Best posts made by Tinuviel

@Ghost That has been done before...

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

@Tinuviel said in RL Anger:

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

@Tinuviel said in RL Anger:

@Auspice Have you considered getting a lobotomy? You can still MU with one of those, apparently.

Would you still love me?

Still?

Another issue I've found with playing an adversarial type character is that... people just don't generally know how to deal with them. In the aforementioned GM vs Player dynamic, the GM is a known quantity. The story, generally, will be tailored for your characters' abilities in such a way that it is possible for you to make worthwhile decisions when dealing with the adversary. Running, attacking, interrogating, wetting one's self, et cetera.

Another PC taking an adversarial position, however, is... wrong, in some people's minds. Most have been, or know someone who has been, in a situation where they lose their PC to another PC for reasons that weren't explained to them. That scares some people. So, they react to the idea of an adversarial character with force. Full force. All of the force.

After some thinking, I think that to have PC antagonists/adversaries in a game such a thing has to be baked into the game's foundations and culture from the start. The reasons that X group dislikes Y group have to be made clear. Not clear to us. Clear to stupid people. So clear that if it were solid you could see through it.

@DownWithOPP

The problem with adding failure as a probability (rather than something that is merely possible, but unlikely in the long run) is that many people turn to online roleplaying as an escape from their lives, in which everyone fails at something all of the time.

Now, I'm not saying that's a good thing just pointing out that it is a thing.

How do we mitigate the sore feelings of failure? Do we even want to?

As a certified crazy-person. See a therapist.
You might not be mentally ill, but having a non-judgemental person to shout at, vent at, cry at... it helps. It really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really...

really, really helps. I mean it.

XP caps, sphere caps, an actual fuckin' plan...

I wish all my planned PBs would stop dying...

Depends on the game.

If it's more story-driven, I err towards the easier side of the spectrum (though normal difficulty is usually fine) as I don't want to be without story just because I can't beat the Firey Thresher Maws of Doom or whatever.
If it's a strategy game (big fan of Crusader Kings 2 and Europa Universalis IV, for instance) I turn the difficulty way, way up. Because I hate myself and want to see what happens.

@Catsmeow I don't think. I just regurgitate whatever the hive mind demands of me at that moment.

@Auspice Amen to that. The super hardcore "broz" (it's almost invariably persons identifying as men) that belittle playing anything but OMGNO difficulty are... well. Broz.

@Ghost Seems perfectly logical to me.

@WTFE There's also the more narrow question: What is the difference between 'a person who plays and enjoys video games' and 'a gamer'? I'm definitely the former.

@silverfox said in The Work Thread:

I always get itchy before conferences.

They're always my favourite. I always get to play "which teenager has lied to their parents."

Naturally, as with every system, there's no guarantee of succeeding no matter how good you are. Sometimes you're just unlucky, and sometimes you're just unlucky a whole lot. That's kind of the point of dice rolling.

@Auspice I was working under the assumption that you didn't have one.

@Derp said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:

I think that if we get into the habit of treating players differently based on past experiences or whatever, it's gonna lead us down a bad road. Players can have difficulties on one game, given that game's atmosphere and environment, that they'd never have on another. I've seen it happen before. While I don't buy into a lot of the 'hivemind' stuff, there is definitely a flow that you fall into based on a game's players, stories, environment, rules, etc, and like all social creatures we'll in some way conform to that, for good or ill.

If a person has developed a reputation for being hostile, abusive, or the like then they should be ostracized. That's part of how communities self-police. If we want to encourage new blood to enter the hobby, we need to exclude those people that cause the most problems. You don't stop the antibiotics once the symptoms go, you continue the course to prevent reinfection.

This makes some people unhappy, sure. People who have been around for awhile and dealt with the same people can be wary, and with good cause. If you don't do what they expect, then you can catch a lot of heat.

But you can also catch a lot of heat singling out players for different treatment for any reason, and not treating all players as if they were playing on a level playing field

There is no middle ground there. You either do treat them all the same, or you don't treat them all the same. No matter how you try and nuance it, it comes down to one of those two things. And either way, one side is going to be unhappy that you chose that path.

There is no right or wrong way to do it. It all depends on what you want from your game. Me, I choose to lean toward the 'all players starting on a new game have a clean slate, and will be treated as equals under the same set of rules'.

People are never on a level playing field. Some are new, some are familiar with how the various members of staff react to certain things so they appear to skirt the rules, some people are just generally better players than others. There is no clean slate, no matter how much you might want to say there is. We know peoples' reputations, good or bad, and we judge them on it - publicly or not.

It's not about being happy or not. It's about being stable, and able to build. If there's a kid coming to the sandpit to kick all the castles down, don't let them come to your sandpit. Nobody is under any obligation to put up with abuse or harassment or negative behaviours in this community. Nobody is under any obligation to let everyone play their games.

@RightMeow It depends on what you put into the whiskey. @Auspice still won't forgive me for the Pepsi incident.

@Arkandel
Most cases, luckily, are as cut and dried as your one versus many example above. Those, for any decent staffer, don't need explaining.
It's the weird edge cases that I'm worried about. Those pesky problems that make you want to just get rid of alleged victim and alleged perpetrator to be rid of the problem.

I don't have specific examples to hand, mostly because if I ever staff these days I typically log in, do my jobs, hang out for a few hours to do other jobs, and then leave - thus I don't have much player contact from the staff-side.

@RightMeow said in RL Anger:

Because it sounds like roofies?

How the hell does 'Pepsi' sound like roofies?