Well, actually, an apology for a pretty egregious lie would be appreciated.
But let me be clear, the rule stated a zero tolerance policy. Generally speaking, is it unreasonable to expect that a rule mean what it says?
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MafiEra Season 14 Review |OT| No, really. Can anyone name this character?
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Well, actually, an apology for a pretty egregious lie would be appreciated.
But let me be clear, the rule stated a zero tolerance policy. Generally speaking, is it unreasonable to expect that a rule mean what it says?
I apologize for not remembering the exact request you were arguing for - I did not go back and reread the conversation. For the sake of avoiding relitigating the past though I still believe it's more effective to focus on what needs to be done in the future as opposed to what was missed in the past, especially when there has already been an admission of responding poorly to issues at times. I'll wait for a response to what I asked about how to improve going forward, the crux of our actual discussion.
I am uncomfortable with tracking behavior for a number of reasons, only one of which is additional workload.
Right now, already, we are:
-writing a guide on behavior for players and mods
-revamping these rules and making a place on OM to monitor them (people from the facilitator team will need to keep up with that)
-redoing moderation guides on OM to coincide with changes
This is new labor, on top of regular ongoing labor. Most of the facilitators are in here every day because there is a vast amount of background labor that takes place to keep things going, not to mention the fact that many of us also step up to run games. It's wearisome and we do it out of love for the game and the community. I ask you, all of you, to please not diminish that because you may not know everything that goes into this. We have jobs, or classes, or both; some of us have families on top of that; some are struggling with outside issues, but we still put in the work. Every new task has to be carefully considered, because it's not worth doing if we can't do it. That is a very real, material concern. We are stretched thin. We are tired. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has thought of quitting from time to time.
But I'm also uncomfortable because there are major issues that can arise with behavior tracking.
Here's one reason. These are arbitrary benchmarks. If someone has a bad game, they're marked for a year? Yikes. And is it only in-game behavior? What if someone is mad after the game? It happens. People get frustrated. So you air some frustration and it doesn't matter if you apologize - and mean it - your warning/action is already down in a spreadsheet somewhere.
(And it's not just 'a year' that's an issue - almost any benchmarks we set would be relatively arbitrary. I mean, deciphering the notion of good behavior isn't exactly simple. It's been the purview of philosophy for millennia.)
And what's reform? The new rules are aiming to be more strict; they should result in far more official warnings than we've had in the past, unless players conform quickly. So all the people who are actioned now have warnings in this database, which may very well lead to bad feeling about all the people actioned (or not) in the past who aren't in the database. It seems unfair. That increases the potential for hostility rather than decreasing it. And if people only get marked for in-game action, not action in spec or post-game, there's more bad feeling, due to more standards that can seem arbitrary. Especially if these things factor in for harsher future action. Such a system would also color things for new players, because it would absolutely come up in games. All our systems and our meta in general already does. Explaining to new players why Player X got removed quickly while Player Y only got a warning means new players see Player X as "bad." It generates ill feeling. I see our endgame here as reducing hostility overall. Tracking behavior like this has grave potential to foster it.
I'm a teacher. I know the temptation to track students for mistakes, be they in class or in assignments, even if it's just in my head. But it's a huge pedagogical taboo because it creates bias and ill feeling. (There are teachers who do it anyway, because teachers are human and they make bad choices). Teachers need to be aware that sometimes students have bad days. That maybe they are struggling and it manifests that day. But you have to maintain good faith about them. And that's what I want to do here - maintain good faith about every player in our community.
Personally, the only way I would entertain any sort of tracking system like this at all for the most egregious behaviors. Bigotry. Out-and-out, no gray area hostility. There is one player in recent memory who fit this criteria and he is the only example I can think of for tagging with a scarlet letter of sorts and to me, the only purpose would be to tell someone "you did this egregious thing and if you cross any other lines, ever, you're out, period."
It will take us some time to adjust to new moderation guidelines. Let's see that adjustment in action and if we need to take an even harder line, this kind of discussion can potentially come back, but right now, I see too many potential pitfalls.
