route_29 | A NEW RULE APPEARS

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A NEW RULE APPEARS

Hey, Route!

Yes, more new stuff. Everything chaaanges, chaaaanges, it's evolutionary~

1) New apps rule!:
In the interest of clarity and app processing speed, we now ask that potential applicants post their application in comments rather than linking. If the app contains explicit references to 'hard' spoilers (think big reveals, like 'Dumbledore dies', I SEE DEAD PEOPLE, I am your father etc), players should put the application in their own journal or their character's journal and link it, making sure to mention the presence of spoilers within.

We've always gotten linked apps (goodness knows I'm guilty of linking an app or five that was spoiler-free!), but having them all on the page means the mods don't have to open a million tabs while processing, and spoiler links keep fellow players from stumbling onto things that might ruin a canon for them.

This is a rule; as of today (the 11th of October), if your app is linked but not marked for spoilers, it will not be processed that week. We trust all our players will read and abide by the rules list, which has not changed besides this.

2) Polling about the passwords:
RELAX, we're not changing anything concerning passwords...yet. But we're thinking it's about time this thing got an overhaul, don't you think?

Our proposed fix: What we'd like to do is remove the passwords altogether and replace them with something of a task system: on the rules and FAQ pages, tasks such as 'explain in one sentence how your character feels about strawberries in their personality section' or 'include a link to your favorite youtube video in the canon links section'.

The goal here is to make sure people have at least given a cursory visit to both pages. These tasks would change arbitrarily and be located arbitrarily within the FAQ and rules. Yes, these would be more work for you, and for us, but the current password system feels outdated and obvious.

Your turn: How do you feel, Route? Hate this idea? Love passwords? Have a better idea? Let us know!

[Poll #1785767]

If you have grievances, comments, suggestions or ideas concerning either the new app rule or the password system, you can: PM the mod account, PM any of us individually, catch us on AIM, or post (anonymously or not) to our (screened) Suggestions post.

Looking forward to hear from you!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hey there! I'm going to try to be as clear and concise as possible, but it's the morning so I beg your pardon in case this turns out more disjointed than intended.

Regarding apps;

Is posting apps really that much of an inconvenience? I don't mean to sound rude by that question--it's just that in order to post an app, your options are either 'link it', or 'post it'. So presumably posting is what a potential apper would have done in the first place, had linking not been an option. Time-wise, they're relatively similar, and if you really want to avoid having to calculate character or word counts (and I absolutely cannot blame you on this, it's a pain), the simple solution is to divide your post by sections rather than word count. Having more (uneven) comments for your app might look messy, but it gets the job done more effectively than trying to figure out whether to cut things off at paragraph 4 or 5.

We chose it because this was the solution we could find that was the least fussy and easiest to implement for everyone involved. We definitely understand it's going to take some time before people settle into posting instead of linking, and we'll take the pulse of things after a few app rounds to see how things are going. We're trying to be more on the ball and more responsive here, not less, so please don't think we're dismissing you. Any feedback helps.

Your comment on spoilers is duly noted--we'll test run the new system for a few app rounds, and if linking doesn't decrease, we'll consider white-texting, as someone has proposed, or simply marking the entire app post for spoilers. To be more specific on what kind of things we mean by 'spoilers', we're talking things that absolutely have to be mentioned in, say, the personality section because it was a LIFE CHANGING EVENT, or a history write-up, since most canon wikis have their own spoiler-cuts. I hear you on spoilers for older canons, but we feel it would be unreasonable to expect, say, a Vanitas player not to expose his face more than six months after the canon has come out, even though it constitutes a spoiler.

Regarding passwords;

The short answer: we have the password system because Route is huge, and there's too much information and too many new people apping each round to risk new players coming in blind. We know it's flawed; that's why we want to change it.

The long answer: Route has, physically, the biggestsetting of any LJRP I've been in. (I don't want to speak in absolutes, since I can't possibly claim to know every RP out there.) Multiple cities, roads that take weeks to travel, Teams, over two hundred creatures with types and weaknesses...and maybe, at some point, whole new regions (but you didn't hear it from me). Compound this with a game mechanic that spans a series of real-life video games that not all our players are familiar with to start, and you can see that not having everybody on the same page is a recipe for disaster. Of course, on our end, we're working on updating the FAQ and streamlining things. This is part of that process. We know the password system is flawed; that's why we want to make it better. But the honor system feels inadequate for a game of this size.

We'll definitely consider exempting veteran players from giving us passwords or completing tasks--if we do change the system--because that seems really sound, or try to devise a solution that veteran players would easily be able to answer and new players would have to look up.

Your response wasn't rude and I hope mine didn't come off that way, either! I really hope this helped clear a couple things up. Ugh, why do morning exist? Thanks for helping us out with your lovely feedback. The more information we get, the more we can change things for the better!

