Activity Check Results / HMD

[lucetimods]

The results for the Activity Check are in! Please note that the following characters were either inactive, didn't post to the activity check, or failed to speak to a moderator about their activity. Also added were characters who have joined the game or dropped since the last add/remove, for your convenience. (And some people who weren't even on the friend/add, for whatever reason...!)

Copy-paste the following here:

manage_circle del_read accepted manage_circle del_read everyonedied manage_circle del_read firstnothing manage_circle del_read forelocked manage_circle del_read myreason manage_circle del_read presumablyalone manage_circle del_read secretmiracle manage_circle del_read searches_forhim manage_circle del_read skyleopardess manage_circle del_read tomodachi manage_circle del_read dunkinchili manage_circle del_read fervidity manage_circle del_read derpivity manage_circle del_read breezing manage_circle del_read supportively manage_circle del_read falenandawn manage_circle del_read justacriminal manage_circle del_read melon_lord manage_circle del_read reviling manage_circle del_read shamelessness manage_circle del_read petreefied manage_circle del_read enchantressofore manage_circle del_read bitsyspider manage_circle del_read hikaruorkaoru manage_circle del_read kaoruorhikaru manage_circle del_read sealanddesuyo manage_circle del_read wildsaber manage_circle del_read falenandawn manage_circle del_read halflived manage_circle del_read tsunsandsteals manage_circle del_read bubblywishes manage_circle del_read hollower manage_circle del_read strikeoflightning manage_circle add_read antwort manage_circle add_read chainred manage_circle add_read removeimpurity manage_circle add_read ferels manage_circle add_read puryde manage_circle add_read notsosolo manage_circle add_read misstechnobender manage_circle add_read bravefighter manage_circle add_read bisons manage_circle add_read raavatars manage_circle add_read jern manage_circle add_read anaxes manage_circle add_read responsibleformyownrisks manage_circle add_read jailbirdprosecutor manage_circle add_read fyulong manage_circle add_read layersoflies manage_circle add_read fortunesgun manage_circle add_read yaydanger manage_circle add_read borntorebel manage_circle add_read connectingwisdom

A number of you passed the activity check, but barely. (You know who you are.) Try to pick things up, as it's no fun to character-squat.

If there are any mistakes here, please let us know! Additionally, if your character was removed and you're still active, feel free to appeal to one of us about keeping your character. However, please remember next time to stay active and post to the Activity Check. Thank you!

And as always:

HMD

How's My Driving?

This is a crit post for both the community and game and for your characters. If you have something you'd like to see us improve upon with the game, PLEASE TELL US HERE! Anon commenting is on, but if anything gets really nasty there will be warnings and thread-freezing. This isn't required but everyone is encouraged to take advantage of the advice of your fellow players!

Just some pointers: no taking cheap shots, no dragging personal issues into things and for the love of all that is wise and great, please double check your replies and comments before posting them. Sometimes a change in phrasing can make all the difference between a helpful tone and a condescending one.

ALSO: We'd like to clarify that HMD means HMD- which means it's okay to have both good and bad crit. Some people have expressed concerns about posting good/bad crit when a character already has bad/good crit posted. We'd like to encourage you guys to do it anyway! You can drive well or badly, and even good drivers make mistakes. So give it a try \o

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm developing quite a few concerns I will admit, however I understand the situation. This is a new mod team, and it's going to take time for you and the rest of the game to find our footing. So there are several things I am going to give you guys the benefit of the doubt on for the time being, but there is one issue at hand that I feel it best to tackle now rather than see it become a problem later.

So if there is one thing I would like to offer criticism to you, mods, this would be to please work on your communication. You've not been doing this well with your players on multiple fronts, and tbh I sometimes get the impression you're not communicating with each other well either. I understand many of you were on hiatus and unavailable, but this is an issue I've noticed even prior to that.

This lack of communication is becoming widespread if not already problematic. I understand you're still experimenting, you're trying to find a balance between being too rigid like you were on the draft and being too open-ended as with the temple. Many of the issues that have come up from things like this can be smoothed over, however, with proper OOC communication which is something the players are just not getting. In light of that I am going to provide a list of areas where I think you could stand to improve on.

1) The mods need to give the players a better idea of what they're signing up for. The nightmares that came about from the draft are a good example of this. Their nature turned out to be similar to that of a death penalty, with their permanence, which is exactly what many players thought they were avoiding when they signed up.

2) Important details need to be communicated in a timely manner. I've heard the discovery in the temples is something to be described as "game-changing", but in spite of this it's months later and we still do not know what that is. This makes reacting to it IC when the news is shared problematic, if not impossible.

3) Player questions also need to be addressed in a more timely manner. I have seen questions on mission and event posts sit for days, and some not get answered at all. I personally have also encountered the same treatment when trying to speak to a mod directly and been ignored more than once. This is incredibly frustrating, particularly on time-sensitive subjects that CANNOT be moved forward without mod input.

4) The mods should be more upfront about what their expectations are. The impression that comes across is that they're weary of having to handle everything and want the playerbase to work more things out for themselves. The thing is that many players regularly rely on the mods only because they're cautious and do not want to overstep boundaries. If you tell them that they should come up with things for themselves, many players would be happy to do it.

5) Lastly, the mods should communicate better with each other. There's been several times where I've asked a question only to get the run-around because only another mod could discuss it, much less give an answer. There have also been instances where someone has gone to two different mods about the same request and gotten completely different answers, showing you're not always on the same page. This is a minor thing, but I can see it leading to unbalance with which mods people will be willing to go to, so they can be treated fair.

All of this said, thank you for your work so far. I think what problems you do have can be easily corrected with some adjustments.