Some other things;
I lost the quote, but someone asked if we could substantiate the claim of more than one bad actor in an aggression situation and yeah, I can, with about half the playerbase in Game of Thrones. That game was a nightmare headache for most involved and I would like to think that with rules like those that are slowly being developed in this thread things could have been smoothed out early.
I think that's a great point and it should be separated out with its own set of actions.
Right now, already, we are:
-writing a guide on behavior for players and mods
-revamping these rules and making a place on OM to monitor them (people from the facilitator team will need to keep up with that)
-redoing moderation guides on OM to coincide with changes
This is new labor, on top of regular ongoing labor. Most of the facilitators are in here every day because there is a vast amount of background labor that takes place to keep things going, not to mention the fact that many of us also step up to run games. It's wearisome and we do it out of love for the game and the community. I ask you, all of you, to please not diminish that because you may not know everything that goes into this. We have jobs, or classes, or both; some of us have families on top of that; some are struggling with outside issues, but we still put in the work. Every new task has to be carefully considered, because it's not worth doing if we can't do it. That is a very real, material concern. We are stretched thin. We are tired. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has thought of quitting from time to time.
But I'm also uncomfortable because there are major issues that can arise with behavior tracking.
Here's one reason. These are arbitrary benchmarks. If someone has a bad game, they're marked for a year? Yikes. And is it only in-game behavior? What if someone is mad after the game? It happens. People get frustrated. So you air some frustration and it doesn't matter if you apologize - and mean it - your warning/action is already down in a spreadsheet somewhere.
(And it's not just 'a year' that's an issue - almost any benchmarks we set would be relatively arbitrary. I mean, deciphering the notion of good behavior isn't exactly simple. It's been the purview of philosophy for millennia.)
And what's reform? The new rules are aiming to be more strict; they should result in far more official warnings than we've had in the past, unless players conform quickly. So all the people who are actioned now have warnings in this database, which may very well lead to bad feeling about all the people actioned (or not) in the past who aren't in the database. It seems unfair. That increases the potential for hostility rather than decreasing it. And if people only get marked for in-game action, not action in spec or post-game, there's more bad feeling, due to more standards that can seem arbitrary. Especially if these things factor in for harsher future action. Such a system would also color things for new players, because it would absolutely come up in games. All our systems and our meta in general already does. Explaining to new players why Player X got removed quickly while Player Y only got a warning means new players see Player X as "bad." It generates ill feeling. I see our endgame here as reducing hostility overall. Tracking behavior like this has grave potential to foster it.
I'm a teacher. I know the temptation to track students for mistakes, be they in class or in assignments, even if it's just in my head. But it's a huge pedagogical taboo because it creates bias and ill feeling. (There are teachers who do it anyway, because teachers are human and they make bad choices). Teachers need to be aware that sometimes students have bad days. That maybe they are struggling and it manifests that day. But you have to maintain good faith about them. And that's what I want to do here - maintain good faith about every player in our community.
Personally, the only way I would entertain any sort of tracking system like this at all for the most egregious behaviors. Bigotry. Out-and-out, no gray area hostility. There is one player in recent memory who fit this criteria and he is the only example I can think of for tagging with a scarlet letter of sorts and to me, the only purpose would be to tell someone "you did this egregious thing and if you cross any other lines, ever, you're out, period."
It will take us some time to adjust to new moderation guidelines. Let's see that adjustment in action and if we need to take an even harder line, this kind of discussion can potentially come back, but right now, I see too many potential pitfalls.
Some other things;
I lost the quote, but someone asked if we could substantiate the claim of more than one bad actor in an aggression situation and yeah, I can, with about half the playerbase in Game of Thrones. That game was a nightmare headache for most involved and I would like to think that with rules like those that are slowly being developed in this thread things could have been smoothed out early.
I think that's a great point and it should be separated out with its own set of actions.
I already quoted this, this is what you said that I'm referring to:
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We actually haven't spent most of this thread discussing past examples. You're gaslighting a little bit, but let's move on.
I gave you a framework to talk about aggression, because the thread was missing some solid ground to discuss the issue. I think it's useful to realize that this is not a unique problem, and that there are examples to look at. I think it's good as a discussion tool at the very least, and I also invite people to modify it and not just take it at face value.
