Let's get rid of the concept of Staff Requiring Development Threads. Period. End of Story.

[Raziel]

[member="Darth Carnifex"]



Submission Name: Glock 17
Strengths:Polymer frame makes this lightweight, portable and cheap.
Exceptionally reliable for a semi-automatic pistol
Weaknesses:Sights are considered quite basic
Lack of a mechanical safety switch could present safety hazard.
Lacks the power pack capacity and raw damage potential of a blaster
I feel ya homie. I really, really do.

I'm no expert on guns, so I did ten minutes of googling and filled this out for you.

 

[Tefka]

Strengths and Weaknesses have always been the biggest metric for submissions, especially in the Factory.

They're meant to make you go "huh. What....what would that even be. What would this weakness be." And sit back and stare out the ceiling.

Those few moments of you whirling back and thinking, that's the raw challenge I intended.

Not for you to just bypass it to churn out sub after sub after sub. I get that sometimes it just absolutely seems silly to be applicable. Like a Moisture Vaporator, for a farm or something. Who even cares if that has a weakness.

But, like a gun or a sword or a Beskar Jetplate, it's meant to make you sit back and think.

Huh.

What could be the drawback?

Because the entire time you spent thinking on the strength, you never thought of the weakness. The entire time you spent thinking of your actions, you should also ponder their consequences. The entire time you spent thinking about yourself, you should also wonder about others.

The entire time you spend thinking about the past, you should spend thinking about your future.

Life has a yin and yang to it.

This went deeper than I expected.

Fill out the damn weaknesses.

 

[James Justice]

Honestly, I have been pretty surprised at what is allowed with a dev thread. I get it that a lot of effort is put into some stuff and this is star wars but look at some of the armor subs I have seen (and self submitted):

• state of the art encrypted long range coms (despite clear cannon in books that armor cannot go trans system without some sort of relay)
• Stealth and beskar and power armor and lvl 10 (Yeah I have seen this approved with 50 posts)
• HUDs and ultraviolet and infared and built in binoculars and pretty much anything else that ever could exist
• Oxygen tanks and rebreathers, AND air purifiers
• Pretty lame weaknesses (how is "heavy" a weakness when you have power armor???)

1. Weaknesses that are not practical
2. weaknesses that contribute nothing to writing
3. weaknesses that are Loldodged

• Shoulder missiles AND knee missiles AND gauntlet stuff AND a LOT of stuff on belts AND a backpack thing AND a boot slot AND knifes in the boots AND an elbow slot AND a harness/bandoleer across the chest AND... I think you get the point

Honestly, all of that is so impractical its a pride show in the arms race that is all about doing the most you can and getting all you can. I find it pretty hilarious what is and is not requiring a dev thread.

I think that not all subs should be approved (sorry). I think it should be about content, is it well written? Yes? Good, you can be approved. No? You need to shape up there sparky. I know that sounds mean but I mean some of the things I couldn't understand that I have had to read before in subs used during threads. I don't know the judge did either. In my frank opinion, factory judges are volunteers. They shouldn't have to read stuff that is illegible for them, its not fair to those who give of their free time like that to make this a great place.

As to whether you can hold X number of ships or Y in your carrier, I think these things could slowly be rolled back and deregulated. It could come down to some things being a strait "no" and everything else being, "yea, go for it, you wrote this very well."

Just my thoughts.

Edit: This was both the deepest and funniest thing I have read this week.

Strengths and Weaknesses have always been the biggest metric for submissions, especially in the Factory.

They're meant to make you go "huh. What....what would that even be. What would this weakness be." And sit back and stare out the ceiling.

Those few moments of you whirling back and thinking, that's the raw challenge I intended.

Not for you to just bypass it to churn out sub after sub after sub. I get that sometimes it just absolutely seems silly to be applicable. Like a Moisture Vaporator, for a farm or something. Who even cares if that has a weakness.

But, like a gun or a sword or a Beskar Jetplate, it's meant to make you sit back and think.

Huh.

What could be the drawback?

Because the entire time you spent thinking on the strength, you never thought of the weakness. The entire time you spent thinking of your actions, you should also ponder their consequences. The entire time you spent thinking about yourself, you should also wonder about others.

The entire time you spend thinking about the past, you should spend thinking about your future.

Life has a yin and yang to it.

This went deeper than I expected.

Fill out the damn weaknesses.

 

[Isamu Baelor]

I'm no expert on guns, so I did ten minutes of googling and filled this out for you.

To be fair, a lot of those strengths, and weaknesses, have no real impact on roleplaying. They're just fluff. The light-weight, reliability, sights, and safety, aren't things that are going to come into effect, unless you actively choose for them to come into effect. Though, if I'm wrong, feel free to shut me down.

