In-game adverts, spam and fixtures:

[Mr_Rieper]

So I've been wandering the server often, on two different characters. One thing I've noticed is that there is a lot of clutter. Shop adverts, adverts for people to join factions, adverts for people to visit locations.

The main boards in settlements are filled with things that are very uninteresting to read. Now, ordinarily I would try to approach this IC - but the boards that are server fixtures are unable to have spam messages removed from them. People remove their own messages to post them to the top again (Something that I have just recently been guilty of, myself) and the first page of the boards gets flooded with spam once again. Many of these messages also seem very out of character in nature, as if the players themselves are posting, rather than the characters.

It seems to be a problem in just about every settlement that there are loads of unnecessary fixtures everywhere. So I'm going to approach this from the OOC angle, and ask the community for feedback.

Has anybody here found those adverts to be useful? Have they been working at all? Do they miss more often than they hit? And should we be discouraging of the loads of unnecessary fixtures for performance reasons?

And most importantly, is addressing this problem through RP going to make a difference?

[The Greater Good]

I've been turned off from reading most fixtures because walking around in the wilderness, let alone Cordor, feels like trying to browse the internet with no ad block. I avoid anywhere with town criers for the same reason. The fixtures are clutter, spam, garbage, and like big obnoxious banner ads, seem to give my game a performance hit.

I honestly think most non-housing areas could do with having their fixture limit halved, as well as (nuclear option) the removal of signboards entirely, since they're used almost exclusively as Fantasy Billboards. So rarely in the time I've played here have I felt fixtures added as much immersion as they took away. From the evil plague fixtures that supposedly imploded you if you touched them back when, to the adverts now. I'm sure there's people who pour their heart into IC paintings, sculptures, altars, but they're vastly drowned out by what is, essentially, trash adverts for defunct shops. Compared to other servers, I'd almost rather say get rid if the vast majority of fixture types, at this point.

[Sea Shanties]

Most other servers have zero ways for players to change the environment, or are much more limited than here when they do. I think with fixtures and message boards the freedom and possibilities we have outweigh the spam and clutter.

Message boards and criers are way too valuable for RP to limit or censor, I think it just has to be accepted that there will be silliness and ads for shops and other things you may not want to see.

Wooden sign clutter can be called egregious, maybe they could deteriorate quickly or be more difficult to make (requiring an actual carpenter and not one point in the trade.) Still, I hate to lose one more avenue to communicate.

Taking away the ability to make statues would be downright criminal.

In the end no two people are going to agree on what is spam and what isn't. Nine people might not care that out-of-the-way Shop X is selling divine haste wands, but maybe that tenth will be overjoyed to see it. Humor is subjective and what two might find funny two more would think is irritating. Etc. I'd always hope the devs would err on the side of letting us have tools to use.

[Mr_Rieper]

Statues are fine. And I don't think the feedback is to take away the ability to make messageboards or fixtures, absolutely not.

My concern is that it is a very modern behaviour for your character to think that creating a "billboard" is a good idea. There are no characters that advise this, IC. And if they do, it's to their friends, and certainly not at the scale that we're seeing. It's an OOC trend that has caught on. And truthfully it wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't a trend. Before, we used to see one or two adverts and that was fine.

I agree with The Greater Good that it feels like being assaulted by unwanted internet ads and spam when walking through areas sometimes. It's literally everywhere and adds very little of value to the server, because they always read as though they were made by a player, not a character. There's a very strong sense of desperation to them, as though everybody NEEDS to get more members in their faction or they will fade away. Or they NEED more customers at their shop or it isn't worth holding.

I'm mostly trying to find out if these adverts actually do anything. Do the players of Arelith ever find them useful, or respond to them? Have there been any times where somebody saw an advert and it actually caused them to seek out the shop or faction in question?

[xanrael]

Eh, I've been new to a particular area before and OOC I had no clue that there was a shop in X location such as tucked away in a building etc. A sign informed both my PC and myself as a player that there were shops there.

For example I could see a new player in Andunor maybe finding half the total shops without any signs. I'd imagine several visiting the Crow's Nest would only believe there were 2 shops there without a sign or prior knowledge. Heck I remember recently seeing a bunch of people in the Arelith Discord bemoaning the fact that there were no Barkskin potions for sale in Andunor while I was staring at an out-of-the-way shop in the city with 100 of them in stock.

