Further PbP and Campaign Issues


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Sovereign Court

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Technically this is a repost, as the first time it didn't show up when I posted it earlier today. Perhaps because I put a / in the topic.

Not honestly combed through the website feedback lately so sorry if this is redundant information and I won't be offended if the topic is locked, closed etc. if your all on top of it. Here are the issues as I see them. No. 1 in particular drove me to make this post-

1. Thread "Hiatus" Problems.

I don't think this issue is seen much outside of the campaign PbP interface but i've had reports that this also applies to people still relying on scrolling through the PbP forums manually or using the "Focus" button.

PMG has said in the past he is not so much in the know about how all the PbP stuff works- but essentially, its pretty common for a game to go on hiatus for a couple of weeks, sometimes up to a month or two. This ranges from various reasons but usually because RL is getting in the way- long travelling plans, a busted computer, floods...

So the IC and OOC threads go very quiet. You still have your dot and in many cases now, your Campaign page on your profile. So your game comes off hiatus, and you start posting on the discussion and IC thread, looking to get your game back on track.

The new posts do not show in other people's campaigns page which they use to track your game. I've had this happen to me on multiple occasions now and for the games which I DM, I ended up sending a heap of PM's to gather everybody. But not everyone is aware this is necessary and wonders why their players never show up. Players in turn, wonder why their DM never came back.

I think the new campaign interface is a fantastic tool and i'm really hoping further things are added to it (i'm also happy to make suggestions :P )- I use it exclusively as it is FAR more convenient than trawling through the respective forums (especially with how frequent dots disappear, see 3) and its a shame that I can't currently always trust it to tell me there are new posts.

A "Mass PM" to a group of players in your own campaign would also be a really neat addition to the PM and Campaign interface, especially until this is fixed.

2. 1 post in 50.

The first post on each page behaves oddly. When adding a new reply using the traditional button, it doesn't show up at all if for example, your making the 4502nd post in a thread. In addition, when trying to get at said new post, the forum will instead take you to the previous page just BEFORE the first post of the new page. More of a PbP issue than a general issue, doubt it bothers people much on the general forums.

3. Disappearing Dots.

I still don't really understand why dots are lost on various threads. I know that the official line is that the server 'repopulates' dots based on your previous posting... But it often doesn't actually ever give you a dot back until you've manually found the thread in question and re-dotted it. Less of an issue than it used to be as we seem to be going through a generally steady period for the site (barring the last major downtime which was ISP I was told).

4. PbP Trolling.

Not a topic i'm entirely comfortable with as I honestly am not sure what can be done about this. We have a situation at the moment where someone is recruiting for their 14th PbP game. This person has never got past the first page in an IC PbP, often disappearing just after recruitment has finished and leaving several players who have spent hours making a character and eagerly awaiting the campaign, hung out to dry. I suppose it would be nice if there was a way to flag such offenders, a reputation system to warn other people... Some way which didn't involve Joana, Mark Sweetman and myself acting as the unofficial forum police... We have warned people in the past couple of games but these warnings are not fully heeded as we're just fellow users, even if his "track record" is fully catalogued.

Don't honestly have a happy fix in mind here. But I don't believe this is the first time such a thing has happened (well, its the 14th time for this one individual). I think even if there isn't a policy put into place for this, its worth PMG etc. knowing about it.

5. 1 Hour Editing Lockout

Some PbP posts are the longest i've seen on these forums, dwarfing even the long rants and flame wars found in Monk threads (tongue-in-cheek, please don't post taking offence and make this a monk thread...). People often want to make sure they meet the DM's submitted "posting quota" (i.e., many want a post per day on weekdays) and post on their phone before leaving for work, or make a quick post before heading out. No one likes being the one holding everyone else up in combat.

By the time they then have access to a computer again and time to edit said post, its been over an hour. They made a typo in the spoiler tag perhaps, and the super secret PC secret scene they were having with one of the players is now bare for everyone to see. Or they accidentally linked the wrong map to a combat, causing a mess of confusion.

Lots of people "lurk" on good PbP games and plenty of people like to read them sheerly for the pleasure of it. In turn, a lot of DM's want to take pride in the "story" of their own game and clear up typos, mistakes etc. The 1 hour editing window is probably fine as is for most of the Paizo forum, but the IC threads could really do with something more generous, say three to six hours.

Not only that, but some edits I have made in the past have been so long by the time I click submit to make the changes, i've been locked out, and I am by no means a slow typer.

P.S- yes i'm well aware Paizo is fully busy with Gencon right now. I'm not looking for an immediate fix, if any fixes are even forthcoming at all.


