Posts made by Arkandel

Well, now it's a very tiny d6. Enjoy!

Can you show a small screenshot of what the icon looks like for you right now?

Catch-22s are an unfortunate consequence of optimization in multiplayer games.

Case in point, metrics like item level (which indicates how good your gear is) and raider IO (an addon/site for WoW that keeps track of your in-game achievements so it's a combination of your gear and skill).

On their own they fair ways to know how 'good' a player is; the idea is if your gear is crap maybe you're not ready for the highest level of content, since it'd require others to carry you.

The way it's quite often done - almost typically - instead is that people want content to be trivialized.

So for example even though a decent player with level 375 gear should be able to easily handle a Mythic 5 difficulty dungeon people will demand 390 instead; it's supply and demand, which cuts new alts from the progression chain unless they bring their own support network.

Which is pretty annoying for me right now as my new alt needs more gear and my guildmates (who're a blast to raid with, so I don't want to change guilds) don't really do Mythic+ at any level. So I have to rely on the raids to gear up, hoping things drop and basically having to be carried until they do, which I despise doing.

@silverfox said in How do you like things GMed?:

How do you approach GMing scenes? What's your way of putting method to the madness? Do you plan things out in depth, or just the broad strokes, or what? How do you decide what people @check and so forth?

The exact way of GMing, to me, isn't very important. It only becomes that for active characters with an existing, ongoing narrative you're trying to enrich and that's a bit of an edge case since most PCs don't fall into that category.

So if we're talking about people I'm not very well familiar with (say, a public +event everyone is allowed to join) my method is this: Give people stuff to do and let them have agency. Make sure to cover for passive players by hand-feeding them plot - you must never, ever be in a standstill where the GM is waiting on players to initiate something and the players are expecting the GM to 'start the next one'. There needs to always be a clear path to involvement. Always. No exceptions.

The only caveat here is if you get the kinds of players (who I love) who like to take charge... let them. Don't railroad it, that's reserved for situations where it's necessary because of the rule above. But provided someone wants to be in the driver's seat then I let them - I want them to - and be ready to respond as needed to expand the overall plot to cover whatever they're trying to do.

TL;DR: My main objective is to give thematic stuff to do for players who might not be engaged in meaningful plot just yet. If that is accomplished and they want more, they get to have it.

@Tinuviel I sometimes get spam e-mails in greek... generated through Google Translate.

Those are the best. Yeah guys, you sound super legitimate.

@Cupcake said in When To Stop Listening To Those Voices:

I know for massive scenes it's okay to page someone with an inquiry - the may have missed it in spam. I never assume in such circumstances I'm being ignored if it happens once or twice. But if I'm in a scene with half a dozen people and my poses aren't being acknowledged at all, or possibly consistently by the same people, am I just not giving enough?

Yeah, large scenes are a crapshoot. It's just a hell for everyone both to even track down all things relevant to them but also deciding which ones they would be responding to - or, hell, even remembering to do so.

For smaller scenes it depends. It could be that someone else has a specific agenda or it's in continuation of an earlier scene that your character is simply the plus-one to; a typical setup for it is romantic pursuits, where you just kind of unofficially get assigned to the fun, fun role of witnessing two people play the flirting dance.

It could also be stuff like... the scene's narrative is shifting towards something that you might miss. For example you go to a bar and think it's a light-hearted social engagement but there's underlying tension because half the people there are Carthian scum and the other half Invictus protocrats so your happy-go-lucky neutral character simply can't get traction.

As to what to do about it? It's easier to say what to not do - try to not take it personally, and don't change your goals to fit someone else's interests unless the two happen to align. It's just not worth it; finding angles that engage you, and partners who are engaged by them, is a far better strategy.

In other words if someone doesn't respond to you, other than for an one-time gentle reminder in case they missed it, fuck'em. Do your thing, and do it with those who enjoy your thing as well.

Which spheres will this game run after all?

