@Roz said in Hello, Survey, and Looking for Recs:

NGL, to me RPIs are just a subset of MUDs that are particularly RP-heavy/focused

Largely agreed. My experience with most RPI focused players is that many (not all, but a WHOLE bunch) essentially trend towards wanting what amounts to a simulation sandbox game where they can go grind things and progress between fun little RP sessions.

I think the hard-line division likely comes from some form of elitism (RPI-ers going “well mine is more SERIOUS”, and “normal MUDders” trending towards “RPIs are full of toxic drama”), coupled with the human desire to generally put things into distinct categories.

Because even across the spectrum of RPIs, they don’t all agree with what makes a game an RPI. Ask the people who only or mainly played Armageddon, and you’d get a wildly different answer to the people who played only or mainly Atonement, or whatever.

@Tez said in Hello, Survey, and Looking for Recs:

Now, questions for us:

The largest sentiment gap is by preferred game style – MUD fans average 3.53 while MUSH fans average 2.85 (49.2% vs 19.5% happy) (Table 10, Figure 10).

Why so unhappy, fam?

I imagine it’s just easier to make people who want to play an MMO happier than it is to make people who are primarily after narrative/story happen, lol. No hate on either genre or game style one way or the other, but I suspect that’s a big part of it.

I fell off of MUs a couple of years ago. I keep up on this forum to see if anything catches my attention (and for the hot goss when I need a mental palette cleanser at work lol). I’ll occasionally give something a try for a few days, but so far, nothing much has managed to keep my attention long enough for my limited energy and time to go towards it.

@ham said in When is the last time you played?:

Something could be the coolest, best, most interesting theme in the world, but if someone doesn’t engage with it, they’re going to be disappointed. I’ve had some of the most fun on games with themes that aren’t my favorite at all.

We’ve all seen the “waves” come and go, and honestly it comes down to the fact that a large amount of folks don’t take initiative to engage beyond “oh hey this is new and everyone’s here.” The amount of fun we have on these games is really pretty largely up to us, and it doesn’t require newness or hotness. It requires effort.

Of course if things don’t grab us, there’s no reason to force it, but this take has always been weird to me. Even in the “heyday” of MUSHes, you had to engage. Maybe we had more time or more energy or whatever the case may be (I certainly understand that for my own self), but the way to hook in has always remained the same.

Bolded for emphasis, but I think this is probably largely the problem, and it’s something I’ve seen in RPE and RPI MUDs, as well as Tabletop RPGS - the expectation that the vast minority (staff, creative players, GMs/DMs, etc.) will exist as load-bearing structures for the entire cognitive workload that goes into creating cool stories.

Which I understand.

Folks (today and historically, in my experience) want to consume content, but they don’t necessarily want to create it (or they don’t think they can). Players won’t play an RPI if it’s “dead” (ie, doesn’t have more than 10 people on during peak hours) or unless there’s "Metaplot: (ie, Staff creating plot and events) to go alongside their MMO grinding. Players in TTRPGs frequently won’t try anything but the standard “Spoonfeed Me A Story” games like D&D, unless you drag them kicking and screaming into a more collaborative game.

I don’t really know of a way to accommodate for that besides pushing for cultural change. I’ve seen people mention incentivizing this behavior, and that might work. But I also think people will tend to see it as “unfair” that someone “gets an edge” over them for creating plots, or will see it as a form of gatekeeping. Which is fine, it just means you have to be willing to tell the people who complain about that “hey you are welcome to play here, but we aren’t changing this, so you probably should either learn to adjust to this, or find a new game”.

I never had any real trouble finding fun on games, because I make my own. It’s moreso that very little draws my attention in anymore, or feels worth the time investment to get involved with, in an increasingly stressful and exhausting to navigate world. So I’d rather just do a little one shot for my friends, or work on a campaign, or something.

@Wikibara said in Numetal/Retromux:

@MisterBoring
The message came in from Discord. I don’t know to what extent, if at all, they’re connected to the game. The message’s content, beyond being pretty unpleasant, wasn’t specific enough. I just blocked and moved on with my day. I’ve no plans to dox anyone involved, though - that’s against house policy.

you clearly didn’t move on with your day. you brought up the message in your complaint post here. no one here is establishing or inventing a link between the admin message and bigoted junk, besides you in your original post by referencing them together.

that’s weird.

