Marlon P.

I think we used to butt heads, but we've also worked together well. You brought the TCFL, which was an idea in my head and in newspapers, to life with your coding and spriting. From what i remember you work in incredible bursts of speed and energy. I also think i remember seeing you communicate well with the team and synthetics. I only see your activity on discord when we both happen to be online at the same time and i havent seen anything bad. You seem pretty chill. On an administrative side I want to ask what you mean when you say moderation. Are you wanting to give loredevs explicit tasks and deadlines? I know i and others were critical of the method used for tau ceti parties, which to my understanding was to drop a message for any loredev to write input and then post the results - which had people questioning the odd assembly of parties. How would you address a situation like this and in general? Also what are your thoughts on the risk of feature creep in lore? And how do we address it?

Hmmm ive been reading more into what haydizzle and gecko are doing and im not 100% this is in their vision. I can withdraw this app if there's no feedback on it for a bit.

Great answers. Have another +1 king.

Gritty is rejecting anything that's hopeful or pulp-scifi, and everything gets turned into this harrowing place of suffering and despair. The standard dystopic scifi present in all aurora factions and societies. Romance is having a backstory as a knight who went to save a princess from pirates in the Wasteland, and you're having a great time doing it. How do you feel about this?

The original OP doesn't talk about that, but a player pointed out how the problem discussed in the OP has made them stop playing here. The conversation shifted a bit to talking about how the server's domineering attitude towards antagonists can drive people to other servers. It's on-topic imo.

Love it all. Great post, and very constructive.

What a good app! These are such a good - what's the opposite of a red flag - green flag that you have a solid understanding of the themes present in Unathi. I also like your arc and would love to see more. You also seem like a swell person. What do you think about the Unathi's place as Aurora's space opera? On a scale of gritty to romantic where would you place Unathi, and where on that scale would you want to write? +1 to this app; my question is exploratory and has no wrong answer.

Retention of players is the most relevant problem there is for a server. Are you saying the OP is wildly inaccurate?

I love them I only personally prefer their prior underdog theme. Not being a heavy hitter made it seem like they can be the good guys. Now they're an oppressive force while still being an underdog so its less fun being a fanboy. The oppressive nature of them subjugating other communities did sour some character concepts, so I rewrote one of my boys out of them since he would not participate in that.

Having a once regular player write about why they stopped playing isn't something to post a meme about. This post shows a problem I touched on in my OP. It's no wonder activity is on a slow downward decline, especially if response to the most inoffensive criticisms of Aurora are met with meme images and zero substance.

Good post. I played a former compacter for awhile. I think they are fun. I may be biased since i wrote them all though. Im glad you think they're plausible. I think touching up could be good. In what way do you see it being touched up? I think people see theyre pirates and get thrown for a loop since they're not an antag-only faction. Branding is everything.

What do you think about them, myphicbowser?

What a great application. +1 all the way.

Im sniping a reply this post so soon because arrow mentioned it to me. Ive been pretty feisty and want to make clear that since its enforcing an existing rule i am all in favor of what arrow has said in terms of stripping whitelists.

Theyre very cute. Love the shading and brightness change. Merge them NOW

What are the exact parameters for the strip? 0 playtime in a consecutive 365 days? If hypothetical John Doe ghosted for 2 hours 260 days ago, would his WL be removed or skipped over? If Jane played for 3 hours once 360 days ago, would she be skipped over or removed?

I agree with this. Theres no love lost from me they misbehave after such a chance offered I agree. Bad phrasing; no beef intended. What i meant to ask is if you can understand why it would feel arbitrary to an affected person, and if you feel that this could also weird out our casual players who, though not directed by this, may feel unwelcome in a command role because of general inactivity? Thank you for engaging with the post even when i wrote my thoughts out badly

I really like F, and also think i like different colored radios.

I really like the ones with color. Gray imo is not the best color for items like this. C is my favorite since it lets people quickly associate it as a radio since it matches the same color as the base sprite.

Would it be fair to strip the whitelists of those in this thread who say theyre easy to get back, since it wont seem to be a problem? I doubt they would agree - where my point here is to give a sense of how arbitrary this would feel for affected players. Namely frustrated at an arbitrary punishment. Its difficult to go through command apps if you're a casual player because you have to play enough to be observed. The more auroras whitelist standards focus on the always-online, the smaller the command population will be. And a small command population feedbacks into the issue by making rounds more difficult for the players on average, further incrementally harming population growth/retention. This kind of step is a big advertisement that irregular players are not to be trusted.

This is something I've noticed and I'm working to get data on seeing how severe this downward trend in the amount of command players is. This thread is part of a longterm trend that is what this post says. Incrementally increasing the standards applied to Command which leads to a decrease in the number of command players. This suggestion in particular is a step that will overtly lead to negative outcomes. Others have already posted reasons why it would make them feel unwelcome. We'd be punishing people out on deployment, or who are dealing with life situations that bring them away from this videogame. You are just as capable of piloting the ship as someone who has been gone for a year, because both of your net experiences in being Command during the NBT is 0. If this is a criteria, shouldn't every single player be stripped our command whitelists? Someone doesn't need to prove themselves through a weeks long application and trial process just to play CMO, CE, or Captain, unless they've proven that they should be put through the process again. Not pre-emptively. It is, as I've said before, infantilizing and aggressive.

I agree with everything here with every fiber of my being. Its what i was trying to say but better.

Nobody will know how to do this. You are just as capable of flying the ship as I am, and i was gone for a year. Until NBT launches there's no one that can follow this standard.

Unless you can say strips are intentionally arbitrary, WL removals come when youre deemed to fail to follow the standards- this what a punishment is. Willingly giving up potential players to other servers is harmful to server health. Why not just start banning people at random with the note to play elsewhere? That will be just as arbitrary. What has changed about playing HoP in the last 365 days that someone after this time would instantly become too incapable to play the role?

This is a great idea if you want to whittle down the playercount of these alien species and infuriate people. Let people prove theyre still capable. Punishing people for the misbehavior of inactivity is arbitrary and can only look conceited from the perspective of the player. Someone catching up on lore after a haitus isn't the end of the world. Show us data that this is a problem worthy of this blanket administrative action.