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Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo
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@somasatori I think this goes for game runners over the years to a certain level as well. I’ve seen plenty of game runners and staff folks (especially on WoD stuff) that refuse to recognize other games as valid. It would be absolutely wonderful if those people had instead chosen to share ideas and stuff with each other, but instead it was all treated like finite resources.
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@MisterBoring said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:
@somasatori I think this goes for game runners over the years to a certain level as well. I’ve seen plenty of game runners and staff folks (especially on WoD stuff) that refuse to recognize other games as valid. It would be absolutely wonderful if those people had instead chosen to share ideas and stuff with each other, but instead it was all treated like finite resources.
Just spitballing here, but maybe that was because of the difficulty of finding and retaining staff? Particularly good staff? People only have so many hours in a day and with the added weight of RL, those hours might be very small indeed. So staff very much was a limited resource. You wouldn’t want to let any of those people (and their man-hours) off to another game.
This went double for coding staff since MU* code up until recently was a horrorshow.
And it might’ve spilled over into competition for playerbase as no one likes to think they’re wasting their time. Larger playerbase means more opportunities for staff to staff.
All that said, the three times I’ve lost my sanity and staffed on games, I never encountered this sense of competition. Either I was oblivious (very possible) or just lucky to get onto games where this just wasn’t a thing.
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I think it comes down to whether the game runner is emotionally intelligence or toxic in their approach to running the game. Everything follows from that.
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@somasatori said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:
New York City
Honestly, I’m just glad I’m not the only one who remembers that fever dream.
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@oknow said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:
I think it comes down to whether the game runner is emotionally intelligence or toxic in their approach to running the game. Everything follows from that.
Yes and no.
In general, the competitive nature is natural when operating in an environment with limited ‘consumers’. Even more so if they’re operating in the same genre, or using the same source material. If we both make soap, we want people to use our soap and not the other, for instance.
It’s how one goes about “winning” that competition where problems lie. One method is to provide the best service one can, with diligent staff, engaging story, etc, etc. The other is by creating a sort of cult mentality around their game, caring more about the transient victory than about actually providing a service.
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@STD That’s true that staff are limited resource, but I was also referring to people treating ideas and stuff as limited resources. Good observation though.
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@Pavel This, exactly. Generally the headwiz of a particular game is who decides whether other games are considered ‘competing games’ or not. I’m glad to see that most headwizzes these days don’t seem to see other games this way.
Cujo does. Mal emphatically did, and probably still does if he’s gone on to running another game after he left SerenityMUSH.
So did a number of Mal’s staffers, mostly the long-time staffers who were his friends and hangers-on (staff culture on SerenityMUSH was incredibly toxic, to the point that newer staffers had extremely high turnover and burnout, while the older, much more toxic staff hung around forever). Most likely they were the ones who were cruising other games with Mal to recruit players and harass staffers, and both repeatedly upvoting the game and encouraging excessive upvoting by other players…
This activity was kept very quiet on SerenityMUSH, for obvious reasons; wouldn’t want folks thinking the game was run by jealous and creepy people, right?
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Do we need to open a post for Mal and crew? I know Cujo and Mal share some traits.* I don’t know if we’re doing a disservice to those that went through the special hell that was Serenity mush, but didn’t ride the shit show amusement ride that is Aoa.
*Source: I was on both game and interacted with both. Please don’t make pick my favorite turd
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@Jax The World Wonders.
Speaking of turds, this just hit the water today:
======================<* 7: Game Announcements - 167 *>======================
Message: 7/167 Posted Author
Activity and Item Retention Update Aug 18 2023 CujoGreetings, denizens.
In an effort to keep the game’s grid functionally flowing, we’re updating the rules of item and property retention. The general rule on this is 30 days of not logging in can result in your starships being recycled back in to the system. 60+ days of not logging in can warrant your ships and items to be recycled back in to the system.
But now, we’re going to add in a period beyond that where if you only login and do not participate in the game, after 90+ days your ships and items are up for recycling back in to the system.
I.e. we need you to participate in the game too, in order to keep your stuff. Please start seeking out RP and garner +noms iff you really want to keep your character’s things on the MUSH. We are a game, we need to continue to keep the game’s grid flowing as it was designed. We need people to play and help create a fun atmosphere for all involved.
So, in summary, please do not just sign-in to try and retain your items, but please consider sending and receiving +noms for viable RP so that the game can just keep being ffun, and functional, as it was designed.
