Posts made by kitteh

@surreality I believe it!

The system works fine in really large, really anonymous settings, like some multiplayer videogames that may have many thousands of players at a time. On these, 'some dude and their five friends' is usually not enough voting weight to break the system, and they work well for slowly identifying and quarantining toxic players (generally by matching people to people with similar votescores, so the trolls just play other trolls, and polite people play other polite people).

But when you have an actual (small, relatively intimate) community, it's just taking something that community should be doing and shuffling it off to some easily to manipulate shortcut. The community should have no trouble identifying actual bad actors. And the people it can't easily identify? Are maybe not bad enough that they need to be ostracized in the first place, but fall into the realm of 'personal differences that people are going to have and staff doesn't need to resolve every one of.'

@Arkandel

A normal complaint system is high effort (ie reasons, logs, evidence) requires almost wholly manual processing, and expects to get immediate investigation/results. A social downvote system, is low effort (you just hit a button, maybe with a short description), mostly mechanical, and promises no immediate action but rather the eventuality of bad actors accumulating enough that they can be considered guilty by consensus.

They both have advantages, but the disadvantage of the second is that you don't get to really control what it's used for. You may not mean it to be for conflicting opinions or general not-liking, but what guarantees its not used that way? (assuming it is in fact a low-effort mostly mechanical system)

Again, it sounds like you're just trying to encode basic social behavior (ostracism) which should happen anyway if people are visible bad actors. Gamifying it only serves to make it easier to cheat and abuse for the people who want to do that (ie, a clique going around spreading nasty rumors is somewhat obvious, a clique coordinating mass downvotes is not).

@Arkandel It's almost exactly the same kind of system (including some things that other people have suggested, like imposed delays and other penalties) and it was removed, presumably for a reason.

Some videogames have vote/devote systems but I think that's a way of building social contract into larger, even more anonymous spaces than MUs are.

This proposal seems like trying to codify (and even gamify) social interaction, reputation, and popularity. Which makes it sound mostly like a tool of potential abuse for cliques, staff, more established members of games, etc. I mean, you guys apparently removed downvoting here, what does that say about the ability for this same community to use it maturely on a game where the stakes are just a little higher?

Collected thoughts:

Tools are great, and if you can give people more tools, why not!

However, they will never solve social problems 100%. Never, ever.

Thus, as a player you have to reasonably watch yourself and this will mean probably avoiding some games merely due to their general rating/theme. The kidnapping vs. Changelings thing is a preeeetty good example, but also Vampires vs. autonomy issues and lots of other things.

STers should also do their reasonable best not to surprise people with extreme shit. Like I don't know where 'surprise, RAPE!' is ever really going to be a great plot inclusion, when it really is a surprise (vs. a possible consequence among others, for example).

Also someone made the point of general, open, whoever wants to hop in scenes vs. running longer plots for people you know. This is a good distinction and if anything, STs should trend more cautious the more shallow, wide-open, etc the plot is. If you have10 random people to show up and then declare 'baby murder funtime!' the chances of someone being upset are much higher.

@faraday Yeah, in my small bit of reading (to get the flight lingo) I found some... dunno, fighter instruction/tactics stuff and it's all complicated diagrams very specific to the exact two planes engaging. It left me awed at people who do that stuff for realsies but also recommitted to a purely... cinematic level of tactics

So your suggestion is mostly that we should page if we wanna do something specifically cool/unorthodox, over in general just trying to pose solid tactics etc? That's fair enough, and I will try and think about this more going forward (just sitting here, I came up with one I should have used last time!). Though it can/will be hard, I think, for some to figure out what the threshold really is (and to not feel like we're bugging you), especially when the 'standard' for space stuff is frequently flipping your viper around 180 to blast things, etc.

Definitely easier to mess with on the ground! Even for the fliers. At least then there's stuff on the ground to buzz

@Ganymede Dunno why this is getting rehashed now!

I have no problem with everyone being good or how things are setup overall, though, regarding 'everyone being good at what they do', half the point is that if you don't start out good at what you do, you may never be. But we were mostly talking about the learning times, which she also clarified are shorter than appear in game, due to a bug or something.