It's not the worst inconvenience, it's not something that will deter me from apping (I think my current overall character count does that on its own). For me it's a matter of organization as aesthetics, which with stuff like apps just pings me in all the wrong ways. I tend to break things up by section when it's reasonable in apps if I have to do comment count. But then there's people who... overuse that and suddenly an app that can be 2/3 comments is 7 or 8 -- which is not only annoying to read, it's ugly to look at and wastes comments.

And I really, really hate having to edit/repost thing numerous times because I am a failure at typing and HTML. Don't get me wrong, I get the flaws with linking comments. It's just my personal preference and having a need to point out the things that are cons to it, because... well, there's a reason a lot of people link apps to begin with.

I figured that's what you meant with the spoilers, though I appreciate the clarification. Though again, a lot of these canons have just that, and yeah -- I get it with the Vanitas thing, but sometimes (especially when dealing with causes for personality changes) the spoilers are much more subtle (I could think of a few from Catherine that would qualify for a long time to come, for example.) As long as you guys realize that's a very slippery slope to play with -- some people are much more sensitive about spoilers than others, and someone getting really upset because they found a spoiler when looking for say - a castmate's app - will just be a headache for you guys. (in the oh dear god is someone really wanking about this kind of way)

...I see your point about the password system, though I still disagree with it for the sheer fact that I don't think it'll change much? In terms of new players -- people who are going to skim will skim either way, or will selectively read things to find what they want. Of course, you want to encourage reading the rules/FAQ and I don't know why you'd join a game without reading that stuff first, but I don't really think you can impress that upon people and expect it to be an effective means.

As an extreme example, it'd be like putting a password at the end of an iTunes TOS box for some people to see if they actually read it. I'M NOT SAYING THAT'S A GOOD THING OBVIOUSLY. But some people are just like that and I think they end up being weeded out quickly anyway when that's the case.

/shrug

I'm not trying to sound argumentative or anything, I just see things from the exact opposite side of the coin on the password system. It feels so... archaic to me. The apps thing is again, just an annoyance - something I don't care for but won't have an affect on me either way since I don't really have any app plans atm anyway.

I should also note my tl;dr is not proportionate to how strongly I feel on the matter, I just don't know how to be anything but long winded.

sob.

Just a response regarding HTML fail, because it is a tricky thing: the solution could be to post the app in your journal, and then use that as a springboard to put the app into comments and test out your HTML and word counts. That way, you'd have everything perfect and accounted for when you go to post it 'for real', so to speak. Yes, it's more time-consuming, but it would save you the trouble of having to fumble around in the app post itself when you forget to close an italics tag. I just wanted to put that out there as a potential solution.

As for the passwords; nothing's been changed yet. Looking at the poll results, the results are only slightly in favor of changing the system, so we'll see what happens. We'll try to take into account the feedback we've gotten here as much as possible going forward.

Thanks, Aly! And for the record, you sound fine.

As far as people not knowing information goes, I think it should be there for other players to point out in small cases, like not being able to catch X in Y place or it taking Z days to get from one town to another. Larger misunderstandings or blatant ignorance is something that could be brought up with the mods on a case by case basis.

It also feels like you're expecting too much if you want everyone to be familiar with everything as soon as they apply. Before I apped, I was only loosely familiar with Pokemon and I still consult Bulbapedia and game reference pages constantly to be sure of things.

My other game, Somarium, has a very detailed world as well as three years of backstory. As of the last mod update, it has 266 characters. The only check it has? A question asking what your favorite rule is. People don't have to know more than that. And in a lot of cases there, and likely here, characters asking a question ICly can double as a player asking OOCly to be certain they're learning things right.

What I'm getting at is that asking people to know as much as possible before they go in is a lot. The game, HMDs, and private player contact can serve for education and telling people what they do wrong in an easier manner than expecting everyone to know a lot of information right off the bat. I've heard from people who don't know Pokemon at all that say it's intimidating to read everything on their own time as it is and quizzing new players would only make them even more nervous about applying in the first place.

I've modded before, though only smaller games, and one of my personal goals was always to make applications seem as unintimidating as possible because that sets the mood for how they interact with the game as a whole. Demanding something exact can leave people with the impression that the mods are very strict overall and that they need to know everything when, in my experience here, getting educated on details as you play is perfectly reasonable.

I'm going to reply to each of these individually, if it's not too much of a problem.

I think you might have opposite views on the FAQ than the mods; this isn't necessarily a bad thing, just different, and I'd like to explain our views more. The way we see it is that Route is enormous and fast-paced and already incredibly intimidating, so therefore it makes sense to encourage new players to read through the FAQ as much as possible before entering the game.

