AC 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 dropped recently, for your convenience.

Copy-paste the following here:

manage_circle del_read inozpicious manage_circle del_read selfdoubt manage_circle del_read soracles manage_circle del_read stopbuggingme manage_circle del_read toujoursfluer manage_circle del_read upontheplains manage_circle del_read vanityunbecoming manage_circle del_read wishedmiracle manage_circle del_read jacqli manage_circle del_read fairly manage_circle del_read bemyused manage_circle del_read cutefiancee manage_circle del_read lastoftheredwings manage_circle del_read little_amber_angel manage_circle del_read sardines4power manage_circle del_read great_summoner_eiko manage_circle del_read flaring manage_circle del_read slaythemoon manage_circle del_read wario manage_circle del_read albioreiii manage_circle del_read monstrosities manage_circle del_read limits manage_circle del_read pyrotechnics manage_circle del_read coldsnaps manage_circle del_read blackmagicelady manage_circle del_read fujoshiqueen manage_circle del_read kicks_eggplant manage_circle del_read transitioned manage_circle del_read aintnoconvict manage_circle del_read loyalotter manage_circle del_read metalbends manage_circle del_read vervainsheriff manage_circle del_read soulboundhunter manage_circle del_read awakenedchaos manage_circle del_read mush_monarch manage_circle del_read loves_a_samurai manage_circle del_read gentleidealist manage_circle del_read dragmire manage_circle del_read rideslink manage_circle del_read andatoilet manage_circle del_read phantasmgap manage_circle del_read heronpecked manage_circle del_read keepsthelight manage_circle del_read aynnnn manage_circle del_read shinydeadaliens manage_circle del_read cry_camellia manage_circle del_read no_ice_please manage_circle del_read untrustworthy manage_circle del_read ozwell manage_circle del_read alexandrite manage_circle del_read pinned_ya manage_circle del_read pridefulfists manage_circle del_read fateofafencer manage_circle del_read ahardwiredheart manage_circle del_read evokings manage_circle del_read couragefighter manage_circle del_read patchworkallegiance manage_circle del_read straightatem manage_circle del_read reactions manage_circle del_read deadlydebutante manage_circle del_read consult_my_books manage_circle del_read lookinforlight manage_circle add_read bubblywishes manage_circle add_read liberatedliberator

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 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

[disembodied]

Hey, just as long as you apologize to the right people it's all cool by me! It happens.

[of_sablier]

I agree with this. I've always seen the Mallynappings not only as a convenient explanation for hiatuses (and as one of the above anons noted, there are plenty of characters for whom signing up for missions would not be IC), but also as a way to play with different effects as a means towards character development or as a small personal plot. Plus, as you said, the player can control the timing of it so they can have it happen when it's the most convenient for them.

I'm totally against them being removed entirely because there ARE lots of characters who wouldn't sign up for missions, and taking Mallynaps away effectively leaves the players of those characters without any sort of viable hiatus option, which isn't fair to them.

[wildkotetsu]

Actually, I very rarely beat up my people! Recently I had Kotetsu turn into a Tiger, and that was a ton of fun! And of course, one of my upcoming plots has Wolfwood drugged as a small little CR/canonmates plot, and before that I had Elicia's dream storytelling, and I've had a ton of cute babbies, and one where Wolfwood could only tell the truth and so on!

I use mallynaps to do a lot of really fun tiny plots, and I'd feel really really weird to just have it happen as a 'shift illness'. I guess the biggest issue is just people hurting their characters too much? Which, we can't really entirely control what people do with their characters, bodily... If it's not mallynaps, it's shifts or what-have-you. IDK, I don't think there's much to do about repetition.

But I do know that removing mallynaps will cut sharply into some of the plots I have planned, and if you switched 'naps to illness, it'd be a very weird and anticlimatic jump... And of course, mallynaps help so that people can keep track of their kidnapped friend--if they act weird out of nowhere, people will be paranoid for village-wide shifts, etc.

I dunno. I'm not much for figuring out the best way of doing things, but that's my two cents. Maybe we can at least have the droids defeatable at a certain point--but still have mallynaps when the characters are unsuccessful. I get what you mean about characters getting hurt, because it DOES happen a lot, but not everyone hurts their characters in their mallynaps. So I'm not sure what a good halfway would be.

Maybe try to employ a 'creative mallynap effect' list or something? Like how some use an intro list of creative stuff. It seems to me like some are burnt out on the whole 'I'm injured huff puff this sucks but I'm back' aspect.

... looking at this, I'm probably not very helpful, aha.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Hello again! I'm not on my phone now but eek, I don't want to de-anon!

