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[flabort]

Cut it down by making it so that, unless you specifically say that you will be away for a while, being away for five turns makes your head explode and your stuff vanish into the aether. That should help.

Make it two.

Three. And instead of head explode, the Other takes you.
Xan, while having the players keep track of their statuses might be help, lazy players will quickly be the end of that idea, as nice as it otherwise would be.

Here's my idea:
Divide the players into smaller, more manageable groups. A group, B group, C group. When doing a turn, do just one group. So start with A group. At the end of the post, you'd say B group comes next. When you do that turn, at the bottom C group comes next. And after C group comes A group. Wash, rinse, repeat. Players in the other groups can REACT during a groups turn, if the current group interacts with that player. Otherwise, they have to wait till they have a GO to post their actions. What?

Because the reason to do turns one group at a time is to restrict the number of posts at a time, making finding actions easier, and also making turns have less actions. You cannot post actions when it is not your turn next. You may, however, post OOC chat, IC chat, and REactions. And of course new applications.

New players get put in the smallest group. When all groups reach 16 players, another group is added drawing players from all exsisting groups until they're all the same size (16,16,16 -> 12,12,12,12. 16,16,16,16 -> 13,13,13,13,13 etc.). If players are removed due to inactivity, the groups shrink starting with the largest first. If all groups fall to 10, a group is removed and the players from it moved into the remaining groups. (10,10,10,10,10 -> 12,12,13,13. 10,10,10,10 -> 13,13,14 etc.).

[Unholy_Pariah]

Cut it down by making it so that, unless you specifically say that you will be away for a while, being away for five turns makes your head explode and your stuff vanish into the aether. That should help.

Make it two.

I disagree with this, if you arent performing actions you arent putting any strain on piecewise whatsoever and i dont really want to lose all my character progress just because i hit my internet quota cap.
The only reason PW used that mechanic in the first place was so that the waitlist would move faster, without a waitlist theres no reason to reintroduce that mechanic.

The best way to help piecewise is to manage our own stats and inventories on a pseudo-honor system, where we update them for piecewise but if he or another player catches us giving ourselves unwarranted stat boosts or purposefully mislabelling items to gain an advantage our heads explode and we get banned for a week, then a month and then forever.
Small things like not updating your pool could probably be overlooked if you dont do it too often but stuff like gaining a soul every time you kill something when piecewise doesnt say you gain a point would be bannable.

[Saurinae]

I think that the "groups" idea flabort brought up would be beneficial.  That way the turns would be smaller but less complicated.

[Unholy_Pariah]

I cant argue that it wouldnt make the updates appear faster due to smaller turn sizes but that idea doesnt really help piecewise increase the speed of the game.

Instead of having 1 huge update every few days that takes him 3 hours to write up hell put out a 1 hour update for a small group of the players every day which could slow the game down due to the sheer number of people playing.

With groups like this wed only get one full turn every 3 or 4 days which is what we have now, what we want is a way for piecewise to get out a full turn every day or two with as little effort as possible.

[Empiricist]

Cut it down by making it so that, unless you specifically say that you will be away for a while, being away for five turns makes your head explode and your stuff vanish into the aether. That should help.

Make it two.

I disagree with this, if you arent performing actions you arent putting any strain on piecewise whatsoever and i dont really want to lose all my character progress just because i hit my internet quota cap.
The only reason PW used that mechanic in the first place was so that the waitlist would move faster, without a waitlist theres no reason to reintroduce that mechanic.

The best way to help piecewise is to manage our own stats and inventories on a pseudo-honor system, where we update them for piecewise but if he or another player catches us giving ourselves unwarranted stat boosts or purposefully mislabelling items to gain an advantage our heads explode and we get banned for a week, then a month and then forever.
Small things like not updating your pool could probably be overlooked if you dont do it too often but stuff like gaining a soul every time you kill something when piecewise doesnt say you gain a point would be bannable.

((I agree with this sine it also allows players to check each others information quickly since they will be with their post (though I am definitely biased towards this since I'm posting Silica's catalog with each post anyway). Additionally, we could create a list of known locations and have each player add in their current locations and interactions to the last edited so that in the end, there will be a location-interaction table with hyperlinks to their posts.))

[Unholy_Pariah]

So far im thinking xans idea is the most promising, if we can include as much of the necessary information piecewise needs as we possibly can into our actions and character sheets then the only things he will need to dig for is word translations, enemy stats and area information.
The rest will all be right there at his fingertips the second he starts writing up our actions.

