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Bobbin Threadbare
Jan 2, 2009

I'm looking for a flock of urbanmechs.

Xander77 posted:

Quite the opposite - it's a bunch of technical jargon that means little to people who didn't play D&D. The smilies (used in moderation) both enliven the list and clarify what's good and what sucks. (I kinda wish JRPG or Dominions LPs did something like that)

I think literally clarifying which items are good and what they do would be more useful than smilies.

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Geemer
Nov 4, 2010



TooMuchAbstraction posted:

I'm trying to use emotes to elide the more boring parts of the travelogue. Using :flame: is more concise and interesting than saying "And then I activated the dragon scale mail again and burnt him to ash", at least in my opinion. Similarly, :black101: stands in for "and then we beat each other with sticks and I came out the victor".

I dunno. That might be too much abstraction. Your pieces will end up reading like the recent Mario games with the dialogue obviously intended for very young children.


Everyone knows who Luigi is, yet they still stick an emoticon in there. They do it for stars too. And in later games pretty much for everything and everyone. Soon there will be only emoticons.

Properly formatted text is more pleasant to read than a sea of emoticons. Of course, an emoticon here or there doesn't hurt. Just don't go so overboard. ;)

DWK
Sep 18, 2009

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Okay, I did go a bit overboard with the emotes during that loot list.

I'm trying to use emotes to elide the more boring parts of the travelogue. Using :flame: is more concise and interesting than saying "And then I activated the dragon scale mail again and burnt him to ash", at least in my opinion. Similarly, :black101: stands in for "and then we beat each other with sticks and I came out the victor".

I also want them for conveying emotion, because there's only so many ways I can say "This is great, we'll get good use out of it." I could probably stand to diversify my emote list though; :woop: is showing up a bit too often.



Emotes are a huge turn off for me. They just make your thread look like it was written by a teenage girl who's using MSN messenger for the first time rather than a Let's Play you want us to take seriously. Why not tell us what the potions do and then we know if they are good or bad. We're all adults here.

Fake edit: I was a teenage girl when Messenger was the "latest thing" in 1998/1999 so I know of what I speak and look back of those days with embarrassment.

Tevery Best
Oct 11, 2013

Hewlo Furriend
So hey. Since Xenocides had to call off his competitive Huge WWII Board Game thread, I figured I'd take my chances and try to start the project I've been thinking about for a long time now.

Beating Grey Hunter to Moscow: Let's Play No Retreat! The Russian Front

Watch out, it's quite long and links to a second post that is pretty much also a must-read to understand the game rules.

In short, it's a board game that I'd like to get a bunch of goons playing and bickering about. Some of them will be the Axis, others will be the Soviets, all of them will have some sort of a position in the command structure. Both sides will scheme (with the use of dedicated Google documents for the more secretive plans) and conduct their moves in the thread, with me basically moderating the thing and making sure they play by the rules.

Do you think this will be fun for everyone involved, or is it a vanity project most likely to crash and burn? Is the way I use and format images easily comprehensible? Did I explain the game rules clearly enough?

Thanks in advance for any comments and ideas.

Panzeh
Nov 27, 2006

"..The high ground"

Tevery Best posted:

Thanks in advance for any comments and ideas.

Now, I already knew NR! before I read your post, but I think it's laid out very well and gives a fairly good explanation of all the relevant mechanics.

Lotus Aura
Aug 16, 2009

KNEEL BEFORE THE WICKED KING!
So, on a non-emoticon related note got a bit of an issue regarding DS stuff.



See, the thing is there's some things that use both screens as a singular entity. Sometimes they'll act like that gap isn't there, but some other things will act like it is. In the cases where the gap is presumed to not be there, it's easy to ignore. But, for ones like this where the border is used it just looks a bit weird.



I can add the border in if need be, it doesn't take that much time anyway. The problem is that I think it might stretch things out a bit too much at double size, and I think that it looks kinda weird to just have a solid mass of colour in the middle too.



This is what it looks like double-sized and with the border added in for a visual reference.

unfair
Oct 6, 2012
I'm guessing if you're going to space them out like that it would be better to make the middle part transparent - that way when you post it on the forum it looks like two images properly spaced instead of one with a weird color block in the middle.

Lilli
Feb 21, 2011

Goodbye, my child.

