Posts made by bored

@Packrat

So, I don't disagree that probably everyone felt or to some degree was being fucked over by Paulus. 100%, he was the #1 problem, as I've been saying. The only point I'm trying to make re: Custodius is that even if everyone felt whatever, the situation was not in any way balanced. 'No one is ever happy' is a universal symptom of MU players in general, and can be somewhat safely ignored as long there's some underlying fairness. But the game did not have underlying fairness. Not everyone was playing the same game. Custodius wasn't the plague that killed the game, but Paulus enabling him was an example of his general bad staffing.

Amusingly, so was your later PC. That's just a continuation of their typical moronic policy of handing out character quality by how OMG AWESOME they thought the concept was and how much coffee they had. BG coolness (beyond a degree of ascertaining basic thematic comprehension) determining power level was one of the big problems, so were random MASSIVE ARMIES appearing out of the blue for some players while others got 100 dudes. This is why games need real cg systems where people spend points for their shit.

Anyway, you're mostly right about everything else, especially how the scale of conflict and big battles should have been handled. It was far too easy for PCs to lose everything and almost impossible for them to gain anything... unless it was the main force under Custodius and the Li Halan guy who just steamrolled the 'main' battles

@Packrat said in Fading Suns 2017:

@bored said in Fading Suns 2017:

And since @packrat is around and was involved, maybe he has some ideas for recapturing some of the magic without the suck.

This is actually something I have put extensive thought into, both whilst I was on the game (trying to persuade other staff to change things) and afterwards.

It's a pretty good list. I think code/documentation wise, it's probably also a good idea to be more realistic about what you can do. Paulus wanted CK2 on a Mush, where even the most advanced custom coded system (that you probably won't have) can't handle something half that complex.

That said some of the more common refrains about Star Crusade were more due to the aforementioned information vacuum and lack of feedback or control than favoritism or (further) insanity. For example the Kurgan were not in fact a monolith or uniformly engaged in the war, Antonio was not getting preferentially attacked arbitrarily, it was because he was attacking everyone without regard to which faction they belonged to then having his murderous fanatic horde slaughter the populace. (On the other hand, he had an entirely expendable fanatic horde and was overall by far the more militarily powerful count, especially as he was the best commander out of them).

Other people were sending letters to Kurgan leaders and/or bribing them, Amber was I think outright paying tribute to one of the big Kurgans to leave her alone

Ehn. This is a little patronizing. There was an info vacuum, but that had more to do with what the Kurgans actually had or could do, or where our troops were or silly things like that. No one was confused/missing any of this stuff you just mentioned (the Kurgan factions were brought up constantly and we all knew about the bribes).

Being able to pay the bribes without facing poverty or massive backlash from the offworlders is why it was favoritism. I had an alt on the main crusade front and every battle was a cakewalk. So apparently the Kurgan factions were so disorganized they couldn't mount the slightest defense for the main objective, but could simultaneously come together to muster armies in the thousands or tens of thousands to fight other fronts. You can wrap it up in theme, but when half the players are on Easy difficulty and the others are on Nightmare, that stops being theme and becomes favoritism of a sort.

@mietze said in Fading Suns 2017:

Though....kinda like certain spheres in WoD you'd probably get the same people who are still grudge holding over the last 3 FS games (I remember people complaining about each other in pages to me about what so and so had done on the FS game that ended like 10 years before Star Crusade!! And I thought vampire and changeling players were bad!)

So probably a very clear, sane, consistent way to deal with tantrums would be best. I think by and large people could get along, with that in place.

This is the one reason I definitely think you should avoid having a very hierarchical setup to start and lean toward more strict-cgen, because this is a big part of what happened on SC. Old grudges are one thing. Old grudges turn into 'You let THAT guy have a position?!?!?!' when the setup is inherently uneven.

Custodius, in the grand scheme, didn't do much that was... super harmful or obviously cheating. But his existence was a mark of favoritism and it polarized everything into a lot of us-vs-them. 'Oh, so in so is so and so's friend and they have a position now so.... OMG THE WORLD IS ENDING.' Etc.

