Inactive in RP

[Dreams]

I will state ONE thing - it doesn't change my mind that this change isn't ok. Just like I would be against a change that said, "Anyone whose pose takes less than 5 minutes gets no RPXP reward," or, "Anyone whose pose is less than 10 lines gets no RPXP award." For me, "Anyone whose pose takes longer than 5 minutes since the last pose in the room gets no RPXP," is too harsh. I am against a change that tells someone how they must play, or what is absolutely necessary. I prefer everyone's styles be respected.

However, that said, to state something rather simple as a solution for those who are very, very upset. A reminder that hemotes tend to be shorter and can be used to fill in space and/or bump a timer. As well as thinks - as long as they are 6 words or longer (I believe). Hemotes are obvious to some in the room and not all, and I think that sometimes they're used rather... well, with things that aren't really hidden movements, etc. However, thinks are definitely a valid way to keep things going as far as your own RPXP ticker. And, may even help the depth of your character.

[cortical_stack]

Is there some reason people can't use osay to request shorter posts? Has anyone tried this and received any amount of backlash? I've had people tell me they don't have long to meet, and if we could do what we need to do, and you know what happened? I said "Sure!" and reverted to say instead of emote.

It seems a lot of people are being very British about this and saying "Oh I wouldn't want to cause a fuss." I don't want to sound like an old fogie, but when did mechanical punishments become a replacement for communication? Short posts have their place, as do long ones. To say "No, long posts are always bad and you will get less numbers for them" is what is rubbing people up the wrong way.

The need to effectively address the issue with mechanic or policy was identified by Kinaed earlier in the week:

I'm thinking TI is having a bit of an identity crisis here. Because we never made any value judgments about whether we'd be a fast paced or short paced game, we were open to all audiences rather than catering to a niche. Thus, we've created the potential for strife in the pbase about things that aren't value judgments, but are a matter of taste. We have the following options:

1) Leave it as is, retain the sense of strife, and accept that we will be a mediocre game for anyone who doesn't fit the 'mean' style play, wherever that is sitting at the moment, which will fluctuate depending on what we have, but seems to be skewed to older players with a lot of time on their hands. This does mean we don't retain new players, which long term will kill the game, even for those players - but we'll be a home for a longer while, and let's face it - Staff tend to be the older player themselves.
2) Choose who we will cater to and go for it, which will impact some players for no good reason other than (whether we go long or short) their tastes are on the opposite side of what we cater to. If we go this route, then we need to think through what kind of game experience we want to be and do what we can to crystalize it and be the best game of that type available.

To place responsibility back upon the pbase to constantly negotiate the speed at which posting occurs is explicitly a return to the circumstances of Kinaed's first cited option. Anecdotally I can also assure you that this will result in a drift toward long-posing. There are several contributing factors but namely it will be that people will not want to have to be constantly perceived as aggressors for asking others to share the time in a scene. They will suspect they will be privately demonized for doing so, and if the tone of the responses in this thread is any indication those suspicions are justified.

It might be said that an alternative is for players to self-govern their posing speed with an eye to equity. This has however always been an option to be exercised. At any time folk might stop and consider if the three paragraphs they are writing is a respectful use of a quarter-hour of the time of others. That this hasn't been effective at resolving the issue is testament to the complex social dynamics underlying the associated problems. Some folks will never have taken personal responsibility for it simply due to never having had the issue put to them. Some will refuse to do so because they feel entitled to the time. Some will say that if you don't have the 3-4+ hours to be comfortably taking 15 minutes posing, you shouldn't be playing this game. You're going to get all sorts of perceived answers to the issue and unless your community is willing to do the hard work of talking out what kind of game experience is desired you'll continue to have this problem right up until the day you don't. That will be the day that the last of the people who can't afford to get in 2 poses in a 2 hour scene will finally have left your community. Then you'll have what so many other games do: a collection of people with their terminals open while they work or do chores, occasionally checking the screen to see if their turn has come back around since they made dinner, attended a work meeting, or watched an episode of Outlander.

[plague]

I have come to the conclusion that keeping up with this discussion is actively damaging to my play experience. The constant reinforcement of the idea that not only is it silly and unreasonable for people to be upset about this change, but the implication that that's a good thing and the game would be better if the people upset were all gone anyways because:

1. their style of play chokes the population,
2. was never intended to be supported by staff in the first place,
3. inherently runs against the THEME of The Inquisition: Legacy, and will ultimately lead to Go Do Laundry Simulator: Legacy as part of a Slippery Slope, and
4. by the way, if you weren't here three years ago, you aren't educated enough to have an opinion on this issue,

just makes a display of empathy toward the valid points (imposing yourself on every scene is exhausting, sure, I'll accept that) a decidedly one-sided endeavor. I guess I'll just go about my business, easily be unaffected by the change by slipping in a one-liner, think, or hemote every now and again, and accept that certain people can't fathom the idea that people would see such a draconian measure as a bad thing.

