The answer is big picture thinking. Walmart has already done it, and it knows the effect it will have. The people who fall for Walmart, haven't done the work, don't have people to pay to do the work, so they, like most everyone, save a few dollars, and turn around and pay for it in community health costs and loss of local businesses. It is the perfect soulless machine.
As they say, corporations are people. People without souls, so what do you expect? It's not like you won't need those same things in 6 months and they will be back in business.
Many components can be fit into the consent structure. It's a matter of do they help create RP, prevent player conflicts, and prevent whatever else peeps don't want to see for the given game.
Strong guidelines on what generates XP from letting people roll everything out? Some sort of scope of magnitude of consequences? So neither "give me that flyer!" nor repeated intimidates on a subordinate get rewarded?
You could only reward actual stories. Or adversity. Or working with new players/characters. You don't even have to do it with xp/power increases. These games aren't D&D, you don't need to level the characters up after fighting off goblin bandits. The saving throws don't get harder, and they don't need seventy rolls on Table III so they can get that sword +5 vs undead to take on your Vampire Prince.
It's a game about entertaining one another.
Or you can check and record everyone who is connected from the same IP at the same time, and over time deduce patterns to apply to your hide from +watch even if WHO still works.
Does anything work on unknown alts? BTW clients can highlight names etc as well, so even without +watch, you can be easily noticed. +watch is far more useful than problematic, especially with the opt-out. You can also set yourself unpageable after +finger'd or logging in if, you know, telling the person to cool it is too hard.
How about &afinger updates a list of who has ever read their +finger, for the paranoid, and there is no timing specific notice, for the paranoid user of +finger?
It provides metrics, feeds everyones insecurities, and takes up space.
You object to someone knowing you are reading their information?
Pre-code the afinger to send a message to the player. "X is reading your +finger info." Nothing else.
As a long term goal, would you look to possibly supplant the functions of another place? EG archive their forums, provide the same or similar services? I don't mean in a competitve way, but as a possible way to merge older designs and user bases into a new model?
Really, if you make things that relate to something (any game genre, by subject or type) and keep it alive, it should draw folks. So for game balance you might want a WoD thread marker like the title says WoD balance.
You may want to segregate games out, but I think you want activity everywhere, so maybe a section on theme discussion where all games can post would make that sense of community happen..
If it's an issue of having the powers means the players bypass interacting with actual situation routinely (telepathy, remote viewing in time and space), then I don't play with the powers. Champions dealt with this issue by calling it a deaden powers trope: the armchair telepath. Sure you are interacting with the plot, but you aren't playing the game that was presented. So no to the powers. I know you can't do that in Mage etc, but I would still do SOMETHING to make sure play was happening. And yes, I don't care if that is someone's play style, They can find another pollen, or another game to do that in.
If the issue is the player's style of play, well engage that before you bother with such a scene. Communication with sentients has become like investigating a scene as a CSI, or hacking in cyberpunk games, and you do not have any need for something that interacts with the characters. I might even have fun slowly isolating and dehumanizing the characters for this, but I would certainly not waste time with everything else. All those scene details, personalities, they are just adjectives on non-interactive objects. I wouldn't care if the players wanted to go do this AND get put through the scene. As a ST I don't do bar chat. If the character is meant to go RP about the information with others, they can. If they were meant to have some characterization, well they can do that on their own time. It's their choice if they want to bypass the player to player role-play.
Burglers. They take things that cannot be replaced.
Stakes.
You have to have them. Something to gain, something to lose , though it doesn't have to be a zero sum.
Bring some. Let players define some. Resolve the challenges, enact the gains and losses.
Be bolder than nickle and dime'ing towards success.
Conflict.
Decisions that lead to consequences.
Characterization and character change.
That's what tends to be fun for me. If you could add in that these stories are accounted for when shifting the status of the setting, awesome.
ETA: Actually, for apply lines 2 and 3 to the setting (setting as character) and you have everything that makes me happy seeing as a player, providing as a ST.
Shouldn't any Event have a purpose such as gathering a sphere or like minded group together, and be used when it is a general invite to everyone who qualifies? So the point is to make connections and play out the myriad themes from mundane to typically arcane for said group?
Or in other words, I get tired of having every meeting/party has zombies if there isn't a world wide zombie plague going on openly. It gets farcical even faster than usual.
On the other hand, my mundane scenes don't ever need a +event.