State of the Queue 2018

[Cephrir]

1) What type of information do you expect to know about a Large Social Game before you dedicate months of your life to playing it?
2) How do you feel about the balance of Survivor games to Non-Survivor games?
3) If you haven't modded a Survivor game, what barriers are stopping you from doing so? If you have, what is stopping you from modding again?

1) Twist level. I may be willing to play any level, but I really want to know what I'm getting into, and I'm probably less likely to play higher-twist games unless I really like the theme. Also, number of players, mods, and theme, obviously.

2) I think the flat number of Survivor games is decent -- ideally there should be one going on at any given time and more if demand warrants it. If there is demand for other stuff, great, run it, I don't care. Realistically I am here for Survivor and maybe Big Brother and anything else I'm going to play rarely and not take seriously.

3) I don't make a secret of the fact that I haven't modded since Bands because I was put off and hurt by the volume and intensity of criticism it received. As players and spectators, we need to be more mindful of how much we abuse people who spend their free time and energy to try to put together something positive and fun for us; if anything, this problem seems to have gotten worse since early 2016. The mods may not be perfect, but they are trying. I have done my best to put this into the world as a player and spectator since then. I am hesitantly returning to the mod scene with carefully selected co-mods and possibly caveats about how players are allowed to contact me.

[MattP]

Agree with cephs #3

[Cephrir]

I'm in favor of a scale or a subjective rating by the LSG mods for twist level (it would help these subjective ratings to be more reasonably related to expectations if they were always being made by the same person/people).

[animorpherv1]

We already have a LSG mod watching every game - it would make sense for that mod to do the scaling as well.

[xRECKONERx]

Yeah, the idea would be this is on the LSG listmod in charge to assign a scale rating so that the mods themselves don't have to add an additional headache into the mess.

[hiplop]

Don't like that. Mod of game should be like "I think it's this". Listmod can agree disagree.

[grumpy]

The listmod should serve as the liaison between mods and players. Handling the twisto scale (what I’m calling it) and point of criticism for afterwards should be their main duties. That way mods aren’t turned off by overwhelming/unjust criticism but also players know the kind of game they’re getting into/degree of criticism inducing twists to expect. It all comes down to the listmod

[Cephrir]

Mod of game should be like "I think it's this". Listmod can agree disagree.

Well that's how we get [every game where the mod thinks it's low twist and it's not, which is virtually every recent one].

[hiplop]

tru

[BROseidon]

The whole reason to have an explicit set of standards is to have everyone on the same page about definitions so that we don't have that exact problem.

"Leave it to people's judgment," even if it's the same people every time, leads to people ultimately complaining because it didn't match what they thought. We should give everyone the same rubric to work off of.

[Aronis]

1) What type of information do you expect to know about a Large Social Game before you dedicate months of your life to playing it?
Maybe like the game's focus? I.E. in this game challenge performance is going to be a big impact or there's going to be a heavy amount of items or w/e
Then also like rate how twist heavy the game is on a scale of 0 to 10 with 1-2 being the equivalent to the early TV show survivor seasons and 9-10 being your games more like arkham.

2) How do you feel about the balance of Survivor games to Non-Survivor games?
It seems fine to me

3) If you haven't modded a Survivor game, what barriers are stopping you from doing so? If you have, what is stopping you from modding again?
Laziness, lack of ideas, not sure if i have enough time, etc.

[Vijarada]

1) I don't care how twisty a game is, I'll join it anyway. I just want the following. 1: what format the game is like is it survivor?. 2: your answer to 1 has to not be a lie. 3: if you're gonna tell me how twisty the game is that has to also not be a lie for example a game with dead players voting and asymmetric tribes being listed as "super hard new players beware" while a game with dead players and 15 auction items being listed as "super easy for new players" is probably bad but obviously this has been gone through before.

2) Survivor is a good game, everything else is way worse but I'll probably join whatever I have the time to join. But survivor is better and I would rather it be prioritised. If there's a survivor game on offer and I'm not in another country or anything, it's likely I'll join!

3) The only important MS thing i ever moderated i made a massive mod error and it had to be abandoned so I'd rather not. IDK, I've considered contacting ppl and comodding games or w/e but I know I'd be a burden and fuck it up.

[PrivateI]

1) What type of information do you expect to know about a Large Social Game before you dedicate months of your life to playing it?

I'm usually down for whatever, but I like good/fun themes, and knowing that the mods are well-experienced. Twists and the like are fine, but I don't think, in general, there's a huge demand for "Survivor, but done completely different", but rather, people want to play games! I understand full well the urge to put your own "spin" on it (and some could note that it's hypocritical of me to say this in the first place), but I think twists should be the cherry on top to keep things somewhat fresh, instead of the centerpiece that everything else is built around.

