Players Avoiding RP

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Kuzco
Posts: 180
Joined: Wed Sep 07, 2016 2:12 am

Fri Mar 09, 2018 4:33 pm

Ok let's go by topics:

-Avoidance: I am a bit annoyed at people obviously zeroing in on me because they used travel and my location's name, only to leave when they realise it's my character. Seen it over and over with the same few people. Same as the old trick of opening the tavern door, looking in, and closing the door again.

-Length: I tend to prefer quantity over quality, just not a lot. I don't mind 3+ lines per emote if you keep stuff coming. TI tends to take a freakish amount of time for even simpler scenes, where 90% of the time I feel I'm just waiting.

Cellan
Posts: 88
Joined: Sun Mar 17, 2013 8:27 am

Fri Mar 09, 2018 5:32 pm

RP comes in all shapes and sizes.

One of the reasons for my long-term love affair with TI is that it accepts and encourages all different types of RP, and that people with different philosophies can come together to tell a story. I won't use the term "ParaRP", because I know where it comes from and is very often used in a derogatory context. I have a few pointers, however, that have helped me over the years with community RP:

1. In public scenes, consider splitting off into groups of "smaller" scenes so that you don't get over-whelmed by the amount of people in the area. You can stay in the same room and react to what other groups are saying; but focusing on one conversation (rather than trying to switch between four) can limit emote length and make things easier on everyone;

2. In private scenes, have the kind of scene agreed upon by you and your partner. If you struggle with longer emotes, send a quick tell saying, "Hey, I'm super tired/have trouble processing a lot of information at once, do you mind if we keep the emotes modest?". If you decide you want to have a slow scene because you're both at work but you absolutely can't wait to RP with your favourite partner, then go ahead behind locked doors. You aren't hurting anyone else, and you don't need an immersion-breaking OOC warning saying that you're taking too long;

3. Don't be afraid of cutting emotes down where necessary. I've done it a lot over the years. I've added stuff back in. Rapid RP is fun. So is highly descriptive, relaxed RP. In public, keeping emotes short and efficient is probably a better idea. Be mindful of context and adjust your style to fit;

4. No, I won't be stopping at the Crossroads or Church Square when I'm trying to finish a tailoring commission and have to get from the First Bank to Seamstress' Delight. RP in public travel points is great, but IC they live in Lithmore Capitol. To my mind, it's totally fine (and considerate) to intrepret that as being "part of the crowd" floating through. Same goes for public crafting rooms;

5. Yup, players going idle/LD in every scene really grinds my gears. I personally like the idea of being able to transfer link-dead/idled-out characters (especially repeat offenders) out of your phome/guildhall and into the Almshouse. In my case, I also have a smart phone from which I usually log in, apologise, and request to be let out with the understanding that I am more than happy to continue the scene once I have stable internet/have slept properly. Likewise, taking longer than about 15 minutes (unless I am aware of potential delays and have agreed to a slow scene beforehand) also really bothers me. If you are in a scene with someone who's playing a video-game and can't be arsed giving you and your writing the attention it deserves, then your RP partner is being rude and inconsiderate.
Eliminate MultiPlaying, allowing only one character logged in at a time focuses the attention at the task at hand
Not a fan of this at all. I often log in an alt to check colouring on outfit strings/line lengths for new build rooms, etc. It's less interruptive than my working in a pboard on my main when I'm in a scene. Just saying.

tl;dr: context, conversation, common sense and consideration of others are great things. TI is a great MUD because it's non-judgemental and open. Let's please keep it that way, and focus on having fun rather than limiting RP and creativity by denouncing other styles.

Oh, and by the way: Farra is wonderfully over-the-top, and that's f***ing awesome.

PoF Rana, Cellan, and Shaylei
Last edited by Cellan on Fri Mar 09, 2018 8:31 pm, edited 6 times in total.

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Voxumo
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Fri Mar 09, 2018 6:58 pm

I honestly like the idea of a reporting system for players who consistently disconnect, leave rp, or idle out. I think if a player is reported a certain amount of times in a certain timeframe, that some sort of punishment should be levied. What that would be, unsure.


As for the length of poses and the time it takes to pose, I would rather this not be something that is enforced, at least in regards to length. It shouldn't take you 20 minutes to pose, and if you know doing a long pose is going to take you awhile, then frankly don't. Though the issue I see with any type of code enforcement for time between poses is massive scenes, such as masses or pyrings perhaps, where everyone tends to default to a turn order, and you could very well have 20 minutes in between your poses just waiting for it to get back to your turn if the scene is large enough.

