Author Topic: stopping ForumMaster from destroying BattleMaster  (Read 132049 times)

James

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Though there was some good stuff talked about in the locals boards (it was always interesting to see other things that were going on that I wasn't directly involved in so knew little of in game) at the same time, it was damaging.

There was at least one occasion where a lot of time and effort had been put into certain events in game, then conversation came on the forums about it OOC complaining about it, suggesting various cheating/OOC plotting and almost ruining something which had been fully planned, organised - with propaganda and misinformation - in game...

So although I will miss some of it, I am leaning more towards it being a good idea (for now...)
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Arrandal

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Hi Tom,

I'm one of those that only just started and was warned by the guy who got me started here already not to spend a lot of time here, just brush against it every now and then if your bored and feeling like you can say something relevant. I am a forum goer, as per my presence on other games, however, since this place is mostly ooc on the forums, I see no point. Unless I am making a relevant post that isn't flame worthy.

I think the close of the Local forum is good, but that the close of the rp forum is not. the Local forum was a hate on hate from ooc players. Role play, you get to rp your char, which I dont mind doing every now and then, and having a piece of history kept of my characters. Not that I have a lot of time to do so, and I do mostly rp ingame to entertain myself and my fellow Realms-people. But I do think about doing it 'one day'. However, there are a lot of extreme rpers out there, that love to develop their character and write even in a solo aspect, which shutting that forum down denies and I think can be easily watched to makle sure that no ooc content seeps in, although its hard to remain ooc when you rp, since you are making a story, with the use of closed rp in the heading of the rp, then it means that only those invited can participate, etc.

Regards the Magistrates, I think you need to keep it open and viewable yes, but it absolutely should be a rule that none but the participants in the case and the judges can speak in them. IF someone else, has something relevant to say, they need to send it via a judge, for viewing in the private chambers, the magistrates as it stands now is just a hate fest, and holds some of the worst posts I have read, and the worst behavior you can see on any forums.

I think that is what people here are trying to say to you about that.

Tom

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I think the close of the Local forum is good, but that the close of the rp forum is not.

[...]

Regards the Magistrates, I think you need to keep it open and viewable yes, but it absolutely should be a rule that none but the participants in the case and the judges can speak in them.

That is a good idea, unfortunately it is prohibitively difficult to implement with this forum software. I don't think we can "voice" people per-thread, only per-board.


The RP forum moves roleplay from the game where it belongs and is in context with the CHARACTER to the forum where it is out of game and out of context with the character and even the player account, connected to the forum account which for many people is not immediately connected. The disconnect is considerable for readers unfamiliar with the player. I do think that people who enjoy roleplaying should do so in-game.

Arrandal

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Fair enough on the rp.

Regards the Magistrates, I have some experience as a forum admin, so I understand regards not being able to add people to individual threads, however, there has been some success in having a group moderator for the entire sub-forum to have the power to add and remove players on a case by case basis, and once given access to the forums those players are only allowed to post in the thread relevant to them, and to their case. The group mod retains the right to remove posts that transgress this rule, which doesnt happen often, in fact once in 2 years would be your average, and quickly dealt with even then.

Either way, your game, your design on all things, and I love Battle Master regardless, and much more because I don't get into the ooc fighting. ;)

Anaris

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The RP forum moves roleplay from the game where it belongs and is in context with the CHARACTER to the forum where it is out of game and out of context with the character and even the player account, connected to the forum account which for many people is not immediately connected. The disconnect is considerable for readers unfamiliar with the player. I do think that people who enjoy roleplaying should do so in-game.

The RP forum is the replacement for the RP mailing list, which, while it certainly had its problems, I still feel was a net positive for the game.

Even though I haven't been writing many narrative RPs lately to post, I think that closing the RP board is not the right direction to be going in. I would rather see it promoted.
Timothy Collett

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You mean, exactly the way it is set up right now? The Magistrates do have a private forum where they discuss cases.

I mean without the thread that follows the initial complaint that is supposed to be gathering information for Magistrates. It rarely helps and I think it'd be better if they could request information from people privately, rather than into a public forum. Publicly post the initial complaint and the Magistrates' sentencing and reasoning, but keep the whole process of the decision private.

Chenier

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I wouldn't mind seeing the local boards disappear, and seeing the forum stripped down to a resource for announcements, help with the game and the Magistrates court.

Then again those functions could probably performed by the Wiki as well...

Also we might want to gather some opinions of people who aren't actually on the forums and why.

I think I may agree. The local boards do bring stuff that we did not really have with the d-list, and is probably the source of most inter-player conflict.

