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From the desk of Lupine...

This is a game for roleplayers. We want your ideas how how to build the better game. Post your suggestions here.
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Koi-Lupine

From the desk of Lupine...

Post by Koi-Lupine »

Greetings!

Allow me to take a moment and introduce myself, I am Koi-Lupine. I will be serving as your new Roleplaying Lead. I am currently working on structuring the Roleplaying Support aspect of things, and this will take me a small bit of time so please bear with us as we transition to new leadership and I get settled into this position so that I may better serve you.

I wanted to take a moment and touch base with you, the players. I want you to feel free to write about anything you'd like concerning Roleplaying aspects of Underlight, and I would be happy to have a discussion concerning them with you. Such as anything you liked about Roleplaying Support you'd received in the past and would like to see more of. Or any gripes you have with things you believe were done poorly, or you just didn't like for one reason or another. This is not a call for a wall of text concerning what you believe to be broken, rather what you think works and would like to see versus what doesn't.

While this position doesn't necessarily afford us the possibility for true and complete transparency, I would like to have positive means of communication between the Roleplaying Support team and you, the consumer of the product we create for your consumption. I plan on guiding a more active team so that you, the player, will have a more robust and enjoyable environment in which to immerse yourselves.

As a reminder, should you require support for a roleplay you are planning you can ask via one of two ways...
First of which is a form that you can fill out *here*. Or, email Roleplaying@underlight.com

Both means will accomplish the same goal, there is no reason to do both as you'll just create a duplicate.

The in-game Roleplaying report option should be used for short requests that I would term "in the moment" type occurrences.

I look forward to hearing from you and working together to build a better Dream.
Uthanatos
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Re: From the desk of Lupine...

Post by Uthanatos »

For a while there, we had some really good support, up until about a month ago. The GM was well written and good at evoking emotion as well as managed expectations. Not every RP was successful, but when they failed, it made sense how and why they failed and to what extent.
“Sometimes it isn't easy to be sane, smart, and responsible. Sometimes it sucks. Sucks wang. Camel wang. But that doesn't turn wrong into right or stupid into smart.”
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Cedar
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Re: From the desk of Lupine...

Post by Cedar »

Welcome, Koi-Lupine!

Along the lines of process-improve, after we submit the roleplaying form or email at the roleplaying address, what can we expect in terms of follow up? In the past after submitting something through these channels, communication often goes radio silent, and I've gotta pray that giving the heads up via the in-game roleplaying request actually reaches someone. As a player, I have no idea if that means the request actually got through, was read and approved, and is being supported, OR there's no support. I just don't know what to expect.

Additionally, I've got some ongoing roleplays in the works, that I'd like to bounce some ideas off of you.
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SnowAngel
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Re: From the desk of Lupine...

Post by SnowAngel »

Welcome aboard. I know we all look forward to working with you.

I would like to say that previously I had been receiving pretty quick responses to emails sent to roleplaying and things turned out well.
Though I believe as someone else mentioned in the past two months or so there has been no response what so ever.

I think that we all would like to know that our emails have been received and read or passed on to the appropriate person to consider and then follow up with a yes or no and why or why not. Mostly we are left thinking.. did the email get received or am I just being ignored because they dont like my char etc. We all appreciate and understand the difficulities during a transition time and appreciate your efforts.

Communication is the key to making anything work, and that would include a roleplaying game as well!

My last comment would be is that there is hope you can put an end to rps happening or not happening because the gm in charge of it likes or doesnt like a character or the player. We can all say that doesnt happen, but we know for a fact it does. So I hope in moving forward, things happen based on time , effort, skill, knowledge etc that is needed for an rp and not just a no because a certain char/player asked for it.

Thank you for being open and willing to listen and for striving to move forward and make the interactions between GMS and chars fun and exciting again, even if brings a bit of an edge to things!
There are times when we stop.. We sit still... We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.
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PKChrisChan
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Re: From the desk of Lupine...

Post by PKChrisChan »

Snow Angel wrote:”My last comment would be that there is hope you can put an end to rps happening or not happening because of the gm in charge of it likes or does not like a character or the player. We can say that doesnt happen, but we know for a fact it does. So I hope in moving forward, things happen based on time, effort, skill, knowledge etc that is needed for an rp and not just because no a certain char / player asked for it.”

