shooc_up | How's My Driving?

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How's My Driving?

This is a post where you can see how you're doing in the eyes of your fellow roleplayers. This can be how well you're playing your character, as well as playing in general.

We encourage you guys to take the opportunity to critique people in a legitimate environment. Make sure that when you give your critique, you really want to give someone a chance to improve or take a look at your perspective on things. This is a place to give and get evaluations on how you play your character.

Bashing people is completely unhelpful, mostly unproductive, and largely hurtful. We do not want people to feel uncomfortable in their own game. If you have an issue with someone, you let them know through pms or hmds, or you let us know. We know you guys are mature and reasonable and awesome people, so we'd like to see this reflected in the How's My Driving. Keep it classy.

1. You can post your character, their journal, and their canon in any way that suits you. ANONYMOUS COMMENTING IS TURNED ON.

2. Be open minded, no one is above learning to be better, not even the mods.

3. Give some constructive criticism! Do it in journal or anon if you feel more comfortable. Absolutely positively no bashing and being unhelpful. On the other hand, don't take crit as a clue to OMG LEAVE AND NEVAR COME BACK or reason it all away as character development without listening to it. Improving is a good thing!

4. It's up to you to let people know what you think. This is your chance to tell people what you think of how they're playing, Even if you don't know the series, you can tell a player how you view the character based on how you've played them and they can compare it to canon. This can be in the form of, "Post moaaaar~" or "We never finish plots! :<" or even "You do a good job at following HP canon!"

5. This is NOT MANDATORY. It is however, HIGHLY encouraged for everyone to participate in. Sometimes it's helpful to get input from people who have seen you in action, so try not to be afraid of it. You might hear good things as well!

6. You guys are full of love, feel free to say that you like someone's character. Just do it constructively, give reasons why you like the character, no just "I love your Muse and you're the best one ever!" Everyone has room for improvement.

7. Please don't spam. We love you, but there are plenty of other places for that!

8. There is a mod hmd for crit regarding us specifically and what we can do for you, and a general game hmd for anything from "Too many of you are whores and you don't use enough British slang" to "We want more crack events '^'". So this is for general stuff you'd like to see in the game from fellow players (without pointing fingers) as well as how you'd like to see the game improve how its run.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I just wanted everyone to know that, despite the slowness of the game, you're all doing a great job. The pace is much more casual and relaxed right now, but it makes me really happy to see people plurking and talking about it with such enthusiasm. Sorting Hat is very much my home game, I've never met such a friendly and inviting community! That might be because of the small nature, but I think SH always has a really cute vibe to it that makes it a comfortable sort of game.

I'm super happy to see people participating and enabling their friends and I think all of us combined have the ability to pick the game back up. SH 5EVERRRRRR basically.

SH is really canon heavy with Homestuck. Are there any plans to put a app ban to keep it from growing even more?

Sorry, I managed to miss this somehow!

Honestly? There haven't been any plans to, no. I can understand why it would probably get overwhelming, but at this point it doesn't seem like such a good idea to discourage any potential appers because it would be good to see more new people in the game.

I haven't seen any insular behaviour, though I'll admit I haven't played close attention. There's a lot of tagging around going on, particularly in logs.

I will keep an eye on it in the future, but for now I would prefer to see the game grow rather than restrain it further.

I'm hardly worried about how the current cast is handling the imbalance, just concerned that we appear to be a HomeStuck AU as much as a Harry Potter one due to the huge disparity. If you and the other mods have decided that this is fine for now, though, far be it for me to argue. I will say it makes the game less attractive to an outsider but if the enabling rate is higher than the odd app, then I'm sure you're correct.

And that's fine! I figured it would be best to clarify since in all honesty a single sentence makes it difficult to gauge your feelings on the manner. We've had issues with cliques before but it's good to know we've worked past it.

Most of the Homestucks here are here from before the big dwindle of muns in the game and most of them at least have one or two characters in the game. The theory is if we get more people in, they may bring more friends and characters.

As it is, we aren't getting a lot of outside interest in the game and it's not as if we can tell people to leave so the imbalance is already there and if it's discouraging, there's not a lot we can do. So far we have one homestuck reserve and one MCU reserve and only one of them I'm certain has been enabled in.

We do intend on doing ATP this months in the hope of attracting more people, at the very least!