But this is exactly how I feel. I'm looking at the reserves page right now and I can write off all the characters that will likely end up dropping due to the way Luceti is right now, and it's depressing. I feel the game has derived so far from the original premise that it's actually become "boring". This isn't Wonderland Wars, or Soul Campaign, this is Luceti (yes, go ahead and make Sparta jokes if you want too XD) and even though it's been running for years, there is still so much that can be done with it. It just needs to steer back to how it used to be and keep those darker elements in place.

When I joined, and I'm speaking strictly for myself here, it was because it was a "Utopia with a dark mystery behind it". But it had achieved that perfect balance of being dark without being a horror or asylum game. People had the freedom to do as they please in the village, yet Big Brother was always watching. I liked that, and I think Luceti should play to it's strengths instead of trying to compete with other roleplays. The game won't die no matter what route it takes, there will always be people who consider Luceti a home. So all we can do is place our faith in the mods and hope they can work towards something we all agree on ♥

[(Anonymous)]

Only kind of related, but this is something I've heard before and have been thinking about a lot. Life in Luceti has gotten pretty comfortable for a lot of characters, and I do enjoy the slice-of-life aspect, which works well when you want to create strong CR. There's always enough time for doing your own thing.

But from what I've heard about in the beginning, I feel like Luceti was a much darker game that did seem more like slice of life with an underlying horror plot. Wasn't Jacob killed publicly over the network? One of the first experiments was a disease that actually killed a few people, right? And what about the Hunter?

I know games change over time and honestly I have no problems with the way Luceti is now, nor the way it was before. But slice of life mixed with horror is how I've always interpreted Luceti, and I've only been here for two years. It's what drew me to the game, really.

(Sorry if this is too off topic, but it's honestly something I've been wondering about.)

[emp3thy]

But those points were brought up in the earlier suggestions, Luna. I agree that there needs to be a way for non-mission going characters to hiatus and it's fun to have a way to give characters random character-development furthering effects. It just doesn't have to be the result of invincible droids.

[(Anonymous)]

Please turn IP logging on, we can't see it, but it will help prevent trolls from jumping in. Especially considering this is quite a heated discussion here, one nasty comment could tip it badly.

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry to not have much to say, but I agree with this comment. Players are speaking out that they do not want the mallynap option removed yet due to it flexibility.

[saltprince]

The problem isn't brutalization (brutalization hasn't been popular for years now, it really hasn't). If people want to do that they're on their watch and frankly I'm not about to tell someone they can't be violent.. The problem is in there being randomly unstoppable droids which makes no sense in context.


I don't mind if sickness-victims are abducted through shifts, I don't care if people are mallynapped through shifts (even if that would be problematic light light of the Renegade stuff if it's dealt with which I feel it ought to be if nothing else to give our characters some sense of accomplishment). I just want the droids to stop being there ominously and unstoppable for no apparent reason. That's literally all that matters right now in my suggestion and I don't might any other details of it.

Re: Same anon

[truepudding]

I really have no strong opinions on this either way, I am just here to say that oh my god, that is the best mallynapping idea I've ever seen???

[wise_maiden]

Well you also can think of in a sense, if people want to play out more "thwarted kidnappings", that might be okay, since really the only time the droids come into play is when people are being actively kidnapped. But we don't see people "beating" them because most of the time kidnappings are just for hiatuses or kicking off plots.

But if more people wanted to work toward more visible "thwarted" kidnappings, at least the idea that they aren't completely unbeatable isnt there, while still giving other people the option of being grabbed. Because the kidnappings do happen fast and we do know they are always trying to update their droids. But taking away the option completely, as has been pointed out, feels limiting to those of us who sometimes don't have an option or see a better one. But that would be up to the mods to decide.

[moelle]

I think I'm getting confused about the idea being presented here. From the way I understand it, the idea is if a Shift Sickness happens, then the Malnosso Shift a person out to quarantine them and treat it to prevent collateral damage. Why would they leave Luke destabilized, or Giles with his paranoia, then, or why would either be considered part of a cure?

Also, something a friend of mine pointed out...

I am a newer player to this game, I joined within the last six months. One of the things that I liked most about this game when I signed up was the Mallynap option. I can understand how, to older players who've watched the game develop all this time, it might feel like nothing is being accomplished with the Mallynaps still in place. But many newer players weren't around for those "small victories against the droids", or the infiltration operation, and are still making frequent use of Mallynaps with no real concerns. To us this is an unexpected and confusing suggestion.

Essentially, it sounds like this might be a clash between the premise versus the plot.

[hiken_ace]

I don't like threading with you. At all. Really.


gdit your tags are addicting, bitch. Your muses are amazing. idek their canon but holy shit they are the most fun ever.