2) How do you feel about the balance of Survivor games to Non-Survivor games?

We always need more Big Brother games. I think getting non-Survivor games to actually take place offsite will be a big step forward, and will open up the floodgates of possibilities. A game like The Challenge taking place anonymously would be a ton of fun, and, frankly, would add an element that's currently missing.

3) If you haven't modded a Survivor game, what barriers are stopping you from doing so? If you have, what is stopping you from modding again?

My pirate ship hasn't come in yet.

Also, if you want to help out with modding a Big Brother game, hmu.

[Chevre]

ego for when i get home

[Chevre]

I guess the only thing I had to say was a response to Question #3, and it's a statement I've said before: Modding here has just changed so massively since the last time I did it. I mean, that game was ran solely on the forums and

quicktopics

. The biggest roadblock is figuring out forums and graphics and I just feel like there's nothing that really fairly presents the scope and breaks down step by step what needs to be done to run a game.

[xofelf]

I guess the only thing I had to say was a response to Question #3, and it's a statement I've said before: Modding here has just changed so massively since the last time I did it. I mean, that game was ran solely on the forums and

quicktopics

. The biggest roadblock is figuring out forums and graphics and I just feel like there's nothing that really fairly presents the scope and breaks down step by step what needs to be done to run a game.

There is a step by step forum guide being made which will be public knowledge once it is finished. Do you think there should be an updated version of Xalxe's old how to mod a game guide?

[Chevre]

Probably wouldn't hurt!

Also I didn't realize that was in the process of being made. I await it.

[racefan12]

1) What type of information do you expect to know about a Large Social Game before you dedicate months of your life to playing it?

It basically just comes down to whether or not it's going to be fun. Of course, the problem with that is that it's impossible to come up with a definition of "fun" that multiple people are going to agree with. I guess what I really want to know is, what makes your game unique (like the stamina system in Medevac/One World or Magic Kingdom being non-anon). I realize some mods want their unique twist ideas to be a secret, but I still think that the existence of unique twists/features should be disclosed, along with enough information to give players an idea of what to expect without spoiling everything.

2) How do you feel about the balance of Survivor games to Non-Survivor games?

It really comes down to what there is demand for. I'd love to see more non-Survivor games, but not if no one's gonna play them. I never would have known of the existence of The Challenge if not for this forum, and I always love seeing things I've never seen before.

3) If you haven't modded a Survivor game, what barriers are stopping you from doing so? If you have, what is stopping you from modding again?

Lack of time (like I'm pretty sure the only reason Pirate Master isn't running now is because I can't assist with actually running a game until May). I'm also bad with actually coming up with ideas and designing stuff. But from working with Xalxe and Monty, I seem to be pretty good as the guy to bounce stuff off and analyze what could work or what could go wrong. And numbers, because apparently numbers are hard.

[BROseidon]

Okay but would people actually play Solitary though?

[Vijarada]

is solitary a social game? because while our games do all emulate reality tv shows, they don't have to, and that's not what defines the lsg queue.

[xofelf]

There was an attempt once. But I think it's much more of a Mish Mash game than LSG which is why it's in Sens-O-Tape and not the Social Games Archive.

[D3f3nd3r]

Okay but would people actually play Solitary though?

It’s MS. People will play, people will most definitely play.

[BROseidon]

is solitary a social game? because while our games do all emulate reality tv shows, they don't have to, and that's not what defines the lsg queue.

The joke is that it's very much

not

a social game. Like that's kind of the whole point.

[animorpherv1]

I've taken a look at Solitary, and it seems interesting. I would consider.

[Bellaphant]

I also think people (me) are out off by modding because it feels like an unknown. Basic game design - fine, but it's hard to know how much...technical skill is needed to create a survivor forum that works - things like graphics all the way down to 'can I confidently change permissions at a tribe swap'.

Also, challenge design. Overall, the standard has been really high, which is intimidating. In terms of enjoyment, I think PSV challenges are the ones I remember most fondly , being a really wide mix of skills - botb also had some lovely collaborative ones in there, although the problem with subjective tasks is there. But that also supports what I've seen recently - a game I modded would have waaaay less flash games and way more 'design a flag', 'solve a murder mystery ' type challenges.

Choosing things as a mod that seem 'cool' sometimes hasnt translated to actaul game play, nor has rewarding skills that you as a mod are personally invested in. I think that's why a clear scale of twistiness would be useful, or even clear information about game focus. People went into medevac two with very clear expectations and this didnt hurt the game. There's also a difference between 'a lot of changes' and 'significant' changes - regular tribe swaps or shake ups have less impact than 'vengeful ghosts'.

I think the last year also showed a few of us euros that playing is getting harder. It's an awkward one because we are a fairly significant number, but not enough to run a game for