Xander77 posted:

Quite the opposite - it's a bunch of technical jargon that means little to people who didn't play D&D. The smilies (used in moderation) both enliven the list and clarify what's good and what sucks. (I kinda wish JRPG or Dominions LPs did something like that)

Alright, let us know in thread when we aren't clarifying poo poo like this because Dominions is nothing if not god damned obtuse. We'll try to explain why poo poo is good or bad.

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe

DWK posted:

Emotes are a huge turn off for me. They just make your thread look like it was written by a teenage girl who's using MSN messenger for the first time rather than a Let's Play you want us to take seriously. Why not tell us what the potions do and then we know if they are good or bad. We're all adults here.

I did tell the thread what the potions do, in a previous update.

What I'm trying to avoid here is having the game just be giant walls of text with occasional interspersed screenshots. The problem is that as a roguelike game, there's not exactly a lot of scenery, and the game action is not remotely self explanatory. With most SSLPs, you have things like

(image)
One-liner describing what happened
(image)
(image)

For the Angband LP, it's more like

(image)

Paragraph of what happened

Paragraph explaining why this is significant

(image)

etc.

which is a pretty awful image:text ratio. Of course we're all adults and should be expected to be able to read arbitrary amounts of text without any pretty pictures to look at, but at the same time the emotes can help break things up and provide some visual variety, since I don't have a wide variety of screenshots to throw at the reader.

I suspect this is something that comes down to a matter of taste, though. Some people think emotes are dumb regardless of context, others just when they're overused, others like them all the time, etc. I'm trying to strike a reasonable compromise.

Dragonatrix posted:

So, on a non-emoticon related note got a bit of an issue regarding DS stuff.

That's a toughy. I'm inclined to say have the spacer bar in (because leaving it out just looks weird), but don't double-up the image size. If people have trouble reading things, then their browsers are equipped with a zoom function.

mandatory lesbian
Dec 18, 2012

DWK posted:

Emotes are a huge turn off for me. They just make your thread look like it was written by a teenage girl who's using MSN messenger for the first time rather than a Let's Play you want us to take seriously. Why not tell us what the potions do and then we know if they are good or bad. We're all adults here.

Fake edit: I was a teenage girl when Messenger was the "latest thing" in 1998/1999 so I know of what I speak and look back of those days with embarrassment.

Haha, yeah girl, LPs are serious business, don't want people having fun with it.

Xander77
Apr 6, 2009

Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.



Nidoking posted:

Show me anyone who doesn't know what a potion is or what it means to cure something, and who therefore can't figure out what a "cure potion" is, yet who will figure all of that out from a :woop:... and I will ask where you found your portal to the stupid dimension and insist that you close it immediately before any more of its contents leak into what remains of our universe.

To be sure. I'm confident that "An Adamantite Ring of Reckless Attacks (+4,+4) [-19]" is also absolutely clear to anyone that doesn't have to wear a special helmet.

Spiffo
Nov 24, 2005

Xander77 posted:

To be sure. I'm confident that "An Adamantite Ring of Reckless Attacks (+4,+4) [-19]" is also absolutely clear to anyone that doesn't have to wear a special helmet.

I agree with the point you're trying to make, but you're arguing it against a point he's not making.

Color Printer
May 9, 2011

You get used to it. I don't
even see the code. All I see
is Ipecac, Scapular, Polyphemus...


Xander77 posted:

To be sure. I'm confident that "An Adamantite Ring of Reckless Attacks (+4,+4) [-19]" is also absolutely clear to anyone that doesn't have to wear a special helmet.

That's something totally different from the cure potions thing and you know it. Also that one was almost explained right there in the list without emoticons anyway. (Ignoring the fact that some people might not know what AC is but whatever)

EDIT: I guess that's not the point you're trying to make but you're not making your point very well.

Color Printer fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Nov 2, 2013

skoolmunkee
Jun 27, 2004

Tell your friends we're coming for them

If you really wanna use little emotes and pictures, nothing is stopping you from putting them on lpix and using them as much as you want to. It's not as tidy as colon-v-colon but :shrug:

Lotus Aura
Aug 16, 2009

KNEEL BEFORE THE WICKED KING!

unfair posted:

I'm guessing if you're going to space them out like that it would be better to make the middle part transparent - that way when you post it on the forum it looks like two images properly spaced instead of one with a weird color block in the middle.



