn social networks off since it pays the bills.

On the other hand there's a lot of work involved in setting up a MU* (which I'm sure is all news to you ). But appreciation and the satisfaction of work done well is the compensation those involved get - that's it, there's no cheque in the mail. In fact you have to pay to keep the lights on in the first place. To spend all those hours doing thankless things with your free time, or worse to be complained at, is a grind of its own.

So when we discuss expectations, those of administrators shouldn't be discounted. They are people, too!

@lotherio said in Managing Player Expectations:

I think what it comes down to is: its not the content (or genre) but the audience. They're looking for other players.

Oh, I agree. It was clear when people flocked to TR (as I imagine they are going to Arx now, as they will go to whatever is the Next Big Thing) because it's where other players are whether they like what it's about or not. But while fully assimilating yourself into a culture shouldn't be obligatory, not being disruptive should be.

If I come to your table and you're running a light-hearted silly high fantasy D&D campaign I don't get to insist on eviscerating my enemies before I bathe in their entrails and eat them, and if I do my excuse can't possibly be that hey, yours is the only game in town. Not while I'm eating your pizza. That just makes me a douche.

I think of late what it feels like most of all is the amount of investment and much as in life, whether we admit it or not, a lot of players look for minimal investment with greater odds on return of the investment. Just I think MU-wise, return doesn't quite work that way for RP; perhaps coded return sure, there are games with measurable returns to investment with code but that's not quite the same as RP I think?

The curious part in this though is that while the primary motivation for these types is socialization they are acting in a decisively antisocial manner. They are, at the same time, going to games specifically seeking the company of other players but also engage them in a way that breaks that game's norms which distances them from what those players are doing.

It's an exercise in frustration for all involved parties; themselves, staff, and other people.

I've had talks in the past trying to guess what possesses people to go to a certain kind of game looking for content that doesn't quite match what its theme is about.

The obvious case (which I don't want the thread to be consumed by) is sex. Some players don't go to Shang but instead to newVampireMUSH, and I'm not talking about stalkers or jerks here but just regular players who want a very large portion of their RP to be about TS, yet they don't choose to play on TS-based MU*.

Or... people who claim they despise certain genres or types of games yet they play them anyway. That doesn't make any sense! If you hate L&L why play on Arx? And if you do what's the point of trying to invent a steam engine or gunpowder or whatever otherwise proclaim the game to be a railroading failure because it doesn't match that very one-sided vision?

The only expectations players should have is for things to be fairly documented and implemented - in other words that procedures are written down ahead of time and staff not screwing them over. Now granted, this has been... known to not be the case.

Otherwise though in many cases expectations weren't fair to begin with. Even when I was participate in a PrP I didn't enjoy too much - perhaps I wasn't given agency, maybe it's too slow, could be that it's too combat based with little story to sink my teeth into, whatever - it's always up to me to leave. I didn't get promised anything, the ST (be it staff or player) doesn't owe me anything.

I feel sometimes we take things for granted in our community, including the time and energy put forth by others for our entertainment. The world outside of MUSHdom isn't our oyster to harvest for our fun as we see fit, so why should a MU* be?