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#2 and #5 are both frequent sources of grief for my players and I.

The 1 in 50 bug causes people to miss maps and responses posted near a page transition, and the 1-hour editing lock-out results in nonsensical posts when people author a reply that doesn't take into account the information they missing in that missed reply — particularly if I'm preoccupied with something else and can't read a new reply right away.

Sovereign Court

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I tried to put forward things that a lot of people are having trouble with rather than just us PbP junkies, but I did contemplate adding 6. I'll put it here for consideration.

6. Alias Retirement

Paizo doesn't want aliases deleted after ten posts or so, which I actually think is a pretty solid move. This does mean that a regular PbPer here can easily end up with 50+ aliases (I personally have 80, having been active on these forums for two years now and no, none of them are sock puppets for non-PbP use...).

What this eventually leads to is a ridiculously long alias list where a player is loath to add more. Which means said player eventually "re-purposes" an old alias, completely renaming it and changing the profile to fit the new character, perhaps replacing an old one from a retired campaign.

If anyone then goes and reads that campaign... you have a rather confusing read ahead of you, with a character called "X" talking as though he was "Y". Amusingly, "X" appears to be a raging Orc but talks as though he was a master elf Wizard...

My proposed solution for this is quite simple- let people "retire" their aliases in a similar manner to how you can designate a campaign as no longer active (such campaigns appear at the bottom of the campaigns page and take up very little real estate). Retired aliases are still associated with that person but-

1. Are listed at the very bottom of the Aliases page taking up very little space (like previous campaigns).

2. Do not appear in the "Post As" toolbar, at least until the "retired" tickbox is deselected.

Many DM's (myself included) also make aliases for recurring NPC's and major villains, so being able to retire them would also be sweet. You wouldn't have a problem of people re-purposing their old aliases if they could be retired and the "post as" toolbar could be slimmed down by users themselves.


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Vote of support for all of the ideas put forward... in particular 1. and 6. I'd add my own words, but I don't see the need as AKs captured the essence of the issues well.... though I'll add one more.

7. Ability to hide 'active' Campaigns

At present the only way to remove a PbP from the Current section of the tracker is for the DM to remove you manually via the Campaign Status, or to wait a few months for it to naturally drop out of the list. However if the PbP is abandoned, or if you leave it and the DM does not drop you from the list of active players - there isn't any way to do it from the player side.

Would it be possible to add an option to Hide or Remove from Current Campaigns when a Player reviews the Campaign Information page?

Sovereign Court

I nearly wrote that one myself Mark, but by the time I got to 5 it had slipped my mind. Yes, having to ask the DM to remove you as a player is quite inconvenient, I have a couple of games I merely "lurk" on in my campaigns list that i'd rather not have populating it and i'd rather not PM the DM to remove me.


#6 (or some other alias management mechanism) would top my wishlist. Right now I've got 91 aliases and most of them are just for one PbP. I'd love to be able to hide certain aliases from the Post-As box.


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I would like the option to be able to set certain defaults for threads. So that I don't have to check who I'm posting as for each game. It's not really an issue but I think it might be nice.


Mark, in regards to 7, if you use the button to hide the IC game thread on the main messageboard page, the campaign will also disappear from your Campaigns tab.

Octavian42, one of the newest improvements to the PbP fora was making your active alias in each thread jump to the top of your list of aliases in the drop-down box instead of staying in alphabetical order. It's not an automatic default, but it's the next best thing.


Joana wrote:
Octavian42, one of the newest improvements to the PbP fora was making your active alias in each thread jump to the top of your list of aliases in the drop-down box instead of staying in alphabetical order.

Ah so THAT'S why I've got 17 aliases that are out of order! I thought it was simply putting all of the recently created ones up there. Yeah I'd definitely prefer some control over that because right now it's a mess.


It's handy for players who generally only have one active alias in a game, but I can see it would be less handy for GMs with lots of NPCs. If you move the character to the "Previous Characters/NPCs," it will put the alias back in alphabetical order (does for players anyway, as I've had GMs use it when I've accidentally posted using the wrong name), but then it will jump up to the top again next time you use it. Still, you can "retire" old NPCs from that list anyway, by moving them to Previous Characters once you're done with them.

It's thread-specific, too, so you should only see aliases you've posted with in that game at the top of the threaad.


The go to top order is nicer players than gms.


Hopefully, these are improvements we'll see in the Paizo Game Space.

RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

I really like a lot of these ideas (especially Mark's #7), but Joana I could kiss you for telling me about that way to get rid of campaigns in my campaign tab (which I love and have as my Paizo bookmark). I've got a few don't seem to have ever disappeared despite months of inactivity.