@faraday I'll resist the 'not me' reply Though as more of a 'not us' version of it, didn't we break up into teams in the last fight on BSGU, assign wingmen, etc?

I think the assist is good. It handles the issue I mentioned where even if you want to 'help' your teammate, you're effectively stealing kills from them (or at least, nulling them out so neither of you can get any). This way there's definite value, as an Ace, to taking some rookie under your wing and having them as your wingman, expecting (or even, gasp, ordering!) them to help you out The noob won't get kills but they're not going to (get many) anyway, statistically.

Re: the 2nd to last thing on your list, I think people do communicate and pose tactics in combat but... there's too many people, too little time, etc, for you to skim through all of that and translate it into bonuses? I mean if you actively do this and we just don't see it, I stand pre-emptively corrected. That aside, the one thing I've rarely seen is a tactical briefing or even an in-flight but pre-combat 'huddle' where there's a specific chance FOR the PCs to come up with tactics. This item doesn't seem one solved by code, so much as GMing/player culture.

@faraday Sure. I just mean that a lot of what I was suggesting was off the assumption that it was 'oh, you're fighting something with 4+ more dice than you and you should really know better (except, we can't)', which is quite a bit more different than, 'uh, yeah you can beat up most of them even if you're a rookie and at worst you're evenly matched, so don't stress it too much'

@faraday Ah, I had no idea about that either. When you first mentioned it, it sounded like it might have been intended that people were missing that often vs. those higher skilled ones. If best Cylons = the worst pilots, most of what I've been talking about is pretty much pointless/redundant.

@Seraphim73 Being able to get the roll feedback manually (so it didn't spam people in general) would be a perfectly great solution, too. It's not so much that I'm a big nerd for the data, but if I'm missing constantly, it might be worth checking just to see that wow, RNGesus really does hate you today vs. getting legit beat by Awesome McRobotpants.

@faraday I think I've made two suggestions at least, the NPC skill and the messages. You said showing the whole roll would be spamy, but what about changing it so its something like

Target X [Narrowly / - / Easily] Evades based on the differential in rolls? That's effectively only adding 1 word of spam (or none sometimes). 'Narrowly' would suggest a lot more that your rolls were close and you had some chance of hitting vs. Easily showing that you were really outclassed? And obviously there'd still be a pretty large degree of uncertainty. Like, I'm perfectly OK with you wanting mystery to the NPCs, but I think it's also the opposite of realistic to have no idea that a vastly superior opponent is vastly superior.

Re Supress: Oh, I thought people were saying that when you had multiple people firing at at a target it was automatically causing some degree of suppression or whatever, outside of the specific action. I've seen the Raptor ECM thing, although I assumed that was Raptor specific.

@Thenomain
Not really? The alternative you gave me is to recode someone elses game, which I obviously don't have the authority to do? So you basically told me to stop complaining or quit. Sorry, other people are having a discussion, and you're not the arbitrator of it. If at any point @faraday get sick of me, she is more than welcome to say so.

I have no idea what your last paragraph means or how it relates to me. I didn't start this thread and only commented in it because I realized it did relate to my character.

Not a big deal. It only frustrates me to the degree that it gets a little boring just having to pose the same pose in different ways every round of combat and not having any good clue of an alternate strategy or anything that would fix it. Again I'm not especially interested in kill count, but I would like things that improve verisimilitude in the squad tactics, encourage team communication, etc.

To take on a (slightly) different topic it would be good if the... suppression things or other multiple-people on a target stuff was more obviously helpful? That's the one thing that's come up as a 'well you can do this' option in the thread, but in-game it often seems like the least satisfying thing. Not only do you not really see that you're helping (and thus, posing that you're helping can be assuming things not visible, and even kind of power-posing to a degree) but OOCly you may also be frustrating your (more skilled) wingmate as you're essentially cockblocking them on kills if you do hit (even for probably negligible damage).

It's another one of the reasons I generally shoot at the guy shooting my wingman rather than his target; I'm letting the guy who wants to chase kills chase kills and maybe stopping him from getting some incidental damage while he does it.