You hit the nail on the head with that last statement, Snow Angel. Though, any discussion on the manner goes quite a bit deeper than the recent set of events. This has been the case I’d imagine throughout the entirety of the Underlight. This is an implicit design failure of the game. Due to the mechanics of the game, this community has inevitably forged an intoxicating mini-metagame in which everyone is forced to remain on completely even terms IC/OOCly with potential GMs in question. Now, these GMs/players aren’t going to blatantly reprimand said players…. They will attack your character and your assets through trolling (all tactically played within the rules) and passive aggression. Some GMs will even go so far as to utilize the responses to these macroaggressions/complaints as justification for design changes and/or GM-supported counter role-play inline with their agendas. Then, once concerns are communicated to ‘appropriate parties’, players are given half-truths or blatantly ignored. I tend to give the benefit of the doubt often because this is a volunteer effort and I absolutely don’t blame the entire GM team but the latest set of actions I’ve experienced spoke louder than any Koi account of any situation has ever expressed. I challenge you not to endorse this terrible anti-player narrative or fall in the pitfalls of trying to please everyone in game (both player and GM alike). Both sides of this spectrum will lead you down a dark path and a miserable experience.

To make manners worse, players are effectively silenced (non-ex GMs I’m referring to) in countless ways. Anytime you seek to voice your opinion on manners or do something a certain GM doesn’t like, you get yourself placed on the lower bracket of harassment where things suddenly just don’t work out. You’ll be hard pressed to believe that GMs and players alike will make the game drastically harder for you. Harder tasks, lack of support, and stricter enforcement of standards. I am sorry you have to experience this, Snow Angel. This behavior is enforced, perhaps even unknowingly, by upper echelons in the GM team and trickles down through rule enforcement, in and out of game communication, and conducts. Most active members of the community are aware of this, and play this to their advantage. They are quick to bandwagon disagree/ignore with any opposition that they perceive threatens their game-controlling playstyles.

As hard as it is to accept that diehard fans can be so backwards, this has clearly been the case. The behavior from some our community has been so consistently (and unintentionally) anti-population that there can't be any other explanation. They perceive and absolute need for feeling of dominance and control of how ‘roleplay’ should work, (which is severely inhibiting mind you) and that is only possible when the active community is very small, so they do their best to control the players through rulesets, identifying as victimized, and marginalizing player concerns rather than just speaking to players. They're attacking the player, not the character, because they want their opposition to quit/get rage banned. They don't want to work with anyone (because they don’t care enough to do so), they just want them gone.

And no, it doesn't make sense. It's not sustainable. We’ve seen this cycle a dozen times now. If population is huge, avoid the wrath of the large community by enforcing incredulously specific rulesets targeting players, and use those ambiguous GM team rules/weak RP justifications to reprimand the everloving crap out of all the legit players until they stop playing. Then once the population is mediocre, isolate and demonize the remainder of helpless disagreeing parties until there's nobody left to fight back. Once the population is completely gone, stop logging in, move on to some other game for awhile, bitch and moan about your favorite(or not so favored) house/players of the year that 'killed the game' by 'driving everyone away' or ‘catering to bullies’. Once the problematic GMs are gone, the population recovers... until the new GMs PC friend’s assets are threatened, commence a GM shakeup, and the cycle begins again anew.

We’ve been through the DoL era of GMs, the AoE/KoES era, and now I presume, the HC era of GMs. The subtle, nearly invisible conduct but severely advantageous influence GMs have is downright absurd. It is my hope, that you not use your position to exert this influence among the GM team and take some time introspecting to address the biases we all have. Also, having the humility to speak to players outside a customer service rhetoric.

Leaving someone indefinitely banned from the UL discord.
Deleting/Modifying forum responses and hiding the fact you changed it.
Tactically disabling accounts by "accident".
Changing your house arts to gain advantages over players under silly reasoning.
Trolling players from your darkmare (Raichuelle)
Playing around the rules of teaching so tactically to not have to do anything for high plateau arts.

Supporting yourself for events and making your character the star of the show.

Constant bandwagon rampages both in the forums and on the team.
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Arnaya
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Re: From the desk of Lupine...

Post by Arnaya »

ROFLMAO!!! The HC era of GM's?!?!? LOL!!!

Seriously, we havn't gotten any support on Anything at all... not even post event support... since Scribble left. Literally... zero GM presence or support. I'm not on the GM team, and neither is any of the rest of the players who's mains are in HC, that I'm aware of at least. Due to our primary play times, we've pretty consistently had to hold four or five (If not more. Right now we're at I think 10 and counting without support) events for every one that got support. There have been periods where its been better, and periods where its been worse. But that seems to have been about the average.
Usually, what seems to have happened is that a single GM makes a point to try and get the HC Characters a little bit of support until people start raving about HC getting all of the support (IE: 1 in 3 support requests gets some response). So.... please let me know when this era of "HC GM's" is starting, it would be interesting to see.

I've often felt that the Bastion got the lions share of support on a general basis, though I know that's usually because of playtimes and etc... and is as sporadic as the support that the HC Characters have gotten. So, usually... Once I'm over my "Damn, this is the 7th time in a row we havn't gotten support" pique, I relax again and recognize that perception is due to the nature of the GM volunteers. Sometimes they're around and active, sometimes not *shrugs*.