I dunno. I think that looks even weirder, at least when resized it does anyway.



It still looks a bit more... off, than with the bar there, at base size too I think. I definitely think a gap of some kind needs to be there, to make it not be completely awful, though hard to say what that should be.

ivantod
Mar 27, 2010

Mahalo, fuckers.

Dragonatrix posted:



I dunno. I think that looks even weirder, at least when resized it does anyway.



It still looks a bit more... off, than with the bar there, at base size too I think. I definitely think a gap of some kind needs to be there, to make it not be completely awful, though hard to say what that should be.

Personally I think it's better with the black bar in the middle because then it's (more) clear that the two "parts" of the image belong together.

Also, in case you don't already know: that game has had a PSP remake in Japan with improved graphics and added content so perhaps worth considering as an extra if you're going to LP it. If you did already know this, just ignore me. :v:

Fat Samurai
Feb 16, 2011

To go quickly is foolish. To go slowly is prudent. Not to go; that is wisdom.
I give about 85% of being an absolute clusterfuck that crashes and burns, but it'll be glorious while it lasts. I'd volunteer to lead my cardboard mens to their doom.

More seriously, I've been thinking about doing something similar for Fields of Fire for a while, and the biggest problem I can see is that organizing goons is like herding cats. Without knowing the game, I'd suggest a maximum of 6-7 players per side, and not setting up a command structure, but only 1 commander and the rest of the goons dealing with several counters each, to simplify things. Giving someone the role of commander, putting another in charge of the northern front and 5 more people deciding where each single counter goes precisely is going to end in tears. Either the entire front becomes a mess of unorganized counters with no teamwork or the commanders end up quarterbacking and everyone below can only obey orders.

Can you give us more details about how do you plan to organize everything? Number of troops per player (are there really only 25 counters per team?), who has the last word when deciding a unit movement, etc... because that's where the problems are going to pop up.

I like the use of images and the rulestalk, no problems there. Don't be discouraged when the players mess stuff up, though. It's bound to happen.

Lotus Aura
Aug 16, 2009

KNEEL BEFORE THE WICKED KING!

ivantod posted:

that game has had a PSP remake in Japan with improved graphics and added content so perhaps worth considering as an extra if you're going to LP it. If you did already know this, just ignore me. :v:

Yeah, I have a copy of Hikari to Yami, though I haven't played much of it (enough to know that it's the same game with more things though). I'll probably dip into it sometimes, but not overly often, for the stuff exclusive to it Angela is a pretty drat good place to start for that, I think :v:.

Speaking of which, since I'm getting all this stuff out of the way now this seems like a good time to work on stuff re:that too. I've not done anything related to the PSP before I'm not too sure as to what good size images are.



The only PSP SSLP thread I can think of right now uses images that're at the default size. I think they look fine, though I dunno if that's something others agree with or not.



In comparison, this is what I get by resizing to 2x base size. I think it might be a bit too much on the large size, though. Especially if/when there's several of them in succession.

ivantod
Mar 27, 2010

Mahalo, fuckers.

Dragonatrix posted:

Yeah, I have a copy of Hikari to Yami, though I haven't played much of it (enough to know that it's the same game with more things though). I'll probably dip into it sometimes, but not overly often, for the stuff exclusive to it Angela is a pretty drat good place to start for that, I think :v:.

Speaking of which, since I'm getting all this stuff out of the way now this seems like a good time to work on stuff re:that too. I've not done anything related to the PSP before I'm not too sure as to what good size images are.



The only PSP SSLP thread I can think of right now uses images that're at the default size. I think they look fine, though I dunno if that's something others agree with or not.



In comparison, this is what I get by resizing to 2x base size. I think it might be a bit too much on the large size, though. Especially if/when there's several of them in succession.

Honestly I think PSP has kind of a resolution that is a bit too small at default but a bit too big at 2x size. Personally I would just leave it at default. Double size is really too big and doesn't look so nice so it's better to have it a bit too small. All PSP LPs that I have seen around here have left it at default size as far I can remember.

EDIT: At one point I was actually considering doing an LP of this where I would take the graphics from the Japanese PSP version and marry it together with the English translation from DS version (which is fairly awesome and quite easy to dump out of game files).

ivantod fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Nov 2, 2013

Ride The Gravitron
May 2, 2008

by FactsAreUseless

ivantod posted:

Personally I think it's better with the black bar in the middle because then it's (more) clear that the two "parts" of the image belong together.

