Posts made by Thenomain

@sunny said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

that's going to introduce ugly consequences if you guys move to the step of deleting things instead of just moving and redirecting

This.

I don't know what consequences there will be, but moving instead of deleting seems like a far more equitable solution.

I agree with a "stop it" warning, unless things have gone far beyond a warning. We're adults. We know when anti-trolling methods are good. It's because we are adults that I think moving instead of deleting is more honest, and more considerate toward those of us who want to see what happened. We don't need protected from vitriol and hate when we know that's what we're getting into.

@insomnia

I violently agree!!!

🤬

@insomnia

It is a good way to see what people think and maybe get some volunteers. Trying and failing is one hundred times better than being told to not try at all. Just because most games die in the conception phase doesn’t mean that the conception should never take place. It certainly is the best time for a game to die, but goddamn how many people remember being kids and just making things up?

Making Things Up is fun as hell! This isn’t time wasted; it’s time enjoyed.

—

That said, I would have to be hard pressed to play a superhero game. I just don’t get the allure. What about Genosha (which I had to look up) is exciting for a setting?

@ashen-shugar said in My first cellphone:

accepts a microsd card for expansion

As long as people understand the risk of this. Which is to say, if you're okay with your cellphone's OS expecting you to manage it. It's a trade-off.

@Sparks had it right from the start, though; it depends on what you want. I'm also with @Admiral on this: Get whatever's free. Everybody else has been talking about preferences, and if you don't have any then your preferences will come with experience.

(Theno's Preferences:

• Doesn't care about the loss of the headphone jack but accepts he's in the minority.
• Thinks that the SD card expansion is over-hyped.
• Absolutely abhors Samsung's need to delay critical security features so they can get their fingers in the OS.)

@bad-at-lurking said in Interest check - Teen Wolf/Mercy Thompson MU:

@thenomain said in Interest check - Teen Wolf/Mercy Thompson MU:

@bad-at-lurking said in Interest check - Teen Wolf/Mercy Thompson MU:

More than you wanted to know, but I seriously enjoy these books, so I gush a little.

This makes you a positive advocate, and someone who would find good things in a Mu* of this stripe, so gush away!

I am still going to make fun of her, er, wolf paw tattoo, though. Is that some kind of new thing to indicate that you’re, er, smooth down there?

If it is, wouldn't we have seen it popping up on the rainbow haired sex pixies on MUs by now?

Well we will now.

@bobotron said in New Vampire Release:

It's hard to balance though.

Knowing who’s on their writing staff I trust that they’ve tried, but fixing mechanics problems is literally their job.

It’s possible that as they’ve seen the whole picture they don’t think it’s broken. We shall see.

@bad-at-lurking said in Interest check - Teen Wolf/Mercy Thompson MU:

More than you wanted to know, but I seriously enjoy these books, so I gush a little.

This makes you a positive advocate, and someone who would find good things in a Mu* of this stripe, so gush away!

I am still going to make fun of her, er, wolf paw tattoo, though. Is that some kind of new thing to indicate that you’re, er, smooth down there?

So I was curious about this Mercy Thompson and looked it up and...I have a question that I'm going to ask in what may appear to be snarky but this is honest and straight-forward: Once you get past the Mary Sue special-snowflake romance-novel fan-service nature of the image of the woman on the cover, is this a decent series?

Okay, that was snarky, but you get what I mean.

@arkandel said in Favorite music streaming service?:

@hedgehog Both Spotify and Google Play let you save songs locally for future playback (and, for example, to only download songs on wifi to preserve data).

Ditto Apple Music.

@hedgehog

What does Deezer do that stands them apart from the others? I didn’t see anything remarkable.

@ganymede said in Descent Reboot:

@taika said in Descent Reboot:

Just a quick reminder: we have Neutral Court tonight at 8:30p EST. All templates welcome, if you're brave enough to go to the site it's held at.

I'll be on a date with my partner, then, but if someone could log it for Mr. Grumpy Pants ...

I don’t need a log, thanks.

I wish Apple Music did the Pandora thing where I can say, "This, with more of this song, less of this song, and none of this artist."

That is my perfect music streaming service.

@tinuviel said in Let's talk about TS.:

I'm totally against any 'system' that takes away the human connection. Systems should arbitrate or mediate, not decide.

That was to Ark. And matchmaker systems do arbitrate.

@therealfake

Also realize that a lot of us are jaded and biased to what we believe it should be. There's a well-known survival mod for FO4 that's just after the bombs fell, literally just after, that is hellish and deadly. I need to clear my thoughts of that. I also have a bias against any Texas Is The Only State That's Right ideology I run into with many modern-day Texans. Hell, if they wanted to leave the Union, I would smile and tell them not to let the Constitution hit them on the ass on the way out.