Personally, reading something like an acting troupe in Cordor looking for more performers makes sense that it would be publicly advertised and it could be written in a fairly plain style. Seeing that advert posted in the Abyssal Citadel would make me start questioning things.

More selective or secretive groups posting open adverts written in a plain manner is a bit different in my mind. Not saying everything needs to be a riddle in iambic pentameter but a more IC method will spark my interest more than something like: "Mask Church looking for more, send a runner to Jane."

[Sea Shanties]

Advertising isn't really a modern concept, think how pervasive it was somewhere like Ancient Rome where signs along the road were very common. The Forgotten Realms setting seems to span everything from the Dark Ages to 19th century Steampunk, often butted next to each other so it's difficult to say what's really out of line and what isn't. What's probably universally true is there was a lot more advertisement in any given era than you'd expect.

I certainly don't want to step on your toes if you're just saying this stuff doesn't work and aren't calling for anything to be limited so sorry if I put words in your mouth. I would say that many spam-ish signs you see for shops and events are posted with just a bit of desperation. My last character had a shop in a place you had to struggle to find and I am very guilty of posting too many signs and messages but it's only because even though it was (IMO) well stocked and curated there was almost no traffic in the area and word of mouth wasn't cutting it. Maybe more areas with lots of shops together instead of one or two here or there might be one way to combat excessive ads. There's really no other way to get people to look into unlabelled buildings that have shops inside, for example, than to put a sign outside-- otherwise people just think it's yet another locked quarter.

[Marsi]

I love fixtures and agree with Sea Shanty, but yes, I find these annoying. Never ever have I looked at a sign and gone "woah-- wait, skleens? Come to Sibayad? Hell yeah on my way!!".

To me this is a problem easily remedied IG but... isn't. I feel the problem is that many when in power are so swept up in their own narrative that they rarely sit down to consider actual good governance. Things like reasonable fiscal and trading policy are ignored in favour of endless "assault, pay 500 gp" rewrites. So meta-problems that affect the populace like fixture sprawl, broken warehouses and junk filled shops perpetuate and are rarely if ever addressed. At the end of the day, 3/5 IG politicians are just there for the story and not to play Sim City for real, which is fair.

Also, I think you're quite right in your observation, Rieper, that the postings feel "out of character" as if the player is speaking. On Arelith there is a subset of the population who fly by night to craft and make money and not much else. Far be it for me to say what is and isn't a legitimate way to play the game but for these types their only interaction with the actual playerbase is their signage and board posts. You will never get merchant RP out of these people, just a voice command "Hello".

With that characterization in mind, sometimes I wonder if the root of the problem is the ecommerce like shops we have. Bemoaning the "internet browser" ads everywhere makes sense when you see that our shops operate like amazon stores. It would be a nuisance for them to be removed, sure, but I enjoyed, for eg on POTM, how a merchant had to (for the most part) actually lay out their wares and interact with passer bys. It takes almost no effort to make big money on the side here just by stocking a shop, when there could be more incentive to play a through and through merchant who is required to actually get amongst the people and sell to them face to face. The success or failure of a merchant should hinge on their charm, savvy and pricing whereas Arelith merchants are so lazy half the time their prices are just guesswork, because who cares, they'll get a couple ten or hundred thousand one way or the other.

Not an idea I swear by or have considered in great detail, but yeah, food for thought.

[Mr_Rieper]

It's good to know that these adverts are actually doing something, maybe there is more of a purpose to them than I initially thought. I was under the impression that most people ignored them, or that they were placed and forgotten about. I wondered about ways of curbing unnecessary or excessive advert spam, especially when it seemed like it was just a vanity advert and didn't do anything effective. Maybe settlement leadership could implement charges or fees IC, to ensure that only the boards or flags that did something useful would remain.

...
Personally, reading something like an acting troupe in Cordor looking for more performers makes sense that it would be publicly advertised and it could be written in a fairly plain style. Seeing that advert posted in the Abyssal Citadel would make me start questioning things.

More selective or secretive groups posting open adverts written in a plain manner is a bit different in my mind. Not saying everything needs to be a riddle in iambic pentameter but a more IC method will spark my interest more than something like: "Mask Church looking for more, send a runner to Jane."

