Posts made by Pyrephox

@Insomnia said in No Man's Sky Thread:

There's a bug with Pre-orders of PS4 which let's you skip the Hyper Drive tutorial, and the pre-order ship is supposed to have a Hyper Drive, but it doesn't, but the game thinks you have it, so it doesn't let you go back and do the tutorial, and you can't learn how to make it without the tutorial... so you get stuck out in the middle of space with no Hyper Drive and have to start over again.

Oh, yes. I've heard about that, although never ran into it myself.

@Insomnia I'm afraid I don't understand this reply?

@Ganymede said in No Man's Sky Thread:

@Pyrephox said in No Man's Sky Thread:

(Although, once you get your multi-tool upgraded, my name for Sentinels is "mobile Titanium deposits".)

I'm still trying to figure out reliable ways to get Aluminum and Iridium, so the going is slow in making my Boltcaster a thing of pure evil. Figured out that the mining beam is shit, even when upgraded, against Sentinels, so --

I've most often found Iridium in asteroids. Sometimes you get lucky and find a planet that has ground-level deposits, but it seems like it's more likely to be found in space. Aluminum, I've found most often on toxic planets for some reason. I don't know if that's actually a trend, or just my experience, though.

@Ganymede Mountains of gold are almost my favorite things, eclipsed only by special resource worlds, where you run through, snatching up Albumen Pearls or Vortex Cubes, while an ever-growing Sentinel army tries to murder you.

(Although, once you get your multi-tool upgraded, my name for Sentinels is "mobile Titanium deposits".)

I adore it. I got it on pre-order for the PS4, and have been playing nigh constantly since then. Sadly, my souped-up ship, multitool, and backpack were all lost when I tried to play around with save game data and accidentally deleted it. So I've started again. Still love it.

I've seen giant flying snake things, bright blue rays in a red sea, eye-covered elder things, and strange worlds a-plenty. It's pretty much endlessly entertaining. The only bad thing is that it's easy to get into a sort of Zen state of exploration, and realize that you've somehow spent six hours on it.

@Cobaltasaurus It seems pretty clear - although I might suggest adding a list of the "taken" variant powers/abilities/weirdnesses from the books, since you don't want overlap. For players who haven't read the books, or just might have forgotten one or two.

I loved the premise, and only left because of my own flakiness. It's a shame to see it pass - I hope that someone else revives the idea of a mortals game - I might suggest one that covers less geography, though.

I'd add: Make it very, very easy for any potential player (especially at the start) to answer the question: What am I going to do on this game? You can do that through having some events with some big hooks, or organizations/factions with immediate impact and interest, or through other means, but whatever way you go, you want to make potential players immediately have an idea of how this character that excites them is going to play on the grid and Do Something. (What that Something is, is going to vary by theme, and it might not appeal to all people. That's okay! It's better to exert a strong, enthusiastic buy-in from 10 players than a lukewarm, least-common-denominator response from 30.)

coughs Apologies to @SunnyJ for the massive derail, by the way. Mage game! Sounds cool!

@Arkandel said in Fallen World MUX!:

Ah, but now we're getting into the 'a good player won't have a problem with that' argument. You know better than to create a character you're not excited about but others would, and have; I've had people come to me in the past a few short weeks into a PC going 'well, I was told/promised by that pack/coterie they needed this but I never see them and now there's no point in it, I just wanted to play it for them'. This is a thing that happens!

Oh, sure. But I was talking about asking STAFF that question. Never ask PLAYERS that question. Rule One of MU*s is that players are flaky as hell, and you should never, ever make a PC that depends on another PC being around or interacting with you in order to remain viable. But directing that question towards staff should get a useful response. Even something like, "Right now, it's pretty open for a lot of concepts and characters. This game is oriented towards investigating Mysteries in an urban setting, so it's going to be easiest to get involved with characters who are high on the Mental skills, and now that I think about it, we could really use a dedicated technowizard or three for stuff that's in the works." That's a response that tells me that staff is open to diverse concepts, knows what their game is about and what sort of play they're angling for, AND has plots and events in the works that are fun to get involved with.

