Excise's Reviews - June 7th, 2009

'''001 Excise=Excise is probably the stable rock of the admin staff. You can count on him keeping his temper when nobody else does. Helpful, polite and very calm. My only beef with him is sometimes he tolerates things he shouldn't. As in, he might actually be a little too calm and not put his foot down when he really needs to.'''

Thank you. See below for your suggestion.

'''002 Excise has repeatedly listened to my vents about various and sundry things, and yet he STILL says hello and is polite to me. ;) But seriously, he has been a calm and reasonable voice in the middle of way too many bouts of drama. And the saddest part is, I couldn't have said what his staff role was if it weren't listed right there in the review message. -- Andi Lassiter's player'''

Thanks Andi.

'''003 Nice job with Solar System Risk. I like the way you played different characters as needed by the scene. Way to keep things fun and moving along. You always do your best to look at things from the POV of fun rather than one side or the other which is also great. One other thing I'd mention is you have some crazy criteria for promoting and demoting people. A lot of times it seems based mostly on stats ('success rate' which I guess translates to how many coded fights won) and OOC popularity rather than on ICA=ICC actions or general levels of activity and RP generation. Maybe explain a little bit what you're doing and why, from an OOC perspective because based on IC explanation we have no clue what will get you promoted or demoted.'''

Thanks. I liked Solar System Risk also. It was a lot of work. Concerning promotions and demotions I'll give a brief, simplified rundown for how that sort of thing works.

Generally there's two requirements for getting minor promotions. 1. Being active. 2. Not being a total dope ICly (or OOCly, I suppose). Success rate isn't all that important and stats never factors into it (for me, anyhow. Some people like to look at leadership). To get promoted to CO of something or XO of something, you basically also need 3. Doing leading or organizational stuff, ICly or OOCly. Obvious, I suppose.

For demotions you get these either by doing something silly or by being inactive.

For the recent administrivia for the Cons' Military it was a collective discussion amongst a bunch of Con CoCers. The Decepticons also have IC cronyism and infighting going on, which is why dudes like Sinnertwin, who's essentially a twit ICly, gets promoted by Hun-Grrr, or (I think) why Scourge demoted Avalanche. Naturally anything not in the Military division is not handled by Shockwave.

EDC-side there's the additional issue that a bunch of people don't even want rank, which means there aren't a lot of leaders there, alas. Obviously if folks tell me they OOCly don't want rank, they won't get it.

On either side I certainly don't agonize over rank decisions and frankly go fairly quickly, cause really, it's not particularly important. That said, if you feel you're missing out or being treated unfairly by me, please please please come and talk to me OOCly.

'''004 I so enjoyed Space Risk. There was lots of room for great social RP even tho the battles weren't my gig.... Please keep bringing things like this to us. Thanks!'''

Thanks.

'''005 TP Staff in general needs to get on the ball. The last few TPs like Pz-Zazz and Space Risk didn't seem to have a real point except to provoke some random fights. Current RP seems to be mostly random combat and very little noncombat, with nothing in place to tie anything together. We definitely need more long-term plots and fewer short-term do-nothing go-nowhere plots. The sense of continuity and theme are getting broken up and discounted.

'''Specific to Excise, I can't really say much. I know he did some of the work behind Space Risk, but I don't see that as very positive. I haven't really seen him take an active hand in developing and running anything recently.

Things to do: 1) Be active as a staff presence 2) Develop and run TPs that involve more social and political RP from the players, rather than just shooting people every couple of nights 3) Tie the TPs into a consistent backstory. It's a MUSH, not a videogame.

Ah ha, and here I thought my streak of Solar System risk compliments would go unchallenged. Risk is meant to be tied together via a common war setting. IE, it represents a military campaign by both sides. 2k5 is based on a war, after all. This Risk in particular is going to affect things in 3 ways that I can think of offhand: 1. Catechism's Bird of Pz-Zazz plot, which admittedly needs more attention. 2. Cyclonus's diabolical plans for Copernicus Station (whatever they may be), and 3. The affect this is having on Earth. IE, that the Shipping Lanes are now full of rampant piracy, etc, but that otherwise the human exploration sites are still hero-controlled. As for non-combat scenes, I can't speak for others (well, except for review #004), but I didn't have any trouble getting social scenes going.

I have to be completely honest with you here: With only one exception (that things got competitive near the end), I was very pleased with how Solar System Risk turned out, and I'd definitely do something similar to it in the future. It was a great chance to focus back on the Autobot/Decepticon war and have the Cons be the Big Bads of the MUSH again. I realize it is not your cup of tea, but c'est la vie.

About my own activity, I have to confess surprise. I don't think I've ever been as active 2k5-wise as I am right now (which, depending on your point of view, might not be a positive). I think you are being too demanding of Staffers in general. TPStaff has been working their butts off lately.

Concerning the need for long-term plots and fewer short-term plots (though, see above, I maintain that this is leading into other stuff), this is easier said than done. I don't foresee we're going to get huge, sprawling, multi-month-long TPs anytime soon. They tend to just piss people off half way through, and require basically a single dude to be controlling everything concerning it.

If you are looking for huge, sprawling long-term TPs, I don't know if 2k5 is the place for you. Something like M3 would probably suit your needs better (ironically, it *is* based off a videogame).

'''006 Excise is great, but I get the feeling that he needs to communicate better with other people. Aside from that, he is good about staying level-headed and only snarking when necessary.'''

Thanks. I'll try to communicate gooder.

'''007 Excise seems to have been really on edge this week. I am not sure why, but he has been snappish and non-communicative while running scenes. He did not announce a scene mid-week was closed until after people showed up and attempted to pose in, and in a scene later in the week complained that things were moving too slowly, only to later on request extra pose rounds. Previous to this, he set aside a lot of time and effort to make Space Risk, which is good. I'd like to see him do more of these things. TP staff as a whole seems to be floundering, with Galvatron perpetually absent, Rodimus interjecting herself into every single combat scene, and Catechism overwhelmed with the Wizard duties that have been dumped on her. This would be a great opportunity for him to step up as a role model and mentor to the other TP staff, given his years of past admin experience.'''

It has been a very stressful week for Staff. There's been a disparaging number of petty complaints by players about other players, and even players complaining that they aren't winning enough in battle (!). The competitiveness and anger players have had against one another has been pretty depressing. I don't mean this as an excuse, but rather to agree that (TP)Staff is floundering. Morale is very low right now.

Concerning requesting additional pose rounds, I (and I think Ramjet can agree with me on this) can honestly say that I never requested additional pose rounds. Rather I simply didn't realize that his pose was intended to be a finale pose. This forced him to make a second pose, but to be honest I don't consider that a particularly notable crime.

The scene mid-week was indeed closed, and this was agreed upon in +ooc by those involved in the scene. I'm sorry, but it is *your* responsibility to ask if you can join a scene in progress rather, not for others to preemptively tell you 'no'. I'm going to have to take the advice of reviewer #001 here and say: Tough.

Lastly, concerning Rodimus, I don't blame him for showing up to combat scenes. He's been very good about !allowing, using extremely low attacks, etc. That said, I understand your frustration at having to balance things out with facheads as they are really powerful (much too powerful IMO, but that is neither here nor there). It can be annoying to have to scrounge up an additional 5 or 6 Cons in order to 'equal' him, which automatically turns small scenes into huge scenes.