@surreality Bitch, we done. Follow me around with your stalkery nonsense if you want, but I stopped having any interest in interacting you when I stopped posting in your thread a month ago. Take a hint and move on.

@deadculture I don't even know what's happening here.

Apparently I'm evil, I guess for pointing that 'the Firan players who ruined SC' were 1) mostly just normal players, the same as you find anywhere (I know for a fact many of them played WoD too) and 2) that the game had strengths aside from its weaknesses?

@surreality You're acting like the people you whine about harassing you everywhere. You really seem like a mental health case, and that this hobby is something you shouldn't be involved in.

@deadculture This is the point where @surreality, despite claiming she has me on ignore, follows me around snarking at my posts.

Because she's a mature, well-balanced adult, you know?

@HelloProject said in Fading Suns 2017:

@bored I've been on 100+ games and I can assure you that this behavior is the minority, being decent and not a literal monster is not some unique special snowflake thing.

There's always at least one or two shitty players, but for most of a game being that way? Yeah, no.

So... 'most of the game' were 'literal monsters'? Yeah, OK. You're definitely not in crazy hyperbole territory, or anything. Please show us the way, sensei! Since apparently we're all fucking moron barbarians here while you're playing thousands of wonderful games with no problems?

...

Getting away from the crazy here, I feel like this is the kind of discussion that makes getting anywhere useful in the hobby impossible. I'm probably guilty of it, and I'm sure I've been more critical of both Custodius and even Paulus in prior threads on this topic. But it's silly to talk about games like they're full of monstrous evil people and kind of an abdication of personal responsibility.

Weirdly, I think that SC was a better game than the average. It was far more interesting and had way more activity and crap going than a contemporary analogue like 5th World. A hell of a lot happened in a short period of time, and the 'literally monstrous' toxicity included a lot of active politics, war stories, etc. If anything, I think it sort of demonstrates how thin the line between greatness and garbage is. Paulus could probably have been ... even 20% less of a jerk, not invited (or asked to leave) a single problem player, and it could have gone on a year more easily. And I'd probably take a year or two of solid plots and fairly active politics over 5 years of 'PrP sandbox WoD game/Generic FS3 L&L #152'.

And since @packrat is around and was involved, maybe he has some ideas for recapturing some of the magic without the suck.

@HelloProject said in Fading Suns 2017:

@bored I don't know about "any other game", since that shit seems pretty unique to WoD and that specific Fading Suns game, and I'm assuming Firan

... and to every L&L game, and to Pern games, and to ...

I mean, if you play with some awesome other genre of people who are totally immune to this high school shit, by all means, invite them along with you to some of our 'inferior' games and show us how to behave? Sarcasm aside, this is just normal (if shitty) human behavior.

@deadculture

Yep. The mousse bit was classic Paulus just clearly not really giving a shit.

@HelloProject

My point isn't that it didn't happen, it's that it was nothing special compared to any other game, including every WoD game ever. People play with their friends (shocking) and when the setting includes hierarchical political divisions and PvP, you naturally get people teaming up with their friends to fight their other groups of friends. That will and does happen 110% of the time, it wasn't anything special on the game or what killed it. Like, name something along those lines that killed the game.

I'm guessing you can't. Because what killed the game in the long run wasn't any of the petty PvP politics stuff (arguably, that actually kept it going, or at least active - do you remember the 10 hour council meetings?). It was the war shit. I quit after I gathered like a huge coalition to win that big battle... and then had him pull off the 'betrayal' thing (that we actually saw coming and made precautions against, but he just ignored those) along with then declaring the big battle meaningless and nothing gained by winning it. Antonio got tired of having to fight the entire Kurgan fleet solo while it blissfully sailed past the capital, Custodius' shit, etc and basically took the longest possible path possible to attack him directly. I dunno exactly why @Apollonius quit (or I forget) but I assume it had to do with some of the same military issues (I was his vassal) and lack of any ability to really move forward with his Jakovian shit because, you know, Paulus was too busy TSing in the 'White Room.'

