Post by Shinn Hirazawa on May 13, 2016 13:25:27 GMT -5
Well... I do agree that inactivity penalty would make people think twice whether they should return or not. I myself had thought of it several time due to my busy schedule (now I got myself landed in hospital for surgery, yeah me! And sorry tova, for that incomplete post as well as not posting with your other shini
So yes, I agree for that gp penalty to be abolish c:
Shinn Hirazawa | What will you choose? Life or Death? Talking: "Hi." - #ff6603 Thought: 'Tall Bastard!' - #ff6603 Zanpakuto: "Ho~" - #008000
Post by Consequence on May 19, 2016 13:32:26 GMT -5
So I am still struggling with aspects of this. I have a lot of people who like GP, telling me they want to keep their GP in the event they ever go inactive. This is (I hope obviously) a questionable source to base policy on. While I highly value input and opinion, it simply must be taken with the proper seasoning in order to make sense for the site.
On one hand, it sits very morally wrong to me to allow for flippant attendance with no consequences. You can say until you're blue in the face that incomplete threads hurt milestones and masteries and rank-up requests, but the fact of the matter is that can be written around or written over. I could just not include the thread in my own request and you would never know, so if I were willing to do my diligence, there would be no systemic action against me at all.
And we can deny people GP for not finishing threads but I thought we were rallying against losing work? In an obvious scenario, if two people did 95% of a thread that was worth 120GP each, then inactivity happens, are we okay costing that person 120GP? Doesn't make sense in the context of the other complaint.
Someone in staff chat suggested a 're-establishment' time, wherein you couldn't make any requests for 30 or 60 days after a period that counted as Inactivity. While not bad, it strikes me as slightly arbitrary. You can prep your request and do some editing and then keep on threading with no problems and just wait out the timer - there's no cost but a brief wait. And what if you were nowhere near making a Request anyway?
There are obvious social implications which certainly cannot be ignored. If you burn me or I burn you it's pretty likely you'll remember and we won't thread again, so people who violate this trust paint themselves into a corner. The community has a degree of "self-policing" for things like this that, while unofficial, are usually effective.
Someone threw out that if you cause a thread to go inactive you cannot include it in ANY request until it's been completed. This is one I like a bit more, but it still violates the tenet of "Not losing work". And this one has the potential to be pretty harsh in some cases.
There's very clearly no perfect answer here, at least to me. I've been thinking about this a long time and a better answer has never occurred to me.
Is a penalty that can be erased by finishing the thread really so awful?
Post by Jian Oreachi on May 19, 2016 13:36:40 GMT -5
If someone in good faith attempts to complete a thread but their partner has either moved on or lost desire due to the absence, is that enough to waive such penalties? is the other person then on the hook to finish the long standing thread or face penalties? Those are my concerns with finishing a thread being a complicated way of making penalties more palatable.
Post by Consequence on May 19, 2016 13:46:49 GMT -5
That was the problem before (essentially). So, no.
If the above were the case, there were a lot of social pressures to waive that so the other person would not lose GP. Like, if a new player dropped inactive from school but then came back. And wanted to waive your penalty together. With the power to say "no' and potentially make that person leave the site, you are pretty likely to say yes.
Essentially what "Works" and what is "Fair" is when the following two conditions are met.
1) There is a clear path for the person who goes inactive to recover the thread, and their GP. 2) There are mechanisms to protect people "bullying" to get their GP back, such as through peer pressure.
This is my experience of working within the system. I am super open to outside perspective.
Probably horrible idea, but here's this. If a person goes inactive, but wants to keep their gp, then if they claim from the thread, they can only get half of the gp earned, rounded down in the case of odd numbers. If they manage to finish it, they can get the full value.
That way, it's not as arbitrary and unfair as a flat deduction. If you went inactive before with like a four post thread where you only manage to earn 16 gp, you then came back to -34 gp. Now, you only lose 8. Which is more fair because you can afford to pay it. No pressure to make anyone finish a thread or waive a penalty unless you really want to finish the thread, and the slowing of your story's progress from ditching threads is represented both officially and unofficially.
Edit: Just to be absolutely clear, in my idea, you can NOT ask someone to waive the penalty. Only finish the thread. If you left because of legitimate reasons like school, then I doubt you'll have any pushback to picking back up. But if you just dropped out of the site for no reason, then it seems like you didn't want to finish the thread anyhow.
Post by Consequence on May 19, 2016 13:54:46 GMT -5
The proposed system put forth by Shun and the discussion is: either I close the thread and claim it, with you getting none. Or I leave it open and we both finish it together, both getting full GP.
Last Edit: May 19, 2016 13:55:16 GMT -5 by Consequence
I apologize. I misread and thought the system was still being molded and not yet in the final stages. With the above proposed system, I'm in favor of it. Then the decision really lies with the person who went inactive, rather than the person who got snubbed. If the person who went inactive doesn't want to finish the thread, then they are taking away their own chance at that gp.
I've refrained from hopping in on this discussion for what I think are fairly obvious reasons (I'm not approved), but I think that, right now, what I have to say needs to be said.
You cannot please everyone.
No solution is perfect, and no system that we, or the Staff, come up with to "fix" the Inactivity problem is going to work exactly as intended. Sometimes, people are going to not get their way- sometimes they might even be (gasp) unhappy with what happens. And, to be quite honest, if people can't handle dealing with the consequences of their actions? Maybe they shouldn't be here.
