paradisaooc | HOW'S THE GAME?

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HOW'S THE GAME?

HOW'S THE GAME?

It's been awhile! It's time for another round of Game Discussion, also known as "How's The Game?"

Here we come together to discuss the game, its plots, the settings, and just about anything we can think of that we'd like to talk about, expand upon, improve, change, etc.

This is not an HMD for players and their characters; this should be about the game's function as a whole and not the people in it. If there is something you feel is absolutely necessary to address that involves a specific person, please IM a mod first to discuss it. We can be reached at terraqueous orb (Kayla), end title (Fudgey) or a great fanfare (Jenn). (Though Jenn is on hiatus right now because her laptop is broken, so Kayla or Fudgey would be best for right now!)

Anonymous will be left off for this round (see first section).

Here are the sections that we've come up with. Add your own and we'll edit it into the list.

Anonymous: Why is it turned off?
What do the mods/helpers do, anyways?
How is my activity being monitored?
Activity check changes
Applications/turnover rate
→ Test Drive Comm
Abilities on the application
Villains & Heroes
→ Recent Villain Activity
→ Upcoming Villain Activities/Plots
Death
World Plot/Paradisa Lore
→ Concrete Resolutions, etc.
Canon Updates
Mini-plot Planning
Changes since last HTG
Plots in General
Regular Plots?

How's The Game will now be held quarterly, in order to avoid excessively long stretches in which there is no outlet for discussion.

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I am going to share my feelings and experiences on this issue.

First, intro posts should not be the only concern, I feel any post that gets very few if any comments should be a concern unless it is filtered to someone. Nothing feels worse than getting no replies on a post, it also makes it difficult to feel attached to the game if no one ever comments to you reguardless of how often you may tag out.

I have experienced frequent thread drops happening before a thread could go anywhere. Also it seems a fair amount of people don't bother with threads after a day or so. Also some people seem to treat their posts in real time, so if you were late to a post (say in the evening when the post was up in the morning or late the night before) you either don't get as much attention as the people before did, or you get whatever new situation has happened to the character. That makes for awkward threading.

It feels like most of Paradisa's activity is during afternoon EST and if you are outside that it is hard to get involved with anything. Sign ups are full, posts aren't being looked at anymore and so on. So if you were not around when it went up you sort of missed out. This is the same for CR memes and HMD.

There are a lot of filtered posts are specific people centric. Either in that they are directed to specific individuals or specific knowledge. It is hard to get involved in on going issues if you have to already know about it to get involved. If the posts aren't filtered directly their content is still directed so it is hard to tag unless you already know the character or are somehow involved with their topic.

Now I don't know what to do about this but it is extremely discouraging; seeing an open posts with journal commentary and a location used to interact with them and a pretty open subject that anyone could tag get near no replies and another one above it of someone eating cake get 200 is frustrating. Not only does it make the person who got 0 people feel like they did something wrong, it gives a feeling that you do not matter at all in the game. It creates a feeling of needing to pander to an audience. "Was I not interesting enough? What can I do differently next time? Maybe I should try and do something outlandish." Instead of thinking of IC posts you start focusing on what will gain the most attention.

All in all I feel if everyone included an open portion to their posts it would help and tried to tag any entry with less than 4 threads. This is the only game I have ever been where I see this sort of problem and it is really discouraging. I am not new here either yet I still find myself struggling for CR and a place inside the community. I really like Paradisa and I want to see the player base overcome this issue.

I have definitely had the no comments thing and it really is an awful feeling. It makes you question if people like the chars. Even when they tell you that they do, it makes you wonder why they didn't tag if they found them interesting.

I do think people need to be more selective with filtered posts. Hopefully the AC changes will help to address that. As for events having happened if you tag later, I think that's more for continuity, so that three people don't rescue the same character at different times. But that probably varies with the posts involved.

What I'm not sure to do about are sign ups and getting people to backtag longer.

However, I have a question about people ignoring certain posts. Do you think it would be helpful to see some stats on how often this is happening? I know seeing the statistics on the intro posts really made a difference in how I approach my tags. Maybe a similar look for posts with 25 or less comments would give us an idea of the scope of the problem?

I've had three chars who regularly got very few replies, so I know it happens. I'm just not sure how regularly. Either way, if we have a visual, it might inspire people to be a bit more proactive.

I do want to say though that the comment problem is a LOT better here than it is in my other game. In my other game, there are a ridiculous number of chars who get no comments on their posts (or very few). So, while we have a problem, I wouldn't say it's the worst I've seen.

However, it is a serious problem and if there's a way we can fix it, we need to. As a whole player base. Not just the newbies or the cool kids or the others in between.

Also, please forgive me if this is jumbled. It's late and I've been a bit braindead today.

