Involving people who don't play US evenings

[Nyr]

What you have described as an issue is something that is not very common, at least from what I have seen.  There have been times where staff members have needed sponsored leadership roles that were peak-time players because they were replacing dead/stored peak-time leaders.  If the clan is already primed for that, it is usually deemed better for the clan to replace like for like.  That's not to say that off-peak players are shunned for sponsored roles, merely that this can be a factor.

Promotional opportunities are largely the purview of the playerbase, though staff is involved to some extent.  If you are never around when your clan leader is, this could be an issue.  If you are never around when your clan is, this is an issue.  Provided the latter is not the case, you can play with your other clanmates and they can indeed vouch for your presence and activity and usefulness to a clan leader that they do see.  You can also do a monthly report to let staff know you're around.  Someone being seriously tapped or seriously interested in leadership would make that known to staff and to their leadership in-game. 

Unfortunately, presence does not necessitate that you become a leader.  There must be a position available.  Staff and PC leaders also ask several questions that have nothing to do with off-peak play:  Can the clan use another leader?  Does staff agree?  Is the PC actually leadership material, or are they expecting to become a leader because the rest of the clan fell off of the Shield Wall?  Are there reasons the PC would have this denied to them?  Has the PC actually earned it?  Do they play enough to be a leader (not off peak vs peak play, but actual playtime--some does need to exist)?  Can the clan and game handle an expansion of size with this particular clanned group?

After all of that is answered to satisfaction, next would be the question:  when do they play?  This isn't a question asked to deny them, but one to consider possibilities.  Some clans can benefit from having an off-peak presence, because all of the above has been met.  I can't think of a case off of the top of my head where someone was denied an IC leadership promotion solely because of their peak vs off-peak playtimes.

[senseofeven]

Thanks for your response Nyr.

I have no qualms or problems with players off peak or on peak gaining their PC leadership sponsored roles. I being an off peak and I have applied for a silk role and even played it before somewhere in the distant lands was overrun by stuff and closed officially.

But I will have to make it clear that I have been denied because I was playing off peak(Troopers are semi leadership roles anyway imo) and I have done everything that I could to staff and IG that I was around and serious. If you need more information, I'm pretty sure staff can see who is the first PC that I created on his account.

It has happened and it happened to me personally. Although there was a PC plot going along, I saw it no logical reason for previous PC leaders to make the basis of denying me because I was off peak.

[Nyr]

There are so many things that go into the equation before that point that it would more than likely be disingenuous to suggest that you were denied for that reason.  Even here you say "although there was a PC plot going on".  That indicates to me that it seems like a factor--if not, why mention it?  You also add that you saw no logical IC reason to deny your PC, but other PCs don't have to agree with your logic. 

I don't know because I am not going to look into your account history and discuss that here.  If you want to discuss that, the request tool would be the place for it.

[senseofeven]

As I started revving all of this up was because I was thinking about those other off peaks who genuinely do not get a chance of promotion -because- of the timezone difference. I am sharing some of my experiences which was and will always be terrible to me personally. So don't put the main focus on me.

However there are players out there who might not be as fortunate or unfortunate as me to have another PC to cause my PC's denial of promotion and being forced to leave the Byn, I still think it's incredibly toxic to even do something to another player even if it was an IC thing, to me it felt rude but this things of backstabbing happens all the time in the office. So I have nothing to comment on that.

What I would want to know is how is the staff going to assimilate off peak and on peak together? How can we be less dead weight to each other now that we've got everyone mostly situated in Allanak and condensing the player base. The off peak is a smaller number, but we're still players here.

I'll also put it into perspective just for you Nyr. At that current time and moment to me it seemed like it WAS because of my off peak that I was denied. It was only after some kind player who decided to spill the beans to me OOC after so many years that I got to know that it was because of IC actions and decisions that caused me so much OOC agony and grief. I spent so much effort and time, and it's all being denied because IC plot and that leaves me pretty much trapped.

And this has brought me to think about what if these other off peakers where subjected to not getting the same kind of leadership and generally, staff will always point them to the peak PC.

As you have said no one has ever been denied IC leadership, as long as nothing OOC is in the issue. I'm just hoping this thread would help to make the gameplay for the off peaks much more interesting so that leader PCs could get creative and help alleviate some of our pains and restrictions.

What's in store for those who are off peak and in clans? Same same and entirely up to the leader PCs?

[Desertman]

I would like to see more clans have role calls for off peak leadership positions specifically.

Will that leader end up playing alone more often than not? Probably so. But, is that leader being played by someone who is an off peak player anyways who probably would have been playing alone anyways? Probably so.