I feel the same way. Black bar just makes it flow nicer.

Stabbey_the_Clown
Sep 21, 2002

Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?
Taco Defender
I'd leave the black bar in for the DS shot, it's the best of the not-great options.

I'm working on a test post, and want to know if these portraits are too big. The characters in this game were animated with facial mocap data taken from the actual performance of the voice actors, so they're really quite expressive. The portraits are larger than normal because I think that if I shrink them down much more, the detail of the expressions will be lost.

Lotus Aura
Aug 16, 2009

KNEEL BEFORE THE WICKED KING!

ivantod posted:

EDIT: At one point I was actually considering doing an LP of this where I would take the graphics from the Japanese PSP version and marry it together with the English translation from DS version (which is fairly awesome and quite easy to dump out of game files).

That doesn't sound like a bad alternative, either. Only problem is that I don't know how to really make a text dump (not for a lack of trying, though), and it doesn't seem like anyone else has done it either.

Tevery Best
Oct 11, 2013

Hewlo Furriend

Fat Samurai posted:

More seriously, I've been thinking about doing something similar for Fields of Fire for a while, and the biggest problem I can see is that organizing goons is like herding cats.
A friend of mine ran a FoF LP, but with voting on general idea instead of people actually deciding where to push counters. Still blew up when RL caught up to him when the game was in the middle of a huge capital C Clusterfuck he didn't have time to sort out. It was mission 3, I think?

Fat Samurai posted:

Without knowing the game, I'd suggest a maximum of 6-7 players per side, and not setting up a command structure, but only 1 commander and the rest of the goons dealing with several counters each, to simplify things. Giving someone the role of commander, putting another in charge of the northern front and 5 more people deciding where each single counter goes precisely is going to end in tears. Either the entire front becomes a mess of unorganized counters with no teamwork or the commanders end up quarterbacking and everyone below can only obey orders.

Can you give us more details about how do you plan to organize everything? Number of troops per player (are there really only 25 counters per team?), who has the last word when deciding a unit movement, etc... because that's where the problems are going to pop up.

After giving this idea a bit of thought (and dealing away with some pipe dreams) I'd estimate that the people actually pushing the counters should be the commander and up to 5 people directly below him (starting with 3 or maybe 4 for the Germans, who have a lot of units on the board on day 1 and 2 for the Soviets, who only have 7 troopers and are bound to lose 2-3 of those before taking a single action). That would mean a single Army Group CO would have between 3 and 7 counters to push around. The last word belongs to these lower-level commanders (in fact, I think that the top level commanders should be banned from posting precise orders) - but in case they do not submit orders on time, the top CO would be able to sub their orders in.

My biggest headache is with card play and reactions - retreats are fairly simple, since more often than not your choices are either non-existent or irrelevant here, but making everyone wait after every card to confirm that no reaction card is going to be played might be a bad thing. I'm thinking that commanders should be able to leave me huge if/else instructions for their use as well as delegate them to lower rungs. CBs, discards and bringing back units (and whom to assign them to) would have to be their sole prerogative.

Of course, everyone would be able to claim leadership of a single unit, but with no prerogatives other than being regularly mentioned in the updates and the ability to post fluff for it.

The catch here would be that should we have enough volunteers (possible, but not necessarily going to happen), I would introduce a rotation system so that a little bit of controlled chaos would enter the game and so that everyone gets a turn. Failed to take the critical objective? You're fired. Lost an entire army group because the Romanians did not hold the flanks? Tough luck, you're still not going to lead much from the POW camp in Siberia. Russians played a card that says Hitler doesn't like your orders? I hear Rommel needs staff officers with attitude. Your replacement is that guy from 2nd Panzer who posted some kick-rear end roleplay two pages ago.

And yes, there are about 30 counters per side (I forgot to account for variable entry units), with a slight advantage for the Germans (but Germans can and will permanently lose troops over time, so they never have all their cardboard mens on the board at the same time).

Fat Samurai
Feb 16, 2011

To go quickly is foolish. To go slowly is prudent. Not to go; that is wisdom.

Tevery Best posted:

A friend of mine ran a FoF LP, but with voting on general idea instead of people actually deciding where to push counters. Still blew up when RL caught up to him when the game was in the middle of a huge capital C Clusterfuck he didn't have time to sort out. It was mission 3, I think?

