Posts made by Arkandel

@Thenomain said in Better Places Code:

@Arkandel said in Better Places Code:

2. Its primal function MUST be to reduce spam for EVERYONE

Disagreed. Its prime function is to create an in-game logical separation within a physical play-space. Reducing spam is a high priority, but we already have a few commands that reduce spam: Page and @Emit for two.

And you know how much I hate spam.

Although I made the disclaimer about the primary reason for this you are technically correct, which I am loathe to conceit is the best kind of correct.

There are primary two issues with large scenes:

1. They are too spammy.

2. Pose order becomes tricky even for characters who aren't interacting with each other at the time.

There are additional issues people have brought up here - such as logging this stuff somehow, which is a huge pain in the ass if we consider privacy as a goal at all for +places, and how to allow things to best leak into the 'general' scene, but IMHO we need a good approach for those larger issues at a minimum.

Any implementation of places must be:

1. Accepted by the community. This has to be mentioned separately since it's the hardest part; you can make perfect code and it'd still fail if people don't use it because they've never used it before so it's not part of their established habits.

2. Its primal function MUST be to reduce spam for EVERYONE, not just those using it. That's half the point of this entire operation - if having 8 people in a room is spammy as hell you've lost me. If the scene has 8 people and me and two friends are in a +place but we get the spam total of 8 (3 for our own poses, 5 for the 'unplaced' players) then who cares?

3. Easy to use. If it requires more than two commands total - the equivalent of @emit and say, for instance, and/or perhaps lacking a convenient easily memorable alias it can still fail.

4. Allow for easy switching between addressing the room at large and your +place. You might want to leak some things or maybe not, but you should be able to at will. Notice how this can easily conflict with (2); such is the way of things.

@Thenomain Places code also has some disadvantages. For example (IIRC, I can't check at the moment) every pose has to start with your name.

Sure, code can overcome such limitations but the real problem is cultural, not technical. As usual.

@surreality Well, sure, but derailing/overcrowding an existing scene isn't a solution to that problem. Starting a new one is.

I don't understand why it's such a problem to just pick a different location. It's not like people idling in the OOC room suddenly felt a great desire to go to Joe's Bar, the only attraction about it is there are already people present. If they go to Jim's Bar with the other 2 idling folks there will be people there, too.

@ixokai said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

Did A or G have to page?

<snip>

(And should B, C, D, E and F decided to take their scene private? Then A and G wouldn't be able to join them either. Is that a better outcome?)

Obviously neither scenario is optimal at that point. But here is the thing, and now you're probably exposed to a peeve of mine rather than an actual argument:

Group 1 is roleplaying. X+Y+Z want to drop in so they have something to do.

... why on earth won't X+Y+Z, who are idlying and not part of any scene, for whom any scene would do, go off and make a scene of their own? Why does it need to be the one already in progress? Just start something, you have enough people!

@Thenomain I had never heard of a Visual Novel before.

Can you explain the concept? The wikipedia entry is a bit confusing ("Typically the majority of player interaction is limited to clicking to keep the text, graphics and sound moving") since that doesn't seem enticing - is it a CYOA kind of deal?

@acceleration I just re-read the original post on this thread and it mentions nothing about RPIs. I was discussing the spectrum because it seems relevant when we're examining cultural differences between two kinds of games which, on occasion, are pretty similar to each other in function if not terminology. The point doesn't seem to be straying from the thread's topic.

@acceleration Don't over-generalize though. That's a setting, not the only setting.

For instance on the MUD I played we had an +IC command; you could always go IC any time but you had to stay IC for <X> minutes after switching before you could +OOC again.

While you were OOC you could be anywhere on the grid to fight mobs, hang out, anything at all you liked - but you couldn't see poses and other IC messages, so you couldn't spy on people. There were also IC-only rooms you couldn't enter but those were also set as !mob so you didn't lose anything.

@lordbelh said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

I disagree!

Its okay to disagree!

How civil! It makes me feel dirty inside.

It is fairly common. I do it myself some times. But there are alternatives, including leaving together with some other original characters and taking your scene to go. We're on a game together. Things happening you can't control, a scene taking a sudden left turn, doesn't have to be a problem unless you're unable or unwilling to turn it into more fodder for rp.

My typical scenario goes like this (and I might be wrong but I think it's fairly common): I see a friend online and page to ask for RP, we pick a room and meet there. At this point we would probably both love an extra character or two to keep things from becoming too predictable and maybe pick up some additional RP hooks - so if asked we'd love to see newcomers. Picking a private room for it won't work since it's quite likely people might assume we're not open for them and won't even ask to join.

I don't think a quick page is too big a barrier to entry. It literally takes under a minute and gets rid of the entire issue right there - as opposed to people joining a scene that's already pretty busy/spammy and having to see folks leaving it for that reason. It's easy then to think they are jerks and/or take it personally because... why wouldn't you? After all you posed in and suddenly half the characters are leaving? Elitists!

