Ares: Client or Portal?

Ashkuri

If I’m scening in a portal, it’s usually because I’m already in a scene on the client.

Same for me. Prefer client, but may be using portal if I’m trying to operate in two lanes. I also use the portal if quickly responding and don’t want to log in and let myself get distracted by channels and things.

“Text” scenes are much easier for me in portal for whatever reason. Combat is far far easier for me in client.

I almost always have portal and client up at the same time.

bear_necessities

@Testament I can’t find it now but I am 100000% sure we have had the “async or no” poll/thread/conversation before.

I’m almost exclusively portal except for a few very specific situations like combat where I feel more comfortable using Beip. But TBH I’ve been getting more and more used to combat on the portal.

KarmaBum

I still play combat on a client just 'cause I type faster than I click buttons, but that’s so rare that it’s functionally just the portal for me.

The only reason I login to the MUSH anymore is to test roll/private.

Faraday

Client for RP/chat, portal for everything else. Browser notifications are not compatible with my ADHD. I rely on the dock icon too much.

@Clarion said in Ares: Client or Portal?:

(A lot of work has clearly been done to make F3 combat stuff work on portal, which I’m very appreciative of! It’s just, uh, clunky.)

OMG it’s so clunky I’m amazed anyone even can use it, lol. It didn’t evolve much past the “huh I wonder if I can make this work” stage.

Pavel

I’m in the ‘mostly client but if I’m in more than one scene I’ll portal it up’. With one exception: I always CG on the portal. It’s just so nifty.

DrQuinn

Both. I haven’t figured out how to multitask in the portal yet, so I missed a page once and felt REALLY bad about it, so I keep the client open for pages/bboard stuff and do everything else in the portal.

Polk

I’d probably like Ares more if more players did as I do: using telnet for everything but the occasional sheet/profile update.

Twinkle

@Polk I’m not trying to be a jerk for asking this, I’m genuinely curious, but what does it matter what other players do? If they’re comfortable with using Ares, why do they need to use telnet to access it?

Coin

@Polk said in Ares: Client or Portal?:

I’d probably like Ares more if more players did as I do: using telnet for everything but the occasional sheet/profile update.

@Twinkle said in Ares: Client or Portal?:

@Polk I’m not trying to be a jerk for asking this, I’m genuinely curious, but what does it matter what other players do? If they’re comfortable with using Ares, why do they need to use telnet to access it?

For reals, this seems like a really strange take, at least without some serious context.

Faraday

@Twinkle said in Ares: Client or Portal?:

If they’re comfortable with using Ares, why do they need to use telnet to access it?

I don’t want to speak for Polk because I don’t know what they meant, but I can say that for many folks:

web RP = async RP
telnet RP = sync RP

You can do either form of RP with either technology, but in practice you do see more async RP from portal and more sync RP from client. So that can lead to some different perspectives.

Raeras

I primarily play on the portal. Clients have always stressed me out so I latched on to the Web Portal pretty quickly xD. But sometimes I’ll use a client to eye chat or, if I’m at work, to keep up with when it’s my turn to pose

Roadspike

I use portal for everything except combat and if I’m RPing in a big scene. If I’m in a big scene, I want to be able to focus everything on one ‘window’ so I can keep my head in things. And while portal combat is functional, I’ve learned the commands well enough that client combat is just so much quicker and easier for me.

I //have// noticed that it’s easier for me to miss a PM on the portal than the client, but I usually notice them in time. Usually.

Pavel

One solitary thing I’d change on the portal? When I get a notification (either the pop up or in the notification feed section), I’d like to be able to click it to be taken to wherever that notification points to.

But my coding ability ends at being able to make my computer produce the magic smoke whenever I try, so, I’ll leave that as a suggestion and not a demand.

Polk

@Twinkle The reason it matters is that when the majority of Ares players are doing async scenes in the web portal, you really can’t play Ares in a telnet client the traditional way.

The whole grid-immersive-pickup-RP sort of style goes out the window. Even if Ares supports it, the player base doesn’t.

And I like grid-immersive-pickup-RP.

Pavel

@Polk said in Ares: Client or Portal?:

The whole grid-immersive-pickup-RP sort of style goes out the window.

Honestly, that kind of RP, outside of a small handful of places, seems to have waved to the dodo as it wandered deep into extinction. At least from my anecdotal experience.

So it’s less of an Ares problem, and more of a changing tastes situation.

KarmaBum

@Polk I definitely get this, and while I miss the olden days…

I think Ares happened at just the right time for a lot of people. I personally would not have been able to stay in the hobby at all after 2020 had there not been a web/async option for play. It just isn’t feasible for me to play from a client anymore on a regular basis, nor to really get anything of substance out of nothing but “traditional” RP pacing. I still enjoy a good 2-3 hour scene when I can, but my typical start-to-finish for a scene is about 3-5 days.

The Ares portal definitely enabled slower play. I can see how this could be seen as the cause of a problem for some people. But it is the solution to a problem for me.

Tat

@Pavel said in Ares: Client or Portal?:

One solitary thing I’d change on the portal? When I get a notification (either the pop up or in the notification feed section), I’d like to be able to click it to be taken to wherever that notification points to.

That’s what the eye icon next to the notification does. If you hover over it, it says ‘view’.

Pavel

@Tat Yeah, this is definitely more for the pop up notification thing, then.

STD

Almost entirely client in all things. The one sometimes exception is replying to a forum post or mail if it’s really quick.

I can’t handle async scenes at all. My brain just isn’t wired for it. It either has to be live or I can’t do it. There’s a certain… flow to a scene that requires being in the moment to really capture. RP without it is stilted and uncomfortable to me to the point of being actively unpleasant.

That’s a me-problem, though, and I don’t resent other players their async-ness.

Faraday

@Pavel said in Ares: Client or Portal?:

Honestly, that kind of RP, outside of a small handful of places, seems to have waved to the dodo as it wandered deep into extinction. At least from my anecdotal experience.

That was my experience as well. In the 5-10 years leading up to the development of Ares, there was a steady decline in spontaneous grid RP in favor of “arranged” scenes, be it in temp rooms or people saying “hey let’s go do something in the Rec Room” on channel. We also saw more simultaneous scenes with the same character - various games even had quasi OOC bits that would spoof chars in async scenes in temp room scenes.

Ares was designed to meet the shifting desires of the player base; it didn’t cause the shifting desires of the player base.