Preliminary Game Discussion Post

[cityship]

Hey, all! Your friendly neighborhood mod team here to try out something new.[Poll #1774777]

Comments

Newbie CR Problem

[cityship]

A particularly notable problem that has cropped up recently is that a number of newbie players have found it hard to develop their initial CR, making it difficult for their characters to remain active in the game. Many have attempted to tag around, but still find it difficult to develop their CR, especially if they are not in a well-represented canon in-game.

What possible ways of doing things can we use to rectify this?

Many older players mention that the reason they don't tag out to many new players is because they don't have the energy or time to develop new CR. What about ways of making initial CR between characters easier to develop?

Re: Newbie CR Problem

[uso]

What about some kind of IC welcoming committee? Characters could be assigned to new arrivals to help them get acquainted with everything. It'd require IC signups, but it could work for some people.

Re: Newbie CR Problem

[daemonomicon.livejournal.com]

That might be one thing we could use, and I think it could be very effective. However, I see that as mostly just helping the situation for those with more sociable characters, so we ought to have something else to supplement it for players with other character types.

What if we also had small open plots that can work for just about any type of characters more often? Like little plot-in-a-can type things that could be run several at a time alongside other plots, that would give new players more opportunities to have their characters meet other people and develop CR for just about any type of character.

[i-saw-myself.livejournal.com]

Blue brought this up on plurk and during the discussion we kind of figured out part of the clash of things.

Personally, I think there's a clash between the fact that newbies need CR and the fact that a lot of players are kind of sold on the fact that it's a slower, working-people's game, where you don't have to tag around a whole lot and can kinda limit your tagging to what you can manage with your life.

And that's a problem because newbies should be made to feel more welcome, but it's not entirely unfair to want to just tag at the rates you're capable, which might only be enough to maintain a small group of CR you've got.

I think we need to try to tag around more. I think the ideas some people have with newbie helpers and all are a good start. Trans' game culture is very dependent on just prodding other people to play and having a person welcome newbies goes a long way towards getting them comfortable enough to reach out when they need to to meet the older players halfway.

I also think changing the podpop a little to get the infodump out of the way via maybe an IC comm file that'd autoplay and the welcoming committee posts being FIRST would lead to more social tagging on the part of older players since they wouldn't be rehashing stuff. More channelposts and people making more of a habit of watching the channel would also help get past some rehashey introductory stuff and hopefully make people apt to tagging around more.

That said, I think though that there are other underlying problems contributing to this, and one of them is the size of the game.

For what the game was intended to be, for what I've heard some older players say they want to game to be, we have gotten too big for our britches. It's getting harder and harder for newbies to find their niche because there's less niches to carve out, less roles in the IC infrastructure (which provide at least some shortcuts to CR). I also still maintain that it's hard to balance the CR you've got with tagging around when you've been in a game a long time, most of your CR is still around (people often play in this game for months and years), and when logging takes so long, and that it's not unreasonable to want to focus on what you've got. It's just a want that clashes with other people's wants.

So I think besides the other solutions we should also, to fix the problem, focus on game size. It contributes to issues with plotting, and I think it also contributes to the game being so big and disconnected that it leads to newbies getting lost and flaily.

But it's a whole separate beast and I'm not sure how to get into that.

[daemonomicon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's probably a big contributing factor to the problem. The only problem is I can't really think of any reasonable solution that could mitigate this.

The only ways I know of curtailing the effects of game size are upping activity requirements (which would certainly not help our older players) or seriously limit incoming apps (which I don't think would help our newbies adjust, as they would have a smaller number of newbies to work with to build up CR).

I'm just not really sure how we could work on this side of the issue effectively. :|a

[ronnae.livejournal.com]

Adding to the Trans_Channel thing. As I suggested in said plurk, I thought that maybe having some fun little things happen in the comm channel would make people tag there more and interact, including newbies.

Things like, but not limited to:

- Running newspaper with important information about the ship and crew.

- Ads by the different establishments on board, and the departments. I know we're not always working and someone might want to trade for some services! And advertisement for the places that the crew can use for morale boosts and just to clear their minds and relax, like; Kang's Drunken Dragon tevern, the Ship's Bathhouse, Hydroponics, Splicer's club/arcade Hunter's Pad, etc.

- A gossip column! Those are usually fun and can stir up some cr or interaction frenzies!

- Text based game? Or one that could be uploaded to the comm network. Challenge crew members against each other for top scores.

Just simple things like that can go a long way. And I wouldn't mind contributing and I've always said I'm willing to help in anything that is needed ^^

[teethofneedles.livejournal.com]

Like Milo already mentioned, I'm generally in favor of shutting down invites entirely. Lowerign the frequency of the app cycle would probably help, failing that. We're a fairly large game at this point and it does make establishing CR and getting involved in plots fairly difficult.

Re: Newbie CR Problem

[indeliblepast]

I think I may have come in at kind of a busy time ICly and OOCly, but... I feel like people in the game are very nice, but not necessarily... welcoming, I guess? I mean, I did an OOC post trying to get Sumeragi some jobs around the ship, and got a fair number of OOC replies, none of which seemed to want to do IC threads over it, and... well, I don't want to force people to play with me if they're not really interested.

Re: Newbie CR Problem

[zouichi.livejournal.com]

You reminded me of something I found out when I was a newbie, which is that for the most part, entering a department and the day-to-day stuff of being in a department is all handwaved, so entering an IC department isn't really the way to get CR I assumed it was.

...also I'm sorry for not answering your IC channel post right away; I still feel bad about that.

Re: Newbie CR Problem

[facepunching.livejournal.com]

And speaking of CR, I've put up Soren's open post up a little early jsyk.