I don't see how it is really a loss. If anything there is a measurable gain in that off peak players will feel more like it is in their hands to decide how well they do.

Peak time clan leaders can also now tell the off peak players, "I don't have space in my unit for someone who's going to be as unavailable for the things that matter right now. You should speak with Sergeant Awwfpeek, they are around more during the week when you are anyways and you would be more useful to them.".

[Nyr]

I wrote up a post earlier about those who are off-peak and in clans.  There does not appear to be a real problem with this; you can get promoted if you are off-peak, if there's good reason for your PC to be promoted.  If you are in such a situation that you feel you are being denied because you are off-peak, then open up a request to discuss with your clan staff.

We do not have and will not create rules against players being mean IC; in fact, the opposite is the case.

2. Life is hard. There are no free lunches on Zalanthas. There aren't even
    free drinks of water. It is likely that your character will die, and if
    you are not clever your character will die very fast. Only (and we mean
    only) the very fittest of all live long enough to retire in comfort at
    the end of their careers.

3. Sometimes people are nasty. There are no rules against being extremely
    mean to others that your character may meet, be it cheating, stealing,
    killing, swindling, or otherwise making a fool out of. The sole
    exception to this is termed 'the rule of consent', and is outlined
    both in "help consent" and in point 6, below.

5. Complaints of unfairness will not be given an audience. If you think
    your character's situation was unfair, too bad. Live with it or don't.
    See point 2 above.

[RogueGunslinger]

I remember I got upset a couple times for something like this. Looking back on it after playing a leader role, I realize I got upset for the wrong reasons, at the wrong people. There's really nobody you can be upset with for this. It's not the leaderships fault, at least not in my case. They hardly knew me, only had a handful of interactions with me. I still expected to get promoted, but is that at all realistic? Could they have found out about me, asked the other people if I was worthy of advancement, tried to look past the fact that they barely knew me and promoted me anyways? Sure, and that probably wouldn't have been a big deal, but it would take some leaps of logic, and hand-waving away the ooc nature of time-zones.

But blaming leadership for the situation in general was wrong because they were put in a tough spot just like I was based on my playtimes. It's not like leaders don't want off-peak players. Fuck, just the idea of players around to spread the burden of interaction you feel as a leader is enough incentive to keep promoting and recruiting. It's just that they also have to take realism into consideration, and if a leader doesn't know you, they have no reason to trust you. And if you promote based on trust, well, that's going to leave some people shit out of luck sometimes.

[senseofeven]

That's probably something that I will have some problem against. I feel that it would be an issue as it reflects on timezone difference.

Where is the compromise?

[Riev]

Retcon offpeakers, restrict accounts to only making rangers.

I never really play offpeak, except that I might play later. Maybe things will change for me. But I've known some PCs that are just hard to find, or play in a different time than me. It gets really annoying just to find them, and half the time they're linkdead or idling.

That said, I can't imagine I would tell someone "You can't have this basic promotion because I never see you". When I was in the Legions, there was a PC that was basically a ForeverPrivate, because they logged in for planned activities but thats the only time we'd see them. I can't imagine ever giving them a leadership position, but when you're a recruit for 3 years, its kind of suspect. I'm still hoping what was seen, was a one time thing. Not everyone is great as a leader, and I've seen some people get a leadership position that is -highly- undeserved but given due to how staff recruit. (I knew the person OOCly, and they were relatively bland and never emoted beyond socials, and got a sponsored role)

tl;dr - Boo to naysayers about offpeak. Everyone is in one city now, all the clans are there. If you, nor anyone you know sees your boss... you're probably in the wrong clan anyways. There has to be a separation between "This is where my character would be" and "I'm literally unable to interact with my clan in any way".

[Armaddict]

Off peak has been pretty-somewhat-healthy in allanak from what I've seen, since the change.  Off peak leadership might not be a bad idea, once more of the offpeakers who are indy due to their offpeakness die and migrate in.

I mean...I know you guys just *cringe* at 15-20 people, but that's like...what I played with for a large amount of early Arm time, and that was without consolidation.  It's really not so bad, once you get a nice little group of people together.

[Nyr]

A good suggestion in any case would be to play in a clan where you have visibility to leadership (either directly, or through other players in the clan that do see you about) and to staff (this requires putting in requests).

