Minimum [Very Minor] Roundcount Requirement for Whitelists

[Zelmana]

I've noticed that there has been a trend recently of some players who play a handful of rounds and then apply for a species or command whitelist. While I do not wish to see newer players to the community discouraged from whitelisted roles, I would caution us in thinking it's okay to let all these folks research and write up characters for the application process to be denied on roundcount.

I believe the scenarios is new players to the community are encountering a roadblock, they see we may have some nice lore and be eager to craft a character. However, we all know that our lore is very developed. Even more experienced players might struggle with the breadth of lore. A new player doing a solid research on a species one-pager can making a 'passing' whitelist, but clearly there is desire to have them be more well rounded in the community before applying, thus the denial.

For the sake of everyone's time, could we add a question to all the whitelists basically with a Y/N to "Have you completed x many rounds in game" "been in the community this long" or similar. Obviously there is some problems with that but a rough idea of roundcount might not be that bad.

[SilverSZ]

An issue with this idea is that by default lore staff don't have access to any method to confirm the amount of rounds someone has played. Unless we have another role such as Admin, CCIA etc we would have to reach out to someone else for each whitelist we did to confirm they aren't just lying. Which is something that I don't think many people would do but could happen and if we are placing a hard restriction that you must play x rounds to be whitelisted we would have to confirm it or its pointless.

 

I also think it could be detrimental as whilst some people are denied for not having played enough and a belief they need to be more well-rounded etc. Some people are also accepted with a good application. I couldn't have played more than maybe 5-10 rounds when I got my synthetic whitelist which is really not much at all. I feel like putting a hard limit could deter people who might be interested in playing a certain species specifically, which does happen.

Overall though I think that setting a hard limit of any nature is a bad idea, and applications should be judged on their own. Personally I've never advised against accepting an app due to a lack of playtime myself either, and wouldn't ever deter someone for applying for the synth whitelist due to a lack of playtime. I wouldn't want a hard limit for the synthetic whitelist and if other whitelists did I'd rather it just be a thing for them, not something placed on all species.

[Scheveningen]

I don't support this. This is a community, you need to ingratiate yourself with it on some level to gain trust sufficient enough to be granted the privilege of a whitelist.

[Zelmana]

9 hours ago, Scheveningen said:

I don't support this. This is a community, you need to ingratiate yourself with it on some level to gain trust sufficient enough to be granted the privilege of a whitelist.

That is what I am supporting. Instead of applicants wasting their time, they will realize they don't even meet a minimum requirement of playtime.

[MattAtlas]

This discussion came up a bit ago in staff chat and I will be implementing a hard number of minimum of rounds played for the command whitelist.

 

[Zelmana]

11 hours ago, SilverSZ said:

I couldn't have played more than maybe 5-10 rounds when I got my synthetic whitelist which is really not much at all. I feel like putting a hard limit could deter people who might be interested in playing a certain species specifically, which does happen.

And that's why I suggested this- some of the recent applicants have only played quite literally a couple or a handful of rounds (less than 10).

I emphasize "very minor".

I think making a bare minimum for Command is a step in the right direction, but I still feel that someone who has played only 10 rounds should be permitted to apply for IPC, Skrell, Vaurca, Diona, etc. Anyone can do research on the species and apply and play, but I think some roundplay is necessary to make sure they know.... general things. Sol, where we are at in the Spur, recent conflicts, etc.

I understand that is able to be determined through simple recognition, and there's no official roundcount variable in player info. I just would prefer we not waste peoples times and place within the formats that unless you've played a good handful of rounds you will likely be dismissed. That way people don't spend 1-2 hours creating an app whereas they could (and should) learn the info over time by playing.

[Lucaken]

This was put up for discussion in one of the lore staff chats, and I will provide my frank opinion from that.

Game time is not indicative of lore knowledge or roleplay ability. These are the main things a species whitelist application tests for. We aren't really interested in whether the player in question has 'gamesense' or famaliarity with the server's culture - contrary to a command or AI whitelist which gives an explicit and heavy responsibility of power over the round. Concerning 'general knowledge' new players are heavily encouraged to read through the new player guides by the server rules, and failure to read through the wiki generally means a chat with moderation.

Some people (very few, mind you) are denied with the reasoning that they haven't been on the server long enough, which more often than not just means they need to be more confident in their roleplay and/or knowledge. The questions on the format are specifically designed to suss this out, hence why we have no required minimum for rounds played. There are very few cases where we actually need to ask for a round count, as again, you can generally tell when a player is not quite up to the standards we want.

Edited October 7, 2022 by Lucaken
Clarification

[Zelmana]

@Lucaken Right- and this is suggestion is more of a courtesy to the applicant than to the reviewer. If they have only been around for 10 rounds they would know perhaps applying is not in their best interest.

[Flpfs]

Unironically, the hard limit should be around 100 rounds. Three to six months should be the minimum to get acquainted with server culture.

[Butterrobber202]

7 hours ago, Flpfs said:

Unironically, the hard limit should be around 100 rounds. Three to six months should be the minimum to get acquainted with server culture.

no lol. That’s ridiculously long. You don’t need to be a master of culture and RP to apply for species apps. You just need to have a basic grasp of the server and the ability to apply the lore.

[DeadLantern]

The determinant for if you can play an alien is purely lore knowledge. While it helps to get a sense of what you're doing in-game, it is not at all required. If there is a minimum round quota established for species whitelists, it should be NO MORE than five rounds. There is no need to gatekeep players from experimenting with new species.

But I also think just a soft requirement would do the trick--simply asking the applicant "Roughly, how long have you been in the community and gotten a sense of what the round-to-round gameplay is." This would force the applicant into appraising their own knowledge of the game. I think this is enough for the species whitelists.

A hard requirement for command players make sense, but also, a command whitelistee is going to get nowhere if they have only played seven rounds. This sort of polices itself, though I get wanting to warn players so they don't waste their time. Maybe just a recommend on the whitelist page: "You should be quite confident with the gameplay and lore as a command whitelist, so a bare minimum of 15-30 rounds is a good goal to exceed before applying."

100 rounds is ridiculous. It's too long for people who are super busy and know the lore and gameplay, but simply can't log the hours. This isn't an application to med school, you can know the game and its roleplay environment from only a few rounds and some reading of the lore.

[Zelmana]

 

50 minutes ago, DeadLantern said:

A hard requirement for command players make sense, but also, a command whitelistee is going to get nowhere if they have only played seven rounds. This sort of polices itself, though I get wanting to warn players so they don't waste their time. Maybe just a recommend on the whitelist page: "You should be quite confident with the gameplay and lore as a command whitelist, so a bare minimum of 15-30 rounds is a good goal to exceed before applying."

100 rounds is ridiculous. 

Yes- thank you. I think you might be the only person who really gets what I'm request from a species whitelist standpoint.
Let's quit wasting time and telling people no when we know they have no chance- you can fake a good whitelist app within a few hours even without logging onto the server AT ALL- but you'll only know (or maybe not, maybe just regurgitate wiki) about 1 species.

By discouraging an app of any sort until they've played a few rounds this would help that. I think even for species whitelist.