rpanons | Trapped in the city of one loo

Trapped in the city of one loo

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ngl events are starting to feel all very samey. they choose different vidya genres for different level backgrounds and jokes but the format is always the same. arrive, be hit by something kinda funny but creepy, be chased by monsters, find something that will appear to be your characters beloved ones/memories/etc.

do you guys agree? should i bring it up to the mods next hmd? or have i just lost personal interest? i do have fun when something that has to do with the plot goes up, and my cr is fun, but the rest of the month barely anything happens because people are waiting for the log.

you're not the only one

i get that vivid is a convenient way to have crazy things happen for the intro but tbh i'm getting pretty tired of it. it's getting to be played out.

i don't mind it if the events are all in vivid, i just want them to be more different, you know?

anyway, thanks for the comment. if more people comment and i see it's just not a personal thing i'll bring it up next hmd

yeah it's def a personal beef and i don't expect anyone to agree with me

i think more variation would be the remedy for that feeling either way, whether the events keep to vivid or not

Yeah the intro logs are definitely getting tedious. I want to start playing with the new people but I feel like I've done the intro stuff to death.

is it only the intro logs for you? because i've felt that way about events in general. the library and the carnival had the same format in my eyes

Admittedly I didn't do much with the library and carnival because I was bogged down in intro threads still.

This one seems to be particularly bad because there's multiple fighting prompts and fight scenes are my least favorite thing to write.

On one hand I only half agree. I think it is formulaic, but since the formula exists mostly for the intro posts, it doesn't bother me quite as much as it would otherwise; those posts are for new characters to react to, and they won't have played out any of those situations yet, since they just got into the game. The actual plot event stuff is more varied than the intro logs. And most of the newbies I see reacting to the intro posts are positive about them.

On the other hand, it's not that I don't see your point. The formula's very obvious, and I feel like it wasn't always like this. I don't think changing it up would be a bad thing, that's for sure. I do remember the mods saying they planned on keeping the TDMs and intro logs as ViViD events, but that doesn't mean they all have to be samey.

Either way, the mods have been receptive to crit on things like this in the past, so I say go for it if it's eating at you. I doubt you're the only one. I miss most of the intro logs myself, which probably contributes to me not caring so much.

like i told the other anon, for me it's not just the intro logs, the library and the carnival felt the same too. and going into the dark parts of the colony was only worth it to get some plot info but playing through was also a bit of monster fighting followed by character references.

you bring up some good points, though, thank you. i think i will.

Honestly, I mostly missed those two events too (the library and the carnival), so you're in a better position to know than I am. We've had a few player plots lately I enjoyed a lot, like the prom, and I did so much threading in those that I didn't have enough time to jump into the actual mod event stuff; the first mod plot I'd participated in in a while was the dark parts log, which felt different enough to me (though I see some similarities there too, you're not wrong).

I feel like the mods could take a cue from some of the player events that are more varied in their approach, but also ofc player plots have more freedom because the players don't need to move the plot, and they tend to be much more lighthearted anyway (maybe too much so for some players). Maybe a happy medium can be achieved.

not the only one. the pace of the game overall has been feeling pretty samey for a while with the way events in general work. vivid has a genre veneer on it but isn't much different from month to month. the crack to srs whiplash has been wearing for a bit imo.

pacing of the game is something that also bothers me, but this is something i've been noticing in dwrp in general, so i'm not touching that for now. at least if events are entertaining enough i have those threads to keep me busy and fun.

thanks for your input! good to see i'm not just imagining things.

it's definitely not just you anon.

I was willing to chalk it up to a new format of game I wasn't used to but after more than 8 months the pattern is pretty clear and pretty samey.

I just wish events weren't a single huge log every single time, I feel like it's getting harder and harder to really cultivate CR in events when everybody is sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for the log to hit captcha so they can plan how to move their threads. Sometimes this happens as quickly as 24-48 hours, and no matter how much encouragement there is to go ahead and tag, people still get leery of jumping in once it's already bulldozing toward 4000 comments.

But then, some characters never put up a post or an open log so you can't get CR with them outside of logs either. It's a strange game culture and I don't know if I can get used to it.

I agree, but I can't figure out how to fix it. I'm one of those players who doesn't tend to put up open logs. I think I just come from a different game culture where you don't do that unless you have something "worth" posting about, and I never feel like I do. But I also hate waiting for events to get threads with a large chunk of the playerbase (especially the ones my characters wouldn't hit up the inboxes of), even though I'm part of that problem. Right now I tag out plenty and that's working out for me, but it works out best when it's a large post of open toplevels that isn't plot-related, like a player plot or something like Lee's hot or not post. I've gotten more traction doing that than through waiting for events and then having to deal with the huge clusterfuck there...but posts like that are infrequent.