People mostly gave up because the war stuff was uneven, unfun, unpredictable, and ultimately seemed unwinnable, except when it was a total cake walk. It was just not that fun after a while.

@deadculture I mean, I have no issue either way. The special stuff is fine as long as people are paying for it in cgen, which is exactly the same issues for Psis, Nobles, etc in FS. Granted it might not all be balanced, but at least normally if you're not getting that fancy garbage you're getting extra tours etc to make up for it.

But I agree any space fantasy thing could probably work. FS is just Dune + 40K. So you could do Dune (as mentioned) or 40K (in any of its many varieties - I got to play some Deathwatch recently in my VTT and had fun burninating heretics) or whatever. Unique theme generic FS3 wouldn't even bother me that much, beyond the usual system gripes that a half-decent coder could probably fix.

@HelloProject said in Fading Suns 2017:

It would have helped if Firan players weren't OOCly trying to dick each other over and pretty much hijacked the game with their bullshit.

And also that it wasn't run by a literal plot thief.

Otherwise, Star Crusade had everything going for it.

It wasn't 'The Firan players.' Custodius was someone Paulus knew from long beforehand on prior FS games, and the fact that he happened to have joined on Firan in the meantime was pretty irrelevant. Plenty of us came from Firan who were not total dickholes (even if you want to include me as a total dickhole). Despite Paulus' claim that the old problem people would be on some kind of careful probation, Custodius got not just a Count, but a Count who was closely tied to the vastly more powerful NPC villains (and thus immune to them attacking, like they did to everyone else) while simultaneously being the son of the Top Leader Guy of the PCs. So there were some very unrelated to Firan issues there.

But you know what? That wasn't even the big problem. The amount of damage Custodius did... was pretty minor? Like, I can't think of much he actively did, beyond not getting fucked over the way everyone else got fucked over. The favoritism was obvious, he got plot focus, no real threats internal or external like everyone else did, but that was about it. Aside from self-aggrandizement, he didn't DO much.

The actual problem was simply Paulus and Lextius' staffing of the overarching military plot, which involved a lot of lack of clarity, arbitrary decisions, and things almost always going badly for the PCs no matter how well we planned, what stuff we had, etc. And as much as they were assholes (or at least definitely Paulus), I won't even put it all on malice. That's the kind of fallacy we get into as MUers, assuming evil intent where stupidity and shitty staffing is usually 99% to blame for everything. They weren't sure of the numbers, weren't sure how different toys would actually work in practice (hence the issues dealing with Antonio's assault lander or Hassan's artillery thing that could literally shoot the entire map). It was always the standard 'GM upset that their stuff gets solved too easily' response: 'Oh, you have this toy that makes our threat trivial?' 'It doesn't work for some reason.' 'Oh you finally won a decisive battle? You get betrayed and the battle causes no meaningful casualties so its a net loss.'

So that was the big problem. That, and how Paulus was more interested in doing his private Jakovian demon TS plots with all the female Decados players than actually running a game

Every other criticism, valid or not, was no more than standard MU BS, people bitching and sniping and whining about wronfun RP or so and so having better toys.Yeah, maybe @Apollonius shouldn't have been given a leader either, or Antonio was a twink-statted god compared to everyone else, or there was a Sexy Party once in the middle of a WAR!?!?!, or X or Y Count had too many OOC friends in faction Z (everyone was equally guilty of this)? All of that stuff was pretty minor compared to the war staffing. And it's stuff we see on every game.

So.... I don't see any reason not to do another one. The interest is there. Just don't be Paulus, don't hand out a bunch of twink-statted counts (at least without people paying for the titles like the rules say you do), and you'll probably have a game.

It's not a rule of the thread, it's a rule of internet and argument in general. Seriously, keep trying to get in the last jab. It will totally work!

