Posts made by Roz

@friarzen be the crotchety doomsday prepper you want to see in the world

@dreampipe said in Spirit Lake: An Original Modern Fantasy Game:

I feel as though playing a grouchy fellow passed his mid-life crisis is my calling for this game. That and having a smoking problem that makes his voice all grrggrrggrrrr.

@Roz would you like a grumpy smoker working in your cafe?

Okay but like, you gotta smoke OUTSIDE. Also you have to deal with your boss being younger than you.

@skew and I are now combining our cafe ideas like VOLTRON

I believe that I will be brewing up a young single dad whose dreams of an athletic scholarship for university were dashed when he got his high school girlfriend pregnant. So stayed in his hometown working at his parents' cafe/coffee shop that now years later he is pretty much modernizing and running full-time. I will know how old his kid is once I decide how old my PC is. >_>

(If someone is interested in playing my kid's mom, hit me up! Caveat that I mostly mean people I've played with before.)

Are you looking for Mediawiki or Wikidot?

I will probably be playing here! And thoroughly recommend the gamerunners and other players I know will be there at the start. So, like, people who I like playing with should totally listen to my opinion!! I guess if you hate me that is also fair warning.

The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater is pretty much my absolute fave. THAT IS THE ONLY HELPFUL THING I HAVE

@ganymede said in Good or New Movies Review:

And Starscream:

that's actually blitzwing >_>

@rinel said in Who are you?:

@roz said in Who are you?:

@three-eyed-crow Don't Be A Lawyer!

OI. Copycat.

Listen, I am skimming at BEST

@three-eyed-crow Don't Be A Lawyer!

Rezzing this thread cause I've been streaming a fair bit lately and realized I could tell people! I'm over on Twitch as rozzingit if people ever want to hang out while I'm playing video games.

For the record, I don't think that staff is planning on pulling out from ALL THE ARX THREADS here or something. Just -- as @Arkandel said, MSB is not well-equipped for this kind of really dense system discussion, and I know it was getting pretty discouraging for staff just because of the way MSB discussions can get stuck on one particular issue and circle around it forever and not have a bigger picture to compare it to. There's the publicly accessible Github now, and yeah you'll have to make an account to chat there, but it provides a much better venue for being able to get into specifics, to have different issue threads on different topics and ideas and projects, etc.

@raemira said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

@jeshin said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

System Question

The Clue systems primary issue appeared to be creating to much overhead work for staff to continue to generate clues. The new system basically sets it so that if 5+ people know a clue you have very good odds of uncovering it in a short timeframe. It does however push new clues further out. With this adjustment to the rate of new clue generation will staff be maintaining the same clue writing style or will they be shifting towards a less is more approach where clues are perhaps more substantive than they have been in the past? I know some clues are very helpful but other clues seem more tidbits or very vague meant to either lead players to ask around or continue their investigation for more clues to create the lattice of understanding. That bread crumb approach would (from an outside observer) appear to create staff overhead too since someone might keep investigating the same issue for months and be needing new clues along the way if it's untread or lightly tread ground.

My understanding is with the new clue system is that when they are generating that new clue for you, they are also generating a whole subset of clues to be discovered, not just one clue, so that you can continue researching that shiny new thing you're looking into and maybe get more information or point you to different plots, or a whole new plot thread in general.

I don't think that's accurate. They're writing a number of new clues in general, so that topics are more fleshed out and filled out, so that people are a bit less likely to NEED a newly written clue. But the reason that new clues now have a cost is just for the staff time required to write ONE new clue, not a whole set of them.

@jeshin said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

With this adjustment to the rate of new clue generation will staff be maintaining the same clue writing style or will they be shifting towards a less is more approach where clues are perhaps more substantive than they have been in the past?

Staff has said they're purposefully staying out of this thread, so you're probably not going to get answers from them on here.

I just want to say that I have RPed SO MUCH about Berenice's fashion and most recently her Assembly outfit that bumped her way up to #2 on +score.

But also I find the idea of further lowering the ceiling on modeling and increasing the floor for things like event hosting, work/invest, and +donate to be super fair for balancing. Especially event hosting!

BUT YOU CAN TOTALLY RP ABOUT MODELING. I'm playing a dedicated fashionista socialite tho which probably makes a difference.

As for the matter of optimizing -- I think that there's a different between optimizing and specializing. Specializing is when you say "my character is focused in one specific area and all or most of their stats and skills will be in that area." Optimizing, to me, is more "what is the most efficient way to maximize the numbers as the system currently exists." Staff has generally indicated that their philosophy is that they want people to specialize or not based on what's IC for the character to pursue so that they can balance the system to optimize around that. As @Sparks said, they want the system to reward specialization in a way that you do get an advantage for it versus someone more generalized/spread out, or else you end up with a game full of generalists where anyone can basically do anything and no one is really shining in different ways.

Optimizing to just boil down everything to maximum efficiency for skill buys also runs the risk of literally becoming obsolete when the system is retooled/rebalanced.

