Suggestion Invasion Criteria and Feedback

[Mellifluous Magenta]

But on the flip side, that's like telling a student to write a detailed book report when they're only allowed to read the synopsis and have to guess at everything else. Oh, and most of their grade depends on how well they understand the book they weren't allowed to read.

I get what you're saying, but that lack of guidance can also hold back people who do want to improve. And, like anything else on Chaos, wouldn't people eventually grow tired of repeating the same things and naturally start seeking out new experiences?

But, seems like admin already made their feelings about this clear, so it does seem a little like a moot point at any rate.

We don't write book reports on Chaos. We write books.

There is no real criteria for a good book. And hypothetically, if you were to somehow create a criteria that affirmatively and undeniably denotes a book as being good, then you eventually start to have books that all look and read the same, because every author is trying to follow the optimal meta strategy that fulfills the criteria to have a good book.

 

[Alan]

I think right now there is a distinct lack of trust and confidence in the site staff, much more than I've felt in the last decade+ I've been here. It is becoming such an issue that it is causing people to leave Chaos, and from me asking, one of the major issues has been judgements, invasions, and some actions by the admins. And not leave writing, roleplaying, or what have you, but leave Chaos specifically for one reason or another. I think this lack of trust and confidence stems from some people for stupid, or petty reasons, but others have far more reasonable takes to say the least.

I do think it's a cop-out to say that bad eggs will ruin any future planning for judgements. I fervently believe that the Chaos of today is not even the same Chaos that it was three years ago, much less two, much less five. I believe in Chaos and its ability to have civil discussion and discourse, and no amount of planning or what have you can stop people from complaining privately. I also want Chaos to succeed and I want the people here to remain here. And, I don't want people to pull away from Chaos. We've lost a lot of writers recently that I would much rather stay on the site, good writers, with good stories and good roleplay. And currently, we have people also future-planning to leave Chaos sooner rather than later, to write somewhere else.

I don't like that.

I think one of the harder things to do would be to release invasion judgements, I think it would suck sometimes but really that's much better than what we have now. Right now we don't have any recumpenance of why someone might've done poorly on an invasion, or why a faction succeeded. I can't improve people without telling them what they did wrong. I used to be very much in the invasion-judgements are bad camp, but within the last year or more I've come around to the idea that they need to return for transparency, trust, and morale's sake.

If we are going to continue to have invasions as the focal point of roleplay and around the large major faction writing I believe those writers are owed and should be respected to be told why they failed or didn't fail.

Time to go mald in a Discord backroom about how biased staff is.

Currently I think in my experience this is the most negative viewpoint about site staff I have experienced in my time here. I don't like that, and I think that we as a community and you all as the site staff can take steps to improve things and make Chaos a fun and healthy place to be in.

 

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

I will put one counter argument in for at least some form of feedback, it doesn't even need to be point based driven. Just a message to the faction Admin team that states, you guys wrote this really well, but this perhaps needed some work.

How are we meant to improve as a faction (because the invasion system is a game within the game) if we have no idea what we did wrong?

It is like when you look at the stats and (Please do not take this as a accusation of bias because it is not) The TSO have not lost an invasion against or for since what four/five years now? It's a great run, but can come across frustrating without the feeling of factions being able to improve because there is no statement other then, "The story was just better."

This is coming from an ex Faction Owner of a Faction that a decade ago probably was one of the bad eggs in people's minds. Which in itself is a problem, just come out and say it rather then constantly telling me that it was ruined. Like yes people get into it, that is what the map game does, it creates an ownership and we see it even now, ownership makes people do crazy things and change whole faction dynamics in order to ensure they have a one up on others.

So I'm for at least some feedback, because how else can you change the constant then to allow those who otherwise don't know to fail, be taught and learn through constructive feeback?

 

[Briana Sal-Soren]

We don't write book reports on Chaos. We write books.

There is no real criteria for a good book. And hypothetically, if you were to somehow create a criteria that affirmatively and undeniably denotes a book as being good, then you eventually start to have books that all look and read the same, because every author is trying to follow the optimal meta strategy that fulfills the criteria to have a good book.

I mean, I'd argue that most published authors follow certain storytelling conventions and take cues from trends that have helped other authors succeed. And just like it would happen here, when the market becomes oversaturated with a particular formula, readers and writers often start looking for something new to spark their imagination again.

Everyone was worried that the board would have too many Sith Lords or Jedi Masters when the tier system got taken away, but there are still plenty of people who write Padawans and Acolytes without prompting.