To get back to the matter of alts though, my one issue with them (past the ever-existent one where people in my scene are taking forever to pose because they're playing three of them at once and argh) is that more or less the same group, rather than just one player, can monopolise +events. By showing up for them (which isn't difficult, especially if they are being ran by the same ST) they take up 'spots' that could have gone to legitimately disconnected, idle players looking for something to do, which is a tricky thing to fix without extensive hardcoding or strict policies. That's because it's far easier to +event/signup and be online at 20:30ET than to show up on the grid with your third alt consistently enough to have a strong presence.

On this, though, we agree entirely. And I wish more STs were willing to say, "Hey, I'd like to give other people a chance to get involved with plots. Please don't sign up for this one unless you haven't been in an ST'd scene in a week or two - if we get up to time, and all the slots aren't filled, then I'll put out an open call."

@Arkandel said in Fallen World MUX!:

@Pyrephox said in Fallen World MUX!:

And about "whatever you'll enjoy" is just flat, flat wrong. Terribly wrong. I weep for the wrongness of it. It's one of the things that will flat out make me walk away from a game, because it says to me that staff has no idea what kind of game they're actually running, no coherent theme, and no interest in drawing new players into the game in interesting, fun ways.

I wanted to address that last part real quick. You missed out on the (theoretical but pretty frequently asked) question it was answering: "What's needed?". Since that sounds similar to what you're talking about in regards to roles. "Something you will enjoy playing, nevermind what's already on the grid right now" seems like a valid answer to me - it's not a complete one, but I wasn't going for that in my example.

No, I get it. I just think it's wrong. "Something you will enjoy playing," is not a useful answer. ANY character I create is going to be something I enjoy playing. I don't make a policy of playing characters I don't find fun. It's like me asking, "Hey, is it better to take a right turn or a left at this street to get to this address?" and someone answering, "You should really drive to that address." It is not an answer that in any way addresses my concern!

@Arkandel See, I think our fundamental disagreement is that you're talking about player characters as individuals, and I'm talking about the system. Individually, a "good enough" player can make ANY character concept fascinating and fun, and will draw people into play with them, regardless of their niche/usefulness/etc.

This is, however, not a good basis for design choices, in my opinion. Excellent players will always be excellent. Most players, however, excellent or not, want to be able to SEE how their character "fits in" to the larger whole, including their degree of "this group/faction/game NEEDS my input/expertise" as well as their ability, as characters, to impact the greater narrative. And you're right that, inevitably, as a game grows, those roles get filled up (unless staff are GREAT game designers, and respond to growth with creating and opening up new roles for people to fill) - and as those roles fill up, new people have to rely less on being needed, and more on Being Awesome as players.

My argument is that this is a bad thing, and a thing that we want to put off as long as possible in the life cycle of the game, because new players (not new characters) are one of the big ways that a game continues to grow, change, and remain exciting. Letting 5 players take up 25 character slots means that's 20 roles that are now gone, without any increase in ACTUAL PLAYERS. Any new player is going to have to compete with those five players (especially in an unlimited alt environment, where I have definitely seen Old Player hear New Player talk about their cool new concept, and then Old Player quickly makes a character (because they know what staff want and the lay of the game) that fills that niche while New Player is still trying to figure out chargen) for any role they want to fill.

And about "whatever you'll enjoy" is just flat, flat wrong. Terribly wrong. I weep for the wrongness of it. It's one of the things that will flat out make me walk away from a game, because it says to me that staff has no idea what kind of game they're actually running, no coherent theme, and no interest in drawing new players into the game in interesting, fun ways.