Except Huston. I'd miss Huston.

I'm 100% wrong to let these color what you WOULD make.

I mainly wanted, at least in my head anyway, this to be a PVE game focused on seeing how people handle such drastic change and adversity.

Be prepared to be the source of all that change and adversity. Warn people that if they log in, even if they stay in their huts, things are Going To Happen To Them. That kind of thing.

(was going to add to previous post, but Tin posted in the middle)

@arkandel said in Let's talk about TS.:

Oh I know, but what I was hoping was to avoid the icky factor of airing your preferences for all to see. That works on Shang since that's why people go over, but on a game with a different focus it sounded out of place, so I wanted something subtler and less in-your-face.

You mean like RPing to find out what happens?

I don't know if you and @Tinuviel are talking about the same situations, but it sounds like you're looking for a matchmaker system as a way to protect people's interests. Neh. I don't see the problem that it's trying to solve.

If you are talking about the same things, then using a matchmaker system to protect against predatory actions won't work; predators will find a way. This is why they are predators.

Tin and I are in complete agreement: Staff needs to be active against bad actors. I'm not saying games need to be "safe spaces" because we won't agree what that means, but emotional abuse is a default no-go.

Games need to think about their punishment list for bad actors, and not just do whatever's on their mind that day, which is I believe at the core of distrust players have for staff.

@tinuviel said in Let's talk about TS.:

There also needs to be clearly articulated "you can talk to us (staff) if people violate your OOC consent" statements.

This should be true for everything on the game. Staff is the only group with the organization and authority to provide order.

And this order has to have bite; if staff and players are not held accountable--or are at least trusted enough to hold themselves accountable, which is the only situation that works--I don't care what you tell people is Okay or Not Okay. People will do whatever they see staff doing or allowing, every single time.

Game culture comes from the top.

I know we're talking about Safe TSing, but the sentiment of going to staff in case of problems goes so far past that.

@arkandel said in Let's talk about TS.:

@surreality said in Let's talk about TS.:

Think about this realistically for a moment and you'll likely begin to see the real scope of the problem: "I am feeling gross and pressured, I went to staff to ask for help, and instead of helping, they called me a bad player and enabled the creeper who has no respect for my player-side limits."

Oh that's true. But as you already pointed out, if you can't trust staff on a game you are screwed either way.

What I'd like to try and do is, assuming we're neither dealing with assholes or bad staff, to try and figure out how to systematize these things. I'll even risk @Thenomain's snicker and ask, naively, whether this is a social problem we can solve through code.

The sentiment, Theno's Law, is that you must be very careful when trying to solve social issues through code. Not that it can't be done, but that it often doesn't do what the designer thinks it's going to do.

I would start by taking a step back from the code itself and codifying the rules of behavior. At the core of Google's success is knowing about networks of trust, and then finding a way to quantify that trust.

...swipe left...

A double-blind system is always good; you only know if someone OKs you for Sexyfuntimes(tm) if they have OK'd you. But this becomes a very small subset of the RP Preferences ideas that have been floating around since...Shang? FurryMUCK?

It's not a bad idea, though I can't imagine anyone I know using it. Throughout my career online, you generally get to a point and page: Do you want to play this out? If they say 'no', then it's FTB time. That's about it. I don't need dating algorithms once I get to my character and someone else's character getting their mack on.

My mother is on Twitter and has a lot of followers somehow, and has been known to ban people from her account for trolling.

My mother has become a netizen.

So strange, but so awesome.

@derp said in New Vampire Release:

@thenomain said in New Vampire Release:

I'm not sure who knows, but their public alpha adventure toned up the casual pedophilia, so, yay?

Say what now?

It was a giant stink at the time. One of the characters you play in the alpha rules+adventure must drink from the innocent, heavily, deeply implying minors, plus the sensuality that comes with vampires. It was pretty easy to see how people took this in an offensive way.

I'm having problems finding the apology they posted, which was about one half apology and one half excuse, but it seemed pretty sincere. To me it was also clear that whomever was responsible for the alpha err'd kind of hard. I also recall that Zak Smith openly mocked the offended, which is why I am a hundred and twenty-nine percent happy to hear he's no longer involved.

@jennkryst

I'm not sure who knows, but their public alpha adventure toned up the casual pedophilia, so, yay?

Seeing who's on the writing staff and leading the project, tho, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt that it's been thought-out more since then.