[galaxgal]

The flagrant assumptions of bad faith and constant rephrasing of things I said out of context to fit the narrative of being some kind of exclusive oppressor because I think measures need to be taken for the continued health and well-being of the MU* are exactly why I have become completely exhausted with this thread. It goes completely against the point of these discussions, it is in utter defiance of community principles such as the OOC Chat Pact, and has been completely dominated by a "My way or the highway" absolutism who have suggested no alternative changes or compromises to solve the problems described as the premise of this thread while others suggesting their own positive changes or compromises or alternatives have been drowned out.

You can rest assured that I am done with this thread as well. More meaningful discussions on the health and state of the MU* can happen literally anywhere else, and my public statements in favor of either this change or one of a similar intent have been made for the people willing to read them in good faith and understanding. As they have been and can be by some.

[Temi]

I am not speaking for staff as a whole, but rather just for myself.

But really, this is not about you. Or not just about you, anyway.

Rather than asking how long is reasonable to spend in writing an emote (obviously there is a lot of variety in this and it depends on what you are giving back for the time you spend), we instead considered 'How long before it becomes unreasonable to expect someone else to sit waiting for your emote (or any emote) and remain present and engaged with the game?'.

That was the 5 minute number. We already have that number in several other high stakes situations - submitting to an arrest, combat rounds, execution emotes. That's not necessarily how long these things take, but how long before the system decides it better continue on.

Next, we considered, do we think players can do this? Our consensus was, in general, yes. There will probably need to be some adjustments from people. More single paragraphs instead of multiple paragraphs, maybe more back and forth on things instead of just coming out with the fully fledged everything, maybe more acceptance of little mistakes, maybe pre-preparation of important speeches or performances. But it comes with upsides too - maybe those beautiful three paragraphs could fit another player's emote in between and be more about the interaction than just about the prose. And of course the increased engagement that we're really aiming for.

No, the long emotes weren't the complaint here, it was the disengaged people. The waiting twenty minutes for hardly anything. But, I do think they are related. If we are asking people to wait fifteen minutes for anything, of course they are not going to stay engaged. Of course they are going to get the laundry started or cook dinner. Goodness knows, I've done it on occasion when things are feeling slow. If the long scenes with long breaks are the only way to get things done, people will show up to them, and maybe they won't complain, but they won't be focused there, and we're going to get people getting distracted and not getting their focus back in time for it not to be obvious.

Now, there's nothing wrong with those big emotes, and we don't think less of the people who choose to do them, and I certainly don't want those people to feel unwelcome. I do hope they will give a try, for the community good, to keep an eye on the time things are adjusting and see if there might be some reasonable adjustments.

Again, it's not about how long it takes you to write your emote, or any value judgment on how you choose to do so, but rather how long another player has to sit there waiting for anything to happen. And when you're with someone who doesn't mind waiting, I certainly don't mind not making them wait. But not all private RP is between people with those agreements.

Is this the right way to handle it? Maybe, maybe not. We've previously added a carrot to encourage people emoting within 5 minutes, and this didn't really affect things on the whole. And I am hearing that this one is significant enough that people feel they can't just ignore it altogether. Unfortunately, I'm also hearing that people are not super interested in adjusting.

Can't players who want things to go faster just request it? Sure, and they still can, but I don't think that they should have to specifically request that there is at least something happening every 5 minutes, in most situations.

[phoenixdoll]

I don't think this will effectively do much to affect my rp in the grand scheme of things because I have never had a shortage of xp. So if I just never get heroic or legendary again.. oh well? I'm not happy about it, but eh. Bleh.

But I admit, as much as I'd like to say it doesn't motivate me, the "numbies go up ticker game" actually really *does* motivate me to keep playing beyond when a scene wraps up. I have definitely been motivated to stay and linger in a public scenes and continue rping with folks that turn up after people leave because I have heroic or legendary rpxp when I otherwise might have decided to stop playing and go and play animal crossing or something. :p my villagers have been missing me since I stopped having my 2hr train commute each day, so this isn't the worst in the grand scheme of things for me anyway. And eventually I will have to go back to the office and i won't have 5 hours for rp on a work night, and I'll start having friends who want to see me and family I want to visit. So being able to play faster and get through stuff does appeal in that way.

Still on the positive, I'm glad that some people will feel more comfortable about entering scenes.