@Arkandel Actually, your cautionary tale is a good example of my point - when you have more people than you have roles, you're more likely to reject and exclude a new person. Now, if there were fewer alts, maybe the chef-player would have had a niche that they valued more highly, and their one character would be in THAT role, leaving the chef space open to be filled by a shiny new person. Or, with less character-pressure all around, the family might have been more willing to say, "Hey, we actually already have someone who specializes in cooking monsters, so you might not enjoy that as much with us, but we could definitely use people with X, Y, or Z focuses. Do any of those interest you?" Because if you don't have enough characters to fill all the niches in your system, you're going to be actively trying to pull people in, and more accommodating to them. Because you NEED them. Otherwise, it's Applicant #25 of 450, all applying for the same data entry job - you're looking for a reason to REJECT them, not to bring them in.

@Arkandel I think it's more than explicitly political games that have roles, though. One theory in community psychology talks about the differences in engagement in role-rich vs. role-poor environments, and they're not talking about political roles. Basically, every human activity has a set of roles - whether that's a political structure, an adventuring party, creating a play, etc. You have a certain number of niches that you need to fill, whether it's "we need a Sheriff" or it's "we need enough shooty people to keep the monsters away, enough smart people to break these codes, enough social people to get us inside the fortress, etc." When there are fewer people than there are roles, then that social structure actively recruits new blood, and it gives "newbies" a chance to try out roles and acquire new skills and competencies. When there are more individuals available than roles, however, the system becomes more insular and performance-oriented, with fewer chances for new people to enter the system, and less tolerance of new people mistakes and of putting a role into (subjectively) sub-optimal hands, meaning that what new people can join end up being pushed to the bottom of the hierarchy (the least demanding, least desired roles), until the new person is able to successfully fight their way up to a desired role. In our game environment, "people" are characters, and alt characters already have a leg up, because they're known/have insight into the game and its needs that a totally new player can't match.

While this may be true to life, it's less great for making a game fun for new people. We're already a pretty insular hobby, and it only gets worse when a shiny new person fumbles their way to a MU*, logs in, and realizes that the game already has 50 characters, who have filled every possible niche they're interested in...but, really, there are like 20 actual players, and at least 15 of those characters haven't been played in weeks (but will immediately be brought out the moment someone tries to challenge their niche, until the competitor is driven away).

@Arkandel said in Fallen World MUX!:

But that's what I meant before - I'm not convinced mandates on the number of alts achieve the goal of people investing in their characters like we do simply because that's not how other people necessarily like to do it. Not everyone is enlightened like we are.

Investment isn't the only reason for a restrictive alt policy. It's also a matter of roles. Games where all the available "roles" are filled by a small minority of players who have 3-10 alts each are considerably less welcoming to new people, and more stagnant, in my experience, than games with much more restrictive alt policies. Personally, I love games that are one character only, largely for that reason. Also, because I like playing with different people, and it does actively bother me when the "fun new person" I've met turns out to be Yet Another Alt. (I have also been kinda stalked in this way, with certain other players taking every character type I thought sounded interesting to play off of, creating an alt, and then approaching me with the character without being honest about its altness. Largely, as far as I could tell, to keep me from playing with people other than them. It was kinda creepy.)

It also helps to keep staff load more efficiently aimed at making things fun for the largest group of players possible, when newly approved characters are definitely new players. You can more easily address issues of plot and activity by directing plots to different classes/factions without having the same players (with alts in every faction) taking over every plot or dominating every faction. It also helps (does not STOP, but HELPS) the character-explosion staff-burnout factor, because at least when you only add a character (and thus the work associated with that character) when you have a new player, rather than one enthusiastic player creating and putting in work for 5 characters.

It did work really well for RfK, and I think that the way it forced people to engage with new players was a part of that. You could not just make "you and your buddies" RP spheres in every single covenant and keep to yourselves. Instead, because every new character was a source of IC power and was less likely to have been made "just to play with my friends in this covenant", you really needed to reach out to new people, and figure out how to play with them if you wanted to fully engage with the game. That was an important part of the game's success, I think.

