Posts made by Mercutio

It didn't help that the center point to your group disappeared into the Ether. It's a real shame. We really liked you bunch. I understand where you are coming from though. I remember when I started there with my little level 5 character amongst people well established and more powerful than my character.

I ended up leaning into that, however, using RP to form connections, using it as a way to set goals and what-not. But that is, in the end, but one playstyle. Everyone plays the game in different ways. It is a typical problem, I agree. Over-dinosauring, that is. Of course, there's always characters of established players who are closer to the starting levels. But it's never a perfect situation.

@Warma-Sheen said in Star Wars: Dawn of Defiance:

@Faceless said in Star Wars: Dawn of Defiance:

@Warma-Sheen I think you're being a bit more critical than is necessary. Honestly it comes off as though you feel wronged by the current staffers, for the actions of past staffers.

I could very well be more critical than is necessary. I can admit that. Maybe it just feels more personal to me because it is me. I know that's a thing. But my experience and opinions about Mercutio have nothing to do with previous staff. Everyone's accountable for their own stuff. Myself, included.

@Mercutio I really find it hard to believe that the "interpretation" was a misunderstanding. But if you say it was, then there's no point in trying to argue. You know your intentions better than I would. If you're not doing the same things I experienced anymore and other people aren't experiencing the same issues, then great. I love Star Wars and more places to play, the better. But everyone has to decide for themselves and no one reading can say they weren't warned if your song remains the same.

No hard feelings man. I understand that experiences can color one's future ones.

@Meg said in Star Wars: Dawn of Defiance:

@Mercutio said in Star Wars: Dawn of Defiance:

In regards to the idea of older characters having more power - this is indeed the case. But there is a hard level cap. And while there are side-upgrade options, the costs climb heavily after a certain point. It's not perfect, but not the worst as a system. It's something we watch.

@Mercutio said in Star Wars: Dawn of Defiance:

Transparency with staff is harder to define or even comment on, as I am uncertain in what way that word is being used in this instance.

Ok, but like, how many of those older characters who have hit level cap but have a shitton of side-upgrade options are in the hands of staff? That's what I'm talking about looking at, and what I am talking about re: transparency.

I mean, I am glad you guys know your factions (spheres. potatoes. whatever you want to call them, really) but knowing who is getting all the cool stuff and getting to do the cool things is important, too. I'm not here to tell you how to run your game, but if all staff have really old characters with a lot of influence because of the things that they have, you can bet it's going to make your game less appealing to people.

Gotcha. Soft Level cap (level 12) has - ignoring NPCs - 13 players. Of which 3 are admin characters due to long-term play. We track the side-upgrades as well in sheet notes - of which Risi likely has the largest sum, but I don't think the top 5 contains further staff characters. There are 3 characters with a level above the soft level cap, a sum that contains 1 admin played character (Risi, who was the third one to get there), and no characters at the hard level cap (14).

We watch the cool stuff, and the levels, and the influence. Though, of all the admin characters, Risi is the only one with notable 'influence', and it's not even a lot. She's just an indie. No direct influence in any of the major organizations (Empire, Rebellion, or the crumbling Republic).

@Meg said in Star Wars: Dawn of Defiance:

Like always, the truth probably lies somewhere in between. @Warma-Sheen may be overly critical and the complaint is silly, but now might be a good time for @Mercutio to take a hard look at power balances in spheres and transparency with staff, too. Maybe there's nothing to look at! But hey, never hurts to do it.

It's certainly a concern at all times. Though we don't have 'spheres' as much as 'factions' around, the power balance across factions is, by design, very disjointed. There are some powerful characters in smaller groups that by themselves have far fewer resources - and we have lower level characters in large organizations (The Empire) who thus have far more resources to them. In a way, each has their own playstyle - as is inherent to this era we are approaching. But you get odd encounters in PvP situations. Example: when the Inquisition comes across powerful and well established higher level characters.

I'm actually commonly surprised in a positive manner, as the Inquisition members take these as opportunities to make it into long term missions, or plan around things instead of running at he wall head-first. Even if PvP is rare, they take it as character growth.

