unforum

[Phaedra]

[krystyn]

I meant more as a doing, interactive thing, but okay.

[Phaedra]

[rose- not logged in]

resources -check the resource list in Quick Reference :)

[Arana]

[Phaedra]

[Arana]

[SuperJerms]

Well, I say it's up to you.

As someone who has been putting in at least 4-6 hours a week into the wiki, I can tell you:

- It's a fairly lonely, desolate place. Every time I think about the wiki, I end up wondering if it's just a giant waste...I know of about twenty folks who update it from time to time, but I've also seen the Lcp go through multiple updates without any change to the wiki. Then when it's done, I wonder if I am just the only one who even looks at it, anyway. Ideally, I'd love to come home on a wednesday night when I haven't been able to see LCP all day and have the wiki at least summarize what's happened. But that info is never there unless I put it there (Friday or Saturday). Then I go into chat and folks tell me they don't want to look at the wiki for info, they'd rather be told in chat. Or, I hear a person say, "I want more info than in The Muck, if only such a thing was out there," and I die a little on the inside.

- I feel like I'm reinventing the wheel to put info there, being that Lucky gives us the muck, Scarp has the blog, the forums have tooons of info, and you totally blow everything we put there out of the water. Seriously, your stuff is so complete, I've been toying with the notion of just stopping all work on the wiki and letting it just be a list of links and three-week-old information.

- We don't have the problem that we had on the ILB wikis (of random wiki-grieving) because we have been neither /.'ed nor wanged. With so few people working on it, it seems that consistent formatting isn't much of a problem, either. We've figured out a decently logical layout so that it's not too hard to find what folks want. And, data doesn't seem to magically disappear unless it's been updated correcctly or moved to a more logical section.


I really don't know what's the best option here. Part of me would love to have enough folks spending time on the wiki that it becomes the easiest to navigate, best cross-referenced, most up-to-date and complete info source available. The other part of me is skeptical that such a thing is possible, and hates to think that the unwashed masses would have access to the info that you have put so much time and care into collecting. I'm really not being snarky when I say that you've got a great resource.

All things being equal, I think I prefer to have your info seperate, then you could cut/paste sections into the wiki as you see fit. What we need is fourty more wiki contributors, not just one really good one.

[Arana]

[ariock]

I have a question. I just saw the deleted post by Raider on another thread, and saw that you had voiced your support Arana, but I am not sure I understand what the solution is. It seemed to me that your concern was that too little information was being posted on the forum, and I thought that for the most part this had been addressed. Raider's concern appears to be that the information is posted too slowly on the forums, making it impossible (though this has been proven not to be the case for other players) to get a card. On that page, you appeared to be agreeing with this different point.

I am just trying to get a handle on what is actually being requested here.

Are you requesting (for example in your sig) that chat not be used?

While I agree that information on solves should be put on the boards ASAP, I think to a large extent this isn't going to happen any more quickly than it did during ILB. And to a certain extent, the only reason people would post as quickly as they did during ILB was to get credit for a solve if they couldn't be in chat and hope that someone there hadn't done it first.

And honestly, I have been in chat for most of the updates....there isn't that much going on in there. The only real information is from the real-time interaction with people at the live events. And the very fact that it is real time means that it isn't conducive to being posted on the forum. The IRC log of the DC event was posted by Magesteff. I posted ALL of the dates on the forum as soon as I had them collected. They were wrong, but as wrong as the original information from DC.

Honestly, have you read the logs of that chat? There was nothing in there that helped ME get a card.

And even if I HAD figured out a card, I wouldn't have taken it anyway. I would have tried to give it to pita since she is the reason I have a card now anyway. It would be nice if people who have cards would help out people without them. And not just because, seriously, how many cards do you need? Also because getting one Spade is worth 6,000 chips; a second spade is only 1,000 more. By NOT taking a second/third/fourth, but giving it to someone without one, you actually increase the total number of chips in play more quickly.

So, please clarify. Because when I see someone rant about a putative "in-crowd" and how he is never going to get a card or a Hat Trip favor and see someone I respect (you) seemingly agree with him, it makes me wonder why I busted my ass last week to try to get info from chat onto the forums as quickly as possible when it appears the people I was trying to help don't appreciate it anyway.

