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Comments
I totally agree with this. I'm all for things that keep the start of the learning curve very shallow. But to keep the "difficult to master" part, it's also crucial for the game to keep a sufficient degree of open-endedness, as it's exactly there where players can still push boundaries and challenge themselves in the "late game".
→My Mudlet Scripts
I don't see it as a slippery slope so much as cart before the horse. Before tackling the monster that is the required essay, I would love to see the admin-created, player-evolved House and City system do something about perma enemyings based on nothing but prejudice and personal dislike. If someone's character hasn't actually committed a crime - read this as made the personal decision to become an enemy of an organization, ie. raiding, killing guards, killing a citizen, etc. - then they shouldn't be enemied for 200+ years. Hell, even if they have raided and killed a few guards, is two centuries a reasonable enemying period? To me, this is the kind of thing admin should possibly stay on top of. Otherwise, player-run organizations will continue to be both an asset and detriment to the fun to be had by some players in the game.
Album of Bluef during her time in Achaea
"Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to? You will never find that [everlasting] life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man."
Also, "freedom" isn't a very good end in and of itself. Freedom is all potential, the currency of creativity (in a way), and I think you or anyone else would be hard-pressed to make a serious argument that essays have, at all, returned on the investment they've received over the years. I mean, if a House is going to fall apart internally because they can't force newbies to write soul-crushing eTheses, I think that House could probably do with a serious overhaul anyway.
@Jacen
For the record, The SL Icon has never gone down. It was taken to .5% twice though, both times by Mhaldorian forces.
Tensions between SL and BL (Houses, not Guilds) started because of some Lotus getting robbed by Otha, though they were not Hashani at the time and he said something about not realizing they were Lotus (mind you he still wouldnt give back what he stole) and it just steamrolled from there, if I recall correctly.
Yes I know Im about 5 pages late, heh.
Also, I just remembered this. I am totally confused about the requirements for novices from houses, because I thought the city was taking that over?
Essays aren't some evil, vile anathema to Achaea as a whole. It's just that every other bloody house had at least one or two essays as slapped together requirements that nobody actually cared about, except tradition or elitism or some other mysterious force kept them there.
I think essay requirements could be done right and could easily lead to positive experiences, even beyond simple opt-in essays. Given that there are multiple houses, if one house has a very strong scholastic appeal of rituals and books and debates, then having a novice show their writing ability might not be a bad idea.
However, it will be a terrible idea if the requirement is "write an essay," and they write it, and they mail it to someone who sees that X paragraphs were written about topic Y, and check a little box in project Z that says the person did the thing and can now advance.
On the other hand if it's a scholastic house and the idea is that novices are to help write some sort of manuscript, and they can participate by writing, proof-reading, researching, debating, etc. etc. then I think that'd be pretty cool. It'd be schoolwork, but school sure is a common roleplaying setting, so I wouldn't sell it as awful.
That said I do think there should be some wariness regarding requirements that are of the dull, meaningless, do-the-thing and check-the-box sort. All requirements should ideally have some potential for fun, interactivity, and character exploration or growth, whether it involves writing or sparring or buying crap. These things people play the game for, not to do boring things that involve ticking off boxes.
I never argued in favour of essays though. I merely argued against admins increasingly incapacitating players in leading positions.
I would never argue that essays have, in general, contributed positively to the game. Neither have essays ruined the game however. That essays remain a possibility though, even if one that should usually be avoided, is something I consider to be positive.
I never said "freedom" was the ultimate goal itself. A fun game is the goal. I merely consider a certain amount of freedom an aspect that contributes to that goal.
As an analogy, I think most of us would agree that character descriptions can get pretty terrible and a lot of that could be avoided by no longer being able to freely write them yourself, but merely picking visual traits out of a predefined selection and combining them into a description. But this would severely limit our feeling of truly defining our own in-game persona, to such a degree that I wouldn't find the benefit we gain from it worth the cost.
Personally, I think that the fact that a handful of houses still have one or two writing requirements (and rarely at HR 1, mind you!) is hardly as dramatical a thing as some make it out to be. It's not as if you had to write a sizable essay to advance out of novicehood in most houses...
I'm still all for voicing ones displeasure with essay requirements IC, but a blanket admin ban on them would be overreacting.
→My Mudlet Scripts
Banning it... but then what about the houses that are centered around writing and the arts?
