What Is Your Preferred Play Style?

[Polk]

The whole reason 3PR exists is that in a traditional scene, if one person goes to put out a fire, 10 people might be sitting for 30 minutes because nobody’s posing.

In async, is that a problem? Why not just use a pose order in async scenes?

I feel like the culture of async scenes is going to end up like the culture for correspondence chess, where you might play many scenes/games at once, and just at regular intervals sweep and update the ones you have to post an update to.

[Faraday]

@STD said in What Is Your Preferred Play Style?:

When time between poses can literally take days, having a pose order is onerous in an extreme. How long can someone hold up an already extraordinarily slow scene before it’s considered a problem?

I think part of the issue is that async RP is relatively new to MU mainstream, and we’re still figuring out its associated etiquette.

But it’s been around for quite awhile in other mediums, and we could draw from there for inspiration.

I haven’t done much forum RP, but in Storium everyone makes one pose for a round, in any order. Then the scene moves on. It’s a lot like how FS3 combat scenes work, really.

If someone is dragging things down, it’s OK to skip them, but how long you’re expected to wait varies by game. Some give a day, some a week, some indefinitely (that one doesn’t work well). So yes, establishing that common expectation is important. (There is also an accommodation for two chars off having a separate side convo.)

But whatever you decide, waiting until they’re not asleep doesn’t seem like an unreasonable request. Otherwise the scene will pass them by so much that they can’t meaningfully participate.

[shit-piss-love]

Async seems to work best for 2-person scenes and runs into problems as the body count scales.

I don’t see how you could do a big event scene with the expectation of async, just basic math. If I were running a game that had a lot of people playing async, I think I’d try to limit how often those sorts of scenes are happening. I think overall I’d try to foster a culture of smaller scenes.

For scenes in the middle with say 4-6 people, I think you need very tight communication about expectations to avoid the scene losing steam or people getting left behind or frustrated. I bet this has something to do with why so many scenes in Ares are private.

[Roz]

@shit-piss-love said in What Is Your Preferred Play Style?:

I bet this has something to do with why so many scenes in Ares are private.

I think you’re mostly right, except idk about this part. I think it’s been the case for years that the vast majority of MU scenes are private; Ares just lays out exactly how many are going on in a way you can see.

[shit-piss-love]

@Roz said in What Is Your Preferred Play Style?:

@shit-piss-love said in What Is Your Preferred Play Style?:

I bet this has something to do with why so many scenes in Ares are private.

I think you’re mostly right, except idk about this part. I think it’s been the case for years that the vast majority of MU scenes are private; Ares just lays out exactly how many are going on in a way you can see.

I agree. What I really mean to say is that I wonder to what extent Ares players may, for scenes that in a traditional MU* might have been in a public place, instead be choosing to have those scenes private so as to avoid having people join whose time-to-post is an unknown.

[Testament]

I often get conflicted on whether or not private scenes should be viewable on the Active Scenes page. I know there’s a wide array of opinions on it, and the amount of feelings that seeing so many private scenes can elicit and seeing so few public ones.

But at the same, if you removed the ability to view private scenes, save your own, would that really help? Most games would look dead, unless you looked at the scene total.

Like for example, LA2024, a relatively small game, has been open since January and is teetering towards 600 scenes. But if you were to make all the scenes that are private as hidden, there would only be one viewable.

Wish there was a better option. Like making it a toggle to be able to go back and forth? So if you wanted to shut that option off so you didn’t have to look at it, you could?

[Roz]

@Testament said in What Is Your Preferred Play Style?:

I often get conflicted on whether or not private scenes should be viewable on the Active Scenes page. I know there’s a wide array of opinions on it, and the amount of feelings that seeing so many private scenes can elicit and seeing so few public ones.

But at the same, if you removed the ability to view private scenes, save your own, would that really help? Most games would look dead, unless you looked at the scene total.

I don’t see how it would look any more dead than a traditional MUSH/MUX where people are just RPing privately in rooms that don’t show up on +where? I feel like if scene logs are still going up regularly it’s not gonna look dead.

I think this got mentioned in any thread recently, but someone had the suggestion of something more like “There are X number of private scenes currently” and just leave it at that, rather than having all the details, etc., which I think could help.

[shit-piss-love]

@Roz said in What Is Your Preferred Play Style?:

I think this got mentioned in any thread recently, but someone had the suggestion of something more like “There are X number of private scenes currently” and just leave it at that, rather than having all the details, etc., which I think could help.

That would certainly help me. I have been trying to get into LA2043 but the psychological sledge hammer of that giant Private Scenes list feels like my middle school bully staring a hole into my head from across the lunch room.

[KarmaBum]

I really don’t think Ares has changed the private vs public scene ratio, or the number of people playing scenes with just one other person.

Back in like 2008ish, PernMUSH/NC/wtfever had an active bunch of people who shared logs on LiveJournal, and most of those logs were just 1+1. Long before Ares, I was paging people to set up scenes that were “on the grid,” but they weren’t open for people to join, so we would often use a private/TP room.