Now, as for the topic at hand: In the current system outlined by Shun, why not just have the "I want to claim the GP even though the thread isn't over" rule apply to both people? Obviously, there would have to be exceptions (such as someone consistently going inactive for silly reasons and then coming back and trying to claim their unfinished threads), but, in my mind, allowing both parties to claim an unfinished thread in the case of Inactivity sounds fair to both parties, while also giving Staff the capacity to bring about proper consequences to those who make a habit of going Inactive for little to no reason.
What if the penalty only applies if the thread was abandoned so early in it's creation that it can't be used as evidence for a request? If a thread is two posts long and the active member doesn't have enough in it to use it as development then the inactive player gets penalized. If the inactive player left after the thread is 12 posts in and there's significant development then no penalty needed?
The proposed system put forth by Shun and the discussion is: either I close the thread and claim it, with you getting none. Or I leave it open and we both finish it together, both getting full GP.
Wait, wait. I'm slightly confused. How did we go from 'let's motivate inactive players to return by abolishing the -50 GP/ thread penalty' to 'if you went inactive you may have lost all of your unfinished topics' GP'?
Perhaps I'm missing something here..?
*Edit: 'May have' because depending on who you were threading with and how much they needed that GP from the inactive topic, they may have closed that topic?
Last Edit: May 19, 2016 14:17:15 GMT -5 by Kasumi Shinoda
Post by Shun Minamoto on May 19, 2016 14:21:10 GMT -5
The crux of your objection seems to be the following:
On one hand, it sits very morally wrong to me to allow for flippant attendance with no consequences.
This is a game. Our primary focus is getting and retaining players. Punishing them for their return doesn't make a whole lot of sense and goes directly against our greatest imperative as a community.
You re-address this below:
And we can deny people GP for not finishing threads but I thought we were rallying against losing work? In an obvious scenario, if two people did 95% of a thread that was worth 120GP each, then inactivity happens, are we okay costing that person 120GP? Doesn't make sense in the context of the other complaint.
This is something that gets viewed very differently. Before, you were holding up the GP I had and then going "I'm taking 200 of this."
Now, at worst, what happens is that you're not able to get paid for something you didn't finish only if the other player elects to outright close the thread themselves. People view these things very differently and, I imagine, will respond differently given that setup. To address the elephant in the room: Robert came back right after you publicly declared that this was happening. Coincidence? I think not. The result? One of our more successful players is posting again.
Post by Miyuki Wakahisa on May 19, 2016 14:55:51 GMT -5
The new setup is only winning because you set it up in a winning position.
What Shun is failing to mention the lost time and effort that people have to deal with when a thread goes inactive. What if you're working on Prestige and the core character in that decides to go AWOL? You wait for them, pushing your plans back in hoping they comeback. They don't. Suddenly, you have to bullshit your way through a plot and come up with a Plan B to hastily try and make due with the situation. All of that time, effort, and hair pulling all because someone didn't have in them the effort to write a quick "Hey, I'm not going to be posting much. Sorry!"
The crux of the problem with this entire issue regarding activity is no one wants to get fined. It's a reasonable thing to want to avoid. But there needs to be consequences for hurting someone, or potentially ruining what they have going. Going by this per thread thing is weird. What if the person never posted in the thread? What if they only posted twice and have like 10 GP in it? What if they posted a lot and have 500 GP in it? It's unbalanced and makes the weight of the penalty arbitrary.
You know what was nice? Knowing for a fact that it was just a flat 50 GP per thread. No questions asked. It can be waived if you finish the thread. Literally the exact same thing, but stream lined and doesn't make longer threads suddenly more valuable for the only reason of either "I have high WCs" or "We got really far in the thread".
We can change to this weird, backwards ass idea, but I PROMISE you a year from now we're going to be in the exact same boat for different reasons. The 50 GP was a very small fine, but could rack up if you were particularly shitty to a lot of people, and was easy to maintain.
Post by Shun Minamoto on May 19, 2016 15:09:16 GMT -5
This is a fundamental divide of "should we punish players for going inactive" versus "should we not do that". As I mentioned when I opened this thread, I understand where the former is coming from and why a flat 50 GP tax per thread left hanging is simple. It's impersonal. It's very much a matter of "This is the rule, let the government handle it from here" that some people really, really enjoy because of how easy it is.
However, I'm very firmly on the side of "no, never, under any circumstances". If someone bails on me and leaves me hanging with no direct contact, explanation, anything, when I'm waiting on them for important plans? I finish what we're doing and don't acknowledge that person again for a very, very long time. I ain't got time for that and I certainly don't have time to go around punishing our players as a matter of rule. They'll face their own consequences, as I just described.
I'm never, ever going to want to do that. It'll be up to Tokiyo to pick which road he prefers.
Last Edit: May 19, 2016 15:10:03 GMT -5 by Shun Minamoto
Post by Rania Fujikagi on May 19, 2016 15:18:19 GMT -5
ngl what you're proposing, Shun, works very well for YOU. Sure, you can easily work around it but not everyone is you and will react or handle the situation as such. Your response is so hinged in not punishing players that you forget there is already a player being punished in this process: the player that gets left hanging.
Perhaps, it is a good thing that a 50GP penalty is simple and impersonal.
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