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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[deathsdoctor]

This is late to the party, but as the last person (I believe) to have done a resist the droids mini-plot, I agree with what's been said here.

Some wins against the droids, real wins, are essential, if only to break the cycle of apathy concerning kidnappings, and is something I've approached the mods about. It doesn't need to be often, but I think it should be done sparingly enough that there is some hope of resisting. Given how powerful some characters are in the barrier and the fact that the TP can easily take out droids, and the fact that during the Infiltration plot, characters were able to take out the droids there, I agree that a continuing 100% success rate shouldn't be maintained.

I also think there are good IC ways to make this change. For one, the Malnosso Organization has a history of infighting, and heck, as the infiltration plot showed, the Rogue employees were not too friendly to others outside their divisions (in fact some, like the scientists, held themselves quite superior) and why can't this friction trickle down and affect the operations the Rogues are running? It would be a great in game way to reflect some of the instability in the Malnosso ranks - it was the entire basis of the Law plot; things had broken down with the Malnosso badly and therefore Law's kidnapping Did Not Go As Planned, to say the least - and if player opinion wanted to have things back the way they were, it could always be said the Malnosso had finally had some things sorted out.

Which is one way. I can imagine many others could work just as well.

[(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.

[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.

[endgames]

Also commenting to say how much I love this suggestion, though agreeing with Zero in that I think it would mean more if it characters inside the enclosure played a hand in it.

And don't quote me on this, but I think some people already have taken apart a droid. I know Daisy grabbed one after that thing with Law (and it went to SHELL...? /unsure), though I don't know what became of it. Shikamaru also got to study them for an hour or so two Halloweens back - since he knows nothing about robotics, he's been slowly relaying everything he saw to Tony Stark in hopes he can make sense of it. So within the enclosure, people ARE working towards this. It would be awesome to see something come of it.

[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!

[(Anonymous)]

I thought the droids were stoppable, since you can destroy as many as you like they just keep sending more out to get you. That doesn't imply that they're all powerful and could take out the Third Party instead of us.

And there's also a power-cap in the village, it could be that the droids aren't affected by it or even have increased power that wouldn't work outside the barrier? Who knows.

[wildkotetsu]

Oh no, I know they're stoppable as in you can destroy them, but yeah, they're unstoppable in that once they're after a character, there's no getting out of a mallynap. Unless I've just misinformed myself on that! >_>

I think the matter is giving the characters something to fight back to and feel some sort of triumph. Whether it's protecting a friend from droids or kicking your own droids' asses into the dirt, the citizens DO want to feel like this is tug-of-war, or something to that effect.

But that probably makes it sound like I'm speaking for everyone; so mainly, my characters would love to feel like they can struggle back without falling miserably on their faces? Constant defeat is a real bummer for 'em, I guess.

Same anon

[(Anonymous)]

You know what I think would be quite awesome? If a group of characters worked together and thwarted a mallynap attempt! I don't see a rule that says they can't, it could be really interesting if done right!

Same anon

[wildkotetsu]

NGL, Wolfwood and Kotetsu would actually have JOBS in Luceti if that happened. They're the types to do whatever they can to stop the droids. PLOT WITH ME ANON, WE CAN MAKE THESE THINGS HAPPEN*.

Actually, Nami has been trying to figure out a way to defeat the droids as well. So if the characters step up and say OKAY, we hate droids, how can we one-up them?, that would be pretty cool. And feel productive as well.




*as long as mods are okay with this and it's not impossible, aha

Re: Same anon

[(Anonymous)]

You're tempting me to de-anon dammit!

[wildkotetsu]

huehuehuehuehue

/wiggles eyebrows

[crisisrain]

I knew if I replied to this post I'd get outed.

But yes! That still sounds quite awesome indeed! It'd be worth double checking with the mods and seeing if it could go ahead once at least!

[wildkotetsu]

Totally. The back and forth victories and failures are what makes storylines so interesting, right? I'd love to have more happy!wins for my people. d(*_*)b

[crisisrain]

What about a scenario where the mallynaps occur for multiple people but only a few can be saved and the rest get taken? That presents both a victory and failure scenario. But it also keeps the fear of the droids in place without undermining them as something that can be stopped entirely.

[(Anonymous)]

This.

This is a good idea.

[notabluesbro]

/me gusta

I approve of this.

[saltprince]

It would. I would love this. Other people (Daisy, Yuri, Robert, when I played them Mark, Nina, assorted others) have been studying it for a long time to. Make Droid Hunter Corps, it would be awesome.

[wildkotetsu]

Yeah! Even the smallest feeling of 'getting stuff done' might be what's needed! Or at least doing a little more plot-application to things like the drafts and mallynaps and droids and WHATEVER. We're all on the same page of 'things need to pick up', at least!

Re: Same anon

[(Anonymous)]

This could, perhaps, even be done without "destabilizing" the idea of kidnappings too much. I've noticed that some muns are way more inclined to mallynap their characters than others. What if an effect was instituted where the character was made naturally weaker to droids, or droids were sent specifically armed to capture a certain character, or heightened tracking or something to that effect? Something that would make some characters just naturally more likely to be caught than others.

[(Anonymous)]

That's exactly what I was thinking! I assumed the droids have that invulnerability inside the barrier, but outside in battles with the Third Party they would be easily destroyed.

I don't mind mallynappings being tweaked if needed or even some mallynappings being thwarted, but substituting them with Shift Sickness just seems to be unnecessary.