On the topic of GM's targeting players.... I don't think that's generally true either unless the player consistently has their characters be complete jerks to a GM's characters. Then, yeah.... I've seen the GM's get a bit frustrated and have their character take a round of the player's character. Which... is kind of understandable.

In general, if people want the game to succeed... there's a single, sure fire, ultra secret, method that is used by countless successful games. *looks around conspiratorially before continuing*. They have players that log in and play the game for the sake of playing the game. Shh.... don't give the secret away ;)

PS: For the record.... of all the stuff that I've put support requests in for Arnaya. Less than 1 in 10 has gotten even a darkmare dropped them. Which was the default "Support Arnaya" GM response for about 4 months solid (Funny enough, during that period. I got more RP's supported consistently than I've had before or since. It was pretty much always "Arnaya's doing something, drop a dark on her" for that entire period). Just to give some idea of what the response has been like for one of the "Favorites" as I've been told by other players, that I am. If that's being a "Favourite"... I don't want to see what being a pain in the GM's arse (Say, by poking them and and prodding for better communication or to moderate seemingly extreme/unfair encounters. Cause, you know... I never do anything like that) would bring me :P

So.... to return this threat to its regularly scheduled topic:

Welcome Koi-Lupine and the other new members of the team. I look forward to roleplaying with all of you :)
The most important lesson I've learned over this past year, is not to let anyone make you cruel. No matter how badly you want to give the world a taste of it's own bitter medicine, it is never worth losing yourself.
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-Lacie-
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Re: From the desk of Lupine...

Post by -Lacie- »

Greetings, I wanted to get in this discussion and would like to see it kept on point. Koi-Lupine set this post up with this...
I want you to feel free to write about anything you'd like concerning Roleplaying aspects of Underlight, and I would be happy to have a discussion concerning them with you. Such as anything you liked about Roleplaying Support you'd received in the past and would like to see more of. Or any gripes you have with things you believe were done poorly, or you just didn't like for one reason or another. This is not a call for a wall of text concerning what you believe to be broken, rather what you think works and would like to see versus what doesn't.
So, what I've enjoyed having from RP Support are things like VERSUS what I don't, might be an easier list:

LIKE: Encouragement. When the support person finds good parts about a RP I've come up with, it tends to make me work harder and put more energy into it.

DISLIKE: Hand-Holding thru an RP. When someone comes up with a half-baked idea (or even when a higher sphered dreamer, who should, by now, know how to do this to some degree and should be DE-Sphered if they don't, imho), and support starts the rp going, only to see the half-baked idea start to fizzle. Then the Support has to really pick up the ball and carry the rp, then the player sits back and does little to nothing. From the outside, this gives the impression that that Koi is favoring one person/group over another. If the player is failing at the rp, let that mo-fo die, for crying outloud. We always learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. This too, needs to be communicated. POSSIBLE SOLUTION: Turning said RP in a completely different direction, allowing participation to be low (no dreamwide "GET OVER HERE AND RP WITH US" messages, summons, Teleportations, please. This feature has too many other great uses to be... abused like this. DreamWide DreamQuake with a nice raw emote would be cool for some things, but don't overdo this.)

LIKE: Discord communication over email. This helps me so much. To be able to grab a GM and discuss the possibility/probability/feasibility of an idea is critical, especially if it's a large-scale RP.

DISLIKE: "Thank you for your interest in Underlight. Dream On!" :evil: Ok, when I get this as an email response, an... automated response, when there just aren't that many people emailing you so you need a bot to respond to emails... I mean, I just want to take a sledgehammer to my beautiful, new computer when I get that response. Fix it, change it, update it... something, please! :D


LIKE: I love it when things go wrong! Sorry, Snow, but a nice, lovely stroll thru the City of Dreams just aint gonna cut it, love. :kiss: UL exists on conflict.
...even if brings a bit of an edge to things!
We need a LOT more than a bit of an edge. I believe the age of restriction, limitation and over-abundance of stifling rules is coming to an end. I believe that lesson is learned, so let's move forward.

DISLIKE:"Stand around and watch me pull the GM's puppet strings" - Roleplays. Oh please, kill me now! If a player can't think of a roleplay themselves and need Support to give more than 25% to the overall rp, it should fail. Period.


Well that's three ideas, and I made a wall of text so I'll stop there. Mebbe this can get Lupine's post back on point. Welcome to the team, Lupine and don't worry, we will try not to chew you up and leave you in pieces for the Emphants! :lol:
~Lacie~
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"Cuz Clever got me this far, then Tricky got me in."
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