Posts made by faraday

@surreality said in Real life versus online behaviors:

@mr-johnson That, IMHO, is just a matter of adhering to the rules of a space. Which I'd call a good sign, not a bad one, really.
We should all be trying to do that.

I would disagree with that. Just because Facebook draws its line at "as long as it's not hate speech, you can be as cruel to each other as you want on this platform", does that make it okay to be cruel to strangers on the internet? IMHO no. Being a decent human being is a more-or-less consistent bar to clear no matter what rules a given online space may or may not have.

@mr-johnson said in Tenuous Tie-In or Original Universe?:

No issue with it being a prequel or even just being a different sector of space disconnected from the Xenomorph threat.

Well, the only issue is if you label the game as "Aliens: Whatever" and there are no actual xenomorphs in it, people are going to be some degree of disappointed and/or mad. I think it would be fine to use the universe as long as the theme descriptions say: "This is set in the same universe as Aliens but there are no actual Aliens" but I wouldn't play that up in the ads and name and stuff. But then again, if you're not using the actual selling-point of the world, why not just make it original. Draw from the source but give yourself freedom.

As @Jaded mentioned, this issue has been studied. Just google and you'll find tons of results. My personal non-scientific summation of the consensus is that yes, people often act much differently online than iRL, and in many cases worse due to the anonymity, the lack of personal connection with the targets, the lack of real consequences, etc.

That said, I agree with @Roz: You can't be "a good person" and also be a jerk to people online. Online people are people too, so if you're a jerk to them then you're a jerk, period.

@arkandel said in Game Restarts:

But for most games creating custom code does take considerably longer than writing theme.

Yeah that’s been my experience as well. Game runners spend way more time on wiki and theme material than code. When the code takes ages it’s either because of lack of a coder with spare time (or lack of a coder period) or some extravagant vision for coded systems. The code for most games simply isn’t that complicated.

@arkandel there are different kinds of creativity though. Someone can be great at telling stories and crappy at world building and/or game design. I think that’s part of the reason we see so many existing themes used vs original ones. The other reasons of course are name recognition and familiarity, both of which apply to game restarts too.

@thenomain said in Game Restarts:

What's your best game-restart experience?

TGG. It's famous (infamous?) for the "blink and you die" PC turnover during the first WWI campaign, but that actually toned down in later iterations (with PCs essentially having multiple "lives"). What really defined the game for me wasn't the deaths but the fixed-length campaigns with a restart in-between. You maintained the (admittedly small) core playerbase, but it didn't get stale because there was always a new setting and a new mix of characters and relationships. I was one of those who grumbled about having to start with a new character every time, but even I sucked it up and had fun. Like - you can't do Guadalcanal forever. It's cool, but it gets old eventually. I think most MUs suffer that problem even if they don't want to admit it.

I don't consider a timeskip to be a restart, but I think it's another way to shake things up. We did it successfully on Battlestar Pacifica because the game was ending and we had a specific finale in mind that would have felt forced if done in the IC present. So we mirrored the show and did a "one year later" timeskip. There was some grumbling, of course, but most folks did pretty well with it. It gave them the chance for some big character changes (marriages, babies, promotions, job shifts) while still maintaining the core of existing relationships. And it set us up for a pretty cool finale.

I tried the one-year-later timeskip again on Sweetwater towards the end of the game's tenure in an effort to rejuvenate a stale setting. I thought going through a boomtown sort of thing would bring new life. Didn't work, but I think that was more to do with player apathy than player anger about the timeskip.

Battlestar Unification went through several mini theme-resets as the crew shifted from being crew on the Galactica, to being part of a special operations force on a smaller carrier, to being part of a base cadre, to being guerrillas stuck behind the lines. While I don't consider these restarts, I do think that this sort of shakeup helps to keep a game from getting stale.

@thenomain said in A New Star Wars game? (Legends of The Old Republic (Name pending)):

@bored said in A New Star Wars game? (Legends of The Old Republic (Name pending)):

I just don't think it would ever work on a MU. Every timeskip would see ~half your playerbase quit in outrage/fail to engage in the new story/etc.

I've also dreamed of a game like this, but not the time nor inclination to follow through. The Reach/Fallcoast/Fallcoast2 is proving that it's possible, but the mere risk of losing players frightens a lot of people, staff and players alike.

But if the players are enjoying themselves, they will find a way to make it work. I played on a game long, long ago where the goal was reach the apocalypse. And the staff followed through. And half of us stayed on to play the after-effects and it was fun.

Yeah, I've done a "one year later" timeskip on two different games when big changes to the setting were part of the metaplot. Some folks hated it, but you could say that about virtually any MU decision. It's not like half the game ragequit or anything.

I personally wouldn't want to do a complete character wipe reset like @Auspice was describing, but even that is not necessarily a dealbreaker to everyone. Some folks like starting fresh. Witness TGG's ever-shifting campaign settings.

@lithium said in A New Star Wars game? (Legends of The Old Republic (Name pending)):

But clearly people would prefer to rehash the same old stuff.

To be clear - I'm not suggesting anyone rehash anything. Personally I see plenty of opportunity for stories in the Rebel/Empire era that have nothing to do with blowing up Death Stars or people in the Skywalker family. But that's not the point here. You asked why familiarity matters and I answered. "Star Wars!" means different things to different people, that's all. And to play in a game effectively, I need more to go on than "there's a Republic and Jedi and some guys with armor like Boba Fett." Constructively to OP: Don't assume that just because you have name recognition that people will understand the setting, unless of course you only wish to attract die-hard fans.