[lucetimods]

Hello, and thank you for your feedback. This runs a little long, so bear with me here.

Some of what you've written here hits home pretty strongly, and we're grateful for the critique, but some of it has the entire mod team scratching collective heads in confusion. For that reason I'll address your points in the same order:

1) The vast majority of the time when we post events and information, plot-related or otherwise, it comes with near-to-full disclosure of what will happen and how it might affect your characters. We understand that it can suck to have curve balls thrown your way that might make it difficult to play, really! However, we can't provide all of the answers up-front all of the time, because doing so would (and has in the past) destroy any mystery or suspense related to the actions you and your characters might take. You won't always know the answers. You won't always know the results. It’s a fact of both life and the RP that we haven’t taken advantage of much, and we actually believe that’s a problem we need to address. In fact, we’ve come to the conclusion that the consequences of actions and decisions should be unknown for players more often, not less.

When we avoid long term consequences to plot events, when we make every single occurrence optional and potentially ignorable, when characters can blissfully dodge what's happening as a result of their choices, it can create a dissonance within the game and encourage meta gaming as well. While we understand the concern of signing up for stuff that might affect your character in the long run without knowing what it is first, if we share everything there will be no real consequences or benefit- just a simple following of a pre-planned course. And that's kind of an issue in games- the fear of dealing with consequence on the side of the player. If you cannot handle surprises or negative results at all, you may want to reconsider signing up for plot events that do not fully disclose the aftermath.

We're actually confused as to why this plot in particular caused an issue at all because it is specified in the follow-up post that the penalty options could be utilized at the players discretion, as in, those players decide when and if it happens. In a game that already has expected penalties for nearly every instance of death and the consequences of this death can be minimized by player choice, and this particular penalty is controlled by the affected party, there should not be a problem.

Think of rp like those old choose your own adventure books. You have choices, but you don't know what result you'll get when you turn the page. Embrace the surprise- we very rarely force dead ends on our players. To demand choice with all known consequences is basically inviting the game to stagnate and get boring. And, frankly, to make all character choices with full foreknowledge of the results rather than acting purely on the character’s knowledge is the very definition of metagaming.

2) The temple exploration was never intended to be "game-changing", so if that was misunderstood by those involved or those waiting for results based on what we've said about it, we apologize; this is not the case at all. The trek to the temple was entirely optional to those who might be interested in seeing a few new things related to the game world's history, and to give you guys extra material with which to formulate theories. If there are other instances of this happening, please let us know and we'll try to remedy that in the future by being more clear.

3) We are guilty of this, yes! And we all apologize wholeheartedly. We'll be taking steps in the future to keep event posts covered more carefully and deal with questions related to game goings-on faster so you guys can focus on your plans. If in the future you ask a question and it doesn't get handled in a timely manner, please do not hesitate to come to us directly and remind us that it's been asked! We promise not to bite. DW hiccups sometimes, notifs get deleted, or we just plain forget. It happens, so give us a poke. If you’re uncertain the best means of contacting us, please refer to the resource directory.

4) We're unsure where the idea that we're discouraging player contributions is coming from, as it honestly isn't intentional, so we'll state it explicitly here and now: we welcome player contributions 100%. If you have ideas for things you want to do in the game, please let us know! If you have a plot you'd like to run, fill us in so we don't have a clash of scheduled events! We very rarely say no outright; sometimes we ask for a compromise when it comes to dates or the way the plot works based on the mechanics/limitations of the world, but most of the time we're more than happy to just wave a hand and let players do their thing. Don't let unknown barriers get in your way if you want to plot- get in our faces and tell us what you want to do and when. The worst we can do is say no, and we're way more likely to say yes. We're happy to work together on this, but very rarely does anyone come forward. After the big mod implosion we opened the floor entirely for player plots and feedback/ideas/suggestions while we got organized, but hardly anyone came forward to take advantage of the free rein granted. If that was because of a fear of these boundaries mentioned in your crit, what else can we do to break them down?

If this is in regards to player actions within events, again, all you have to do is ask! The worst a mod can possibly say is “No.” But most likely you’ll be asked for how you intend to do something so we can understand the details fully and incorporate what would happen into the end of the event! Some very plot-changing things have happened because of player ingenuity, and we very much want to see more of that. We try very hard to leave events, missions, and drafts a bit open-ended so players can team up to try to solve the problem in a way we could have never imagined. (The Zompania draft was very much the exception to this, mostly because as mods we had to set up the situation so that no one would end up permanently dead.)

5) In regards to mod communication we're especially confused- we have discussions almost daily via plurk about plot, player requests, questions sent our way, etc. Sometimes it takes a day or two to get input from everyone due to schedules, but communication is very strong in our group now. If you have specific examples of problems with mods not communicating with you or people you know, please let us know (privately if you wish, of course) so we can address it. There are some messages we've noticed well after they're sent because of how we received them: AIM messages received while we're unavailable, messages sent to the mod accounts- such things happen on occasion. We do not use these accounts daily, only when mod business needs to be done, so they are not reliable. In an attempt to prevent that from happening again, I have added a question to the game faq about contacting the mod team, and a message on the plurk profile and mod account profile of how best to contact us. Hopefully that will help.

If you have received two different answers from two different mods, we're curious to know why anyone would be asking two mods the same question in the first place, unless we're misinterpreting that? Again, we communicate questions and come up with answers as a group unless the answer can be found elsewhere (like the faq), and sometimes we will send players to a different mod who can better field questions (for example when questioned about the temple I told a player to contact Kyo rather than me acting as a go-between), but otherwise its more likely a misunderstanding than a miscommunication. Again, if you have specific examples, please let us know so we can sort it out.

I think that about covers it.