Maple
Administrator
PL: 80,000
Stargoon (x2P); Sparkling(x4P)
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Post by Maple on Mar 4, 2018 15:44:08 GMT -6
As I was marauding the site for people who have been mostly-only in closed threads, and thinking of ways to deal with it beyond PLPW limiting, I came up with another solution. Before I present the solution, I want to discuss a few of the whys behind not liking a high prevalence of closed threads.
1) It gets around the Training cap. There is a reason why we have a training cap. It's so one person can't just post an insane amount of WC and ascend to absurd heights. But by posting in Closed Threads, especially 2-person closed threads at high frequencies, a player can get around this limit. For instance, two people who are dedicated can easily push each other to a high WC output. We've seen this already.
2) It's antisocial and exclusionary. Closed threads in of themselves are fine. But the practice of playing mostly-always in closed threads is not fine. This is a shared RP site, you are meant to play with others. Structured story and planning is okay (though too much of it is generally meh), but relying solely on that for your progression is lame. Claims that Open threads fall apart before the second round in posting doesn't really hold water with me, as I've been Open Threading for years and rarely experienced that problem.
3) It promotes others to do Closed Threads in a more-competitive atmosphere. The big thing we don't want to see on WDB, which we're acting to positively counter, is a grindy race for the sake of power mentality. Wanting to be the strongest is fine and understandable. But doing gamey things (like Closed Thread running, for instance) in order to get there is lame.
So, for these reasons, I'm entertaining the idea of limiting the amount of Closed Threads. This may or may not coincide with an expansion in the amount of Open Threads allowable.
What's everybody's thoughts on that?
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Wintoz
Archived
XP/PL TRANSFERRED TO BROK
PL: 16,532
Brute Form (x2P) Monster Form (x4P) True Form (x6P)
Tag: @wintoz
Posts: 73 
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Post by Wintoz on Mar 4, 2018 15:47:38 GMT -6
I generally agree with your assessment Vi, at least for some of the grindier players. However, sometimes people like to do closed threads because they want to have a 1 on 1 with another player for story purposes, or they want to have a duel without half the site jumping in. So while I agree with the limiting, I don't think it should be TOO low, as to avoid limiting this aspect.
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Post by Mayonezu on Mar 4, 2018 15:47:40 GMT -6
I don't mind it, but on the other hand I generally enjoy writing in a trio the best. I would be annoyed if I couldn't cap how many could join my open threads.
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Maple
Administrator
PL: 80,000
Stargoon (x2P); Sparkling(x4P)
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Post by Maple on Mar 4, 2018 15:49:30 GMT -6
Open threads with a cap could be distinguished from Closed Threads, for sure.
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Post by Lily on Mar 4, 2018 16:14:07 GMT -6
All of the threads I've joined have been from invites/discussion in the Cbox, and most of them are closed because we have an idea we'd like to explore with our characters, often times being one on one spars. Granted it's still early, and with the thread limit right now, I've yet to follow up in a second thread with anyone besides Olivia (which is a follow up to a technically Open thread I was invited to). So right now my perspective is that limiting Closed threads when they are specifically around to allow people to roleplay scenarios is unnecessarily. But I'm also lacking a lot of the metrics the Staff would have on hand, so I only have my personal experience to go on. I can see how it would be an issue if, say, Ronin and myself were to do thread after thread after thread of Closed 1v1's where we were both posting like crazy. But I feel like limiting Closed Threads may create other issues, like annoyance or bad attitudes with people who join an Open Thread when you don't want them to, but you can't stop them because you are out of your allotted Closed Threads. It's definitely a tricky thing to manage, but like I said my experience with Open Threads is pretty slim. (I mean, my first thread was Open, but it didn't really go anywhere and didn't have a clear plan, people joined, it got a little slow, then the Thread Limit of 5 was implemented and everyone jumped ship  ) |
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Post by Ronin Sashouka on Mar 4, 2018 16:15:43 GMT -6
In my personal experience, my main reason for utilizing a Closed thread is two-fold. On one hand, I genuinely want 1-on-1 interactions with quite a few characters. The second part of it, however, is the high amount of fall-through when I make an open thread. In my experience, most of the Open threads I've done have died out painfully from people simply vanishing and the inability to progress it. For some of us (like myself, where I'm seeking to get a both of the Nimbus for flavor), this essentially just leads to frustration and threads that end up trashed and wasting both RP potential and/or any chance of XP growth at all. And this goes both ways, for both the highly active and the low active playerbase. I know in my case I also go out of my mind trying to find people to thread with, however, so perhaps I am not the main problem with this closed thread mentality aside from my use of it. If people were actively avoiding anything BUT closed threads (I insist on trying to make any Scorpion Dojo thread open for that exact reason, to prevent any anti-social connotation), then I do think that they could be approached.
