Posts made by Arkandel

And we all know what happened to Atlantis, right?

@Wizz said:

...That is genuinely not that complicated.

I agree that it's not. I'm even a bit sold on the system after listening to @Coin and @tragedyjones drooling about it for so long.

However look at it this way maybe. A five pound weight isn't that heavy but if you lift it at shoulder level and hold it for a while it'll feel pretty damn heavy, right?

I think the same might apply to Conditions. No, they're not that complex especially after we get more used to using them in everyday RP. However if they need to be applied constantly - and they do - then that stands to interfere with many people's normal ebb and flow in RP; I can appreciate that sentiment because I'm one of the people who'll rarely look to use mechanics in scenes if I can help it.

This isn't a big overhead on its own but multiply it by every day you play the game, every scene you're in, and it adds up. That's not a question, it's a given - the only question is whether the benefits (which do exist) make all that effort over time worth it.

What concerns me though is that, as simple as it can be made to use Conditions (which is debatable, as some people deep that complexity to be more than others), it's still an overhead. It's still a thing you have to do.

So I can completely see how, to an average player, it might be too much to invest for the returns. Or in other words, I don't know everyone sees the returns or considers them substantial enough to go through the pain of familiarizing themselves with this level of maintenance which will take place constantly afterwards. It's not something you do once and it's done; you have to keep it up.

Eldritch is an interesting experiment because it's the first game I've seen where you're pretty heavily encouraged to use the system to advance. Even in other 2.0/GMC MU* the standard XP were sufficient to make it optional but there, especially after the first six months, it's pretty mandatory or your PC will lag behind.

After replacing my motherboard (and, given the opportunity, cpu) then power supply for my PC which got fried a few weeks ago, I now strongly suspect the initial problem was a crappy power bar.

In retrospect I should have bought a UPS. Bah.

@HelloRaptor said:

I can see the seed of a good idea, but every time I find myself wanting to play with them I just sort of balk at how shit they collectively are in implementation.

I think they can do a good job bridging the gap between "automatic XP" (where you do nothing and XP grows on trees) and assorted methods of harvesting XP through generic activity (where posing/socializing grants you XP without much oversight on just what you're doing).

What I really question and remain unconvinced on is how successfully they can be implemented on a MU*. I can see many ways it can fail if, say, it is...

• too inconvenient/time consuming to go through the process of gaining Beats (it doesn't have to be very hard, if it's hard almost at all it'll be a pain in the ass since it's something players will be doing constantly)

• too much work for staff, who'll be faced with constant barrages by players on top of traditional +job workload

• too much for the average player to use sufficiently for their PCs to advance, resulting in all those casual players being XP starved

A game like Eldritch relying heavily on Condition resolution faces two bottlenecks: Plot availability and staff availability. They can scale the first through STs but they'll need consistent +job monkeys for the latter. And if RL hits, that could become an issue.

@Rook No one likes nWoD, we all just play it.

@HelloRaptor said:

@Arkandel

A MU*'s lifeblood is in its casual players who log on a few times a week to have a scene, not those few who practically live there.

You keep saying this. I don't really agree or disagree, I'm just curious why you keep asserting it as if it's obviously true. It certainly seems like something you'd like to be true, but I'm not sure what you're basing the statement on.

Sure thing. Consider the following:

• By definition there are fewer hardcore players around than casual ones. Most people either don't get to spend eight+ hours day playing a game or they don't want to. So the majority of your playerbase will be the other kind.

• Players with that kind of time don't tend to stick around for long. I think that's a fair generalization - either the circumstances in their lives change to no longer allow it (i.e. they get a job, go back to school, etc) or they burn out. I've seen plenty of people who were pulling all-nighters one month vanish the next - but the person with a regular work schedule and income might 'only' get to play 6-7 hours a week, but they do it consistently and for longer - hence the 'lifeblood' remark.

• I've learned to mistrust people who can invest too much time in a game, and not just from MU'ing. The reason for this is human nature, we are naturally inclined to expect a return on our investments; if I sink most of my waking hours into something whether consciously or not I'm likely to believe myself entitled to receive something back from it. Such entitlements tend to go terribly awry, be it on WoW or a MUSH.

The hobby doesn't require a gigantic time investment. Mind you, to non-gamers even folks I'd refer to as casuals represent a nearly unthinkable commitment. But yes, I believe the latter are who games depend on to thrive, more so because the guy who gets to be online thirteen hours a day isn't adding that much more value to them than one who has say, three.

Other than for the recognition factor, how is that different from simply automating gains, however? I.e. what's the difference between this approach and say, TR's when it comes to advancing through XP?

There are many ways to implement XP systems and 'the best' approach always depends on the beholder's eye, for obvious reasons.

@Ganymede, I'm agreeing with you here, a system which scales the rewards with activity would be tilted toward people who have the luxury of investing a lot of hours into the game, and that's not right. A MU*'s lifeblood is in its casual players who log on a few times a week to have a scene, not those few who practically live there.

What I'm arguing is that a the hybrid system (such as, but IMHO not quite the one described here) does ensure that. Consider the following please?

• The amount of XP you earn through activity is capped. A player who logs on for 5 hours a day and one who gets to play for a couple of hours 2-3 times in a week would still hit the same weekly ceiling; what it incentivizes is consistency, not mere time investment.

• The advantage of Beats over automated pose counters (which I'm still fond of due to their impartiality and not adding to staff's workload) is that it's not how much but what you do that matters. Go to a bar to chat about the weather and it's going to be hard to justify resolving a Condition or the such. Someone would eventually make a frownie face at you.

