What has changed?

[Third Eye]

@Polk said in What has changed?:

One thing that is changing about the world is that most people on the Internet are not using a traditional desktop computer. They are using phones and tablets.

For this reason, one of the things I’m surprised hasn’t changed is the relative usability of mobile clients. I can play an Ares game on my phone without much trouble but it’s not a mobile client, really, it’s just a webpage I can refresh in a mobile browser, so that feels a little different than something focused on phone or tablet players. The available clients themselves like Blowtorch and Mukluk have the same issues they did when I first started using them, it feels like.

[Polk]

@Third-Eye It’s weird. The mobile app-based clients are actually just dying off, rather than exploiting the growing user base.

I guess the big MUDs all getting their own dedicated web clients just killed the market.

[MisterBoring]

@Polk said in What has changed?:

I guess the big MUDs all getting their own dedicated web clients just killed the market.

I agree with this, and also want to point out that a lot of newer phones are blocking telnet in ways that even app developers can’t get around, so that’s probably caused some issues with continuing development of apps for mobile platforms as well.

[Arkandel]

@Polk You know what hasn’t changed and I’d think it would have by now?

There’s still no real alternative to ‘the Mudconnector’ of olde. Just an up-to-date web site that lists all active games (and periodically checks automagically to see if any are down, their ‘who’ lists, etc), and has some kind of categorized statistics on demand.

For example it’d be nice if we could run a query “modern fantasy games, order by number of average online players” and see what comes out.

[Polk]

@Arkandel It’d be nice if Grapevine would show more stats like the old mudstats did, yeah.

[Faraday]

@Third-Eye said in What has changed?:

I can play an Ares game on my phone without much trouble but it’s not a mobile client, really, it’s just a webpage I can refresh in a mobile browser, so that feels a little different than something focused on phone or tablet players.

Yeah I have these grand visions for an Ares mobile client, but it’s tough to balance the nifty widgets (that would make it better than the mobile telnet clients that have been around forever) with game-specific variations. Also I’m not a mobile developer, so… it’s all a ginormous learning curve. Someday maybe.

[Faraday]

@Arkandel said in What has changed?:

There’s still no real alternative to ‘the Mudconnector’ of olde. Just an up-to-date web site that lists all active games (and periodically checks automagically to see if any are down, their ‘who’ lists, etc), and has some kind of categorized statistics on demand.

AresCentral doesn’t have live queries like what you describe, but it does auto track game “up” status and show average connection data.

[Third Eye]

@Faraday
It’s definitely not a complaint, just an observation since sometimes the browser functionality when used on a phone gets talked about as if it were a mobile client. As it is Ares games are the only ones I’ve ever managed to RP on my phone in a way I remotely enjoy, so I’ll take it happily. Though I admire the fortitude of those who do most of their RP everywhere on their phone. I’m always surprised when someone says they do, but there seem to be a decent number of users like that out there.

[Prototart]

there definitely aren’t more superhero places than there were forever ago, when i first started playing there were like a dozen-plus and 4-5 with major player populations, now it seems like there are usually like 2 at a given time with more than maybe 20 unique logins and tbh i’d say the quality has dropped p dramatically

[SpaceKhomeini]

This post is deleted!

[SpaceKhomeini]

@Third-Eye

Le sigh, we’re still chained to the built-in limitations of Telnet (which as someone mentioned above, is helpfully being killed by security-minded folks to begin with). That and the fact that mobile devices OS’s just don’t have the same persistent connection ability that desktop ones do.

The only non-MU* application I ever seem to have for a Telnet client is troubleshooting server status/connectivity.

[Faraday]

@SpaceKhomeini It’s not really “telnet” that’s the limitation - most MUSHes communicate on a custom port, not standard telnet. Unless you’re trying to connect over a raw telnet terminal (whyyy??) instead of a regular MU client, you aren’t really going to be affected by the security changes.

