Be aware!: temporary 4-day inactivation limit coming up

[TheNewGuy]

Yikes, lots of extremes in here. I mostly see this as a slippery slope / arbitrary change, though. Why 4 days? Right now people are pissy that folks won't log in once every five days with a seven day limit, if we make a four day limit it'll be people pissy about the folks who log in once every three. Leave each other alone, damnit, people get busy. The tools wouter created to make mass inactivation possible for Moderation are coded to a seven day time period. Wouter clearly thought 7 was fair. I say leave it.

[Siggon Kristov]

Yikes, lots of extremes in here. I mostly see this as a slippery slope / arbitrary change, though. Why 4 days?

4 days is not that arbitrary. Right now people are pissy that folks won't log in once every five days with a seven day limit, if we make a four day limit it'll be people pissy about the folks who log in once every three.
It's 24 months in-game. That is enough time for an entire legislative term in some nations, and it is also enough time for 3 consecutive - but separate- bill cycles.

Leave each other alone, damnit, people get busy.

If a player gets busy, it shouldn't result in inconvenience for other players. If someone is too busy to play this game anyway, why does it matter if his party gets deactivated?

The tools wouter created to make mass inactivation possible for Moderation are coded to a seven day time period. Wouter clearly thought 7 was fair. I say leave it.

Does Wouter still think this way? And even if he did, is it impossible for Wouter to be wrong on something? In discussing the pace that time advances in the new Particracy, he believed it would make sense for different worlds to have different paces. He agrees that time moves way too fast in this game. He agreed that my suggested pace, of 3 months per day instead of 6, was a good idea (coupled with deactivating players after 4 days). Some world owners may even want less months per day, because they may login less often. These slow-paced worlds would probably be more ideal for an educational setting, or for players who are really busy.

However, with the pace that time in Classic advances, 7 days is really too high for an inactivity limit. It would be more tolerable if events did not happen so fast. It's annoying to wait 3-6 days just for a cabinet proposal to pass. When one finally passes, the next election is not that much further from the date of the bill's passing than the election that preceded the proposal. It's really unrealistic sometimes, and extremely annoying. It's frustrating when a party is occupying and not using seats; it makes cabinet proposals more difficult (and sometimes impossible) to pass. It also causes problems with bills that require a supermajority of seats to vote in favour.

The more players in a nation is the more inconvenience it causes. Sure, RPing a deadlock gets fun for 1 or 2 terms in a row (with a term being possibly as short as 24 months in-game or 4 days IRL), but not 3 terms or more terms than that. That story - for an excuse to not have a cabinet passed - gets pretty stale after a while.

[TheNewGuy]

is it impossible for Wouter to be wrong on something?

No, but "game mechanics come first" has always been the one rule we never bend, and if we're stuck with the rest of this broken game we might as well not ignore this one dumb piece.

[Siggon Kristov]

is it impossible for Wouter to be wrong on something?

No, but "game mechanics come first" has always been the one rule we never bend, and if we're stuck with the rest of this broken game we might as well not ignore this one dumb piece.

"Game mechanics first" is really being used out of context, here. With the loose way you're using it, "game mechanics first" means that we shouldn't bother ourselves to work on resources for each country to start trade since each nation's budget page has zero imports and exports. "Game mechanics first" means that we shouldn't do anything that contradicts game variables. It does not mean that we can't work around limitations.

Game mechanics do not prohibit Moderation from deactivating parties whose players haven't logged in for 4 days. If that was the case, Aquinas could not have done it so many times (and Amazeroth could not have done it in Dranland and Lodamun). The only thing done by game mechanics in this case is that parties with over 7 days of inactivity are flagged (the impression I get from Amazeroth). This doesn't mean that a moderator is prohibited from skimming through to see if a party has been inactive for 4 days. A moderator would not always have to do this anyway; it's usually players who point out inactive parties.

And we do bend the "game mechanics come first" rule for the sake of other rules. A player can, for example, easily violate cultural protocols without being stopped by game mechanics. What that player does by game mechanics can ruled illegal by Moderation, i.e. changing a culture rapidly (for example: changing anthems and titles from a language to another), and Moderation can force it to be changed. By game mechanics, your party's default name contains the word "Party" at the end when you just register. It doesn't stop Moderation from enforcing RP laws in Indrala and Ibutho were political parties (and therefore the use of the word "Party" in a player's party) are banned. Moderation is arguably going against game mechanics when they enforce these rules that require forcing players' decisions/actions to be reversed, despite these decisions/actions being allowed by game mechanics.

[TheNewGuy]

-snip-

Sorry, on second glance I think it may have been hard to read the sarcasm in my last post (and I'm also a bit drunk... Pulling a MikeR on PT tonight). In actuality I think the game mechanics come first rule is usually silly because PT's game mechanics are so terribly broken that they're, on average, pretty much useless. I personally see PT as more of a forum-based RP game than anything else, and the game mechanics (e.g. elections) are pretty much going to give you 100% support > 32% support > 1% support > 84% support more or less arbitrarily. Anyway, you make good points, and I don't disagree. I rescind that part of my argument. I can guarantee you, though, that at least in my case if a 4 day limit is imposed I will either need to self-deactivate or I will need to be deactivated relatively frequently, which is a pain in the butt for me, but not a huge deal. It's often just not possible to login consistently every 4 days, even if I like to.

[hts]

I am not trying to screw anyone over, I just think that these 5 day inactivities cause major inconveniences for active players. I am not trying to impose my view on anyone, but to me 4 days is plenty time to at least log in for a minute or two. I have not been playing PT for as long as many of you, but I can tell you that since the day I started the inactivity of seat holding parties has been an issue. And this is despite the fact that I played in a relatively active country, though now it is practically dead.

I do not know if this is a ridiculous proposal or not, but what if each country set it's own inactivity limit. The limit would be between 4 and 7 days, but each nation would be able to decide on it's own. The bill would have to pass as a RP/OOC resolution, and would require 2/3rds the vote. In order to save moderation some work, as I realize that all of these different inactivity times would be confusing, the active parties in the nation would report the inactivates to moderation themselves. Moderation would then simply take a quick look at the party, to ensure that they truly are violating inactivity time, and then deactivate them. I do not know if this plausible, but it is just an idea. Do not be too harsh lol.

[PaleRider]

YES PLEASE CHANGE THIS TO THE FOUR DAY LIMIT!

[Siggon Kristov]

For instance PaleRider.

YES PLEASE CHANGE THIS TO THE FOUR DAY LIMIT!

I'm just laughing at Maxington right now...

[EEL Mk2]

I probably shouldn't presume to tell you how to run the game so soon after my return, but one of my concerns is the sort of person who disappears for 6 days and 23 hours, logs in, logs out, and then disappears again. I think that moderation should have the discretionary power to deactivate accounts where someone is functionally dormant even if they are technically complying with the 7-day rule.

[Siggon Kristov]

So can we have this an official thing, or not?