Even if we did change the system, and nothing's been set in stone yet, we wouldn't be asking anything difficult from our players; we know that we have people coming in with zero pokémon knowledge, asking them to suddenly be experts would be incredibly rude on our parts. We feel, however, that encouraging new applicants to familiarize themselves with the game's policies before they join isn't asking too much. Again, we don't want anyone to know everything (that's what we're here for!), but we do expect players to come in with some knowledge of how Route works, or at the very least to know where the FAQ is and how it's laid out so that they can more easily access it for later reference. This holds not just players with no prior pokémon experience and master trainers alike; even if you've played all the games, Route doesn't exactly function like its digitized counterpart.

If we change the system, we'll definitely attempt to keep things as relaxed and fun as possible. We're not out to indimidate people out of apping, either, and we want every part of the game to reflect Route's lighthearted appeal.

I'm doing this in two parts to break up the pile of words somewhat. And I apologize in advance if this is too personal to be relevant.

Is posting apps really that much of an inconvenience? For some people, the answer is an emphatic yes

Posting apps can be a huge inconvenience for people who are anxious about any number of things, from having HTML perfect to flailing over the right amount of text to put in at a time, to the simple aesthetics of how a few lines of text with a link look compare to a long line of comments or the relative privacy of being a link away rather than out in the open for everyone to see at any time. While this might sound silly or trite, these are things I can worry about, and I know there's another Route player with an anxiety disorder as well in my circle of friends, so that means possibly many others I'm not aware of.

It may not seem like a big deal to you to have to edit or repost something to get coding right, but to some people it is a huge thing and linking to be certain they have everything right can reduce player nerves.

In addition, I feel awkward and like I'm intimidating possible castmates if I post something in comments that takes more than 3 parts, regardless of how long others around me on the comment page are. I don't think I'm alone in this.

There's also the matter of routine. Again, from my own perspective, not having to change the way things are done for what doesn't seem like a very important reason is comforting and makes me enjoy knowing that I can do things the way I have done them for a while now in LJRP. Changing that routine is upsetting in any part of life, especially in a hobby where I try to feel as safe as possible.

And as said elsewhere, linking takes up a single comment whereas posting eats away at comments and makes it more likely that the 5000 comment captcha limit will be hit in the middle of a cycle or that there will be an intimidatingly large number of pages for new players to see.

I realize that approaching this from the perspective of a constantly-nervous player may not make sense in the minds of someone who has never had to cope with anxiety, if I'm correct in thinking you don't (and I apologize if that's a wrong guess), but it's a perspective that I felt needed to be brought up. Player comfort, especially when trying to join a game, is a big thing to me.

We definitely understand that anxiety issues can be crippling, and if the new app system causes anyone undue stress, they have our sincerest apologies. You would be correct in assuming that I, Ara, do not deal with anxiety, and with that in mind, you can feel free to take or leave the solutions I offer:

In regards to satisfactory HTML, as I outlined above to Yosuke-mun; potential applicants can use their own personal journal to post the app in split comments, tampering with the html and contents until everything is to their liking, and then posting the application in the actual Route post. Of course, all applications should ideally be polished before getting submitted, but this allows for the most tweaking.

In regards to privacy: while an app is public whether on a journal or in comments to an app post, we understand that the seeming 'obstacle' that a link creates can be reassuring. In that case, we can't offer an immediate solution, as we keep our apps public for the benefit of new appers. However, we'd be more than happy to screen the application of anyone that asks, after the final verdict. That way, the applicant could have the freedom of keeping the app as a post in their journal, removing it entirely and having it be invisible, or only keeping relevant parts in their journal for fellow players' reference.

I won't touch on app length, since I'm afraid I don't understand the problem; the app is the same length whether it is in a journal or in comments, isn't it? Castmates also may feel more encouraged, rather than intimidated, by a longer app. Those feelings are very subjective though, and not something I feel qualified to comment on with any accuracy.

We do understand that changings things like this stirs things up; however we hope that in time, this will become normal and routine. This was actually the option we felt would be the least fuss for everyone, as opposed to say, switching entirely to emailed apps. As for eating up comments--if captcha comes on sooner than usual, we'll be sure to make a new app post as soon as possible.

You're definitely not wrong to bring up this issue, and we really appreciate that you feel safe enough to bring it to us. We'll get a feel for how the new system fares over the next few app cycles and if problems arise we'll definitely take this into consideration. I hope that some of the solution ideas I outlined can be of some help, and if all else fails, we'll be more than happy to work with you and any other anxious applicants on a suitable compromise. And, on a more personal note, I'm sorry if any of this came off as dismissive--as mods, we're here to help, not hinder.

Thanks for giving your input!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A NEW RULE APPEARS

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Part 1: Passwords

Re: Part 1: Passwords

Part 2: Linking vs Posting

Re: Part 2: Linking vs Posting