Posts made by faraday

@tempest I think an entire industry of movie and game trailers runs contrary to the idea that there is a finite amount of excitement for A Thing that will run out if you talk about A Thing before it's ready.

That said, I do agree that it's better to just build a game you want to play (and ask a few trusted friends if you want to know if they're interested too). Just because people are (or are not) interested in something now - that doesn't necessarily mean they will be in six months if/when you actually finish it. And MSB represents only a subset of the overall MUSHing population. It's also liable to bring out the "But you should do it this way!" crowd, leading to the danger of trying to design a game by committee. You can never please everyone, and it's very easy to become discouraged.

@packrat said in My first cellphone:

If you can afford to just outright buy a phone then take a SIM only contract then that is generally cheaper but you do need the money up front, it does however give a lot of flexibility

Depending on your carrier, the price may be a wash. Verizon, for the most part, is now just taking the price of the phone and dividing it up into 24 payments. So it's not really a savings deal like it once was; it's just an installment plan. Paying up front does give you more flexibility though, like you said.

Sometimes there are deals though. Right now for instance the iPhone SE is on sale if you use the installment plan versus just buying it outright.

@ganymede said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

So, who gets to determine if a location is a fun, persistent "hangout"? The firing range didn't get nearly as much fun-time as Erin's bunk, trust me. And that was very much a hangout, along with Charlie's. But we had a firing range because you put one in.
I think, maybe, what some gamers like is, on an OOC level, the idea of having some sort of IC "hangout", as a concept, that's permanently stuck on the Grid. And since the early days of yore, players have wanted these for their PCs. Thus, they like to @dig rooms, and thereby make their mark for future generations.

In grid terms, the person building the grid decides what constitutes a 'hangout'. These days typically that's staff.

In a temproom/scene system, the people creating scenes there decide what constitutes a 'hangout'. If you're constantly doing scene/start with a location of "Erin's Apartment" (bunk is a little hard for the analogy here :)) and an open scene that people can join - then that's gonna become a hangout too because people are hanging out there. It will in time develop the same sort of continuity that a grid room does. You can save a desc that gets reused, and update that desc when Charlie accidentally sets the couch on fire. And people will say "LOL remember the time that Charlie accidentally set the couch on fire?"

I dunno - to me that actually gives players more opportunity to make their mark on the future generations, compared to the "only staff can build" mentality of most modern MUSHes.

But I get that I'm in the minority there, apparently. Just rambling since you asked.

@ganymede said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

Why was there a Head in the ship on BSG:U?

Because when I made the first grid for BSG:Pacifica I thought it would be a fun persistent "hangout" location based on how often it actually came up in the show. Then people actually used it and it kind of became 'a thing' on Battlestar games that followed. In contrast, I don't think ST:TNG really had scenes in the bathroom.

@ganymede said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

So, maybe it ain't even a culture thing. It could just be an age thing.

Dunno. I've been MUSHing since the early '90s so... that's pretty old too.

@sunny said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

I don't have the context I need to play Larry.

Again, that may be a culture issue. In the games I've seen, the whole point of him being a community NPC is that everyone is free to chip in to define that context. Maybe in one scene somebody mentions his beloved fish and now that's a part of his character. As @peasoupling said, it helps to have a wiki page or something to record those little tidbits for everyone's common reference.

@ganymede said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

@thenomain said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

It's Ten Forward vs. The Holodeck.

@faraday, I think this is the perspective Sunny is trying to explain.

Yeah sorry, I don't get it. The Holodeck is by it's very nature ICly fake. What I'm talking about is more the difference between playing a scene in the @dug Ten Forward or a temproom for the Head on Deck 12. Staff maybe didn't see the Head as being important enough to @dig a room for it, but ICly it's still there. It's permanent (ICly). It probably doesn't have enough interesting RP happening there for folks to care about it too much, but it can be a fun diversion sometimes. And if you do Battlestar - it may come up enough for it to actually be an amusing non-standard place for people to run into each other.

:helpless shrug: I think maybe @sunny is right, that it's hopeless trying to explain it to me, but I appreciate the attempts.

