I, too, agree with Ghost's conclusions.
As usual, my posts tend to focus on a specific point someone has made, trying to make sure that said specific point doesn't get lost in the other specific points. I think that being excluded because you are an unknown factor is a Real Thing.
@Lotherio's chalk board analogy is a Real Thing, too. Do a few social experiments, as some have up above, and you might see things in a different light.
MSB is a clique. You may boo and hiss at me for saying so, so blatantly, but it's ultimately true.
Staff on a game are the people on the game who can Make Things Happen most easily, so when a staff-run scene is opened, people flock and step on each other to get there. It's worse than Black Friday at Walmart.
It says a lot about the state of MU*ing when we've come to a point that people cannot find RP because others are too worried about:
I know that you think that this is shocking (if you are not being sarcastic or facetious), but it is much more common than you might understand. It happens a lot of WoD/CoD games that I've tried joining. Make a new character and make some page-contacts, looking for people who might want fresh RP in their circles, and almost every time I get asked who I am.
I can somewhat understand fear of inter-Sphere spies, but god damn. When I state that I am new here and just looking for RP? I'm not giving up personal/identifiable information to sate someone's fears. Sorry, I'm not who you suspect I am, but thanks anyway, I'll look elsewhere.
Back to Arkandel's shock, however, it no longer shocks me to get this sentiment from MUSHers. It just doesn't. It may be inflammatory, but I think that many long-entrenched players on a game absolutely feel threatened by others. This is a game, people. It isn't your job, your livelihood, or your RL relationship. And right now? All those "But Rook"s on the tip of tongues out there just, to me, prove my point that Ghost is right.
If the OOC Game means that much to you, you are part of the problem.
Replying because my last post wandered and didn't make a point:
I've met several people that have made no bones about outright saying "If I dont know you, we don't RP" and then they needle for past characters/games/interaction information to place me by. I have learned to simply smile and shrug, tell them that it is their loss, and I move on. I am not here to suppliment my life with online OOC drama, I get enough via work and my RL social/family life.
Some people/personality types thrive on interpersonal drama, I do not. I do not need to feed on people's energy in such ways. I much prefer to build people up, support them on rough days, help them find fun.
There is something to be noted here, however, and that is a lot of RP cliques that I have run into in the last 3-4 years have been of a mindset that "We don't know you, so you will get minimal attention/inclusion until we have judged you".
I normally do not advertise who I am, where. I very briefly had my AresMUSH @handle linked to a character, but removed it because it just grew more and more annoying to me. I do not play the OOC game. I, in fact, stay the hell out of any OOC conversations about a game or the players on it. I just don't want to see behind the curtain.
I agree with Ghost - there are people out there that appear (to me) to be into MUSHing mostly for the "OOC Game" or "metagame" as many describe it. They derive their fun out of the OOC interaction, for good or ill, and not the IC character stories. I say this because: 1) They very rarely RP (maybe once every 3-4 months, by their recounting), 2) 99% of their MUSH time is spent chatting and talking.
Some of those people that I describe and have talked to over the last couple of years, are the very people at the top rungs of a few games' IC structures. The IC leaders of the game. Not RPing. Not stepping down for the more actively-IC people vying for the position, either.
Having had more than a few conversations with players over the years, just in natural chats, it seems to be that this happens everywhere. As one said, "It is how MUSHing is."
So, as a result of this, I don't advertise who I am, where I play. I have no playlist. Not because I've done horrible things or been banned anywhere, I just enjoy my anonymity. I like meeting new people who may be old friends but I don't know it yet, but yet neither do they. Discovering great RPers and friends is the joy of the game for me, 50-50 with the great stories written.
The moment when, during a company All-Hands, one person in the spotlight mentions that they played "an RPG where you played a vampire" and the chatroom chime-ins of 'Vampire the Masquerade' hit double-digits in five seconds.
I tend to make brownies that you cannot eat one of without a whole glass of milk. So gooey-rich that they slow-motion crumble in your hand. Hmm. Back later.
@sparks brings up a good point. People (MU*ers) will not give up their client for one or two games. If they are still playing a MUX, Rhost or Penn game, they will stay in their client.
Any client built for this, if you want to retain BOTH groups of players, has to adapt to this new platform alongside any MUSH/MUX that it works for, as well.
A point of consideration.