But they give a carrot - If the essay is good enough, it could become part of the help scrolls, or added to City library. Some people work hard, but since there are so many essays/sermons to go over, it seems like no one ever gets published.
did lots of works for the wardens, published them myself.
Kerria said:
The Virtuosi is centered a lot around writing. They may not be essays, but more often than not, we still have to write a fair bit despite being the focus now being "write short, but powerful pieces". Some people may not like the need to write a lot, but people who join our House should have expected that they need to write a fair bit when they join.
Still, if the concern is whether players are having fun is the intent behind discouraging essays, we have to look at what the House stands for and what methods they have to employ to get there. I personally think Virtuosi reqs are fine. People seem to be having fun challenging their creativity with the need to write stuff, which might not take an essay form, but could still be relatively lengthy.
Similarly, Outriders is a scholarly and exploration House, I think it's partially unavoidable not to have writing requirements but the people who join should expect some measure of writing to coincide with the theme of the House.
@Nim: that's all essays have ever been, though. No reason to think that's ever going to change, and there's no reason a novice can't show their writing abilities through sermons/lectures/etc., all of which are interactive. I mean if they're that eager to get noticed, they can always write the essay* themselves and show it to other people, such as their mentor.
It's a game that revolves around reading and writing text. One way or another, if you can write well, you're going to get noticed.
@Iocun: I mean... if you're arguing against banning essays, whatever the reason, aren't you tacitly arguing for them, at least in those places where maintaining the status quo means they're not going to be abolished? At least, that's the end result in this instance, and it's not something I feel is all that worthwhile where the game is concerned, and I'm inclined to think one idea that's good enough in execution is better than any number that are amazing in possibility. Nobody ever has said to me in any of my text-administrative days 'you know what I really enjoyed? Writing this thing that nobody except maybe two people, of which I am one, will ever read.' Mostly, they resent it as much as the HR3/HR4 novice aide I assign to read it does.
The thing is, banning essays is banning essays. It's not placing undue restraints on current and future HLs; it's not the first in a series of grievous infringements upon our ability to shape and mould admin-sanctioned orgs or the direction of the game as a whole. It's not taking any freedom away from the HLs to make the game a more fun place for newbies to play. It simply means that, at minimum, the requirements that were once 'quit playing the game for an hour and write up something in Notepad or Word' are now a little less unbearable and a little more in line with, frm what I can tell, what the game's always been about, which is playing with other people.
The difference between writing a desc and writing an essay is that people see descs every time they do LOOK PERSON, and it can factor into your emotes/RP (things like Mhaldor's branding or the Mark of the Twin, for instance). It involves people, which makes it infinitely better, unlike essays, which nobody ever, ever reads ever.
The thing about the essays that most people hate is that it doesn't really matter how good they are. Such essays ask things like "what is Evil?" or "why is Humility awesome?" or, in generic terms, "describe some house viewpoint" with the particular viewpoint usually being chosen or at least limited.
You usually do not even need to write such an essay. Sometimes HELP <HOUSE> covers it, other times you can find the answer in various HHELP scrolls. Certainly, the writer can make it more personal than that, but that's roleplaying, and roleplaying is usually a deal more fun with other people than alone, alt-tabbed out of the game client so you can write something in word/notepad/vim.
The sort of essays I was suggesting was things that could actually, as you say, get added to libraries or made into help scrolls. In a combat house (although such a thing as this should definitely be more opt-in, unless the amount of written material is especially limited), you might write how abilities work or general tactical things.
There was a (slightly outdated) book on afflictions in Cyrene's library, and it was the most useful freaking thing to me when I was a newbie. I still refer to paraphrased descriptions I wrote to it whenever I forget what a less common affliction does.
In short, if you have writing requirements, they should be a creative outlet, not just a means of testing people. If they're required in order to become a house member, there should be sufficient freedom in choice in how to meet that requirement, with options such that ideally few player types in the house would not enjoy something (probably including things like "give a speech, host a debate, invent an edutainment game, interview a bunch of people, write clever graffiti, or whacky ritual suicide deathsight one-liners instead")
(also while writing this I decided it's be really cool, if unnecessary, to have some kind of scribe NPC that writes down everything said after being given something to write it down in (and if it has pages, which page to do it in) until the person who handed them the thing asks to have it back - players can already do this, so it's not necessary, but it'd still be cool!)
Given that every house in the game is being redesigned in some way and to some degree, I disagree with the bolded.