I do think, however, that the constant leaps to call everyone a grinder for just RPing or lumping them in just for the use of closed threads (not what was said, but I'm sure will see implication based on how chat always goes) is the wrong way to view every little bit of activity. In particular, I don't really have a good taste for the constant whining about others grinding. Most of that just makes it so those complaining look like they care about PLPW. Obviously balance IS something to worry about, but how many times are we going to keep shooting things in the foot? People will just make open threads and keep working around the rules if they want to grind. And it's just going to hurt those who need Closed Threads for tools. And setting limits for Closed Threads on-top of a Thread Limit seems like we're just making it more and more constrictive for folks.
Apologies, however, if my thoughts on this are considered ill-conceived. I've seen a lot more people chased out of chat by this constant "grinder claim" manners and consider that a bigger problem and likely the source (more than any) for some sudden jump in Closed Thread usage.
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Post by Vegia on Mar 4, 2018 17:21:46 GMT -6
Sometimes I want to be antisocial and exclusionary. There are people and/or characters I'm not always in the mood to deal with.
I do not feel that enforcing one particular playstyle on the game would be beneficial in any way. You are already limited to five threads. If you feel like people are grinding, kneecap their PLPW or just institute a straight cap on maximum purchaseable PL which raises on a weekly/monthly basis. That's a completely separate issue to someone's desire to allow anyone into their threads or not.
Personally speaking, the continually negative tone in the cbox is a much bigger issue for me, currently, when it comes to the competitive/anti-social and exclusionary feeling on the site. More often than not, when I pay attention to the cbox, it is filled with people ranting about some tiny flaw in the game and/or complaining about the behaviour of other people or their characters. I deal with constant negativity as my day job, so I have a very limited desire to deal with it in my downtime; thus I have 'excluded' myself from the cbox for the sake of my own continued enjoyment of the site. I doubt that I am the only one.
I am probably not being as diplomatic as I could be as I'm processing some more RL bad news, but I thought I might as well get it off my chest anyway.
ETA: On topic again: One thing that might be reasonable, though I don't think it would have effected anyone so far, would be limiting the number of closed threads with the same participants in rapid succession. E.G. A full week must pass before you can do a closed thread with the exact same cast list. This would stop the concern about two people teaming up and doing one on one threads one after the other to grind out PL. I wouldn't mind that, because it isn't a blanket limitation on deciding who you play with.
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Maple
Administrator
PL: 80,000
Stargoon (x2P); Sparkling(x4P)
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Post by Maple on Mar 4, 2018 17:41:29 GMT -6
I don't get that since in the box, tbh. Maybe I'm comparing it to the Souls box, but I see it generally better. Maybe that's a phenomenon of being an admin and my presence stopping the bad stuff, but if you see any kind of harassment screen it and send it to us or post a grievance on the site about it.
Social threads we already took the temperature over, and it seems like the majority view is that a limit of 5 is fine. I'd be fine with removing the limit if the majority of the site felt like we should.
There likely won't be a Closed Thread limit. It's something I considered because when we do lower the PLPW bar on players who exceed universal score criteria, we're getting complaints. These are complaints we never really experienced on Souls when we had the SMM limit, or we when we did have complaints, we had them less stridently where people didn't feel under personal attack somehow.
The change could be that people who never experienced SMM before are now experiencing it, or that they're not seeing a staff explanation attached at the end of each grading.
But yeah, the closed thread effecting quality thing is something we're going to look at irrespective of SMM, if it's happening constantly and involving a small group of people on rotation or something. It's fine not to like threading with certain people, but what we want to avoid is cliques.