This is what is interesting to me. I agree, advertisements that are local and very much relevant to the goings-on in an area make it feel more interesting. I actually have no problem with localized adverts, and I feel it does more harm than good to post your adverts to every single board, everywhere, in the hopes that it will be seen. This is literal spam. But I feel like as a trend, it's still caught on because people believe it helps them in the long run. The problem is only made worse when people remove these adverts from boards just to repost them, and keep them on the front page. It discourages people from checking the boards for relevant happenings because the same adverts are always stealing space.

...
I certainly don't want to step on your toes if you're just saying this stuff doesn't work and aren't calling for anything to be limited so sorry if I put words in your mouth. I would say that many spam-ish signs you see for shops and events are posted with just a bit of desperation. My last character had a shop in a place you had to struggle to find and I am very guilty of posting too many signs and messages but it's only because even though it was (IMO) well stocked and curated there was almost no traffic in the area and word of mouth wasn't cutting it. Maybe more areas with lots of shops together instead of one or two here or there might be one way to combat excessive ads. There's really no other way to get people to look into unlabelled buildings that have shops inside, for example, than to put a sign outside-- otherwise people just think it's yet another locked quarter.

No harm done, I didn't intend this to be a suggestion thread to remove fixtures. I like fixtures. It's one of my favourite parts of Arelith that we're able to craft interesting things and put them in the world. I'm mostly just looking to gain a bit of perspective as to why the signs and adverts seem so desperate, and possibly, try to find some better solutions to use IC. I think the idea of having a giant billboard advertising your new shop is something that players feel is necessary, even when their shop is getting a fair amount of traffic. That, to me, feels a bit like OOC min-maxing their ingame businesses, if that makes sense. Though I will acknowledge that it is clearly more necessary than I first thought, especially when finding a shop can be difficult.

[TheDoctor]

So if my Druid see's a bunch of signs, ad's, billboards and what not he can destroy them right?

My half-ork walking through the bramble see's all the bramblewatch signage.. Hacks them up with his bastard sword... Is that allowed too?


To me all that clutter is IC and my PC will react to them accordingly.

[Mr_Rieper]

So if my Druid see's a bunch of signs, ad's, billboards and what not he can destroy them right?

My half-ork walking through the bramble see's all the bramblewatch signage.. Hacks them up with his bastard sword... Is that allowed too?


To me all that clutter is IC and my PC will react to them accordingly.

Fixture rules apply. You may bash one fixture per 24 RL hours.

It's really not worth the effort to bash them though. You'll suffer the IC consequences for it if you're discovered, and if you're not? Well, then they'll just replace or repair the fixture and take it as a random act of griefing, because there's nothing else they can do.

As usual, the most effective way to combat the fixture spam is to RP. But I was curious about how the playerbase felt about this, OOC.

...
To me this is a problem easily remedied IG but... isn't. I feel the problem is that many when in power are so swept up in their own narrative that they rarely sit down to consider actual good governance. Things like reasonable fiscal and trading policy are ignored in favour of endless "assault, pay 500 gp" rewrites. So meta-problems that affect the populace like fixture sprawl, broken warehouses and junk filled shops perpetuate and are rarely if ever addressed. At the end of the day, 3/5 IG politicians are just there for the story and not to play Sim City for real, which is fair.

...

I think it's this, as well. But having led settlements in the past, it really is a tiresome job. I feel guilty having to delegate this to somebody, because it's difficult to take such a tedious subject and turn it into fun RP. Often it results in the character being yelled at or ignored.
I really enjoy seeing settlements where the time and attention has been taken to manage things like this, but I completely understand why it's often neglected. I just wish it were not so. The tireless trade ministers and managers of settlements are the real MVPs.

[Borin Drakkmurl]

Not to pat my own back or anything, but when I used to play Urebriwyn, my wild elf ranger, I had a habit of keeping track of fixtures in the wilderness, specially the Arelith Forest.

After some ammount of time, if these things were still there and not serving any clear purpose in the eyes of a half naked, spirit driven, wild wanderer, I would "vandalize" them. Advertisiments were the most frequent target.


