MU Peeves Thread

Third Eye

@KarmaBum

Definitely agree with this. I think it is more an issue of games than servers. Different game cultures skew in different ways.

This has been my experience as well, though as Ares gets ‘older’ (was looking at my BSU logs from 2017 and thinking about how that was like 6 years ago at this point, oh time) I feel like games have to do more expectation management about this with players and I’m not sure what the best way to do that is. Beyond clearly stating whether real-time or async play is the norm/what’s done by GMs in staff scenes, but it takes a while to internalize that even if people read it.

I’m sorta curious if other codebases like Evennia will adopt ways to do something resembling async (I know Arx has flashbacks but in my experience they never worked super well and were definitely never a focus), but it’s possible RPers who want that experience are more apt to drift to Discord or journal games if they can’t find what they want in an Ares box.

Pavel

@Third-Eye said in MU Peeves Thread:

2017 and thinking about how that was like 6 years ago at this point, oh time

THIS IS NOW MY PEEVE THANK YOU

Roz

@Selira said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Wizz Meanwhile a peeve of mine is how widespread asynch games are, and that I really don’t have the brainspace or capability of doing them well, or the ability for that kind of long-term focus on one scene.

I’m the same way. I know the best solution is to have a balance of games focused on different styles, but I do still get a little twinge when folks talk about async saving the hobby re: folks getting older, because if async takes over the hobby, I’ll pretty much be out.

Ashkuri

Real-time scenes that are easy to pause and then pick up again is where it’s at

shit-piss-love

I just can’t maintain an interest in async scenes but I also don’t really have a life that allows time for real-time so that’s really why I have not played a game in five years.

icanbeyourmuse

I don’t care if scenes get paused and continued. I’ve done that. But the scenes done on websites I forget they even exist most of the time. So, I prefer ‘real time’, even if it is paused and what not.

KarmaBum

I just like to play.

I have a preference for pacing, but enh. Whatever works.

Cobalt

@mietze God, I saw this so much on xWoD games. It felt like every time I had someone as an admin to my sphere who wasn’t already a friend of mine that was male I had to fight with them one everything. Back on TR there was a staffer who literally quit working in spheres if there was a female spherewiz. I was out right told once “blah won’t work with you because you’re female, and he doesn’t work under females”.

I get that staffing for MU is a volunteer gig and not the same, but image saying that to your manager in an RL work place?

Cobalt

@Wizz said in MU Peeves Thread:

Common peeve but I kinda wish there was a paradigm shift and live scenes stopped being such a focus on most games. I just can’t do three hour blocks anymore, for a lot of reasons, and it’s hard not to feel like I’m somehow being rude when people ask for them on channels and I can’t jump in.

Meanwhile, my peeve is when I do carve out time to do a “live action” scene and people take an hour to pose. I don’t have a lot of time and my attention span isn’t great anymore.

I’m 100% ok with async or slow pace scenes.

But if I’m trying to actively storytell and there is a person who its their time to pose and the last person hasn’t posed in half an hour I start to think about all the other shit I could be doing and start to get antsy.

Wizz

@Cobalt said in MU Peeves Thread:

I was out right told once “blah won’t work with you because you’re female, and he doesn’t work under females”.

What a dick, I’m sorry.

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Polk

@Cobalt said in MU Peeves Thread:

@mietze God, I saw this so much on xWoD games. It felt like every time I had someone as an admin to my sphere who wasn’t already a friend of mine that was male I had to fight with them one everything. Back on TR there was a staffer who literally quit working in spheres if there was a female spherewiz. I was out right told once “blah won’t work with you because you’re female, and he doesn’t work under females”.

I get that staffing for MU is a volunteer gig and not the same, but image saying that to your manager in an RL work place?

Sheesh. If someone like that were on a game I ran, I’d excuse that person from playing on the game entirely.

Straight To Jail.gif

If you can’t be respectful to women in authority, then I don’t trust you to be respectful of women as peer players or STing you, either.

Snackness

At this point, I’ll play at whatever pace someone wants to play.

tsar

I left my job of many years for a much better job but holy shit am I tired all of the time now. I just want to not be tired. I want to feel like I’m not scraping the bottom of the barrel for my creativity. I want to feel like I’m not falling into the FOMO pit.

I know it’s temporary and that by September I’ll probably be in a good groove and things won’t be as draining, but GD. I have so few hobbies and this is one of them, lol.

Cobalt

@Polk Back in The Reach times people weren’t as willing to call others out on their bullshit. Or maybe it was just he was someone’s friend? idk.

I much prefer the games we have these days, where shit like this doesn’t fly anymore.

Faraday

@Third-Eye said in MU Peeves Thread:

I feel like games have to do more expectation management about this with players and I’m not sure what the best way to do that is. Beyond clearly stating whether real-time or async play is the norm/what’s done by GMs in staff scenes, but it takes a while to internalize that even if people read it.

I don’t really see why this is on the games or game-runners.

Players just need to communicate. If you like live, quick scenes - say so. Find like-minded players on the game. If there aren’t any, that’s probably not the right game for you.

It’s no different than people liking different kinds of RP. If the majority of players on a particular game like big bar scenes and I prefer one-on-one, that’s not a problem with the game - let alone the game server.

Async RP on MUSHes has existed for as long as MUSHes have; it just wasn’t as visible because it was happening in Google docs, across livejournal posts, emails, etc.

Dreampipe

I just don’t know what to do anymore. That’s pretty much the whole peeve.

Nala

@Faraday said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Third-Eye said in MU Peeves Thread:

I feel like games have to do more expectation management about this with players and I’m not sure what the best way to do that is. Beyond clearly stating whether real-time or async play is the norm/what’s done by GMs in staff scenes, but it takes a while to internalize that even if people read it.

I don’t really see why this is on the games or game-runners.

I feel like this can be directly influenced by the game runners. There was a game I was playing on that, at the start, had a good mix of live vs async scenes. However the vast majority of the “plot” style scenes by the staff were async. This was fine at first, but over time live players stopped logging on and the game slowly became more async focused.

I don’t think it was intentional and it looked to me like staff was trying to support both styles. It just became a case where if you wanted plot, asyncs were largely where it was at, and if you didn’t do async, it felt like you were missing out.

I do agree the majority of players on a game tend to define the style of scenes available, but I think there are ways game runners can make their intentions felt in a way that can influence where the majority ends up at.

Faraday

@Nala Sure. But what you describe is no different from game-runners only running plots for a single faction, or only running plots involving political RP, or only running plots on a different timezone. There’s nothing magically different about async RP - it’s just another axis of preference that people need to align on if they want to play together. Staff certainly can influence this, but generally plot scenes are only a small fraction of total RP on the game.

Testament

@Faraday The only influence I ever put in on how I’d like scenes to go for the players is during scenes that I would run as a GM. Would almost exclusively be live and on grid. And I still got pushback for live scenes being exclusionary because not all players that wanted to be there could. I came to conclusion, quite quickly mind, that no matter the format that a scene is run on, someone is going to be left out, my attempts at juggling everyone’s schedules be damned.

As for everything else? The players are adults who know their own preferences and do their scenes as is their wont.

L. B. Heuschkel

@Testament That. You can’t accommodate everyone, it’s simply not possible. You can try to accommodate as many as possible or a specific segment. You’ll need superhuman staff to get them -all-.