How Response Time Affects Your MU*

A MUSH is like any business. The only way to keep it alive is by servicing your existing customer (player) base while simultaneously recruiting and retaining new customers (players). Players don't pay to play most games in money, but they do pay with their time and their creativity. The only thing that keeps a game going is having players, without it there is no roleplay, and without roleplay you are spending a lot of money to maintain a site that is not accomplishing anything.

Every game suffers a constant, steady trickle of player loss. Even the best games lose players to Real Life issues. That's why the treatment some wizteams offer to some players on some games is so surprising. Nowhere does this show up more than on the issue of response time.

A Tale of Two Blunders

I once left a game, rather noisily in fact, because a TinyPlot proposal I'd submitted was still unanswered after 11 months. How did I know it was 11 months? I'd sent a copy of the original proposal back to myself for reference, and so I had it there, date and all.

Periodically I'd send reminders to the wizteam of that game. Every three months or so, an interval of time which I considered more than reasonable, I asked if they'd had a chance to look at that tinyplot yet.

Sometimes I got "no" and sometimes I got ignored. The result was a slow boil of steam growing under my collar. The only good news was that it was not an urgent plot and I already had a year long personal tinyplot going that was taking up my time and keeping me glued to the game for awhile. Eventually, though, other problems began to abound and this poor plot simply became one of several reasons I found myself unable to stay on the game. The funny part is, had they merely just rejected the plot out of hand within a reasonable timeframe, I would not have been upset. Some plots don't fly, that's simply the way it works. But to be unable to get either a "yes" or a "no" answer for nearly a year's worth of play struck me as excessive.

Here's another anecdote. Back in 1995 when I first discovered MUSHing, I put forth a rather lengthy application to an X-Men based game. It was for an original character as all of the features whose names I recognized were, predictably, taken. I was a complete newbie, but I was a reasonably competent writer and fairly creative. I'd read every single news file, as well, so I suspect the management of that game would have been hard pressed to tell that I was new to this whole thing.

When I finally got my application back a month later, it had been ripped to shreds by no less than three fairly grouchy staffers. Had it been returned within a few days I probably would have taken the time to rework the thing, but by the time a month had passed I had already sought out and found a game where one got into the RP far quicker -- on the same day, in fact -- and so I felt no need to continue courting the X-Game for membership. Granted, at that time Tales of Ta'veren, which became the game that fostered the start of my MU* hobby, had no character generation or applications or anything if you just wanted to play a regular Joe or Jane. Still, that early experience forged a question in me that would become a standard of which games I chose to patronize with my time and talents for many years to come, and that question was...

How Fast Can I Get Into The RP?

When one first finds their way to your website or telnet site and starts reading news or +bbs or whatever it is you have available to give a new player some idea of what your game is about and why they ought to be there, there tends to be a sense of excitement. The new player is ready to play. Lengthy applications can be daunting, but on some games they truly are necessary. And in that same honeymoon phase, most players are willing to at least take a stab at your app. They figure at worst they'll hear back from you in a few days (or whatever response time is posted in your news files that they've already accepted as the truth) and even if there is something wrong with their app, they'll be able to fix it.

Imagine, then, the effect on the new player when that period of time passes. The week promised in the news files grows into a month, then six weeks. Finally something appears in their e-mail. If they haven't already given up on you and devoted their loyalty to some other, friendlier place, they might get a stab of excitement when they open it up. However, if it's a rejection letter, nine times out of ten that player probably isn't going to bother fixing everything. They've already waited, after all, three months simply to receive this letdown.

In a hobby where people are constantly scrambling to find and keep players, can your game really afford this? It is bad enough to lose players when you already have them -- now you're losing them before you even get them.

TinyPlot Proposals

I have never seen a game that does not claim to love tinyplots. Almost every file labeled "News TP" that I have ever seen on over 30 games that I've nosed around on tries to solicit tinyplots, at least on paper. This is the way, after all, to get into the meat and drink of roleplay. This is the way to get out of all of those endless hours at the local bar doing chit chat RP or down in your local kitchen doing washing-my-dishes RP. Tinyplots make the MU* go round, so goes popular wisdom, so why the heck would you, as a wizard, be cavalier with them when you finally get a proposal?

Everyone has a limited life of enthusiasm on any new project, and tinyplots are no exception. Consider how long it would take for you to lose interest in a plot proposal that you have submitted and heard nothing back on. How long would it take for the characters the whole tinyplot revolves around to start disappearing, one by one, until the whole thing becomes moot? If you let this happen on a regular basis -- well, you can't claim to be in love with tinyplots. How long are your players going to stick around when the competition is answering their mail in a reasonable time? Did you know some MU*'s have policies that allow players to transfer characters from other games whole cloth through the means of various time travel and dimensional and space devices? Why are they going to stick around for your Almighty Wand of Approval when they can go to Speedy MUSH and go play out their tinyplot over there? (And if they have to have a stop in the Lost Buried Spaceship that brings their medieval characters over to the SF MU*, do you think they'll care enough to stick around on your game? Or will they decide that just makes things even cooler?)