The Magistrates cases need to be made private. Whats the point in having dedicated volunteers, if everyone gets a say. May as well not have a council about it and put it up to a vote. From what I have seen the Magistrates have enough trouble being professional and decisive with their decisions anyway, without others muddying the waters.

Its not hard for someone to state their case, and if the magistrates want more info they can contact the defendant in game via the OOC and allow them to post their side of the story. Once both sides are presented the Magistrates can circlejerk about it all they want, without all the outside input, decide what is and isn't breaking the social contract etc and be done with it. Having every man and his grandma involved in a case, having a say, just muddies the water and makes bad blood.

The local forums can all go, it just brings up !@#$ about who started what war and why, and half the cases are because someone seemed to mix OOC from the forums and IRC and bring it ingame or vice versa. Roleplaying is about separating yourself from the character, not using it as a persona.

The helpline, Dev forums and roleplay forums could all be left, a long with anything that doesn't impact on Battlemaster, such as the other games forum. As long as those are moderated correctly then all is good.

The other thing about the forum is that the Dev's/Moderators/Magistrates are all volunteers (i believe) and they are not always professional. In all the times I have been a forum moderator/admin, there has always been one rule, no in-fighting. I understand people are all equal and what not, but when you see the Dev's openly disagreeing, either debatingly or almost aggressively with tom or another dev, it's a bad image. I don't know how the inner team mechanics work but from an outside observer it looks really bad, as if all the Battlemaster team does if fight with each other and circlejerk around issues. Its the same issue as with the magistrates. People can disagree, but its like a couple fighting about their bad sex life in front of their friends and family, its awkward and in bad taste.

Anyway thats my two cents.

This I strongly disagree with, however. I absolutely wholeheartedly hate the titan system. Being secret, it has absolutely no accountability. I have not had a single good experience with the titans since I joined this game.

But back to the forum, and the talk that it leeches IG communication. I'm not sure I agree with this. I write a lot here... like, a lot... too much. But in any case, I'm never on IRC anymore. When I started playing, I was on IRC 100% of the time, or just about. And for quite a while. I write more and more on the forums, and less and less IG... but is that really the forums' fault, as some would suggest? I don't think so. IG, the realms are getting smaller and smaller. Whenever they grow a bit, they then often break up again. This is especially true for active nobles. Often, the general noble count will rise... but it'll be a bunch of people who barely ever (if ever at all) initiate discussions of their own or even reply to others.  Though I still spend a lot of time on BM, I actually spend a lot less now than I did when I started playing back in high school, where I could easily spend the whole evening reading and writing letters, chatting on IRC in-between. But if so much of the time I do spend on BM is spent on the forums, it's because there's nothing interesting to say IG. On the forums, one talks with hundreds of people. IG, each character can write to 30 or so nobles, out of which only 3 or so ever really seem chatty, and in most cases even if agendas overlap for some things, they remain conflictual for many things. So who do you write to? You can try to reach foreigners to enlarge your discussion pool, but this faces the same problems. Getting rid of the forums would not magically transform all of that activity to the game, much of it would simply be lost or redirected to IRC (which is often said to be no less hostile than the forums).
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Geronus

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While I am one of those frequent posters, I don't like the idea of closing down the forum, or even parts of it.

But back to the forum, and the talk that it leeches IG communication. I'm not sure I agree with this. I write a lot here... like, a lot... too much. But in any case, I'm never on IRC anymore. When I started playing, I was on IRC 100% of the time, or just about. And for quite a while. I write more and more on the forums, and less and less IG... but is that really the forums' fault, as some would suggest? I don't think so. IG, the realms are getting smaller and smaller. Whenever they grow a bit, they then often break up again. This is especially true for active nobles. Often, the general noble count will rise... but it'll be a bunch of people who barely ever (if ever at all) initiate discussions of their own or even reply to others.  Though I still spend a lot of time on BM, I actually spend a lot less now than I did when I started playing back in high school, where I could easily spend the whole evening reading and writing letters, chatting on IRC in-between. But if so much of the time I do spend on BM is spent on the forums, it's because there's nothing interesting to say IG. On the forums, one talks with hundreds of people. IG, each character can write to 30 or so nobles, out of which only 3 or so ever really seem chatty, and in most cases even if agendas overlap for some things, they remain conflictual for many things. So who do you write to? You can try to reach foreigners to enlarge your discussion pool, but this faces the same problems. Getting rid of the forums would not magically transform all of that activity to the game, much of it would simply be lost or redirected to IRC (which is often said to be no less hostile than the forums).

