Phoenix: Sundered Earth

Jadendami wrote:

Why does this game always wipe its annoying

Wiping is a symptom of a game that doesn't end. This game will always wipe, unless a hard cap is placed, which will probably never happen unless something radical happens.

So I have a few problems with this game, which may more be attributed to the hosts and their admin teams.

1) Decorum. Nobody knows what the hell decorum is and dares call themselves roleplayers. Stick to the theme. Wear the right clothes. I'm tired of seeing Michael Jackson's, Naruto, and other crap running around. This not a fan game (anymore). This is not a pop culture game either.

2) Inappropriate OOC. This one is incredibly flexible. Some people may think talking about womens chests is inappropriate, which is debatable, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about when it goes disgusting and people start talking about personal locations of hair that should better be handled PRIVATELY. I have much more extreme circumstances but I'd rather not leave them in this comment.

3) Ranked people just aren't doing anything. I've been waiting about a week or two now for the Earth Guardian to do something, which he has not. This has left Earth as a dead husk, and no ranker wants to 'rerank' someone apparently.

Some of these issues may be specific to one server and not the other, but all I have to say is;

I miss when I hosted Finale and broke 100+ players.

#1, Decorum, this is something I haven't really seen listed properly in the rules sections of the servers, let alone enforced on one of them.

#2, Inappropriate OOC, have more 'fun' with the mute button! OOC can be fun... sometimes.

#3, Lazy Ranked People, Okay, fine, we'll give this one completely to the players. :P

Yes...We're dying...! Nevermind we regularly are the second or third most populated game on Byond at all times of the day, and regularly have almost 100 people on on one server early on in wipes.

Nevermind the hidden server/s, which have anywhere from 40-80 people on, depending on how long they run their wipes (A long time, usually.). Or that the largest server is "only" running at 70ish people already after changing addresses not 48 hours ago due to switching hosting services!

I hope my sarcasm is easily detectable through the internet.



Edit: PS: Quit using our comments page to advertise links to your games/hubs. I'm not blind, and I'll just delete them.



Edit 2: As for decorum. That's really up for server admins to decide on what counts as what. And there are rules to make sure that people can't just run around acting like idiots.

However, you're crazy if you think the overall consistency in the quality of RP isn't going to go down as the population goes higher and higher. It's an unavoidable aspect of more and more people showing up from other locations. That's more about knowing where to go, and who not to RP with.

There are idiots in every community, and, while they eventually usually end up weeding themselves out (Nine times out of ten, they end up freaking out over something and going on a PK spree, or detonating a nuke in the middle of a city, etc, etc. Which leads to the admins promptly adding them to the perma-ban listings.), i'm not in the habit of treating the playerbase as being hostile to the rest of the game. It's unprofessional, and not conducive to actually running a successful game.

As a side-note. This is often why we run multiple secondary servers, and restrict hosting to authorized hosters only. People who don't like the "atmosphere" of one server are always free to play on another active server, without fear of the server collapsing due to competition or other outside influences. It also gives the player time to play the game while waiting for the former server in question to be more conducive to what they want out of it, as all the servers do often change things up/experiment with new ideas quite often.


I'm not sure what you expect the administrators to do about people you don't personally like, as that's what the concept of "decorum" often comes down to, in my experience. But I will say that pretty much any "solution" would be one that's incredibly dickish toward's the general playerbase.

I am not, nor will I, order my administrators to do something that would equate to purging the playerbase to measure up to some sort of utopian ideal of a "roleplayer's paradise".

You either missed, or weren't around for when that "concept" was implemented several times during Finale's history. It was as callous and, for lack of a better word, as jackassed as you might imagine, ticking a large number of people off. Mainly because everyone has their own ideal over what constitutes "perfection" (Most don't even really care.). And often one person's concept of "perfection" is another person's concept of "stuffy as all hell".

If you don't like someone, don't play with them, it's as simple as that. All things considered, most people won't crucify you over it. Unless they intend to do so IC, in which case you might have a problem, but that's one that can be resolved ICly, as well, through the judicious application of force, intelligence, or lots of explosives. If they complain on either front, bring in an admin, who will handle the issue.

Some people are just ridiculous, and would be prompted to stop playing if you told them they couldn't wear what they picked lol. I can see a reply being "If I can't wear it why is it in the Clothes tab?"

Actually, it's funny you mention adding in a new method for designing clothes.


