| Player-run games |
|
|
| Player-run games |
|
I've heard some very quiet rumblings that the player-run trivias we've been having, haven't been going so well. In particular, I've heard that the scoring has been unfair, the attitudes poor in general, the questions/answers subjective. Needless to say, I'm sad to hear it, and I'll be paying closer attention to them in the future. Please, send/append your comments on these games to me. I have no way of knowing that they're going badly if no one tells me.
-LadyAce
The first trivia I ever played in, one of the question was 'Who wrote the last episode of the X'Files'. I replied with the correct answer, only to be told it was wrong because it wasn't the episode that screened in the US. 'Who's face is on the $1 bill?' Apart from the fact our $1 bills are no more, it was the Queen. Ummm wrong again the answer is George Washington. Aa a matter of fact, George Washington does not appear on ANY of the notes in my wallet. Not that there are many, but thats not the point. other games run by immortals are often the same. I was up at 5.30am 10 days or so ago for work. Logged on and what is on the welcome board? A trivia game from Spencer. You have one hour to answer the following questions. ohhh yay, at 5.30am. THe people in Australia have it even tougher, it being 3.30am-1amish there Concievably it could have been better for some european countries with it being their early evening, but I don't really know. I get home from work 9 hours later, wondering what the answers are, and the entire post is gone. Cool, not only could no on in my country have played, but we couldn't have even found out the game went on. Whats more, I saw one person boasting that he mudmailed his answer sheet to all of his alts as well as Spencer, then mailed all of those to Spencer from each alt and generated 2 tokens for each alt. ne day I hope to see such a game played when I am online so that I can get 32 tokens.
I note someone made a post earlier about coupons being too hard to come by, and I almost made a comment there. In the last 7 months, I have been in maybe 7 games, though I'll be the first to admit that I may well have forgotten a few. I have won 2 tokens, thanks to Spencers 24 hour James Bond game, and I didn't turn it into a token generation exercise, though I do wonder why I didn't. This from a character that managed to play in the prime US times and make 15 coupons in 3 months. In response that coupons are plentiful enough, frankly, it depends on where you live, and that does sadden me a little. Hell, even characters that perma ever second week tend to run around with multi-color weapons annoying as those things are.
ok, so I realise that there is little that can really be done about this as most immorts are US based and can't really afford the time to get up in the wee smalls and run a game, and those that are up at that time are busy doing things like real work while they can get some peace and that overall, its probably the price I play for not being a US citizen, though I would argue that putting up with your TV programming and colossal racial arrogance (no individual names but as a race you are by far the most arrogant race on earth) penalty enough. I can't really be bothered getting up at 6am to attend pkill tourneys either.
BTW, I note Morphine started a non-colour bid at 175K today and attracted bidders. Is that inflation, or does my memory fail on the market value of a coupon 18 months back? Could have sworn 100K for a non-colour was a pretty good deal.
Anyway, as I as saying, most games here have been biased for years in that they are run for US time zones, favouring US citizens, and causing them to have a completly differnet value for coupons than most of the rest of the mud.
Davien Holyoake.
If player run games are to be supported, I think they should just be sponsored by creating the channels necessary...
As for coupons, i find it fairly easy to make a mil in an hour or two of game play, that's 25-50 hours of work until you get TWO coupons for using your redemption point. And that's with me being enabled and looking for prey at all times, so I'm betting the actual rate in which one can accumulate coupons is more like 30 hrs or so on average.
Not a bad deal, even with 1 hr a day, that's 2 coupons a month.
Darkheart Harkzael
And I think you either missed or ignored the point. Its not the getting of coupons that really matters, it the opportunity to get them. By living where you live, you get an opportunity once every 2 days. By living where I live I get about 1 every 2 months. I believe that HAS to create a differnece in the value that you and I place on coupons
In terms of player run trivia, some of them did a damn fine job. Qumiby even ran a non-US trivia that had a lot less than usual US based questions. In fact, most of Quimby's trivias were pretty good. By most I mean the ones that I was here for. But none of that alters the fact that immortal run trivias have been just as bad over the years.
Davien Holyoake.
As for culturally specific questions, I've heard it said that it can't be helped because people have to ask stuff they know about. This depends on ones own areas of knowledge, some are more culturally specific than others (eg its harder to make sport and TV non-biased, obviously, than science an art). Thats all the more reason to have lots of different people run the games so there is a big variety to choose from. Questions which presuppose that everyone is American can seem annoying, I agree. (Though actually most people get their questions from books I believe, so more careful selection and editing would go a long way).
Btw, you can hardly call Americans a 'race', its a nationality...if it was a race, comments about Americans would be racist....;)
Ish
Perhaps those players opposite the United States could find one or two among their number to also offer player-run trivia games. This would certainly lend a different slant to the questions as well as removing the scheduling problem. If two players alternated games, then everyone would have the opportunty to participate.
As I said, this suggestion doesn't address any of the other issues raised, merely the difficulty that players in other time zones have participating in trivia games.
In addition, perhaps the imms might consider requiring those games with immortal sponsorship to submit a log of the game to the imms so that they can have some idea of what happened if there happen to be specific complaints.
On the subject of "bias" -- I know we've all gone over this before, but it seems to have come up yet again, and so here goes...
- It's darn easy to be biased without meaning to be. The fact that we in the US have no way of knowing that someone different wrote the last X-Files which aired outside the US, and the fact that we naturally think "1-dollar bill" not "1-dollar bill in America" because that's where we are, shouldn't make people upset. I'm thrilled by the chance to learn new perspectives and approaches, and trivias are great for that. So point it out, gently -- at least in the trivia games I ran, I awarded make-up points if someone found me a reference on the web.