@sunny said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

If he's just something that you created and have been running for 2 years off and on, he is your NPC. I'm going to make my own bartender to avoid stepping on your toes.

Maybe that's a game culture issue? And maybe that's part of the disconnect. On the games I've been on, there's no such stigma attached. Lots of people use the community bartender. There's a tacit assumption that you won't kill him off or anything without talking to the person who created him, but otherwise you're free to use him - no code involved in "taking him off the shelf" or anything.

@sunny said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

Obviously NONE of it is real, but we're talking about perspectives and subjective reality here to begin with.

I think that's the key point in our different points of view. It's perspective. It's like that silly dress picture a few years back.

"It's blue"
"WTF do you mean - it's gold"

Both statements are true from own points of view. You saying "It's more permanent than a temp room" and me saying "Huh? There's nothing temporary about it" strikes me as the same kind of situation.

It was my hope that maybe there was some way to reach a shared understanding of why we see it differently, but maybe it's just how our virtual eyes are wired.

Because heh - the NPC thing is the same to me. Sure there are times when it's just "the nameless bartender plot device" but I don't need a roster or a wiki profile or a +sheet to get attached to Larry the Bartender, who we've emitted several times a week for two years, who's developed his own personality. Permanence comes from the story not the code -- for me.

ETA - In point of fact, two of the most memorable NPCs in my decades of MUSHing had no such codification. They existed only because somebody kept using them and made them interesting. One graduated into a full-fledged PC because he got such a legend attached, and another caused a huge ripple when he got killed.

@sunny said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

I think it's just not going to happen.

Maybe not. I am, at least, making a genuine effort here to understand. If you're sick of trying to explain it nobody's forcing you to.

@thatguythere said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

If I had never had a scene there then I wouldn't care gridded or not, but by having five or six or x scenes in a place it becomes an important place to the characters story.

OK see I can actually understand that. I guess my perspective though is that the continuity - the shared story of a place - is independent to whether it has an @dug room to it. I can use a RP room a dozen times to reflect my character's personal apartment or Mama's Diner and then those places too have a story attached. They become more than just a name. You get to know Mama, get those shared experiences, etc.

Granted if there's a common hangout defined (whether via a scene system hangouts list or a grid) it's more likely that more people will develop those connections with a hangout spot just because it'll get used more.

@sunny said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

Because a code dug room is more real/lasting/permanent than a temp room. It exists as something more than a temporary description.

I guess this is where that immersion colorblindness comes in, because I just don't get that. The city exists ICly. It's permanent. Mama's Diner may have only been used in a random scene and not dug, but it's still there ICly (unless Meteor Chick burns it down). There's nothing temporary about it.

(Again please bear in mind I'm not trying to be "this is stupid!" about it, I'm honestly trying to understand because I just don't get it.)

@thatguythere said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

I mean that doesn't hurt any individual scene but also gives me no reason to care about anything that doesn't directly effect my character, oh you saved Joe's bar cool your effort enabled me to avoid typing Frank's instead.

Maybe I'm missing something here too. I mean, let's say Joe's Bar was the one coded in the grid. Unless you're Joe, or otherwise have some sort of special IC attachment to Joe's Bar, why would you care if it got blown up anyway? More specifically, why does the fact that someone do @dig for it have any impact on whether you care about it? It's just a bar.

@apos said in What does Immersion mean to you in MUs?:

For the mail, does the player of Stella have any idea whether that is IC or OOC, and whether they should respond ICly or OOCly? Probably not.

Great topic. I would just clarify one minor bit here that folks like me saying "mail and messenger are functionally equivalent" are assuming that you use the tool to provide proper context. So it would be more like:

Mail:
TO: Stella
FROM: Bob
Subject: --IC Message-- Hey we should meet
Stella gets an IC message on her wristcom:
From Commander Robert, to Ensign Stella, sent at 10:37 am yesterday, IC time.
"When are you next free? Please hit me up."

I bring this up not to quibble, but because I think it's important in any conversation about immersion that the alternatives be functionally equivalent. Otherwise yeah, you get confused players.

