Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Staff Invasion Summaries Banned.

Why remove the voluntary part?

I'm in favor of the change though. Summaries suck.


It's been advised, and accepted, that the voluntary part was the biggest issue of it.

On paper, it seems chill. "Yeah, sure, submit one if you want to," an Admin might say. The Admins don't care, it just adds extra flavor. And we're not adding it to judgements, we constantly say "No, it doesn't affect judgements."

But then, over time, over years, you'd see a few judgements pop up mentioning exact moments referenced in Summaries. And I know for a fact that it was pretty routine for the Admins to provide them to Judges. So, if summaries don't affect Invasions - like we've said they don't - why are they being provided to Judges? Why are moments from summaries, players mentioned in summaries, also mentioned in Judgements?

And if you see this, as a faction that opted not to voluntarily submit one - wouldn't you now feel pressured to submit one? You're representing your faction, after all. And your writers want to win. Anything for that edge. So now, when one voluntarily submits one, the other feels compelled to do the same. And when they both feel compelled to do it, it's now become an issue of "writing up a summary that compels your argument for victory better than the other." So now, the MFO's definitely feel it impacts Judgement, because they've been given every reason to believe it does based on the history of judgements provided.

There were alternatives, proposed and advised. Guidelines for the summaries to abide by, making them feel less PVP centric and more story based and fair. But, my fellow Head Admin drove home to the point and said in the discussion this week, "Either make them compulsory or banish them to the 9th circle of hell." And I very much agree, given everything we've seen and discussed.

People want to have their cake and eat it too. It's forever been my job here at Chaos to draw the line on how much cake is too much, and we've arrived at it on this subject. The subject of accepting Invasion Summaries, voluntarily or compulsory, will not be broached again - we have our final say.
 
Final Note: The SWRP Staff Team was admittedly divided on this issue. However, if you've ever been in that MFO room where all the Faction/SWRP Staff talk goes down, you'll know I've said one of the most powerful things in the map game is two Major Faction Owners coming together and agreeing on something. This discussion was started because two MFOs opted out of summaries, got a judgement they unitarily disagreed with, and made their observations known.

This took balls. It takes big huevos because while one can easily say "they're intimidated by you, Tef", I usually lean more towards that they're less intimidated by SWRP Staff and more intimidated by you, Chaos. More intimidated by the backlash and drama you can incur, more intimidated by losing sight of their stories and the fun they're having because ya'll complain and in greater numbers than any other entity here. And furthermore, it takes a certain strength to go down the road of doing things "the right way" by appealing to SWRP Staff and not just going full tilt and complaining and losing your shit on Admins, RPJs, "the system."

I don't know if this is a decision the MFOs were trying to get, or like the conspiracy crowd tries to say, "weaponizing Staff." I don't consult them, I just listen when they have issues. I don't care for any of the tinfoil talk on these decisions. Internet machoism or "getting W's" only goes as far as memes with me.

One thing I am certain of, while Staff may be divided, I don't think the MFOs are. And this is a decision that impacts them way more than it does us. Not only in function, of how Invasions proceed, but in behavior. In mood. And in general vibes in regards to how they interact with each other. Regardless if they WANT this, if writers WANT this, I think we all agree that we can sacrifice it for less PVP-toxic mindsets and more good vibes.
 
It's been advised, and accepted, that the voluntary part was the biggest issue of it.

On paper, it seems chill. "Yeah, sure, submit one if you want to," an Admin might say. The Admins don't care, it just adds extra flavor. And we're not adding it to judgements, we constantly say "No, it doesn't affect judgements."

But then, over time, over years, you'd see a few judgements pop up mentioning exact moments referenced in Summaries. And I know for a fact that it was pretty routine for the Admins to provide them to Judges. So, if summaries don't affect Invasions - like we've said they don't - why are they being provided to Judges? Why are moments from summaries, players mentioned in summaries, also mentioned in Judgements?

And if you see this, as a faction that opted not to voluntarily submit one - wouldn't you now feel pressured to submit one? You're representing your faction, after all. And your writers want to win. Anything for that edge. So now, when one voluntarily submits one, the other feels compelled to do the same. And when they both feel compelled to do it, it's now become an issue of "writing up a summary that compels your argument for victory better than the other." So now, the MFO's definitely feel it impacts Judgement, because they've been given every reason to believe it does based on the history of judgements provided.

There were alternatives, proposed and advised. Guidelines for the summaries to abide by, making them feel less PVP centric and more story based and fair. But, my fellow Head Admin drove home to the point and said in the discussion this week, "Either make them compulsory or banish them to the 9th circle of hell." And I very much agree, given everything we've seen and discussed.

People want to have their cake and eat it too. It's forever been my job here at Chaos to draw the line on how much cake is too much, and we've arrived at it on this subject. The subject of accepting Invasion Summaries, voluntarily or compulsory, will not be broached again - we have our final say.


Makes sense, good deal :)
 
Im confused...why exactly was this made? RPJs would ask or be given a summary of Invasions????

