Managing AWKP swap threads...when to restart?

[ElfGunn]

My FS has several swap threads, they've been very popular. The member who was managing them has left the FS. She used to start a new thread at the first of the month, sometimes sooner.

Is there a limit to the number of messages in a thread? How do you know when you hit it? TIA for any advice or suggestions.

 

[Zoof]

I'm unsure of any hard limit in threads, but I've had people in my fellowship claim that message threads past 20 or 30 messages load very slowly on their machine so they try to restart those threads once that threshold is reached.

I personally am running a relatively recent machine (Ryzen 7 3700X, 16GB RAM) and have no desire to boot up machines that are 12 or more years old to verify this, so I'm taking their word for it.

EDIT: Dammit. I have one such machine sitting on my desk that's already booted and is used as a dedicated "document viewer/third screen" machine. I'm now very curious and it hurts.

EDIT2: Okay. My poor aging laptop (lenovo T400 - Intel Core 2 Duo [P8400], 4GB RAM) does NOT do Elvenar very well. Which is about as much as I could expect from such a machine. Aside from initial loading, I didn't notice too much of a performance drop when viewing a <10 message thread vs a 30 message thread. Overall, the experience was poor. As to be expected. F---, would use cheap $30 smartphone to play instead.

EDIT3: I used Firefox to try to play Elvenar on my aforementioned craptop. Not sure if using Chrome would've made things better, but my poor laptop would probably crumble into dust if I tried it. I did not attempt to play using Pale Moon (low resource Firefox derivative) as I wasn't confident it would run at all.

EDIT4: My curiosity is trying to murder me. I've started loading it in Pale Moon. Ran into a hardware acceleration error/warning for which I clicked "Continue to Game" and ... well. It loaded. Please send help.

EDIT5: Color me surprised. It actually works. Better in Pale Moon, actually. But only because it's not pegging my RAM. CPU's at 95% on both cores, though. Technically playable. If I had to, I could probably play the game like that.

 

[samidodamage]

I don't know that there's any limit. On browser, if a player is using older equipment, the longer threads take longer to open. Before I changed systems a couple years ago, I'd usually notice it myself when the number of msgs got to ~100. Another mage at the time had issues when it would be closer to 75-80, so he took the initiative of restarting the swap thread when it got slow to load for him. Since I upgraded my system, I don't notice the slow loads anymore. I'm also not the most active member in those threads, but see the last update was a few weeks ago for all of the threads at once and the number of msgs ranged from 93-173.

 

[iamthouth]

@ElfGunn No limit afaik, we change over at around 230-260 messages usually.

 

[ElfGunn]

I didn't think about platform issues when I posted. I play exclusively on the mobile app, I think others in my FS play only on the PC (browser). The threads always load at the same speed for me.

Thanks for mentioning it, I'll discuss with my FS. I guess we need someone who's always on the PC to say when the threads start loading slowly.

 

[Lelanya]

I try to restart mine at 200 to 225, because that's when scrolling back gets hard to pin down, if any of them need checking. 400 is an absolute top limit IMHO.

 

[ajqtrz]

During FA's we used to run am "FA Starts" thread in which we place reports of what we had just started making. This allowed us to know who would have what at what time. We don't use that system any more, but I did notice that once it got to about 75-100 I'd have to start a new one to make it load faster.

I'm running a 6 year old system with 16 RAM. I think the RAM is more important than the CPU and/or age (to a point, obviously).

On the subject of Swap Threads, we've tried them and found two problems. 1) Less than 1/2 of our players participated; and 2) they had to be restarted to often when they simply disappeared out of mail (the last entry was, therefore, never "paid back". So now we use exchanges which are based on the contract model between two player. "I want X" "I'll give you X in exchange for Y", "I delivered Y," "I delivered X, transaction done." We have two exchanges. 1 is for 100KP, the other for 10 Rune Shards. They work pretty well, though I'm thinking of lowering the Rune Shards to 4 in stead of 10.

AJ

 

[Iyapo1]

1) Less than 1/2 of our players participated; and 2) they had to be restarted to often when they simply disappeared out of mail (the last entry was, therefore, never "paid back".

For the first problem, if the FS doesnt like them then there is nothing to be done.
For the second problem....If I start a 300KP thread to help players burn runes then I have to watch it, if it goes inactive I have to take the bottom spot because I took the first spot. I got 300 KP for posting a thread...I have to be the last entry on it because I already got paid.

 

[Lelanya]

For the first problem, if the FS doesnt like them then there is nothing to be done.
For the second problem....If I start a 300KP thread to help players burn runes then I have to watch it, if it goes inactive I have to take the bottom spot because I took the first spot. I got 300 KP for posting a thread...I have to be the last entry on it because I already got paid.

That's right!!

 

[ajqtrz]

For the first problem, if the FS doesnt like them then there is nothing to be done.
For the second problem....If I start a 300KP thread to help players burn runes then I have to watch it, if it goes inactive I have to take the bottom spot because I took the first spot. I got 300 KP for posting a thread...I have to be the last entry on it because I already got paid.

Let's say Bob, Ted, Carole and Alice (hmmm....why does that sound familiar?), are in an fs. Bob starts and waits for one of the other three to take the next step. Ted steps up. Now Bob has his KP and Ted waits...and waits...and waits. The swap thread dies. Does Ted now need to start a new thread? If so then he gets to continue waiting...until Carole or Alice, or even Bob, steps up. But if he doesn't restart the thread but somebody else does before him, how does he ever get his KP?

Having said that, I do think you are right that if Ted remembers it's his responsibility to restart it...and to know when to do so.... then all is well. AND that if people like them they work. If they don't, they don't. I let anybody in my fs who wants to start one, start it. So far, they just go no where OR only 4-8 ever do anything with them and after a few days they just die. I like the exchanges because we get a few more players involved. Probably because they are a form of contract where you know who is going to give you the KP and don't have to wait for somebody?....anybody?.....to step up.

AJ

 

[iamthouth]

When the threads start being slow, the mages reset it and post who the first donation goes to, being the last on the previous list.

 

[Iyapo1]

@AJ...
In your example, Bob started the thread. It is Bob's responsibility to make sure Ted gets paid. So if Ted donates....and waits and waits...Bob needs to take the thread because Bob started the thread. If Bob let's the thread die on Ted, Bob is a bad team mate. Bob started a thread and got KP for nothing. Bob has to give that KP back if the thread starts to die so no one loses KP else Bob is up KP at the expense of a FS mate.