Pegasus Fleet Forums

ELOA Experiment

One of the players on Harby discovered that her primary character had been deactivated (Before I was handed the Sim). I found this out when I added her remaining NPC to a JP. She logged in but couldn't reply to the post... had to notify us via email.

I'm going to try something. In the crew roster, I've created a "Player ELOA" department. Inactive characters can be moved from their original department into the ELOA Dept. without deactivating them.

It's not right, people join a sim, take up a choice role on the ship, and then sit there and do nothing. Sitting around wearing pips does not constitute participation. Simming involves a commitment, even if it's only FIVE minutes every other Day. Barring exceptional (emphasis on 'extraordinary') circumstances like hospital beds, prison, or exploring outer Mongolia, anyone can log in to answer a JP Tag.

Need to take an LOA? Cool. There are times when I need to. There are times when I need to pull out of a sim to get life under better control. But camping out in a choice role on the ship and dragging your feet isn't fair to Trek enthusiasts who would at least make minimal effort.

CO's, you might want to try this out. It's a less drastic step than inactivating player accounts.

- PSF

My SIMM has a couple of ways to respond to inactivity.
1) Rewards - every episode you participate in (I mean actually write a post for) you earn a service badge. Some players are up to 35 badges.
2) Bumps - if a player has not responded to a tag I log in and add Tag: [BUMP] as a reminder and a warning.
3) Puppet - if a player has ignored a bump for a week without contacting me, I take over their character to keep the story flow moving.
My players are aware of this and most of them are in regular contact with me anyway. I have had one person join recently. Spent a week going back and forward with emails trying to flesh a character out. Got accepted... never even logged into the site.

Interesting system, Ro' Matlh.

My current method for keeping posts moving along is NPCs.
If player characters become inactive, then a counterpart NPC continues the post.
I guess the football analogy is, if one player won't carry the ball down field, then another will.
I hope that people won't take offense to that. After all, that's what team players are for.

- PSF

I hope that you're taking into account what the person is on ELOA for. If a person must travel cross country or continent to a funeral or undergo a surgery and will have considerable downtime due to pain, that isn't camping or just taking up your space. Those are viable reasons. Open ended ELOAs are a pain in the butt- we've all had players who said two weeks and disappeared for a month or said that they don't know when they'll be back. That, honestly, is milking the system and it's not fair to anyone involved: you're right. Just be careful. The last thing you want to do is have someone report you for penalizing their character because they had to take three weeks in Cuetzalan with no internet to bury Tia Guadalupe. That won't go over well.

Indeed. Dropping a note to let everybody know is key. Vanishing without trace? Not so easy.

Oh, I know. Do you have house rules on your website stating what happens if a player does something like that? Strikes? If a player has no heed for your simm and does this constantly or bucks the rules, you really need to ask if they're good for your ship? It's very difficult to find players because gaming has taken a big hit in the past few years. A smaller dedicated crew can get you a lot further than a large one half manned by seats that are always empty.

OTouvelli,

Actually, I only need to offer the proverbial carrot, but I don't need the stick. I'm prolific enough of a writer that missions progress with or without participation. Initially, my pace was too fast for some people to keep pace, but hopefully I've improved in that area.

I encourage and welcome participation. Synergy of joint posts yields wonderful, unexpected twists and turns in side JPs and even missions. If people don't, then I understand that sometimes RL, writer's block, and fluctuating motivation limit participation.

I assertively move missions forward because I have participated in sim after sim after sim which poo'd out due to inactivity, particularly by CO's. Players put precious time and energy into their characters and stories. They don't deserve to be come casualties to inactivity. I'm sorry if my method might make people feel 'expendable' or irrelevant to missions. All I can say is, if I felt that way, I'd say to heck with sims and focus upon fan fictions.

That was a long answer to your question. In a nutshell, I don't need to use any penalty system to keep missions moving forward.

- PSF

The penalty system isn't there just to punish characters, it's to let them know what is considered wrong on your simm and and what will happen if they do it. Keeping momentum is a great thing- it really is- but if a bigger issue comes up such as harassment or breaking the fleet rules- do you punish arbitrarily and risk having it elevated to JAG because you 'were mean to them' and nowhere on your site is it listed that they cannot do certain things? Food for thought my friend.

Oh, issues other than ELOA? A bit of a topic shift, but okay. I've been fortunate with my own crews. I haven't had any who picked on other players. If there are misunderstandings, I encourage them to openly discuss them with the group in OOC threads. We're a team of peers who shouldn't feel afraid to openly voice opinions... differing opinions. It's not "being mean" because you have a differing opinion.

It's up to the CO to create a solid set of sim rules for known issues, and add new rules for unexpected or new dynamics. I personally witnessed very harsh and crude sexual overtures on other Sims in the past. So, when Harby was passed to me, I created both rules and profile options whereby players can specify if their characters are receptive to relationships or not. Has it worked? I'd say flawlessly, so far. Have I needed to steer other issues a different direction or create new standards? Oh yes.

Example: We have a holographic CE. If no practical limitations were established, you'd have an invincible superhero. At this point, his computer speed still allows him to multitask all over the ship. He can project communication holograms of himself wherever there's a Com projector. That's pretty darn powerful.

However, substantive holgrams or 'physical bodies'? That needed to be addressed. The ship can't instantly create and replace dozens or hundreds of invincible physical CEs on demand. I established a standard whereby each holodeck 'area' requires the equivalent of an auxiliary reactor to power substantive forms. And, except in the dedicated holosuite, only one substantive body can be projected by an emitter at a time.

Sooo, I raised concerns in OOC where they could be discussed, and we now have the standards clearly enumerated in our Wiki. Beyond that, I've clearly designed the ship computer to be largely unhackable by the CE as another game balancer. I even created a weapon to disable holograms through their incurable achilles heel. Was that picking on the CE? Not at all. It was to prevent game busting SHS.

There are functional mechanics, and there are relational ones. People have a right to not have their characters affected by other players in ways that they don't want. Rule of thumb, "Just say no." If all of us do not share that understanding as implicit, then something is wrong.

- PSF

It sounds like you've got it all figured out on your ship. I'm glad that you've got such an open working environment that there are so few troubles. Sadly, that's not the case on many ships. Congrats on your success thus far. I hope that it continues.