If you never see your leader, that is a problem, but most clans have multiple leaders.  You'll probably be able to see one of them, at least every now and then, to have them talk to you and you to them.  If you never see any leaders, that's a problem, but you can definitely still play with the rest of the clan.  Show that you are active and involved (check in threads, etc).  If you never see most people in your clan, that's a larger problem; you might need to find a different clan to play in.  Riev mentioned how everyone is in one city right now, and that's pretty much the case.  There's definitely a lot more off-peak activity, and most of that should be able to be found in Allanak.  It may take a bit more time for the clans in-game to catch up with that, but that's okay--we've barely had Tuluk completely closed for a month. You will probably see more offpeak-tailored roles available in the future purely because more off-peak people are playing around each other there.

As RGS said above, the leader may not know what you are doing if they don't see you about.  That isn't insurmountable:  you can try to arrange a meeting with them IC, or failing that, talk to your staff; the leader can also talk to their clan staff about it.   This isn't really a bad thing or unusual, I've seen this happen and I have been in a leadership position to help this out for recruits I did not see regularly.  Let's say you are in Kurac and you are a recruit and need to be promoted to Mercenary because you've been there the requisite time.  You shouldn't remain a recruit forever.  If you are indeed playing regularly and involved with the clan, you should be able to be promoted.

This can be resolved with communication.  If there is nothing IC stopping you from it and it is truly just a problem of timezone mismatches, it can be resolved.

[whitt]

That's probably something that I will have some problem against. I feel that it would be an issue as it reflects on timezone difference.

Where is the compromise?

Have a heart-to-heart chat with the clan recruiter, Icly explain when your character is likely to be around and if there will be opportunities given that?  If the clan lead can't get the hint, well, that's unfortunate.  Be sure to pick a clan with a clan lead (however short lived they might wind up being) that has folks you can play with,  I think clans have a huge advantage with the clan boards and roll-calls to figure when folks are and aren't around and plan accordingly.

Clan RPTs will all ways be a PitA, so prep a role for yourself, as was mentioned elsewhere that might be viable as clan spy, reconnaissance specialist, or infiltrator that way during off-peak you can do your work to lay the groundwork for the rest of the clan.  

And clan leads get creative on how you can keep an off-peaker busy in your clan.  Not an easy ask, but something that should be possible, I think?  At least some of the time?

[Revenant]

The thing is, the T'zai Byn's schedule is rather oppressive, takes a lot out of you and leaves you little time for anything beyond grunting, sparring, sharpening your weapons and shovelling shit. As a runner, you are not afforded any privileges for deciding, ok, today, just this one time, I'd like to do X instead of Y. Further, you do not get paid, you cannot afford a private place for any, activities, you cannot buy drinks, you're lucky if your sergeant feels like giving you the coin for stable fees. It's a good place to train your character and meet others, as well as participate in large events, but after an IG year, it gets stifling and troublesome, especially for off-peak, who often times find themselves alone in the sparring hall or workshop, solo emoting.

Promotion to Trooper is kind of a big deal, but not so much because of the prestige or what have you, but because it offers you a chance to do some things that have been denied to you the past IG year. This going without stuff will eventually fatigue players who could just as easily be making a lot of coin crafting or salting, instead being broke as a joke, and, when passed up for the opportunity, yes, it's very irritating on an OOC level. May as well just leave. This leads to even fewer off-peak players in clans. If there were a status between Trooper and Runner, which would alleviate some of the burden, then this wouldn't be such a big deal. Half the time, there's no point in even walking to the Gaj, because you'll just have to turn around and come back as soon as you get there, leaving little time for interaction, or your duties of making the Byn's presence known and felt.

[Nyr]

In that case, as an off-peak player, you may have more trouble playing in a clan where you get paid based on active participation on jobs.  It's not impossible, but it will be more difficult to make ends meet if contracts often occur at times that are not conducive to your own time zone.

[Eyeball]

It would help a lot if there were some IC means for communication between the peak players and off-peak players. Leaders could receive reports from off-peakers and assign them duties. Maybe some NPCs could be intermediaries.

Off-peakers could have some coded support too. Maybe a migration of a certain sort of animal only happens during off-peak hours, for example, so off-peakers are the ones that have to be tasked with hunting them. Maybe sparring NPCs could appear only during off-peak hours.

[HavokBlue]

If you're in a clan and you're having issues with peak/offpeak communication IC... you have your clan forum to try to arrange a time you can be together, and if you don't have another PC you can pass a message through, I think most clans actually have IC rumor boards that are very under-utilized? I remember the Salarri one hadn't been updated in years and it was accessible by anyone in the clan.

[Eyeball]

If you're in a clan and you're having issues with peak/offpeak communication IC... you have your clan forum to try to arrange a time you can be together, and if you don't have another PC you can pass a message through, I think most clans actually have IC rumor boards that are very under-utilized? I remember the Salarri one hadn't been updated in years and it was accessible by anyone in the clan.

