Activity Check Discussion Post + Contact List Update

[burningvigor.livejournal.com]

Hello, everyone!

While the game has been trucking along pretty nicely (I hope the military arc has been enjoyable for most of you!), recently there's been a lot of talk about people's waning activity. I do think that Damned is a place where you can afford to be slow at times, where you don't have to post to every shift -- this isn't meant to discourage people who aren't lightning taggers like some of us. It's already been mentioned a number of times, but there's little I can do as a mod to make people post faster, and yet there are a few changes that can be made to possibly work through this problem. I definitely want to encourage people to put their all into the game when possible and to play out some awesome plots, so here goes.

This issue was brought up over on the suggestions post, so this is mainly just meant to be a continuation of that. It was mentioned there that this is something that should be talked about by the game as a whole, and so this post is basically an open forum for people to give their thoughts and talk things out. Whether you're one of the people who's frustrated or someone who is on the slow side and looking to explain your side of things, feel free to reply and comment around!

The two solutions which have been brought up are as follows:

a) changing the requirements for the activity check
b) adding a "Posting Speed" section to the plot post form

The second option there would mainly be a way for people to know from the start what to expect from potential thread partners. It's not much of a change, but it would allow an open line of communication to be present from the start.

Changing the Activity Check requirements is something that is going to require some more thought, and so I'd like to start by polling you all on if you think it's something that needs to be revised.

[Poll #1781912]

So go ahead and fill that out, reply here with your thoughts, and we'll see what we can do about this! I'm sorry there's not more I can do, but hopefully this is a step in the right direction.

Additionally, some changes have been made to the Contact List in order to make communication easier for everyone. There's been a spot added for people to list their plurk names if they wish. It's in no way required, but if you are open to people contacting you/conversing with you through plurk then please feel free to list it. More importantly, a Preferred Method of Contact section has been added so that other players can know how you would like to be contacted. I'd like to ask for everyone to respond to the contact list with their response to that section if possible! Thanks a lot for reading all this, and have a nice night, everyone.

Comments

[ryuuzaki]

I've stayed out of this up until now because I've been processing a lot of thoughts on the issue, and because I don't want to get into a back-and-forth on it... I kind of just want to leave this here.

One thing that is important to me: I hope that Damned remains a disability-friendly game. The slow pace, lax AC, and low number of simultaneous threads to juggle per character have made it uniquely friendly among LJ games to people who have disabilities, especially those that might actually and unpredictably interfere with someone's functional ability to post. I would not like to see AC requirement changes that take Damned from being a game where you can work around things like that with the understanding of your threadmates to being a game that requires so much activity that it's impossible for people with those issues to stick around. (I feel like this would be a factor for me sometimes, but honestly probably not enough that I would consistently fail AC or anything; I'm just thinking from the perspective of these problems.)

It's one thing if a game has always been that way--but it's another when it's a paradigm shift that makes a game unwelcoming or unworkable for a chunk of its playerbase. Also, some elements of this discussion have gone in the direction of redefining "doing the best you can," which makes me kind of uncomfortable in and of itself: a lot of people have been told for a long time, regardless of the nature of their issue (family, work, health, etc), that they best they can do is good enough, and that RL>RP always, and now they're being told (not necessarily by the same people) that that wasn't actually true after all. NGL, that is disheartening, especially when it seems to me like two-way communication is still the biggest problem with lagged or dropped threads.

That said, it's important to acknowledge that even when everyone else is being as empathetic as they can, sometimes the best someone can do still isn't good enough, and that is what it is: When does an individual player, regardless of their personal hardships, need to call it a day? When you redefine that line in a way that can make gameplay more demanding for some people, you risk alienating the players who are used to the line's former location, even if they can meet the new demands. It's something I would like to see being handled with extreme sensitivity.

Some other stuff!:

- If you are waiting on the other player in a lagged thread, approach them. It's possible to say, "Hey, were we going to continue with this?" or "Can we make a plan for the rest of the thread?" without being a jerk. Most slower players everywhere are sheepish about their lag, and would appreciate it if they weren't always expected to take the initiative.. I'm not denying that they should also be communicating. However, it's better to reach out to them than to fester about them not reaching out to you.

- It helps to get into a new shift as soon as possible. I've been working to improve my own activity lately, and this has been the single most vital factor. A lot of us have gotten in the habit of considering a shift during DS to be a window in which to start the inevitable backthread, rather than treating a shift as the period of time in which we're going to try to accomplish the majority of the thread. With NS, the delay seems to be about breathing room after a hectic DS.

- Following on that, if you find yourself oblivious to the schedule and events, pinning the game's main community for notifs--or just pinning the "intercom" and "radio" tags on the main comm and then the "mod" tag on the lounge--can help a lot. I understand that there may be a general impression that LJ notifs are completely unreliable, but that's not usually the case for most people who use them; they're at least worth a try.

- Don't worry about your post length, just do what's appropriate for your character and give the other player something to work with. I write long posts because I have to analyze a lot of info for my character to be IC. I promise, as a tl;dr poster, that I love getting a short post back; it makes my life easier.

[ryuuzaki]

Sorry -- also, I realize that what I wrote above could be taken as "No AC changes should be made at all" (and I'm replying because this post was too long to edit and incorporate that). I don't feel that way, but I drafted a long reply to Jansen's specific proposal, and I felt that issue was better covered there, if I can get my reply down to a manageable length.

[train-tracer.livejournal.com]

Thank you for putting this here. I was eventually going to write up something for this lounge discussion as well, but this says many of the things I was going to point out pretty clearly.