The reason we sidetracked into talking about your record is because what you've said here about your plans carries the same tone and approach that, at least some of us feel, isn't going to change anything. The reason is that people are stating that aggression and hostility is pretty plainly bad and unwanted, and leadership comes back with statements that sound like excuses, but no clear reasoning for why they are taking positions that ultimately excuse and welcome aggression.
But I don't even mean to lay these problems at your feet alone, there are other people involved in leadership that either haven't really spoken up about what they'd do, or haven't weighed in on some meaningful questions about what they'd do differently from past times.
It was me, and I'm not asking for one example, I'm asking to substantiate the claim Natiko made that "most instances of aggression involve two or more parties both being hostile". Why did he say that? The reason I ask is because it's a broad statement that's trying to justify an institutional bias on your end.
I'm not going to have time to do all the rest right now - but I want to start here at least.
I agree with you that the text can be used as influence as we build stronger rules. But the reason I continue to bring up their community is to point out that what's said doesn't match with what's done and I think that speaks to the difficulty in moderating mafia in general. But I think this brings us back to the beginning of what constitutes sportsmanlike conduct.
Maybe some examples:
A. "This is a bad argument. If you're town, it's not helping."
B. "I can't believe you think this will work. You're a fucking idiot."
B here to me is unsportsmanlike and aggressive. A to me is fine. But this one's pretty obvious so I'll try to be more nuanced.
A. "This argument is fucking stupid. If you're town, it's not helping."
B. "This argument is dumb. No one's going to buy this. It's obviously wrong because of x and y."
I would mark both of these as fine - but I would probably watch that discussion to see if it escalates, just in case, as it seems like it could veer out of control and get heated.
A few things on what was being discussed near the bottom of the last page:
1 - The two spreadsheets I keep that show our community's data are personal; I don't manage them because I'm in the moderation, I had them long before I was invited to it. So if I keep them it's not because I feel I should do that as a facilitator but because as a regular community member I think it's important to have that information available. Obviously, this means I am also the only one that works on them.
2 - Browsing through thousands of posts from a single game and drawing all the important data out of it takes me a handful of hours every time, even more so when I have to go after design spreadsheets to find something that's not in the game thread itself. I 100% know that people would not know that since I don't really talk about that part of the process (all I say about those sheets is "there's a new game in there!"), but saying adding anything to them is "just another thing to keep track of" is really trivializing the work I have to do to update them, and kinda makes me feel people take them for granted so maybe I *should* talk about that part of the process more?
3 - Doing what it's being suggested (keeping track of people's past aggressions so they can be penalized according to their history) would be a subjective task since I doubt you meant that every warning should be recorded, only those of a specific type, and I would have to actually read entire game threads (which is not something I do currently, I just go straight for day/start ends to see when people died and what were their roles) to get the context of a conversation, then talk with the gamerunner and/or game watchers to see if it's something that should go on record. That's way more time I need to put into these things, which I don't currently have as I have my uni semester going (I didn't even find time to put HvV 2 on the sheets yet). Also, how much would be enough penalty, 1 whole season away? How much is too much? That's another subjective thing that doesn't have a simple answer.
4 - Because gamerunners would be aware of this warning record, and everyone can be a gamerunner, this means that such record would have to be a public document, and I am absolutely against creating a sort of "wall of shame", where people could look at other players and form opinions of them based on numbers. This document would also make impossible for players to apologize and regret their actions, since those warnings would be on their profile no matter what they have to say afterwards. Policing players in this way would make running games and managing the community so much less enjoyable.
5 - In these drafts that we wrote and were posted here a few days back, we say that people would get priority penalties if they keep receiving warnings in a game. That already kinda does what it's being suggested, since these players would have lower priority in a period future games and fewer chances to play again. It's much simpler and benign, and keeping tabs on people would hurt more than help for all the reasons above.
---
I never talked about this publicly, but whenever I find time I am also porting some of our game threads from the old forum to OM, so people can read it without accessing that site. That's tens and tens of thousands of posts, and it's taking me such an absurd amount of time to do this that at every point I feel it's not worth the effort. But it will once it's done. I'm just saying this to show that we put a lot of work into making this community happen, and I would ask people to appreciate that.