Re: Newbie CR Problem

[morphitudinous]

I'm really sorry, that's my fault. I got myself so distracted that I haven't done any Engineering gatherings, and that's totally my responsibility. I'll get one up tonight or tomorrow, okay? There's a lot to do there.

Re: Newbie CR Problem

[governmentninja]

I think it might help if we open up more areas of the ship, since, in terms of OPs, the only options are really "Chillin in Hydroponics/obs deck/Media Library," "Sensorium shenanigans," or "Look, I found [insert building name here] in the city!" since a lot of the day-to-day department stuff is handwaved.

Also, "Drunken Dragon."

Outside of that, there's either plot related posts, or your character needs/wants something specific.

Not that any o those are bad options, but when you've been here for a while, there's a point where you go "Well, they've alrady done [A, B, and C] in the sensoriums, they've wondered aimlessly around Hydroponics, sat around the obs deck, read half the books in the Media Library, had some beer at the Drunken Dragon, unearthed [X Place] in the City, found [Y ship] in the Hangar, they don't need to talk to anyone about anything specific, and there's no plot happening or plot fallout to deal with... so what can I do for an open post that's new and different?

"...

"...

"...

"...hn"

Re: Newbie CR Problem

[ronnae.livejournal.com]

XD I totally agree with that, it feels that way at times, but that's why I suggested maybe minor events happening around the ship, pseudo memes and exploring the new areas sounds like it'd be lots of fun!

Aren't there some hidden areas on the ship still?

The City

[governorkang]

Would it help if locations in the City were marked with whether or not a person could use them in logs without asking another player or the mods for permission? There are quite a few spots listed in the wiki that are undiscovered, that don't require permission, and several other places like the tavern and Awesome World that don't require permission either, and I'm not sure some players are aware of this, especially newbies.

Everyone is free to add new locations to the City as well, as long as they're not their personal home (exceptions are made if the personal home is Important To Canon, like Cassie's or the Masaki house, or a palace/mansion if the character happens to be an Important Figure/leader on their world), or something really crazy and outlandish. The wiki can be edited by anyone.

And of course, people are free to claim empty buildings for their own, if they don't want to live in the crew quarters with the squishy beds. That could be a way to build CR, going house-hunting or fixing up a place, or scavenging around the City for stuff to put in the house.

Just think about it. You could have your character living in the Lincoln bedroom of the White House if you really wanted.

Voluntary HMD Posts?

[cityship]

Currently, the game has no mandatory HMD requirement, and people are free to do them (or not) as they wish. However, even though we still don't intend on making HMD posts mandatory, the mod team feels it might be useful to have possibly a single post where people can link their own HMD posts or perhaps even have regular voluntary HMD memes. Remember, this would be completely voluntary, as we don't believe forcing people to do HMD posts is necessary.

How would everyone feel about something like this? Or, if they have another idea about this, please suggest it here.

Re: Voluntary HMD Posts?

[i-saw-myself.livejournal.com]

I think the problem with linking ones people have is as people join and drop, that page would get out of date.

Voluntary periodica HMDs would be nice though.

Re: Voluntary HMD Posts?

[ronnae.livejournal.com]

I agree, I have one in my personal journal and it's always open for anyone and everyone ^^ I'm sure it helps with things before they get taken to more unpleasant locations!

Re: Voluntary HMD Posts?

[radiantcourage.livejournal.com]

What we could do that I've seen from other games is hold a monthly/bi-monthly HMD meme and open it to everyone and not just the game for those who lurk around here to stalk specific characters, etc.

Would this work for people or nah?

Re: Voluntary HMD Posts?

[so-pregnable.livejournal.com]

IMO a meme would be a good idea but the stalker part is a bad idea. A lot of people play for themselves and each other, not an audience. I personally care more about what my castmates and gamemates think and really don't care what total strangers have to say because while games can be entertaining to outside readers they're an interactive form of entertainment. They're meant to be more entertaining for those doing the interacting.

Department Posts

[morphitudinous]

So it's already been mentioned that aside from Medical and some open-hours Council stuff, most of the IC organization stuff gets handwaved. And that's not providing the CR opportunities it should.

---so for this, there will be an Engineering post sometime this weekend. No really. I swear. I cleared out my log of homework so you can beat me with a stick if it doesn't happen. It can be a little boring to just patch holes in things, though, so what about a social element?

How can we make things like that more interesting? If I just have us mingle and make some teams to fix stuff, are we gonna be okay? A team for teaching newer recruits, things like that?

[i-saw-myself.livejournal.com]

Maybe you could make up new inventions that'd benefit the crew and have the engineering guys test them out? So then you could have whacky effects happen and stuff to react to until they tweak things to be right?

Kinda like the glue gun incident.

[ronnae.livejournal.com]

I've done logs like that XD But they've been personal ones in Engineering. Like the mishaps with the invisibility invention and Ronnae's rocketboots XD I had lots of fun with those, so I think that'd be pretty cool to have people test out inventions and such.

[morphitudinous]

That's right up Billy's alley, and of course the others have plenty of great ideas too.

I've just always been hesitant because I don't know what's really allowed, what might break the game. We were told long ago, for example, that if we wanted teleportation it would have to wait until endgame. Is there anything useful we can build without breaking the plots---that we might need?

Re: Department Posts

[sunlightsister]

I think little events going on in the Department could be a big help - I used this example up in another thread somewhere, but the Furby log in the Med Bay was a really good example of just a fun log that gave people something to play around with and build some CR. So perhaps things like just general open logs of 'today, [insert event here] is happening in Engineering', and then people can just run with it.

Re: Department Posts

[radiantcourage.livejournal.com]

Hmm...

Perhaps a get-to-know thing since some people in Engineering might not know their fellow coworkers as well as they hope? I do agree with the team teaching newer recruits, though - it sounds like fun!