@Roadspike said in Non-toxic PvP:

@Faraday said in Non-toxic PvP:

That was literally the statement that kicked off this entire tangent. A proposed zero-tolerance policy towards pacifist characters in high-conflict factions.

Looking back to @Jumpscare’s original post about zero tolerance for this type of player, I want to know that they are describing an archetype that they’re calling “the pacifist,” not players playing pacifist characters at all.

Here’s the actual description.

@Jumpscare said in Non-toxic PvP:

The pacifist is a player archetype who will join a moderate or high conflict group, then do as much as they can for their faction without engaging in the central conflict. Then, when they get backed into a position where they’re called upon to resolve a conflict by fighting it out, they’ll agree to the fight but refuse to fight back, letting the opposing side win, in order to give the other players the most unsatisfying resolution possible.

@Juniper then clarified with:

Pacifists don’t just sit out, they tend to belittle everyone participating and take a revisionist approach to the faction’s raison d’être.

Again, referencing the character archetype, not anyone who wanted to play a character with pacifist beliefs.

@Kestrel kept up with the idea that this was about a character archetype who uses their character’s pacifism as a bludgeon to wrongfun people playing characters who fit with the purpose/vibe of the faction.

I admit that I lost the thread a little bit with the specific example mentioned later, since it refers to some situations and mechanics specific to a game that I don’t play, but I don’t believe that there was ever an intention to ban people from playing pacifist characters, just characters who fit the archetype of a character who is (irony intended) a militant pacifist who uses their beliefs to demean and socially bludgeon characters who engage in violent IC actions within the designed theme and setting of the game.

People seem to be largely ignoring the brunt of the argument (that is, "there is a specific brand of OOC troll that weaponizes pacifism in a game designed and built around conflict and violence), so that they can instead fixate on an argument that isn’t being made by anyone as far as I can tell (that “pacifist PCs shouldn’t be allowed in PvP games”).

Deeply frustrating, and frankly doesn’t seem like the folks doing this are arguing in good faith, but are instead letting their own anti-PVP biases or whatever get in the way of an actual discussion. Goalposts, at no point, have been moved. Multiple people have gone to great lengths to point out they’re talking about broad archetypes, and then citing specific incidents.

@Juniper said in Non-toxic PvP:

You can design a near perfect character-conflict system and it will be ruined by an influx of extremely sensitive slice-of-life RPers who devolve into sobbing fits whenever they witness so much as an invitation to participate in conflict.

So lately I’m thinking I’d just kick out those people. Not everyone is capable of the kind of introspection required to choose a game that suits their playstyle, sometimes you have to do it for them.

As I often say whenever the topic of “how do we do character conflict good and fun?” comes up within the MU discussions, the answer is literally this. Community management.

That’s not a skillset that every (maybe even most?) folks who want to run a MU have or want to develop, which is understandable. But willingness to have to be “the bad guy” and take a rep hit, and deal with reports, and investigate claims, and all that sort of thing.

IMO player-driven conflict as a focal point to a game doesn’t really ease the cognitive burden on the staff running the game. It just shifts it from “THE METAPLOT” to “watching out for jerkwards”, which inevitably leads people to complain about the lack of Metaplot anyways.

Not even just slice-of-lifers who want to stake up a part of the niche game that clearly isn’t for them. But tryhards that focus entirely on winning conflicts over creating cool stories. “But that’s what my character would dooooo” types who justify crummy behavior via “IC logic”. Escalators that go from 0 to 100 (both in reacting to conflict, and in initiating conflict).

There’s many pain points that arise when it comes to running a game w/ PvP (tho I prefer Jumpscare’s rebranding of it to CvC personally) as the main drive, and after years in this hobby I just don’t know that I believe it’s worth all of the effort, given the variety of dillweeds and trashbag people you have to sift through to get The Cool People Who Just Want A Lil Bit of Spice In Their RP to stick around.

@Jumpscare said in Tales of Zalanthas:

What surprises me is that they say they use AI in their code development process, and their code is over 120,000 lines. As a direct comparison, the code for Silent Heaven is only 44,625 lines, including comments. Both projects use Evennia. Something feels off, like their AI character that has a hand coming out of its leg as it rides a hotdog that has a second skin.