I'd kind of appreciate it if a mod didn't read things from a "She's not in the Homestuck cast" perspective and assume I was complaining about things I didn't mention. Even if it is only one sentence, I only meant what was said in the one sentence. Your reply lead to another person jumping on the 'she must be complaining about the cast' bandwagon and I'd rather not make every comment I have a page long to cover all contingencies with the understanding that I have to because people will want to read into things.

And honestly, I'm rather surprised at not having a mod respond at all to the anon comment. Thanks for letting me handle what you started on my own.

If there is any criticism I can give the Homestuck cast, you and anon have just created it. It shouldn't be 'us and them' since we're in the same game but apparently I was wrong.

In all honesty, if you want your intentions to be clear it's important that you make them clear yourself. As I said, we've had issues in the game before in the past year I've played here and I would like to fully understand the issues before I consider capping a cast.

I would appreciate it if you didn't try to blame me when I'm trying to come from a helpful place. My thoughts were that there isn't an 'us' and 'them' and I wanted to be certain that you weren't feeling excluded and that there isn't an issue that needs to be dealt with. I refuse to feel as if I've caused a problem by trying to help and understand and if you have a problem with that, you're free to discuss it further or bring it up with another mod.

As for the anon, we've always allowed anonymous contributions as far as HMDs go, I don't see why I need to take the blame because someone has a second opinion. As far as it goes, it could be considered quite blunt but it is indeed a HMD and it is a place for discussion. As it is, it seems like you want to say your feelings on the matter and not participate in any sort of talk that might solve the issues here. I'm not a guard dog and I'm not here to bark at an anon for having a contrary opinion, if you felt the need for mod involvement there are many perfectly simple ways of contacting me and having me sort out an issue. From the way it looked, I thought you had it handled.

I'm afraid as it is, you're coming across as very entitled and very rude. I honestly don't know how I can help without digging a hole for myself and, apparently, my whole cast. I'm relatively new to modding and trying my best to help understand an issue, I would appreciate it if you treated me like a person and not as someone you can bully and shoulder blame onto. I'm sorry I couldn't help any further and I ask that you don't take my curiousity as some sort of offense.

Edited 2013-04-25 13:20 (UTC)

This is the game thread, not a personal HMD. They did not comment until you did and their points are taken from your reply, not my actual comment. They felt it necessary to make it personal and to also criticize a player who has nothing to do with my own observations. I understand you feeling it is fine for people to participate in a discussion but the aforementioned are not in any way constructive nor related to my inquiry. Whether you think I have it handled or not, your silence, as a mod, condones their behavior.

I am not mad, I am hurt. You're a mod. I'm supposed to be able to talk to you and the others without having to then defend myself all day. I asked that question a week ago and it's not until immediately after you reply with your assumption that the extra comment ensues. If I'm being entitled because I think a mod should at the very least point out that a comment is unfairly criticizing a player and doesn't address the topic, then I can admit to being surprised as well. I certainly don't mean to be rude and if I am coming across as such, I wholeheartedly apologize. I am succinct which lends itself to interpretation.

You're not a bad mod and I doubt you anticipated what your curiosity would result in from the anon. I waited all day for you to say something to them for their unwarranted, off-topic assumptions but you never did and it was very much like you had their back. I don't have a way of seeing that you think it's been adequately handled. I just see two people accusing me of thinking one way and me trying to set them both straight.

This has certainly been a learning experience for me. You have already adequately explained how the mods feel about canon imbalance at this point in the game's regrowth which was my only concern when I commented. I'm going to need time to think on the new concerns that these conversations have brought to light.

Thank you.

As you've already observed, this conversation has gone far off topic already, so I'm going to make this my final reply. If there's something else you'd like to discuss, you're free to bring it up in private to Fiona, James or myself. I also ask that you don't take this as an official opinion presented by the homestuck cast. It was meant as a discussion.

As for the anon, I don't necessarily condone how blunt the comment was but as we've realised, the initial comment was easily misconstrued. It's also worth noting that you did not post yourself on the HMD, which in turn makes it seem as if you are willing to scrutinise other casts but not receive any observations for yourself. I am a mod and you can talk to me and ask me for help, but I don't work on intuition. If you had an issue, you could have asked me during the apparent day you were waiting instead of hoping that I'd step in for you. It's my job to help, but it's not my job to blindly defend you when you've stepped up to the plate. It's anyone's right to disagree with you. Even reading over it now, I cannot seem to understand what it is that has offended you so terribly, as such I did not feel there was a great need to intervene.

