SURVEY QUESTION: MOVES!

[PepsiWhirda]

Most of my gripes have been echoed a dozen times already by Bandit and company, but I have a few differences to talk about: 

I don't think this is only a matter of the system being "too complicated" or requiring "too much information."  What I believe is that the system is bloated, inefficient, and poorly executed.  If the consensus is (and I think we've shown here it isn't) we should keep the extraneous data points to help certain people inform their writing, fine.  I disagree with that, but I'm not about to go against the current on a personal vendetta.  Rather, for me the issue is that the information needed to write a move without a lot of pointless and time-consuming back-and-forth simply does not exist in an organized and effective way.  We've discussed adding generic templates for moves that are pre-balanced, and just allowing users to [insert flavor here] such as adding a visual description and tweaking numbers to suit their style or character.  If a sweeping and comprehensive change isn't gonna happen in any sort of timely fashion, then fine... do that.  But do it, don't just talk about it endlessly.

Still, I think the above paragraph yet again misses the greater issue.  We all talk about a desire to grow the site and foster an environment conducive to creativity and fun, and the current system is, quite literally in my eyes, the absolute antithesis of fun.  Bandit has mentioned he has friends who wanted to join but said fuck that when encountering the moves system, the massive tables of rules without a functional tl;dr, and the joining process in general. I can also testify to that fact, because I've given invites to two good writing buddies of mine, but both of them changed their minds when they dug into the site.  Whether or not the current system works is not the question for me; rather, it's, "What does the current system add to the Omniverse and the ultimate goal of garnering new members and fostering a fun environment; and what does it take away?"  For me, and for many others in this thread, the answer is, "The current system doesn't add enough, and it takes too much away."

Now, I'm not suggesting abolishing numbers and metrics entirely, and I'm not suggesting divesting the Omniverse from the ideal that this is both a writing website and a role-playing game.  What I'm suggesting is that the moves system (and, more broadly, the entire process of joining and getting up to speed) needs to be as user-friendly as possible, and the simplest way to implement that ideal is to cut all the extraneous beeswax and focus on creative freedom and creative agency.  A move can give potential opponents an informative description of its capabilities without needing to tack on a bunch of metagamey crap that ultimately gets ignored in favor of telling a great story.  I don't need to know that a gun takes three seconds to reload, because sometimes it needs to take two seconds and sometimes five, because in the end none of the numbers matter.  They are tools to leverage for storytelling, and making them mandatory because someone can't inform their own decisions or can't find the time to ask their fight opponent a quick clarifying question adds nothing useful to the Omniverse.

In a philosophical sense, I think we need to figure out what we want the Omniverse to be.  If we want it to be a bloated RPG where the quixotic notion of "game balance" takes precedence over ease of use, then keep the current moves system but implement a way to make it easy to learn and minimize the barriers of entry to joining and having fun on the site.  Because it really is costing us new members, whether it's five members or fifty, and it really is pissing off current members who see it as useless fluff that in the end gets ignored a large proportion of the time anyway.  Or, if we want the Omniverse to be a writing website, where telling quality stories takes precedence over playing some min-maxing numbers game and inviting power creep that defeats the notion of balance anyway, then we should cut all the chaff (or make it optional) and allow straightforward and informative moves to pass.

Whatever the decision, let's actually do something and let's make it snappy, because as far as I'm concerned leaving it the same is not an option.  This isn't a new issue just because now we have a thread about it.  It's been discussed constantly for months, in the shoutbox, in the public Discord, in the staff Discord, etc....  And while we talk in circles we're losing new members and doing current members a disservice.