Again: last poo-fling, or be mature and move on. You only get to pick one!

Blame @Ghost. But I think I've said all that's necessary.

There's no link, because I don't have one, which is why @Ghost is hilarious. It's the same thing we've talked about in the past, but people are busy etc. There was a point where we had someone possibly also interested in helping but I haven't talked to him in a while (he's more @Jealousy's contact than mine), but there hasn't been much motion on it.

Edit: if it ever happens you'll definitely get word as I know 7S is your jam, but I'm not very focused on it.

@deadculture

Mine that will never happen because you and other people are too lazy to help His thesis is that I am criticizing @surreality to sink her game as potential competition to my likely-will-never-happen game.

@surreality said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

@bored said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

OK. I clicked through the one link you gave and skimmed a couple lines and there was something-something about rape (and his handle is shang related).

REAP, not rape. That is not a typo. Dude would create a character, play for like... two days, then +suicide the character only to repeat the process (endlessly) for like... years. So he got the nickname 'the serial REAPist, because he... kept reaping his characters over and over again. Like it even says in the damn post.

Ok. Again, I clicked the link, skimmed a second, and then went back. I read it incorrectly and correlated it with other posts you've made about sexual harassment/stalkers/etc. It was an error. Your 'guy who trolls me likes you therefore you=troll' logic is still not actual logic..

And if you had said "I don't like aliens/Cthulhu' instead of 'it's always end of the world plots and Cthulhu (when the latter isn't even a thing)', not a peep. Nope, you went to assumption land.

Except that's a total re-framing of events, not how they actually happened. You reacted to that post in a fairly polite and friendly way (read your post immediately following it), explaining that you were going for something different from how Cthulhu stuff normally occurs (say on TR, whatever). Our discussion was still polite and non-trolly at that point. Only in retrospect have you decided to re-frame things as @bored = poo flinging troll monkey shitting everywhere for the entire thread. This is the same technique as Gany, manipulative lawyer-ing.

And if people didn't begin with completely ignoring what I asked folks to focus on and didn't insist that a single bar that not every character on the grid would access would be an enormous problem, maybe we wouldn't be here.

You have a pirate themed game where some (probably large) portion of the game will be able to breathe water, while another will not. I don't think I or anyone else was crazy to bring up this issue. You've assured us you're aware of it and will be careful, which is fine. That doesn't make us trolls for bringing it up.

This is not being defensive.

I'm sure.

No, I am annoyed as hell.

You're annoyed because you're being defensive and I'm not capitulating, and it's really obvious (see: omg someone is upvoting him, what the hell?!?!?!). You want the last (negative) word, which is basically never how it works. Either you get to fling shit in the monkey pit, or you get to be mature and walk away, you don't get both.

I specifically and explicitly did not show off the project, and stated so clearly. If I was showing off the project, you'd have a link to the wiki. You do not.

That's odd, I thought you posted stuff about a game including a summary of inspirations and vague outlines of the setting and races.

Again, you're trying to play a game here, where you want to show something and want to talk about it but then you want to define it as not-that-thing so people cannot talk about it.

I asked three questions based on a series of general criteria, the end. You have not been shown shit other than a logo image, you rampaging jackass.

Honestly? Fuck you, and fuck this.

You're going to handle the stress and criticism of running the actual game really well, I can tell.

@surreality said in Strange Game Dev Inquiries from surreality (condensed):

That wasn't what I was in any way trying to imply. Dude was never any kind of sexual predator, just a very mean-spirited troll. There's a link to his trolling craziness... somewhere in scrollback at this point.

OK. I clicked through the one link you gave and skimmed a couple lines and there was something-something about rape (and his handle is shang related). I'm not about to read the post history of some random dude I've never heard of who happened to upvote me to spite some other person he doesn't like. I don't care about your drama with him! That being said, your whole 'this guy is bad and he likes your opinion so you should rethink your opinion' is dumb. Full stop. Hitler (yep, why not) liked dogs, or so I have heard. His positive view of dogs does not cause me to re-evaluate my own. It's not valid or persuasive logic and indicates a lack of ability to argue on the merits.

