You have a bunch of different people trying to 'write' a story and each person wants a different outcome. Its a convoluted mess of story 'written' by a couple of teens in a chat box. There's no definitive way to determine if an attack strikes or it doesn't, and people just go back and forth in chat trying to BS their way into keeping their character alive. This is what happens when you try to settle things (that would normally be solved by skill, weapon strength, etc) using text.
It's called compromise, dipstuff. Sometimes people don't get their way, and decent people are capable of accepting that and moving on.
Authors work around this and tell a story through text by having only one person write the damn thing. History tells a story through definite conclusions and actions. You try to tell a story of a bunch of original characters that are each controlled by their own writer. Do you see the problem? Rarely does anybody want their character to die/lose, so they try as hard as they can to cheat/write their way out of a situation using the stupid 'reaction time' system you came up with. You give people the ability to react to anything in almost any way they want. I'm sure you understand the problems that go along with that. People are always going to want to react to benefit themselves. And when a decision can't be reached after 30 minute of bickering, an admin comes in and decides to settle it their own way (keep in mind the admin also has their own character, so they are now in control of both their own fate AND other players' fates as well.) You can see how this is all adding up to a ticking timebomb just waiting to explode.
First of all the reaction time system was not my creation.
Secondly, we've had many circumstances where people have let stuff happen to them for the sake of the story. This is generally expected behavior, and if you pull some crazy reaction stunt every single time something happens to you you're gonna get told to stop godmodding. This is not truly the ability to "react in any way they want"; they are constrained as much as the thief is. The longer people have been around, the more their ability is accepted, which has similar results to that of your RPG stats systems and numerical garbage. If some guy who just joined for the first time starts trying to go "master thief undetectable" on someone, I'm probably going to call bullstuff, but if he instead builds his skills, presenting his progression and improvement, and THEN goes "master thief undetectable" on someone, he'll probably get away with it.
The reaction system trying to give everyone a fair chance (no matter what) is exactly the problem. You're trying to give each player a chance to react and save their character by... out-writing each-other. It's the stupidest way of determining who dies that I've heard of. You're trying to cater to the whole 'story' thing, which is a flaw in the first place. If you did away with the reaction system but kept the chat-action system things, like backstabbing, would cause people to complain left and right about 'OP' actions. If you went with a full RPG approach, everything would be determined absolutely, but it wouldn't have enough options/actions to suit your novel writing needs. The problem here lies in having a bunch of people in a game trying to tell a story not by playing the actual game, but by writing themselves into and out of situations and playing 'reaction' tag in chat, tag-backs allowed.
Again, these problems can be circumvented by RPers who play fair. People who act essentially untouchable (we had one by the name of Amir a while back) get told to stop godmodding. If they don't stop, they get banned (or in Amir's case, we handled it in-rp by having him get eaten by something or other).
You should understanding the foolishness of trying to write a novel where the writers are essentially gods controlling their own characters. In an actual RPG, the 'writers' are in control of their characters and can make up their own personalities and backstory, but the 'god' deciding the outcome is the game and the actions taking place within it. It's stupid trying to let each player have ultimate control of their character. It's stupid trying to write a collab story with a bunch of other players who, for the most part, contribute to the story by having to act as their character. This means when Bob and Bill eventually meet in the story and Bob's writer wants Bob to kill Bill, and Bill's writer wants Bill to kill Bob, we run into a problem. In real life or in a game, the more equipped/skilled person wins. That's that. Here, its an argument of who is more equipped and who is more skilled because there is no system in place determining anything and its one big stupid game of playing pretend. Even LARPers developed a number/stat system to prevent this crap.
The issue is manyfold: No system is capable of handling every single loving thing that could logically be done in a given situation. An ogre character has a scent ability; he can tell who's been past recently (assuming he knows their scent, which he may well not). I cannot think of a single loving system that would properly handle scent in an actual real-time environment; DnD is turn-based and not constrained by IRL schedules and random server crashes. Now that I think of it though, we do need some sort of system for the passage of time; right now time passes in one massive disorganized mess, and it doesn't help that people teleport as a shortcut.
See below also.
Yet another problem lies in keeping this open to the public. Not only do we have a bunch of writer-gods running around, but now there's more who can join at any instant. Of course, if a new character wants to kill a long existing wandering poet character, there will be loads of controversy and action-denial by the admins. It's not that the poet is strong, it's that he's been around longer so he gets some sort of veteran character privilege. This basically creates a circlejerk of existing players that prevent new players from having a major story influence. The veteran system works in RPGs because veteran players are usually strong and equipped. It doesn't work here because the admin that's playing as a wandering poet character shouldn't be strong, but he writes his way out of trouble because no veteran will accept losing to someone who just joined. It then creates a giant 'trial' to get new characters accepted into the story.