 

[Joy]

Aether Verd

If there are bad eggs affecting invasions then they should be identified and told that they are no longer welcomed to participate in invasions. A minority of bad actors shouldn't affect the rest of the community, particularly, if there is a large amount of people who are unhappy with how invasions are being hosted.

Valiens Nantaris

I would suggest site staff host a poll asking if the community are unhappy with how invasions are right now. Cut through any debates or red tape and produce a number of how many people there are who feel like this. If there is big number of people unhappy with invasions then telling the community nothing will change isn't sufficient. If it is a small number of people then they can be told to kick rocks.

These types of threads are going to keep popping up until raw numbers tell us whether this is actually an issue or not. Most of the people who currently write on this website are not going to share their opinions on the public forum because they do not want to argue about it. But there is a reason why these threads keep popping up and why they always get a lot of lurkers following what is happening.

 

[Aether Verd]

It is like when you look at the stats and (Please do not take this as a accusation of bias because it is not) The TSO have not lost an invasion against or for since what four/five years now?

TSO is secretly the Bluehawks, in this essay I will

 

[Alan]

We don't write book reports on Chaos. We write books.

There is no real criteria for a good book. And hypothetically, if you were to somehow create a criteria that affirmatively and undeniably denotes a book as being good, then you eventually start to have books that all look and read the same, because every author is trying to follow the optimal meta strategy that fulfills the criteria to have a good book.

I'm not a chef, right? I can't create a Crème brûlée that'll melt your face off. I can't do all that. But, if someone serves me bad Crème brûlée, I certainly can tell that it's bad, despite me not being a chef.

Likewise, I don't think you need some infallible, all-encompassing checklist for what constitutes a "good book" in order to meaningfully tell whether a book is good or bad. The fact that there isn't an objective formula for producing great literature doesn't mean there are no standards by which we can evaluate it.

 

[Credit Wizard]

I keep hearing the phrase “tell a better story” in the community and comments here.

So what does that mean in my mind. If Faction A signs up for objective 1 about fighting a monster and the people on objective 1 write about going to the beach instead. Then faction A should lose because they didn’t tell the faction story they told a personal one in the confines of the invasion.

You going to the beach doesn’t help the faction win the battle. This is the simplest criteria I can think of. Did either faction actually do the story they signed up for.

If one faction did the story they should win

 

[Taiia Locke]

I keep hearing the phrase “tell a better story” in the community and comments here.

So what does that mean in my mind. If Faction A signs up for objective 1 about fighting a monster and the people on objective 1 write about going to the beach instead. Then faction A should lose because they didn’t tell the faction story they told a personal one in the confines of the invasion.

You going to the beach doesn’t help the faction win the battle. This is the simplest criteria I can think of. Did either faction actually do the story they signed up for.

If one faction did the story they should win

Telling a better story means coordinating between the writers and faction staff. Coordination between your Faction and the other Faction. From my experience, every invasion I have ever seen that was lost was largely due to the narrative being weak, poorly coordinated, or people just not reacting to the other faction. Granted, that's not true of all of them, but this is the average observation I have had on Chaos.

 

[Braze]

I think right now there is a distinct lack of trust and confidence in the site staff, much more than I've felt in the last decade+ I've been here. It is becoming such an issue that it is causing people to leave Chaos, and from me asking, one of the major issues has been judgements, invasions, and some actions by the admins. And not leave writing, roleplaying, or what have you, but leave Chaos specifically for one reason or another. I think this lack of trust and confidence stems from some people for stupid, or petty reasons, but others have far more reasonable takes to say the least.

I do think it's a cop-out to say that bad eggs will ruin any future planning for judgements. I fervently believe that the Chaos of today is not even the same Chaos that it was three years ago, much less two, much less five. I believe in Chaos and its ability to have civil discussion and discourse, and no amount of planning or what have you can stop people from complaining privately. I also want Chaos to succeed and I want the people here to remain here. And, I don't want people to pull away from Chaos. We've lost a lot of writers recently that I would much rather stay on the site, good writers, with good stories and good roleplay. And currently, we have people also future-planning to leave Chaos sooner rather than later, to write somewhere else.

I don't like that.

I think one of the harder things to do would be to release invasion judgements, I think it would suck sometimes but really that's much better than what we have now. Right now we don't have any recumpenance of why someone might've done poorly on an invasion, or why a faction succeeded. I can't improve people without telling them what they did wrong. I used to be very much in the invasion-judgements are bad camp, but within the last year or more I've come around to the idea that they need to return for transparency, trust, and morale's sake.

If we are going to continue to have invasions as the focal point of roleplay and around the large major faction writing I believe those writers are owed and should be respected to be told why they failed or didn't fail.