1 - The two spreadsheets I keep that show our community's data are personal; I don't manage them because I'm in the moderation, I had them long before I was invited to it. So if I keep them it's not because I feel I should do that as a facilitator but because as a regular community member I think it's important to have that information available. Obviously, this means I am also the only one that works on them.
2 - Browsing through thousands of posts from a single game and drawing all the important data out of it takes me a handful of hours every time, even more so when I have to go after design spreadsheets to find something that's not in the game thread itself. I 100% know that people would not know that since I don't really talk about that part of the process (all I say about those sheets is "there's a new game in there!"), but saying adding anything to them is "just another thing to keep track of" is really trivializing the work I have to do to update them, and kinda makes me feel people take them for granted so maybe I *should* talk about that part of the process more?
3 - Doing what it's being suggested (keeping track of people's past aggressions so they can be penalized according to their history) would be a subjective task since I doubt you meant that every warning should be recorded, only those of a specific type, and I would have to actually read entire game threads (which is not something I do currently, I just go straight for day/start ends to see when people died and what were their roles) to get the context of a conversation, then talk with the gamerunner and/or game watchers to see if it's something that should go on record. That's way more time I need to put into these things, which I don't currently have as I have my uni semester going (I didn't even find time to put HvV 2 on the sheets yet). Also, how much would be enough penalty, 1 whole season away? How much is too much? That's another subjective thing that doesn't have a simple answer.
4 - Because gamerunners would be aware of this warning record, and everyone can be a gamerunner, this means that such record would have to be a public document, and I am absolutely against creating a sort of "wall of shame", where people could look at other players and form opinions of them based on numbers. This document would also make impossible for players to apologize and regret their actions, since those warnings would be on their profile no matter what they have to say afterwards. Policing players in this way would make running games and managing the community so much less enjoyable.
5 - In these drafts that we wrote and were posted here a few days back, we say that people would get priority penalties if they keep receiving warnings in a game. That already kinda does what it's being suggested, since these players would have lower priority in a period future games and fewer chances to play again. It's much simpler and benign, and keeping tabs on people would hurt more than help for all the reasons above.
---
I never talked about this publicly, but whenever I find time I am also porting some of our game threads from the old forum to OM, so people can read it without accessing that site. That's tens and tens of thousands of posts, and it's taking me such an absurd amount of time to do this that at every point I feel it's not worth the effort. But it will once it's done. I'm just saying this to show that we put a lot of work into making this community happen, and I would ask people to appreciate that.
Do you really think in a community that has not policed aggression strict enough, most aggression has not been met with additional aggression? It's not excusing anyone for doing so - it's making a statement that often more than one player will be punished for aggression which is totally fine - it needs to happen. Not everyone will be happy with that outcome on the player side of things though.
Show me the quote where I said most of the thread was spent discussing it. Again, I don't appreciate you putting words in my mouth, nor do I appreciate the unfounded accusations of gaslighting. It was clear we had strayed off the pertinent topics, and thus I was trying to get us back on track.
I wouldn't call anything laid out here 'my plan'. People on our team much more adept at these things handle the rule writing. My opinion is but one of many. As for the rest, I've openly admitted to my shortcomings. Continuing to lambaste me for them and tie that into the future expectation hasn't been productive though. I've explained that I should have taken doofus at face value, and in the future will do so. I've explained that in the future I would take all complaints seriously about aggression. I've explained that the entire point is to prevent issues such as that from occurring. You're taking a statement that was an example of what can happen (two people arguing), that I laid out clearly both should be punished for (even if they object and argue), and somehow trying to tie that back into previous incidents in which punishment was not taken seriously as if I'm making any sort of statement on that and I'm not. I'm simply saying multiple people can be aggressive, all should be punished going forward, disagreements will occur due to that though.
How is saying that everyone that hurls insults should be punished a bad thing? That even if one of them feels the other started it, that doesn't excuse further aggression?