A Helpful Policy:

Consider publishing a response time policy for both new character applications and tinyplot proposals. Then stick to it. Religiously. If you and your staff are backlogged then consider soliciting volunteer aid. And if that is impossible due to the nature of your game, consider sending out just a short note to the author of each proposal (since you'll be inundated with both types at any one time) to let them know. Tell them how many proposals you're buried under and tell them exactly where they are in the cue. Apologize for the delay and give them a reasonable and honest ETA.

When you publish a response time policy you're not committing to have anything approved by that time. You're committing to a yes, no, or revise answer by that point. Once you've issued the response, the clock restarts. In other words, if your policy promises to respond to all character applications within 24 hours, what you're really promising is to tell them yes, no, or revise and return within 24 hours. If its a revision request, then you are committing to respond to their revised draft within 24 hours, and so on.

Suggested Response Time Policy:

Character Apps: Within 24 hours of receipt if you have an in-house character application system, within 7 days if it is a longer, e-mail based system.

Tinyplots: Within 1 week/3 weeks. In the case of a tinyplot it may be a yes, no, revise or, "need to consult" answer. A "need to consult" answer means that it is going to require whomever the TP wiz is to go talk to Area Leaders or other wizards and get their opinion on it. So within one week you send them the fact that you like the initial draft but need to consult with all of these other people, and you let them know that within 3 weels of this new letter you'll have an answer for them. This means your total response time on a global TP is a month, not bad for a huge TP.

Then, immediately write a letter to everyone you have to talk to, forward the plot to them, and tell them that if they haven't managed to get back to you by the deadline you're going to assume they think the plot is great and you're going to tell the player to go ahead with it, and from there the Area Leaders or whomever else will have no right to complain. (This may also give you an idea of which staff members are perpetually asleep at the wheel).

Clear Expectations:

One MU* I applied to (that actually did keep me on as a player) has a sample app on its page that is nothing more than a detailed background broken down into component sections. Following that format netted me a "please revise" note that asked for a bunch of information on what was going on in the character's head and what her strengths and weaknesses were.

I filled it out, primarily because as I move into my tenth year of MU*ing and with my own game to pay attention to I'm not nearly as impatient about getting onto a new game as I once was, but it was irritating to me just the same. That probably just means that the wizard who approved the initial sample app is no longer with the group and the new wizard likes more detail, but if that is the case then a new sample should be put up for the public's consideration. (Perhaps they could use mine, since I did get a comment after I jumped through all of the hoops that it was good enough to frame). That said, the wizard in question was very quick to respond to me (within 24 hours in fact), a fact that contributed greatly to my willingness to offer her the revisions she wanted.

That said, had I been a new player who does not realize that these webpages and news files and whatnot are extremely difficult to keep current with up to the minute (or even up to the year) information, I might well have become discouraged. At the very least, I would have been well within my rights to point out that the sample app had nothing of the sort in it, and question why I was being required to offer this additional information. If you don't want your players to slow down the process by asking them why you're making them rewrite, then make your expectations clear from the start.

No Sinkholes:

I know some wizards who cannot stand to let a single app trickle through their fingers without nitpicking it until its dead. They never, ever approve any app on first pass, they always make people rewrite it. I'm not sure why this is, really.

If a player makes any sort of reasonable effort to fix the problems you outlined on your first "request for revision", pass the thing even if it isn't perfect. That will clear up your backlog, for one thing. For another, its just a game, not a class writing assignment. If they start twinking deal with it later, but if they neglected one little detail you asked for its probably just because they had other things on their mind at the time -- like the real class paper they have to write.

Do not ask for revision after revision after revision until you've spent over 3 months on the same app. It wastes your time. It pisses them off. And if by some miracle they do stick around to take your nonsense, your game had better be the most fun thing since DisneyWorld or they won't be around long, which means all that nitpicking you did was for nothing.

Develop a Routine:

If you get yourself into the habit of checking for whatever character applications have come in and whatever tinyplot proposals have come in and answering them, one by one, right away until they are finished, you'll find you don't have that pile of work anymore. You'll find response time does not become that much of an issue. You'll also find it will suddenly take up less time than you think it does.

Sure, you are going to have days when you log on and all you want to do is play and not think about it. Might I suggest that if that is your goal for the day you log your RP alt on and not your wizalt? Then any idiot can +finger you and see that you haven't read your mail yet, so of course you haven't responded. As long as you make it back within a few days or so and proceed immediately to the unopened pile of mail and begin to address it fairly, you're probably not going to get any complaints. After all, the same person who +fingers you will also know that you have been on recently, so they aren't dealing with a case of the amazing idle wizard.

Its. Just. A. Game.:

If you hate the work of approvals so badly that you can't respond to them in a reasonable manner, perhaps you should consider removing or reducing the need for them. Does every single bartender on your game need an application, or just the really powerful people? Does every plot need approval, or just the earth shattering ones? If your sense of dread outweighs your ability to catch players once they've jumped through the hoops you set up for them, its time for one of those policy re-evaluations. Don't be afraid to rewrite the thing -- and don't be surprised if what you hear when you do is one huge collective sigh of relief.

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