The real issue with playing on mobile is the other thing you mentioned - that mobile OSes just aren’t designed for persistent connections. As soon as the phone goes to sleep, your connection drops. That’s never going to change, and even if we upgraded MUSH connections to the more secure SSH, it wouldn’t help. The “telnetesque” command-line interface will always have these limitations.

What will solve this is a mobile client that operates on push/pull rather than a persistent connection. That’s going to require server-side code changes to support, on top of someone making an actual mobile client that works that way.

[SpaceKhomeini]

@Faraday Yeah I’ve had similar issues with using SSH apps in a pinch.
Shamefully I’ve used raw telnet before for, well, reasons. I’m not proud.

I’m gonna detour for a sec to give a tremendous shout-out to you for all that you’ve done making Ares a robust platform that I can actually play on a tablet OS (my preferred device for these things). The web portal has made this something of a joy again.

[farfalla]

@Arkandel It’s not exactly the same, doesn’t show average connections for example, but there’s Mustard.

[Testament]

I honestly don’t know if there’s been a shift towards the fantasy genre, honestly. At least , not to the point where it’s become more visible. Yes, there is Arx, which is by all accounts the largest fantasy mush out there(I say mush, not MUDs, as there are some massively huge fantasy MUDs out there), and a handful of smaller 10-20 person playerbase fantasy mushes that tend to go under the radar most of the time. Personally, I would like to see more original theme fantasy out there.

I do think the number of superogames has stayed pretty consistent over the years, as I could name a good number of them ten years ago, the number of games seems to of stayed relatively the same, only the name and synopsis appears to of changed.

[Pavel]

I’d definitely argue that, once again, we’re only a tiny corner of the hobby. What we see reflects what people here are interested in, not what exists. More people here are interested in Arx and superheroes than World of Darkness, so we see more of the former and less of the latter.

The popularity of the superhero genre in other media, especially with the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, may have had an impact on the number and longevity of superhero/comic book games, but we lack the data to really make that assessment outside of our own anecdotal experience.

[Testament]

It really does make one miss Mudconnector, because that was the best metric the hobby had for a long time.

[Third Eye]

@Pavel said in What has changed?:

I’d definitely argue that, once again, we’re only a tiny corner of the hobby. What we see reflects what people here are interested in, not what exists. More people here are interested in Arx and superheroes than World of Darkness, so we see more of the former and less of the latter.

Arx is to me an example of something that’s maybe not really new as just ‘new to regular discussion’ because - in addition to the players from RPIs and stuff it pulls in (and people who play because it’s a big game and those always have a gravitational pull) - I noticed anecdotally when I was active there that a lot of folks on it had played Firan and just kinda dropped out of the hobby after Firan, then came back when Arx became a thing. Which feels like in part another example of players who just don’t play much outside a particular genre (which makes sense, really, a lot of folks do).

[Arkandel]

Some folks mentioned MUDs being quite popular.

Now I haven’t played on a MUD since the nineties so I must ask… what’s the lure these days? Why do people play on one, as opposed to a MUSH?

The reason I ask is MUSHes offer words to deliver their gameplay, and that’s a very unique feature. The combination of improv, literature and minds-eye theater is pretty niche.

But… why a MUD? What’s the upside of typing ‘cast fireball kobold’ as opposed to clicking on an icon in one of the myriad graphical MMORPGs?

[Testament]

@Arkandel Some people like low-res MMOs. Like no, really. I had a couple of friends who only played MUDs for that reason. They don’t really want to write a narrative, have no interest in RP, but still enjoy the gameplay that MUDs tend to contain.

Some were older players, who had been playing MUDs since they first came around. It kind of reminds me of my dad who still plays his Commodore 64, specifically playing Fantasy Adventure, where all inputs in the game are done by inputting a ‘verb+noun’ combination. Like ‘take key’ or ‘climb ladder’, etc etc.

It takes all kinds, I suppose.