japheth
staff puppet account
Posts: 31
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Post by japheth on Jun 12, 2014 19:31:46 GMT -5
'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'
Even 5 years ago I can remember debate about whether "Background Snobbery" was harming the game, and that the vast majority of players wanted to get in game and then flesh out who they were as they got comfortable with the world and the character. Certainly, I made exactly one character on SOI before becoming an admin there and his background was 4 lines of ridiculously generic bullshit. Some people just don't want to write an essay on their character before getting in game.
Still, you do have a certain crowd who usually happen to be influential that push the idea that anything less "cheapens" the game for everyone else and would somehow ruin their personal experience of the game if all of these "Hack and Slashers" were allowed in who don't want to write a detailed, researched background. Newish staff usually are easily swayed by these kinds of arguments (even if they were the kind of players that didn't write such backgrounds beforehand) and perpetuate the negative cycle.
In my opinion it is reasonable to ask for a couple of sentences on the general concept, but as long as they've made even that effort, and their background doesn't contain any information that is flat out wrong ("He is the second son of Sauron, and King of Gondor"), there's no good reason to reject someone based on background. In fact, I'd go so far as to say even with such errors, usually you should just fix them up for them, and make a note to them "I Removed the part about -x- because that's not allowed, but welcome to the game anyway.". A far more player-friendly attitude.
Hopefully someone amongst the senior admins over there comes around to that way of thinking and makes it their personal issue.
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Post by BitterFlashback on Jun 12, 2014 20:45:07 GMT -5
Still, you do have a certain crowd who usually happen to be influential that push the idea that anything less "cheapens" the game for everyone else and would somehow ruin their personal experience of the game if all of these "Hack and Slashers" were allowed in who don't want to write a detailed, researched background. Newish staff usually are easily swayed by these kinds of arguments (even if they were the kind of players that didn't write such backgrounds beforehand) and perpetuate the negative cycle. I totally agree. Believing everyone always has to totally write out a detailed background for a character in advance is problematic. What's worse is tends to translate into believing railroad plots are the only way to change the game when you become a staffer. I sometimes write a detailed background. sometimes I don't. And in either case the result is the same: I start playing the character. I get in character. And then my subconscious begins making the character real as I play. Part of that includes inventing additional backstory. Extended family. And so on. Once the character is complete that background becomes set. It's easier to be inspired with one thing on the spot that fits the character than to think of nearly everything before you even have a feel for who you're going to become. The pretense detailed backgrouns = good RP is really a pretense that people who already do that use to automatically become better RPers just for doing what they prefer doing in the first place. It's no different than the arrogant twats (male and female) who demand excessively descriptive emotes and mdescs. the ones who youll often find are so miserably inept at saying anything interesting in character that you'd rather have a conversation with an unoccupied npc. or a chair. or a conversation with yourself via thinks. And i believe it translates to railroad plots because it's the same mentality. Because these kinds of ppl are only good at doing things well in advance. Do you do better when youre forced to improvise? or does forced improvisation cause you to curl up into a little ball? because that gets magnified when you throw NPCs, lrge groups of PCs, and events that cause permanent changes into the mix. To put it another way: pretense is often a mask for laziness, ineptitude, and a slow mind.
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Post by snorpborp on Jun 12, 2014 21:59:01 GMT -5
Wasn't meaning to come down hard on laketown staff. It just made me think I'm not a good alpha player if I don't know all the lore won't wade through their site to find info on the starting area, etc. I will checkit out when things are more ironed out.
I agree that sometimes making up my background as I play has the best result beyond the first general concept.
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japheth
staff puppet account
Posts: 31
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Post by japheth on Jun 12, 2014 23:11:07 GMT -5
Wasn't meaning to come down hard on laketown staff. It just made me think I'm not a good alpha player if I don't know all the lore won't wade through their site to find info on the starting area, etc. I will checkit out when things are more ironed out. I agree that sometimes making up my background as I play has the best result beyond the first general concept. Your experience is fairly representative of the same experience as the typical new player to the MUD or the genre, and your experience of being rejected for probably quite trivial reasons and deciding not to come back is probably, in my experience, almost as likely as not. I don't think anyone here is suggesting they're being at all malicious or that any way is inherently wrong (they can run their MUD how they want at the end of the day), but it is easy to see that such choices have consequences that harm the MUD's long-term viability (one could argue even the entire genre's viability). When the answer is as simple as taking the time to be helpful and being a little open to player's preferences, it's hard to see the arguments against it. I think this sort of criticism is generally constructive and it's the kind of feedback they really need to hear if they are in Alpha, so I encourage you to make it directly to them too (though I am fairly sure they read these forums from time to time).
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calk
staff puppet account
Posts: 47
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Post by calk on Jun 12, 2014 23:26:18 GMT -5
Wasn't meaning to come down hard on laketown staff. It just made me think I'm not a good alpha player if I don't know all the lore won't wade through their site to find info on the starting area, etc. I will checkit out when things are more ironed out. I agree that sometimes making up my background as I play has the best result beyond the first general concept. Your experience is fairly representative of the same experience as the typical new player to the MUD or the genre, and your experience of being rejected for probably quite trivial reasons and deciding not to come back is probably, in my experience, almost as likely as not. I don't think anyone here is suggesting they're being at all malicious or that any way is inherently wrong (they can run their MUD how they want at the end of the day), but it is easy to see that such choices have consequences that harm the MUD's long-term viability (one could argue even the entire genre's viability). When the answer is as simple as taking the time to be helpful and being a little open to player's preferences, it's hard to see the arguments against it. I think this sort of criticism is generally constructive and it's the kind of feedback they really need to hear if they are in Alpha, so I encourage you to make it directly to them too (though I am fairly sure they read these forums from time to time). I had my background rejected for being too sparse as well. I didn't find them at all unwelcoming. They told me what to add in to make it acceptable (they have a checklist. You just have to go through it and make sure there's at least a sentence addressing each thing as far as I can tell). I added in a few sentences, maybe three, putting it at a medium sized paragraph instead of a short one. And since it touched on everything in the checklist, they accepted me. They weren't cold about the rejection either. I should note I know next to nothing about LOTR mythology. I've seen the first movie many years ago, and I've read the hobbit. That's it. I didn't really read their website at all (couldn't find the appropriate pages when I looked) and was intentionally making my background as sparse as possible for the exact reason that everyone above me mentioned liking to keep their background sparse.