Essays are a joyless, soul-killing activity more often than not. But you can understand why people assign essays as tasks. There are limits to gameplay, to the ways you can mechanically interact with the world. There are so many things you can't actually do: you can't really tame a basilisk, or incite a riot in Tasur'ke, or telepathically project yourself into someone's dreams to learn their fears, or consort with air elementals. You can roleplay and emote whatever you like, but the consequences that make actions real are limited to whoever's willing to cooperate with you by pretending what you pretend.
So it's easier to say 'write about this' than to work within the confines of game mechanics and figure out another way for people to demonstrate aptitude. Especially when it comes to more specific, esoteric subjects.
Agree, Bluji. But if we're gonna set the lowest-common-denominator bar somewhere, we should set it higher than essays.
The Ashura have no essays. We promote people based upon putting fists into faces.
da rpz yo
wait i'm confused i thought that's what essays were?
I'm not arguing for essays as a whole, I'm arguing for not fundamentally banning any sort of requirement that includes writing. To say "everything that requires people to spend a few minutes to write something is evil", without looking at what it is, what the house is about, at what rank it is required, how creatively the writing requirement is designed, for what the written text is used, etc., seems nothing but stubborn, and a bit childish.
What would be the actual principle behind the ban? Banning everything that may require an out-of-game time investment? As I said before, I'm generally against requiring many out-of-game time investments, but you can't avoid all of them. By that logic, you'd also have to ban many combat requirements, since it's impossible to truly excel in combat without spending some time reading combat logs, trying to understand them, creating aliases in your system, and so on.
Or is the principle to ban every kind of requirement that many players don't find fun? That would include probably 90% of all currently existing requirements.
Or is it about not doing anything out of an underlying principle at all, but simply banning essays because, well, "ARRGH ESSAYS!!!"? Well, yeah, that seems like a rational way to manage a game...
→My Mudlet Scripts
On the one hand, I can see the purpose of essays. It's hard to be certain that a character (and therefore, the player behind the character) has a firm understanding about something like Nature, the element of Fire, or the Second Truth. An essay over the topic is typically a good measure for their understanding, and the longer the essay the deeper their understanding you can measure. Sort of the same reason you use them in academic settings. An interview tends to leave the interviewee with scattered thoughts and an unorganized presentation that can lead to thinking they know less (or sometimes more, if you can believe it) than they actually do. Plus, it doesn't take as much time on the testers, of whom there are far fewer than there are newbies and no one really enjoys giving tests in the first place.
That said, I loathed (and still loathe) doing many of the essays required of me over my years playing. Particularly now, as my Sylvan House character, the few times I've been able to log in recently have been accompanied with the dread of looking over my essay requirements (do not even get me started on rituals; that's something that I could write paragraphs about in the Ranting thread; I am not that creative, and I feel like an idiot when I have to write my own; leave me alone!) and so I've been putting them off as long as possible. I just graduated from college, I'm done with essays for the next five decades or so, thanks. MAYBE one per newbie, but more than that is a serious drag. And DEFINITELY no requiring of rituals. Just don't do it.
(P.S. My anti-establishmentarianism wants to say that a Divine law against required essays is a bad thing, that Houses should be dissuaded from using them, but they should not be outright banned.)
Don't be silly, @Iocun. I'm not saying anything that requires a time investment and also requires writing is terrible. This is a text game, after all.
Nor am I saying that just because Newbie X doesn't think a requirement is enjoyable, that is therefore a good reason to abolish all requirements everywhere (since that's ultimately where that slippery slope argument leads).
Nor am I fundamentally opposed to stringing together large quantities of text of varying quality, as pretty much everything I've ever written will attest.
I AM saying that I don't have to know anything about the context to know that requirements of novices (or the sole path for advancement within a House) that are non-interactive by nature and time-intensive are baaaad news for a game in a niche market that relies on player interaction early and often to retain new players.
The difference here is that combat aliases don't require much time, if anything, to set up, and the time investment that they do require is broken up by testing them, usually with people. Combat logs you tend to go over, either with other players in-game or on the forums, also with other players. In fact, pretty much everything involving combat involves other players. Except for some of the new bashing mechanics, I guess, which apparently require use of some combat skills? I dig it.
@Naverre, if I were testing for competency in e-theological beliefs (or whatever), I'd much rather assume the opposite position and see what the kid could come up with. Those are waaaaaaaaaay better than essays imo.
