Posts made by Arkandel

@Ganymede ... You people are a zombie apocalypse waiting for its Patient Zero to happen.

@Coin For starters I agree with you; yes, it makes little sense to go play on a game whose core you're not ready to embrace. Be it a horror game you intend to treat as a sex MU* or what you mention, it's a bad idea all around. And I've had to help people out in my scenes with some pretty basic things although I knew for a fact they had been playing nWoD MU* for years at that point, and you'd think they'd know how to throw a punch. They don't.

But consider this. The group you are referring to here:

MUing is fucking filled with people who will play a game just to play what they want to

... is not that large. It's in fact tiny. Yes, not all games need to be huge but we're well past that point by now; we're no longer really discussing if games will have hundreds of unique concurrent connections, these days 40-50 is pretty damn good (and barring alts there are very few MU* that pull it off).

So yes, it is annoying if players aren't willing to find a compromise between what they really want and what's actually on offer, but on the other hand if those same annoying people weren't there to begin with to fill screens with their poses sans dice rolls and their questions about what to roll to pick a lock then the remaining folks might not have a blast either having only a handful of others to engage and renew their roleplaying threads.

@Ganymede Then screw that noise.

@Roz Wait, this just occurred to me. Is there PC/console cross-play in Overwatch or is it exclusive to each platform?

@surreality Plus that's a convenient tool to use. Not only does it reduce the annoyance of being stuck in CGen until all the i's are dotted since you can play in the mean time, albeit in a somewhat more limited capacity, but you get a better feel for the character in the mean time.

A couple of scenes can give a hell of a better understanding of a new PC than writing a background, at least for me.

Haters. Am I chatting with a friend about how great Sunday's Game of Thrones was? I HATE THAT SHOW. Is someone talking about how they love Arkham Knight? UGH I HATE THOSE GAMES. Hey, I like Diablo 3, it's an awesome game. I HATE THAT. Okay, fine, why? I HATE ROLEPLAYING GAMES UGH.

Then they go on and on about how there's a wide world out there and it's the summer! Just go out and have some fun!

My favorite (?) line when I brought up reading fiction - not just a book or even a genre but fiction in general: "Well, I think the real world is interesting enough."

@Ide said in Does size matter? What about duration?:

But where can I officially register my peeve for poses that attempt to answer to four other people's poses in the same scene. Their character's head will be whipping around smiling, smirking, winking and nodding like an understudy in the cast for the Exorcist.

Yeah, absolutely agree. Just because you're in a scene with five people it doesn't mean you should try to respond to everything they do. It's a hilarious thing to even visualise!

My only issue here is that during such spam it's easy to miss something which was meant for you. I usually have SimpleMU highlight my PCs' names for this reason but for example if I posed wearing a hat and you say something addressing 'the dude with the hat' as the screen scrolls it's trivial to miss it.

@Coin said in Core Memories Instead of BG?:

<rant>
As an aside, I am repeatedly baffled at how difficult it is to get people to understand how to build Breaking Points. Running Eldritch--especially app approval--was a challenging experience mostly because I just found myself not even being able to even with some people's inability to comprehend this. And I know it makes me a bit of a dick--some people just have trouble with this sort of concept and it's not, you know, their fault. But the twentieth time someone presents a Breaking Point as, "one time my character shot a person and left them to die" as a Breaking Point, I twitch. It's not that hard to rephrase that as an actual Breaking Point, man. "Abandoning someone who may potentially die". Come on, man.

Anyway.
</rant>

I suspect you'll disagree here but there comes a point once enough players don't understand a mechanic or system enough times that it might be that mechanic or system's fault as well.

As you know I'm not big on rules myself even though I go over the theme parts of splat books very carefully but still skim over the dice parts; even so I'd say I'm better than most people care to learn and had to help folks in my plots with both very basic and more advanced things. So sure, we can blame reading comprehension and it's warranted to a degree but if the issue is recurring and wide-spread there ought to be a time when we say - okay, this thing is either not very intuitive, or we need to provide more help and examples, or ... well, rant about it on MSB which is acceptable as well.

Duration is more of a dealbreaker than an advantage - I don't care too much if you pose in two minutes or four, just keep it to single digits. Please.

Size... my preference is for more detail. But it's not a thesaurus contest either, stuffing as many words as possible doesn't make a pose better, it just makes it longer. Make it good.

@Ganymede said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

@Arkandel said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

For instance there's no reason CGen checks, assuming staff still wants oversight over the characters, can't take place after the PC hits the grid; that dramatically cuts down on the initial bottleneck before players get to the good parts and they can be processed when convenient.

There's plenty of reasons not to do this, actually. I can think of:

1. Blocking prohibited PC types, such as children and anthropomorphic skunks.
2. Blocking revenge PC types, created to PK specific folks.
3. Avoiding retconning scenes involving the above.

These sound like good reasons to implement a system that allows you to check over PCs before they hit the Grid.

Sure, those can happen, but why can't 1,2 be performed retroactively?

"Hey, this guy is playing an eleven year old".
"Hey, this guy entered the room and immediately tried to attack me".

As for 3, due to the rarity of such events, it's probably more efficient to very occasionally resort to retcons than to have universal, mandatory checks. If for every 50 more or less reasonable PCs who had to wait through CG there might be one case of an idiot doing something idiotic - catching and dealing with them will save time.

Again, BITN is doing this, are they flooded with 11 year olds and vengeful PKers?