In regards to disjointed power, we have the obvious:
The Empire has overwhelming force, but can be slower to move on things, and tend to use hard-handed approaches on things.
The Rebellion has little in the way of Force, but is quick to get in and out to perform small strikes. Sometimes they have higher level characters. Sometimes lower level characters.
The Independents, for the most part, are a wild card of varying power. Their influence is adjusted by their own actions, and who they ally with.

In regards to the idea of older characters having more power - this is indeed the case. But there is a hard level cap. And while there are side-upgrade options, the costs climb heavily after a certain point. It's not perfect, but not the worst as a system. It's something we watch.

Transparency with staff is harder to define or even comment on, as I am uncertain in what way that word is being used in this instance.

@Warma-Sheen
I understand how that may have been confusing at the time. Maybe I could have communicated what I meant better at the time. It's an element I inherited from the administration, not one I made up on the fly -- I was naught but a player at that point, as you point out. What was trying to be gotten across was that you were seeing 'thanks' to the force residing in living things such as the moss etc - which would have been standing out to your character.The wording found in force sight suggests that you see things in relationship to the life in the area - though that can be debated.

This wasn't done out of spite, or to give you any trouble at all. Just as an RP element. I'm not sure how, by staying away and not RPing, you experienced that 'things changed' or 'did not change'. But regardless, as you pointed out, that is coming from your experience before I was even admin, which is now... what... a year ago?

Perhaps give it a go again. You might be surprised if you give it a proper shot. There's no hard feelings towards you.

P.S. I am in no way a perfect story teller / gm / whatever. I might make mistakes. But I try to make it work. If there are issues, a patient dialogue, or even reaching out to Malacia, my co-staffer - if you rather not speak to me directly - has a chance to resolve issues and make the game as a whole better for it.

Risi is indeed my character. I'd say most of this claim isn't actually the case however, based around the fact that I barely even play her, or any of my characters these days. Ever since taking on the job of headwiz / staff duties, I'm far too busy to even weasel my characters into much of anything or anywhere.

Still, it is true that I do indeed have a character in most 'spheres'. Risi is the most well played and well established one - as a natural effect of what @Tempest pointed out - but her influence on the galaxy as a whole is laughably small. Though she's had her impacts. Especially while I was just a player.

Regardless of that, I'd right out say that the idea of staff requests hitting brick walls around anything is out-right a false statement. Putting up roadblocks doesn't make anybody happy on the game, and is outright poisonous to the idea of a roleplaying environment. Sure, characters may fail at tasks - not everyone is perfect at everything - but that's part of the system. We still will work as well as we can with our players where possible to get things moving forward - where they wish to move things forward.

(As a side-note, it is notable that @Warma-Sheen has not been an active player (no participation in anything aside from a rare few logins) throughout my entire time as an admin, or even most of my time as a player, so I'm not entirely sure where this is coming from either.)

@Fizzle11 said in Star Wars: Dawn of Defiance:

Are there no more Taungs?

The Taung are at the moment largely a non-issue / not an active story element. They may come back at a much later time in order to wrap things up.

@Faceless
No. Kitty has departed, as has Ysalamir, Soresu, and Ataru - the latter handing me the mantle of Headwiz. Vaapad was left behind as per the change from GoD to DoD. Ashen still hangs out from time to time.

A GALAXY DIVIDED

The galaxy's state is tenuous. The invading TAUNG IMPERIUM, spurred on by a mysterious benefactor, has been pushed back out of civilized space, and has left change in its wake. A split galaxy with the Inner Core controlled by EMPEROR PALPATINE and the Outer Rim systems under the guidance of the now crumbling OUTER RIM REPUBLIC.

The budding RESISTANCE challenges the Empire's power at every turn and has gained allies as well as support from segments of the Outer Rim Republic. Confrontation is still a dream as the peace between the Empire and Republic must be maintained. The REPUBLIC KNIGHTS work to maintain order in the war-torn Outer Rim while the remains of the JEDI ORDER and other FORCE TRADITIONS are becoming whispers and hearsay, hunted by the Empire's mighty INQUISITION.

