Holiday Season or Something Else?

[Maise]

There’s still a group that’s having fun, and I wish them the best luck in that. They’re telling stories. I personally only log in to RP with one person who I enjoy, the rest of my interactions lead me cringing usually.

[Holic]

Reminder that New Haven’s theme, as indicated on the website’s main page, is meant to be supernatural horror. Sometimes it’s chill, sometimes it’s funny, and sometimes it’s violent. If every interaction you have in the game outside of one person causes you to cringe, the issue may be your expectations.

[Maise]

Oh, it’s absolutely my expectations. I’d love more horror, and I’d desire more angst and violence. I welcome it. I don’t mean the players make me cringe, the RP is not awful. There’s some very talent writers. I have a world of respect for the logs I read.

But, it feels like people have just given up and that’s what makes me cringe. It’s like the spark in their RP is gone. Or it’s just me. Which is okay. However, given what I’ve read, people have been chased out of here because of broken mechanics and a lack of care to write the theme. So the people left already have their story to tell, their friends to tell it with and no capacity for more.

[Mab]

Ckaleb:

“Good writers” aren’t going to waste time on a game where creative output and incentives have been subsumed by clanker slop, and the uncreative simpletons who mistake jumped-up autocomplete for ingenuity.

New Haven doesn’t appear to promote writing at all.

[Holic]

@Maise
You say that you welcome these themes, yet on at least two occasions were blatantly no-selling and making light of situations that should have been tense at the bare minimum, frightening if realism were considered. Particularly for a character that was seemingly unaware of the supernatural prior? The second time around you were not the most egregious offender in the room, but I bring this up in case you weren’t aware to what extent it comes off as outright dismissal in your roleplay. The irony here is that when this happens during an antag scene, you are essentially being the bully while someone is only trying to interact with you, to create tension and excitement, to give you a story to tell and maybe act on later.

So yes, much about the game itself has been discouraging players certainly but one of the worst culprits for waning interest, a feeling of wasted effort, a lack of desire to bother with violence/antag or to engage with many active PCs altogether is just that. The dismissal. The lack of realism. The lack of human response from characters to threats, violence, or ambient themes of danger. These are aspects of the game that you, the player, have every bit of agency to affect change on.

On a more general note the Hunt really did take a lot out of people. I hope beyond hope that Nova reads all of these honest and overwhelmingly negative player experiences and feedback posts regarding it and makes needed changes, or I doubt the game will survive. Especially for one that is entirely player-run and relies on its community to create stories, events, interest etc, harsh punishment that invalidates our investment is pretty much lethal.

[Maise]

Holic, I welcome that as I am entirely oblivious to having done so. So, thank you for that.

I know there have been some ragey characters that I’ve ignore their angst as I didn’t want to feed into the trouble. The only other time I can think of, after a moment of reflection, was one where the narrative had been pushed that it wasn’t that big of a deal. Just an angry person who yells and growls a lot but that’s it. And, I apologize if that came off as no-selling.

I have never experienced antag in the game as its been spoken of. So my character meeting angels, demons and all has been a very pleasant experience. There have been gruff characters but that’s it, gruff. I’m pretty sure it’s offset by the fact I wasn’t aware there was an actual threat occurring OOC, so I’m sure that influenced my IC behaviors.

If that is the moment you’re speaking of, I can only say I’ll try do better.

[Calk]

@Holic

Regarding:

On a more general note the Hunt really did take a lot out of people. I hope beyond hope that Nova reads all of these honest and overwhelmingly negative player experiences and feedback posts regarding it and makes needed changes, or I doubt the game will survive. Especially for one that is entirely player-run and relies on its community to create stories, events, interest etc, harsh punishment that invalidates our investment is pretty much lethal.

People might need to petition (suggestion) this. I believe Nova has said on a few occasions that they don’t read the forums, other than Ask the Staff (and even then, they won’t read it if it seems ranty).

If you decide to do this, I suggest showing good decorum if you want to be heard.

I’m going to wait to see if any changes are made before Spring Solstice. If none are made I’ll probably write one of these as well.

[Holic]

@Calk

Good call, I had been meaning to but forgot. I think something like this can only have impact if there are enough voices echoing it (politely) though, honestly wonder if it wouldn’t help to have several big name players petition these concerns.

[Entropy]

I tried. He basically ignored me. So good luck with that. You’ll have to do better than me. He does not care that I’ve been playing for a decade, have petitioned for hundreds of things in that time, and tried to help the community grow and prosper. Nope, I got a little rude, so best to just ignore me and apparently hope I just go away again.

[Dream]

Nova tends to shut down when ‘enough voices echo’ a sentiment regarding game mechanics that are questionable at best. I’m fairly confident that if there wasn’t such a hostile reaction to the wild hunt and it’s effects during the holidays, we may have gotten more information and a chance for something constructive to come out of it.

Would this have changed anything? No, I’ve never seen these turnover mechanics like secrecy or doom get even the smallest of adjustments to make them less brutally painful to the player base.

No one has ever once praised these mechanics either because they have never served the function that they intend which is turnover.

[Dream]

These forums are atrocious, you can not edit previous post it seems.

I was going to add that the wild hunt could be marginally improved if it didn’t nuke t2 characters. T2 characters have always enjoyed improved doom timers and better secrecy so I have no idea why their wild hunt timer puts them within the realm of two kidnappings a year AND a hefty 10,000 karma hit for the trouble.

[Author]

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