Thanks,
- Staff
------------------------------< +bbread 7/167 >-------------------------------
Gee, I wonder who this could possibly be aimed at?
This is pure speculation based on past experience, but I suspect AoA’s vastly-overcoded object list is running in the red again (which is known to happen if you demand coded objects for ammunition packs, healing items, effing BOOZE, and similar things for no good reason). That, and the age-old desire to recycle ships back into the system, whether to allow the dinos to buy more ships or to provide ships to the very occasional new player. Most likely the former, since we all know AoA staff’s concern for the situation of new players could fit inside a thimble, most likely with a lot of room left.
- Staff
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I don’t know how code works. Does having unused items affect the system negatively in some way?
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@GF Once, a long long time ago, there used to be such as thing as ‘database bloat’. As a for instance, players could only build a limited number of rooms for their homes. That’s almost unheard of now with cheap GB sized storage, cheap, huge bandwidth, etc. But if that’s a really old game running an outdated code base… Maybe?
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@TNP I don’t quite remember how their code works, but I’m fairly sure they use virtual items: Usually set as an attribute on your character rather than an @created object.
Starships are likely made of actual rooms with code objects in them; things like ammunition and the like probably aren’t, and any scarcity is artificial.
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@TNP It is (DSS). Some of their code has been updated, but whether it can incorporate virtual objects or not, I have no idea.
I do know it’s one of the laggiest games I’ve ever been on, and potential database bloat may be a factor (I know severe overcoding is). SerenityMUSH, another infamous DSS game, had similar issues, and at one point was confirmed to have a severe database bloat issue, or at the very least a similar issue to database bloat.
As for ships, the number of examples of different ship models is kept artificially limited there, so there is a hard cap of sorts on the number of ships on the game. Not nearly all of them are taken, but the nicer ships are, and tend to stay that way. IMO, Cujo and Company probably want some non-friends’ ships freed up so they and their friends can claim them.
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@TNP If memory serves, it’s Penn, using DSS for sheets and equipment (the same thing that Serenity MU used, except they didn’t have clips for weapon reloads… essentially unlimited ammo, bit this may have changed), TSpace for ships (but only flight/cargo, no coded combat), and other weird subsystems, including elevators you have to wait for, fully mapped out Tatooine desert and Naboo grasslands which took hours to walk around, hope you have a speeder - 15 km per room, forced to wait until X time had gone by before you get to the next room (X based on speeder… speed)
Edit to add - some ships were needlessly excessive, the Millennium Falcon having 15 rooms inside. Others are bare-bone, you’re lucky if you get a cargo bay AND a cockpit. Some systems had up to 20 ships just idling in orbit doing nothing but providing vibes, which is fair, but had no way to dock or board or land on them, so… pointless beyond vibes.
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@Jennkryst They have since added such ‘features’ as several varieties of weapon powerpacks, medical supplies, coded space combat (which may or may not work; a few ‘work-around’ non-coded space combat systems are still in use), and coded weapon and starship mods and devices to allow them to be added. All the other pointless code you mentioned is still there, including a tram on Coruscant that not only forces you to wait, but demands you pay coded money for the ‘privilege’ of using it.
A number of SerenityMUSH players/staff migrated there years ago after the most recent reopening, which is probably why the game has been ‘blessed’ this way.
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@Warlander If you’re so unhappy with it why are you still paying attention to it/on it? IF I dislike a game as much as you do this one, I just quit and forget it then mostly forget it until someone brings it up and I decide to comment.
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@icanbeyourmuse Like Charlie Brown, I’m fascinated by failure.
Especially staff failure.
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As far as I know, SMU never did get coded ammunition, but it wasn’t for lack of Mal trying to get it. He was obsessed with this for a long time. On a game with definite database space limits.
Coded ammunition on AoA was because of the constant staff refrain that ‘players have too much money/XP/stuff’, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
I’ve wondered for years if the DSS codebase brings out the number-obsessed twit in terrible MU owners/wizards…
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@Anony-Mouse Actually, SerenityMUSH DID have coded ammunition. Mal threatened on the Public channel to wipe out PCs’ stores of ammunition that weren’t stored in lockers more than once. Actually did it once, which at least one player quit over.
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Ah, my bad.
Can’t blame the person for quitting, frankly. Money was incredibly hard to get on that game, and ammunition was just one more thing to spend it on. Though what difference storing a bunch of stuff in a locker would make as opposed to carrying it around on you is an utter mystery to me.