Really I guess I should become part of the solution and start trying to come up with more mini player-plot stuff to post myself.

it's actually not your fault, anon. there is only so many open logs you can do. i used to make them all the time, but by now i have nothign new to offer. and when there isn't an event going on, our characters just live their lives, y'know? again, there is only so many posts you can do about movie reccomendations and sitcom confusion at work.

this is the problem with "pace". i understand that in the old times people didn't like having 500 posts about an event, but we hit the other extreme and now it's just a log in the whole month.

games need to bring back "two weeks of crazy shit happening" - crazy shit can be fantasy, action, crack, drama, whatever. a middle point fr fuck's sake.

thank you for your comment! this thing you're mentioning it's not just Cerealia, it's happening all across the board. nothing happens during the month until the event/intro log hits and somehow this supposed slow adults we have nowadays fill up those posts in a couple of days.

like i told the other anon, by now i wouldn't mind it so much if events kept me busy and entertained, but they don't. so hopefully if we ask the mods to shake things up a little bit we can have more fun.

this is exactly my current problem with the game. unlike op, however, i don't believe this is across the board at all. i've been doing this for years, many of us have, and i'm in another game and have been in enough recent ones to know this isn't the case or "across the board" at all. common between a few, perhaps, but that may really not be a good thing.

i too find that it really stifles cr and as a result i often feel lost and out of the loop regarding game plot (which whiplashes from cutesy crack events to downright grimdark between months with no in-between and really no carry over/development because everyone's still busy backtagging two events ago, let alone trying to develop anything new).

it used to be that i thought this game's backtagging tendencies were great. after seeing it in action for a good long time, it's hitting overkill. on top of event pacing and lacking individual development or player plotting.

the game is super reactionary, and the way events work, even if they weren't samey, can be really exclusionary if you're not on the ball enough to be on page one top-levels every time, and it's intimidating.

it is a strange game culture, i absolutely agree. and like you, anon, idk how much longer i can stick it out, regardless of the little cr i do have.

maybe "across the board" was a little too much, my mistake. but i've been having this problem in many games since last year, so it may be less than what i said but definitely not as few as you think. and yeah, it isn't a good thing.

i mentioned in a general thread some posts ago how ironic it was that we became a plotty game culture now that we have less time for stuff. everyone asks for some kind of plot, shit happening, and this ties for example with the discussion on wankgate on how every game needs to add "and some horror elements" because that's the easy way to make conflict happen.

we have become super reactionary, people save themselves for those logs. like i told the anon above, i remember how it was to have 500 intros or "i'm a kid/my costume/the opposite sex!" posts in two days, but it's crazy that we can't reach a middle point.

this whole deal is one of the reasons, imo, why suddenly so people want gargleblasted back. not just because we are lacking silly not-big-plotty games right now, but because of the pace. at the beginning of the month we were presented with lots of shit to deal with - a new planet, a new job, etc. so you posted when you had the time and thread at leisure.

ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2016-03-20 01:04 (UTC) - Expand

agreed, i don't have this problem in my other game. i'm having a much easier time developing cr there and there's a lot more player plotting in general.

ohmygod crack to grimdark whiplash...you and another anon both used that phrase and that perfectly describes the way it feels. I agree.

I'm glad op brought all this up and we can have a rational discussion about it. I like the CR I have but I'm burning out on the game itself because of this schedule. one of the above anons is also right, this is the complete opposite of having 500 event-reaction posts, and tbh I'd rather have the latter because that only ever mildly annoyed me.

what was really telling was one of the recent events where everyone still had use of the network to contact each other, and yet there wasn't a single network post during the event. I think it was the ghosts? I was wondering why no one was warning the colony at large about what the ghosts could do to people.

ayrt (uh unless i'm using that acrynym wrong, sorry!)

(Anonymous) - 2016-03-20 01:12 (UTC) - Expand

Has anyone taken this to the mods? I'm not disagreeing or anything but the mods this time around seem a lot more agreeable than the previous. If something is suggested, I'm sure there'd be a change.

it's been suggested before, but i find i often get "that's just the way it is" responses or "the mods can't do anything about it," so personally i've never bothered, feeling like a good portion of the game either doesn't notice or really doesn't care. i don't want to be the one to harsh on something that works for the majority.

eh, player response is never the same as mod response. i say take it to the mods because even if it's just one person, it still gives them something to think about going forward. even if the game culture doesn't change, at least the mods can try on their end to shift things around with events!

As someone who has brought concern about event-writing to this mod team in the past and gotten a very polite, thankful response, and could see the crit being taken with the very next event that went up, the mods really can do something about it, and I think it's a great idea to bring it to them.

I absolutely love this game, and I'm still managing to make it work for myself and having a ton of fun, but I also agree with all the criticism in this thread, so sometimes even those of us who are happy could be a lot happier with some change.

i'm asking here precisely to see the general opinion before making an hmd comment to the mods. i wanted to be sure it wasn't just me being done with the game - sometimes it happens you don't click, and that's ok. seeing that isn't the case, i'll bring it up next hmd.

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Trapped in the city of one loo

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