Returning to the initial point, I will reiterate that a canon cap isn't what the game needs right now but that it will be something we consider once the pace of the game picks up. I'm sorry that you're leaving this discussion with more concerns but I would prefer that we continue to discuss them privately, should you feel the need to.

In all honesty, I think this is an unfair thing to say. I mean, most of the Homestuck cast in SH play multiple characters that aren't Homestuck as well. Putting an app ban isn't going to make things better because at the moment we're not exactly getting a heap of other series apps. It's not the fandom's fault that Homestuck is popular and that it has a ton of characters to choose from. You also have to admit that the majority of the Homestuck cast in SH is active so I'm not seeing the problem here in terms of keeping the game going... If perhaps they were constantly apping in and not taking part, then it would be a nuisance. However, as it is they're apping and they're staying mostly active. It's not their fault other canon players won't app in or be active. In fact, I've noticed they do plenty of posts in an attempt to incorporate other cast players to form CR with them.

Looking at the journal comm, I also noticed there were a series of other canon character posts that have garnered just as much responses as Homestucks - are you sure you're not just feeling jilted that your own journals were primarily responded to by the John mun? Continuing with that, I must admit it's difficult to tag with you OR said mun when neither of you seem that interested in tagging out of your Sherlock cast of 2. This isn't me trying to get into a pissing contest with you, I'm just finding it silly to assume that banning more Homestuck players from joining in is going to help with adjusting the canon balances in the game.

There's also the fact that the Homestuck players aren't being clique-y - the majority of them have extensive cross-canon CR. For example, we have Rhys Rhydderch who just recently made the post directed to all of the Ravenclaw students, which I notice you took part in. The Homestuck posts on the current first page of the journal comm are all open to general cast rather than being filtered. The majority of the posts on the logs comm are also open to general players, several of them being party threads and the like.

We can't force people to join with specific characters - it's not their fault that they're interested in Homestuck or not. We can only promote the game and try to be open to other people and their canon choices. If you're finding the balance that irritating, perhaps you should try suggesting to some of your friends currently not in the game to app in, because placing an app ban on a game that currently only has 24 players is a bit extreme, especially when said people are already have multiple characters.

I have absolutely nothing against the current Homestuck cast. I notice a lot of the time there is favoritism shown in who they reply to but that's every player's prerogative--they and everyone else can play however they want to and it's hardly a defining feature of any one canon but rather just the way cast-mates generally work. I just know in the past, if I wanted to join a game but it was primarily one canon, I shirked away from it. If you don't know beforehand that a game is played with balance, the statistics are scary and it's the statistics which are readily available and offered to applying players. I would not join this game if I were looking to right now if I saw just how many Homestuck characters there are vs other canons. It would be daunting if it were any canon, our just happens to be Homestuck. Watching it grow even bigger makes me worry we come across as a Homestuck AU rather than as a Harry Potter AU. That's great for people who want to play from Homestuck but could turn others away.

Anyway, no, hardly jilted feelings. I'm actually surprised by the comment that you think most replies to my posts have been from John's player. Event posts are heavily weighted that way but that's because we've plotted something together. For everything else, I actually get a varied response. I haven't had any problems playing with the overall community in the slightest. I really was honestly just commenting on the fact that we have a huge imbalance and wondering if there were going to be any measures taken to limiting its further growth rather than having it continue to expand. For a game that's trying to grow, huge imbalances don't really help in the long run and are much harder to correct once you have one.

Right now I very much feel... not so connected to other players because the number of us who don't play at least one Homestuck character is very small. There is a sense of not belonging which your reply sort of reinforces. I'm not one of you and so apparently my comment on the game's canon imbalance becomes a statement of being against the HomeStuck cast. I never wrote a single word about 'cliques' or things being 'unfair'. I simply said the cast was extremely large. I never said we should have less HomeStuck players, just that it might be good to not get too many more.

I'm not really sure how you came to infer so much from one sentence. Hopefully I've corrected your assumptions, though. Maybe next time, don't go Anon. I'm not ashamed of my opinions. If I were, I wouldn't share them. I'd appreciate the same level of respect.