Though speaking more on Length of poses, I personally tend to change my length depending on the rp partner I have. If it's a new person I've never rped with, poses tend to be shorter, person whom I rp with frequently, longer poses if I know they can keep up. I can whip out fairly lengthy poses relatively quickly, but not everyone can of course. Though admittingly sometimes I disregard the above rule of thumb when a scene calls for it. For example serious scenes that don't involve combat, I tend to get lengthy. Even my combat poses tend to be on the more descriptive side.

Though I do want to note StarStarfish is not alone in the issue of certain methods of posing having been disregarded. While it hasn't happened to me in several years, I too ran into players when I first started who would oocly jump on me for not meeting their same length of poses. I had hoped such players had disappeared long ago, but it seems it might still be an issue.
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The_Last_Good_Dragon
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Fri Mar 09, 2018 8:45 pm

I'll try to touch on a few points here. I seem to have earned a reputation for being a person who writes blocks of texts for emotes and I simply cannot imagine why. I'll try to add a few thoughts in here to some of the concerns and complaints that I've seen mentioned.
This Thread wrote:1) Limiting Pose Length
I'll be blunt: if this gets implimented then I'll stop playing. Being able to take a bit of time to sink into a bit of prose is why I play RPIs. I already exceed the character limit on a pose not infrequently; I also don't think that I take too long to pose, it's exceedingly rare for my poses to come more than 10 minutes after another person's despite the length of the poses. I hate to be so black/white about this issue, but it's a nonstarter for me. :(

I do think that me making these large poses sometimes puts pressure on others to do the same. You don't need to. Pose a length that you are comfortable with and doesn't greatly inhibit the RP. And also, just writing a lot doesn't mean the quality of RP is good.. Sometimes I find myself rambling in a scene but doing very little to set the scene or engage others, and I'm always trying to improve in that facet. I definitely encourage people to focus on mastering their comfort level of RP-writing and then branch out if so interested.

If it takes you longer than 5 minutes to write a pose, you're PROBABLY taking too long. My general rule for RPing is to take a couple of minutes to consider a reaction and the structure of the emote, then no more than 5 minutes to write it. At times, I've set up a stopwatch to help me with that.
This Thread wrote:2) Limiting Players to 1 Character Online
I'm very much in favor of something like this, though I'll conceed that it might be more frustrating than beneficial to stop people from doing things like checking mail on their alts, or to be handling some minutae like crafting or pooling a skill with an alt while they RP. Perhaps consider restricting RPXP gains on the account to the first character connected on that account or otherwise restricting emotes to only one active player on an account at a time.

There have been times that I know someone's actively RPing on an alt and giving me the most baring pass of time, short emotes infrequently, and it's the fucking worst.

This Thread wrote:3) Coded Messages about Stagnant Scenes.


I think this is, perhaps, the best way to handle the "flow" of RP, and probably wouldn't be terribly hard to do. I think most people seem to agree that 10 minutes without a pose should never be the norm. I don't think it'd be terribly difficult to add in a timer that checks each room in which RPXP is being generated, checking when the last emote was made and who it was made by, and sending a warning to those in the room that the last pose is 10 minutes cold and another pose should be made soon. I would even be 100% alright with penalizing those in the room down a stage of RPXP for taking too long to pose. The message might read something like this:

Code: Select all

> [RP Warning] It has been 10 minutes since the last pose. You have dropped a level of RPXP:
>              Please be courteous to your RP partners.
This message should not be toggleable; if a player does want to gag it they can do so client-side, but it shouldn't be able to use the excuse of 'I didn't see it' if it comes up.
This Thread wrote:4) Players going Link-Dead and Not Returning.
This, FAR more than other things, is what I hear complaints about from others in my guild and some people I chat with OOCly. People vanishing mid-scene is remarkably frustrating and it's just not excuseable, in my opinion, in today's day and age. Obviously I don't mean in the singular sense: we all sometimes drop out or something happens and we have to abort a scene whether willingly or not - players shouldn't be punished (or HEAVILY punished) for one or two offenses.

But it's hard for me to find much sympathy when the same people seem to always wander off mid-RP. Sometimes they give excuses that grow hollow with their repetitiveness or simply offer no explanation. Often, it seems, people vanish because the RP doesn't seem to be going the direction their player wants, and that's a dozen times worse, whether it be their flirtations aren't returned, or the lesson is somwhat boring, or they are turned on sharply for something they might not agree with.

