Interesting thoughts here, that people want to stay and are looking for the right content to stay for. I think that’s true for some players, and maybe not as true for others.

Most people like the idea of the long haul in theory, but some players definitely find it much easier to start a new idea than to continue playing an old one for a long time. I don’t know that any amount of Great Game Content is ever going to outweigh the allure of “what’s new and all the potential that could be had there” for some people.

I’ve really made myself crazy over the years trying to put out the best possible content and hooks and RP so that people won’t go. I took their departure to other games as a sign that whatever I’m doing is not good enough anymore and is not fun or interesting, which felt terrible. But I think these days I just have to accept that some people like new things no matter how “good” the old one was.

That’s kind of why I’ve been thinking about this Playerbase Bubble phenomenon to begin with. Doubtless a lot of factors go into it, anyway.

From the other “Why MUSH” thread:

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Why MUSH?:

@MisterBoring said in Why MUSH?:

Is three months the sweet spot for a MU?

Actually, yes. It is. Story time!

Once upon a time when the Earth was young and I first became staff on a MUD (LegendMUD for ye curious) in the late 1990s, Raph Koster was one of the implementors (you may know him as Ultima Online’s Designer Dragon). No, I’m not name dropping here – I think I talked to him twice, it’s not like I know him. (His wife is awesome, though).

Anyhow. Raph Koster did a study on this and reported his findings. There are three cut-off points.

Three months: The average time a player will spend on a game, any game. Once the new shine and sparkle has worn off, many move on to the next new thing.

Eight months: Those who were severely and firmly hooked have now done it all. They start to look for expansions, new things – and end up wandering off to elsewhere in pursuit of those things.

Forever: And finally, there is a core group of players who have found a home. Nothing short of pulling the plug on the game will get these guys to move on.

I kinda want to dig in on this three month thing a little bit. After being in the Ares space a while now it seems like every game that opens gets hit with “the bubble” for about 3 months, a huge influx of players that are there and then just leave and go to the next game. Then the next Ares game has The Bubble for a couple months… then the next, leaving the old game(s) with a much, much smaller player base of longer-term residents.

I’m not saying this phenomenon is good or bad, I think it just is, but I am interested in thoughts on administrating it. Is it better to cap a game rather than struggle to support The Bubble for the short duration it lasts? Is it better not to cap players joining, because The Bubble definitely won’t last? Has The Bubble always been there, but games came out more slowly back in the day so we didn’t notice it as much? Is there a difference in the kind of stories that can or should be run during a Bubble period?

@Roz said in WoD/CofD/Supernatural Games, One Splat or Many?:

@catzilla One splat, or a VERY limited selection of splats. Basically I think that your whole staff should always be able and willing to handle all splats that you make available, or else you’re going to run into the inevitable issue of how you continue support when someone needs to dip.

I came here to post but I was only gonna say this exact thing, lol

The facts are what they are and they’re never going to change. It’s a Star Wars game! They’re doing stuff. Some is ok. Some is really stupid. The good guys and/or bad guys have the upper hand this week. There’s some spaceships and some guns. If you are unlucky enough to have an issue with someone, especially a harassment issue, no one will help you.

That’s the only thing to say about this place. It does not matter what the theme posts are. It never did. I think it’s ok if we don’t give them free publicity for every single bbpost.

The systems are onerous, the dino gaps are frustrating, the personalities of the staff and key players are sometimes terrible, that’s all kinda whatever in the end. It can be dealt with.

More to the point, and pointing at where this thread started:

Every MU in this day and age has a “harassment won’t be tolerated” policy. They vary by content and complexity, but to name just a few across a few genres/types/codebases: Liberation has policies of this type, Spellbound has them, Disquiet has them, Silent Heaven has them, Arx had them, I think even Shangrila has guidelines and policies around welcome and unwelcome player behavior.

There is one game out there that does not have a “harassment won’t be tolerated” policy and that is Age of Alliances. @Zephyr asked Cujo to put one in and he refused.

What on earth reason is there to refuse putting up a line of text that says harassment won’t be tolerated?

Make of that what you will, I guess.

This might sound complicated, and maybe it is. The goal here is to make it as approachable, as possible, though

lol

@SirKay if you don’t have the bandwidth to give game content to OCs, just don’t have OCs. Building second class players into your game design is asking for a headache.

@SirKay said in Consensus on Roster vs OC vs Mix:

Focus of potential place: upper echelon would receive more staff attention (events/missions) and considering Roster for this level; lower echelon might receive directive/TPs/RP from the upper (a team under a roster).

I would be a lot more concerned about a system in which some players explicitly and by intent receive “more staff attention” than I would be about anything to do with rosters.