@lordbelh said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@Arkandel Seems more of a peeve to me.

I disagree! It's fairly typical (probably even cliche) when a scene starts somewhere with 2-3 people and just as it starts getting some momentum suddenly it balloons to 5-6 as folks notice there's stuff happening on +where and walk right in so it swiftly becomes unmanageable. It's common to see the original participants then going "uh, sorry guys, I can't keep up with the spam, see ya!".

Now, to keep things under perspective here I am not claiming the-generic-you is a monster for popping in without checking first... but check first. It's that or have every scene take place in temp rooms, at which point why have a grid at all?

@Kanye-Qwest It's not, IMHO. But it is reasonable to wait until they set before you pose in, in case you're walking into something already taking place you should take under consideration. Waiting on a round of poses seems practical.

EDIT: Sorry - also, large scenes. If a scene already has 3+ people in it, ask before joining. Don't be that guy.

Is this open yet? If not is there a planned opening date?

@Chime said in RL Anger:

People that like white backgrounds on webpages. I want to stab you in your eyeballs.

Why? I'm not a designer but my understanding is it's the best/most comfortable way to read stuff - dark text on a white background.

I've played both MUDs and MUSHes for years.

There's no difference in terms of the roleplay in general; several MUD players I've interacted with were great, creative writers and very enjoyable to be around, and many MUSH players who enjoy twinking systems and learning mechanics could thrive on a MUD.

The big issue is reconciling the combat system with the necessarily turn-based aspect of roleplaying. Fighting mobs is usually quite fast paced and largely automated (backstab orc; bash orc; trip orc;...) and only lasts under a minute if not a third of that, but violent encounters between two PCs would involve typing, and that alone can take 5+ minutes.

I've love to see a MU* engine that can find the sweet spot between the two in an integrated implementation of such mechanics but so far I haven't.

So players always had to choose between using the same rapid-fire system which can result in a PC death in no time at all (imagine losing your PC, whom you've been playing for a year, in under 30 seconds because you got a slight burst of lag) or having a full fighting system you use for NPCs and then something else entirely for PC interactions. It's not... neat.

I'm waiting to see. Unlike the comic this seems to be set in a single town, but it remains to be seen how much of the writing they'll be able to translate to the screen - Ennis' writing alternated regularly between hilarious absurdity and serious kicks right in the feels, so ... maybe.

@Vorpal I'm really sorry to hear that. I hope your mom is okay.

@Auspice said in Tips on Güd TS:

and then I ended up with a stalker (before I knew how disturbing the person was, I'd given them my RPSkype name and I use the same UN generally for wikis). It sounds like a lot of people, lately, have had some great times there. Happy for them, but alas.

Oh, crap. That sucks.

While we're on the matter, how do you folks pick viable romantic partners for your characters? For instance I'd never allow anything to happen with someone I don't already know OOC - the chance of drawing the short straw are fairly high. I'm mainly thinking of people (I think @lordbelh mentioned something along such lines?) who prefer handling everything purely IC if they can help it, so in such cases do you feel filter partners out based on anything other than poses?

Do you think MU* can use a version of Tinder? You don't have to ever use it, but if you declare interest in a character and they declare interest in yours it notifies you both!

(I can feel @Thenomain scowling at me across space and time)

@Cobaltasaurus I've played on Shang during different periods for shorter or longer stints. Conversely it's a fallacy you can't play unless you TS there - I did it for months and had plenty of fun. There are many pretty good roleplayers on that game, it's just harder to track them down since they're bunkered up away from the sheer insanity by sticking into small groups and filtering fairly strictly who gets in. Cliques on Shang are required if you want to retain your sanity.

Anyway though - the pages I used to get and the things I was told completely out of the blue by people I had never even chatted with before were ... interesting. I mean for starters you know how the line we're examining here is between IC and OOC? Some players don't want it at all, and they're very upfront about this fact. The MU* is more of a chat channel to them so instead they occupy this hybrid ... space lingering between the two. I'd get pages out of the blue like "I want you to do <X> to me", where <X> could be goddamn anything imaginable, sometimes barely recognizable as a sexual thing in my book - and those people didn't really have characters, they just had a name and a list of kinks.

I'm not usually one to judge if I can help it but as I am also both unwilling to disregard the player/character separation blatantly and unable to actually do anything to people over the internet, not being a wizard, I was always left extra puzzled by the requests. Either frame them in an IC way or don't, dammit!

What I was very pleasantly surprised by when I joined KD was there was no insanity. I'm pretty sure some hefty TS is taking place - the setting is what it is after all - but it wasn't like that at all. The over-the-top frenzy isn't endemic to sexually themed games, it's contained if staff care to do so. Which is not to say other phenomena didn't occur there too - I did have people lose interest in my PC once they realized he was 'taken' for example - but that's a fairly common thing to encounter in any given MU*; sometimes romantic entanglement RP is a game of musical chairs.