And quite frankly? Yes, you're annoying the shit out of me today because instead of actually getting to work on the game, I've had to spend a pile of time playing whack-a-mole addressing all of the worst case scenarios and fear-based assumptions

I haven't made you do anything, you're spending your time as you choose. If you think I'm just a troll, the proper response is to ignore me, which you've failed spectacularly at despite numerous opportunities. You've re-engaged once I've stopped at least twice (including very start of this whole thing). And if I'm 'forcing' you to address issues... sorry that the hobby has issues? I didn't create them, and I hate to break it to you but you'd have to address them at some point anyway.

you keep shooting off like you filled a potato gun with buckshot and pointed it at the thread. This is the kind of stuff I am talking about:

Hint: this is you re-opening another can of shit, just for the sake of it. You've given up on one line of argument (me accusing you of horrible corruption) and just picked another, for the purpose of... I dunno. I thought we'd actually come near civility with the last couple posts. Guess that's not satisfying for you?

...seriously. Buckshot. I could keep going here, but I think maybe you'll begin to see my point.

No, because It's seriously hyperbole.

You quote me 4 times without finding even more than 3 actual complaints. My 'buckshot' approach boils down to: 1) I don't like aliens/Cthulhu. 2) Cthlulu spawn are probably going to be most of the playerbase which takes it further away from the setting for me. 3) Don't split your population (which, again, is good advice and not a hostile criticism.) The funny thing is you've actually addressed all these issues pretty well, and if you left it to that, your thread wouldn't be such a tire fire.

This is not being defensive.

I'm sure.

It is being annoyed as hell that instead of waiting a little while to see what the thing is and how much that sucks, you seem eager to begin a bashing based on what you assume it will be and the worst aspects of all of those things. This sticks me in the position of badly explaining shit on the fly that I've already had to budget 2-3 RL months toward getting down in a draft form that I think will be ready for a rough review, and that is a shitty position to be in.

There's a reason I asked folks to not go galavanting down those roads yet: they aren't even leveled, let alone paved, there are no maps or street signs, and the best answers anybody's going to get on those subjects are going to be about as useful as the directions you'd get mumbled out in broken English in a heavy accent by a drunken old coot at the gas station who uses the places where things didn't used to be as their landmarks. (Read: good luck getting anywhere with it.)

Bash it to bits based on what it actually is with wild abandon if you want to. Seriously. Sledge at will when the actual information is available.

Slinging shit around because of what you're afraid something might be is crap, though.

Re: all of this since you're basically saying the same thing a bunch of times:

Look. I get that it's unfinished, but you chose to show off your unfinished project. You can't show it to us, and then fall back on that unfinished status as a shield for criticism. I'm not 'afraid of what it might be', I'm reacting to what I see presently in the context of my MUing experience.

Your requests are not binding on me. You really need to read @ThatGuyThere's post a few times, because it's a nice summary. You don't get to control the discussion in the way you want to control the discussion. I understand that this is distressing to you, but again that reflects more of you having an odd disconnect with the forum than me violating its norms.

Maybe the forum needs a 'No criticism' subforum? Who knows. Anyway. I'm quite willing to be done with this, as I've been many times. Maybe try not accusing me of anything new and we can leave each other alone.

@Ghost Keep defending her, I'm sure sempai will notice you.

@surreality

(Intro deleted, it was mean and I wrote it without really digging through all your points).

1. Again, that's nice. but again, I'm not familiar with your history. It makes the fact that you think I have such a hateboner for you all the weirder because I'm pretty sure we've barely ever interacted.

2. ... Ok? I mean, that bit of text seems like it belongs in a non-derail post, as it's stuff about your actual theme. I posted the gif because the thread made me think of that and I love Futurama more than probably anything ever. Some of the people who've met me IRL can attest to my 'Good news, everyone' notification sound.

