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 dropped recently, for your convenience.

Copy-paste the following here:

manage_circle del_read bringtherain manage_circle del_read eternalpromise manage_circle del_read fanged_wings manage_circle del_read goesbythebook manage_circle del_read heartofahawk manage_circle del_read herroyalsunrise manage_circle del_read hohenheim manage_circle del_read ignitethesky manage_circle del_read kagetsukai manage_circle del_read keepitinthefamily manage_circle del_read lookatmyguns manage_circle del_read madpuppeteer manage_circle del_read malkuth manage_circle del_read needabourbon manage_circle del_read onceaknight manage_circle del_read polydimensional manage_circle del_read purewhite manage_circle del_read refused manage_circle del_read roundup manage_circle del_read screwthegods manage_circle del_read storyofapromise manage_circle del_read thatmadbastard manage_circle del_read visionofwords manage_circle del_read magiartes manage_circle del_read iwantcake manage_circle del_read dragonsheir manage_circle del_read phasingthrough manage_circle del_read catches manage_circle del_read didntmeanto manage_circle del_read ratpack manage_circle del_read forgiatura manage_circle del_read galaxynymph manage_circle del_read restoring manage_circle del_read analyzing manage_circle del_read feelinghot manage_circle del_read statice manage_circle del_read abstruse manage_circle del_read hatsoff manage_circle del_read estelle_bright manage_circle del_read jinuzuki manage_circle del_read soundfrequency manage_circle del_read moelle manage_circle del_read notreesplease manage_circle del_read kenpo_kitty manage_circle del_read blinkingusalong manage_circle del_read thinglike manage_circle del_read stockpot manage_circle del_read upthere manage_circle del_read havemilkbro manage_circle del_read authenticity manage_circle del_read unchains manage_circle del_read asquiet manage_circle del_read kyoshi manage_circle del_read shying manage_circle del_read bloodypocket manage_circle del_read affability manage_circle del_read flameshield manage_circle del_read redheaded_rock manage_circle del_read notshrimpman manage_circle del_read spiritbruising manage_circle del_read goodboy manage_circle del_read pinkyizpower manage_circle del_read shred_the_sky manage_circle del_read wigglesfate manage_circle del_read miniaturization manage_circle del_read flowermemory manage_circle del_read donteatmyfries

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

Luceti / Luceti Mods

[lucetimods]

Feedback for us, the game, whatever.

[eyesofstrength]

I just want to say that I do love the plot and all the stuff you are doing. You guys are definitely awesome mods and I still do love Luceti and all.

But there is one thing that concerns me a bit. That is the new rule that was added this AC for people who were accepted late. I get that this cycle especially there were a few characters accepted right before the event and due to circumstances beyond their control had to intro late. Stuff like that, I definitely agree with making exceptions as needed. But I do think that making it go as far back as it did and being based on when someone posts their IC intro is just leaving open too much room for potential abuse.

Just wanted to get that out there, I'd really much rather see exceptions made as needed than a blanket rule like that which is a bit too wide open for abuse.

Thanks and keep up the good work!

[selfhelp]

Re: the AC/late acceptances thing, it's not a blanket rule that provides a free pass, exactly; that was worded badly. It just means that if you introduced a character after the start of the AC period, you're not required to get a full 30 comments this AC only. It's for the sake of fairness. If all the other players are given a full month to reach those 30 comments, it wouldn't be right if we penalized newcomers accepted after the fact to hit the same deadline in less time.

Additionally, not every new character is introduced as soon as they are accepted; sometimes delays happen due to hiatuses, plots, or events. All of this is taken into consideration. This is why we ask that new characters still be added to the AC: so we can see what their activity is and from what point it began.

tl;dr it's something we've thought about already, but thanks for the reminder so that it could be clarified.

[eyesofstrength]

Not a problem, I'm glad for the clarification and figured it was just one of those new things, still needs to be hammered out fully sorts of deals. Thanks for that and glad to know it isn't something I needed to be nearly so concerned about!

[hiken_ace]

I also have a little concern with the way AC is run now, too. By having it done every other month, there's basically a month where activity doesn't count.An example is last AC. Activity had to fall between March 9th and April 9th. And then for the whole month of April, anything we posted wouldn't count for AC.And as someone pointed out to me, this gives character squatters a chance to do nothing, and then pick up activity for months that count. Do you ever plan to have it go back to every month?

[automailed]

We get asked this often, but our answer is always the same. Activity checks are time-consuming and yes, they can be lenient, but we have no desire to run more frequent ACs. Having monthly ACs would mean that we'd have to change the requirements to something more simple to help us do it faster, like making everyone do a post a month. We don't feel the need to do that. We haven't had activity checks monthly for years (I honestly can't recall it happening), and it has worked out fine this long.