Good luck tho

Today someone AMBUSHED ME (idk if you’re on the forums but you know who you are if you read this) with a link to a website for a game I played around 2012-2018. It was run by a head wiz who became a close IRL friend and who passed away in 2019. I had no idea the site was even still up.

What a kick in the feels. All the old logs are there, and our snapshots of funny ooc moments, and our pictures and playlists. There are lots of captures of jokes and stories and fun moments of my friend who’s no longer with us, and other friends as well, some I still talk to, some I don’t.

I am so grateful and I am so sad. MUSH is such a strange medium in the way it can feel so all-encompassing at the time, and then enough time goes by and it’s just a little snapshot of how things were, and who you were then, and all the fun times you had writing stories with other people way too late into the night.

Really, really grateful and sad.

Representation/Diversity can be a charged issue when it comes to writing characters, both in fiction in general and in this hobby. Some people never write outside their own experience, due to comfort levels or for fear of getting it wrong. Some people do write characters from a background different to their own, and that either goes well – and adds something to the game imo – or is uh… reductive and problematic. To say the least.

Writing the Other is maybe 20 years old at this point but it’s useful and fairly inexpensive if you’re interested in digging into this stuff.

They also have a number of articles and essays and other resources on the site, some of which are free and some of which are paid webinars and stuff.

Worth looking into if this subject is something that interests you!

This subject has come up with a few people lately, but the real peeve is how much garbage media/tv/movies I have consumed solely because my played-by was in it.

Obviously Cujo is Cujo, and various Cujo policies/decisions are always inexplicable. The ships, the cargo, the econ, the Stuff, the fairness or lack thereof, the BBpost Metaplot, the… whatever the deal with Aryn/Poe is, this weird “you can come back” moment, etc etc, you can pick on all of it.

I think it’s important to remember, though, that the whole debacle that started this was:

On this game if you are harassed, and particularly if you are harassed by a popular player who appears to generate activity, there is no help for you.

Cujo doesn’t need to be like “guyz you can have your toon back,” Cujo needs to be here saying “I won’t tolerate bad behavior, I’ll take it seriously, this is my house and I’ll keep it clean.”

But that’s never gonna happen, so. Oh well. Super fun time simple, big IC grid awaits, lol.

Cujo and Friends got rid of everybody they didn’t like or who didn’t agree with them during the Great Drama and built a utopia for themselves out of the echo chamber that was left. No troublemakers anymore!

That is now, and has been, playing out about the way everybody expected it would.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

good luck to them I hope they are having fun

@Testament Prosopagnosia! I have it as well and it can definitely be an embarrassing factor in my real life. It’s also one reason I hate AI portraits, as I find them extremely hard to distinguish.

In terms of descs though (and I know, we’ve talked about this) I don’t think you need to know exactly what their face looks like. It doesn’t matter. You need a vibe, some physical basics, and anything major unusual, and that’s it, that will inform the impression of the character in the written form.

Tastes vary, but for me, I never need to know details like a roman nose or cupid’s bow lips.

@Testament I will write every desc for you forever if you want

You still have to do the drudgery of editing my filthy human writing tho, and it will be a lot of work

Resurrecting the thread to give an art-related warning. A heads up for anyone who draws their character art on an iPad with an Apple pencil:

If the glass screen breaks you have to go through Apple to get it fixed. You cannot go to a 3rd party screen fixing place like you would for a phone. Apple has proprietary chips in the screen and proprietary calibration software involving the apple pencil, and the apple pencil will not calibrate properly with the 3rd party screen no matter what you do. This causes unavoidable jittery lines in the drawing.

Once it’s been done, the 3rd party place can’t fix it because they don’t have the Apple proprietary crap and Apple won’t fix it because it’s been altered by a 3rd party.

The iPad + Apple pencil has been a great way to draw for years. I don’t want to get into right to repair (although I feel strongly about this rn) or Apple sucking (although I ALSO feel strongly about this rn) on the art thread. There are just a lot of talented artists in the mu community and if anyone else is using the same set up I would like to spare them the nonsense I just went through.

I will do the lifting to set it all up, I don’t usually mind.

What I mind is the person who says “I want to rp!” and then they say “I don’t know what to do. I don’t have any ideas. What character would you like me to be? LOL!”

At least pick which of YOUR OWN characters you want to be, come on now. I’m not doing that for you.

IMO, it’s not great to take a stance like ‘the church is in control of reproduction’ unless players are explicitly allowed to take a swing at that institution and that massive social control. Are they allowed or encouraged to make motions back to their own autonomy? Fuckfruits for all?

‘The church is in control of reproduction’ is one thing. ‘The church is in control of people’s bodies and everyone is chill with this IC because that is our ooc policy’ is uhhhhh less good.

WHAT game is this

@mangosplitz pls

lololol