I’m not calling them out or anything. It just doesn’t line up with my experience.

I don’t have any coding experience, but they’re trying to recreate a diku derivative, simulation (and combat specifically) heavy game, so that may have something to do with it. It’s likely going to be a pretty crunchy game, as RP games go, with a focus on combat and mechanical capabilities vs storytelling (no matter what they say). Probably not enough to explain this exact margin, but it can probably explain a bit of it.

I never played Armageddon, I was always put off by the community and the tagline talking about murder and betrayal (and I don’t think I’ve ever heard or read a single story about the game that’s ever made me go “wow I want to play this”, even as a person who does like a crunchy, lots-of-levers-to-pull sort of game at times). But I read over their weird not-official forum sometimes, and the community doesn’t seem great. So I’m assuming that even if the code is well done and good (which doesn’t seem likely, if the gap between a pretty technically slick game like Silent Heaven and their unfinished game is so wide), the game will probably either eat itself alive, or just devolve into desert PVP, or chud finding ways to make people’s lives more difficult without technically breaking any rules.

@Jumpscare said in AI Megathread:

@Trashcan said in AI Megathread:

There were about 6 million auto accidents in 2022. If the self-driving car (extrapolated to the whole population) would have caused 5 million accidents, it would be better.

Making cities walkable would be far better than throwing more money into the abyss that cities become when they’re overrun by self-driving cars.

Unfortunately, tech bros would rather reinvent bandaid solutions over and over again instead of actually working to improving the future.

@Juniper said in Numetal/Retromux:

My unsolicited verdict-

Others should be a little less mean towards people with characters that are too special, unique, edgy, whatever. Because those encompass a lot of people. Most people want to be special in some way, sometimes tactfully and sometimes… not. I think we all get to have more fun when we’re not veering aggressively away from being “cringe”.

Honestly. The “mean girls” attitude that’s creeped into a few different nerd/geek and adjacent spaces is exhausting.

i like this thread mostly because it’s a great reminder that sometimes a story doesn’t have any heroes in it

@tsar said in Anime recs?:

@NotSanni said in Anime recs?:

I MAY HAVE BLOCKED THE TRAUMA OUT.

I guess I’m a glutton for trauma. To the list!

jokes and bits aside - there’s definitely some sad stuff in Dandadan, but (so far at least, I haven’t read the manga so I can’t speak to the future) it feels overall wholesome to me, and the sad/trauma related and adjacent stuff feels poignant and impactful.

@Tez said in Anime recs?:

@NotSanni You out here reccing dandadan to heal someone’s soul when THAT ONE EP just hits out of nowhere?!

I MAY HAVE BLOCKED THE TRAUMA OUT.

My rec still stands. Sometimes you gotta get a lil hurt to enjoy the good even more. They do a good job of following the hurt up with the healing.

Dandadan is my current fave!

@Yam said in AI PBs:

I’m confused. Is genAI a fun, harmless tool to be more efficient at creating art, or is it the catalyst for the race to the bottom, a “painful and violent” future for humanity? I feel like the original argument deviated a bit.

Because it has. Red rocket is just gish galloping and moving goalposts. Very little reason to engage them seriously, as they don’t seem interested in anything besides bad faith contrarianism (see: their other posts). Walls of weird, miserable nonsense.

@RedRocket said in pvp vs pvp:

@NotSanni
I’m not throwing a tantrum. I’m just telling you the truth as I see it. I watched these games that I loved go down the toilet because staff chose to coddle a few troublemakers and change the rules so that they would whine less.

The damage may be irreversible but if it’s not, it’s certainly going to take a drastic and revolutionary new approach. That’s all I’m saying. What people are doing now isn’t working. Try something else. Hell, try anything else. Just stop making the same mistakes over and over and over. That’s all I ask. Stop listening to people who are clearly leading you down the wrong path. Do something new. Do something different.

Look at what worked in the past and what didn’t. Be objective. Don’t listen to people who want to make everything about them. Ask yourself, what can we do differently to attract and retain new players?

Surprise me! Please!
I want the hobby I used to love to be worth playing again.

You continue to mount your weird defense in favor of using slurs and being politically incorrect.