@alzie said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:
@surreality The loudest ones usually don't understand what you're doing anyways, but it's certainly not conducive to any of the developers 'give a fuck' rating if everyone keeps telling us how little they want it. Hope the project goes well.
Regarding this talk of the next version of Mu, however, what do you want out of the interface? Everyone keeps clamoring for the removal of telnet. Fine, but you're just replacing that with something else. If not telnet, it will be some other form of server-client communication. Maybe you do that through HTTP Requests, Maybe you make your own protocol (Relevant XKCD), Maybe you do it by email, Maybe you do it by wikis or forums or Maybe you just decide to do it by database queries (Relevant XKCD).
We're all talking about eliminating the data source, but that has nothing to do with the interface. People wanted HTML in Telnet, so pueblo exists. People wanted sound in Telnet, so we came up with ways to do that (IRC used a protocol command, Muds had MSP). People wanted really involved GUIs with Graphics and what not, so they made entire GUI Clients (see Batmud Client, or the many plugins for Mushclient that create GUIs for games).
So we change to another data source, the popular idea so far seeming to be a database backed RESTful front end, but what do you actually want out of that interface? What should it do differently? It's still only going to have text to display to you. How should the text look differently? Yeah, we can do some better things with CG that way, but we could do the same things with telnet and pueblo.
I'm not the old man on the corner telling everyone not to advance, but maybe we should actually talk about what we want out of the advancement? At least a semi-clear goal.
QFTFT. Again.
(Oh look. ANOTHER coder asking for a technical discussion. Good luck, Alzie.)
@auspice I think your interviewer was multi-mushing, if the interview scene got so slow and distracted. You should have said something OOC and bailed. Rewarding that sort of distracted play is a waste of your time. You should raise a complaint to the staff of the place. Do they have a +gripe command?
@Melpomene
Your very last line makes a butt-ton usage of %b. Try replacing with [space(#)]? Just helps with readability.
There is a crowd of however many that believe that Telnet is the problem.
There is a crowd of however many that believe that Telnet is not the problem.
Enter a thread that specifically states "Telnet is the problem", and both crowds will voice their opinion.
People are getting personally offended by the voicing of opinions, so it seems much less a technical discussion than it is a preference discussion. I have tried to guide both of these threads into some sort of technical planning/dreaming/design direction, and each time people have apparently taken offense.
Right, I get that. But just pumping the input/output to a web portal doesn't really change the style of the game.
If players are still essentially typing in a small box at the bottom of the screen, while the output from the game populates a larger box on the screen, then there is very little change happening here.
Bear in mind that IRC has that same format. Chat Rooms have that same format. Forums don't, really, so there is a UX style change in that RP circle.
What I'm asking is: How would you completely redo MU* so that it is not command>output in two windows? Is that even a goal here?
I dunno if I should continue participating, as I am immediately (by my second post in this thread) coming back to the same 'arguments' and questions that I posted and came to in the other thread.
What is it that NewMU* games (Ares and Evennia, we just need a new 'word' to encompass these things to differentiates them from MUSH/MUX/Telnet-based games) are going to bring to the table?
When I logged into either one of these, I am still presented with text-only scrolling output. From what I have seen, they are still done in a command>output interaction.
What are the plans to completely change the interaction motif, the UX and style of these games?
I see two of my character names on a couple of the WoD game listings. Won't say who. Been around far too long.
All addictions are forms of escapism. To me, all escapism runs a very high potential to be an addiction, at some level of severity.
This one came along in the last two generations, and thus is just "coming to light" to researchers, who always seem to be several decades behind the advent of things.
I think, in less years for them to have declared gaming an addiciton, social media addiction will be "discovered".
Yeah, ran it (as a completely different system) as an idea back then. Didn't get much interest, so sort of just stopped. Since then, things have changed with the theme and setting, clearly. Much more clear and formed.
No, it wasn't a Wraith game.
@auspice
Can't view the article because of "WHINE, YOU RUN AN AD-BLOCKER!!!!" crap. Sorry, not paying you a dollar to read your stupid article. plonk
@wildbaboons
Not much, honestly.
The best case scenario is that potential STs are part of the daytime group, we click, and they can run stories at night after a period of learning the theme, the 'power level' of stuff, etc. I have to feel comfortable with their approach and style.