This part contains the one legitimate issue noted here. In my experience, yes, you're right, there is an issue with new players having trouble getting involved. Some people have circumvented this issue by designing a particularly unusual character, but this causes another issue with saturation of the unusual: When everything is extraordinary, extraordinary becomes ordinary and then nobody is phased by anything at all. Other people have established their place through sheer persistence; Rudie's character Amanda in particular was constantly overlooked by far too many of the veterans, but she kept at it until she managed to integrate more effectively.
There is no solution to RP. There are so many fundamental flaws with these types of 'serious hardcore' roleplays that they just boil down into bickering and drama. Your ultimate problem lies in trying to sloppily turn a game into a collab writing project. You throw in so many imaginary systems and flimsy rules to try and force a story out of players in a game. The admins are then forced to resolve arguments and pick the winner because people have to act through a goddamn chatbox. There is no solution to your problems, Full RP servers are a flawed and stupid idea.
There is no solution to you. Your ultimate problem is that you demand that everything be quantified. If it's not hard solid numbers it's meaningless to you. Statistics this, dice rolls that, everything has to be determined by numbers or it must be horrible. Your systems cannot handle inventive plans, unusual abilities, or even basic problem-solving logic in many cases. There is no solution to your problems, full RP servers can work well and be enjoyed by many even without some convoluted mess of numerical data.
I both agree and disagree with heedicalking.
Heed is right that things are convoluted because each player has different goals. Your solutions are to make things absolute or to establish a common goal, or goals for certain groups that, if you desire, stray away from PvP. Provide a common enemy or incentive for cooperation. In this respect, even the stufftiest Army RPs have more substance because the goal is simply "Fall in line." It's easy, attainable, and understandable. With freeform RPing, there should not in any way be an open-judgment system.
The time to react system is bull. It needs to be a "means to react" basis. Self-Defense? Guards? VCE?
RP can be successful, and enjoyed by many, given goals and for the most part, predefined roles or role limits.
I'm not saying this just to complain. I want your server to improve and see an influx of players because good luck to you. If I didn't give a forget, I wouldn't be here typing this.
Replacing "time to react" with "means to react"? Hmmmm... VCE isn't our solution; we're not trying to make this a gameplay thing, but could you elaborate more on what you meant by that?
We actually did try to establish common goal deals in the past, but they really flopped due to a lack of proper communication between administrators (we don't have any sort of central place to leave messages or handle issues; some people have steam, some people have skype, some people have forums accounts, but there's no one thing that everyone has) and so it really didn't get the amount of input it needed. This, too, is a problem that needs to be addressed, and I'll talk with the co-host to see if we can figure something out.
Their loving chance is to catch the thief before he escapes. Your whole "chance" facade is bullstuff.
Except in most of the cases we've dealt with, the thief should well have been noticed long before he actually reached into their pockets, but wasn't due to the limitations of the gameplay system and the fact that they never actually said anything before their attempt.
If there's nothing they can do about it, it seems a little pointless to make people say stupid stuff like "X ATTEMPTS TO ROB Y". This only creates drama.
The point is that sometimes there is and sometimes there isn't.
Cliche bad admin banning users for 'not being good enuff' or 'not doing it the right way'. You shouldn't be in a position of power if you get your panties in a knot every time somebody does something.
The bans are short and intended to convey a message to the dumbforgets who completely ignore it when we ask them to stop.
The point of your existence in the server is to make sure the server stays entertaining, not to police everyone and scare them from actually doing anything outside of standing around and talking.
I admit I do go overboard at times, and I'm sure you do too, given your administration history.
Firstly, because you were too quick to ban, the entire conflict was ruined. Instead of the man on the horse chasing a thief and giving the thief a chance of getting away, he gets banned. Wouldn't the first scenario be more interesting?
Also, punishing people for using a character archetype is only limiting the roleplay. Whether or not a pickpocket attempt fails shouldn't concern you, neither should it be grounds to straight up ban people. Leave some stuff up to the players, I mean jeez.
Ok, I guess I wasn't clear on some of my positions here. Yes, we do need to find a way to delimit those character archetypes. I don't ban people just for being a thief.
This is what I meant by "power tripping". You'd rather hand out bans then solving easily-solvable issues.
The problem is that it's not always easily-solvable: Some people just plain old don't listen when we ask them to stop. Those who do listen just get a warning and that's that. I did not mean to imply that we ban everyone on the spot, sorry about the miscommunication.
They're not being good sports, they're being quiet because they don't want to be banned for criticizing an admin. That's what I meant earlier, if all you do is police the roleplay, you're scaring people from actually participating.
Now THIS part is actually a continuing problem. One of our co-hosts (cousin of the main host) has less patience than your average attendance secretary, and I almost got deadmined and banned for criticizing one of his decisions and trying to point out the flaws in it. Eventually the other co-host managed to convince him otherwise, but it continues to be a problem to this day. I'll do my best to hit the right balance; some people do need to be dealt with via administration, but plenty of people don't.
if everyone is trying to be an assassin or thief, you're not doing enough to encourage people to follow other career paths
There's actually nothing that's really encouraging any career paths over any others, which is probably part of the problem.
