Just running my brain-meats here. Churning.
I think the issue with MU is that everything is so stretched out.
- Lots of time waiting for/arranging scenes
- Waiting sometimes 30-60 minutes in between poses
- It's hard to feel relevant in massive scenes with other roleplayers, waiting for 30-60 minutes to take an action that may or may not be relevant
- Responses from staff can take days
So with that in mind I think that IC failure would be much easier for the MU community if the pace was a bit faster. Think of it this way.
- 1 massive scene with 30-60 in between poses to -attempt- to do something relevant (and then failing) feels like a complete waste of time, but what if it was 10 minutes in between poses and you got 4-5 other attempts to pass a roll or do something relevant?
- Limited availability of "important" characters creates a "Waiting in line" feeling (like the horrid "trying to get a Jedi slot" from back in the day), but what if a weekly cycle happened and all you had to do is get on the waiting list and wait for your turn?
- Failing a roll only to see another player (more or less popular, it doesn't matter) do the SPECIAL THING in the scene is disheartening, but what if scenes were faster paced and designed so that each character had a skill/job in mind that was their special sauce?
I honestly feel (reflectively) that aversion to "IC failure" was a little bit of people just not wanting the negativity of "not being successful", sure, but I also think that the absolute time sink of the hobby and wanting to feel something in terms of return on investment was a huge part of it. A lot of players failed and it was "WELP, ya failed, so sorry, have a good night" and including some sort of element in failure that led to other RP opportunities always seemed to resonate well with the players I knew.