I know that there are players for which optimizing the numbers is a source of a lot of fun! I think the issue that comes up is when the extremes kind of butt against each other. Like, a lot would be solved I think if people kind of just paused a beat to clarify if a level of detail on either end is what someone is asking for. If someone is just discussing their PC's overall skillset, comments about it not being "optimized" (like what @Goblin described happening to him) can be really premature and end up feeling unwelcoming and discouraging. Likewise, if you're asking for help and people start with the basics but what you're really looking for is more detailed stuff, just ask for more detail instead of assuming people won't help or are hiding info.

@sparks said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

To be fair, maybe the real answer is "we need to just stop listening to complaints about system design until everything is done, and then do any re-balancing afterwards." Because the systems are meant to facilitate RP, not replace it.

Tbh I have been saying this about various things since Alpha. That it is okay for staff to be like "Okay we understand there are concerns but we've reached our cap of talking them out for the time being."

@groth said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

That said if someone makes a factually incorrect statement at me, I'm going to correct them with math and it will be in spoiler tags from now on so those who think working things out is the devil don't need to snark all over the thread.

Dude, come on.

@groth said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

When I lay out the math for a system, it's not with the intention of telling anyone they're playing the game wrong, it's with the intent of allowing them to make informed decisions and provide the foundation I make conclusions from. If someone doesn't want to know how the systems work, then a systems discussion thread is probably not the best thread for them to be in, maybe we can make a no-spoilers version of the thread for people who don't want to know, or maybe I should start putting the math behind spoiler tags.

I think that's a bit unnecessary (and also kind of condescending). And, again, kind of missing the point I was trying to make. People aren't being spoiled by math, and I don't think they need to be PROTECTED FROM IT or something. You don't need to put your stuff behind NSFW TAGS. Or, like, a single link.

Again, my point is that when people are coming into a discussion from the perspective of someone who is interested in using systems but who has some gut feelings about how they play out and how that makes them more or less likely to use a given system, drowning them with the mathematical proof that their feelings are wrong -- doesn't usually help. Pointing out that there have been recent revisions to the system can surely be relevant. People's gut reactions to systems are indeed often not accurate to the numbers, because no system survives first contact with players. Sometimes those gut reactions are inaccurate enough to say "sorry, can't help there," because sometimes people have unreasonable expectations about what they should get out of something. (Those sorts of feelings you especially can't math away.) But, frankly, throwing math equations around is a good way to get a fair number of people to skip over text. (Pax's guide she's been drafting for the magic system deals with this in an interesting way: for each section that she goes through the system from a usability standpoint, she has a mini-section at the end detailing the math involved. At the start of the guide it basically says "I'll include the math at the end of each section for people who are definitely gonna want to dig through it, so please skip over if you don't care about that stuff."

@sparks I think that uncoupling -- or reducing -- the connection between house prestige and house income would go a long way as a stopgap. I think that's a really huge area where it kind of comes down to people feeling a lot of pressure, and I think it's a really big area in which the "prestige is a minigame" intent can fail. (Then again, the potential pitfall of that is then it becomes -- what value is social stuff bringing the house at all to encourage houses to support their social PC projects?)

@jeshin said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

@roz

Knowing the math backend of a system is like knowing odds in poker. The odds for poker have been known for awhile now. There are books discussing it. There are a lot more books discussing poker strategy and human behaviour at the table and manipulating it. Knowing the most efficient means of engaging with a system is beneficial for everyone.

Again, as I said in my post, I wasn't saying that people shouldn't dig into the (publicly-accessible) math if that's what makes them happy, or that they shouldn't share their findings if people ask for them. But, like, it was barely an hour ago that people were kind of saying, "Listen, I don't actually want to know all this mathematical detail because I'm not necessarily trying to be the most efficient." I'm saying that you shouldn't center these discussions on mathematical efficiency because a lot of players don't play that way. Yes, I do think the system should adjust to reward healthy ways of engaging in it, but I actually think you figure that out more by talking about how people experience and engage with the system. Like, I think @Apos's posts saying "there are more efficient ways of doing this, like XYZ, but people haven't been doing that, which is curious!" are helpful, because they're not so much centered on figuring out the efficiency as much as looking at how people engage with it.

And I think there are instances of ~EFFICIENCY~ being brought to bear in a way that actually reduces fun for other players. And, as @mietze said, encourages a mindset of "if I'm not engaging at peak efficiency with the systems, then I might as well not engage at all."

@mietze said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

Or out of fear that they are not doing it right because their skills are "too low/not good enough."

This is why I also dislike system discussions that are based on, like, a basis of "what is the absolute most efficient way to do this," because it quickly turns into "people are doing this wrong/not doing it well enough because they're doing it at less than peak efficiency." Which I don't mean as "people shouldn't crunch numbers if that's where their happiness lies" or "people should obfuscate their efficiency," but when we're talking about user engagement in a system and how to make it feel better, I think that a hyperfocus on "peak efficient way of utilizing a system" tends to actually have a negative effect on the discussion. It reduces the human element in favor of math and it gives the false impression that the math can predict how people will engage and how they'll feel about it. The math can predict a lot! Not denying that. But it very much loses the human element that is going to be the most common reaction.