Reevaluate your life.

@RedRocket said in pvp vs pvp:

@NotSanni
I’m not saying that games are dying because they aren’t being run the way I want them to be played. I’m saying that they are dying because they are being run the way a small hand full of whiny forever-victims who instigate the problems they then complain about want.

The more generic and baby proofed the games became the more the player base dwindled away. What is happening now isn’t working. What people did then was working. Back in the day there were hundreds of active players on at a time. Now you’re lucky to see five.

Maybe, just maybe, you might want to think about why it worked back then instead of just dismissing the only time the medium was actually successful at retaining a large player base because it hurt the feelings of a few bad actors who just want to stir up shit and make drama.

Every year your player bases shrinks because people don’t find the games engaging and every year you double down on doing the same things that don’t work.

How many times are you going to make the same mistakes? Creating a new game with a different setting that is basically the same thing as the last game that collapsed with a slightly different coat of paint on it is never going to work in the long run.

You need to do something that works and the only thing with a proven track record of working is letting people play what they want to play. It’s probably too late now anyway. Even if you did stop trying to shoehorn everyone into the same bland box I doubt you will be able to entice enough players to try the text only format.

The whiny bitches won. They got what they wanted. The games are exactly the way they wanted them - and that’s why no one is playing them any more.

What a deeply unpleasant way you choose to navigate through life. I can’t imagine going onto a forum, and then having the audacity to throw a tantrum because “The whiny bitches won”.

@RedRocket said in pvp vs pvp:

@Pax

Lame is not a slur when it is used to describe a thing, only when it is used to describe a person.

It’s a synonym for disappointing, weak or unsatisfying that has been used for most of human history dating back to the early Germanic tribes that first used it to describe an animal with a non-functional of overly weak leg. You would put down your horse because it had a lame leg and couldn’t plow a field anymore.

It’s only considered a slur if you say a person is lame because you are advocating for them to be killed.

I’m very clearly not advocating for the murder of the people who run boring games.

Absolutely wild and inappropriate when someone says “please don’t use a slur” to go on a weird tirade.

All the red flags (no surprise, given your “GAMES ARE DYING BC THEY DON’T PLAY THE WAY I WANT THEM TO” attitude tho).

@InkGolem said in AI PBs:

@NotSanni Ten bucks says this is the same guy who did this sad display a few weeks ago. This is totally alpha job-having behavior.

probably, yes. just a loser troll w/ nothing better to do on a friday night. probably got kicked off of one of the RPIs that showed up after Armageddon shut down tbh. best to just report and move on at this point.

@Necro said in AI PBs:

@sao said in AI PBs:

Pretending that commercial generative AI models aren’t walking databases of art theft is just disingenuous at this point. Like I think most of us have at least poked at them at this point, myself included, and I am not going to hate on people for yielding to the temptation to use the convenient and available thing, but let’s not engage in reality distortion about what this is.

Why do you leftists insist on having such retarded opinions? Generative AI models aren’t databases at all and characterizing them as such is factually wrong. Running matrix algebra on a bunch of image/caption pairs is not theft, you’re just unoriginal and nobody wants to pay for your CalArts genderblobs.

Your post is why only people who got real educations (your PhD on Gramsci’s foreskin doesn’t count) that require them to take Calc III should get to have an opinion on this topic.

lol, snowflake behavior

@Perfect-Paz said in What happened, man?:

Yo, so I decided to dodge your ban for fun. Turns out, my thread is the only that’s been posted in in just over a week. Before that? Three weeks ago. Even on other boards of this forum, like Rough and Rowdy, you have one thread that’s been posted in recently, and the rest are literally three weeks old at a minimum since being touched. The last time Game Ads got touched was literally months ago.

Your forum is dead, and the only posts it gets are desperate, cockamamie attempts to discredit my (correct) view that you tried to take a hobby and hollow it out, but in reality you ceded it to the people you hate most without realizing it. Oh no, you didn’t like MAP13 from 30yrs ago? LOL!

I’ve been banned for days and you can’t help but cope, seethe, and dilate about how your ilk has been gatekept from everything worthwhile, and pointing it out does brighten my day a little bit considering how fundamentally malignant you lot have proven yourselves to be over the last 15yrs.

lol chill out snowflake