I don't really use NPC profiles that much as a GM (I'm happy with my main alias) but I could definitely see doing so if I could then mark them inactive, a la the campaigns. I'm a big fan of the go-to-top feature for the ones I play in.


I particularly care about #1 and #3, and to a lesser extent #3 and #7.


Motteditor wrote:
Joana I could kiss you for telling me about that way to get rid of campaigns in my campaign tab (which I love and have as my Paizo bookmark). I've got a few don't seem to have ever disappeared despite months of inactivity.

THIS +1


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Joana wrote:

Mark, in regards to 7, if you use the button to hide the IC game thread on the main messageboard page, the campaign will also disappear from your Campaigns tab.

Octavian42, one of the newest improvements to the PbP fora was making your active alias in each thread jump to the top of your list of aliases in the drop-down box instead of staying in alphabetical order. It's not an automatic default, but it's the next best thing.

Ever the angel of the boards. Thank you, Joana.

Next, I do like what's been done with the PbP forum. Thanks to the tech team.

That said, one thing that's annoying me as a DM is that if I accidentally post with the wrong alias, be it one of my PC aliases or a different DM alias, that alias gets pinned at the top of the alias selection pull down, while the DM alias I've been using for months or years stays pinned in alaphabetical order. Maybe the alias selection drop down could be ordered by frequency ofselection in a given thread?


therealthom wrote:
Joana wrote:

Mark, in regards to 7, if you use the button to hide the IC game thread on the main messageboard page, the campaign will also disappear from your Campaigns tab.

Octavian42, one of the newest improvements to the PbP fora was making your active alias in each thread jump to the top of your list of aliases in the drop-down box instead of staying in alphabetical order. It's not an automatic default, but it's the next best thing.

Ever the angel of the boards. Thank you, Joana.

Next, I do like what's been done with the PbP forum. Thanks to the tech team.

That said, one thing that's annoying me as a DM is that if I accidentally post with the wrong alias, be it one of my PC aliases or a different DM alias, that alias gets pinned at the top of the alias selection pull down, while the DM alias I've been using for months or years stays pinned in alaphabetical order. Maybe the alias selection drop down could be ordered by frequency ofselection in a given thread?

Couldn't you make that a previous npc to not have it selected at top?

Sovereign Court

As someone who plays in a lot of pbp, I wouldn't mind a warning about the culprit from #4. Who are they?


GeraintElberion wrote:
As someone who plays in a lot of pbp, I wouldn't mind a warning about the culprit from #4. Who are they?

Allow me to save Mr. Kilcoyne some trouble. I believe he is referring to me.

It is absolutely true that I have started numerous pbp games (14 apparently), many of which have died on the vine. I regret this very much, and I apologize for any damage I've done to the pbp community on these boards. It's a strong community and I don't wish to be someone who causes problems; I want to be a contributor. Every game I try and start I do with only the very best of intentions; I just want to take part in a game. However, I confess to some personal problems involving my mental health which are a barrier to success. Still, I keep trying just because I really want to succeed. If anyone views me as high risk, please feel free to ignore any recruiting attempts I may offer.

I'm really not a troll, though. I offer a couple of examples of longer-running pbp games I have GM'd. It's a small sample size compared to the number of failures, I admit, but maybe it at least demonstrates that I really do want to GM a successful game. I realize that I've burned many bridges, but I hope I'll still be welcome here.

Legacy of Fire IC thread

Savage Tide on ENWorld forums


I wholeheartedly agree with the OP comment #5, I frequently edit typos and the 1 hour limit can be a problem.

I use a tremendous amount of aliases for most of my NPCs or villians. The visual effect is nice, it clearly shows a different character/creatures actions for the story. Retiring alias would be a nice feature.

#8 A spellcheck function would be a handy feature.


#5 can be bad if you type [/dice] [/dice] and don't get your attack roll for example.

Sovereign Court

Malvoisin- I did mean to put "Troll" in quotation marks and forgot as despite your track record you have (this time) responded citing illness etc.

Regardless if trolling or simply a known track record of having to drop games... I think players need to know these things, as not many do the research. I like to think theres a really nice PbP community on this site and it makes me sad to see people posting about their horrible experiences with it when the GM disappears. Of course, where do you draw the line? I admit I don't have a solution for #4.

@Baldwin- I think most browsers can have a plugin that spell checks now. I use one on Firefox.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
baldwin the merciful wrote:
#8 A spellcheck function would be a handy feature.

Your browser may offer this feature already. For example, my firefox underlines the words that are spelled wrong.

