Wow I think this might actually be perfect for the DBZ game I wanna make >_>. I could totally apply that stuff to training, science, magic, space travel, afterlife travel, hunting dragon balls, etc.
Presumably, couldn't this system essentially be used with any sort of attribute or skill system 0_o? It seems like you can easily plug it into whatever you damned well please, even really exotic stuff.
Because of my irl experiences (I live in Philadelphia), I spent my first years in MUing hiding my race because I was terrified people would hate me if they found out I was black. Though it wasn't because I thought people were racist, it was because I had it hammered into my head that being black was an inherently bad thing >__<. (I got better)
So, if nothing else, I do understand the fear, even if I've only experienced a few race things in MUing.
I also like to think that there's no fucking way these people wouldn't get dragged for doing that shit in the modern era.
This shit is hilarious and we all need to enjoy it for posterity. If it doesn't make you laugh I don't know what will.
You all need the power of positivity, so as your local magic negro (I'm not even sure if I'm allowed to say that, and I'm a black guy), I will give you a reprieve from the hellish torments of the hobby this week.
Taiwan is the first Asian country to rule in favor of same sex marriage.
Look at these adorable 100 year old twins!
A lady went from homelessness to Harvard graduate!
Nicki Minaj literally does more humanitarian work than a saint.
Nintendo is a champion to the blind!
I certainly try to improve and try to make my contributions outweigh any negatives, as much as I can. I can't really understand the mindset of like, I don't know, just doing a lot of poisonous shit and then just not feeling bad about it.
I admit that I'm somewhat surprised that I've never been prebanned or had my own thread (we're ignoring the H!P Thread on WORA from when I went on a childish trolling campaign in 2013). But most of the bad shit I ever did was just suddenly blowing up because stress, anxiety, and general maturity issues I've had to work on. Well, I think I'm at least good on the maturity stuff now, the stress and anxiety are just kind of always an ongoing battle.
Still, it's legitimately surprising regardless.
I've played multiple games where a player was just a disruptive ass and then bitched and moaned on WORA and got immediate sympathy and people believing everything such a player said, because they said it angrily enough. Like back on WORA there was this dude who got banned from X-Men Movieverse for what I can only describe as racist metaposing, and literally spamming the RP channel with a bot asking for RP, because no one wanted to RP with him.
So he came to WORA and lied out of his ass with no evidence, and everyone was like "That seems legit and we support you".
While MSB is definitely different from WORA in many ways, I think it's good to keep in mind that this is not exactly an isolated incident. I came to generally perceive WORA as a place where problem players go to bitch and drag a game's reputation through the mud, and get sympathy, because that's been the case so many freaking times. So I'd honestly keep that in mind for MSB, for the purposes of not ruining games or players' reputations without hard evidence of whatever bad shit is being spoken about.
I definitely don't think it matters where the abuse comes from. Like, when you start splitting hairs like that, where would you draw the line?
People get fired for horrific racism from their jobs all the time, even if that racism didn't happen on the job. And while some people would argue that jobs should protect freedom of speech or whatever, why is a company going to risk both bad publicity and a possibly toxic work environment for everyone else?
Harassment is harassment, being horrible is being horrible. It's not staff's responsibility to do anything about stuff that happens outside of a MU, that much I will say, but it's certainly their prerogative, and in some cases I would say it's in their best interests. Staff can and should do whatever they want/can to protect their players, to say otherwise, in my opinion, is mostly an arbitrary restriction.
I often find that I trust staff less when they entirely remove themselves from being on the same level as the playerbase. It just gives you this sense that they're aloof and unavailable, and I get the sense that I just don't know the people I'm working with even on a casual level.
Altering the grid is a bit of a weird thing. I oddly think Shangrila and Penultimate do it best, despite being TS MU*s. I just like the idea of being able to put in a request for expanding the theme in some way and contributing something. I never felt it needed to be more complicated than that.
I don't personally believe that every alt needs to be public, but I do believe that all staff need to know every alt. I also think that maybe alt privacy could be a privilege that's removed for reasons like someone being on harassment probation or something.
One of my big peeves about games is how staff need players to explicitly break some super well-defined rule in order for something to count as harassment or a big problem. Putting people's emotional well-being behind bureaocratic red tape is something I see as a problem
I sincerely need everyone to read this long ass thread, because while I have experienced all kinds of prejudice and met some of the worst people ever, even spoken to literal Neo-Nazis and debated a GamerGate leader, I have never truly met anyone who just fit every negative stereotype about shitty ass people possible.