I guess what I'm concerned about is I have a fear that if I need to get longer to pose than 5 mins to do something justice, or because my joints have swollen up, that I'll start getting flack for that. I don't know if it is because of this change or just bad luck, but I've had people ask me if I'm there when I've been replying this week (and I barely played this week bc of RL sickness). And unfortunately, because I was scrolled up because of scroll due to heaps of osay chatter I missed their query... Like, not a big deal, just an accident. But I'm worried I've fallen in love with a game that I'm just not capable of physically playing and that feels BAD. And maybe that's so? Idk if there's anything that can be done if that's so. Dunno.

I... just.. the thing that pushes up how long it takes for me to reply is that I'm still relatively new and trying to be themely. I do a lot of looking up help files. I do pretype to make sure my partner isn't waiting too long, but I also have RSI and joint issues and sometime I just physically can't type as fast as I otherwise would if I didn't suffer from various dumb health conditions. (I used to be a professional typist, of all things, would you believe?)

But by the same token, I usually match what I'm given. Maybe if poses shorter I'll have less joint pain. So.. I dunno. Can't hurt to just try I guess.

I get that this change isn't about me. I get that it was done to improve the game, to improve engagement, and thinking about it in that way is perhaps helpful, but.. like.. It still affects me and I still feel a bit alienated?

But worse than the actual change has been just reading this thread. Just... a bunch of yikes and I'm sorry to have been part of it.

[phoenixdoll]

Sorry to post twice in a row, but @galaxgal:

I'm not sure if you have been referring to me in some of your posts.

If I have caused you grief, I want to apologise for the poor choice of words on my part. Shorter poses are not by nature "shitty". I said something like I *feel* like I've been throwing out low effort shitty poses, or something like that (can't see my original post while typing this on my phone), and I think I felt that the reason for this was implicit but it isn't. The reason I feel BAD is because I want to match my partners and they are able to write much more than me in 5 minutes.

My intention wasn't to slur anyone's posing style. I wish I had been more careful about my choice of words. All I meant was that I felt that I couldn't win, that I didn't feel like my writing was any good because I felt rushed, in part because I've probably picked up the worst hobby for me considering my busted wrist joints.

I genuinely wasn't meaning anything about anyone else's poses.

[Dreams]

I guess what I'm concerned about is I have a fear that if I need to get longer to pose than 5 mins to do something justice, or because my joints have swollen up, that I'll start getting flack for that. I don't know if it is because of this change or just bad luck, but I've had people ask me if I'm there when I've been replying this week (and I barely played this week bc of RL sickness). And unfortunately, because I was scrolled up because of scroll due to heaps of osay chatter I missed their query... Like, not a big deal, just an accident. But I'm worried I've fallen in love with a game that I'm just not capable of physically playing and that feels BAD. And maybe that's so? Idk if there's anything that can be done if that's so. Dunno.

Heaps of osay chatter is an entirely different topic. Osay is intended to be used to clarify RP, not to make smart remarks or funny comments, or to have a conversation not dealing with clarification in the middle of a scene with multiple people.

Unless they are somehow needing to clarify RP after every single pose, 'heaps of osay chatter' sounds like osay is being abused. Just because it is only a 5 rpxp deduction doesn't mean people can use it for whatever they want to - it has a helpfile and guidelines.

If two people are sitting in a room and choosing to have a conversation via osay, that is one thing - we can't police what people do by themselves. But the minute a third person comes in and osay is enough to be distracting and/or slow things down, it shouldn't be being used in a heavy manner. Clarification of RP only.

'Help osay' has this information. Anyone else in the scene is perfectly justified to ask others to stop using it unless they need clarification of RP.

This kind of request shouldn't have to happen, and each time I have to make it, it makes me feel like the dick/killjoy. But I can't focus on a scene with a ton of osay in the room, and it does break policy. Definitely don't mind clarification stuff, but other stuff isn't ok. There is discord, OOC chat, and other ways to CHAT. Osay isn't it.

[phoenixdoll]

Hey Kitty, I wasn't advocating for the behaviour, the chatter wasn't mine. It was an accident on my part that I missed poses and clarification questions because I was scrolled up to read the last poses.

I was trying to explain why I felt nervous.

Please don't yell at me

[Dreams]

Hey Kitty, I wasn't advocating for the behaviour, the chatter wasn't mine. It was an accident on my part that I missed poses and clarification questions because I was scrolled up to read the last poses.

I was trying to explain why I felt nervous.

Please don't yell at me

I... was not yelling at you.

If you are having to wade through pages of osays while trying to pose, you aren't the one doing it. I was making it clear that you had perfect right to ask them to stop if it was an inappropriate use of the command, and explaining why.