Liechtenstein's LP was what introduced me to FoF. If I ever do this is to make more people aware of the game so it gets out of P500 status. :argh:


You could have the commanders send you orders for every unit (depending on how much work that means), and use those if/when someone else misses an order. That would speed up play, but would mean more work for the commanders, and potentially not very rewarding work if their orders are systematically ignored.


Instead of resolving one combat and then asking for input on the next one, rule that the attacking player has to commit all the cards they are using in the turn while placing target markers. Same with reaction cards, as the defending team can see all the combat happening in the turn at once. If the defending team can't play a reaction with their current hand, write the update and post the pre-combat stuff. Say something like "Russian CO, PM me if you want to use a card" and then post the rest of the turn a couple of hours later, so you don't give information about player's hands.

I can see this being a problem only if the drawing mechanic lets you change your hand a lot between each attack.

Tevery Best posted:

You're fired AT.
Fixed that for you :ussr:

Hamsterlady
Jul 8, 2010

Corpse Party, bitches.

Dragonatrix posted:

Speaking of which, since I'm getting all this stuff out of the way now this seems like a good time to work on stuff re:that too. I've not done anything related to the PSP before I'm not too sure as to what good size images are.



The only PSP SSLP thread I can think of right now uses images that're at the default size. I think they look fine, though I dunno if that's something others agree with or not.



In comparison, this is what I get by resizing to 2x base size. I think it might be a bit too much on the large size, though. Especially if/when there's several of them in succession.

I keep my the PSP screenshots for my LP at default size. 2x is way too big, any anything inbetween would look terrible.

Teledahn
May 14, 2009

What is that bear doing there?


Something of an aside, but is there a way to link to a specific POST in a thread without loading the entire page of the associate thread?

E: \/ \/ \/ Yes I did, not sure how I managed to type 'page' instead.

E2: Thank you both!

Teledahn fucked around with this message at 06:31 on Nov 3, 2013

Lance Streetman
Feb 20, 2011

A parfait is a dessert, but it is also the French word for perfect.

Teledahn posted:

Something of an aside, but is there a way to link to a specific page in a thread WITHOUT loading the entire page of the associate thread?

You mean linking to the post by itself? I used to know a way to do this, but I can't remember. It involves loving around with the url, that much I do know.

Cake Attack
Mar 26, 2010

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?action=showpost&postid=[POST ID GOES HERE]

For example:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?action=showpost&postid=421272952

I'm not sure if there's a way to generate this directly from a post, though. You can get the post ID from selecting edit, or pressing the asterisk next to a post.

Cake Attack fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Nov 3, 2013

FutureFriend
Dec 28, 2011

There's a Greasemonkey script that generates a button that has a URL directly linking to the post: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/8926

Keep in mind, it only seems to work if you put on the option to show a icon if you've seen a post or not.

Tevery Best
Oct 11, 2013

Hewlo Furriend

Fat Samurai posted:

You could have the commanders send you orders for every unit (depending on how much work that means), and use those if/when someone else misses an order. That would speed up play, but would mean more work for the commanders, and potentially not very rewarding work if their orders are systematically ignored.
Basically the plan is that commanders (top-level guys) post general orders ("This turn we seriously gotta grab Minsk, guys, ditch the siege of Riga and get down there") with the mid-level guys (let's call them lieutenants for now) telling me precisely where to put units X, Y and Z. If someone fails to submit an order, I try to go with the general idea that the commander had.


Fat Samurai posted:

Instead of resolving one combat and then asking for input on the next one, rule that the attacking player has to commit all the cards they are using in the turn while placing target markers. Same with reaction cards, as the defending team can see all the combat happening in the turn at once. If the defending team can't play a reaction with their current hand, write the update and post the pre-combat stuff. Say something like "Russian CO, PM me if you want to use a card" and then post the rest of the turn a couple of hours later, so you don't give information about player's hands.