@Thenomain It still comes off preachy. At least being told 'hey if you don't like it, don't play' comes off as unnecessarily extreme. I've praised the game in many places and overall I'm not even in it for the combat. But you know, we're having a discussion!

If she doesn't want to change it, that's fine. Her posts often include things like 'if there are better ways to do this, tell me' so... I don't think I'm being rude offering my thoughts. There are things I've mentioned she can pretty easily do. Identifying 'really badass NPCs' is doable in the existing game I'm sure (just naming them?). If she doesn't want to do it, OK. Exposing the degrees of success on rolls I imagine is doable also (the basic roll command shows them, the combat autocode doesn't), so maybe that would be a thing too.

If she doesn't want to change anything or doesn't like my suggestions that's OK too! Maybe someone else will offer something. But I'm pretty sure we're all enjoying the game and don't need to be reminded we can take our balls home.

@faraday I've seen the evade vs miss messages and I gathered that's what they meant, but I still think you're going to be really reaching to meaningfully use the small amount of information you get out of that (again, without actually seeing successes on your rolls, margin of success, or something). As you've pointed out, combat is pretty short. So I mean, they evade once. Bad luck? High skill? You try it again and just miss (because we're talking non-elite characters here). Well you didn't learn anything. Try it again, they evade. Ok maybe now you think they're higher skill with some confidence and switch, but the combat is half over and very likely all the easy targets are dead because they got 1-shot in the first round.

I don't really have any new suggestions beyond the ones I've given.

I would nudge to point out that anyone who's seen the show probably realizes the vipers can fly backwards, and a lot of people pose doing it (because it's cool!). I know I did in the last big scene and I'm pretty sure I caught someone else too. So pointing that out was a little of what I meant! It's not so much that I can't conceive of how two things could possibly be shooting at each other, just that for round after round it's both limiting and can start to stretch believably (all these mutual firing solutions and no one is dead? what gives!)

Anyway, no problem. I'm sure we'd all love it the more... verisimilitude? Or whatever word you want to use, there was to combat. But Faraday is only mortal (if an impressive one) and we can only ask so much of her

@Seraphim73

OK I'm going to preface this with a big 'if I'm totally backwards on this and we're just totally talking past each other, my apologies' but... why are you posting at me, and what do you think you're arguing? It's getting kind of weird and feels maybe not as friendly as / more condescending than you seem to think it is?

Your first post amounted to 'I do things the smart way' (read: the most min-maxy way if you want a higher kill count, which is pretty obvious) while also implying that it was great teamwork on your part to be doing that... and maybe everyone else was NOT doing the right or smart thing? But you're bragging about explicitly NOT teaming up (in the sense of getting suppression bonuses) or anything. You're hunting for kill count. And don't get me wrong, that's fine, both OOCly (people like to brag) and ICly (fighter jock club stuff). But be honest and don't claim one thing while it sounds like you're talking down at others at the same time.

From what I see, most people who aren't focused on the killboard just RP and shoot at what makes sense. Yes, it's perfectly valid to shoot back at the thing targeting you but I think that's often the least interesting situation since generally it means very isolated solo posing rather than playing off other people. My posts to Faraday were merely pointing out what I thought might enhance the RP experience a bit (as it would give us more feedback to RP around), though if she doesn't want to do it, it's her prerogative.

This is my general experience with the sphere on multisphere games, yep. I think it's basically the one game that should be put in a ghetto and never allowed to play with others.

The others may have disparate power levels and create various kinds of twinkery, but Mages are gods in a game of mortals. It's an interesting theme on its own, but in mixed play its not fun for anyone but them.

@Arkandel Aw. I like pirates.

@faraday

Because there's no feedback to indicate whether our miss streaks are due to a skill gap or crappy luck? We don't see rolls or margins of success (unless we're hitting?). To some extent we can RP "Oh, you finally got that guy who was giving me trouble, thanks", but for a low-skill character that's about as far as it goes.

Also, this stuff does happen. I did RP asking for others to help me get my target. So people are already doing these things you say we should be doing. But the system is fairly opaque and its hard to distill some information from the feedback we get, and so a lot of it is just kind of making things up. We can thank the better pilot for helping out, but no one can really say "Oh wow, you killed their superskilled guy."