Posts made by Arkandel

@skew It's so dangerous you risk not closing your parentheses!

@Thenomain It's hard though to play in a game you're very highly ranked as staff in. At least for certain kinds of things - if you earn a position, rank or special place, even if you did everything by the book you'll still get shit for it.

@Swaggot Love the game you're going to make. Love the concept, love the idea, love it. If you don't from the start you'll burn down halfway down the line when the reality of the everyday grind it is sinks in.

@Retias said in Fallen World MUX!:

I need to put together a character idea. Have two mage concepts already, but they're for other games. Minded towards trying a Thrysus Silver Ladder who's trying to sort issues in the Shadow by supporting certain Spirit courts. What sort of Cabal idea did you have in mind?

As we discussed in private it's probably better to see who's interested first, sit down in a group (or have an e-mail thread or something) and see what kind of cabal it'd be.

I know I plan to play someone recently Awakened, most likely an Arrow, but I other than that I haven't even picked a Path yet. Maybe a medical professional for starters, I haven't done a concept like that in a while.

So far there're three people chatting about either a cabal or 'just' character ties, so that looks promising.

@faraday I think @Sunny meant bad staffing is making a lazy choice ('let's ban alts from happening!') instead of dealing with a very small minority of players engaged in a certain behavior ('hey, dude, this is the 14th alt you've made this month... we should have a chat').

@Kanye-Qwest said in How Many Alts Would An Alt User Alt If An Alt User Could Use Alts:

It might be difficult to avoid someone with 15 alts, especially if they are prone to making/dropping them with no notice.

On the other hand 15 alts will not have either the social capital or XP to matter as much as someone who plays 1. It's just a matter of activity.

@saosmash Oh yeah, that's a known annoying bug. I've had to restart it a number of times.

@Three-Eyed-Crow But if someone is doing that, can't you just avoid them (like you'd avoid anyone who's doing something stupid) instead of imposing a game-wide limit on everyone?

So, since according to reports FW will be open sometime soon, is anyone thinking of cabal'ing up?

If you wanna talk shop, message me and let's get somethin' going.

@Dragginz said in There's Nothing to Do Here:

There are other factors that aren't mentioned in this discussion, due to politeness perhaps. I will rudely name a few. The first is the Plot Barrier Fatigue Factor. The second is the Plot-killer Player Avoidance Factor. The third is the Not A Team Player Factor.

I think the implied assumption most of us were making so far is that all extraordinary factors relating to badness weren't present; i.e. staff weren't incompetent bureaucrats blocking everything, any players involved weren't horrible people no one wants to hang out with, etc.

But you are right, such cases should also be mentioned.

@Auspice You know what gets me? Players who do send each other pages ("hey,let's do a scene"). And then they go and have the most boring scene possible, set at a bar, talking about the weather - sometimes literally! For example they're both different supernatural types but they don't know that IC and neither does something or gives any hook for the other to pick it up so they can do something more fun.

But afterwards... 'this place is boring, ugh'. That grinds my gears.

@Lotherio said in There's Nothing to Do Here:

I am of the mindset that 'nothing to do' is more on the player than staff.

Yes and no. Before you legitimately stone me for a cop out answer please allow me to explain.

First - yes, some players go and sit in a room expecting the world to provide for them. Where's my plot, bitch? I'm bored, entertain me! There's no real defense for that, we are all responsible for our own fun and failure to be proactive by trying to make something happen, reaching out and offering meaningful RP to others... generally being creative is at the very core of our hobby. There are after all no mobs to kill, we're all we got.

But the other half of it is, games can do a great deal to at least facilitate players if not actively encourage their interactions. For example at various times during MU* code evolution we didn't have handy commands like +meetme (no need to know the grid, if you want to join someone you just can), +where (see where RP is happening), assorted seeking-RP flags that show up in bright colors if someone's actively searching for scenes; those helped. The XP system itself can act as an incentive - yes, obviously people should just go play the damn game they're in without having to be rewarded for doing so, but I've spoken to people before who were still 'looking to cap their XP for the week' and were on the lookout for something - such scenes can lead to boring bar stuff but they don't have to, so that too helps.

The latest evolution has come from games like RfK, or so I understand from @Ganymede's gushing over its system - political environments tend to work well since they don't require the presence of a Storyteller (in fact in some cases they might actually discourage it since it introduces a degree of bias) and make characters each other's tools, adversaries and needed allies to advance their agendas. So in that way such resources can be great to have and give people both reasons and methods to engage each other.