To use another example of immersive code - +knock.

Bob uses +knock.
Stella sees: Someone is knocking on the door.
Stella uses +peephole to see that it's Bob.
Stella uses +shout to say "Who's there?"
Bob sees her shout. Shouts back. Etc.

versus

Bob pages Stella, "Hey, Bob's outside your door knocking."
Stella now has context and doesn't need to use any commands to figure out what's going on. Stella pages Bob, "OK, she looks through the peephole and then opens the door."

or

Bob and Stella just get in the room together immediately because they know they're going to do a scene and OOC chatter some establishing details so then someone can pose:

There's a knock on the door. After a brief exchange establishing that it's Bob outside, Stella opens it. "Hey Bob. What's up?"

As I mentioned on the other thread, I don't feel immersion in MUSHes. Ever. So to me, the messenger or knock code is just a PITA because it adds absolutely nothing to the game for me, but it's a whole other set of commands I have to learn just to do things I can otherwise already do. And as a coder, that's a whole other set of commands I'd have to code just so people can do things they can otherwise already do.

But I do understand, at least in an abstract way, that there are people out there who get something out of this stuff. It's just hard to relate to since I'm not one of them.

@runescryer Yeah that's been a standard part of my RP room code for a decade. I'm sure others have their versions too. I haven't seen people use it that much though.

I like the idea of changing descs but I'm waaaaaay too lazy to write different versions of the same room desc. (Heck you're lucky to get one half-decent version out of me. :P) I've also found that a lot of folks either skim or don't read room descs, so I'm not sure how useful a changing one would be.

@thenomain said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

It may have changed, but people started loving flavor emits, but came to hate them.

I hate them, along with weather emits. They either don't really add anything (do folks really care that a cool breeze whispered through the alley or a bird fluttered by overhead? maybe that's one of those immersion things I don't grok again...) or they're just incompatible with the RP already going on.

@thatguythere said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

See this is my issue with the lack of a grid, if no one cares about Momma's Diner before or after the plot then what is the point of saving it?

It works both ways though. Maybe nobody cared about Momma's Diner before you used it in a scene, but once the big confrontation with Meteor Chick happens there it becomes a recurring thing for awhile. Maybe it becomes so much of a thing that staff decides to add it to the 'hangouts' list as a pre-set location.

This actually happened on BSGU with one of the temp bars that somebody (I think @Ganymede?) used in a one-off scene that then got re-used a couple of times because folks thought it was cool.

I think that a more flexible grid actually encourages players to be more creative. Players don't always have to hang out at Molly's Bar. Staff doesn't have to try to make Molly's Bar the be-all-end-all hangout place that has everything under one roof. Somebody can just wing a karaoke night in Joe's Bar or pancakes at Mama's Diner, and maybe that becomes a recurring thing. In this way I think it harkens back to the 'old days' of MUSHing where players were encouraged to contribute to the grid.

@deadempire said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

Even though what I do on Arx is check "where" and zoom over to where it looks like RP is happening

T8S is still stuck on an old version of Ares because their coder had a family thing, but one of the changes I made in the newer version is that on +where a scene in "Joe's Bar" doesn't really look any different if it's in a temproom versus in a grid room. So if all you're doing is looking at +where and joining a scene in progress, it's hard to tell the difference.

Of course that still doesn't address the immersion aspect. If you get a kick out of wandering the grid, then no - you won't see Joe's Bar because it's just something somebody made up on the fly. You can't walk straight there as if your character were walking on the streets. I get that's a roadblock for some folks.

@lithium said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

The how is important because it helps make the world feel /real/, at least for some

I get that as a preference thing. What I'm saying is it doesn't resonate with me. I don't know if it's because I'm a coder and I automatically see behind the curtain on everything, or if it's just how my brain is wired or what, but I feel no immersion while MUSHing. So it's like trying to explain color to somebody who's color blind. I just don't get it. Like the folks who like an IC message system. I understand those people exist, but I don't grok that either. Just use pages or mail. I don't get how it makes a difference.

