[LURKERS] Mr. Gradgrind's Review

[Fluffball]

Scooter giving Dreyote oil? Otherwise pre-Combustion tanks..

Dreylin forted his oil and already has combustion. He said he's got 3 turns till industrialism. Enters the war in 2 (presumably.)

[The Black Sword]

So. We're at four days now waiting on REM to play his turn, and two days since he posted that he would get to it in the next 12-24 hours. While I have no doubt that REM is legitimately busy, this is starting to get a bit ridiculous. I don't like these Pitboss games that start turning into PBEM games. Any thoughts?

I think my PBEM games have been faster on average than my Pitboss games.

[MJW (ya that one)]

So. We're at four days now waiting on REM to play his turn, and two days since he posted that he would get to it in the next 12-24 hours. While I have no doubt that REM is legitimately busy, this is starting to get a bit ridiculous. I don't like these Pitboss games that start turning into PBEM games. Any thoughts?

I think my PBEM games have been faster on average than my Pitboss games.

All the cool kids play pitboss so people who like PBEM better like REM are stuck playing pitboss. Add in the fact that people don't have what it takes to cockblock people from playing and this is what you get. So pitboss games become de facto PBEMs and structural problems from not being sequential, when the game is made around it, and the fact that replacement players happen in pitboss more makes things worse.

[Gaspar]

#fuckpitboss #pbemforlife #toomanyhashtags

[The Black Sword]

All the cool kids play pitboss so people who like PBEM better like REM are stuck playing pitboss.

I'm not sure which format REM prefers, I suspect it was the unique nature of these current games that made him sign up for them. Ancient Era starts are great, that's why one comes along every few months, but it also means you can skip one and be pretty confident that you can sign up for another when it suits. The current crop of games have some unique twists though and if you skip them you're unlikely to see another for quite a while; PB27 - huge 23 player game, PB30 - Lurkers rate the players, PB31 - Vets game, PB33 - Industrial era. That's why I was really tempted to sign up for them anyway.

Regarding PBEM vs Pitboss, Pitboss will always be faster than PBEM but it has issues because the game was not designed to be played with simultaneous turns. But 1t a day is about the optimum speed for one of these games and it's hard to beat that even with a low number of players. A lot of players only have 1 consistent window for playing, so it only takes one person not to be able to find a second window. A well set up 4-5 player PBEM will hit the 1t a day pace and hence I'd prefer PBEM for that player count. Obviously as you increase the player count, Pitboss becomes the preferable format. I don't like Sullla's implication that PBEM's take 4 days for a turn to get around, that's not the case in my experience.

[Ichabod]

Interesting that, apparently, REM lost those 2 cities to Pindicator due to not unloading the units from the boat into the city.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Interesting that, apparently, REM lost those 2 cities to Pindicator due to not unloading the units from the boat into the city.

We could intervene if scooter did that to REM but it was Pindicator. As I've said before you agree to give sullla an edge from lurkers if you play with him.

[Tohron]

I did bring up giving similar levels of help to others, but it seemed the consensus was that providing near-equivalent assistance across the board wasn't the way to go (though, looking at REM's thread, I don't see the transport even being mentioned before it was destroyed, so that wouldn't have been a option here anyway).

[Mardoc]

I don't like Sullla's implication that PBEM's take 4 days for a turn to get around, that's not the case in my experience.

I agree with you here. 70% of pace is a question of finding players who can commit to PYFT, 20% is player count, 5% is turn complexity, and I'd only attribute maybe the last 5% to Pitboss vs. PBEM. I'm not honestly even sure that this game is moving any faster due to Pitboss, since it's been in one turn split or another for so very long.

We could intervene if scooter did that to REM but it was Pindicator. As I've said before you agree to give sullla an edge from lurkers if you play with him.

Even if it were scooter, we'd be magnifying the problem, not shrinking it.

First and foremost: last time it was Scooter v Dreylin and REM benefitted from Scooter's lurker help. Giving REM advice might perhaps sorta even out Scooter's situation, but it would be a second benefit to REM.

Second: how confident are you that the two cases are identical in size? I'm pretty sure they're not. So it would just be changing the imbalance, not fixing it.

Third: it's still pushing the game toward lurker influence rather than player influence. Minor, but we assume lurker intervention is a bad thing unless specifically requested by the players.

[Zalson]

Ooh, this horse is back from the dead!

It is easier to notice these mistakes when someone reports as thoroughly as scooter and Sullla report. REM didn't even give us lurkers a chance to help him in his quest for domination.