But yea, I fully support getting rid of development threads. It's just my opinion, but they're just timesinks. It's not something that particularly enriches the board for me, and it stops me from using the Factory as much as I would like. (I have a navy to sub, and that's a lot of dev threads.)

 

[Raziel]

Though, if I'm wrong, feel free to shut me down.

I enjoy these open discussion threads. If I came in to shut people down I would get evicted from staff fairly quickly. There isn't much I can add on the subject after Tef's message above. But as another reader of a submission (not just a judge) strengths and weaknesses make it easy to get a feel for a submission quickly (fluff and all).

 

[Jhiaga Shiwr]

I think that dev threads can be a real timesink indeed, and yet, they still hold an importance, an potential of entertainment. Plus, my biggest fear is, as [member="James Justice"] mentionned, that the weaknesses never come into play, or at least way more rarely than the strenghts.
But in the end, getting rid of dev threads (or at least making them non-necessary, yet still possible for a bonus) would be fine with me.

 

[Dedata | Celty Ree]

I think dev threads are good. It keeps a level of control. But sometimes they can be a bit overwhelming when your asked to do a 50 post dev that includes other writers. I've found those too difficult because most the time someone stops nd the whole thing stops.

It then becomes hard trying to re plan for in the end to become to tedious and the idea gets scrapped.

All devs (I mean all) needs a way to be done solo or in pairs but then tailor the amount of dev needed to something do'able by the amount.

One of the things I need to do to go through codex was meant to be 50 post 3 writers as what the previous admin agreed on. Since the new admin moved in it's now 100 - posts but 15 can be taken off for every master. To me that is unfair and the people I was doing it with didn't feel up to doing 85 posts (me been the only person with a master char)

 

[Jsc]

[member="Raziel"] [member="Tefka"] - Guys. As much as I'd love for us to all sit down and have a good debate on how strengths and weaknesses on factory submissions are often superficial, time-wasting, and hypothetical nonsense. This discussion was about saving time. Not wasting it. So I'm going to skip that little tangent and just say, Today we pondered how development threads might be a systematically overblown factory application that wastes peoples time rather than teaching them about the genre, contributing to submission balance, or even promoting fair play as intended. And I'll leave it there.

 

[Kami Meran]

Gee, it's like forcing people to come up with strengths and weaknesses for tech is contrived and pointless.

Yeah when you make some thing that is intended to work then have yo think if something to make it not work.
item Phrik box
strength is a box made of Phrik
weaknesses...? ummm

 

[Eugen Aker]

[member="Tefka"]

I'd be down for this. Working both sides of the factory, I generally found dev threads boring to write for, and to read through as a judge. I expressed this before to the Factory staff that I've always found dev to be busy work that just sucks away from my time writing the kind of threads I like. I don't have much time for these sorts of things, so I'd rather just work out the balance in the sub itself and be done with it. Better stats for a ship or vehicle at more limited production, for example. Even with those 100+ post dev threads, there's still going to have to be balancing anyway. No matter how much development you do, you're never going to have an everything shield or gun. With that said, I'd still be in support of people needing to complete challenges to use restricted items above unique production, and keep it at that.

I don't want to get into the whole strengths and weaknesses debate, but I've found the section useful as a means of summarizing points made in the description section (or not), points which may not necessarily be obvious to a reader who's not familiar with something like armored fighting vehicles. A walker may have an easier time navigating steep terrain or narrow spaces in comparison to a tank, but then it has a high center of gravity, high profile for easy targeting, and is terribly vulnerable at the legs and joints.

[member="Raziel"]

Glawk (sic) 17

+Immune to EMPs/Ion Blasts.
+Bullets cannot be deflected by lightsabers.
+Useful as tupperware.

-Limited range and (default) magazine capacity.
-Poor performance against armored targets and obstructions. (Using standard ammunition)
-Is ugly as sin.

 

[Tefka]

Yeah when you make some thing that is intended to work then have yo think if something to make it not work. item Phrik box strength is a box made of Phrik weaknesses...? ummm

-is a box
-is stationary
-is heavy as @#$%

#filloutthedamnweaknesses

I do appreciate everyone who is staying on topic, though. We've gotten quite some good feedback for this.

 

[Bolt]

Why would Phrik be heavy as @$#%? Its one of the lighter materials...? Lol

Personally the more I think about it, I think removing the dev is not necessary. We already have it so that should you not want to do dev, you can just dull down the weapon, or beef its weaknesses. At this point, Dev should simply be reworked. Say something ultra powerful, weapon wise (as just an example, Alric and his many pewpews), gets subbed, these ultra strongs should have a pre deficit toward massive deving. Generally average to moderates should be judged on merit.

If its just a decent strength, then balance it out and boom. But if its a potentially one upper in a PvP scenario, those ones require large devs.