[GreatWyrmGold]

((Just so everybody knows the suspected message is "Null is the avatar of the other the sealers are mad"))

"The Sealers are mad"...do we know who the sealers are? If not, could they be the PCs?

Cut it down by making it so that, unless you specifically say that you will be away for a while, being away for five turns makes your head explode and your stuff vanish into the aether. That should help.

Something like this is good but doesn't help much. It only helps us more accurately gauge the problem.

I have a question about the mention of digging through tables and pages of notes. Is this for explorationy stuff or just spellcasting? If the latter, I'm willing to show you Aether's notes, which are pretty efficiently organized, on the off chance that it helps.
I suspect that if we understood the complexity of the Perplexicon we'd be able to help more...but it seems spoilery to do so, since the complexities are what make the Perplexicon.

[Toaster]

I rather suspect it's his tables of spawn chances, NPC stats, loot tables, and the like.  I rather suspect the spawn chance one is particularly troublesome.

[Angle]

I wonder if it might be worth while to move stuff into a wiki. That way, he wouldn't have to dig through the entire thread, just check a few pages on the wiki.

[piecewise]

That would cut down on the list, but not sure if it would successfully make it easier on Piecewise however... Maybe if we include our character sheet in all of our IC posts in a spoiler might make it easier for him to find stats and items and so such, as well as quote all future actions in our initial IC post for ease of finding in one place. Stating your location above your post might help too, putting it in bold and so such. Something like...

[TEMPLE GROUNDS]

"IMMA SMASH YER SKULL!" Kill random dude.

Spoiler: Ran Domguy (click to show/hide)

Name: Ran Domguy
Description: Largely average
STR: 10
END: 0
DEX: 0
SPD: 0
POT: 0
CHA: 0
AWR: 0
WIL: 0

INV: Nothing

Having someone collect and quote all the IC posts for Piecewise in one place would help too, I bet, as mentioned previous, then people could make a link in their IC post that points to said post. Would require more work on our part, but might make it easier for Piecewise.

Stuff like that would definitely help, since It would save me from digging through things and I could make edits to the sheets right there in the posts.

Tough call.  I think the real question is this:  How attached are you to the world?  Back when it was an 8-man deathmatch, you knocked out 2-3 posts a day in this with ease.  Now, with the huge world and player list, it's suddenly overly complex.  You quadrupled the playerbase but also tripled the complexity, leaving you with 12x the work.  Something has to give.  I can see how the world would feel empty with fewer players, though.  I'd put out a few possibilities:


1:  Cap the players, somewhere between 10 and 20.  Cut anyone who hasn't acted recently, then let attrition whittle it down to the desired number.  You could tweak the number until you're comfortable.

2:  Shrink the world.  Honestly, it'd be a lot of pre-work and probably wouldn't actually help the time it takes you.  Would only really make a difference with a cap as well.

3:  Chuck the world.  Save it for another project (because it'd be a shame to put the work you put into it to waste) and bring back the arena.  Again, I'd still do a cap (maybe 16, since it's twice the old arena) and make the arena a bit bigger, then don't even try to do more than one post a day.  5-6 a week.  You could even save some concepts (the gods, occasional NPCs, some loot options perhaps) without completely losing the feel.


Really, there's no feasible option that doesn't involve a player cap.  It's up to you, and how much work you're willing to put in.  Hell, if you wanted to shelve the entire thing, that'd be your call too.  (We love it please don't do that)  You're putting in a herculean GMing effort, considering I don't think I've seen another RTD with over 10 players (at a time) playing, and you're doing TWO with over THIRTY players.

Bringing it back to the arena would work just fine. Smaller cap, less things to mess with. I wouldn't mind losing the world, since it was made for you guys to play around in, not for my own benefit. If this is something you wanna do, then it's something I can easily work with.

Cut it down by making it so that, unless you specifically say that you will be away for a while, being away for five turns makes your head explode and your stuff vanish into the aether. That should help.

Make it two.

Three. And instead of head explode, the Other takes you.
Xan, while having the players keep track of their statuses might be help, lazy players will quickly be the end of that idea, as nice as it otherwise would be.

Here's my idea:
Divide the players into smaller, more manageable groups. A group, B group, C group. When doing a turn, do just one group. So start with A group. At the end of the post, you'd say B group comes next. When you do that turn, at the bottom C group comes next. And after C group comes A group. Wash, rinse, repeat. Players in the other groups can REACT during a groups turn, if the current group interacts with that player. Otherwise, they have to wait till they have a GO to post their actions. What?