[(Anonymous)]

As a compromise, there could be a way to try and limit how many droids make successful kidnappings? Say people notice there have been less mallynaps now that more people go on missions. The Malnosso could say they've been intercepting most of the droids and stopping them, but since they're shifted into the enclosure, they can't catch all of them.

Or maybe they find a code of some kind to put on the barrier that limits to strength of droids that are sent in (carry the 3, multiply for 10, idk) so that the droids are weak enough to be defeated if people are strong enough, but if a character is either weak, by their self, or just doesn't feel like putting up a fight, they can still be taken.

I realize the issue with these is that the characters themselves wouldn't be having an impact on stopping the droids (unless we get some geniuses together to dissect a droid and see how to stop them instead of the malnosso; we have more than enough mad scientists in Luceti I'd think) but it would put a limit of sorts on them ICly and remove the "indestructible droid" mentality.

[temzan]

Judith | Tales of Vesperia | temzan
Personal HMD here

Adding to the apologies for slow tags in the last few weeks! I'm sorry and will slowly be working through the backtags in my inbox.

[wildkotetsu]

Oh, no, in that case I understand entirely! I actually think the droids being stoppable is a good idea. That's why I said there should be successful and unsuccessful mallynaps, y'know? I just don't want that kidnapping situation to be x'd entirely, because I like mallynaps! My characters don't like missions, so if I ever have a cool player plot I wanna do, I can easily get to that point.

But yeah, all and all, I think finding weakness and being able to kick droid butt from time to time is a good thing. Lord knows my characters want to kick their asses a lot. My characters have even destroyed some; the problem is they have a huge quantity of them and keep sendin' those suckers out.

Or something.

I'M STRAYING OFF THE BEATEN PATH; all in all I agree, more victories for the villagers. As long as my character can disappear and re-appear with effects done to them, I don't mind if it's tweaked or changed up. That's my biggest concern!

[saltprince]

That'd be fine by me if we could make people doing an effort to do that. The last few times we've done that (Law, Nina, a few others) people have gotten kidnapped in the end anyway, which I feel didn't help the image any. I just think the droids and the Renegades are a great avenue for people to productively have their characters win some victories on the NPCs which count for something.

[hiken_ace]

Lemme squish your super moe Chopper. Seriously, he's great and I can hear his voice clear as a bell in every single tag I have with you. :3

[bubblywishes]

Oh okay, I'll just stop tagging you, then.



omg you loserface, go play Okami at the least, it's amazing and the art and music and characters and everything ever aaaaah...

[wildkotetsu]

Don't forget, we DO have Bil and Molly on our side! Perhaps they can power down the droids to a degree, in some way? Since they're savvy on all this and are the 'semblance of deceny' in the NPC group. Besides, I wanna know what those dweebs have planned for themselves and their futures in Luceti!

[saltprince]

I'd love that last paragraph. Or any of this suggestions (albeit I'd prefer it from in-enclosure geniuses I think my bias is showing). I love this entire comment.

[(Anonymous)]

Hello! I haven't read the other comments to this thread yet but I really don't like this idea. "Shift-Sickness" implies that negative effects have to happen to your character (as you elaborate more with the words cure). I like Mallynaps because we don't have to do anything to our characters, they can simply vanish for a period time and come back fine, or they can come back with other things I would hardly count as an illness. I don't think it's fair to remove that freedom and replace it with what is essentially a type of forced event. So I'm sorry, but I wouldn't want this as an alternative. Thanks for understanding!

[emp3thy]

It may just be the older player disconnect. I've been here for years, and it feels like characters have no more control over their environment than they did when they started. With so many smart and talented characters, it just doesn't make much sense that they can't work together to do something about kidnap droids. It's what most of them do in canon regardless.

As for the suggestion - that's just one idea. My own thoughts would be that the 'sickness' itself left untreated would maybe cause something dangerous for the world as a whole, not just the character - maybe even the 'sickness' causes a problem with the barrier that could bring it crashing down if left alone? Then the Malnosso "cures" would cause side-effects, which could potentially be worse than the illness itself was. The Malnosso probably don't know or care that much about Luke's Replica status, after all!

Basically, I'd just like to see the unstoppable NPC droid aspect removed. It's demoralizing to characters to know there's literally nothing they can do to protect themselves, despite being so powerful and having a functioning community for so long.

[hiken_ace]

Works for me.


I-I would, but I'm stuck without a Wii...

[of_sablier]

This is actually part of why I like the Mallynaps! I feel like they add to the sense of ever-lurking danger-- characters can be taken at any time and they're powerless to stop it. Switching that out for something like a sickness removes that element of fear and, IMO, would make the characters even more complacent.