EDIT: And as I think about it, I don't think there is any better way of getting the information TO the players at the live events than in chat and out through the phones of the Legion of Spectres.

[Guest]

I apologize in advance for the length of the post. *chuckle* Boiled down: this week's updates on the forum weren't very good, LCP is missing some elements that made community better in ILB, I don't think increased forum posting will help much but it is a laudable goal anyway.

Ariock, I'm sure all of the forum users appreciated the posting of the Dates of Death puzzle info to the forum. However, this was a puzzle that was largely unsolved b/c of an error somewhere along the way. Once the dates were given to us by Lucky, the puzzle was solved almost immediately (since it was, as Shado first suspected, a very simple solution). So, the Dates of Death puzzle wasn't information posted wasn't very useful.

After that, there were very few postings to the forum about current information/leads - just postings listing the cards as they were found. And they were found quickly.

This week, no one posted much info at all... the update thread is still only 4 pages long. The Caldwell puzzle was a dud, the spanish was posted but it seems like it was determined to just be story related pretty quickly. (Not that story stuff should be considered unimportant but... really, a lot of the story so far seems like you could forget it once the next card is found) Also, there's very little discussion of the character updates on the forum even today. There is some spec being posted.

In ILB, I was never in the chat but I felt very much part of the game b/c, as I've noted before, there was a lot of potential for wild speculation and discussion. The content and solves was far from self-explanatory (while most of the content in LCP seems far more clear). People could spend all week in ILB discussing what a phrase in a posting from the SP might mean or what a comment on the phone might mean. Also, there was more of a sense (illusionary or not) of storyline impact by the community in ILB and the forums had discussions of strategy. In LCP, nothing we do has any story-branching impact (so far - I hold out hope) so we don't need to and don't tend to discuss any options for the upcoming live events/updates. There are few or no clues hidden in updates that give us a hint of what to expect in the next update - so there's no spec on meaning or any plans for how to use what came in the last update.

It sure would be nice if some of the info from the Wednesday update was needed or at least helpful at the Live Event on Saturday. Or if there were hidden facts in the update (relevant or irrelevant to the storyline) that would provide hints directly or indirectly for the Live Event or the online update but wouldn't be enough information alone to reveal anything.

Some ILB puzzles, IMHO, were more complicated than anything we've gotten in LCP. Harder puzzles lead to more community discussion even if the solves are individual or by a small group. I think community should be about shared experience and shared ownership of the solution. I think the poker tables, the small favors, etc are nice additions to the "formula" (is there a formula for ARGs yet?) but they have their flaws. The poker playing (except games with in-game characters) is like busy work in grade school - just there to keep you busy. The small favors don't pull those of us without nearby community members IRL into the game - they don't give us a sense of accomplishing anything for the greater good. But it is better than nothing. I hope that Jane and the rest will have a post-mortem and discuss their feelings about the successes/failures of LCP especially regarding the community and community involvement since it _seems_ (to me at least) some facets of LCP are designed to answer some possible criticisms of ILB regarding geographic limitations to involvement. Even if that discussion is: Speaker is full of crap.

Since I've joined the chats the last two Saturdays I have felt _much_ more involved in the game. But I still don't know if/how the live team in Washington used the info I dug up on google about the Keithley graves - and I don't know whether or not that played a role in the mixup with the dates of deaths. In fact, if the error was in the live event puzzle on the PM side, that "robbed" me of a significant ownership in the Dates of the Dead puzzle --- assuming they used my info at all at the Live Event. If the mixup was caused by me and my mad googling, then that is pretty cool but I'd owe the community a small apology (small b/c the interaction with Lucky to get the right numbers was pretty cool). At any rate, I felt more involved then (and I posted at least some of that info I googled on the forums though I doubt it was very interesting). It might be nice if the full instructions went live on the relevant allin page when they found them so we didn't have to get the info from our Live Event friends and re-type it but maybe that's cheating the coordination between Live Event and the Legion.

The "prize" of winning a card and speed at which cards are found discourages posting in the forums - if you have a lead, you have to follow it - if you take time to post it, you likely lose the card. Even in the chat (as mentioned by others), there is little posting of spec about cards (possibly for that reason) but, if you aren't in chat, you might have the perception that it is different.