But yes, to OP's point - it absolutely unequivocally does make a difference to some segment of the MU population.

ETA since I missed a reply...

@thatguythere said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

grid is no one person's space (with the obvious exceptions of private builds) since it was created by a staffer or helper for the good of the game so it doesn't cause my issue.

I respect that. My personal hangup is the opposite. I would never join a public scene on grid without either an invitation or an awkward "hey mind if I join" page. But if somebody expressly says "Sure come on down" via the Open tag then I wouldn't feel that same issue. Everybody's different. No system - neither a grid nor a scenesys can please everyone.

@thatguythere said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

I would never do this for a scene in a creative room even if it was set public because if the people wanted me there they would invite me and it is their place since they just made it. Where on grid to me is more like hanging out in an RL public space more of an implied hey we are hanging out.

:helpless shrug: I don't disagree with you, but I also don't know how to help with that. I mean, the instructions say a scene marked as 'Open' has been expressly marked by the creators as being open to anyone joining via scene/join. So the impression they don't want you joining is just... not what the system does. The whole point of marking a scene open or private is precisely to avoid the problem your'e describing where you don't know if you're welcome or not.

On the flip side, I know a lot of people who are just as timid about joining an ongoing scene even when it's in a public bar or hangout on a grid. Not without reason either, as I've personally been on the receiving end of being turned away with "we've already got something going on here, do you mind?" for scenes in grid rooms before. (Not private residences either.)

But hey, it's a new system and it's currently only really core on Ares games. I understand people being skeptical about it. Either it'll catch on or it won't. It certainly doesn't stop you from making a grid.

@coin said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

it would be stupid to think only one way works for all people. Anyone arguing that "if you like a big grid you're stupid" is actually being really ignorant

Well, MSB is filled with people calling other people stupid for liking or not liking the particular style of play they prefer. I don't think that's excusable, but it's par for the course.

@sunny - For the record, I don't think anybody is stupid for liking a grid, I just honestly don't understand it. I accept it as a preference, I just don't get why it matters how you get to a scene. It's like somebody speaking a foreign language to me - it just doesn't compute. If that failure to grok has ever unintentionally come across as intolerant, my apologies.

From a purely practical (not preference) standpoint, the idea of a grid is an obstacle to new players understanding how the game works. I've heard this from a number of people, and also from my own experience trying to write a 'MUSH 101' tutorial and explain it. For example:

@wildbaboons said in How did you discover your last three MU* ?:

A few months ago I spent about half an hour with the help of half a dozen other people trying to help someone new to MUSHing (came from forum RP i think) to understand the concept of a room and grid. They never did figure it out before they decided it wasn't for them.

It's also a barrier to some of the more advanced web integrations. Ares lets you play from the web, for instance (not with the telnet-y MU client but with a dedicated scene page), but the seams between the web side and the game side are messy when the web side doesn't really have a concept of which room you're in.

So I personally think there's a bit more to the issue than just pure player preferences.

@seraphim73 said in Big city grids - likes and dislikes:

if you can't just walk into the room, and have to "teleport" in, it feels more private, and there's a barrier to entry. I think that our hobby would be better off with more scene code if we could get past this, but I don't know how to get past it.

Sometimes I feel like this is a no-win situation. If there's RP on the grid, some people are tentative about joining without an invitation. If there's RP in a scene room - even if it's got (OPEN) emblazoned all over it - some people are tentative about joining without an invitation. This is a people problem, not a tools problem, and I don't know how to get past it either. Maybe we can't, and just need to look at the other pros/cons and call the comfort zone/invitation problem a wash.

@saosmash said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

I dunno, I feel like "I reject your apology because I think it is manipulative and disingenuous" or whatever is a reasonably civil way to respond to an apology you find insincere as opposed to being like "you're a garbage person and that's a garbage apology" and then you can go to the hog pit your own self to be like "holy shit HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO ME."

Oh I actually agree with that. It's certainly possible to reject an apology civilly, depending on the wording. Like you said, YMMV and each case is probably different. As @Arkandel says, ultimately it's up to the mods to decide.