ETA: There's something kind of ironic about writing essays to say that essays are stupid, so we can make a game out of it if you want. Give me a circumstance in which you think writing an essay is a valid req for anything beneath HR5 and I will give you a better, more engaging, and less time-intensive alternative. Mathonwy Corso, House-Fixer, at your disposal.
@Mathonwy: One of the things the Mojushai did was require that not only should you spar, but you should also write what you learned from the spar to the house combat clan log. Generally, it was to show that there was some active effort in learning combat - and, to begin with, the combat section definitely required someone else to interact with.
What other approaches would you seek for that? I'm honestly curious since I actually sort of liked that requirement, even though I'd probably sparred like forty or so times before actually doing it.
Nim said:
To be honest, I've learned more from talking to people about combat* and what they've noticed, say, during arena events and things than I ever did just writing down a summary of how, e.g., my raid defence went (the latter usually looks like HAHA I FORGOT TO MASS AND DIED LIKE A TOTAL NOOB).
For one, if you're starting out in combat or aren't like a raidmaster/top-tier PKer, you probably don't know enough to know what it is you're doing wrong in the first place, so how good of an analysis can you really provide?
For two, if you gather a few noncoms/people looking to get into combat and have a discussion as opposed to a lecture, you're going to probably be answering the questions that a few people have but don't want to ask (because nobody likes looking stupid), or they might answer questions you have but don't know you have because of the issues in point one above. You also get the chance to ask follow-up questions or clear up misconceptions, which isn't something you can do with an essay.
*not to imply that I am, you know, good at combat or whatever
Jumping in the conversation, not having read all 33 pages tbh so I may be missing context, but my 2 cents:
Agreed.
That is interactive. Asking them to go do/discover something then write a sentence or two seems fine (to me). But isn't the main point here about essays? Essays aren't "do something, spend 20 seconds typing about it, repeat" they're "spend a few hours learning about something, then spend possibly the same amount of time (if not more) writing about what you learned".
A smaller series of longer processes feels more like work, and is unappealing. A larger number of shorter iterative processes feels more active, is less likely to be viewed as work, and keeps you engaged. This isn't just a thing for games, it's present in business processes as well (agile development, scrums, etc.) The connection and engagement begins when a task starts, the longer the task is the more likely they are to lose interest, trail off mentally, or even forget what they were doing! (imagine being new to the game, starting an essay, then you have to log off and don't play for a day or two, you basically have to start from scratch)
Nobody's saying that essays can't contribute to Achaea's unfolding tapestry of lore, but for any amount of time on a novice/House level that you ask someone to churn out a couple hundred words for the sole benefit of the requirement's proctor and the person writing it, you could spend that same amount of time doing any number of things that contribute to more actual interaction between players.
Also, the expectations placed upon a player looking to join an order in terms of contributing back to the game's story are going to be vasty different than some newbie just learning the ropes whose primary goal is just getting to HR5.
Sylvans were particularly guilty of shitty reqs. The entry-level stuff was fine, but the Quaero, ugh. Even for a strictly optional set of electives within an optional program in a House of pontification, it was just not inspiring stuff. The Air path was the worst, I remember 5-6 out of 10 advancement tasks being in the form of 'write about this subject'. I tried hard to come up with more fun, gameplay-incorporated things for Fire. I don't know what it's like now.
'Do a ritual' is or can be a bit more fun/involved than 'write an essay', but it's also kind of... You're asking someone to improvise when they aren't yet necessarily familiar enough with the game, as a player, to know what they can, can't, should, and shouldn't do. You're asking them to DM - minus guide book - when they're still learning to play D&D. Daunting. "Do I just emote it all? What do I emote? Drawing a circle and chanting? Or a pentagram? What if it's a square? Then what happens? Some glowing lights? Will anything actually happen or do I emote the consequences myself?" It can take a long time playing the game before you realise what you can do, how far you can push the envelope, and have a high enough familiarity with the subject you're roleplaying to be able to take liberties.
I feel like rituals and essays should be kept as "choice tasks" until a certain stage in the game, for example higher up advancement or perhaps even Order joining. But I do think neither of those two should be moved out of the choice task list (maybe rituals in some cases as mandatory later on, but never essays as mandatory)
Artemis says, "You are so high maintenance, Tharvis, gosh."
Tecton says, "It's still your fault, Tharvis."