Like I get the voluntary part but...isn't that the duty of an RPJ? TO READ through all the BS that is Invasions? I mean...they signed up for that...they knew what was coming...or am I reading this wrong? This is totally confusing
 
Karthus Karthus as Tef explained it was originally flavor and something like a highlight reel submitted by MFOs just for the sake of a showcase but wasn't supposed to be doing the job of RPJs for the RPJs or making an impact on Judgements.

At least on the Judgements side of things apparently some summaries were being used as source material instead of the thread posts themselves. Because of this MFOs would feel that they needed to do a summary to best represent the efforts of their writers. So if they didn't do it they were 'dropping the ball' so to speak, at least that may have been the perception. To clear up the confusion and in an effort to make Invasions more relaxed Tef & Staff are cutting out the variable of submitted summaries entirely.

This is only for the purposes of review, the rule says nothing about MFOs or MF Staff from making a summary for the benefit of their writers to read about the Invasion's events.
 
Im confused...why exactly was this made? RPJs would ask or be given a summary of Invasions????

Like I get the voluntary part but...isn't that the duty of an RPJ? TO READ through all the BS that is Invasions? I mean...they signed up for that...they knew what was coming...or am I reading this wrong? This is totally confusing

Summaries sucked.

I think I worked on somewhere in the wheelhouse of 10-15 across a year or so, and it really sucked the fun out of the invasions themselves. I know I felt like the summary being "voluntary" wasn't true. While I'm not going to try and argue with Tefka or RPJs, I am confident in saying most invasions where a summary was written and a writer (or more) were mentioned, it was straight out of the summary. I recall reading summaries posted after our own that either ripped our stories apart in an attempt to undermine them or seemed to point out every little detail that "countered" our stories.

The competition itself wasn't a problem for me. The underhanded tactics by people who were composing less compelling stories did.

With that being said, RPJs don't read the whole invasion. It's silly to believe they would. No one should be expected to read an entire book worth of Star Wars fanfiction when the stories themselves are amateur at best, far from concise, and spread out across hundreds of posts with no real timeline to follow. You shouldn't expect people who are doing something for their hobby to also slave for that hobby's sake. Plenty of people on Chaos are great writers for being amateur hobbyists. When you put 20+ people on the same thread to tell a joint story, those amazing writers tend to fall into the literary soup that is the invasion.

You are reading it wrong, though. Tefka stated plainly he doesn't read an entire invasion. It's just RNG for him. If the owner of the site and former head admin wasn't putting in all the work you thought he was, it's unlikely his volunteer help would be.
 
If the owner of the site and former head admin wasn't putting in all the work you thought he was, it's unlikely his volunteer help would be.

I agree with the majority of your posting, however bluntly stated it is, and I just wanna say I've personally seen some breakdowns of Invasions I did not participate in. They were incredibly thorough. I believe I'm in the back of the pack, quality wise, when it comes to invasion judgements on the team. Also, they advised me not to reveal how I do it, because as head of the team, the above quoted is the natural perception. I'm the head of the team, if I'm doing it, that's how we all do it, right?. It's truly a difficult thing to believe that we literally all do it completely different because I never laid out a path, never wrote instruction, in all of 9 years on how to judge an Invasion. Victory Declarations were the closest we ever got, and they're looser than a hooker at Burning Man.

However. Lol.

I give significantly less farks than your average RPJ, and you will never catch me apologizing for it. Cut them some slack. Also miss me with those Invasion Reports, I'm likely not reading your posts anyways.

#rollrollrollyourposts
#gentlydowntheRNG
#dab #dab #dab #dab
#somebodypleasehelpme
 
PS: For the "how to win invasion" crowds over the years, that was my idea for how to combat the minmaxing of it in the very beginning, the sweaty tryhard crowd. It's pretty effective ngl. Has it's share of complaints, sure.

Randomness and inconsistency.

People are always going to complain about the referee. Source: has watched ESPN.
 
This seems like a good move. I really like this system we have at Chaos. As far as I see it anything that keeps this focused on writing and pvp fun vs getting the edge over the competition is great.
 
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Vesta

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With that being said, RPJs don't read the whole invasion. It's silly to believe they would. No one should be expected to read an entire book worth of Star Wars fanfiction when the stories themselves are amateur at best, far from concise, and spread out across hundreds of posts with no real timeline to follow. You shouldn't expect people who are doing something for their hobby to also slave for that hobby's sake. Plenty of people on Chaos are great writers for being amateur hobbyists. When you put 20+ people on the same thread to tell a joint story, those amazing writers tend to fall into the literary soup that is the invasion.
I can't speak for current RPJs, but I can personally say this isn't or wasn't always true. There's a very different impact from reading the thread with no horse in the race, and without following the OOC hype train that leads up to and carries the invasion to its end. Whether or not current or some other past RPJs have read every single post in an invasion, I can at least say that every one I was involved in the review process of in the past (when I was an RPJ) was read all the way through by at least one of the individuals judging the invasion, usually two. While recent reviews I have been shown are.. questionable.. in the points made or brought up, most of the lack of centering of views on what people might perceive as important events is just a difference in perspective.
 
what people might perceive as important events is just a difference in perspective.



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