Posts made by Thenomain

@BigDaddyAmin

The slang used in the first two episodes of Life Is Strange is not something that people should be aspiring to. No, not even you, Cirno.

@Arkandel said:

What I'm trying to say is, even with a statement of privacy and assuming the best intentions by head staff, all it really takes in the end is one coder no one catches at it.

This really explains all code and all coders. There was, a year or two back, an exploited code hole in ... bash, was it? That the people in charge of the code think was inserted purposefully, but it happened so long ago that they couldn't determine it.

@ThatOneDude said:

Bro...

Let me BING that for you...

Reading isn't your strong suit, is it.

@Thenomain said:

Where is the Supersahara Africa?

It was a joke, people.

Where is the Supersahara Africa?

@Alzie said:

The problem isn't with staff knowing what players are doing, the problem is that players attribute past experiences universally.

The problem is that sometimes people define "players" as a universal group, as much as visa-versa.

The problem is that coded systems (code or systems) do not survive the first encounter with the end-user.

The problem is that perception is not invalid.

The problem is that people are not emotionless robots.

The problem is that people are social.

The problem is that Mu*ing is social.

The problem is everything.

@Apos

So what you do is: You do it anyway. If people use it, great. If not, you depreciate it. Find out how to make it work, not try to find out first if people want it to work. Unless you do a more formal survey of usage, you won't know until you try, then keep tweaking it until people use it by second nature or until the experiment is declared a failure.

Be respectful of the concerns; this is what your survey tells you. Make sure the room informs them non-threateningly. Maybe something like: This is currently a logged scene titled 'blah blah'.

We do. This is why we still get upset about it.

@Apos said:

Another example, automatic logging of all events. I've had some testers tell me they just aren't okay with it, even if it's entirely voluntary. They just dislike the -potential- of some of their RP being captured without their consent automatically. Some players are way more prickly about their privacy or anything that feels invasive than others. I personally do not care if everything I do publicly on the grid was captured for posterity but others REALLY disagree.

This is interesting, because a lot of people are logging the RP without consent, on a person-by-person basis. If you feel like you can get a candid response to this, I'd be interested to hear what the justification for this double-standard is. That is, they're okay with people doing it without notification, but not the game itself.

What I'd like to try is a scene logger. People log scenes. People post logged scenes. It happens so much in WoD games that people stopped asking me, and so I assume they stopped asking others; does that mean this is no longer an invasion of privacy? I don't know. There really is no difference, here, except that we'd be offering a service to simplify what people are doing anyway.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

I've played on games with public +watch code on "hang-out" type locations and nobody cared.

Because watch code is done transparently. I've seen more people get upset about the friendlist/watch-for-login (aka The Other +Watch) than remote-room viewing, because you don't know who's stalking your logins.

Where's Gretel?

@Arkandel

This would be an updated Suspect flag, which only logged what they type.

The thing about violations of privacy is that you have to expect privacy to begin with. My objection to many implementations of games is the assumption that if you don't explicitly state it, you have none whatsoever. I believe this to be ethically wrong, if technologically neutral, which is why I don't like technocratic administrative methods.

However, without a statement of privacy you should assume the worst and demand an official statement. Don't let staff hide practice behind obscurity or ambiguity. If they continue to do so, assume they are purposefully unethical.

On-topic, I like cantinas and especially Star Wars again, thanks to the recent movie.

@Groth

Yes, the Suspect flag exists and logs everything, but this statement has two facts encoded in it. First, log files cannot by default be read in-game. It can be set otherwise, but this is the kind of code that is reasonable for players to know. The second is knowing how Suspect flag works, and it's either defaulted to Wizard- or God-Only.

Out of the box, everyone can know who has access, the ability and limitations of Suspect.

What it does not do is allow you to log specific commands. For this, you would use @hook, which also requires server access, but can allow this kind of logging and revealing of the log to everybody. This is how I guess they're doing it. "Anything" is broad enough that players who are interested in knowing their implied rights are reasonable. That is, this is a reasonable thing for staff to be asked, and they should reveal the code outright in that case.

edit: I forgot about @Snoop. https://github.com/RhostMUSH/trunk/blob/82b353e19b33227b360efaa01a3b32ba3a5d80dd/Server/src/netcommon.c#L569 -- it looks roughly like a different kind of Suspect flag.

@Arkandel said:

@Tyche said:

Martin should ring up Brian Sanderson. He'll have the series finished in three months and be halfway through a prequel and sequel by the end of the year.

It's not fair to compare a human being with an A.I. specifically developed to write novels, though. Come on.

I think Martin is an uplifted Killer Whale where the treatment is wearing off and he's busy more thinking about fish all day instead of writing, well, anything.

... What? Too soon?

I think it would be fair if the players asked to see the code, to know how staff can use it.

... Aaaaaaaaaaand I'm out. Good luck with this game.

Supervising RP used to be okay until it became spying on players.

This didn't take very long in the hobby, either.

@Lithium said:

Out of all the super hero game systems I've come across it's the easiest to understand

Because it's still a hell of a difficult thing to understand as a game in general. "Easier" does not mean "easy"; this is the responsibility of the game designers, who have apparently written a game for other people who understand the Superhero mindframe and also a more complex d20 Feats system. These are two conceits of the M&M2 system which limit who it's for and how easy it is to pick up.

If you think it's easy, then maybe consider the skills you have that make it easy, and find ways to teach this. You won't be convincing me that it's easy by simply saying so. @TNP gets it.

I have read exactly one superhero system that has addressed both theme and the best way to build powers Wild Talents. I felt that sigh of relief with one small side-note titled something like: "Why we don't throw people into the sun." I bet I can piss off any superhero game fan by building a reasonable, low-powered character who can, e.g., teleport someone into the deepest abyss of the sea and would. Wild Talents says, "Yeah, don't do that, because fun." It cares to introduce people into the game, not just make assumptions like M&M2 does.

I specifically listed two web comics that care about these aspects, and I'll name a third: Grrl Power. (Link to an example of the characters playing what sounds like M&M)

Maybe also Mutant City Blues, but I'm not sure Gumshoe makes a good Superhero game. It looks like a good game with super powers. It's probably the only superhero game I've read where the power system is not really a toolbox as much as a power-path. It is, however, another superhero game that thinks about it, for which I give it a lot of props.

@Lithium
This is true. It is less painful to go barefoot into the backyard of someone with twelve dogs with the runs than it is to go barefoot into a room covered with broken glass.

@ZombieGenesis said:

I think the key to understanding M&M is understanding PL. It is, unfortunately, a min-max issue by default.

Thanks, this was the point I was getting at. The game rules of MM2 touch on this lightly, "Set your PL as high as you can go, then go from there," but going from there is not straightforward.

@DnvnQuinn said:

Min Maxing in a game with combat as a focus is...just smart gaming.

It rankled me when HelloRaptor said things like this. My contention--my very strong and deeply-rooted belief--is that if the game doesn't help you play it, it's a shitty game. If your table doesn't help you overcome the learning curve, they are shitty friends.

MM2 requires you to be good at its brand of min-maxing before you've ever played the game. This is doubly true on Mushes, because the people around you aren't friends, and MM2's chargen system makes WoD Mage's magic system look like kindergarten math.

Anecdotally, my MM2 character attempts end up with maybe two powers, while those around me have six or so and do more damage with a better chance to hit. How? I have no idea, because this form of min-maxing is not in my gamer's DNA. MM2 is, probably quite by accident, antagonistic toward anything but the d20 Feat-Based gamer mentality.

The main, and almost only, reason I point this out is that every time people gush about how awesome M&M is, I want to scratch my eyes out crying tears of blood.