I suspect almost all of us have a smartphone. Download a MUD app (Blowtorch is my recommendation for Android) and log in if your internet goes out for more than 10 minutes. A quick 'Sorry my internet's out' is immensely satisfying for me so I can go on about my business and get you out of my office/house/whatever. If you involved in a conflicted scene, give the person a quick heads-up that you'll work out a result of the scene ASAP, or nudge them towards Staff to help with a resolution while you're away. If you're in a fight, be prepared to 'lose' the fight; if you're arresting someone, be prepared for them to escape.

But stop with the idling out. Stop with the watching videos and ignoring your RP partner. This is a multiplayer game: if you can't be courteous to those you RP with on an OOC level then, speaking only for myself, I'd rather you just not be around. Sorry.
This Thread wrote:5) Penalizing Players who Idle Out During RP.

I'm totally fine with this. I'd like to encourage Staff to consider allowing RP Partners the ability to control this penalty. There are times that I know my RP Partner might need to step away in the middle of RP and that's fine, espcially when it's in a private scene.

In general, though, I think the system should very much consider things like characters on the same account idling out on the same players and the frequency of people idling out mid-RP. I think it's this that frustrates most people the most, though I might be misreading what I'm told.
This Thread wrote:6) Penalizing Slower Emoters / Rewarding Well-Paced RP.
What about creating a system to encourage players to pose more quickly after another player? Rather than a message like I mention in point #2, add in the ability for the system to track the 'pace' of a player's emotes as they come after another player's, especially in scenes of 3 or fewer players (which is the vast ajority of RP, I expect). When poses are coming with less than 5 minute gaps on average, raise the RPXP level. When they take longer than 10 minutes, lower it. I don't think that simply lowering RPXP without delivering a message will increase the pace of RP, however.
This Thread wrote:7) People Criticizing Another Player's RP Style To Them
This is inexcusable to me. Short posts are not "wrong". Long posts are not inherently "better". TLI has no structured standard and for good reason. There are also no turn orders. If another player is posing more quickly than you are able to, the TURN command already exists as a method to ask someone to slow down without being aggressive, and HELP TURN outlines when that should and should not be used. If someone is getting snippy with you about your RP style, I think you should mention it to staff so that such players can be reprimanded.
~~ Team Farra'n'Stuff. ~~

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The_Last_Good_Dragon
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Fri Mar 09, 2018 8:54 pm

I think an understated problem is this thread is the frustration of players when those they are in RP with go Linkdead in situations where it becomes questionable whether they are simply trying to pull the plug on a scene they aren't enjoying, whether it be because the subject matter of the RP is "boring" or "contentious" or because the scene hasn't gone the way the player might have wanted it to.
~~ Team Farra'n'Stuff. ~~

quanin
Posts: 24
Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2014 2:19 am

Fri Mar 09, 2018 9:30 pm

speaking as one of those players who log in from work, I usually try to lay out the expectation when I'm playing from work that I'm online because it's dead, but I may be delayed because it got busy for a few minutes. I log in from work because it's the time when I can most consistently log in and be active. If a penalty for taking too long to respond to RP is implemented, it won't motivate me to respond faster to RP--because I'm already responding as quickly as I can given my current situation. What it will likely do is motivate me not to log in at all, because while I can guarantee availability, I can't guarantee I'm staring at the screen the entire time I'm online.

This is the same on the occasions where I log in from home, though I'm less likely to be distracted on those occasions--they're just a lot less frequent than my logging in from work. And that's because TI is a game, and not the sole focus of my attention. I have family. I'm looking for a new job, so I will be taking phone calls, or having to quickly respond to a potential employer's email. I can't guarantee my family won't need something, or one of those phone calls won't come in, while I'm in the middle of a scene. I can still respond to someone's RP, but maybe it takes me 10 minutes before I start writing that response.

I don't think RP style/length of emotes is an issue that needs looked at. I've seen people take 15 minutes to throw up a two-line emote. I've seen people throw up a paragraph in 5 minutes. When I used to play here regularly before, one of my consistent RP partners took upwards of 25 minutes sometimes to emote--because that was a thing she was doing to distract her from writing a paper (names are being withheld, because that player I believe still plays here). That was perfectly fine with me--I just did something else while I waited on her. My being delayed in responding to her was, I'm going to assume, also perfectly okay--partly because she never said it wasn't, and partly because if I were in her position, and I'd made clear to someone (as I do when I'm working) that I may be a little delayed, I wouldn't be too bothered if they were in another window and took a bit to come back.

