Luceti Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lucetimods) wrote2014-09-14 05:18 pm
lucetimods) wrote2014-09-14 05:18 pm
Entry tags:
Announcement!
Hey Lucetians, a few announcements for you!
1) Here is this month's friend add-remove, to be copy-pasted here:
2) It wasn't logged or announced previously, but Luceti officially won the Featherbowl, yay! Congratulations to everyone who no longer cares because you're not in college anymore and what is football anyway. /o/ However, there is one perk to this development: the Battle Dome has been upgraded for your convenience. Due to the extensive use the dome gets and the number of people who seem to visit on a daily basis, the rooms have all been split in two (since they were already huge and, like a standard holodeck, has a wacky hammer space system anyway) so the number of available rooms have been doubled. Enjoy!
3) Everyone loved Featherbook, eh? Well, the journals have also received an upgrade as well… sort of. On the back of every journal in town, there is now a stiff cover and a screen on the inside, akin to a tablet. This screen displays nothing but snow and static for the moment (which you can turn off, thankfully), but this will change in the future. Try not to break it, they're very expensive!
4) Son of revenge of the passive shift from the black lagoon! The time shifts will be continued and are INTENSIFYING! (For reference, see previous time shift posts here and here.) Effects may also last longer, from hours to days at the discretion of players.
These will continue for the foreseeable future.
5) Speaking of future, we have plans! Lots of them! Namely for the month of October. There is an event upcoming (details of which will be provided later) that will cause a serious stir and a LOT of changes around town. For example (a non-exhaustive list):
These changes are going to stick for a while, but are not permanent. During that time there is the potential for permanent long-term game effects, however, and that will be discussed more as we approach the plot. Because these changes to the town are going to last longer than your average event (approximately 1-2 months) we're announcing it now for this reason:
Whatever you want to do in Luceti as it exists at this time, do it now!
Player plots, mini events, missions, character posts - whatever you want to do. You have until October 1st, just over 2 weeks, to get it done. Certain changes will stick afterwards, so don't expect Luceti to be exactly as-is when it's over, but if you happen to miss your chance to do things now, don't panic. Just be patient.
That's all for now!
1) Here is this month's friend add-remove, to be copy-pasted here:
2) It wasn't logged or announced previously, but Luceti officially won the Featherbowl, yay! Congratulations to everyone who no longer cares because you're not in college anymore and what is football anyway. /o/ However, there is one perk to this development: the Battle Dome has been upgraded for your convenience. Due to the extensive use the dome gets and the number of people who seem to visit on a daily basis, the rooms have all been split in two (since they were already huge and, like a standard holodeck, has a wacky hammer space system anyway) so the number of available rooms have been doubled. Enjoy!
3) Everyone loved Featherbook, eh? Well, the journals have also received an upgrade as well… sort of. On the back of every journal in town, there is now a stiff cover and a screen on the inside, akin to a tablet. This screen displays nothing but snow and static for the moment (which you can turn off, thankfully), but this will change in the future. Try not to break it, they're very expensive!
4) Son of revenge of the passive shift from the black lagoon! The time shifts will be continued and are INTENSIFYING! (For reference, see previous time shift posts here and here.) Effects may also last longer, from hours to days at the discretion of players.
- The matrix glitching: witnessing the same event happening multiple times
- Ghosts: seeing characters that have been in the game in the past (but characters are unable to actually interact with them)
- Total recall effects re-manifesting
- Death penalty and Mallynap effects that the character has previously recovered from return!
- Any time shifting that happened previously can occur again (short of actively time traveling)
These will continue for the foreseeable future.
5) Speaking of future, we have plans! Lots of them! Namely for the month of October. There is an event upcoming (details of which will be provided later) that will cause a serious stir and a LOT of changes around town. For example (a non-exhaustive list):
- Buildings will change
- Landscapes will change
- The technology level may change
- Missions will be temporarily unavailable
- Mission points will be temporarily unusable
- Kidnappings will temporarily cease
These changes are going to stick for a while, but are not permanent. During that time there is the potential for permanent long-term game effects, however, and that will be discussed more as we approach the plot. Because these changes to the town are going to last longer than your average event (approximately 1-2 months) we're announcing it now for this reason:
Whatever you want to do in Luceti as it exists at this time, do it now!
