Posts made by L. B. Heuschkel

@silverfox Makes you almost wish no one ever applies for that job.

@Cobaltasaurus Yeah. Same for me on the two games I am on. It's a little meh to see them go quiet and people be busy or too depressed/stressed to play. But it's how it is right now. Might help a bit when we clear the initial weeks of September where a lot of things are starting back up after summer. Might not clear until we've cleared November. Either way, as long as folks have a grid to have fun on when they are able, I think our games are doing everything they can.

Most games -- in the MU* hobby and otherwise -- that I am in touch with report the same kind of slump and exhaustion. The same applies in real life -- hell, my neighbour who is usually all but anal retentive about his lawn has more or less let his roof collapse because with all the free time of quarantine, he gets nothing done at all.

It's not a matter of free time but of emotional exhaustion. I suspect that a lot of games and communities are going to need to accept that half or more of the customer base is flying at one quarter impulse until further notice.

@Ominous It can be hard to stay signed up for, though. I signed up and within an hour, having yet to post anything, found myself shadow banned. After waiting for a week on a response to my inquiry to customer support I went 'fuck it, they obviously don't want my clicks.'

@SixRegrets @menwritewomen on Twitter. The account you do not want to follow if you want to retain any faith in male authors and their ability to write, well, women.

@mietze Raph Koster once described this as the 3/8 month slump. A large number of players quit after three months -- that's when the new shiny has worn off. Another large number quits after 8 months -- that's when they feel they've done it all. Anyone who stays after that is staying until the plug is pulled. It's pretty damn important in game design to keep in mind which of these three you are designing for -- otherwise, you might not survive the first mass departure, and definitely not the second.

@Pyrephox I'm going to have to agree on that. A page on a game's wiki detailing that particular's game preferred takes on how to get RP, how to include and be included, and so on, can only be a good thing.

I'm not sure how much difference it'd genuinely make -- since new people are likely already swamped in infodump and may not find it -- and old people already know the local culture. But it's still a declaration of directions from the game runners -- a statement of desired game culture. I for one would read a lot into such a page, about how the game management views new players, asynchronous players, and inclusion in general. And this, indeed, is not a bad thing.

@Lotherio said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

Its just the UI maybe, I go to the portal to figure it out a new place, active scenes is right there for me to click which is good to show folks activity, I click it and see lots of private scenes or slow scenes. It puts me off. Other players have said the same. It is our pref. The OP can be something that may never be fixed and its a choice, its great.

Yeah, I get that. Preferences are preferences, and yours is as valid as anyone else's. The reason it sits poorly with me is probably that for me, it's not a choice. Either the game supports slow scenes or I can't play -- and by support I don't just mean the codebase allows stopping and resuming, I mean plot structure and story telling too. When everything happens in US peak time and if you're not there when it happens -- well, then that game is not for me. Regardless of what codebase it's on.

@Lotherio You're entitled 110% to your preference where your own scenes are concerned.

Age old scenes that seem to move glacially sometimes have another explanation, though. The group of players I spend most time with -- and myself for that matter -- are people who suffer disabling chronic illnesses. Playing at a pace of a pose per day, and sometimes less, is the only way some of these people can play.

Which still does not rule out that a lot of games could benefit from some kind of awareness that having things going on for new and unattached people to join is a good thing, and an effort should be made to cater to all play styles.

@faraday Agreed. There are no doubt games that could do with a community effort to make things less closed-off and private. I think I mentioned above, I have quit games that had this problem -- that you just can't get into stuff, synchronous or asynchronous, because you're not part of the old boys' club. But that is indeed not a codebase issue.

@faraday said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

I've sat on public rooms on Penn games too and had the same experience. This isn't an Ares thing.

I have had someone walk in on me on grid, on a Penn game. It's just that every time it was the same one person. So there's one person (hi @Caggles) who actually does this. No, it's not an Ares thing, it's a game culture thing.

@Ganymede said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

I play often during business hours EST and I can tell you that Arx has quite a bit of activity for Euro-Zone folks.

I have considered it, for this reason. Something about it doesn't seem to quite click with me -- but I'm not going to say 'never' because, well, this.

@Lotherio Such a change would tell me, someone who can't be there for synchronous RP, that I am not welcome on Ares games.