You don't need to be sorry for the suggestion. On paper, what you asked isn't anything inherently bad (Ket also asked too, it's just your post beat hers by a minute or something so I think more replys went to you)
I actually don't know. I wanted you to substantiate that claim with facts, maybe. Could you name the aggression incidents where someone didn't reciprocate? Or do those just get forgotten? If you're only remembering the ones where it was tit for tat, it's coloring this entire argument negatively.
"Rover Ketkat You both seem to be locked into discussing past examples. "
It was the entire premise for your question you wanted answered.
Again, the notion that two people hurling insults shouldn't be punished isn't the topic. The topic is the predisposition of moderators and leadership approaching these incidents in general.
You clearly stated "most instances of aggression involve two or more people acting hostile", and I am questioning that assumption, because right off the bat it seems to ignore a lot of instances where people don't push back and just quit, or don't even join because the hostility kept them from ever joining. When you say that alongside statements about players 'weaponizing' rules and not always being innocent, it raises a lot of red flags about how moderators are responding to people's complaints.
I agree with you on all of these examples. 2A definitely has the capability to escalate things further, but the target of the aggression is the argument that they're making, and not them as a person or their skill at the game.
I feel that a lot of these are strange questions to be asking as someone who has knowledge of how Era moderation tracks every warning, ban, report sent/received, and notes on someone's profile and that those aren't really removed which leads to you receiving the same questions surrounding reform, length of time between infractions, and so on. While it will always be somewhat subjective, these are typically tracked and monitored as it allows for clearer actions and consistency across moderation.
I can understand the desire to not want something like this to be public as it can create this 'wall of shame', but for it to not be tracked in any way can lead to situations where different people behind the scenes are making wildly different decisions. Ideally, there's a chat for staff to discuss these issues as they pop up in the game, and if someone PM's a gamerunner or someone on that team, then it should be mentioned in that chat so it can be seen by everyone or at least whoever is around. There is a record of it there, and then it's posted in a spreadsheet that others can look at if a warning is issued, as we're not really going to have access to Xenforo's fancy auto tracking stuff it does.
I don't feel that bigotry should be tracked within this community as if someone is spreading anything like that, they should be removed from Era and not just a mafia game.
This creates some more work, but largely all of that outside of pasting the information into a spreadsheet would ideally be happening already so as to maintain consistency and prevent the burden from falling onto one person. If the work is getting to be too much, or there are too many people on the staff jumping into games at once, then I would really recommend expanding the team where you can. Like you said, it's a volunteer position and it can't be expected for a handful of people to take on everything and to be available for 24/7.
Let's use this as a hypothetical example. Someone joins a game of Mafia and they misgender me a few times before a warning comes in and tells them to stop. They don't misgender me the rest of the game, but they do it again the next game. And the next, and the next, and so on. Is there a certain point where someone doing this consistently across multiple games should be factored in from your point of view?
Natiko
I have continuously been looking towards the future and making suggestions on how to improve things based on my own experiences within games I've played, my moderation experience, as well as rules from other mafia communities. At the same time, we can't ignore everything that's happened in the past, especially recently, as these are the mistakes that have to be addressed in order for things to improve. Wanting to be stricter, and wanting to enforce the rules more often are great, but those are nebulous and hard to pin down when you don't directly see where the disagreements arise from or how dismissive something can sound. And I am aware that you're conceding how you sounded at the time, and how you've striven to improve.
I don't think that anything that people have done in these games or the way that these situations have been handled are unredeemable, but for most people who have experience with aggression that has turned them off the game, there are going to be specific examples that come to mind. That's where this is coming from for Rover, and there are a few examples that were directed at me from others in the past that I recall as well. As things move in a more positive direction, these issues will stand out less and less, but until we get there, it's hard not to want to talk about them as we want to see meaningful change away from these specific points as well.
Era has a system for that, though. We don't. And that's part of the difference. We're also a much smaller community than Era - another part of the difference. And people also don't get removed from Era the first time they say something bigoted - that's a place I would like to be more harsh, because again, small community. Something like that would feel much much more personal here. Always bad, different impacts.
I don't have a lot of time in the afternoons but I'll try to get back to the rest tonight. I'm still missing a few from before, too.