Player plots, mini events, missions, character posts - whatever you want to do. You have until October 1st, just over 2 weeks, to get it done. Certain changes will stick afterwards, so don't expect Luceti to be exactly as-is when it's over, but if you happen to miss your chance to do things now, don't panic. Just be patient.
That's all for now!
Mod Questions
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especially since i haven't been around for like a month hi everyone.no subject
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1) Death penalties last a minimum of four months. The in-game time shifts have been going since before the Zompania draft. Other metaplot elements have been extant for even longer. The point is really that 3-4 months is not a particularly long period of time in this game, or in any ongoing RP.
2) The severity was left up to the discretion of the players as a courtesy, since those involved in the Zompania draft were not warned ahead of time as to the specific long-term effects of the draft, only that there would be something. As such, it would be pretty darn rude to suddenly retract that courtesy without first providing the players a way to have this effect removed, wouldn't it?
3) In regards to the expectation of being told results of a plot in advance, I don't believe that it has ever been the policy of the mod team to spoil metaplot or reveal details before events make it absolutely necessary. This was true, say, when characters were given the option of stealing cultist-related items in Zompania and Pagoda, and is also true for the nightmares. Again, as the nightmares were not voluntary (unlike the thievery in the ruined enclosures) the severity and execution has been left to the players out of courtesy.
I hope that clears things up a bit.
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1.) Three or four months isn't a long time! But we don't know whether or not it's only going to be three or four months. We don't have any kind of time structure at all for the time shifts. In fact, the time shifts and dream shifts haven't even been mentioned in the past three or four months when it really feels like a vital plot detail that should have been mentioned monthly to offset the new players in the game that might not understand what's going on at the moment.
I recall that in a plurk it was explicitly stated that when we signed up for the draft plot, we weren't going to get something like a death penalty, but there will be a somewhat lasting consequence. The fact that the timeframe of it is being compared to a death penalty is confusing to me for that reason.
2.) The severity or lack thereof doesn't actually give players more to work with other than to kind of brush the nightmares under the rug. If I wanted to let the nightmares have a big lasting impact on my character, I have no idea how to pace something like that, because a time structure for how long they will last or any other details were never given (in fact, they wouldn't have been mentioned at all were it not for Hilda's player bringing it up as a question.)
3.) I don't think anyone's asking for the results of a plot in advance. In fact, I'm pretty sure a lot of players have been asking for the results of lingering plots such as the tunnel doors and the temple a lot more than current plot details.
Additionally, what we're asking (this time and for times in the future) is for more general communication of what you're going to be dealing with in an event.
For example, you didn't have to say "Your character is getting blown up and almost sacrificed except they're going to get time shifted back to life but it will be super traumatic and they'll have nightmares about it for x months in addition to the weird paranoid feeling of being watched". Something more along the lines of "You'll be experiencing a not-quite death which will have a consequence that will last around x months" would have been absolutely fine.
It doesn't help that we didn't get any kind of follow-up for the personal effects in around three months (the mission doesn't really count because it's more follow up to the draft than the time shift stuff in particular and the time-shift/nightmares/etc) and that is extremely frustrating from a player perspective.
Does this make more sense? I'm sorry, this might have been better for an HMD, but these are frustrations that I've been having for quite some time and getting the verbal equivalent of a slap on the wrist and "we're not telling" seems really unreasonable to me right now.
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1. We will fully admit that when we originally planned this ongoing plot, we intended to wrap it up quite a lot sooner than it has gone on for. However, due to various circumstances (namely, the Zompania draft and temple exploration threads taking some time to play out, and four out of five mods being gone for half of August or more, thus rendering it a pretty useless month of collaboration) the timeframe has gotten away from us. For this reason, we did not see any need to warn the players exactly how long the time shifts and dream shifts would continue for back in the original announcement, since we did not anticipate that it would become this drawn out. For this, we sincerely apologize. Being left in the dark for long gaps of time is understandably frustrating. But that's why we're really pushing to get the ball rolling faster and move into the final phase of this plot. We also apologize for not posting reminders of this plot detail at the conclusion of each app cycle in order to notify new players - this is definitely something we overlooked.
