HMD | April 2012

[these_balls]

EVALUATE MY BATTLING!

TRAINER TIPS:
→ This is encouraged, not mandatory. We will not penalize you for not using it.
→ Feel free to link your personal HMDs if you would like, just in case someone doesn't want to use the mass HMD post.
→ this is more for actual critique and discussion. Please don't just blindly praise a person or just call them horrible. If someone's doing a wonderful job, you can tell them, just tell them why, or even where they're showing off bonus perks. If someone's doing a not-so-wonderful job, tell them why, give them things to improve on if you can. Examples, links, things that can give them something to work on. Meaning, no bashing, flaming, or nasty behavior. Please keep it civil.
→ Anonymous is turned on! But note: anonymous is a privilege, not a right. If it's being abused to bash players, please be sure to let one of us know and we'll step in or freeze threads if necessary. If anonymous is abused too much, it will be turned off for the next HMD.
→ Don't take this all too personally! Remember that roleplay is a game, and crit is supposed to help, not make you feel horrible. No one is perfect, we've all got room to improve. Please keep that in mind.

→ MOD/GAME HMD

Comments

[dreamsofahero]

So this is something unrelated to any of the other issues mentioned, but it's been kind of nagging at me for a while. Namely, that I've noticed it's really hard to develop IC relationships with characters/players outside my own canonmate(s), and not for lack of tagging on my part! And before I say more, let me just add that I am NOT suggesting this is in any way an issue with any players, but rather with how the game is formatted, and that I'm using myself for an example just because it IS an example.

See, the thing is, Sion's been here what, two and a half months? And while half of my threads in other characters' journals are with people outside canonmates, on the rare occasions Sion does a post, he gets... really surprisingly few tags back. In his four journal posts, I've only ever gotten four non-canonmates replying to them total, something like 90% of the comments in his posts are exclusively with canonmates.

Now don't get me wrong, I love threading with canonmates! But it's kind of frustrating when it feels like the only way to get replies is to have some sort of existing relationship, and the only way to get THAT is either to be canonmates with someone, have a character from a popular/well-known series, or to know someone OOCly. And being a relatively new player with a character from a lesser-known canon and who doesn't sit around chit-chatting with people on plurk, that's kind of hard to do. Besides, the thing that I enjoy most about RP in general is the spontaneity, the not knowing who's going to suddenly reply that you never thought would have gotten along with your character in that way.

I suspect that a part of this though is just because of the sheer format of the game. I know that while I make a point of checking for the weekly add/remove post, when there's a lot of intros it's very, very easy to miss someone's journal, and thus miss a post or two. And frankly, not everyone keeps up on the journal adding- Sion's been in the game for two and a half months, and yet there's still over 20 journals, some of which I know joined after him, who don't have his friended. It IS a hassle at times to keep that list up to date, especially since sometimes the console will glitch and such, so I can't blame anyone for not always being up to date (I know I'm often a little behind!) so I can't help but wonder if there isn't a better way to handle it. Especially since there's also the issue that if someone DOESN'T post, it's... pretty much near impossible to spontaneously start talking to them without arranging something OOCly; I regularly see characters in other posts or in the OOC comm that I never knew were in the game because I only have the posts on Sion's reading page to go by! And I know I'm not the only person who occasionally has problems with not getting responses from people outside OOC friends/canonmates, because I've seen other posts where that's the case, too.

So what all this comes down to, is that I definitely feel there's an issue here, and I wonder if there's a better way to handle it. My first suggestion would be for there to be a consolidated community, instead of going by individual journals all the time, which would make it MUCH easier to find posts and not overlook them. Alternatively, creating a "network" page by friending all the current IC journals and comms in the game (and possibly not the OOC ones) so that when in doubt, players can simply visit that reading page to catch up on things. But either way, I think this is definitely an issue, because it's been pretty consistent the entire time I've been in the game so far, and it really IS fairly frustrating at times.

[derpsaboutfamily]

I believe you could view the friends page of route_29 for all the current IC journals and comms in game? Here!

[dreamsofahero]

That may be! But it still doesn't really address the main issue I raised- namely, that the game is currently designed, and players encouraged, to follow it by using their journals' reading pages. And obviously there is an issue with this, if it's so incredibly difficult to establish new IC relationships without some kind of OOC connection. Which is the main point that I'm finding so frustrating, and why I suggested having a comm or network page as being the centralized go-to place for following the game, rather than leaving it up to individuals.

[derpsaboutfamily]

I'm in both journal-based and community-based games, and I haven't really seen much of a difference between the two. I think regardless of whether or not the game is journal-based or community-based, there's often a bias of wanting to tag canons you know. I have just as hard a time establishing new IC relationships in my community-based game with my lesser-known characters than I do here. I'm not saying it's right, necessarily, but I don't think completely revamping the way the game is built will change too much of that, unfortunately.

Perhaps the way around it would be to have more CR memes and to tag around those.

[(Anonymous)]

This is a problem with journal based games in general. Unless you want to suddenly convert the entire game to a community based one, there really isn't a way to fix this.

The other problem is, well, to get tags you do need to tag yourself. You can't blame everyone else for not getting tags if you just plan on expecting them: Tag out there and they WILL come. Start building the CR yourself if you want it. Others might feel the same way as you, they might be waiting for the tags that aren't coming, so it's up to someone to take that first step.

Be that someone. If they don't follow up on CR that you're starting, crit them on it and if you don't, they can do the same.

[dreamsofahero]

If you read through my entire comment, you'd see I addressed all of those point you just raised, including the possibility of switching to a comm-based system, or having a centralized network page rather than relying on individual players' journals to all be up to date. Similarly, I DO tag people a lot. Sion posts fairly infrequently, so I kind of have to, anyway. By the month, for threads Sion had with people outside his own journal posts, 5 out 7 in February were with non-canonmates, 4 out of 6 in March, and 4 out of 6 so far in April. The only reason he has any threads outside his own posts with canonmates is because, given the nature of their canon relationship, he will always respond to a canonmate's post in some way, so it is really not for lack of my tagging around. But again, I've observed similar issues in posts made by other characters from more obscure canons, so I really don't think it's just me that's having this issue.

[(Anonymous)]

... Well if you put numbers on it it sounds like you aren't tagging that many posts at all...

[dreamsofahero]

Considering that it's in the middle of con season as well as busy time at work for me? That's probably more than I average with any other character in any other game at the moment. And still averages WELL over 100 comments per month, as most of my threads often average 15-20 comments from me apiece, where the minimum activity requirements for the game is what, somewhere in the 20-30 comment range? So, y'know, if you want to split hairs like that...

And apparently I need to repeat myself again, but I am not the only person affected by this. I have seen posts on a regular basis that basically only ever get tagged by the character's canonmates, as far as I can see. Which yes, is often a symptom of the journal-based format, but that's exactly part of the issue, isn't it?

Oh, and I neglected to mention before, but I, for one, do not feel comfortable critting people solely on the basis of "hey our characters threaded x many times but you never tag me" for the simple reason that it's entirely possible that what's ICly important to one character isn't as important to the other. And the complaint here is that SION'S posts are not tagged by other people in the first place, regardless of how much he has or hasn't threaded with anyone else. Basically, characters from lesser-known canons or played by players who aren't well-connected OOCly don't really get tagged, regardless often how often they post or with what content. And because it gives the impression that you have to be or play someone popular just to get replies, that is really, incredibly frustrating and discouraging to a (relatively) new player to the game!