The clan boards aren't really meant for person-to-person communications, more like public notices.

[HavokBlue]

I think you probably get a little bit more slack with the IC rumorboard than your "clan rumors" gdb thread. If it's something really urgent or important and you just can't get playtimes to coincide, bribe the barracks quartermaster to pass a message.

[Eyeball]

Or just implement a NPC message system. Why always the argument to change nothing? If what you're proposing worked well, there wouldn't be this problem with off-peakers.

[Revenant]

In that case, as an off-peak player, you may have more trouble playing in a clan where you get paid based on active participation on jobs.  It's not impossible, but it will be more difficult to make ends meet if contracts often occur at times that are not conducive to your own time zone.

Good point, still, if an off-peaker wants to play a gritty mercenary who's, not all wealthy, I think it would be nice to show them some consideration. It's certainly possible to make ends meet, somewhat, but you're not going to have a silo full of obsidian coins to go swimming in. Your food and water budget are off the table, the Byn provides some protection against the powers that be, so these are not expenses, easier to stretch your coin a ways. Also, if you have a crafting subguild, this can help, but having absolutely no wiggle room with the schedule is the issue. Saying, "This might not be the clan for you if your schedule doesn't match up exactly." doesn't exactly address the concern.

Still, I must admit, I've seen a number of off-peakers get promoted, it's just, harder. Harder to defend yourself from slander, lies, unrealistically easy for people to sabotage you, without other off-peak players, who have been promoted, who can actually stick up for your character because they know them.

[Sorry]

Some of this might be from the problem of calling it off-peak or peak itself, cos there's different peaks for people in different timezones around the world - I think there's actually quite a lot of people not on American time from what I've seen, and though it's no doubt less, it's still it's own peak, even if it's not the highest.

I know changing language doesn't always change a culture¹, but calling times that aren't America evening time "off peak", even with no malice intended, could maybe be reinforcing the idea that there is a "proper time for roleplay", with everything that isn't around that time then being seen as second-class/of less importance.



¹ ( When I was brand new I found that sometimes the "wish all" thing would have no one replying, and outside of America times the website helper chat thing was no good with never anyone on it ² - I don't know how much the staff timezones also reflect the playerbase but it could maybe be good to make sure there's enough people promoted to be staff to place equal value on roleplay in the other timezones as well it's own reward with these "peaks" growing more as they are watered and nurtured )
² ( I also remember sometimes trying to ask things of people in the gaj etc about how to do things was met with a sense of 'go away' because asking things in OOC in public areas, even genuine newbie questions for help on how to respond to something for the roleplay, is "gently frowned upon" - but nowhere else to ask things if you don't know people to ask because you don't know anyone else that plays the game OOCly, some stuff you can find out IC but some things you can only really know if you know what you are meant to type and stuff and compared to roleplay on other things it is very technical and a lot of stuff has to be learnt OOC to know how the game itself works to be able to roleplay, some of which can distract a little from actually being able to write for stories! )

( I am a newbie that only within the last few weeks decided to try RP in this game again by the way )

[aeglaeca]

If you want to take an extra day off, there are two solutions: ask permission or don't get caught. Please trust that your leaders do not want to punish you for your OOC schedule, they just want you to not be blatantly skipping your duties in front of a million vNPCs.

[Talia]

I don't know how much the staff timezones also reflect the playerbase but it could maybe be good to make sure there's enough people promoted to be staff to place equal value on roleplay in the other timezones as well

We do have lots of offpeak staffers, both because they live in far-flung corners of the world and/or because they don't have "normal" schedules. 0 Producers are offpeak (though they all have weird schedules!). 2 out of 3 Admins are offpeak. 3 out of 8 Storytellers are offpeak. So there are quite a few other staff that, for example, I do not see frequently--despite the fact that they are actively working on the game, just as I am.

An additional factor that may mean wishes go unanswered is that not all staff can or will reply to all wishes. Storytellers can only reply to wishes from PCs in their own clan group. This is why we have the request tool, so that you can get help even if you can't find a staffer in game at that moment. And the helper chat gets emailed to Helpers and staff if it goes unresponded to, so feel free to use it for questions.

[Cavaticus]

The obvious solution here is to vote every day and continue to recruit people to play the MUD, until the difference between peak and off-peak is 200 players vs. 100 players.

[Rokal]

The obvious solution here is to vote every day and continue to recruit people to play the MUD, until the difference between peak and off-peak is 200 players vs. 100 players.

200 players would be awesome.