2. I'm not sure if I understand why lacking a timeline for the dream shifts is preventing anyone from plotting with them or exploiting this plot point to its potential. The residual dreams are a natural effect of the world, and are therefore unpredictable - they're not going to follow a logical timeline. We've left this up to players' discretion so as not to push anybody out of their comfort zone as far as inflicting Not Very Nice things on their characters goes, yes, but also to allow for some creativity with it. If you want the nightmares to become more frequent/severe for your character over time and then level out at a horrifying fortissimo of trauma, go for it. If you want the nightmares to fade in and out of intensity, you can do that too. If you want them to happen only every once in a while, that's perfectly fine. To be honest, this is not something we should need to hold players' hands for. Run wild with it. There is literally no "wrong" way to do it, so don't be afraid of overstepping boundaries that do not exist.
3. In regards to the tunnel doors, we first ask that you have some patience with us. That segment of the plot was handled by Masa, so it has, understandably and unfortunately, fallen to the wayside since he left the game. We can only juggle so many things at once. Since getting the new mod team together and taking a few months to get our feet back underneath us with some "warm up" events, our primary plot focus has been on the time shift plot that is currently running (including the Zompania draft and subsequent missions, which tie into that). While we've been laying the groundwork for that, we have not had time to revisit older plotlines. When the current plot comes to a head, I think it will become clearer why we have put older plots on the backburner in favor of rolling this one out. Think of it as a way for us to reorganize ourselves as a game.
Second, the reason the tunnels exist is so that characters might take the initiative to explore them and make progress in that regard. The code is still running on the doors, after all, if characters go check on it. We understand that Masa was a lot more upfront about the tunnels, but please understand that we are not Masa. We're trying to find a happy medium between doling out all of the necessary information (and as a result dictating precisely how the plot will unfold before it happens) and thrusting the full weight of responsibility on the players with careless abandon (thus leaving you all to wander in the dark, which probably does little in the way of plot progression). If players are interested in carrying out further plot with the exploration of the tunnels, we ask that they approach us. In recent memory, only a few players have come to any of us with this interest. Understand that this plotline is available to anyone and we will of course provide the details of what any new rooms contain, but it is on you, the players, to bring it to life. (However, I will repeat that for the time-being this plot will be on hold, as we do not have the time to wedge it in with the current plot. We also have a lot of sorting out to do in regards to the tunnels and what was unfolding there, so that will take time. Again, we ask that everybody please be patient.)
Moving onto the temple exploration plot, the players involved were told what their characters would see as the log was happening. Those characters are free to share with others what they discovered. It seems redundant for us to OOCly make an announcement regarding what was found, prefacing an IC post about the very same subject. For the record, and I direct this at a general audience: because there seems to be some confusion on the matter, the results of the temple exploration were not intended to be game-changing. I'm not sure how that impression was formed, or what we as mods might have said that was misconstrued in order to infer that, because that was not our intention. Rather, the purpose was to add a bit of world-building with some fun tidbits.
Aside from the dreams - and correct me if you have an example to the contrary in mind - I am unable to think of any plot point that we've left entirely in the dark, and the dreams themselves are only a minor plot point, not a major overarching event. To be honest, we find ourselves baffled by how much this has become a point of contention, when it is something that players can do whatever they wish with. With the upcoming event, we've tried to hint at what it will entail without revealing the meat of the plot, because we want everyone to be aware that something big will be happening.
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- I, personally, still do not know what is going on with the Temple stuff. No one else I regularly talk to does either, and to my knowledge it wasn't finished (or if it was, it was only finished relatively recently). I'm sure others' frustrations arise both from how it was blown up to be something important and then to how there was subsequently jack all of information to people on the outside. That's where I'm coming from with it and I'm sure where other people are to. Thus, that strikes me, personally, as something we've been left in the dark about. That said, if you really did inform the players who are still threading it what's going on there I guess I'll just need to bug them, so I'll apologize for my own frustrations about that.