- Timing...it's always strange to hear how hard it is to get coupons at non-primetime hours, and then to run games/events at those hours, and get next to no participation, and even then it seems to be mostly people who are in the US, playing. In addition to lower participation, there also seems to be lower enthusiasm for games at the non-US hours, I'm not sure if you guys just figure we don't love you, or you're too nice to ask, but without a bit of demand, expressed in a positive manner, I end up less inclined to run games at those hours.
On player-run games in general -- yes, they're susceptible to accusations and whisperings about bias. They are largely an act of trust on my part, and therefore can end up being abused. I think the benefit in terms of fun outweighs the difficulties, and I'm going to continue to try to make them work. Please don't think that if you report problems to me, I'll pull player-run trivia, I don't think I'm cruel or unreasonable -- if things are going badly, let me know so I can do my best to fix it.
-LadyAce
If you don't like coupons so much as to not devote time into mobkill or whatever else, that is your problem. End of story. There is a very feasible way to get coupons, and even if they cost 300k per piece, they're still very easily attainable. I remember a char who could maintain/expand a 14 room mansion, adding almost a room every day -- while having alts to pk, etc, until he archived.
Coupons are attainable, out there, and guess what, participating in games may even take longer than trying to purchase them via xp or gold. Although I personally had a lot of luck with tag, triv, writing to the lt, or simply just purchasing it, i don't consider myself as being an extreme case when it comes to coupons.
If you have alts you want to play, well obviously it'll cut on your chances of getting a coupon with your other char. Same goes with games. You have to be online with the char you want the coupon on. I personally think there is a flood of coupons and prizes in the mud atm, everyone, even this char who's done almost nothing but pk has TWO on him.
Darkheart Harkzael
not once, but twice (on alts) I've been given answers to a trivia game by the person running the game beforehand. I really don't mind not having coupons and tokens, to be honest, and I'll gladly state why.
availability- lets see, how many times have you gotten a "add-a-color" out of the prize machine?
different coupons- when's the last time you -heard- of someone getting a --multi-color-- out of the prize machine?
games- games have bigger prizes than rp, period. if I write to the LT, and get a token, I don't even have a chance at getting a multi, which I'll call top prize, and to my knowledge, every game run does offer a multi, of course, it's been a while since I've really made an effort at any of these games because of this.
in response to darkheart- not all of us are hack-n-slash mudders. not all of us want to spend our entire time online killing mobs and running around like a chicken with it's head cut off (TM), so my words to you are this, your an idiot, you've always been an idiot, and you'll always be an idiot, so don't come rambling with your biased opinion that everyone is like you, I find it rare for anyone to play anything like what you do, so go back to your little "I'm pk and I'm god" world, and be happy there.
in response to mort run games- do away with them, bad idea to begin with.
You can still run games for each other, but there won't be any prizes supplied by the imm staff, you'll need to supply your own.
-LA
dh
I think I've gotten something like two adds and a mundane from the prize machine in the last three months. That's three coupons, which is quite a bit, even if I have no real use for adds or mundanes at this point.
And wow, you dislike Darkheart.
Danar
Mort-run trivias were previously my only chance at getting coupons. I agre that there are some problems with the games, especially cheating--though in my opinion the biggest problem was the prizes not being representative of the investment. Problems with biased questions and time zones can be alleviated by increasing the number of people who run games--not by limiting it to imms. I often run into questions and topics which I know nothing about (amazing but true! ;) ), but with very long games, such as Mayor Quimby's, I can relax, knowing that there will be more questions and more topics in which I can catch up.I hope that if we work together, we can find a solution to the cheating problem, without having to eliminate mort-run trivias altogether.
Elisa the urchin-no-more
Other ways of getting coupons include:
- flag hunts and recalltag, generally run impromptu
- other types of games, including trivias, casinos,
scavenger hunts, pkill tournaments. These are announced
on boards, LT, and/or the "events" command
- reporting bugs and typos, which makes you eligible for
our weekly drawing
- sending in articles to the LT
- purchasing them from other players
-LadyAce
Trivia, Casino, Scavenger hunts, pkill tournaments are almost exclusively run at or around 3pm Sunday US time. When is that for me? 6am Monday morning. 4am Monday morning in Australia, ranging back to some at least reasonable times in Europe. ok so I guess I do have a chance to take part in these, but its gotta be FAST before work. Actually trivia is an exception there, it used to be run at a time I could get to if I skipped the afternoon at work.
Reporting bugs and typos. I have done this for as long as I have played here. I have seen those bugs and typos make it into the code change list and I have yet to hear anything back about any of them. Bar the one with Will when he wouldn't allow non-human shapes to pass. Kaige actually consulted with me about that, then fixed it. Thats it period.
Sending articles to the LT is a way I guess, but I have yet to have anything I wish to say to the subscribers. Until I have something worthwhile to say, I personally will say nothing and I would never view posting to the LT as a prize inspired game.
Purchasing from other players is about the only way left now. That always presupposes you have the money to bid for the coupon, you will be online when someone is offering to sell one, and that no one else with more money will be bidding at the same time. ok so yes I have bought a couple of coupons in my time, but doesn't that destroy the point of having games for the fun of playing the game? We might as well have a coupon shop somewhere. After all, does having a string really hurt the game in any way? System overhead can't be THAT high for one string, and the machine is about to be upgraded......
I'll finish off by saying that I don't really need coupons. I have 6 in my inv at the moment that I have no idea what to do with. BTW, I would welcome suggestions.... I am merely pointing out things as I see them when it comes to getting coupons. I am merely saying I earnt 15 in 4 months when I wasn't working and could play in the evening US time. I earnt 4 tokens in the following 9 months when I could no longer play at those times. -shrug- There HAS to be something wrong there.
Davien Holyoake.