Best posts made by bored

@Arkandel Sure. Your argument is effectively @Ganymede's argument that we've had on this topic elsewhere.

I don't disagree with your conclusion, I just stress that you avoid the problem by addressing that 'if'. If FCs are important? Are they ever justifed for all the crapton of BS they cause?

In my MUing history, the answer is a resounding no. Can I think of good RPers who were good on FCs? Sure. But not one of those games didn't also have total jackasses on them too, or have the good ones still be elitist twats, or any other number of problems. I just don't see a benefit to MUing caste systems, which is what this shit boils down to: an elite caste of players, and then a bunch of shmucks.

And the members of this elite caste? Maybe slightly better RPers than average who are maybe are less dickish than average, all based on the totally unbiased judgment of their closest buddies.

So yeah, fuck all of that noise, every single time. If 'feature' roles are important to the theme, OK, but every single player needs to qualify for them alongside their pleb alts. That's the only way it's not a nepotistic shitshow, every single time.

@Bananerz I think you're (possibly vastly) underestimating the appeal, even with code limitations.

So you may want to seriously consider when you say 'planned to ... be interesting and engaged with a few players' how you will deal if you get more. You may need to consider player caps (and after the Spirit Lake situation, raise them in advance) if you're planning on more intimate STing that won't support a literal horde of people.

Because... I think you're going to get a horde of people.

An actual correct usage of FS3.

+1 just for that.

@Ghost said in Good TV:

Even better? I get the sense that the fans of the books and games didn't care at all about the casting of Yen and Triss that it didn't even register. People WANTED this.

It must be nice being this naively positive

@Apu I'm sure that nearly all staff everywhere come in with, at the very least, some mild self-delusion that they're going to be fair, with the goal of 'not being like that'; it's fairly rare for staffers to be actual, intentional, self-aware tyrants. It's generally the case that they think FCs will enliven the game, not shut out 90% of the playerbase. No one goes in with the aim of 'this will really make my game suck, yeah!'

At the same time, I restate my observation that the rate at which they succeed in these aspirations is 0%. Outside of all/mostly-FC games like comicverse kind of stuff, FCs basically always end up being a net negative. That doesn't invalidate the one time someone knew someone who played a really hot er I mean well-characterized Princess Leia, but generally I find these games worse off for the attempts.

I am aware of the FFG stuff, and keeping my eyes on the progress (although they definitely seem more interested in the LCG than the RPG). I do like the new storyline from the LCG (an alternate history that diverges at a successful Scorpion Clan coup), so I'm hopeful. However, seeing a lot of the issues I had with Edge of the Empire, if their take on L5R uses similar mechanics I don't know that it will be a great fit (either for me personally, or for MUing).

That said, AEG's L5R 4th ed is quite complete (it had a huge run of splat books covering... pretty much anything you'd ever need, I think) and quite sufficient to run the game, including one in any timeline you like, including the new LCG one. Many of the older books are also still usable, particularly setting books (Shout out to City of Lies) and adventures, since converting among editions is usually pretty trivial. It being unsupported really has no impact on that, any more than people have had to stop playing their favorite D&D edition because newer ones came around.

I'd also add that L5R is really a game about the setting and the lore. If you love that, the system side of things is probably secondary. But this also circles back to my old game and why it failed, which had a lot to do with lack of familiarity in the setting and difficulty among new players in figuring out how to RP in it. Honor and the particulars of Rokugani etiquette are easy things to get wrong and the setting can be pretty punishing when you do (and I even intentionally dialed it down by setting the game in a rowdy Crab port).

@three-eyed-crow Well, Firan was huge and often lethal on pretty large scales, but yeah, it did have some other characteristics.

So you're right, it might not promote a huge game. But we talk a lot about quality vs. quantity here, so that's not necessarily what should be the only goal. There are also probably ways to tune the lethality a bit so that people can volunteer for it or avoid it. IE, flag specially dangerous missions for being so, and let the high risk folks throw themselves at those if they want.

Anyway, I'm definitely not promoting this as a right-way/wrong-way kind of situation, it's obviously not that and I like the idea enough I'd play either way. Just expressing that I think there is some desire out there for a more lethal setting and that it could help keep it fresh in ways that some games in related genres struggle with.

(double for latepost)

@Kestrel

Your willingness to wear your beliefs on your sleeve is your own choice, though. In the United States (and even moreso in Europe, really), we do enshrine a certain right to privacy, particularly as in regards to political belief. This is to ensure people retain a freedom to such beliefs, and we can look to easy examples of what happens when it is not upheld (ie, McCarthyism etc). This is all at least in theory anyway, as there's another thread discussing how this may be less true in practice, where people's reactions to that knowledge were generally alarmed. Because we expect that we can keep those things to ourselves if we choose.

