rpanons | Everything is under control

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Concerns?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There are a lot of implications that new people wanting to play in the game is a problem everywhere in this discussion which is very problematic and insulting. That people expressing interest is a problem in itself. No one is saying the queue will be magically fixed by adding two new teams, only that it would create more available slots that might help slightly than doing nothing. The queue will never disappear, but it's only natural for the game to expand slightly after almost a year since the last time it did. Nothing will be ruined by this, just as nothing was ruined when Carnelian and Iolite were added.

I want people to actually offer suggestions to help instead of bringing up things that are irrelevant.

I have no problems with new people wanting to play in the game -- I love playing with new people. I have problems with expanding the number of teams, which I've detailed my reasoning for in some places and agreed with anons who share my opinion in others. I brought up temporarily closing the app pool till more people are placed as a suggestion to at least stem the growth of the pile. I don't see any insults to new people who want to play in the game here, only acknowledgement that a long wait time is something that I personally see as necessary for Aather to keep functioning at its best. We obviously disagree, but saying that the basis of our disagreement stems from insularity and not an honest difference of opinions is an insulting strawman in and of itself.

I see your arguments, I really do. I just don't agree that they're in the best interest of Aather's future.

Nothing will be ruined by two new teams, but a few months down the track from now (if we're lucky) the queue will balloon out again and people will have issues getting into the game and we will be back here having this discussion again. We need to weigh up the pros and cons of adding new teams on their own merits, not as a way to help the queue. Because it is not something that will actually help the queue. Doing something that "might help slightly" just because it might help slightly is not a good way to make decisions if it's going to have other repercussions.

If I had suggestions I wouldn't be offering them here, I'd be emailing the mods already.

But you know what, at this point I think the only thing that's going to solve this discussion is to just add two new teams and see what happens. As long as we can all agree that we actually keep an eye on what's happening so that when we reach the point of this discussion again we all have more information about exactly the effects of adding new teams on the queue.

We don't know that the new teams won't help, but we do know that not adding new teams will absolutely not help. I think that everyone can see that, because we are currently without solutions. If we create the possibility of more slots, even 14 (+2 knights), then doesn't that at least provide some opportunity for more queue flow? If everyone is in agreement that it won't dramatically change the course of the game, because no one is arguing or worried about that, and no one thinks 16 more characters will hurt anything, then why don't we add the teams? Adding a negative number of slots will not move the queue when nothing else is moving the queue.

Personally I'm comfortable with expanding to 14 teams from a community point of view, but I'd want to see the discussion be about the pros and cons of expanding the amount of teams and who's comfortable with how many. I don't know how many other people are comfortable with expanding how far and I think that's a better discussion to have at this point. The question is at what point that "might help" is not worth the extra issues that adding more teams creates for current players/gamerunners and I can't answer that question for anyone but myself.

There are some people that do still believe that adding two more teams would have something of a negative impact (namely for trying to run games), though I am not necessarily one of them! But there are still those whose opinions are still valid! So by adding two more teams we may negatively affect those players, while not actually positively affecting the status or movement of the queue or game as a whole.

DA just coming in to all of this: ideas! What if we open up Personae creation again? Maybe there are players out there with game ideas who just want a Persona.

Another option, what if people can make Personae and have, idk, Personae-centric plots they can play out with teams as a way to get memories? Like, for example, hey, there's a bear infestation at Cabin X, whatever members of that cabin who are around have to play a small game to power up Goldy to get rid of the bears. In the end they also are rewarded with memories, and maybe plot.

Or maybe have a variety of game sizes but more often? Meaning, "this game will only have 1-7 number of teams" with a max cap being half of Aather/6 teams + whatever Knights availible. Go half or go all? Though that might make teams frustrated if they really wanted to play in a certain game... maybe have that game again for those teams later in a week, like a staggered game?

Sorry, some of these are probably unreasonable suggestions, but wanted to try throwing things out there!

I don't think this should be done cavalierly, because it's a huge strain on gamerunners, especially gamerunners who are looking to do anything different. It's easy to say that adding teams won't change things up when it hasn't before, but the difficulty curve of running games with more teams is nonlinear -- this has been true in the past as well.

However, AJ and Zazzle have noted that they are going to do a non-anon community brainstorm about this at some point soon. It would probably be a better idea to restart this discussion there.

I would also like to point out that the queue has been growing over the past two months after it actually became quite short in December—it stayed under 20 for several weeks and went down to 11 team apps at one point. People saw that as a good time to get their applications in, so the app count more than doubled immediately (within the two weeks) afterwards, which is what has significantly contributed to the current bottleneck. There's a good chance that adding two new teams will have the same effect, where people will take the fact that the queue is suddenly drastically shorter as a good time to submit their app, returning us to the same problem almost immediately.

You can turn this around though, too. The current bottleneck is pretty anomalous over the course of the last year. The pool has gotten bigger and smaller, but it's been relatively stable and it's been flowing relatively well most of that time.

Making two new teams won't drop the app pool down so low that everyone will necessarily see it as a great time to app. We had pretty good equilibrium there for a while. If we could get the queue back into the 20-30 range, things may well balance out again.

Everything is under control

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Ideas

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