Using The Star Wars Roleplaying Game Saga Edition rules, we have created a rich world where player actions can control the outcome of the Galaxy. Come join us and fulfill your destiny.

rhostmush.com:9901

http://www.swdod.com

Dawn of Defiance has been around for years now, formerly known as Generations of Darkness. The story continues, but under new management. We've reached the 8th year after the formation of the Empire, and are almost at the midway point from the game's beginnings, to the Battle of Yavin on this 3:1 IC:OOC game. There have been some divergences from canon along the way, some minor, some major. But as we approach the proper rebel era, the focus of the game is starting to return to that important conflict.

There have been code changes over the past years, such as the addition of the Scene System and some quality of life changes around the way people get around the galaxy. Are you an old player of Generations of Darkness, or looking for a wide open galaxy with lore and a history you can sink your teeth into? Give us a go.

Not seeking to resurrect this topic. But for those who come one day later, a new feature now exists in PennMUSH which allows this behavior more easily: help monikers

You can lean on the moniker() function, or fall back on the default exit format, for this functionality.

@HelloProject
That was Pueblo/UE. Based around the Pueblo / MXP type transmissions. PennMUSH only, last I recall.

http://angelic.genesismuds.com/

No, Angelic Layer MUSH was definitely a MUSH. It's technically still live on its server too.
Though none of the original creators are still around, I did a lot of the new-generation code on there.

What's up?

@BobGoblin said in Are there any active sci-fi MU*s these days?:

Those two now run the game and take full credit for the game; which I find extra amusing to take credit for someone else's work when in fact they're merely caretakers.

We do what now? o.o
We're not just caretakers, we've taken over the game. But we're merely building on what previous admin have left for us. I played for a good 2+ years there, enjoying the stories that were enabled by former admin - so I have no idea what you're on about?

At which point they eventually became admin and then when everyone else left took over. And now alter character sheets to advantage.

We do what now? o.o Good god no. Malacia would kill me.

I log everything by default because by god - I have a shoddy memory. And it also means that when I catch someone in a lie, I have reference stuff. But that's for general MUSH-ness. When it comes to actual scene-logging...

Well, I like to have everything logged. But to expect people to put in the work of logging? It can be such a pain in the ass. Big proponent of automated logging (there's a reason I made scenesys), so that people can look back on things. More-over, having logs posted to a wiki shows game activity. And if you're a smart admin, you could even use it for other information. Like who are your most active RPers and what-not. What groups of people need more attention?

@Ganymede
Just some simple recursion (using fold()) so you don't have to deal with going over the same dataset again.

@Seraphim73 said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:

Whether there are any abilities that actively keep players from being included in RP is more of a game culture call, in my opinion... if Staff allows players to tear down other players for picking up particular abilities, that's a bigger problem with the game's culture in my opinion.

We definitely don't appreciate that behavior - but we're not omniscient. At times, that kind of behavior slips through the cracks (or is done in pages, and invisible to us). It's unfortunate

For the longest time, I've had issues where I wish there was a way to save information to a database like SQL, in some known format, and be able to query it. I don't just mean 'just use SQL', but I mean advanced features like... 'related topics', etc.

I basically wanted Graph based storage. I tried using oqgraph, since MariaDB gives access to that, and with MariaDB being binary compatible with MySQL, I could use it. But it isn't well maintained, and it tended to crash things. So I dropped that. (Read: Don't use OQGraph for SQL Graph Storage, it's a trap!)

I recently actually started work on this anew, and in doing so fixed a bug in PennMUSH's SQL handling that enabled single-return Stored Procedures -- creating Graph based functions in SQL. However, SQL isn't really made for this... with enormous tables, this'll get slow. (Read: Stored Procedures for SQL Graph Storage is the best option at the moment)

It's roughly detailed here:
http://mush-mercutio.tumblr.com/post/153345784737/pennmush-graph-framework

If I finish this, I may at some point rewrite SceneSys to use this kind of storage, and launch some basic things along with it, like a basic BBS and a basic Jobs system as a POC.

Being reflected on the MUSH and on SQL, would allow easy grabbing through websites, etc.

@Thenomain
Damn right it was a PITA.

But hey, it taught me Regular Expressions, so... win/win?