Let's Discuss the Hyperpost Meta

[DkKoba]

Yes, *I* am here to talk about hyperposting.

After a loss in a recent game where several players lost motivation - I have realized something. That game had *multiple* players post *hundreds* of posts throughout the game, myself included.


This kind of meta is what alienates people who do not have time to keep up with threads or play constantly, and can even ruin games.


I did post some tips on how to keep up from my experience replacing into very post count heavy games which I will quote here:

re: people talking about not being able to keep up as town :

try to just focus on the recent activity strictly and then go from there. i myself did this when replacing in, and then referenced the content i missed over time when needed by doing ISO searches.

you dont need the whole game, you just need the meaty part of the conversations.
at worst, if you say something that is wrong/out of date, they can correct you and you'll be able to have a specfic area to reread to update yourself.

If everyone did this, it would make players who struggle to keep up help raise the overall townplay.

tl;dr: use the iso tool and only read recent stuff to stay at least somewhat relevant. it also helps when youre town to show you are trying to stay engaged and are helping contribute to a solve. if you have a part wrong because you didnt read it, another player in the game can always quote you and correct you.


that being said, there should be a tool to only see posts where people quoted you. that would be cool.


I have been doing this in games i replace into that have significant content and it's worked well (i was 2/3 correct on scum most of the game and even reached a proper PoE at the end without ever reading much of day 1)

Highly recommended.

(On top of this, if it is a mechanics heavy game, reading the OP and catching up on mechanics after you've had time to

townslip

get acquainted in thread is also a good idea.



Now, onto actual solutions:

I think that it is time that games start instituting post caps, particularly Normal and Newbie game. Not quite a geriatric post cap - but not allow a player to post several hundred times within 1 dayphase.

I'm making this thread as an open discussion on this topic as I think it is an important part of current meta that is causing players to not want to play/reducing the quality of games.

[DkKoba]

Relevant thread: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=72279&hilit=hyperposting

I actually cannot believe that thread was made back in 2017. I thought it was more recent.

even that thread reached 1k posts.. incredible.

[DkKoba]

I think that maybe there should be a Post Cap where each player is only allowed 25 posts per Real Life Day.

This is something I was thinking myself, I want to clear it with Implosion but the next game I play in the Normal queue I would like to potentially try out a post cap that is higher than geriatric, but still makes it difficult to hyper post.


In my experience on Epicmafia forum games, where we are probably some of the most egregious hyper posters due to our chat mafia history, just the existence of a post cap was a psychological barrier enough to force players to think about what they're posting and how much they are posting. The cap would be set to what the average post count of previous games were and we still saw a reduction in posts.



I think I'd like a per-IRL day and a per-game phase post cap combined, with restrictions lifted somewhere between 24-48 hours before deadline.

[DkKoba]

I've tried some experimental rules to curb this, and I wouldn't say they've been super successful. I think a general discouragement from triple-or-more-posting in a row does in fact decrease that behavior and helps some. One suggestion I got from a post-game survey ran along the lines of giving a posting cooldown if a player had twice the median number of posts. That sounds like it could work well, but I haven't tried it in practice.

Due to the long deadline meta we have as well, something very dynamic has to be developed to curb some players.


The main issue is to not spawn 20 pages within 3 IRL days of the game starting, for instance.


I think it will do well for players if day 1 has significantly less posts allowed than currently is possible due to the low info nature of the day for instance.

Currently I am thinking of these restriction options:

Multiple hardcaps meant to pace posts from players:

1. You may not post more than twice in a row within a half hour period. This is also lifted when another player posts after you.

2. You may only post 10-20 times per IRL day

3. You may only post 250 posts total per day phase. (adjusted for how many IRL days the day phase is)

4. You have unlimited naked vote changes(within reason), that is not to be used to communicate once you have reached your cap.

5. These restrictions are lifted 36 hours before deadline.


Alternatively, a post "soft cap". If you are reaching high post levels, you become restricted.

1. If you reach 100 posts within the dayphase, you will acquire a post restriction.

2. You will only be able to post 5-10 times per IRL day until it is close to deadline.

3. You have unlimited naked vote changes(within reason), that is not to be used to communicate once you have reached your cap.

4. These restrictions are lifted 48 hours before deadline.


Something like this is a good place to start IMHO and will go a long way towards making the game more welcome for those a little busier in their lives and unable to read pages and pages of games.

[DkKoba]

I really think at minimum just a (even if its really high) post cap is psychologically enough to stop people from just straight up posting constantly in the case of players like myself, bell, etc.

[DkKoba]

like, people seem to be skipping over the idea of like that player asking people to calm down or just "hey all yall post too much, I can't keep up" like, I know in games when people are struggling to keep up that's where I'll try and help them like "hey tell me your reads, lets go from there" but like I think I've only been ask once to post less.

You may be right; it's possible that the problem lies in part with the people who just assume they won't be able to follow everything and then don't even try. But then again, I'm sure there are people who want to actually be able to read all the posts in the game, and these strategies won't help. I guess that's another group that we'd want to hear input from-- the supposed people who have trouble keeping up. I guess those are less likely to be the kinds of people who frequent MD, so that might be trickier.

idk, maybe I just shouldn't have posted here. oops. I mean if non hyperposters ever want to give me tips, I'm always down to listen!!

No, you're absolutely fine This is MD, we are brainstorming, I appreciate hearing your viewpoint even though I disagree with some things.

Hearing about how this has gone on MU is pretty valuable. It sounds like the posting caps aren't really an effective deterrent there. Is it because they are used in all games? Or is it because people want to play games badly enough that they will endure (and/or try to find a way around) the caps?

I believe it is moreso because of the way 48 hour deadlines work vs 7 day ones. People tend to crash in and start hyperposting within the last few hours of the deadline and also exhaust their postcap early on, since the postcap tends to be lifted before deadline, so typically they get to reach double the postcap in a dayphase - however, trust me, it would be even worse without the postcaps xD

[DkKoba]

with the MU thing, andante was strictly referencing our subcommunity we have there for epicmafia where we host multiple games a year at least and we always have a postcap because several people end up managing to 300 post within 48 hours somehow without one.

we all collectively agreed we dont want games to reach 5k posts on day 1, which happened on the main site before it got taken down, so we had post caps in all our games and it's managed to curb d1 by quite a bit.

[DkKoba]

Just to throw a comment in about the MU post cap games: the one game I played (with both Koba and Andante) was absolutely impossible to keep up with. The 150 post cap was honestly too little to stop some posters. I don't think I was able to read over two fifths of the posts and even the posts I read I did not feel like I was actually reading but really just skimming. MS definitely has a "problem" with hyperposting, but it is nowhere near as bad as it is on somewhere like MU or my former homesite. I think the important thing to keep in mind with hyperposting is that we have long deadlines. That means you can take things a little slower, let the thread breathe more, etc.

that game was a large with 16? players and most people average 100 posts so 1600 posts were expected minimum in phase 1

our large games reach similar numbers on day 1, just spread out across a longer time, because of the longer deadlines.

[DkKoba]

Actually why do i lie.
I don’t even read wallposts. I just pretend that i do!

We know

[DkKoba]

Collective caps btw create an extreme strategic power that doesn't typically exist where increasing your post count simultaneously increases your thread presence and collectively decrease everyone else's and that also applies to things like two players thunderdoming increasing that weight in the thread and probably rewards people for monopolizing thread presence in a way that does the opposite of fix the problem.

Can confirm andante and i did this in a game peta modded on epicmafia. We did anything to reach global post cap