@lithium said in A New Star Wars game? (Legends of The Old Republic (Name pending)):

@faraday That is why you avoid all that stuff, you take away the expectation of previous knowledge beyond: Star Wars!

But that's kinda my point... "Star Wars!" to me is Empire vs Rebels or (to a lesser extent) Clone Wars. Anything else may as well be an original theme for all it resonates with me.

@lithium said in A New Star Wars game? (Legends of The Old Republic (Name pending)):

What unfamiliarity issues? It's Star Wars.
It doesn't change /that/ much. You have the Republic. You have Big Bads. You have privateers, pirates, mercenaries, cutthroats, merchants...

I don't want OP to take this as a criticism, since they should make whatever game they want to make. But since you asked...

I'm a casual Star Wars fan, which is to say I've watched the movies and played a few of the video games. I know jack about whatever time period y'all are talking about here. Jedi Civil War? Mandalorian war? Revan? No bloody clue, and I'd frankly be uncomfortable trying to jump into such a setting.

@ixokai said in Star Wars?:

Some can. A lot can't. "I get better at basketweaving" isn't really true if my basketweaving skill is 2 forever.

Yeah. You don't necessarily need a traditional carrot-on-stick model of "experience points", but if you've got skill levels there's got to be some way of reflecting when those levels change. Otherwise you've got the guy who joins the Rebellion to fight the Empire but, uh, never actually learns to fight.

@seraphim73 said in Star Wars?:

@faraday Oh yeah, any large-scale CvC component puts FS3 out of mind for me, definitely. And I might be allowing my FS3 familiarity to get the better of me, but I don't consider tweaking weapon stats and stances as much more than tweaking.

It's more than weapon stats and stances IMHO. But it feels off-topic for here so I created a discussion over on the FS3/Ares forum for anyone who cares.

@seraphim73 A PvE game with no Jedi? Sure. But that’s not a typical Star Wars MUSH. And what you’re talking about to make Jedi work goes beyond “tweaking” and into “significant modifications”.

@mr-johnson Well, hope you don’t mind your Jedi being wusses and your Stormtroopers mowing people down with full auto blaster fire and everyone complaining about the unfair power balance and slow XP progression. Good luck.

Oh no... not another FS3 Star Wars game. My heart can’t take it. It goes against pretty much every piece of advice about What types of games FS3 is suited for. Ares without FS3 would be fine, you just need somebody to code up a skill system that better fits your needs. (Ares is still in beta FYI.)

@arkandel said in Travel Times - Enforced?:

If IC my PC is supposed to be on the road for a day and there'll be a PrP about it tomorrow at 8 then I just continue to RP on the grid until then if an opportunity comes, and simply place all those scenes in the timeline before the trip takes place.

That works as long as everyone else in the scene is on board with that plan, which is totally fine. But it takes coordination. If you're mentally slotting that scene into Tuesday and I'm mentally slotting it into Thursday (because that's what +time says it is) then you run into continuity issues. Maybe your games have been less concerned with continuity. I've been on games like that. There was one Victorian game where +time was just a month. It drove me crazy. But on the games I've played, continuity was more important. You could do backscenes or even forward scenes, but you just had to be careful.

@arkandel said in Travel Times - Enforced?:

But even then I guess I wouldn't even call it an 'enforced travel time'. There's basically zero difference between "hey, I'm gonna run a PrP for you guys tomorrow at 8pm" and "hey, since you guys will be on the road let's have a scene about the trip tomorrow at 8pm".

Not to be a nitpicking twit, but the difference, of course, is whether everyone is scene-locked between today and tomorrow (or whenever they get back) because they're on the road, unable to RP with anybody but other road-trippers.

That's what I think @Ganymede was alluding to with "you barely even noticed it" on BSGU. There were enforced travel times, but I took care to set up most of the missions so the travel time didn't inconvenience anybody. Most games don't care about +time beyond the 'day' level, so as long as you can get there and back in the span of an IC day, you can easily avoid continuity issues or scenelocks.

"Hey I'm gonna run a PrP for you guys tomorrow at 8pm... it's going to ICly require you to spend the prior 8 hours getting there, so don't RP anything that happens during the IC hours of 12-8pm."

@arkandel said in Travel Times - Enforced?:

If I don't then I'm bad and I should feel bad.

Or be up-front about it. "Look, this mission will take you guys off-grid for a week and you'll only have each other to RP with. You in?" The problems I've seen are not so much about occasional one-off plots, but occur when getting from A to B is a regular and routine part of the game (like on a Star Wars MU with multiple planet settings).

@three-eyed-crow Yep, ditto. It's not the travel itself that's the issue, it's the inability to do the thing that the game is about... roleplay. Whether that's because you're stuck on a planet/ship by yourself (my first experience on a Star Wars game was being stuck alone on Shesharile for weeks waiting for an IC shuttle pilot... ugh) or because you're twiddling your thumbs waiting for a travel timer to expire.

@lithium said in Travel Times - Enforced?:

Either they are enforced, or they are not, I'd rather see them enforced.

We enforce lots of things without code. If a game wants to enforce travel with keystrokes, I find that absurd and just won't play there. Just like (one of the reasons) I stopped playing WoW is because I have better things to do with my time than sit on a griffon watching fake scenery go by. My character exists in the world even when I'm not logged in. There's no valid reason (IMHO) to say they can't be traveling when I'm not logged in.