I'm teaching myself how to update the GUI using the Byond dev tools at the moment. The ability for server admins to choose which clothes they want would be quite useful for the hosts, I imagine. Especially if they want to run themed wipes with custom made maps.

I'm adding that to the list of things to do.

Stevenw9 wrote:

Kitsueki wrote:

Some people are just ridiculous, and would be prompted to stop playing if you told them they couldn't wear what they picked lol. I can see a reply being "If I can't wear it why is it in the Clothes tab?"

If someone stops playing because they're breaking theme, ruining peoples immersion and above all having a negative impact on role-play, then good. This is a role-playing game. Unless this has changed, and so far no one has told me so, you should be a role-player and not a disruptor.

That being said, as far as what's in the clothes tab and what's not is more of a design decision. Arch (or I, if requested) could program a clothes tab (or better yet, popup UI with a preview function) in which the host or the admins can add/remove clothes usable for all, based on files from their own computers. Or just the host. Don't trust the cache? It can be made to dump the files to the server to always keep a 'hard copy' unless removed in-game. This is IF you want to go the user content route.

However, my original intent wasn't to target clothing. It's to target physical appearance as a biological organism.

I'd hate to say it but If we kicked sub par players to the curb a lot of players would be missing. Being some kind of tyrant over whats visually appealing to certain people just seems like a bad idea.

Your suggestion is nice though, I'd personally love that. I have many icons I'd like to offer the players to use without handing them out permanently, but I can't really do that. If that was implemented into Sundered Earth, I think I'd waste a -lot- of my time tinkering with it, haha.

Stevenw9 wrote:

@ Kitsueki

All I have to say is, it works in the real world (LARP), you guys are just not willing to step up and create a 'real' role-playing environment. I really don't mean to be rude, but it's the only way to explain it.

Whether the servers are willing to create it or not isn't really the factor atm =]
Personally, when I first opened my server it was focused specifically on roleplaying, and creating that ideal environment. Many problems later I learned to relax and let people do what they want for the most part, which seems to work out better for activity in all honesty. Unless I'm missing some key component here, the integrity of general roleplay is only affected by the admins to rudimentary levels. Beyond that I believe it's up to the roleplayers available to create that standard, and environment, since they are ultimately the ones that develop what's going on lol.

Stevenw9 wrote:

Kitsueki wrote:

Whether the servers are willing to create it or not isn't really the factor atm =]
Personally, when I first opened my server it was focused specifically on roleplaying, and creating that ideal environment. Many problems later I learned to relax and let people do what they want for the most part, which seems to work out better for activity in all honesty. Unless I'm missing some key component here, the integrity of general roleplay is only affected by the admins to rudimentary levels. Beyond that I believe it's up to the roleplayers available to create that standard, and environment, since they are ultimately the ones that develop what's going on lol.

That's the big difference between your perception and mine. The more strict I become, the more active I become in the role-playing environment. That means that if I lose half my player base due to them not fitting with the theme/setting/etc, I'll gain half a player base just because of the amount of constant events I'd pull and the amount of stories/groups I'd help organize. In fact, because I get so directly involved activity ends up increasing, not decreasing, and from past experience the population ends up much happier with it.

Imagine a medievil LARP without refs stopping people at the door for wearing modern clothes or for constantly being out of character (That last part should not apply to a harsh degree, we like our bracket /say). Everyone would end up quitting, because of the constant breaking of immersion and character.

Is it more work? Undoubtedly.
Is it worth it? I think so.
Will it still work? No idea. This worked on Finale, but I don't see a lot of the same keys I used to.

I see what you're saying there, and it sounds right. What instances have you found so far that bother you in regards of keeping with the themes?

RiceKnife wrote:

Can you change the directional macros in this game?
For example if I want to use W, A, S, D

It's entirely possible. You'd just need to know the movement commands. If you wanted to do it, you could even set up a "MMO style" hotbar system, with W,S,A,D being the movement keys, and 1, 2, 3, etc, etc, being attacks.

In other news, I figured i'd post here, since noone ever reads the blog, to say that i'm finally getting a moments bit of freedom from college to work on the next content update.

If all goes well (And, admittedly, it rarely ever does.), I should have at least half of the new map done sometime soon. Our iconners have delivered most of the icons needed to do it so far, and i'm just waiting on a few last new urban icons and objects to be done.