So its clear: I'm not advocating that people be immune to consequence for their actions where they express certain beliefs, but instead that there be laws and standards related online bullying, threats, and violation/dissemination of PII. We actually do have laws for some of those things, but they only seem to apply in the meat/paper world. Online, mob justice is supreme, and it feels oh so wonderful until you're the target.

(I am not that interested in debating the specifics of a rally beyond what I've said already to the lawyer catbot: it's public action so it mitigates privacy).

It wasn't my intent to 'bash' the game, but to offer vigorous and honest criticism. While an open alpha may not be an invitation for a popularity contest on MSB to determine policy, it is a moment in time where the game creators can probably make more use of criticism than at any other time. That they choose not to is fine, but I'm not going to sugar coat how bad an idea I think FCs are (the same way I won't really sit and equivocate on the typical nepotistic tier/feature character stuff in other genres; it's always a shitshow, and you're bad for doing it, and no your explanation as to why you're not bad isn't an exception).

The bukkake thing was just a callback to a prior joke. I thought it was a humorous summary of one (of many) issues with FCs, how they tend to get into very non-canon relationships that are often cringeworthy and theme-damaging.

@scourge I mean, I definitely agree with you. I imagine most MUers aside from a few hardcore comic types (which I think are the minority of the board regulars, though the UH drama has brought some out) are a lot more mentally invested in 90s Cartoon X-Men as their single greatest influence, 80s-hair Glamazon Rogue included. Of course, even then Jean is mostly just Jean, not Phoenix other than as a plot point, so I still chalk that one up to people being twinkish.

Anyway, I'm just not sure how you gracefully address the (former) issue on a game like this.

@TiredEwok Tbh I'm not sure that expectation will hold up for a lot of the early content? The difficultly of a lot of old wow content was in learning basic techniques and coordination. No one knew anything and it was tons of guesswork and fiddling around in an era before good wikis.

I know one of the devs actually spoke about this when they were talking about deciding to use the final patch state for itemization and bosses (instead of actually updating with their content phases): that they can't really restore the original growing experience because a lot of it was wrapped up in bugs, constant balance changes, and player learning. (Examples given were major boss bugs like those on Rag and C'thun, or people finally working out a strat for Nef's drakonids).

I think the 'the syntax has to be completely the same or the oldbies will rebel' is... exaggeration by the oldies for the sake of hating change (like most people do). Push come to shove, I do think people will play where they can play, so long as its achieving the functionality they desire. The key thing is... 'simplifying' or 'modernizing' the syntax doesn't guarantee that functionality remains untouched. That's what why Storium failed to hold MUers.

Its important to differentiate syntax from function. You can pretty things up or organize them how you like, but in a text interface how far can you get from '(qualified)verb objectlist' as your basic template? Sure, you can do 'get towel from basket' vs. 'get basket's towl' vs 'get/container basket towel'. You can do attack/ranged shotgun/dragonsbreath=punk imma pk vs... I dunno, some other horrendously complex thing, but all of those are going to hit limits based on simply what info the command needs to parse. In the first one always requires 4 pieces of information, a general command (get), a switch to a specific form of the command (/container, 's, from) and the two targets.

I'm not sure how you ever get away from that in text. And making buttons for web interfaces will still face that problem assuming you want that functionality - you don't just need an attack button, you need a pulldown for the weapon and ammo, maybe a list to click the target, etc.

@thatguythere said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I know @Arkandel said elsewhere we shouldn't need rules not the be asses (paraphrasing) but the simple fact that moderation was desired kind of shows that to not really be the case.

It's not about needing rules to not do it. Rules won't stop people from being and 'ass', because what constitutes 'an ass' is wildly subjective. Probably the large majority of arguments in this forum have one or both parties thinking the other is a total unmitigated jackass, and many of the people reading agreeing one way or another. If you start modding that, you are 100% now picking winners and censoring opinions.

We need rules for over the top behavior so that behavior is actionable based on a standard. Because they're new, they should be specific, clear, and limited in scope to particular areas of the forum. Pure ad hominem being sent to Hog and derails being branched to their own threads is more than sufficient (especially as we can already see that bad actors can and are taking advantage of the modding to hide their behavior).

@Auspice said in General Video Game Thread:

It's also a good option for people who don't want to touch Epic!

Yeah that's the major factor, just that it has some exclusives. I generally prefer things on Steam just for keeping my library, achievements, etc in the same place, but if I can't stand the wait I may as well also pay a lot less money.