I can see this being a problem only if the drawing mechanic lets you change your hand a lot between each attack.
The general plan is to go like this:
Post 0. Discard Step. At the end of opponent's turn (while they're still figuring out minor things like detraining or whatever), CO declares (in thread, because the discard pile is shared and not secret) which cards are discarded (if his side has to, but it's not going to happen all that often). There are a couple of cards that allow you to draw a bunch first - if he opts to play one of them, the discards will probably be announced a little later, possibly even just before post 1.
Post 1. Card Phase. Nothing to do or see here. Supply Phase - also, no decisions to be made. Org Phase - in-thread announcement of new units coming up and a reminder of which units are in the shattered/destroyed/surrendered boxes. Post ends here. CO decides which cards to discard in order to bring back his dead fellows, where to put them and which lieutenant gets to command them (also if he sees fit he may move units from one command to another). If any side wants to play a card that triggers in one of these phases, it is applied retroactively (still, a CO must order it).
Post 2. Movement Phase begins. Post contains little more than a map of where everyone is. Any cards played by either side work from the board state at the time of their announcement.
Post 3. Combat Phase begins, post contains yet another map. CO declares target hexes, then the defending CO may declare counterblows. Might put up another post at this point to summarize all the hexes that have to get hit this turn. Afterwards attackers declare any cards or tokens committed as well as in what order should the battles be resolved. Lieutenants of the attacking side declare where they would advance after combat if successful. Defending side's CO declares what cards he plays as a reaction to any particular battle. Defending lieutenants declare their preferred retreat paths and whether or not they would accept a counter-attack given the chance. There are two cards that I can think of that would mess with it, as they allow you to play the top event from the discard pile - in case those get played, the other side's CO may alter their plans while waiting for his underlings to act. In the docs players can set standing conditional orders for me on how and when cards modifying battle outcomes should be played.
Post 4. Combat Phase results. Retreats, deaths, rolls, all those good things. Token removals and waiting for the COs to announce the detraining and preferably discards. In justified cases, some retroactive card play can be allowed.

As for the timing, I'm thinking of making posts 1 and 4 result in 12 hours for the CO to respond, after which any of the lieutenants can respond instead, post 2 to give everyone 48 hours to respond and Post 3 to give everyone 48 hours to respond, with lieutenants being able to take over for the CO if he doesn't post in 24 hours.

Finally, some cards can be played "at the end of the opponent's X Phase". I'm thinking those cards should be played in the docs so that the opponents do not get a tip.

Tevery Best fucked around with this message at 08:37 on Nov 4, 2013

Admiral H. Curtiss
May 11, 2010

I think there are a bunch of people who can create trailing images. I know some who could do this as if they were just going out for a stroll.

Dragonatrix posted:

That doesn't sound like a bad alternative, either. Only problem is that I don't know how to really make a text dump (not for a lack of trying, though), and it doesn't seem like anyone else has done it either.

Easy.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52687139/rips/MyWorldMyWay_TABLE_SUB_EN.7z

macnbc
Dec 13, 2006

brb, time travelin'
So looking for some feedback on my LP-in-progress.

It's for a horror adventure game ARG type thing called Missing Since January over here.

Things seemed to have started out well enough. I got some initial interest and some good feedback that I was able to incorporate into my updates no problem.

But a couple days and 3 updates later things have completely dried up. It kinda sucks too because I've tried to structure it to encourage viewers to participate as well. But it went almost instantly from a low murmur to silence when I was expecting it to snowball a bit.

I'm trying to figure out what's gone wrong with this one. Is the game just that bad? Not the right fit for the crowd here? Am I doing something wrong?

Basically I'm just trying to figure out if it's possible to save this thing or if it's already dead.

SuccinctAndPunchy
Mar 29, 2013

People are supposed to get hurt by things. It's fucked up to not. It's not good for you.

macnbc posted:

I'm trying to figure out what's gone wrong with this one. Is the game just that bad? Not the right fit for the crowd here? Am I doing something wrong?

Basically I'm just trying to figure out if it's possible to save this thing or if it's already dead.

At a glance it just seems like the game is really obscure and unknown and so isn't something you should expect to draw in a massive crowd.

berryjon
May 30, 2011

I have an invasion to go to.

macnbc posted:

So looking for some feedback on my LP-in-progress.

It's for a horror adventure game ARG type thing called Missing Since January over here.

Things seemed to have started out well enough. I got some initial interest and some good feedback that I was able to incorporate into my updates no problem.

But a couple days and 3 updates later things have completely dried up. It kinda sucks too because I've tried to structure it to encourage viewers to participate as well. But it went almost instantly from a low murmur to silence when I was expecting it to snowball a bit.