- The tunnel plot's been brought up by those people involved with it repeatedly and told it'll be pushed back. I get where you're coming from with it pushing it back - I sincerely do - but it's frustrating... for those of us who still remember it. It's been a solid year since the last door was opened down there, so really that whole paragraph about how it's a player responsibility (particularly in light of the fact you just said it needs to be pushed back) just strikes me as being a little bit . . . unmerited? That's not quite the word I want. But I get where that's an issue, and I look forward to seeing what we can do with it later.
- I personally feel left in the dark about the last two missions, in particular the rewards (or lack therefore of) to them. I get that the Mission system is being refitted now, but the fact that we got told ahead of time there won't be points but will be some other reward just for it to sit for this long has been frustrating to me. Actually there's just been a lot of confusions about the point system (if it's being phased out, which I am not sure I want but I don't know what's coming so I'm not pressing there, what things cost, etc) which have been sort of irksome. Though, again, I get that your current plot is probably going to refit MARS as a whole so I'm not doubting it too much.
- I personally haven't used the Dreams that frequently or as strongly as I could have. I'll admit that. But where I'm coming from with them (and where others are coming from with them) is more or less that, for example, let's say someone had their characters have really awful ones again and again every night for the first month and get no sleep at all, but then realize a month (or two) later that they're lasting a lot longer than they theorized, so with nothing else to do they can either keep up them being awful, or just diminish them to nothing. Alternatively, someone like me didn't do much with them early on only to be like "oh right, those exist" and pop them up into existence a month or two later, thinking it might be leading up to something... but then it's not so much in the great scheme of things.
Game wide, the existence of them is effective foreshadowing for the upcoming things, I'm sure. on an individual level, not having a set timetable for them has been a little bit frustrating for making an arc out of it, because I at least have been hesitant to go too strong or too weak with them because I'm not sure why they will ultimately end. Does that make more sense? The comparison which comes to mind to me were those fear shifts last Halloween, which yes, lasted a long time as well, but they had a set timetable going in and thus people could pace it at their leisure within that time.
Which, again, ultimately just goes back to this plot being pushed back by understandable circumstances.
Ultimately, most of the issues I have (and I can't speak for anyone else on this) boil down to the plot being pushed back and then what appears to have been a lack of communication about the fact it was pushed back. Please don't misunderstand me: I really love a lot of the freedom we've been being given in little ways on the last few missions and events, even if we had to find that there was that freedom (which again, could be a communication thing) and if this is going to be the new standard, I'm actually really quite excited. But in order to help find that happy medium you're looking for, I'd like to urge you guys, if we ever end up with some long lasting thing in future like this, to try to set up some rough timetable we can give the players, do little reminders if it is pushed back (like I know I straight up forgot the time shifts at one point until someone plurked about them in mid-August) and/or endeavor to be prompt at OOC responses (like with that casualty list, for example).
I realize not all of this was in your control (nor should all this be directly in your control) but that's about where I'm at. This post actually gives me a lot of hope because a lot of these issues I'm talking about here actually aren't present in it.
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- What I should say is this: we're hoping that the tunnel exploration becomes a more self-directed plot. Obviously, there is player interest, but most of that interest is in the vein of simply asking when things will pick up again, rather than clearly stepping forward and showing interest in interacting with the plot and making something of it. I have little else to say in the matter of the tunnels, other than that I'm sorry that it has been left hanging for so long, but this result was basically unavoidable, however frustrating that may be. As previously stated, that whole plot was entirely directed by Masa, and so we the mods were left hanging with it as well after he left. It will be reintroduced eventually, but for now it will stay on the backburner. Thank you for your understanding.