Here's a slightly different topic: the size of our community
We've shrunken. Any ideas why? Aggression could play a part, but given our history and how we've been bigger during wilder times, I doubt it's the driving force. (Of course we should continue to tackle that issue). The move to ResetEra with an assumed smaller userbase seems to be a reasonable guess. Apart from that, my thoughts keep wandering around the time investment.
I've been one of the biggest proponents of shorter days and post requirements. But exactly this could drive away a lot of the casual players we've seen in earlier days. What's the general opinion on this? What about a game with loooooong phases to test the waters? 4/day, 3/night - we might even get crab back to play a game like this.
We've shrunken. Any ideas why? Aggression could play a part, but given our history and how we've been bigger during wilder times, I doubt it's the driving force. (Of course we should continue to tackle that issue). The move to ResetEra with an assumed smaller userbase seems to be a reasonable guess. Apart from that, my thoughts keep wandering around the time investment.
I've been one of the biggest proponents of shorter days and post requirements. But exactly this could drive away a lot of the casual players we've seen in earlier days. What's the general opinion on this? What about a game with loooooong phases to test the waters? 4/day, 3/night - we might even get crab back to play a game like this.
Run a small game like that an see how it goes. Starting any experiment with a smaller game is usually a good way to test it out.
I'm personally probably going to be more interested in smaller games moving forward just due to my schedule changing a lot.
On the topic of phase lengths and post requirements, I wouldn't mind lower post requirements if phases were 24/24 for example. Or else, if I remember right, GoT did 72 hour day phases for the first few days, which at the time I thought was the norm. I wouldn't mind seeing someone experiment with shorter/longer phases and posting requirements, since that might help people who don't have a lot of time to devote but still want to play.
On the topic of phase lengths and post requirements, I wouldn't mind lower post requirements if phases were 24/24 for example. Or else, if I remember right, GoT did 72 hour day phases for the first few days, which at the time I thought was the norm. I wouldn't mind seeing someone experiment with shorter/longer phases and posting requirements, since that might help people who don't have a lot of time to devote but still want to play.
I personally prefer a little longer day phase because with my schedule (working late shifts three days of the week) there's way too much of a risk that I might not be able to post much during an entire day phase due to work and my general tiredness.
However, i wouldn't mind being able to try a shorter day phase though it might be easier to just be a spectator for that and see how it matches up with my schedule.
However, i wouldn't mind being able to try a shorter day phase though it might be easier to just be a spectator for that and see how it matches up with my schedule.
I don't think that the lenght of the days of the post requirements are why we are shrinking. I think it's because people leave because a number of reasons (maybe rl, maybe because they want a break, etc) and we aren't getting new players. How many new players we got this last season? If I didn't made a mistake 4. That's really low.
Something is failing. We recently were in the spotlight but we didn't run a game to draw new players. I think we should change the way we currently use to make OTs. A good idea would be to ask for the thread to be moved to Etc Forum instead of Hangouts when we are running recluitments for a new game and changing the title of the OT to add the name of game that we are running so we can draw people attention with the flavour.
That's a good point, the OT should ideally be up to date and promoting the next game(although I love the self referential jokes they aren't great if you aren't in already)
I think currently it says taking signups went it isn't happening yet
I think currently it says taking signups went it isn't happening yet
Wait do we not do this?
Im pretty sure we did this back at gaf, hell its the only reason i found this place.
I was also under the impression we still did this. Would explain some things if that hasn't been the case though.
Another +1 to keeping the OT title as up to date as possible in terms of when we are recruiting and not and I don't think it would hurt to use the title to advertise the next game instead of doing a more common OT title.
A smaller game running a long day night cycle 4/3 is probably a good idea as well tbh especially if it gets really eye catching flavor. Those longer lengths are great for newbies and those with less time investment (even if the game overall will take longer).
I don't mind trying out different day phases/time things since I've been in different games with different schedules though I guess it depends how busy I am and if I can make the commitment.
If my memory serves me correctly, one of the previous seasons had the thread move from hangouts to etcetera.