As an in-and-out member of UF posters (ILB and LCP being my major posting sprees), I also feel the presence of an in-circle but I think it is just the general difficulty of joining a group and the immediate recognition by group members of proliferate posters may be off-putting to new members. As a whole UF is one of the best online communities I've ever seen for welcoming and incorporating new members.

All of these factors together are what our forum-only friends are being affected by. Honestly, I don't think posting more in the forums will help alot primarily because of the speed at which card-finding goes and the relative lack of anything else to do. But we should try anyway. And we shouldn't feel attacked when they gripe. We should feel challenged to do more.

Again, sorry for the length. I feel what Arana and Raider are saying b/c I spent two weeks "watching" before I decided I'd try the chat. At the end of all this, I'm going to have to write a critical review of LCP and post it. *chuckle*

[Speaker]

*grumble* Apparently I was logged out while posting the above. Its me and I wasn't trying to hide it. Promise.

Ugh. I can't edit it so there are some grammatical errors that will never go away and I can't clarify either.

Clarification:

On planning for live events, there are the coordination threads but that's all they are - coordination. Not really strategy in the sense that I mean above.

Small favors and the greater good. I actually do feel like the small favors occasionally make me feel like I'm doing something for the greater good of humanity (fix up a grave, flowers at graves, my research for the police sketch whether that was above and beyond or not). And I really like that - it leverages the community aspect of ARGs to do good things in the world... that can only be good for players and for the reputation of ARGs in the real world. It is a brilliant aspect that can be used to market ARGs to non-gamers as a powerful tool for potential good and it gives players something to do that doesn't have any real geographic requirements (mostly). I can only see potential for this aspect (unless we all become jaded and feel like we're being forced to do good things ).

[Shad0]

Re: [META]Forum vs. Chat - a humble plea

[ScarpeGrosse]

I'm just going to say it:

Finding a card (Robert Brown) has not changed my LCP playing experience whatsoever.

Yeah, I got a spade. Sure, i get another 5K to lose in a dramatic fashion at the poker tables each week.

But in terms of overall enjoyment? Nada.

I know there's a race to get them, but honestly, it's pretty pointless because it really does not add anything significant to the experience itself.

And maybe what we have here is an experience that IS SUPPOSED TO BE dramatically different from ILB. Maybe we're getting easier puzzles so that it is possible to go through them *at your own pace* - an oft voiced critique of previous ARGs has been the inability to experience anything outside of the actual "hour of update" - here in LCP, though people are discovering the cards, they're discovering the characters to open up the story FOR EVERYONE. Maybe the puzzle-solving (miniscule really) and the character cards being discovered aren't the focus of the game. Maybe it *is* just the story at this point.

Gun (the game) doesn't have the whole Bungie mythology and Halo 1 backstory to discuss and add to the experience of the ARG story (as in ILB), which is probably why there's less spec - We know LESS of the game that's being marketed. However, I'm actually pretty suprised we're not the actual history that's being presented in LCP - the mobsters and Al Capone. The Civil War. WW1. WW2 - perhaps because more of us know the history behind the story Lucky's laying out for us. The majority of us are not Civil War Dumb, or WW2 Dumb. We know what happened It's not fiction and is less open to interpretation, therefore, there's less speculation about it.

I didn't answer payphones in ILB, but I still enjoyed the story immensely. Just because you're not finding character cards doesn't mean you can't still enjoy the story and the experience. This isn't ILB and really shouldn't be compared to ILB. It's a totally different beast with a completely different mechanism of relaying the story and that difference doesn't make it any better or any worse - it's just different. We're using the forums differently, we're communicating differently, we're playing differently.

Update day in chat is usually a bunch of "new on Lucy" "oo new on Willie" coupled to a whole lot of dead silence and the occasional "does anyone know Russian?"
If the forums look like we're just throwing names of cards up and the updates, it's because that is really what's happening - it's not some conspiracy to keep those not in chat down It's really an accurate representation of how the game is unfolding in terms of play. There really isn't more to it than that and it shouldn't by any means be a point of contention between community members. There is no "in group," no cliques, no conspiracies. Solving a card doesn't reap many rewards.

I take that back. *Anyone's* discovery of a card reaps a big reward: The Story. And that, not whether there's a sufficient number of posts of speculation and discussion about the discovery of characters, is what's important and is the experience. Nothing else (forums, chat, poker) is that important.

[Speaker]