I'm trying to figure out what's gone wrong with this one. Is the game just that bad? Not the right fit for the crowd here? Am I doing something wrong?

Basically I'm just trying to figure out if it's possible to save this thing or if it's already dead.

Feedback can be very hit-or-miss, especially with certain genres. When I did my Urban Chaos LP (Archived on lparchive.org, as well as down in the archives of this sub-forum), I didn't get a lot of feedback either simply because people were waiting on the next update. This isn't an indictment of the lack of feedback or your LP at all.

Rather, I see it as the people who watch your LP as choosing to wait for the next update rather than fill your thread with discussion that may or may not be relevant. Not every thread is going to have massive signal-to-noise ratios like the Dangan Ronpa threads or the like.

Take it not as a bad thing, but rather that you're doing something that has your audience in rapt attention awaiting your next word. ;)

CrookedB
Jun 27, 2011

Stupid newbee

macnbc posted:

I'm trying to figure out what's gone wrong with this one. Is the game just that bad? Not the right fit for the crowd here? Am I doing something wrong?

Basically I'm just trying to figure out if it's possible to save this thing or if it's already dead.

You aren't doing anything wrong. The competition is just very high these days. So unless your LP is particularly unique, you're an LP star/extremely entertaining, and/or you're LPing a popular title, you're just not going to get a lot of comments. The playground is just too crowded. (Which is part of the reason why I've stopped doing LPs myself.)

That said, the audience, albeit relatively small, is there. A lot of people just don't bother commentating on LPs, which doesn't mean they don't read them. The rest depends on whether that's enough to keep you going.

Lilli
Feb 21, 2011

Goodbye, my child.

CrookedB posted:

(Which is part of the reason why I've stopped doing LPs myself.)

Awwwwwww, I really enjoyed your LPs. :(

Perfidia
Nov 25, 2007
It's a fact!

chiasaur11 posted:

Flesh is not strong. Let's play [Fallout Tactics]!




So that post is almost 2 months old, and effectively killed off by Xander77 in one foul swipe, but I actually liked that (if the duplicate image stuff could be sorted out, plus your more in-depth plans for a real thread). I'm probably biased from liking this type of game, but still. Sorry that you dropped it.

Lazyfire
Feb 4, 2006

God saves. Satan Invests

CrookedB posted:

That said, the audience, albeit relatively small, is there. A lot of people just don't bother commentating on LPs, which doesn't mean they don't read them. The rest depends on whether that's enough to keep you going.

We had this conversation just a few pages back, but it is worth reiterating that a lot of people are watching videos and lurking threads, never to post in them. It can be frustrating to see videos getting views but then no one posts if they think you are doing a good job or need to change something or telling you they hope you cover something. It is kind of the nature of the beast for a lot of people, myself included, even if I get a relatively high amount of posters (I've woken up and been impressed to find 6 whole new posts in the thread).

With regards to the Missing Since January LP: I was wondering where that went after it appeared in the Sandcastle what feels like months ago. I was looking forward to seeing how that played out but never saw that the thread went live. I'll be watching now that I know it is running.

Fat Samurai
Feb 16, 2011

To go quickly is foolish. To go slowly is prudent. Not to go; that is wisdom.
Without knowing the mechanics it's difficult to see if there are any problems in your plan, but it seems you've put quite a bit of though into this. I'd say go for it, and modify your approach depending on thread response. Worst thing that can happen is that you have to get back to the drawing board.

I'd like to pre-emptively volunteer for a minor commanding position in the Red Army a coulpe of turns in, so I can get a feel for the game before messing it up completely.

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macnbc
Dec 13, 2006

brb, time travelin'
Thanks all! I think posting here actually was the best exposure the thread's had because it suddenly picked up again. I appreciate the feedback.

Lazyfire posted:

With regards to the Missing Since January LP: I was wondering where that went after it appeared in the Sandcastle what feels like months ago. I was looking forward to seeing how that played out but never saw that the thread went live. I'll be watching now that I know it is running.

This is actually news to me because I hadn't posted here about it before. I just checked the master list and LP Archive to see if anyone had done it before and got cracking on it.. I didn't do a test post here because this isn't my first LP and with the nature of the game (e-mails, lack of a reload to previous point) it would've been difficult to do a proper test with. Hopefully I didn't step on anyone's plans!

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