Edited 2011-05-15 06:19 (UTC)

Yeah, in the past I've struggled with Kate and Akihiko but I eventually was able to settle them in. It's discouraging because I didn't have that problem with Uru so I wasn't sure what was up. It's just so easy to take it as a personal thing. :(

What I'm not sure to do about are sign ups and getting people to backtag longer.

We'll just have to stress it and push for it on our own end for now. Say you and I are tagging and I drop the thread or a day passes and no reply. PM me and ask. I've done it in the past when I didn't get a tag for days and the player in return continued the thread with me! I was very happy.

I think I'm going to try and go through April's posts and check and see what the radio of filtered to unfiltered posts were, to get a statistic on it.

I'm going through and taking a look at posts with comment counts under 25. We can compile, maybe? :)

The PMing or IMing thing is a good idea, but tbh it would make me feel nervous and anxious and sort of like... as if I'm trying to pressure the other person into replying, and would end up inadvertently scaring them off. (Unless I knew them outside the game.) THIS IS OF COURSE JUST ME I am ridic. shy.

I don't blame you; it can be a very intimidating process. I'm worried I come off too strong when I ask people to tag back or continue a thread, too. It's the only solution though I can think of for wanting a thread to progress. It would really depend on how you word it, too. ;(

You're right. It's something that I'll work on, because I really do hate seeing interesting threads get dropped.

I didn't so much mean in situations where a character needs to be saved as much as events happening later that day being reflected in an older post that was a simple discussion of some sort.

I'm confident we can figure out an answer as long as everyone is willing to accept there's a problem and work together on it and not dismiss it. I do think some kind of statistic would help, though I'm not sure if it should focus on comments or threads as sometimes with a single dedicated person you can have a very long thread, but the post itself was not particularly diverse due to having had one tag.

True this isn't the worst of all but definitely the worst out of what I have personally experienced.

As for events having happened if you tag later, I think that's more for continuity, so that three people don't rescue the same character at different times. But that probably varies with the posts involved.
If this is for a plot-post, or something worked out OOCly, then I get where it comes from. But if it isn't, then I suppose the poster should be prepared to be rescued 10 times by different people? It's a bit unfair to have a first come, first serve thing with situations like these if they weren't plotted out/worked out prior to the post. I've only come across mini-plots like this that have been worked out previously, so I haven't seen any posts where this hasn't been worked out.

I think with sign ups, if there's a limit on how many people can participate, then players with multiple characters should only select one character to participate. I did this with the trial post - I had Piper already up for a jury member, and stated that if the jury number didn't meet 12 by the time the post went up, James could help fill that quota. I didn't want to take a spot away from someone who may have wanted one of their characters in there but were unavailable of signing up when everyone hit the post.

I think ignoring certain posts is something that can be rectified with a statistics post, but also you've got to take into consideration the canon and the type of content posted. That's the thing with all posts, though. I know I skip over some posts because I can't think of a way that either of my guys can tag in and be helpful with the CR. Sometimes the post gives me little to work off of, or whatever the content is, my guys aren't familiar with it (for instance, if it's a specific canon thing for the character or a thing they've done in Paradisa that my guys don't know about). But I think that a statistics post will definitely raise awareness that this is a really big issue and it's very off-putting for players who have this occur to them. I have issues with posts I make that end up with a few taggers, which makes me wonder whether my character is making a good impression or not with others. So - I think the first step to kicking this problem in the rear is a post looking at the problem at hand.

IDK if this is even helpful.

When i originally did the intro post stats, I tried first to calculate the average number of comments instead of number of commenters and it didn't work because of the canyon between people get lots of comments and people who get few. I'll try it again with commenters instead next week... See if I can compare it to how low long the character has been in paradisa.

I am going to +1 this so hard. I don't see any reason that a post with an open section should go ignored or with one or two comments. It's been brought up countless times and yet nothing has changed. I just don't understand what brings up such a poor lack of tagging when we have over one hundred players in this game. Even if say... five people don't tag out, there's a ton of other people. What is going on? Are we seeking specific type of posts, characters or interactions? What constitutes as an "interesting" post to people? (But honestly, I now vehemently dislike the idea of "making an interesting post". Like you said, if someone can make a post of someone just eating cake and racks up 200+ comments, then people aren't looking for "interesting".)

I've never noticed the filtered post problem though some friends I made who've come and gone from the game told me the same thing. They didn't feel they could get into this game because of many filtered posts. I do notice certain characters make a lot of filtered posts or stick to the same people. It's a panfandom game; you're not required to tag everyone but it doesn't make a lot of sense to hardly tag outside a select group.

All in all I feel if everyone included an open portion to their posts it would help and tried to tag any entry with less than 4 threads.

I think I said it above about intro posts but what I said can be applied to any post with few comments. If even ten players can tag a post, we could be making leaps and bounds of improvement.