- I can't find anywhere in either the mod post regarding the recent missions or the Commandant's IC announcement where it is stated that rewards are on the table. I believe we hinted that a reward may come into play at a later time (and, again, the timeline of things got away from us unexpectedly), and that was meant to set up what is happening with these new screens tucked into the backs of the journals. As for the mission system in general, we've done some cleaning up and a slightly revised, newly organized system will be implemented after the current plot comes to fruition. We feel that it makes more sense to put these changes into effect after that rather than right before, which is why it has been on hold for a bit.
- We're still not understanding why having a timeline is so crucial in regard to the dreams and utilizing them, but I suppose that is something we will agree to disagree on. It is not intended to build up to anything, nor have we ever stated that it would. I can see where there would be some confusion, seeing as the time shifts are intended to build up to something larger, and those were implemented at the same time, so in retrospect we could have clarified that. Regardless, it was, I'll repeat, intended to be a minor plot point rather than a full-blown event. It was something for characters to react to, and something to hint at the nature of sacrifices. However, we will say that these dreams will cease at the conclusion of the current ongoing event, and we will inform you when exactly that will be.
We hope to be clearer in our communication to players in the future, and we hope that the final phase of this event sets the correct tone for where the game will continue from here.
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Also you already answered everyone else's questions, but I noticed one thing here regarding exploration of the tunnels I'd like to ask for more clarification on, if that's all right? I'm one of the players who's been semi-actively trying to get back to that, though usually Sapph has been the one to talk to you guys. I am cool with us waiting, for the record, and understand fully it was Masa's plot and so with him gone it will be handled differently in the future. I'm also fully supportive of it becoming a player-directed plot, that sounds cool to me.
Given that, when it becomes relevant again after the big plot is done, what is it that you need us to be taking more initiative on? To my understanding, since this is how it was done for the last door, all there is to it is for the players to say what door they've set the computer program getting a code for (the garage in this case, going by the last IC poll) and for the mods to say what's in it when it opens.
If this has changed we'd be happy to adjust accordingly. I personally am just confused because Sapph and I have been tackling this the same way we did the last one, so other than holding new polls for future doors, I'm unaware of what else there is to do.
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As far as the methods are concerned, please just make sure one of you contacts me, and we'll discuss and work out what'll be found.
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And we can do that! Probably when the big plot is done? I'll keep it in mind, thank you.
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First of all, I want to preface this by saying that that the temple ruins subplot was never meant to be "important" or "game-changing", and I'm not exactly sure where this misconception arose from. It is true that it was hyped up, and perhaps that's what contributed to this. We created a small subplot, a sidequest if you will, for players to pursue and learn a little bit more about the actual setting of Luceti, and we wanted you all to take notice of it. As long as the game has been running, we've honestly allowed the players to truly learn very little about the true nature of the world. It was strictly meant to be IC knowledge that the characters gained there, and it would fall on them to share (or not share) this information with their peers.
To that end, I recruited a few players (namely, Athena and Vil) to help lay out the narrative as the characters explored the temple trying to find anything new in this version of the temple that had not yet been raided. Through their investigations, they managed to actually raise the temple above the sea (making it accessible in the current timeline for the characters to go to), found a keystone, and used that keystone to access a secret room and find... Well, I'll let you see for yourself. What's contained in the link is what was intended to be found, be relayed by those characters to everyone else, and for the villagers to discuss and pontificate upon what was found and just what it might mean. But that didn't happen (yet). As for what it actually means? Well, that's not something we plan on revealing yet, we're curious to see what everyone comes up with first, honestly. (:
Of course, judging by the length of time it took for this factoid to be revealed, things didn't proceed the way I had planned. My intentions were that by getting several players in on the secrecy of what was going to be revealed, it would speed things up, but obviously it had the opposite effect. That was poor planning on my part, and had I anticipated that, I definitely would have made more of an effort to make sure people were aware of what was going on. It was an attempt at a different method of storytelling than we've usually employed. An experiment due to the criticism over how rigid the last draft had been.. But seeing as it didn't work out, it's not a method we'll be using again, at least not without some serious fine-tuning.
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(Although when I was discussing this with Yosie, he asked if she would just try to carry on a conversation with them regardless, and you know, she totally would. So at least she has that advantage?)
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(Aw, oh Grune. She's too sweet.)