@RnMissionRun Look at the URL you're trying to access.

https://musoapbox.net/https://musoapbox.net

@Auspice Ads are no problem. I watch Netflix because it has none; the moment it has some I will go back to torrents, which are ad- (and money-) free.

There are options. The industries involved should be reminded of it, because they've tried time after time to limit what and how we can watch and listen under their own terms and that didn't go over so very well.

@Auspice What I'm worried will happen is we'll revert back to basically the exact same setup as cable, but streamed. Obviously no one will pay for 4-5 different subscriptions and switch between Netflix, HBO, Disney, Amazon, etc... so it will come down to whatever compromises the market will tolerate in exchange for affordable, usable bundling.

@Auspice I find a lot of the criticism leveraged against Netflix is because of things they are literally not allowed to do although they'd love to. For example in Canada a common one is "it doesn't give me the same selection as in the US unless I use a VPN".

Do you think they don't want to?

@Kestrel said in MU Things I Love:

This is a quirk, right? Am I weird for getting a kick out of this?

You could play a perfectly well adjusted, well behaved, normal likable person who does everything right. Those are a blast to play with.

@Testament said in General Video Game Thread:

@Arkandel I'm not telling anyone to not play it, though? I was just detailing my impressions from playing the game for about 30 hours or so and I felt like I was able to give a somewhat coherent quick review of what I thought.

Sure, and either way it's perfectly fine to give a bad review of anything. "Hey, I tried $game and it sucks, you guys" is a-okay.

But to go to a thread someone is asking a question about $game - which implies they happen to like or at the very least they're still interested in it - to shit all over the whole thing is just plain ignorant. It's basically screaming "Stop LIKING this thing I don't like!" at someone.

@Pandora Well since you posted about it maybe that's a self-solved problem.

@surreality I'm not worried people are talking shit about me all the time simply because most people don't think about me... almost ever.

That's about it. It's true for just about everyone.

Do you know how sometimes you hate to be on the same side of an argument as some people?

I'm an avid WoW player and I more than agree there are issues with this expansion on many levels, but damn if the negativity online isn't getting to me.

Case in point, there was a Reddit thread this morning in which someone was asking "hey, I want to roll a new alt for arenas, would you recommend a Mage or Warlock?".

There were 9 replies on that question. Four of them - by different people - were variations of "this game sucks, go play something else, it's circling the drain".

Like, fuck off people.

I don't care too much for writing with an agenda. But I quite intensely dislike judging writing based on an agenda, too, let alone going out of one's way to damage writing one is somehow offended by by proxy.

A villain is defined by performing villainous acts. If they happen to not be to your liking then don't buy the product, but this trend of actively campaigning against products - or writers - because of the material itself gives me the creeps. It's no less than organized attempts at censorship.

There is certainly material that shouldn't see the light of day and that's covered in many countries' hate speech laws.

@Auspice To be fair, the worst physical pain I've ever experienced in my life - bar none - was a cracked, infected tooth. It was near the back of my mouth and had it happen on a Thursday night when I lived in a small city for a while whose dentists were all going to a convention for the weekend.

That weekend. Was not. Fun. I couldn't sleep, I could barely function.

I suspect human life before reliable dentistry was not a lot of fun a lot of the time.

@mietze Yeah, that's exactly what I do - brush before bed and in the morning. My mouth is fine, my breath is clean and the teeth look pretty white to me.

@Cupcake said in When To Stop Listening To Those Voices:

I keep trying to remind myself that what I feel is real, but it also isn't true. I just really need to stick it until the proof of it not being true outweighs the anxiety.

This is my take on it: When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

If you are finding RP, especially with the same people over a reasonably long period of time, it's because they want to RP with you. If they didn't they'd avoid you, and if they had other things they preferred to do instead they'd be doing them.

Obviously it's not as easy as telling yourself "okay, I have nothing to worry about so I'll stop worrying about it" since that's not how emotions work, but just look at what people are doing. That's the source of truth.