Currently I think in my experience this is the most negative viewpoint about site staff I have experienced in my time here. I don't like that, and I think that we as a community and you all as the site staff can take steps to improve things and make Chaos a fun and healthy place to be in.

There's a lot of truth in this. And I'm tiered of seeing writers chased off the site.

How can we fix this?

 

[Braze]

Telling a better story means coordinating between the writers and faction staff. Coordination between your Faction and the other Faction. From my experience, every invasion I have ever seen that was lost was largely due to the narrative being weak, poorly coordinated, or people just not reacting to the other faction. Granted, that's not true of all of them, but this is the average observation I have had on Chaos.

"Telling a better story" is still subjective, though. We can absolutely identify things like coordination, responding to the other faction, and actually pursuing the objective as criteria.

But deciding which side did those things better still comes down to someone's judgment.

That's why I think clearer criteria and some explanation after the judgment would help. You don't need a rigid point system, just enough transparency for people to understand what "better story" actually meant in that invasion.

 

[Amelia von Sorenn]

The short answer is...no. We will not be doing this again, because it had no point. People here get very into it, and can't understand how you could possibly ajudge them the loser!

Site Staff definitively says it’s not coming back, so let’s keep posting about how Public Invasion Judgements should be brought back

 

[Natasi Fortan]

I can tell you from experience sometimes a "detailed" "reasoning" is not better than a simple "Team A won and Team B lost, bye."

Sometimes asking for an explanation is simply asking to be deceived. Accept it and keep it movin'.

 

[Alan]

Site Staff definitively says it’s not coming back, so let’s keep posting about how Public Invasion Judgements should be brought back

yes, let's completely disregard many writers concerns and post a meme instead. very helpful and beneficial to the conversation

 

[Taiia Locke]

"Telling a better story" is still subjective, though. We can absolutely identify things like coordination, responding to the other faction, and actually pursuing the objective as criteria.

But deciding which side did those things better still comes down to someone's judgment.

That's why I think clearer criteria and some explanation after the judgment would help. You don't need a rigid point system, just enough transparency for people to understand what "better story" actually meant in that invasion.

Subjective to the judges, yes, as they are the ones judging the invasion. Valien's already stated invasion feedback is not coming back. Hypothetically if they did lay out strict criteria for invasion judgment, what would happen? Everyone would treat it like a script and not deviate.

 

[Kurayami Bloodborn]

yes, let's completely disregard many writers concerns and post a meme instead. very helpful and beneficial to the conversation

Moreso than beating a dead horse.

 

[Alan]

Subjective to the judges, yes, as they are the ones judging the invasion. Valien's already stated invasion feedback is not coming back. Hypothetically if they did lay out strict criteria for invasion judgment, what would happen? Everyone would treat it like a script and not deviate.

I don't think that's necessarily a better way to do it. I didn't always like the points systems or by-the-numbers synopsis that they used to have. I think there's a better way to do it than we did five+ years ago. I think a general consensus or observations, even just a paragraph or two, by the anonymous judges would be helpful.

For example, here is the one from Serenno from a few years ago I just dug up. I think they changed over time, but I think something short and concise like this would go miles for improving how invasions are handled presently.

Moreso than beating a dead horse.

It's not beating a dead horse. We have multiple of our fellow writers raising a concern. Who are we to tell them not to air out frustrations or have a civil discussion and discourse?

 

[Viers Connory]

For example, here is the one from Serenno

Oh hay dat me

 

[Taiia Locke]

I don't think that's necessarily a better way to do it. I didn't always like the points systems or by-the-numbers synopsis that they used to have. I think there's a better way to do it than we did five+ years ago. I think a general consensus or observations, even just a paragraph or two, by the anonymous judges would be helpful.

For example, here is the one from Serenno from a few years ago I just dug up. I think they changed over time, but I think something short and concise like this would go miles for improving how invasions are handled presently.

I remember the invasion summaries, yes, the problem is people overcorrected with them, and they became how people tailored invasions. That goes back to my script analogy, we have already seen this play out. We have historical evidence that it will go exactly as it has before.

It's not beating a dead horse. We have multiple of our fellow writers raising a concern. Who are we to tell them not to air out frustrations or have a civil discussion and discourse?

It kind of is when the head admin has already said no.

 

[Kurayami Bloodborn]

It's not beating a dead horse. We have multiple of our fellow writers raising a concern. Who are we to tell them not to air out frustrations or have a civil discussion and discourse?

It's not coming back. Staff has already weighed in. My comment was succinct, whether you agree or not. I'm sorry so many feel that staff is in the wrong for not bringing back scripted, boring slogs .