Planned Changes: Newbie Game Deadlines

[AnonymousGhost]

Following this.

Haven't played in any newbie games recently, but here are my thoughts regarding the deadline differences between Queues:

Newbie games serve as an introduction and after a player has made the introduction, then going into other Queues (which would presumably retain their 14 day deadline) wouldn't be as much of a culture shock.

[AnonymousGhost]

They're not going to jump the rest of the way up. They are the site's future moderators. They'll be the ones running 7 day games. If you're looking to cater to them you might as well just go all the way to blitz deadlines.

Not to point out the obvious, but... The newbies that stick around, and

I mean stick around for the years to come

, will age and become the adults we are now with busy lives, jobs, families, college, and whatnot - if they're not doing it already.

[AnonymousGhost]

To be fair (if the above point is true), MS games can go at a faster pace but only if multiple people are engaged at a time. It's just the time between those engagement moments are the ones that make people perceive the game as dragging on.

[AnonymousGhost]

Should the SEs and ICs have a different prod timer length than the newbies in the Newbie Queue? If there's a problem in SEs and ICs flaking (and that's an 'if' I'm not sure about), then implement something like mhsmith suggested:

Queue bans.

Replace out as an SE without good reason and yiure queue banned for 2 months
Do it again, 4
Etc.

Maybe start at 1 instead of 2 idk, maybe give a single free pass

But the SE replace out rate is awful and a terrible example to set for newbies, and is in partuclar a thing which deserves attention.

[AnonymousGhost]

The problem with long deadlines isn't that you get bored waiting for day to end. It's that you get bored waiting for other people to post. Shorter deadlines won't make people post more content; it'll just give them fewer opportunities.

I agree with this analysis.

[AnonymousGhost]

It's probably with noting that everything seems to be dragging around here from game activity to the amount of time it takes for some games to fill compared to others.

I don't think that having a BaM Ruleset with no prods and no replacements will turn out to be a good thing for the game. Rather, I would suggest a punishment - maybe a temporary ban from signing up for another game - but then I remember that it's been mentioned that those types of players really could care less about the punishment if they're going to flake. Honestly the BaM rule of mod killing an hollow spot just punishes the rest of the players - consider the situation where it's a town PR - and the time that that role/slot could go without posting is too long. The players might just lynch it if that slot can get away with not posting for that absurd amount of time.

So, I'm in favor of not having a BaM rule or rule set being implemented as the whole way it could operate has the potential to ruin the game for the players. Keep the prods and the replacements and I do like the suggestion of having a replacement queue.

[AnonymousGhost]

Turning the Night into an instant one would be an interesting change to implement, but I'm skeptical whether or not it'll have a postitive change on the rate of posting. Night play is separate from day play, so it might not be as clear a cut of a cause and effect reaction like we're thinking might happen.

If newbies want games that instantly start could it be possible that we offer them marathon games? Or something like it? If the goal is to only have them stick around, then this could be a possible solution (maybe not the best, now that I think about it though).

The deadline obsession has less to do with deadlines and seems more like a hammer trying to fix the wrench shaped activity problem. In other words, it sort of works but it's not really getting to the root of the problem (lack of activity). Prods and replacements help solve the root problem, but I don't think they're quite as effective as they should be sometimes.

Right now posting activity seems to be extremes - pages are either be churned out or the thread is dead silent, there is no happy medium anymore. I think that if we gain back that balance, it could lead to an improvement. Where? That I'm not sure.

[AnonymousGhost]

Reviving this:

Are we still having roughly the same newbie dissatisfaction with the new day lengths now, then compared to the amount of newbie dissatisfaction before the deadlines were reduced?