I think Ares allowing those logs to be quickly published made people notice it a lot more, but I’ve been playing for 25 years, and the lion’s share of my RP has been in a scene with one other person in it.

[Testament]

@Roz said in What Is Your Preferred Play Style?:

I don’t see how it would look any more dead than a traditional MUSH/MUX where people are just RPing privately in rooms that don’t show up on +where? I feel like if scene logs are still going up regularly it’s not gonna look dead.

I think that goes back to something Faraday said about how the display of active scenes(async or not)is relatively new to the MU mainstream. So it gives a slightly different perception of ‘how games are’ rather than how we used to view them as. Because there’s more information that’s now viewable.

So you’re absolutely correct that it’s not that much different from logging onto a traditional MU and seeing a relatively small occupied +where list, while also seeing a +who list of about 20 or so people logged on. The difference here, or at least, the difference to at least me, is that addition of more information does change an aspect of whatever perception or context you want to take away from it.

[Faraday]

@Testament said in What Is Your Preferred Play Style?:

the amount of feelings that seeing so many private scenes can elicit and seeing so few public ones. …
Wish there was a better option. Like making it a toggle to be able to go back and forth? So if you wanted to shut that option off so you didn’t have to look at it, you could?

If you’re worried that people are going to be put off by a lack of public/open RP, hiding the private RP isn’t going to help. There still won’t be any public/open RP.

If you’re worried that people are having some kind of bad feelings (FOMO, resentment, whatever) over people RPing in private without them, I don’t really think that’s a problem that code can solve. They’ll still feel left out if they see people posting RP and they can’t find any.

[Third Eye]

The whole ‘should private scenes be viewable’ thing is a whole OTHER topic, though async is why I’d ultimately like the list of them to be collapsible at least. I don’t mind them as a gauge of activity on the overall game but that becomes less useful if there’s a bunch of scenes with no poses for 3+ days hanging around.

[shit-piss-love]

@Faraday said in What Is Your Preferred Play Style?:

If you’re worried that people are having some kind of bad feelings (FOMO, resentment, whatever) over people RPing in private without them, I don’t really think that’s a problem that code can solve. They’ll still feel left out if they see people posting RP and they can’t find any.

We’ve had a bunch of people in this thread or another recently including myself express that the Ares format of showing all the private scenes does in fact hit different. For some of us it definitely gives the impression that the game is going to be impenetrable and that reduces excitement, and also a look at the “last pose” stats for those scenes conveys the impression that the game is full of dead scenes. Regardless of how people might think people should be reacting to this, the brain works the way it works.

Also, since I have not been able to get into Ares much (for the reason cited) I am not sure if there is a way to make your scene actually private, like not show up in the list at all. It feels super icky to me that that everyone can see who everyone is in private scenes with. That just seems like a risky move in a hobby that is already full of “What were you doing in private with THEM?!”.

[Faraday]

@shit-piss-love said in What Is Your Preferred Play Style?:

We’ve had a bunch of people in this thread or another recently including myself express that the Ares format of showing all the private scenes does in fact hit different.

Private RP has always shown up on the +where list of every game I’ve ever been on, Penn/Tiny/Ares, and it’s always engendered that same reaction.

I am not sure if there is a way to make your scene actually private, like not show up in the list at all.

You can set yourself hidden, which means your name won’t show up in the public scene list.

[KarmaBum]

@shit-piss-love I don’t know how to put this nicely so I hope this doesn’t seem pricky 'cause it really seems like… just don’t type scenes / visit the scenes-live page if it’s bothering you that much.

You can also use CSS to hide the “last activity” column on the page -

.live-scenes-block .col-sm-3 {
    display: none;
}

[Faraday]

@KarmaBum Also, scenes/open in-game will only show the open scenes. The scenes page on the portal puts the private ones you’re not a part of at the bottom of the list. FWIW, I did once look into making them collapsible as @Third-Eye suggested, but it’s just problematic because it’s all one big table currently.

[junipersky]

@shit-piss-love

This is 100% accurate for me.

[Third Eye]

@shit-piss-love said in What Is Your Preferred Play Style?:

“What were you doing in private with THEM?!”.

Whether this is an impulse that should actually be maneuvered around or indulged is always where I get stuck because this stuff bottoms out with me pretty quickly, whether it’s via WHO list/where checks or just watching scenes. But, again, whole other things.

[Scissors]

@Faraday My feeling on this is exactly like yours.

Unfortunately Async seems to be increasingly becoming the norm, or at least I’m noticing it more in my latest round of dipping-my-toes-into-Mushing-again. And frankly, it’s burning me out a lot faster.

[tsar]

@shit-piss-love said in What Is Your Preferred Play Style?:

That just seems like a risky move in a hobby that is already full of “What were you doing in private with THEM?!”.

if anyone pages me that I’m sending them explicit TS poses, you’ve all been warned