Players idling out mid-RP can be a problem, yes, but exactly how big a problem it is I think depends on the scene. Going idle/linkdead in the middle of, say, a review of faith? Okay, now maybe we're talking possible RP avoidance. Going idle/linkdead while we're sitting in your character's living room having coffee? Non-issue. either you'll come back and we'll continue, or I'll have a staffer help me make my exit and catch up with you OOCly to either arrange a resolution to the RP if it needs one or schedule a time when we can pick up the scene where we've left off (I've done both, depending on the partner, the scene and the context). There's already a policy against doing the former, and I don't think there needs to be a policy against doing the latter. Now, if you're one of those people who *always* idles out or goes linkdead forever while our characters are conversing, I might try to find an IC means of maybe limiting the types of RP we get into--for example, maybe I spend a little less time RPing in your phome so I'm not always having to bug staff to release me. But then that's something you need to work on, and if you're not going to work on it, slapping one or both of us with a penalty for violating RP policy won't solve that.

I don't think policy needs to be any more involved than it already is re: pace of play/going idle. The first problem is unavoidable given the nature of the game and its playerbase--you're after people who like to write. Some of us like to write a lot. The second problem is, to be blatantly honest, a personal one--either for the one doing the idling/disconnecting, who should probably be looking at what they could be doing differently if it's a regular occurance, or for the person(s) in RP with the idler/disconnecter, who already have ways of dealing with it if it's proving to be impactful on their RP. Penalizing one or both these problems will only hurt what's otherwise an awesome RP atmosphere, and the only one I keep coming back to.

Temi
Posts: 428
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Fri Mar 09, 2018 9:45 pm

Maybe we need to decrease the length of RP periods - right now, you'll stay active if you emote once every 30 minutes with 2 people in the RP. Maybe that ought to be 15 minutes. That would reset things like hemotes, thinks, etc, but it would also set a little bit faster expectation of response. I don't think anyone would argue they should only be emoting once every 30 minutes.

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Niamh
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Fri Mar 09, 2018 9:51 pm

A length limit on poses is simply telling people who prefer to write longer emotes their style of RP isn't welcome. I disagree, and extremely strongly, with that notion. We're one of a scant few games where people bother writing emotes, let alone good ones. Length, be it short or long, is not a determination of quality. Short emotes can be downright terrible. Long ones can be downright terrible. Both can (and usually are) good. I'd be wholeheartedly against having both a length requirement (which we already have) and a length limit. Shoe-horning style into a small field of acceptability wouldn't be good.

I still play TI regularly, and with very few exceptions I've experienced people adapting to a middle ground when RPing with each other. Those who favor meaty emotes RPing with someone who favors "say Hi." will typically come to a middle ground and write middling emotes while they're together, so on and so forth. All else said, emote length and time waiting don't go hand in hand, at least not in my experience.

I think we should be extremely careful here not to alienate any one type of player by telling them their RP is bad. It most certainly is not bad. I already edited someone's post above to remove an instance of them specifically calling out a player's character by name and criticizing their emotes. Not cool, you guys. Making somebody wait 15+ minutes for an emote because you aren't paying attention is what's bad. Dropping linkdead and logging into an alt while leaving your first RP partner waiting around for you is bad.

In any event, I can't imagine somebody writing an emote, regardless of length, taking 15 minutes to do so while actively paying attention to the scene. Phones change this. If you're on a phone, just warn the people you're RPing with ahead of time so they can decide if they want to invest time into the RP, knowing there will be a substantial wait between emotes. This is a cultural fix, rather than a code one.

Edit: Temi's solution is code, but good.

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Voxumo
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Fri Mar 09, 2018 9:53 pm

Temi wrote:Maybe we need to decrease the length of RP periods - right now, you'll stay active if you emote once every 30 minutes with 2 people in the RP. Maybe that ought to be 15 minutes. That would reset things like hemotes, thinks, etc, but it would also set a little bit faster expectation of response. I don't think anyone would argue they should only be emoting once every 30 minutes.
I think this would be a sensible first step and then seeing how things go from there.
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quanin
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Fri Mar 09, 2018 10:23 pm

I agree, Vox. Hell, even delayed I almost always manage to emote twice in 30. If I plan to be more delayed than that, there's a tell/osay with an explanation. Or if I expect the delay to be substantial, I make my IC excuses an leave. They might be lame excuses, but sometimes, RL is lame.

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