@bear_necessities said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

@Lisse24 I really wasn't speaking about you, I was explaining an actual complaint I have actually heard from several people. That being said, I don't think your problem is exclusive to Ares games. You can give people all the tools in the world and people still won't RP outside of their circles.

And there's the real issue. It's not the codebase. Ares does nothing the other codebases can't do. While it's true that some codebases seem weighted more towards grid based RP than others, it still comes down to what people do. I for one always sit in a public room on grid when available to play, on Ares games, and I have never, ever had someone walk in on one without paging first. Not once. Never ever.

I have, however, been the new kid on a game knowing no one and finding it pretty much impossible to convince anyone to let me join their stuff. I have also experienced being welcomed and invited to join stuff. It should be obvious which games I stayed on.

Inclusion, to my view, is about people and game culture -- not about codebases and interfaces. The more options available, the better.

ETA: I'm not actually a fan of asynchronous RP either. It's just that from my European timezone, it's the only choice I get -- Ares or not Ares. So Ares making it easier is definitely not a bad thing.

I'm not familiar with Evennia. But as a GMT+1 person, what works for me with Ares is the accessibility to people who aren't in US timezones. The ease with which scenes can be started and paused. And of course, the ease of logging and sharing.

One thing that might be worth considering at this particular time is not the game itself and its concept as much as it's the timing.

I'm all for new games. Everyone who has an idea should definitely go right for it -- the good ideas will float, the bad ideas will sink, everyone gets to try on new things, everyone wins. But right now, you're not just going up in against 'there are many other games out there, what makes yours special'. You are going up against what's already killing a number of those games: 2020.

No matter how great your idea is, you're up against a year that's only going to get worse as November draws closer, Covid-19 and what it's done to people's finances and marriages, and political chaos -- not just in the US but pretty much everywhere. What's killing games right now isn't that they're bad games -- it's that no one has the energy to play. I'd sit down and work very quietly on those theme pages and your no doubt excellent idea until 2021. Because at this time, the odds of a new game surviving and doing well are bleak, and a good idea deserves better.

That said and onwards:

The first step in game design is to have an idea. You've got that. The next, to identify your audience and your goal. Describe -- mostly for your own use but also to potential other staff -- what kind of playerbase you want.

• What's the pace going to be? The narrative style?
• Are you going to be combat focused, or investigative?
• What kind of players are you trying to attract and keep?
• What kind of OOC atmosphere do you want, and how are you going to achieve it?
• How much activity do you want? Should players expect daily events for everyone, or will it be a race to sign up for that one event every two weeks?
• What about players who can't make the events? Do you intend to keep them involved, or is it on them to make that happen for themselves?
• How strictly do you intend to stick to theme? Will new players have to read forty pages of infodump, or can they jump right in? What happens if someone deviates a bit (or a lot) from theme?
• What kind of positions can players strive for in the game? Are you player versus player, or communal story telling, or both?

None of this affects your theme directly. But in my experience at least, identifying the OOC goals and intentions will start thought processes that will help you narrow down the IC theme as well, and make it more water tight. No plan ever survives its own implementation intact, but the less pitfalls the better.

If this is not the advice you were looking for, feel very free to ignore and move on. I speak from the perspective of tabletop game design where entirely too many great ideas die the death of no one taking the time to work out who the game is for.

@Macha said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

Pain Pain Pain pain pain. Fuck this shit. Fuck you, Ankylosing spondylitits. Fuck you, body. Just... RAWR

With you on this today. Fuck fibromyalgia too. Sat up for four hours. Leg is on fire, body is screaming. Such crime, leaving sofa for four freaking hours.

@SixRegrets Seems to be global.

https://twitter.com/gertvdijk/status/1300035365236080640

(Also, you were right).

@faraday To be fair, the game was still accessible from a client. It was only the portal that was down -- and only for a few hours during a time frame where presumably you were asleep.

Gray Harbor is currently experiencing some kind of bottleneck issue that the admins are working on fixing. Just a headsup for anyone failing to connect.

Edit: The issue seems to be at Ares central. A fix will probably happen in short time, Faraday tends to be a miracle worker.

Edit 2: And we're back.