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Post by Vegia on Mar 4, 2018 18:12:56 GMT -6
Its not really harrassment, it is just an all-pervading sense of negativity.
I wound up abandoning the cbox on Souls for pretty much the same reason, as I recall. I don't go into open voice chat when I play Overwatch, and whilst the likelihood of someone insulting my mother isn't as high in cbox, there's still a lot of 'you are playing the game wrong' subtext to a great many of the discussions that I've seen on there. It doesn't make me want to participate, if you see what I mean? At the same time, you can't really police the cbox against 'negative tone' with rules or staff intervention; it is set as a community.
Weirdly, I've not seen anyone complain about their gains going down. I've seen people complain that they don't think the gains go down enough for the people ahead of them, but when I've seen it come up the people effected by it have been in favour of it. I was one of the first people to be hit by it, and I think it is fantastic - I have zero desire to change the way I engage with the game and I don't want to leave everyone else in the dust, so I think the SMM as I have experienced it is a very elegant solution.
I think staff could maybe do with being more transparent about it - making the thresholds public would probably help - but so long as people understand they aren't being singled out or punished any reasonable person should understand why it is there.
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Post by Mal Asada on Mar 4, 2018 22:00:11 GMT -6
I was one of the first people to be hit by it, and I think it is fantastic - I have zero desire to change the way I engage with the game and I don't want to leave everyone else in the dust, so I think the SMM as I have experienced it is a very elegant solution. I second the above sentiment. Also, a simple message to people explaining why they're being nerfed may help some feel better about it. like 'hey you're too awesome, we don't want you to stop being you but we also want it fair and fun for everyone so we need to temporarily reduce your plpw', Might go a long way. |
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Post by Guzheng on Mar 4, 2018 22:04:47 GMT -6
It's also important to consider the fact that a Closed thread is generally less awkward to set up than an Open thread. Most Open threads have that full round of people figuring out why they're there, and sort of introducing themselves before the real roleplaying can begin. This sort of thing can get super tedious, and doesn't fit every character - for example, Guzheng isn't the kinda guy to randomly get involved in something that he doesn't have a direct interest in. To jump into an Open thread with him feels really out of character and kind of dissonant - thus, my threads tend to be Closed threads with characters Guz would have an interest in.
I think your original post kind of ascribes a certain attitude towards players who tend towards Closed threads that may only apply to a minority of those players. While Guzheng is one of the stronger characters on the site by base PL, I'm not choosing Closed threads as an attempt to game the system or get around the Training cap, and I doubt most players like me are.
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Post by Kail Valliere on Mar 6, 2018 21:10:00 GMT -6
I've had two open threads get killed because someone dips without a word.
So no cap on closed threads. I don't need 5 people in every single thing I do, I mean I get where your coming from but sometimes a 1 on 1 thread is best, especially if you've been plotting with someone in PM.
If we're gonna have cap limits on everything we do it'd just be ridiculous.
"You can only have 2 closed threads and 3 other threads and 2 training threads" or something?
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Lord Blezad
Rising Soul
PL: 5,015
Brute Form (x2P); Monster Form (x4P); True Form (x6P)
Tag: @therevolution
Posts: 99
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Post by Lord Blezad on Mar 7, 2018 3:58:16 GMT -6
I'd prefer to just nuke grinder's PLPW scores based on the criteria we came up with before the site opened: 1) solely threading with a limited number of characters, 2) inflated word-count prose defined by over-repetition and over-description, 3) lack of engagement with wider site & character stories.
That said, I'm for a closed-thread limit should it come to a vote.
Kail, you can have an open thread and still limit the number of entrants.
Guzheng, I find that a weird RP philosophy to subscribe to. its not as if your character has total control of the things happening around him. your character's IC preferences wouldn't necessarily stop him from being drawn into nearby events. I do, however, understand your concern with entering open threads, but I'd argue that character entrances can come across as artificial in many instances, regardless of thread type.
Ultimately, there's an ethical argument in here somewhere about intended engagement vs real engagement. I think its best to encourage intended engagement without hard limiting current/real engagement, even if small groups/bubble clique RP is something that I personally really, really hate if its pervasive and long-term.
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