If my memory serves me correctly, one of the previous seasons had the thread move from hangouts to etcetera.
There are other things too:
- The current OT still has Life is Strange as our current game even when we had 2 more games and 2 ONUWs after it. That's the first thing that someone who isn't a regular sees when they enter the thread.
- We need to improve the way that we catalog games. Right now the games can be vanilla, role madness, unusual or bastard. Vanilla and role madness are OK but Unusual and Bastard can be a lot of things. I think that the gamerunner could post a brief description about the special mechanics (without spoiling anything) that their game would have. That could help draw players who are not interested in the flavour. For example HvV2 could have said that the game had specials events and minigames. That is not really a spoiler as that was announced before the game started and it could have helped with recruitment.
- We are running only one game at a time lately and if you die early you have to wait a long time to play again. If you are lunched D1 or killed N1 you have to wait until the game ends, post game talk, a new recruitment and all the pregame stage. That could be a lot of time. For example OJ was lunched D1 in HvV2 and that was a month and 10 days ago. All that wait can kill the interest that someone has with playing.
We used to start new games when the current games where halfway so players who couldn't signup and players who died could play again quickly. Maybe we could run some minigames, ONUWs or small experimental games while the big games are running to keep the momentum going. Those games could run without affecting priority for the bigger games and maybe allowing players who are playing a current game to join if they want.
- The current OT still has Life is Strange as our current game even when we had 2 more games and 2 ONUWs after it. That's the first thing that someone who isn't a regular sees when they enter the thread.
- We need to improve the way that we catalog games. Right now the games can be vanilla, role madness, unusual or bastard. Vanilla and role madness are OK but Unusual and Bastard can be a lot of things. I think that the gamerunner could post a brief description about the special mechanics (without spoiling anything) that their game would have. That could help draw players who are not interested in the flavour. For example HvV2 could have said that the game had specials events and minigames. That is not really a spoiler as that was announced before the game started and it could have helped with recruitment.
- We are running only one game at a time lately and if you die early you have to wait a long time to play again. If you are lunched D1 or killed N1 you have to wait until the game ends, post game talk, a new recruitment and all the pregame stage. That could be a lot of time. For example OJ was lunched D1 in HvV2 and that was a month and 10 days ago. All that wait can kill the interest that someone has with playing.
We used to start new games when the current games where halfway so players who couldn't signup and players who died could play again quickly. Maybe we could run some minigames, ONUWs or small experimental games while the big games are running to keep the momentum going. Those games could run without affecting priority for the bigger games and maybe allowing players who are playing a current game to join if they want.
I would love this, yeah. I'd be willing to run Minis/ONUWs like this as well. I have a Mini game that I could run at anytime right now tbh, I just haven't officially told whoever I need to talk to about it.
We already started working on this - as part of review now, designers are supposed to write a description for games that are unusual or bastard to provide a bit more in the way of clues.
I also think our signups could go to 72 hours. I know everyone's scrambling to go and often we rush, but if we want to give the OT some visibility and get new players - or message occasional players and give them time to respond - 48 hours is not long.
And that's what makes this community unique, in that one of our primary objectives is to recruit new members, not just converse with existing members.
I agree that the OT title should reflect which game is currently holding signups and I've always been a little OCD when the first page doesn't advertise our currently running games, too. That should be updated as soon as signups start for the next game
i also agree that we should try to have multiple games running at a time. From what I've heard, we need more people to run games, so that might not always be possible. But having a smaller game start running maybe after a few day phases have passed in the larger game will keep the engine running.
it's not like we're having trouble with exposure. On the contrary, it seems like every time a new member to our community shows up their opening post begins with "i followed [insert game(s) here] but I've never got around to actually playing but I'd like to."
OP
OP
With the bulk of discussion having slowed and things being wrapped up we're gonna put a pin in this season's review thread! Thank you again for everyone who participated and gave your insight! The changes we have gathered from this will be posted in the OT (HERE) and will be used for the coming season.
We're still getting the finishing touches up on games and the new OT but it should be up soon.
Thanks everyone <3
We're still getting the finishing touches up on games and the new OT but it should be up soon.
Thanks everyone <3