Sure, if all other things are equal and the players involved are eventful and proactive none of this is really needed. I suspect many of us can bring up anecdotes where awesome RP took place with everyone contributing and adding elements to it without the need for external tools... but they sure do help.

@Coin said in Pokemon Go:

No, I know it's illogical to demand that of them ahead of time or with any level of certainty. But now that there has been a case (or more), they should look into diminishing it as much as possible. Or not. Whatever.

Pokemon ain't out here, so.

Given their spawning chances are based on algorithms (i.e. they are automated to a great degree based on collected data usage, since the job of going over it manually to hand-pick locations around the entire world would have been a freakin' gigantic, expensive project on its own) I'd say their best approach might be to selectively blacklist certain locations. That shouldn't be too hard so it'll probably happen at some point just to silence some of the critics.

But man, so much negativity already over social media. I get it's the popular thing and everyone loves to bitch at popular things but my Facebook stream is full of people declaring in outrage how they are not playing P:Go as if that means they're special, and are taking offense at everything about it - from people 'looking at their phones' (which is completely new and never happened before) to 'parks being overcrowded with people', to how this free game no one is making them install will expose their private information - just before they post pictures of their latest piercing, of course.

@Auspice said in Pokemon Go:

@Coin

I'm 100% with you. I mean, the most upsetting thing about that Koffing at the Holocaust museum wasn't that it was there... It's that enough people were in that place, playing the game, that random chance let it happen.

Also, schools aren't generally going to have Pokestops/gyms. Some might. But Niantic has generally avoided schools (esp. elementary & middle) having them (so, y'know, there's no issues with adults lingering about). Since polling places are often schools...

But seriously. The excuses people already give to not vote? ('I don't feel like getting up early.' 'I forgot to ask for the day off.') Pokemon wouldn't magically make non-voters suddenly vote.

Niantic has considerable experience with this - I'd say more than anyone else could have - since they're also the company behind Ingress.

It's just impossible to predict all sensitive situations especially when it's something as new as virtual and real worlds colliding, there's very little precedent for any of this. Hell, companies in well established markets with decades of history behind them make mistakes which, in retrospect, are pretty obvious yet at the time no one saw them.

The one from the top of my head is the controversy around X-Men: Apocalypse where they had huge billboards up of what came down to a man choking a woman. Yes, when it's put in these terms we're left scratching our heads going "how they hell did they think that was appropriate?" but that's only in retrospect, as they probably just... didn't think of it at the time. Same as the Holocaust museum thing ("we'll put Poke-stuffs at museums and get good PR by sending kids to educative places like that! woo-hoo!"), it just didn't occur to them.

Everyone fucks up.

Seen today:

"If Niantic puts gym and pokestops at all voting locations this year, it could swing the largest voter turnout in a long time."

It's funny because it's true.

@DnvnQuinn said in Interest Check: Single Sphere VtR Game:

Kingsmouth has pretty much stepped away from the God Machine stuff. I've been there about a month/two and seen absolutely zero. I've experienced no God Machine stuff at Fallcoast either. Infact it's rare I see a game that includes it these days. Where /are/ you seeing it? Cause I'm into that shit...

That could be because most games these days are sandbox, and GMC generally requires an involved staff presence (or at least a ST comfortable enough with staff to get this deep into a metagame).

@Auspice But no inline spell-checker. What a tragedy.

@surreality said in How Many Alts Would An Alt User Alt If An Alt User Could Use Alts:

Some games already do have a 'no more than one fachead/family head/gov position/etc.' and this problem is rapidly resolved.

In theory perhaps. In practice... the obvious example I can think of in terms of not-quite-but-similar limitations is on ol' TR; the Team Leader of a sphere can't play in it! Cue the 'assistant TLs' of spheres where no one was ever actually a team leader, or if one was it would have obviously been a courtesy sidekick.

I really have no horses in this race at all since I don't alt but arbitrary restrictions tend to do the opposite of what they set out to do; they only nominally contain the people they're supposed to but inconvenience everyone else - and there's often a silent majority somewhere - without any tangible benefits to show for it.

For fellow Torontonians - an interactive map of where to find what!

@mietze There's this guy who comes to my boxing gym. He must be in his late sixties but it's hard to tell... he looks toned but that's the best you can tell about him at a glance.

The old geezer can lift! Damn! And he's doing pullups like nobody's business. Other men his age can barely get out of the recliner - he can lift the recliner. And whoever's sitting on it.

The only real issue associated with old age in general is recovery. A twenty-something can pull a muscle or strain a tendon and they'll be ready in a few days... get injured later in life and it can sideline you for a long time. Which is why volume is advised over personal records.