@Thenomain said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

@Arkandel

CG checks before role play serves a great number of purposes. System validation. Theme enforcement. Uh, other things, but that's two more reasons than you gave for dismissing pre-RP checking. They can be loosened, certainly, but to say there is no reason that it can't be dropped is one more reason I think you don't know what you're talking about.

Just because you value things differently it doesn't mean you are right - you realize that, right?

For instance and for the most part theme enforcement rarely proves to have been critical enough that it had to be done pre-grid; while good staff will be able to provide useful, insightful input it's fairly rare that turned out to be urgent enough that it couldn't wait for later. If there are disrepancies they can be worked out after the fact instead of allowing that big bottleneck to stay in place.

Sure, occasionally you'll get a Transformer trying to apply into a Vampire MU* but that's the rare exception. BITN's background-writing for instance is optional and it didn't explode.

We should be constantly looking for ways to lower the barrier to entry, but it helps to have logic behind it. Mushes have run on 400 people logged in at once; what on earth do you mean it doesn't scale? I've created a chargen that does all the system checking for you; what do mean it doesn't scale?

I suggest reading what the thread is about instead of trying to attack... something, I don't know what, or why. @ThatGuyThere brought up a theoretical question - what if we suddenly had more than a thousand people trying to get into MU*, could we handle that load? And my answer argument was that, other than for hand-holding and personalized assistance to complete MU* newbies, we still have practices in place which defy code automations because they include mandatory human checks which, while still helpful, have a disproportionate benefit compared to the time and effort involved, and as such we could likely afford to place them at a lower priority if we did get a rush of newbies coming in all at once trying to apply for characters.

Now, I could certainly be wrong - I have been before - but sometimes you're really grouchy, man.

All that is true but I think we are also shooting ourselves in the foot a fair bit when it comes to most MU*'s ability to scale for more players. What I mean by it is a lot of checks currently in CGen - in my opinion at least - serve a marginal purpose of actually improving roleplaying conditions in the game; the value of backgrounds for example is already being discussed, and many games have consciously decided against further automation for routine things such as XP spends by putting them behind hoop-jumping, requiring justifications (which need to be read after all) and so on.

For instance there's no reason CGen checks, assuming staff still wants oversight over the characters, can't take place after the PC hits the grid; that dramatically cuts down on the initial bottleneck before players get to the good parts and they can be processed when convenient.

What I'm saying here is not that staff who want to pay more personalized attention to characters are doing it wrong; there is certainly a benefit, but it doesn't match the time invested. Obviously if a game-runner wants to do it anyway they should, but if they don't then it won't be the end of the world (*), and the game could handle much greater playerbases than we're used to.

(*) There is one caveat in this assumes having reasonably seasoned players. In @ThatGuyThere's example of a thousand complete newbies busting the doors down to get into text-based roleplaying games there will need to be a lot more hand-holding than we're probably ready to provide.

@Deviante said in How does a Mu* become successful?:

If you have a great product and have skilled people working for you in order to make sure your clients are happy, you can say you have a successful business.

You just described many (many!) businesses which, for one reason or other, went bankrupt.

It's the accomplishment of goals that makes a business successful - i.e. typically 'be profitable' . Projects like MU* are different, it's hard to draw comparisons.

@Ganymede said in Overwatch, anyone?:

Does your computer have the ability to run Overwatch? If not, you have but one option to play.

Yeah, I have a pretty decent PC. It's just more... comfortable to play on a recliner than in a computer chair, you know? If I can do it that way adequately I probably would. It's the controller that's literally killing me as I walk against walls and take seconds to align myself.

You fools! Question.

I have an XBox One but I'm terribad at using controllers. Just not used to the damn things versus mouse+keyboard.

I'm considering grabbing Overwatch. Is it worth getting the XBox version with the hope it encourages me to use the inferior method of playing or just stick to a PC?

@ThatGuyThere Why are you assuming if suddenly there were a thousand new players interested in MUSHing in the mid/long term the result wouldn't be more games being created?

In the 90s there were quite a few more MU* around than there are today, some with hundreds of people online.

@ThatGuyThere What bugs me about Marvel is how little they seem to like their own legacy characters.

Yes, when Kyle Rayner replacing Hal in the 90s resulted in a ton of crap it proved DC isn't exactly immune to this but they fix it sooner or later and it stays - more or less - fixed. Sure, I'm still annoyed Tim Drake was replaced by another Robin but he's still around (even though you're correct that after the upteenth reboot I'm not sure what the hell history is like any more).

But between the Clone Saga and DocOck stuff on Spider-man - for years you couldn't read Peter Parker as Spidey in either the mainstream or Ultimate universe! - and assorted very gimmicky 'changes' on their major properties to replace them with younger, spiffier versions they are leaking readers. If I'm a 12 year old boy (which most women who know me would agree I am, I digress) and I just watched Thor on the TV I may wanna read the comics, woo-hoo! But... what the hell? Why is Thor a girl? Okay, let me read Captain America then! ... wait, Steve Rogers is geriatric? No wait, he's a bad guy? What's happening here!

At least if you pick up Superman it's the Last Son of Krypon fighting bad guys in a more or less recognizable version of the iconic costume. Batman's is Bruce Wayne whose parents got killed when he was a boy. Wonder Woman is still Diana, an immortal Amazon kick-ass warrior. You know where you stand even if the details can be sketchy and require a PhD in comicology to understand on a day to day basis

@ThatGuyThere I don't know if ignoring stuff that makes no sense LALALALALA counts as 'maintaining continuity'.

@Coin Your mom asked me. And I do read manuals. <shifty eyes>