@Sparks While I grasp the logic, the other bit that makes my soul itch is...
...it's not replacing with 'naked woman features'. If this is the reasoning, it is apparently taught to replace with 'naked women from porn' features, which are, uh... yeah. While porn is broad and varied, I would not call it a genuine random sample of the population.
I just... the methodology here makes my head hurt on so many levels.
@Atomic Would recommend chatting with @faraday about Ares. Pretty sure it can be set up on DO, and by all accounts, she is amazingly helpful. Also has a fair bit built in and ready to go.
@Too-Old-For-This said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
I was raised that if I'm not early then I'm late.
This. Same.
...but my husband is the Puttermaster General. I have genuinely never seen a person be more able to find new and creative ways to completely waste time and/or be perpetually late due to dazzling levels of sheer inefficiency.
I have taken to lying to him wholesale about when we have to be somewhere, giving a target time of anywhere between a half hour to an hour before the actual time to be there, and we are still barely, if ever, on time getting there if he's managing things.
There are days I genuinely can't imagine how he functions in the world like this, and others, I simply marvel at it all.
@Auspice If it makes you feel any better, I apparently have at least two dead ringers. I met one, and have seen pictures of the other.
The one I met? Same friend group. People would confuse us. Including her boyfriend and mine.
Awwwwwwkward.
@Ghost Meanwhile, I am still all kinds of sad we never got our Paul Bettany (per A Knight's Tale) Bravo. 
(Our current one kicks ass, though! <3)
@Derp The wiki is getting a 2.0 treatment... at some point. The stuff you're describing is definitely an issue, and it's something very much in mind going forward. Not a ton of help right now, but ideally it's something that will be improving in the foreseeable future.
Really... I found Ark's post a bit out of place, too, particularly since the initial post makes it clear that it isn't for everyone in no uncertain terms. Going on about this as though it wasn't addressed from the jump due to things that are in no way universal wants was more than a little off-putting. My brain went 'he probably skimmed/read too fast and missed that bit', so I stuck with the relevant facts. Without that 'he probably missed that bit' mental loop in place (which is often there for everything)... uh, yeah, it does come across as a bit condescending and short-sighted. I mean, the things cited are not things that everyone wants, either, so their absence is not going to be a universal negative. Plenty of us find them to be major positives.
The game has now been around for almost a year. Just to address one of the points raised in the 'but what about' post, look at the difference between a player who joins the average permanent XP-gaining game a year from when it started compared to the active player who joined on day one. Odds are often good they won't be able to be in the same scenes and events due to the power disparity between the two. This is not an issue on HM at all, and it never will be. To some folks, this may be the most terrible thing ever, but to me, it's pure gold. It means that anyone interested can hop right into play/events/anything/everything without level-based concerns. It means everyone needs everyone else much more. It means new players or old players are not 'locked out' of things on the game over stat/level-based fairness concerns. It means plots and stories can be designed without a never-ending worry about how to handle sheet-based major power disparities, and can focus on telling an awesome and engaging story without ever once having to worry about that vast catalogue of issues.
This is non-trivial. The impact is notable. Inclusion increases because people don't have to worry about whether or not the new person is going to get turned into a greasy smear due to 'just having fresh out of CG stats'; they can be invited along without impediment. (And if and when anyone does get turned into a greasy smear, they live on in the metastory and the next story to fight another day and continue forward.) This also contributes to giving more people opportunity to shine that is otherwise often dominated by the very, very active, or high-powered dinos who showed up on day one (and maybe haven't done much of anything since but gain passive XP for existing until there's a spotlight to dive on like a shark catching a whiff of chum).
@Atomic said in A fully OC supers MU:
As for actual setup, I'm looking at a couple hosting solutions. If anyone has advice there, I'll happily take it.
Digital Ocean has been consistently solid. They're monthly rather than annual, but for $10/month you have all you need and more control of your virtual server without the potential hassles of shared hosting.
@Arkandel I think a number of the things you're discussing actually are handled pretty well, even if it is in a less obvious way.
There's continuity and a persistent character in the meta-story that's genuinely fascinating, for example.
There are power imbalances of a sort, and it is marginally keyed to activity: the more you do, the more you tend to know, and that's useful in the game -- it just isn't represented in the form of XP to be spent on stat increases that would often be implausible in a scaled-down system that rarely has a storyline that lasts for more than a handful of IC months.
Information, role (today's leader is tomorrow's janitor and vice versa), and connections are 'soft power' and both are important to the story, the characters, and what those characters are able to do in a particular scenario. Sometimes this results in positive or negative modifiers if and when relevant.
Activity also earns a character 'genre points' that can be used in the current story for special actions and effects.
They key here is that they are also not permanent. This is a great reward for activity, without hamstringing people who can't be around as often for a month -- it gives them a chance to be on an even footing again the next time, when the people who were more active today may have the busy RL month instead. It is the most mind-bogglingly fair approach to the 'active players vs. passive dinos' debate I've seen to date. Just because numbers on a sheet don't swell over time or with bursts of activity, it doesn't mean the idea of power imbalances IC are erased.
@Arkandel Fast, Cheap, Good: Pick a maximum of two.
...when a seriously awesome scene feels like playing chicken with the box of sniffle-tissues.
@gryphter ...I dunno, I had to go sleep. (Not even kidding! I mean... )
Stuff I have noticed as a player, and from behind the scenes:
The lack of XP/newbie vs. dino dynamics is not to be underestimated.
Yes, I have totally made it a point to try to make people sniffle in death poses, and I am not the only one. (Sometimes, it's a pact!) This can be more fun than most folks probably think. (Also, proooooobably only @gryphter will understand why I am legit terrified at the amazing teamup hacking roll that literally just happened while I was typing this.)
Bot is amazingly flexible, and runs with ideas. The specific setup of the game, structurally, allows for this very well. The willingness to do it is something to not ever underestimate as a fantastic part of the game.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/world/canada/plastic-bags-embarassing-messages.html
...how does one get that job, of coming up with these? I would do that job. I would fucking love that job.
@Admiral said in From my heart.:
You speak in a tense that suggests you speak for everyone involved.
I am speaking for myself and Scorn having mended fences, not the forum, period.
@Admiral Look. I am not a ray of warm fuzzy sunshine on my best day. I haven't exactly been knocking it out of the park on unruffled chill since all my medical shit came rolling down the pike, either. I had a part in this, too, and even if I kept mum on names until the other day, I've been bitching and griping about this for a fucking month now.
I'm going to put this as simply as I can: sometimes, shit goes wrong. Sometimes even very wrong. There is a point, when you're brutally honest with yourself about things, when you realize, 'know what? The good shit that folks want to get back to is way better than being mad about this is ever gonna be'.
Shit went wrong. We got mad at each other. And then we got over it.
(Theno: I meant... Skydive is not a sock puppet.)
FWIW, we did talk this out privately. Things are good. Also, re: Skydive, pretty sure that's not a sock.
@bored I was just thinking, 'it's like they replaced all the pouches with Folger's Weaponry'.