 

[Kamon's OOC]

To be honest strengths and weaknesses are what make submissions worth anything. Can't get rid of those.

Dev threads should go away though.

 

[Tefka]

[member="Dead Eye"]

Then you're not for changing dev, because it currently works as you just described.

 

[thegreatbeyonder]

Also, the Codex just slashed dev thread requirements hard (anyone remember thirty posts for a fence?) and it makes so much more sense now.

Yep, pretty much only sithspawn and super duper units require development at this point. Oh, and very well-defended military bases.

 

[Netherworld]

As a former FJ and a frequent visitor to the Factory, I am crazy down for this. All the yes. Make it happen.
Judging on merit and balance >> churning out posts. This, to me, is an absolute no-brainer.

If we trust our staff to be as impartial and well-intended as they humanly can (but keep in mind that they are still just human), then this is a much preferable system. Restricted mats challenges should stay for obvious reasons, but otherwise... do it.

 

[Cassus Akovin]

As a character made almost exclusively for the purpose of collecting "all the things", all the Restricted Materials should definitely remain with their challenges, because honestly once I can get a thread started with a premise and an interesting challenge, they can be really fun.

Other dev threads... meh, I've always been less inclined to work for something that on its own is perfectly acceptable... other than the fact the judge doesn't feel comfortable with it not having any dev threads for it, when from what I hear they hardly read the thread anyway, just skim the good bits. Which is understandable considering the volume of submissions they must pass judgement upon. In the interest of time and creative liberty, I say the necessity of dev threads are no longer absolute for a community of this size.

 

[Bolt]

Yep, pretty much only sithspawn and super duper units require development at this point. Oh, and very well-defended military bases.

This is basically it. I feel Dev should be required for the hardest of heavy hitting equipment. That's it. As is, depending on FJ, should I sub a gun that shoots massive blah blah, I might need 10 posts of dev or more. But others might see it as not being to heavy for a PvP battle, and therefore will not ask for dev.

That's what I meant. More regulation on what Dev is needed on. Not every gun is required to have dev, but it would be nice to still see it reworked to make sure everyone is on that page.

[member="Tefka"]

 

[Mór-rioghain]

I agree with this.
Development threads have prevented me from submitting anything to the factory honestly. It's hard to find the desire to essentially type pointless words when I could be posting to things I enjoy more in the little time I actually have.

 

[Asemir]

I know I'm late to this, but oh well. And I posted a comment in the actual blog post, but here are my thoughts:

I don't see a need for Dev Threads. When I was an RPJ patrolling the Factory, I only used Dev Threads as a way to indicate that the submitter had put serious thought into his or her creation. The Dev Thread showed the creator had considered the history of said item and all of the major and minor details. It was only useful for filtering out the spur-of-the-moment submissions.

That said, I believe the same can be done with simply having submissions include a decently detailed description of the item. Tell me what the item is, what it does, why it was created, etc. Or, in other words, create a "character bio" for the item.

That leads me to something that sorta bothers me (not in a bad or good way). We don't police character bios. But we police and restrict Factory/Codex submissions. Characters are supposed to be the driving force behind RPs, not the trinkets we carry. Factory and Codex submissions are lore, which is by definition the background/context for our stories. Characters are the (supposed) primary force behind everything we do. If we do not bother reviewing or approving or policing character bios, why are we spending so much time on the lore/background/secondary items? Should it not be the other way around?

Character bios are only reviewed if a conflict occurs, such as if I posted a Darth Asemir bio that made him capable of belching Death Stars and I tried to apply that same characteristic to a PvP battle. I believe we should do the same for Factory/Codex submissions. If it's not a problem and it's not being abused, why the need for such a thorough review? Anything that's at issue can be judged on a case-by-case basis. Not to mention, in my experience as an RPJ, most of the conflicts that occurred where a Codex/Factory item was discussed were not truly stemming from the item itself but how it was used by the writer. Those conflicts are about writer-to-writer maturity and interaction, and should be judged as such.

That's my two cents on Dev Threads.

As an aside, regarding Strengths and Weaknesses, I think mandating those are pretty limiting and annoying. I understand why they are required, but they don't actually mean anything or have any equivalence to "Real Life". Does the Homo sapien race have any strengths and weaknesses? No, it really only has characteristics. "Vulnerability to fire" is not a weakness; it is a characteristic. "Unable to breathe ammonia-rich atmosphere" is not a weakness; it is a characteristic of having a pH stability based on water.

You can't evaluate strengths and weaknesses in a vacuum. Any strength and weakness has to exist within context of something else. The same inability to breathe ammonia vapor can act as a weakness in one context but a strength in another. That's why I feel listing strengths/weaknesses is really.... odd.