Planned Changes: Newbie Game Deadlines

[Micc]

/support

Gotta give the newer generation of players what they want. If you’re not consistently breeding new young talent, then you’re growing older and falling behind the competition.

[Micc]

Its funny how we have threads upon threads talking about how the site is dying but whenever a change gets proposed there is so much resistance . If this is what the new generation of players want (penguin's surveys and my personal experience seem to say it is) then its in the site's best interest to cater to that. If your not actively getting younger then you're getting older and slowly falling behind the times. This fact remains true whether you're a professional sports team, a fortune 500 company, or a forum mafia community.

Don't be the grumpy old dinosaur that falls behind the times.

predit: yeah what reck said.

[Micc]

I think this discussion has raised awareness that there is a demand for games with deadlines in the 4-7 day range. There's already one game in the Micro queue being advertised as having 7 day deadlines. Give moderators some time to adapt to this newfound demand and I think you'll start to see a larger variety of deadlines being used. Site meta seemed to respond pretty well to the differing opinions about non-hydra games and I can't see why this would be any different.

[Micc]

I've moderated a couple games under this new format, was the backup mod for Zito's game and, am modding a few games that are currently ongoing.

The 30 hours prod timer does feel obnoxious at times. I get a lot of "wow I didn't realize it had been that long" responses to the prods I send out. I think the pattern of a player posting in the morning and then not making it onsite until the evening the following day happens quite often - and by then its already been more than 30 hours. I'm at the point were I feel pretty strongly that 36 hours is a better fit than 30.

I do think keeping the pace of the game quick is important, and agree with Zito's opinion that replacements and night phases significantly hurt the pace of the game. I've been experimenting with a policy where I'll end the night phase early if all players PM me. I've found that as long as there's more than 4 players in the game someone's either forgetting to PM me or doesn't want night to end early. Zito's 2b is similar to an idea I posted about in the Newbie Discussion Group at one point but it never went any further. I think its a decent idea that's probably worth hashing out in more detail. Becoming less deadline obsessive is a site meta shift that I'd like to see too, but that's something that's pretty hard to just set in motion.