By vandalizing, I dont mean bash or steal. I would just replace the descriptions, keeping some of the original, but add in signs of wear and tear.

Claw marks, overgrowth, moss, bird poop, vines.

If after a while no one had done anything to clean up these fixtures, I would deteriorate them even more.

After some more time with no response to the changes, then I would finally repurpose the fixtures for something else.

Most of the time people did not even seem to notice. A few did, and reacted and rp came out of it. Some even went out looking for my wild elf when they learned he was the one encouraging nature against the evil ways of advertising.

Just an idea.

[Mr_Rieper]

...

That is fantastic. And gives me some ideas. Already glad I made this thread, thank you.

I remembered you could quickly modify fixtures with the pickup and drop x2 technique, and use Firewood to make a workstation to modify them. I haven't used it in a while though.

[Nitro]

So if my Druid see's a bunch of signs, ad's, billboards and what not he can destroy them right?

My half-ork walking through the bramble see's all the bramblewatch signage.. Hacks them up with his bastard sword... Is that allowed too?


To me all that clutter is IC and my PC will react to them accordingly.

Fixture rules apply. You may bash one fixture per 24 RL hours.

It's really not worth the effort to bash them though. You'll suffer the IC consequences for it if you're discovered, and if you're not? Well, then they'll just replace or repair the fixture and take it as a random act of griefing, because there's nothing else they can do.

As usual, the most effective way to combat the fixture spam is to RP. But I was curious about how the playerbase felt about this, OOC.

You can bash any number of fixtures you want as long as it's RP'd and IC. You can only permanently destroy one fixture per 24hrs, AKA trashbinning it.

[Nevrus]

A lot of this could probably be cut out with a single billboard for shops and a single billboard for factions that has to be maintained by the government in its hard description. If there's a character limit there could be auctions to be listed, etc.

I think there's value in having advertising, but not in it being decentralized and pervasive.

[Subutai]

I'm not really sure what the problem is with advertisements, honestly. People put the advertisements along roads where people travel and see the signs, which is not only logical, but entirely historical. Advertising signs and posters were common in ancient China, Egypt, Greece Rome, medieval Europe, and pretty much every other time. Town criers in the medieval period were also known to be paid to shout advertisements.

If people are posting many advertisements for their store everywhere, that might be a one-off issue, but as for people posting advertisements on the roadway, it's just the nature of roadways, to be honest.

[Ebonstar]

don't mind a few signs here and there, until it comes and there are so many you cannot turn a corner, or move up a ramp.

Now the criers having incessant nonsense is what I have main issue with. Anonymous posts on board are one thing. the latest that sounds like a foreword in a book dust cover, but yet actually have no meaning to anyone but the person who wrote it and buys it to be cried out for rl days is down right annoying.

If you going to use the criers have it be for something relevant to more than one or two people please. Its not good when you in the middle of nice rp and the crier spouts off every 2 minutes with a paragraph of literal garbage with no context whatso ever

post on the boards for this, then it can be ignored by the majority to whom it has no meaning, instead of people wanting to kill the criers

[LIonGraphiK]

I have a distaste for the signboards. If it didn't contradict the be nice rule, I would have made it a mission for my character to destroy them all! Needless to say, I think they gimp the whole RP experience and stops a level of fundamental player interaction. Somebody that doesn't have an automatic wooden sign doing all the work for them will take a more active role with their trade RP. Not to mention these signs create an MMO vibe! We're an RP community are we not?

[Subutai]

As someone with a character who runs a shop IC, I can safely say that running a shop is already a huge amount of RP. The presence or lack of presence of a sign would honestly have very little bearing on my amount of trade-related RP.

[Mattamue]

Have there been any times where somebody saw an advert and it actually caused them to seek out the shop or faction in question?

When I first started on the server the signboards at Crow's Nest helped me find an ingot store when no one else was consistently stocking them. It would have taken a long time for my curiosity to take me to the back of the Sibayad bathhouse otherwise.

[Borin Drakkmurl]

I think no one is arguing against signs in and of themselves. They make sense in certain contexts, and awful in others.

You step through the gates of the island's de facto capital, Cordor. People of all sorts busy themselves back and forward. Colorfull wooden signs promote all manner of goods and stores for you to peruse.

Cool.