3. I think the numbers stopped lining up and I'm not sure what you're referring to. My intention has never been to derail your thread, and I felt my initial reply was indeed on-topic (because again, 'I don't like fish people' seems a relevant answer to 'What fish people do you all want most?'). I disagree that I'm being disrespectful of you. If anything, you're being somewhat willfully ignorant to how a forum you spend tons of time on works. Other posters have put it better but posting here is an invitation to fairly free for all conversation, and you've surely seen it 1000 times before. You may not be asking to crowd source, but you're talking to us, so we're going to talk back, and we're entitled to our own opinions, which you may or may not find valuable or total garbage. The good news (re: your wiki) is that your wiki is not WORA 2.0 and you can set different expectations there. Beyond that, will say that I am not trolling you, though I am (at this stage) effectively trolling the people who think they're defending your thread from derails by derailing it much worse themselves. Between the two of us, this would have probably ended 2 pages back.

4. You know what, I'll admit to the first part of this one. I am paranoid about staffers being trustworthy. I totally am. I have basically zero faith in anyone who isn't a years long friend, because I've seen far more shitty behavior in the hobby than I have good. And those close friends I trust? Well, that just goes into the nepotism thing, which I know even I'm not immune to. It is exceedingly hard, even for people who are on the whole ethical, non-asshats, to tell friends no when they make small requests. But these add up and the result is a culture we're all familiar with. This is why I have a pretty hard line stance that boils down to 'features are always nepotism'. Me and Gany fought about it in another thread (she said she's OK with someone casting a MU like a play, I think that sounds like nepotistic BS too). But yeah. I have little trust. This probably fgures into the 'does not play' thing from the Meta thread, too. But all of that said... I still wasn't accusing you, @surreality, the specific person distinct from the general culture of MU-dom, of anything. Again, that sentence ends with the assumption that you will let everyone play what they want (reading!) and the paranoia is a parenthetical aside.

5. That's nice. I believe that he was upvoting me in lieu of downvoting you because that option doesn't exist and the internet is full of trolls and dicks. But creating any sort of equivalence between me and your stalker because he happens to upvote my post? Yeah, no, fuck that noise and fuck you if you're essentially likening me to some sexual predator.

6. I'm not sure I even understand this or what it's referring to. But yes, there are some accusations in the last post, where, as I made clear, I was responding to what I felt like was a total abandonment of civility on your part as well. Again, being likened to some sexual predator is pretty much universal gloves-off time, no? It's like Godwin'ing.

@surreality

I started typing a peacemaking version of this, but reading your post another time... I can't even begin to feel like you care about re-establishing civility. So I will be more brief:

• I am not familiar with your post history. Your post here did not include any such information.
• I support some of your stated transparency concerns.
• I was joking around with the gif and subsequent posts were an attempted return to levity. It was intended in the spirit of 'lulz, we MUers and our TS.'
• Based on everything else, you will not believe the above. I suppose the paranoid likely and reasonable alternate theory is that I was pre slut-shaming your game to defame it so no one would play there! In b4 Ghost.
• Believe what you want about my 'accusations.'
• Or, I dunno, try reading comprehension. The 'accusation' is a parenthetical, and the conclusion of that sentence is that everyone will probably be allowed to be fishmen.
• I am apparently now accountable to the posting histories of people who upvote me. Does this work in reverse? Can I upvote your stuff elsewhere, and that means you support me? (also, it means several people who dared express any kind of agreement with me in the thread are also terrible people by association, they better watch out!)
• But seriously, you're monitoring upvotes and care enough about them comment on it? Maybe take a break from the internet popularity arena.

And much like in real life, argumentative people on the internet lawyers casually make up their own versions of events and timelines to suit their arguments and defend their friends clients.

But I know, we have to believe you when you do it. You're a professional argumentative asshole, unlike the rest of us hobbyist argumentative assholes!