Posts made by bear_necessities

@Roz Yeah you're probably right, it's really just a personal thing I've felt which is why I tried to address it as a "me" statement and not a general one lol

@Roz Yeah I mean it's always cool to ask your playerbase what they are enjoying, what they want more of, etc. I would expect staff to have the pulse of the game. But a 'why aren't you playing here' poll seems... different? from what you are talking about.

@Seraphim73 I don't play your game but this recent dip in activity looks really new for you guys. But it's also October, when games traditionally see a dip in activity due to the ramp up of holidays, etc., along with the added stress of kids still out of school and work still needing to be done. You may also be seeing a decline of activity due to you being at the "end" of a plot, whereas games like The Network are at the beginning of a new plot, so more people might feel like they can get their foot in the door there right now and might be playing TSS less at the moment.

I'm not really keen on the idea of polling the playerbase in general bc I don't feel like it really does anything except make people start thinking the game is on it's last legs? If I were you I would just head into the next adventure. As long as you & Blu are actively running plots that aren't blocked to people, people will play.

@Ghost said in Is this hobby on it's last legs?:

To be fair, Firan had all kinds of coded/creep bizarre

I mean, to be fair, I played Firan for 3 years and was never aware of the 'secret game within the game' and I know a lot of people who were not aware of it either until after the game was already closed.

That's still not the point. Arx filled the hole that Firan left in the community. Another game would fill the hole left by Arx. The hobby is not dying.

The popularity of Arx really just proves there's a high demand for games like it, not that the HOBBY WOULD DIE OMG without it.

Firan had a similiar sized playerbase. When it closed down, the hobby didn't die. Arx opened up eventually and people came. If Arx closed down tomorrow, someone somewhere would build a similar style game and people will come and 2 years from now we'll have the same discussion about how the hobby will DIE if SheepGoatSimulatorMU closed down.

If you build it, they will come.

Most of us are quite happy with games that have a 10-20 active sized playerbase and would like more of those.

ETA: I think there's a huge untapped potential in original themed L&L MUSHes with low fantasy elements like Arx. I would argue that adding another game like that to the queue would be immensely popular and you wouldn't even need anywhere near the amount of systems that Arx has. People just want to play that genre.

@tangent what game lol

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Is this hobby on it's last legs?:

at this time, the game needs to be casual friendly.

This isn't a 2020 issue at all. People have had trouble getting into games long before this year because they are not casual friendly. It's not going to go away once 2020 stops sucking. Like, being casual friendly is something most games should strive for?

Anyway, we have had this discussion like 300000000 times. The hobby isn't dying. The tentpole games are out there. Ares has several active games.

I really wouldn't worry too much about the feedback you get here. I tend not to get too interested in games that are at the base-concept level because 9 times out of 10 they won't see the light of day and I don't want to get invested or excited. Probably a lot of other people like that.

That being said - build it and they will come. Really, if you are active as a staffer and running plot scenes regularly, you'll have people that will play.

@SixRegrets You can customize stats and attributes on FS3 pretty easily so I think that would work for what you want.

Anyway, this sounds fun and I would play.

I'm not entirely sure why you would need an entire customized system. Are the PCs in this game not "normal"? i.e. do they have supernatural powers?

@Roz said in General Video Game Thread:

Final Fantasy XVI announced for PS5.

The graphics don't look great but I will be cautiously optimistic. I was not a fan of the fighting system from FF: Dudes with Car, and it looks like they are using that again Hopefully you don't have to buy a shit ton of DLC for the entire story again..

@il-volpe Sounds like you got it figured out. Good luck with the project!

@il-volpe I'd really nail down the game set-up before you even begin to worry about the time period. Having hedges + graduate students + Brakebills students + whatever is quite a large spread, and you really run the risk of cliques icing people out of plots, especially if there's not a common goal to unite them all.

Why not make a game about hedges? The hedge community has a lot of interesting aspects to it and could be a good game. It would attract people (like me) who are particularly meh about playing The Magicians: Harry Potter Edition and don't want to play magic college students going to classes.

@il-volpe said in 'The Magicians' again -- time period?:

major part of setting is a school from which you graduate, people may want time to go faster so it's conceivable to ICly complete the program within the MU's lifespan.

If the major part of the setting is a school from which you graduate, why would you want IC time to go fast and conceivably have people graduating and not interacting with the main setting?

I'm a fan of faster time pacing as long as there's a lot of handwavium that plots aren't timeblocked. But that being said like ... think of your setting and try to be realistic about it, because if the POINT OF THE GAME is to be a student at Brakebills (and there's nothing to do past the point of being a student), then maybe don't speed-rush it to graduation.

If you're looking for a way to get rid of the canon characters (which I would highly recommend), there's already a convenient plot device to do that without having to go back in time. Use one of the timelines where they didn't succeed in killing the Beast and all died. Or say they all died after a different point and use that as your jumping off period.

I would go modern, or a few years into the future only.

I'm gonna go one step ahead and say don't base your game in Brakebills. The interesting part about the Magicians wasn't the magic university, it was Fillory.

@Pyrephox I can see the difference. Like, opening a scene can be perceived to take a commitment that grid-sitting doesn't. I have (far too) often gone out to sit on the grid and decide 5-10 minutes later that I don't even really want to BE there, and I can just ninja back into my hole without really anybody noticing. But if I open a scene, I'm committing to RPing at that moment (and while I realize I could just easily... close the scene and ninja back into my hole, it "feels" different).

I don't know the solution for that. I just understand the feels.

I do think anything between 24-48 hours is a sweet spot to have scenes auto-closed, particularly with the convenience of the restart button.

Even in the extreme cases, throwing an OOC to keep the scene open is not that hard, even if it might be a slight annoyance.

I don't think this is a problem that can be solved with additional code. I don't even know if it is a problem. Like it sucks that there aren't more games where "live" RP is regularly happening, but it seems like more of a "me" problem than a code problem.

@Cobaltasaurus said in Euphoria - Feedback:

Then I spoke with ESG about how things were going and how I saw a lot of people apping for the department heads and not being particularly active

Yeah so I mean one thing I would tell you is to not worry about people apping "leadership" positions and idling out. I personally would not put any particular emphasis on being a leader because "trickle down" rp never works out the way you want it to and it puts a lot of stress a leadership position to begin with. In fact, I wouldn't pin plot on any specific rank/position/race/etc and just spread it out as evenly as possible.

@Sunny thanks for clarifying, I think what you said makes sense.

@Ganymede 100% agree.

I rarely do asynchronous RP and nothing turns me off more from a game than seeing a bunch of scenes (ESPECIALLY plot scenes) that have been going on for days/weeks/sometimes even months. I'm glad Ares has given people the ability to slow-scene and I'll take advantage of it sometimes, but if the scene is going on for longer than like 2 days, I'm out.