You wander into a magical forest, the trees so tall and full that you can no longer see the sky. Golden leaves fall gently all around you. At far, there is son- DONT MISS IT, BOBS AMAZING SHOP AT THE TOWER, SALES UNTIL NEX MONTH- ...song. there is distant song. You walk and see deer skittering and running, at far there is a li - BEST SHOP IN CORDER! BEST PRICES FOR CALTROPS!!11 - ...god damn it.

Not cool.


This, I think, is what Mr Rieper was originally getting at.

[Nevrus]

Killing Bob and his Caltrop-selling friend for desecrating a sacred forest with commercialism?

Very cool.

[Brahtius]

Some places on the module are just really, really out of the way. The Radiant Heart area, Orc Camp, Campsite etc. If you didn't promote the places and let people know your shop or whatever is there then you won't sell anything. All this does is drive the popularity of shops in major settlements.

I think the placement of said advertising boards is key and I also see no issue with promoting shops, factions or locations on noticeboards. They're noticeboards, they're for notices of different varieties.

[Mr_Rieper]

I think the common consensus in the thread is that the adverts are necessary, and have a purpose. At least, some of them.

I just wonder if there isn't a better way to direct traffic to places, without crowding areas with signs and flags. I think we can all agree that there are many fixtures that are created then abandoned, and not all of them are useful. There has to be a better way to direct traffic, one that flows seamlessly within RP and doesn't involve the needless fixtures. Nobody knows where to draw the line, as players, on how many fixtures are too many, or which of them are necessary or useful.

Borin Drakkmurl is correct in saying that the main problem I have is how excessive it is, and how adverts are placed in strange places. It's fine to have a few signs in the cities that are relevant to them. It's fine to have a sign or two out in the wilderness that looks like it belongs there. I think, in general, it's fine to have signs that look like they belong in an area. But ideally we would be able to determine if there is such a thing as "too many signs" and roughly, where is that line drawn?

The other issue is messageboards. As the server population increases and standards on board spam decrease, the boards become unusable with the sheer amount of low-value information that is posted to them, over and over. They are important. They are basically IC forums, but with no moderation, constant flame wars and aggressive advertising.

They are important. Do we think there are any ways of settlements increasing the meaningful communication between characters and helping RP flourish? Should we plop down more player made boards to try to filter the spam?

These are all decisions that settlement leaders have to make in-RP, sure. But out-of-character, do we believe there is a common problem that can be solved? I can't help but notice these things and struggle to think of ways to rectify them through IC behaviour alone. A lot of the time, it results in harsh feelings OOC when governments start trying to do a clean-up, or cracking down on it. As Marsi mentioned earlier, many characters in government just don't want the micromanagement that comes with it. It is a hassle to deal with things like these, unfortunately.

A lot of this could probably be cut out with a single billboard for shops and a single billboard for factions that has to be maintained by the government in its hard description. If there's a character limit there could be auctions to be listed, etc.

I think there's value in having advertising, but not in it being decentralized and pervasive.

This is an idea. Could it be something player-made though?

[Sea Shanties]

Excessive signs in cities seems like an issue for the city government to deal with. If they annoy you in a place you're a citizen, bring it up to the leaders. If it's elsewhere, that's their problem.

Maybe signs and most other fixtures that aren't metal or store should deteriorate quickly if left in areas marked wilderness. Maybe even disappearing after resets.

[Ebonstar]

Have there been any times where somebody saw an advert and it actually caused them to seek out the shop or faction in question?

When I first started on the server the signboards at Crow's Nest helped me find an ingot store when no one else was consistently stocking them. It would have taken a long time for my curiosity to take me to the back of the Sibayad bathhouse otherwise.

ok this was a time of a good sign, why because its in a port hub and makes sense to drive traffic to another ship to take you to another market.

hubs and ports yes signs would be expected because they are traffic spots.

walking in the woods and having signs just stuck there where you run into orcs and ogres and hungry eagles, no because common sense would tell you that the local monsters are going to break your sign and use it for firewood.


Thought about the fixtures also listed about, and watching craft stations in cities being bashed constantly, I dont find is a be nice type of thing.

Do people not realize how much time goes into these particular fixtures? And its not just a bash and have to repair it. its a bash and bin it most times.