And there's fucking two!
I hope you find this as hilarious as I do.
https://www.facebook.com/francis.x.mcginley/posts/10154430456430766
@surreality I played a MUD (I forgot which one, I played a lot of them) that had a psychic network. It was kind of hilarious because it was basically a psychic chatroom. I highly recommend doing this.
I definitely don't think that weird magical variants of IC channels are a bad idea,
I think I'm banned from Hog Pit, since I don't see it. But I kind of don't want to be in a toxic wasteland anyway.
@surreality I can see the merit in this. While it's not necessarily the same ends as in-MU IC channels, I could see this potentially being useful for the people who use it.
For me, the appeal of IC channels is to enhance the flavor of the world, which is why I only have them exist in an IC context. IE: I avoid general "RP channels". If people are using some sort of IC channel, then I prefer it to be in the IC context of some sort of technology that they're not in the same room.
This is by no means necessary, it's just a strong personal preference on my part. Back in the day there were general "RP channels" on DBZ MUDs (oddly they didn't think that RPing in the same room was like, a thing), and people would just start writing their elaborate muscle descriptions and how awesome they are for the whole game to see.
It was cringe all around, so this is why I'm like, IC channels should always exist in an IC context, and never, ever in a highly descriptive manner. Well, there is one exception, which are live broadcast channels. Channels that represent a televised event and broadcasts what's happening in the room (people aren't actually RPing on the channel). We have one of those on M3, it's great.
But this Mediawiki thing doesn't really need to exist in an IC context, since it's mostly just a feature to RP off-MU, so I wouldn't worry too much about that. I say go for it.
@surreality I in general don't like to separate RP from the actual MU itself, which comes from an experience I had pre-MUs. I played a Zoids RP called Metal Machine Music, it was a mixture of AIM chat and forum RP. It was fun, but the separation kind of created two distinct RP cultures and was kind of a disjointed and unfocused mess.
Ughhh I hate having to sound like a responsible adult, but like, I think this email argument is getting a bit circular and you guys are never going to agree (I don't care enough to include myself in the "you guys").
Also, if MUDs are included in MUs, sometimes they're a business. But that's just nitpicky on my part.
While not a problem, more of a "this would be cool", I wonder what would change about the culture if more MUs embraced IC channels (IE: channels that represent internet, radio, phone, etc). Some private, some public, representing different areas of communication. I've always enjoyed games with them. Well, some of the games I play have moved beyond simply channels and already have their own uniquely coded systems for IC communication outside of a scene itself. I find them to be very convenient and fun, when properly moderated.
I say when properly moderated for reasons that anyone who played MCM 5 years ago or M3 2 years ago should know. Everyone else should just take it as an ominous warning that you don't want unregulated public IC channels. Private ones don't need to be regulated, really.
If I recall correctly, I think Reach had a channel for IC radio shows, that was fun. But that kind of concept can be taken much further (and has been many times).
When I make my game, I think I'm gonna give scouters access to a chat system that is limited to 140 characters, because fucking hilarious.
edit:
"Omg all these dickpics!"
@ThatGuyThere said in Identifying Major Issues:
@Derp
Hate to break it to you but you don't have to give google a phone number to get an account. I have a gmail account and have never given them a phone number.
Google accounts without a phone number are ridiculously easy to break into, just as a heads up.
I've had a PC since I was thirteen (that's 2001), and immediately started making sure I obscured personal details about my identity online. By the time I was about 14 or 15 I started using secondary emails because I realized it was probably dangerous to use my main email on shady websites. Hell in the late 90s before I had a PC, damned near everything I watched on TV told me how I was gonna get snatched if I didn't take the internet very seriously. I think the generation under me is used to thinking of the internet as a very safe thing, while the generation before me isn't used to thinking of the internet as a thing you prep to be on.
Then again, my generation also invented telling naked women to put shoes on their head, and unintentionally created a political climate in which the Nazis could return, so what do I know.
In my experience, in just ten years alone this hobby has almost entirely changed as far as staff conduct and what is or isn't acceptable in most games. While WoD has been slow to progress with this rest of the hobby, even those games are showing huge amounts of progress every time a new one pops up.
So I don't know about crazy remaining constant, this is a totally different hobby from when I joined, which is good because I'd have otherwise just quit by now due to being sick of all the bullshit and insane staff practices that used to be the norm.
Also I join -way- too many games to make a new email every single time. I would literally have over 200 emails if I did that from the start of my time in the hobby.