• If done right, it places the emphasis on story; quite literally stories are where the game's carrots are, they're the best ways for mechanical advancement - which is exactly where they should be. Figure out a way to draw Storytellers and you're gold - which helps players without a ton of time immensely. I work a lot of hours so when I'm home in the evening the very worse thing I need is have to scavenge RP out of the blue, asking on channels and waiting to see who bites, possibly ending up in some pointless scene; compare that to an +event that starts at 20:30 which is guaranteed to come with a plot attached and man, I'm so there.

If I disagree with Eldritch's approach it's in the exact distribution of numbers but there's nothing to say I'm right and those guys are wrong. I think past the six months due to the XP cap versus the reduced automatic gains people with extra time would indeed begin to outpace the rest significantly - but that's not an issue with the system's philosophy overall, it's just figuring out the right figures to attach.

A hybrid system might work well though, @Ganymede. For example I'm optimistic about Eldritch's system where you get (for the first few months) half your XP automatically and the other half through activity-generated Beats.

Now, granted, after that the focus would increasingly lean toward the latter and that might become an issue for people who can't afford to play a lot, as they'll be outpaced more and more over time, but I think the system's heart is in the right place. Give something to everyone and a bonus to those who can be more involved.

Oh, okay, so we're not talking about nWoD but more generally, gotcha.

I think it could work, as long as there's some reasonably plausible way you can justify what the resource will end up buying from an IC point of view, and it might have its uses in say, catch newcomers up to the rest of the faction, be offered as rewards for good service to the group, etc.

@Misadventure XP no, because that's too flexible a resource. But many shareable merit dots cost XP and that's more or less how they already work. Wouldn't that work for you?

I'm of two minds on this.

For one yes, Beats, Conditions etc are all over the place in 2.0 so it seems like a good idea for something so deeply ingrained into the system to not be bypassed or used as a pure opt-in, or a lot of powers and their effects lose a lot of their utility. Plus I like the idea of being rewarded to lose or fail, since it seems to lead into a more collaborative kind of storytelling where fewer people will need to be the perfect snowflake who always comes back on top.

On the other hand... can we really call a system good if players don't like it? And I measure that by how they are actually making it part of their routine, not just liking it on general principle and on paper. Now, it might be because of the implementation (being too complex to apply for a Condition, taking too long for staff to handle its resolution, etc) but it could also indicate a more fundamental issue. Maybe it's too complex, or it could be the nWoD crowd just isn't willing to learn new things? I don't pretend to have the answer, but it's something to consider.

Now, I think on SHH the XP policies have sold the Conditions/Beats system short since XP 'income' from +votes and PrP participation tends to be sufficient to cap one's advancement (due to its delayed spends) and thus ... well, there's no great need to resolve Conditions if you don't really want to. I can see a MUSH like Eldritch where advancement makes it mandatory to participate in Beats generation ending up with more people using it.

The question though is, is either approach superior to the other ? In other words, is it better to essentially make the system largely optional or is 'forcing' players to opt-in a good idea due to Conditions' integration in 2.0 in general? I'm wondering what y'all think about this.

The underlying issue is whether the playerbase's resistance to adopt this mechanic stems from game-culture inertia given the time frames we're discussing here or if it's something deeper than that.

This might not fall directly under "balance" mechanics but I'd rather not keep making nWoD 2.0 threads, so I'll stick this here.

I had some conversations lately about Beats and Conditions, and how far (or if) they've adopted by MU* cultures so far. It's a fair question as several existent games are using them at this point and even more upcoming ones are planning to.

Now, I'm less interested in whether it's a good system and more in how far the average player has been using it frequently. My limited perspective suggests, based on just those I hang out with, that relatively few people file for Beats - but it's entirely possibly many others do.

So that's my question - do you update your PCs' Conditions frequently? Do you file for Beats? If you happen to be staff, do you care to share a rough estimate of how many people are doing this compared to the rest of your playerbase?

What problem are the solutions in this thread solving?

Unless the interface can be much cleaner than I've seen, actually roleplaying seems impossible on even a decent tablet. The screen scrolls, there's no way to spawn channels or pages in a separate tab, and touch-typing is a pain in the ass.

I hope someone here can prove me wrong.

Lately I've started to use my tablet while I watch TV to keep track if anything interesting is happening on MU*.

So! What are you guys using to connect from your mobile devices? Anything not particularly annoying, possibly with some nifty features such as highlighting strings, a nice interface for multiple tabs, etc?

Also, any non-annoying keyboards you've found? For instance the Go! Keyboard I've installed is nice for many things but utterly frustrating for MU* since some of the very common characters (such as are hidden several keystrokes away.

Care to share your experiences?

I haven't made a post on TripAdvisor in 3+ years, and I never was a regular contributor. I keep getting "congratulations, you're in our 10%!" e-mails every few weeks letting me now how many thousands of people have taken my advice and to keep up the good work.

Yo, if thousands of people go to a restaurant based on a review I wrote four years ago, they're dumb. Also if someone this idle is in your 10%, your service is in trouble.

I think sometimes we take game themes too... seriously? I mean, my impression is we gravitate toward gritty-and-realistic where most TV shows are never afraid to break out of their own molded continuity to do weird shit for the sake of doing weird shit. So while we're bound by mechanics and rules ("fetishes can't do that!") a good show introduces elements just on the sake of how well the story is served.

Maybe it's because some bad tropes have poisoned the well, I don't know. But think of the indignation of introducing... dunno, a pregnant Vampire to the average nWoD MU*. There'd be riots. Not saying it'd necessarily make for a good story, just that it wouldn't happen, because we are oddly enough running games with more rigid rules than multi-million dollar productions.

Is that weird?