Because the reason to do turns one group at a time is to restrict the number of posts at a time, making finding actions easier, and also making turns have less actions. You cannot post actions when it is not your turn next. You may, however, post OOC chat, IC chat, and REactions. And of course new applications.

New players get put in the smallest group. When all groups reach 16 players, another group is added drawing players from all exsisting groups until they're all the same size (16,16,16 -> 12,12,12,12. 16,16,16,16 -> 13,13,13,13,13 etc.). If players are removed due to inactivity, the groups shrink starting with the largest first. If all groups fall to 10, a group is removed and the players from it moved into the remaining groups. (10,10,10,10,10 -> 12,12,13,13. 10,10,10,10 -> 13,13,14 etc.).

That could work, and it would reduce the time between my posts, but not between turns for any individual player. It would reduce my daily workload, but not the overall work and time delays.

((Just so everybody knows the suspected message is "Null is the avatar of the other the sealers are mad"))

"The Sealers are mad"...do we know who the sealers are? If not, could they be the PCs?

Cut it down by making it so that, unless you specifically say that you will be away for a while, being away for five turns makes your head explode and your stuff vanish into the aether. That should help.

Something like this is good but doesn't help much. It only helps us more accurately gauge the problem.

I have a question about the mention of digging through tables and pages of notes. Is this for explorationy stuff or just spellcasting? If the latter, I'm willing to show you Aether's notes, which are pretty efficiently organized, on the off chance that it helps.
I suspect that if we understood the complexity of the Perplexicon we'd be able to help more...but it seems spoilery to do so, since the complexities are what make the Perplexicon.

Killing idle players really isn't gonna help with the turn load. Hell, I could have 100 idle players, as long as they stay idle everything is good.














Thanks for the understanding guys. I hate to let you guys down like this; I really want to continue what I've created here, but it was just becoming too much.

[Dermonster]

I would like the full word/rune list if you DO discontinue it.

I'm not saying I want you to, mind.

[syvarris]

I'll jump in with my own unique suggestion that takes elements from the others.

A few players volunteer to be helpers, and they collect all the actions and put them in a google doc or something.  They add the statuses themselves, to prevent cheating, and entirely handle the simple/mundane turns where people just summon a sword or walk into an area with complex spawn mechanics or something.

They leave all the stuff that is important, vauge, or needing spice to Piecewise.

That would cut down the workload immensely, spreading it betweem many different people, and everyone else would be able to continue on with their game.  The only issue would be the helpers not playing anymore, except maybe as the heroes or something.

...

If this idea gets accepted, despite how much I love playing Perplexicon, I volunteer to be a helper.  I've been hoping to run a copy of this game on another forum anyways, and this would accelerate that plan greatly.



If you do go with lowering the player count, please give the rules out to someone, so they can run a copy (with jumbled words) in a different thread, with mutually exclusive players.  That way people would still be able to play, even though they can't play with so many people.

[Empiricist]

((Here is my prototype of a player-managed status list. It currently only lists people in the "Temple Grounds" area who have been recently active.
Locations are bolded and underlined, player and NPC sections are separate for each location, each are under an italic heading.
Character names are listed with player names displayed via mouseover, actions linked to their message, interactions as dotpoints underneath actions.))

Spoiler: Prototype (click to show/hide)

Temple Grounds
Players:
Sarassh: Use magic [PM], return to previous location, prevent hostiles from entering the basement
-In combat [Jarvis & Aldit]
Octagonapus: Attack Sarassh via multi Zorhalth. Get soul countainer form bar, go to sea path. Continuously spam Zorhalth
-Entering combat [Sarassh]
Daniel: Repeat words, move away from zombie tiger
Adrian:
Bigfoot:
Corsair: Lead Jarvis to the courtyard, remain in anti-magic zone
Tod-4:
Derm: [PM]
Nahere: B20, B22, B23, and B24
NPCs:
Patrick: Currently idle
Zombie Tiger: Currently idle, chewing on own tail

[Xanmyral]

I completely and utterly didn't notice that someone else was attacking Sarassh. Huh, darn, guy might die before Jarvis even gets to the courtyard.

[Empiricist]

((Yeah, that's the other advantage of player updated posts: people are less likely to swarm on top of a single person that is about to be repeatedly set on fire ))