I agree with this 110%. Closing down the forum is not going to solve this problem, nor will it inspire people to put more effort into the game. If anything, it will result in less interest in the game, as talking about it here keeps people engaged and inspires passion. We need more passion about the game these days, not less, even though passion also inspires conflict.

Whenever you get players of a competitive game bumping elbows, naturally there's going to be some friction, but with a few exceptions I really don't think it's as bad as people make it out to be. Sure, people argue plenty on the Local boards, but that's human nature frankly, and I don't think it gets personal very often even when it does get heated. I'll be honest with you, I think that a lot of the people complaining are actually the ones who have trouble separating IC from OOC. Some people just don't like conflict, period, and can't handle disagreement. Maybe that's a chauvinistic assumption for me to make, but seriously - the number of times that people actually start hurling insult at each other as opposed to just disagreeing is not all that high compared to the total volume of discussion going on here. Actual flame wars don't start every day, and when they do they usually don't last long before the mods step in or cooler heads prevail.

I think you're stifling a vibrant community here by shutting down the Local boards. If it wasn't for them, I'm not sure I would have even started playing again after I paused all my characters last fall. Coming here to the Local boards and reading about what was going on everywhere kept me engaged with the community and eventually inspired me to return to the game and start playing again; I really don't think I would have reached that decision without that influence.

Closing down parts of the forum is a huge overreaction to a problem that I frankly don't think is nearly as bad as people are suggesting. Moreover, even if the problem did exist, this would be the most ham-fisted, cut off your nose to spite your face possible solution to it. Solving the problem of player disagreements by simply keeping them from talking to each other isn't solving the problem at all, It's just draining more life out of a game and community that needs all the life it can get.

Daycryn

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That is a good idea, unfortunately it is prohibitively difficult to implement with this forum software. I don't think we can "voice" people per-thread, only per-board.


The RP forum moves roleplay from the game where it belongs and is in context with the CHARACTER to the forum where it is out of game and out of context with the character and even the player account, connected to the forum account which for many people is not immediately connected. The disconnect is considerable for readers unfamiliar with the player. I do think that people who enjoy roleplaying should do so in-game.

It's not an either/or situation. One can roleplay in the game and also post it to the roleplaying forum. I don't know of anyone who does the latter without doing the former... while many people do the former without doing the latter. The roleplaying forum is really just not a problem.
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Wolfang

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Closing down locals is stupid, one of the reasons I decided to play this game was because of the interesting talks and politicking I read reading the Dwilight local. Now I will have absolutely nooooo idea what is going on with the war in the north, or pretty much anywhere at all except in my own realm. This is a pretty dissapointing move and will probably have a negative impact on player attraction and retention.


stuartalexmc

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 I can't say the Forum is a good thing but I do think that closing the Locals Boards will be counter productive. It is the only source I can see of information from outside your realm. It enables people to get a grasp of the politic of a island; when I joined I read the forums purely for the information that they contained.

You would lose a great asset to the game if the Locals board was closed down permanently. As I for one would not know what was happening outside of my realm otherwise.

Perth

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I agree that closing down the Locals board is not a good idea. It is probably the most active part of the forum and seems to be where everyone enjoys discussing the game.

What needs to happen is a rule in the Locals that IG events can only be discussed once a certain amount of time has passed. This will cut down on the flaming as well as the influence of OOC discussions on IG events.
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Daycryn

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I can't say the Forum is a good thing but I do think that closing the Locals Boards will be counter productive. It is the only source I can see of information from outside your realm. It enables people to get a grasp of the politic of a island; when I joined I read the forums purely for the information that they contained.

You would lose a great asset to the game if the Locals board was closed down permanently. As I for one would not know what was happening outside of my realm otherwise.

Well as has been pointed out, there are, or used to be anyway, realm and other player-created newspapers, posted on the wiki. That was a great source of fun, especially back in the day.
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It used to be so that realms would actually force their rulers to give e.g. weekly updates of what was going on on the continent, so everyone stayed involved. That way you could easily distinguish the good realms from the lesser ones (or the good rulers from the apathetic ones). I don't think people should get their information from the boards on the forum. It is a OOG medium and will, deny it as much as you will, influence the way your character behaves. Simply put; perhaps it is better you cannot know what is going on everywhere all the time. Your character don't, why should you?
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Tiridia

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Losing the local channels might promote guilds as the means of inter-realm communication. Guilds are nicely IG and IC plus they moderate themselves. The local boards made communication too easy.