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delerak
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"When you want to fool the world, tell the truth." - Otto Von Bismarck
Posts: 1,656
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Post by delerak on Jun 13, 2014 0:45:48 GMT -5
I find it maddening that you require much of a background for any orc. They aren't exactly written about at all in depth by Tolkien. The guy literally wrote like maybe a paragrpah or two on orcs/goblins. Hah.
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delerak
GDB Superstar
PK'ed by jcarter
"When you want to fool the world, tell the truth." - Otto Von Bismarck
Posts: 1,656
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Post by delerak on Jun 13, 2014 0:49:46 GMT -5
So when you login to your account to check and see if a character is submitted where do you go? You have 2 options in Actions, Character Generation (which fopr me just goes to create another new character) or change password.
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,451
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Post by Jeshin on Jun 13, 2014 9:09:08 GMT -5
I don't believe the staff is being background snobs. I literally wrote, he is from this town (supplied on the wiki) he took an arrow to the knee (like that dude from skyrim) and this is his basic personality. Used to be a hunter, now he's something else. 7 sentence. Approved.
1) When you login to the chargen page, go to the create a character thing, under where you enter a new name you should see STABLED CHARACTERS or something in hyperlink blue. Click it. If you have no stabled characters then you have no properly submitted an app. An app will say submitted if it has been submitted and stabled if it is waiting for something on your end to be submitted.
2) I suggest picking a town from the wiki selection, stating you have just arrived in Utterby (the setting currently) and you are looking for work as crafter, hunter, guard, or town idiot. The current rule for alpha is that everyone is newly arrived in utterby from some other location.
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delerak
GDB Superstar
PK'ed by jcarter
"When you want to fool the world, tell the truth." - Otto Von Bismarck
Posts: 1,656
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Post by delerak on Jun 13, 2014 17:45:04 GMT -5
Yeah I don't have that hyperlink but I definitely submitted a character. Well that's just annoying. This GUI is pretty terrible. Can't you just login to the mud with a client and create a character? I noticed this when I tried to get the login information:
Connect to game information.
Default Content Block 2.
Erm.. yeah that's not really helpful when I need a socket.. lol.
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Lizzie
Clueless newb
Posts: 199
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Post by Lizzie on Jun 13, 2014 18:03:36 GMT -5
I got rejected for a vague background. I made a generic Amos so I could play a generic Amos. My lotr knowledge isn't l33t. So I made a generic oaf so I could figure out the exact setting. I don't have detailed knowledge on why my char is where he is. I don't know what shit to make up. "He's a wanderer." Meh. I might try again for beta. Don't feel bad. About a week before the game opened I got an email from a staff member saying my backstory was, and I quote, "Great!" and that I just needed to fix some things like a sudden loss of skills. About a day before the game opened I received another email from the same staff member, informing me that my backstory was horrible and would in no way work. How, he asked, was I supposed to play my role when steal (a skill I never made any indication of even wanting) was RPP only? Haven't bothered to even look at the site since. I'll give SoI about a year before it goes down in flames.
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,451
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Post by Jeshin on Jun 13, 2014 19:13:53 GMT -5
Instead of wishing doom onto a renewed RPI. Why not pass along this variance in response to the staff. This is a MUD in alpha, but the staff should be experienced. If you are having issues, now is the time to say something. In alpha, when things are changing and being tweaked and tested.
Connection details: middle-earth.us:4500
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jun 14, 2014 1:30:54 GMT -5
There should be a concrete set of guidelines as to what is, and is not, supposed to go in these. That would help them immensely, I think. Though to be frank I'm pretty indifferent. I liked the Hobbit, but LOTR was too slow to be of any interest, and SOI in general was never even slightly appealing as a concept to me. Best of luck.
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delerak
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"When you want to fool the world, tell the truth." - Otto Von Bismarck
Posts: 1,656
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Post by delerak on Jun 14, 2014 1:39:10 GMT -5
Who is wishing doom? I'm just commenting here that the GUI is clunky and I don't know why they made a new website and everything it just seems a bit overboard. Trying too hard.
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Post by gloryhound on Jun 14, 2014 19:18:32 GMT -5
Is SOI draining Armageddon of players?
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Post by legendary on Jun 14, 2014 20:24:40 GMT -5
Is SOI draining Armageddon of players? SoI appears to be what Armageddon players do while idling on Armageddon. www.middle-earth.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=874It may come across as jaded, but I've learned that it's never in my best interests to believe what I read on a games own forums. The A/P/S RPI community in particular is known for being rife with cliques, corrupt staff and various other undesirable white noise, so I've been wary of investing any of my time there. Could someone active in the community and game explain that situation in more detail, if possible? I've also heard that many of the first in players received statistic and skill stacking from staff under the pretense of 'fixing' an error with the character generator, along with a far larger sum of starting money. Is there anyone here that can further confirm that this is the case? If so, have enough of these characters died off, so as to level the field for those without these benefits? It would be wonderful to have another game to play, but if they're going to be another corrupt social cesspool such as Parallel, I would rather not waste my time on it.
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