About the time zone... I don't know how to correct this. I know a lot of our players in Europe, Australia (and someone in Hawaii?) miss out on events or posts and feel left out when they try to tag in. Often they are not replied to. One depressing instance to this was when the baby ghost appeared back in the winter and people tagged in a day or so later and were met with no replies. ;/

All I can stress is BACK TAG everyone. Someone replies to your post late, treat them the way you would want to be treated. There's been a small improvement in backtagging but it still has a ways to go.

For issues of time differences all I can really say is yes back tag! Also perhaps if people considered that their entries are sort of rooted in time. Even if someone posts 18 hours after you posted it, the comment should be considered within the timeline of the original entry. I always thought this was a given in journal based games, though perhaps this is just an issue of people being confused on that sort of matter.

Another concern I have also noticed a bit is that most threads people decide not to use a posting order. I know that posting orders can sometimes bog logs and threads down, but without them a person can miss out on huge spaces of IC time and not be able to respond to things they normally would have simply because they had to go to bed, school or work. Suddenly you come back and the entire situation has moved on without you and you no longer have a place within.

As for how to deal with that? I think people should just be a little more mindful, I don't find it a huge issue yet though.

Exactly. I've always treated posts as it happening the time it was posted unless otherwise noted in a tag/OOC note. Like someone tags in later like:

[ ABC doesn't get a response yet. In fact, isn't until three hours later XYZ opens up their journal again to speak. ]

Things like that!

For the posting order, can you come up with an example of so? I'm sorry, I'm actually kind of confused! Sorry, it's hitting 3AM and lack of sleeping is kicking in. Do you mean when you're doing a thread with a few people and you log off, only to return the next day and see it's progressed without you?

Exactly that. Like you have to go away for a few hours or for the night and later it's already moved onto something major and you were left behind. Now I'm not against free moving threads, or multiple people jumping in whenever, but sometimes it gets a little too chaotic and people are left behind because they don't have all day to track the thread and post to it every time there's an action or comment they would be IC to address. I have seen people drop out of threads because of this.

But as I said the only thing that can really be done about that is just for people to be a little more mindful of the other people involved.

+11111111111111111111 everything you said.

Seriously, I don't even know. I know that I'm guilty of overlooking posts - as I'm sure everyone is - and I think that we do look for specific types of posts, even if we're not actively thinking "I want a post that talks about the colour blue". I think that we just need to change the way we think and approach certain posts and be a little more open and willing to tag those who we may not have any CR with. I know I've been trying to tag a few characters I've never interacted with before (and I've only been held back by how much time I have/how serious I'm guilt-tripping myself to get my uni work done). The only thing that constitutes as "interesting" to me is whether or not I can see my character/s gaining any CR from the one who posted. I just try and think of ways my characters can somehow answer/appear in the situation presented in the post. ;/

Speaking as someone from Australia, I feel incredibly discouraged either way. A Sunday for those in America is a Monday for me, and I'm busy at university for the bulk of the day. I think that backtagging also goes hand in hand with this. And I think perhaps some plots might require more figuring out the nuts and bolts of it all so certain players don't feel left out? Perhaps there needs to be a little more effort put into planning out plots when it comes to including everyone and making everyone who is interested feel as though they are contributing and will contribute, regardless of timezones and when they can access their computer?

I backtag like it's nobody's business. I guess I always assumed people were backtag friendly? Hearing this is a big surprise to me. ;/

But honestly, I now vehemently dislike the idea of "making an interesting post".

+1, to the extremee.

I agree with everything you're saying, but I'd repeat what some people have said above about how some characters just don't have much to say regarding a certain topic? I know, for one, since my characters are mostly reclusive people that I make an effort to find a way/common ground that makes them likely to tag a certain entry. And on that note, I'm even considering picking a different char who is likely to have different ideas of which entries would be interesting to them.

On the other hand, and I don't mind playing the devil's advocate here, is that I've encountered similar and sometimes worse problems with tagging in other games. But I think, aside from whether the community is welcoming or not, it is about whether or not said character has established CR or been tagging on other people's entries.

I don't mean that tagging is just an I'll-scratch-your-back-if-you-scratch-mine scenario, although it might be so to an extent, but that it helps make it easier or even give me an excuse to tag an entry that my character wouldn't otherwise tag because they kind of know each other and have something to talk about.

I agree with you about the pressure to make posts more interesting... but I feel that the pressure is more to make it open and relevant to most characters possible. I agree that it's a bad thing, but I don't know if it's something that can be fixed necessarily...

I agree with all of that. I've been struggling lately with Darien, for example. His intro got so little response, and all of his posts have really only gotten like 2-3 people responding, no matter how open they are.

For me it seems that the characters who are either known, come from known canons or are really flashy/unique get most of the attention, which is unfortunate. I try to go out of my way to tag posts of characters/canons I don't know. It has lead to some of the most interesting conversations and friendships I've had IC.

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