... ninja'd :)


I'm using IE and it's not picking up when I spell a word wrong. Does anyone know where that function is hidden to enable?


AFAIK, it's not available in IE. It's on by default in Chrome and (apparently) Firefox.


Joana wrote:
AFAIK, it's not available in IE. It's on by default in Chrome and (apparently) Firefox.

That makes me feel better.


I've clicked on "hide" for those dead campaigns listed under Previous Campaigns in my Campaigns tab and they just keep coming back.

I've even gone into the archives and have tried to "hide" them. Yet they still keep popping back up.

Is it just not possible?

RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

Javell, I'd suggest trying what Joana suggested, about x-ing them out. That's worked beautifully for me (so far at least, I suppose they could come back at some point -- need a channel energy ability, I guess).


I actually x'ed them all out in the archives, but they all came back save 1. Not sure why that's the only one that stayed gone, but there you go. *shrugs*

I'll go back and do it again and possibly again. Maybe if I can get 1 to disappear each time, at least that'll be progress. :)


therealthom wrote:
Joana wrote:

Mark, in regards to 7, if you use the button to hide the IC game thread on the main messageboard page, the campaign will also disappear from your Campaigns tab.

Octavian42, one of the newest improvements to the PbP fora was making your active alias in each thread jump to the top of your list of aliases in the drop-down box instead of staying in alphabetical order. It's not an automatic default, but it's the next best thing.

Ever the angel of the boards. Thank you, Joana.

Next, I do like what's been done with the PbP forum. Thanks to the tech team.

That said, one thing that's annoying me as a DM is that if I accidentally post with the wrong alias, be it one of my PC aliases or a different DM alias, that alias gets pinned at the top of the alias selection pull down, while the DM alias I've been using for months or years stays pinned in alaphabetical order. Maybe the alias selection drop down could be ordered by frequency ofselection in a given thread?

+1. Some sort of frequency of use selector would be awesome. Several of my older games don't even have my dedicated GM alias float to the top.


I would like to see an "Alias" tab on any other alias's one might have.

When you get to a specific alias, the only way to switch to another alias is to click on your main avatar name and then click on the "Alias" tag.

Not overly critical but would be quite handy.


Javell DeLeon wrote:

I would like to see an "Alias" tab on any other alias's one might have.

When you get to a specific alias, the only way to switch to another alias is to click on your main avatar name and then click on the "Alias" tag.

Not overly critical but would be quite handy.

+1 actually this would be very handy

Sovereign Court

Is there any chance of some kind of staff response to this? People who know my usual posts on Paizo know I usually abhor posts that call staff or developers out but i'd like to know if the feedback was helpful and if any of these issues are anywhere on this year's to do list :). Some of them may not even be seen as issues by the staff and i'd personally be interested to hear some input on these subjects which align closely with my main interests here on this website.

The hiatus problems/disappearing dots has struck me again after a couple of weeks absence from posting in some threads which means its likely struck many of my players too.


Man, that one hits me all the time. If my main game were slower, then I'd be really screwed, since its Gameplay and Discussion threads also have a bug that keeps them from updating FeedDemon with RSS.


Yeah, those dots are finicky. I'd wager they only last somewhere around 5-7 days. It's not long at all.


I don't like the disappering dots either.


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path Subscriber

The dots have hit various of the games I play in and leaves me holding the game up, despite going into the campaign tag more or less daily. So a big +1 on that.

I would also like to remove from my alias and also my pathfinder society characters which a) I mistakenly put in the Society but should have been aliases. Then there are the other aliases that are now retired and clutter up the place, either because the character wasn't selected for a game or the game has ended. So a +1 on managing aliases.

I must say the others seem sensible things that would help those of us gaming on the boards. Although I'm not sure about going over the hour on posts, because it could lead to a lot of retconing and stuff if things are changing under your feet, either gm or player.


therealthom wrote:
That said, one thing that's annoying me as a DM is that if I accidentally post with the wrong alias, be it one of my PC aliases or a different DM alias, that alias gets pinned at the top of the alias selection pull down, while the DM alias I've been using for months or years stays pinned in alaphabetical order. Maybe the alias selection drop down could be ordered by frequency ofselection in a given thread?

Hey, therealthom, one thing I've just now realized as I'm DMing a PbP for the first time: If you mark your DMing alias(es) "NPC," they don't pop to the top of the list. So if there's a main one you want to use for a game, be sure not to mark it as an NPC; it'll show up as a Character rather than an NPC in the Characters tab, but it will default to the top of the list in the gameplay thread.