I mean I know people who want to try a couple of different things - they like say, Demon but they also like Werewolf. They have friends in one sphere but they also have buddies in another who're looking for a packmate. So either way they'd need to give something up or they'll scratch the extra itch somewhere else as well; does it truly matter to you if the awesome RP partner you ran into is distracted because they're playing another character on the same MU* or on a different one? Hell, the character you ran into might be their second alt - meaning if the game didn't allow for it you wouldn't have met them in the first place.

It matters to me! Because if they're "scratching their itch" in two+ ways on THIS game, then that's one (or more) fewer roles for awesome new people to fill, and ultimately, fewer people for me to play with. And, hell, if we're honest, it's a lot easier to avoid a player who you just don't play well with, if you only have to know about their one character, and there's little chance of them trying to create a secret alt and cozy up to you. And yeah, it means that you might not have the opportunity to play with everyone who looks interesting (there were some people on RfK who I really would have liked to play with, but couldn't because of IC circumstances), but "more people to play with than I can" is a GREAT problem for a game to have - and you can mitigate that somewhat by facilitating a positive and interactive OOC culture.

Mostly, I look for something interesting that has potential for a self-sustaining environment, and that inspires me in some way. I know that's vague, but I get inspired by a lot! The biggest thing is that I want it to be clear that the game runner has a vision about what makes this game different, has clearly articulated that vision, and has chosen mechanics that are entertaining and that support that vision. So, if you say "this is a political game", then that needs to be backed up in both the kinds of characters which are allowed AND the mechanics chosen. I'm going to need to know that the staff understands what "political" means, beyond shiny hats. Likewise, if you say something is a "dark fantasy game about power and sacrifice" then don't give me bog-standard WoD, but give me something fun where every move towards power is going to cost me something, and where the powerful NPCs are coherently reflective of that theme, and where the PCs approved are ambitious, striving towards various kinds of power, but also with a lot to lose so that the sacrifices are meaningful choices.

Just don't give me "This is a <system> game set in <setting>." That ain't a theme, even if your setting information is pages upon pages of text. I'm also fine with homebrews, heavily house-ruled systems, and settings where I need to read Walls Of Text, so long as it's clear that staff knows the kind of game they're creating, and all the text helps me explain how to best create a character that fits within it. That said: I do love fantasy and SF, and will be far more inclined to enjoy a game if it has some significant SFF elements, than a game without. I only really like PvP when the game's been carefully designed to encourage long-running conflicts over nuclear strikes, and when the conflicts are both meaningful, and designed to make it as fun to lose as to win. I'm not particularly interested in playing animals or roboty-robots. I'm also not inclined to play any "feature characters" or on games that have feature characters. I also don't want a freeform or minimalist system that gives me few choices to make during character creation and afterwards. I like a moderate amount of crunch, and to know the mechanism by which my character will progress. XP ceilings are fine, though.

@Arkandel I dunno! The world of KD has some pretty weird stuff in it - none of which is probably used in a MU*, because it IS weird, but, I mean, the world of Kushiel is pretty weird.

@Roz Hey, by all means. I stole the initial image/scene from Memento without shame. Since it was WoD, it ended up being that they had all been possessed by vengeance-driven ghosts who had already /gotten/ their revenge (and abandoned the bodies, hence why everyone 'woke up' at the same time), and now they had to clean up the mess. Or, as rather ended up happening, create a miniature gang war (one of the PCs was Mafia-affiliated).

I started a plot in media res one time - as in, "You're right now running from people who want to kill you, and don't remember a damned thing about how you got here." With the plot itself being putting together how the PCs got from the last thing they each remembered, to all being covered in blood and dirt, with people trying to murder them. It actually worked out pretty well - of course, I gave people OOC warning up front that their PCs would be in the position of something having been done to them that they did not have control over, and letting them opt in/out on that basis.

@surreality Granted. "Magic" needs to be operationalized as a concept. For that matter, so do "ghosts", and "angels". It largely is useless talking about those words without establishing a common definition (and, for that matter, what would count as proof of their existence - existence, not non-existence, because you cannot prove a negative). I fully support creating such definitions!