Is it weird that it feels to me that base FS3 Ares would be better to use than the FFG thing? Primarily because among the short list of things it's actually designed for includes flying space fighters around and shooting each other?

Are people (out of those here, I guess) very intrinsically interested in any of the particular (d6/d20/dFunnySymbols) systems? Just kind of curious. I've talked a bit about how I think FFG's system is a terrible choice for MUing, but it's not like the prior ones are all that great either.

So... it took one argument about moderation and we already have the mods being abusive, using 'mod voice' to defend each other from criticism, and me upvoting @Kanye-Qwest.

I'll add that while I'm fine with nothing changing, if you're going to change things, I agree very strongly that it needs to be in the way @lithium and some others have suggested, ie with clear posted rules of what is ok and not-ok in every forum area. This is another place where my prior (and agreed-with-in-principle, at that time) suggestion of restructuring the boards might help, as it's a lot easier to have heavy handed moderation if you designate areas as the 'be nice, no really, we will ban the fuck out of you' vs. 'critical analysis, try and put some factual content in your posts' vs 'poo and popcorn and gifs' areas. I don't mind carebear zones for those who are more comfortable there, nor Hog behavior being clearly enforced to it.

Outside of some hard rules, I have zero faith in it being applied even remotely fairly consistently, for the reasons we've seen covered pretty heavily. Equal behavior is frequently treated very differently here, and no volume of 'we can totally be objective!' protest is going to make me actually believe that. So if you're going to do it you need at least some pretense of standards, as well as presumably some method of addressing/appealing mod behavior.

I should also add, as much as she decided the best way to keep this thread positive would be to dare me to derail it and personally attack her, this would actually benefit @Auspice. When people disagreed with her modding, they had no recourse but to burn effigies in the public square. If there are rules to point at, and a process (ie message @Arkandel or w/e), maybe that could happen less. As mods you're never going to escape the idea that this forum pretty much has its roots in having a venue to circumvent unchecked, unanswerable, unquestionable authority, so if you want to be active you probably have to balance it with a certain level of self-restraint and transparency.

I tried 4T, but it never felt like the theme gel'ed and it had some demographic issues that plague these games when they don't get larger playerbases.

I think to answer the general question of why there aren't bigger/more successful games... is that UH is what you get. Even if you remove/ignore the creeper stuff, it's a huge +who list with lots of alt-camping, lack of ready access to core rp, etc. And the games just all tend to trend this way. A lot of people just want to have their favorite characters and maybe do personal RP/TS on them, but the motivation to do plots, public rp, etc seems minimal, and is further complicated by the wide selections of characters creating inconsistent tones, power imbalances, etc that often ruin that RP when it does happen.

In a way, these games almost run themselves, but getting them past a very low bar of 'people log in and chat on Super-aliases' is a much more difficult process.

@arkandel Fire the new mods.

You've admitted we're testing, the first test failed.

Next: Dial it back. Try again with a medium point of moderation between what you tried here and what existed before. I know you feel people 'wanted more,' but you've taken this as a mandate for sweeping reform that doesn't exist.

If you want an example that doesn't have to do with @Auspice and @Ganymede acting like tools, how about the fact that the current moderation regime/system/rules/whatever you want to call it seems to be incapable of supporting a thread that exemplifies MSB's purpose. At no point should we feel like our rules exist to protect the dishonest and abusive garbage-people that comprise UH's staff, and yet it seems like the rules have largely served their interests over ours, with a thread about legitimately terrible people being over-moderated, chopped up, etc.

There's a difference between personal attacks and calling legitimately vile people what they are, and you don't seem to be able to make the distinction in the current framework.

@arkandel It's not that we can't express ourselves. We can. I'm Ok if it becomes the forum norm that anyone calling someone a cunt or a nazi or whatever just gets their post deleted. Everywhere if you want, even on Hog.

What I mind is that it seems difficult to properly condemn something that really deserves it without that thread ultimately getting sent to the Hog pit. Again, this has happened, and in the process you have burried, to the benefit of Claremont & co, for instance a player talking, in detail, about the specifics of the circumstances under which she was sexually harassed. That is a thing you have done, even while we write and upvote post after post about how we really ought to encourage this kind of reporting!

The approach is something along the lines of one bad apple spoiling the bunch, and... it's the internet. Every bunch will get spoiled, even if we police ourselves perfectly, because even then 1-day posters can come and shit on things. You need some tolerance for things to get, if not personally nasty, at least viciously condemning of things that deserve it.