Of course, the flip side is, if you or one of your players accidentally post under the wrong alias, just mark it as an NPC in the Campaign Info tab (better, an "inactive" one) and it'll go back into alphabetical order where it should be.

Sovereign Court

I've been giving some more thought to the "Hiatus" and "Disappearing Dots" problem and i'm wondering if its simply what happens when a game drops into the archives.

This happens ridiculously easy. Right at this moment for example, pages 1 and 2 of the PbP IC forums are all full of games that were updated today.

Page 3 is games that were updated Yesterday and Thursday, and even the very oldest games in the PbP IC forum that are listed have replies on them only a few days ago.

Perhaps its simply that a game can fall into the archives so easily (there are SO MANY PbP IC threads, 4 pages is not enough :/) which is causing the hiatus problem I cited? A IC thread will fall into the archives after a mere week of inactivity, or sooner if the PbP forum is particularly busy. It could potentially therefore, be remedied by simply allowing a longer list/more pages in the IC forum Am I barking up the wrong tree here or am I on to something?


You might have something there, AK. My game was on hiatus for a week while I was away at Dragon*Con (and recuperating from the ensuing 'Con Crud' afterwards) and I was surprised when my players didn't receive updates when I resumed posting. Seemed odd that it would have been archived so quickly but if it's as you say, then it makes more sense.

Sovereign Court

A week is about the cutoff point at the moment... and I will check to see if its worse or better on weekends.

Sovereign Court

Hopeful bump... The problem of disappearing dots and "X New Posts" seems to only be getting worse as the weeks roll by.

Paizo Employee Senior Software Developer

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The dots and x new code is being completely rewritten. I hope to have the new code rolled out in the next week or two.

Paizo Employee Senior Software Developer

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Since I'm working on this code right now and it's fresh in my mind, I should describe what the changes are going to entail.

As I said, the code for dots and "x new" is being completely rewritten. The old code would forget about dots and "x new" for threads as they got pushed into the archives. This was to prevent us from having to track way too much data, but obviously caused problems with slow-moving campaigns.

The new code gets rid of the archives, so we'll be using a different strategy to limit how much stuff we're tracking for each user. We'll be keeping track of each person's 500 most recently posted-in threads for dots, and a separate list of 500 most recently viewed threads for "x new". Threads associated with active campaigns are explicitly skipped when deciding which info to discard, so dots and "x new" shouldn't expire no matter how old the campaign is.

Campaigns become "inactive" for a player in a few different ways: a) If nobody's posted in any of its threads for more than three months. b) If the GM marks the campaign as inactive. c) If the GM marks the player as inactive. d) If you hide the gameplay thread.

The old code would forget if you've hidden a thread if the thread was inactive for more than three months. The new code tracks up to 500 hidden threads per person, removing threads with the oldest most recent post first. It also skips any gameplay threads for your campaigns that you've hidden so they should remain inactive until you deliberately unhide the thread.

As for the various requests about improving alias management, I haven't done anything about that but I'll see what I can do while I'm poking around in this stuff.

Sovereign Court

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Ah the sweet smell of progress, woot! The changes sound great thanks for the info.

As for the alias management... some way to make an alias "inactive" in a similar manner to a campaign would work very well.

RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

Sounds good. Thanks, Gary.


Nice, PMG! As a PbP enthusiast, I really appreciate that. Stuff I'm not sure about:

Would it hurt performance to consolidate the lists and make it the 500 most recently posted-in and/or viewed threads? Because it's weird when oh hey, there's a thread with a dot that I haven't viewed in awhile... why doesn't it say how many new posts? And it would be ditto for oh hey, there's a thread with new posts... but didn't I post in that one?

The stuff on hidden threads was convoluted. My interpretation is that once you hit 500 hidden threads, the next time you hide another thread, the one that will be lost from your list is the one that hasn't had a post in the longest -- but skipping over PbP gameplay threads, leaving them on the list so that you can keep your Current Campaigns trim.

@AK: Do you just want to minimize an "inactive" alias on your profile, putting it into a compressed list at the bottom of the page, as with Previous Campaigns? (That would be good enough for me.) Or do you have an idea for some larger effect? Because in your analogy, when a DM marks a campaign as inactive, that affects other people's lists.


This sounds awesome.


motteditor wrote:
Sounds good. Thanks, Gary.

+1

Thanks for taking the initiative to get this thread started, Alex.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

I don't know if this is related to the code changes, but I'm seeing the XX new posts not disappearing now after you look at them (though they seem to reset when you get enough posts to move to a new page in the thread). It looks like it just started this morning, I think.

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