We don't see this problem being enough of an issue to increase the frequency of ACs; we would rather focus that time on applications, plots, and events, which is much more of an issue that needs to be sorted out to keep everyone happy. So sorry, but the answer is no.

[hiken_ace]

I can see how it would be a bit of a problem. I apologize for my bad wording there, I was getting things mixed up. If I can make a suggestion? Would it at all be possible to keep AC as it is, but instead make it count for both months? For example, from June 1st to July 31st? And we wouldn't even need to change the amount of AC, it could stay the same. I hope I don't seem as though I'm trying to force any changes, I just want to offer suggestions.

[daisy023]

Echoing the rest, I'm really grateful for this plot, and both sides sound a lot of fun. I am amazed and grateful by the effort you guys put into the events, and doing two at the same time was just astonishing. Thank you guys so much for running this game.

My only problem was the dual nature of the plot in the terms of CR, and especially so as a single-player character, though to be honest it's understandable. I had to take a while to decide on which front to send my character to for my CR, and I apologize to you guys (and to many muns!) if I end up regretting my decision in the morning.

It'd be the only thing I'd note. To be fair, it served as a great option for those wishing to pass from the bigger plot. I wonder if a similar draft would happen again, but given Luceti's nature, I think it might.

[markofthewise]

I realize this sort of led to a conflict of interest for a lot of people, since there was a lot going on with both sides. In the past we've had people complain that there's nothing to do when drafts are going on. In the past we've tried to do different things, like letting Luceti Land stay during a draft, or having bad weather during a draft. In this case we decided to be ambitious by giving people in the village something sizable to work with. And mostly it happened because the plot called for it.

That said, it's probably something that won't happen too often. At least not to this scale. In the future there will be opportunities for similar plots. It's not at all unlikely, for instance, that a future mission might take place in space. Or that another droid incursion could happen in the village. Or, like you said, we might use that setting again for another draft. Anything's possible. So I do apologize to anyone who might end up missing one aspect of the current plot/event due to having only one character or whatever else might be keeping them on one side of the event only.

Re: Luceti / Luceti Mods

[(Anonymous)]

Just a note--while the recent flurry of mod plots and events is highly appreciated, I personally know of several players (myself included) that have had to hold off on character plots because of this. If the players who are making these plots can have a little forewarning when they seek mod permission, it would be very appreciated.

[ohmythor]

Just to ask for some clarification here. When you say forewarning, how do you want us to give it? Generally, there is a pattern to the way we structure and launch events, and the timing of it is actually pretty consistent. However, we all have pretty busy lives, so generally events aren't announced until around 4 days in advance. We try to make it earlier when we can, but sometimes time just does not permit.

What we do require from you guys is that you let us know as early as possible when you want to run a player plot. Literally, as soon as you have the idea, contact one of us so that we know it's got to be in the schedule. That way we can plan all the mod-run events, drafts, missions and so on around what you guys have planned.

To help give a little idea, usually we plan on an event per month. There is especially regularity in app months, where usually, once the app round ends, we'll plan an event for everyone. AC months tend to be a little more malleable on event timing.

Hope that helps!

[(Anonymous)]

The thing is that these plots were okayed by the mods weeks in advance, and at least one that I know is purposfully having to extend their arc because of this. The rapid timing of the plots is the problem, in honesty.

Details don't need to be given when warnings are issued, just point out that there is a game event happening close to that time.

[ohmythor]

Well, how? Would you like us to announce it on the OOC comm or mod journal or some such? Genuine question. Like, a game-wide notice of an upcoming event is essentially what you're looking for?

[(Anonymous)]

No, no. Just a poke via PM if the mods are aware of a character plot is all. There's no need to ruin the surprise for everyone.

DA

[(Anonymous)]

I just want to throw it out there that Ragna's mun put the plot post for his Black Beast player event a month ago now, and yet the entire thing was completely overshadowed because you put up a main game event instead. I imagine he would have had to have spoken to you about running the player event in advance, you can't say you weren't aware of it, and you could have said "we'll be doing a main game event around that time" or something along those lines?

[markofthewise]

You're right. We've been pretty disorganized. Our major issue is communication among us mods (since one will approve the plot, but the rest of us don't know about it) and forgetting when plots are set. Consequently player plots have been getting sort of scrambled and when it comes time to start doing events or game plots, we're left with very little room to set things. But we're taking steps to fix that. Which will be two things:

1.) We'll be keeping our own internal calendar for events and player plots.

2.) We're setting up a post for player plots to be posted to. After they've been approved, the player will post there with a description of their player plot with the dates set for it. This will give some transparency so it's very clear what days have player plots going on for both us mods and to the players in the game. This should hopefully alleviate any future incidents of overlap.

[voidseeing]

Just a thought, but what about having something like a player plot calendar similar to the weather calendar so that people can tell with a glance what days have things going on?

ayrt

[(Anonymous)]

I had a feeling this might be the case after I did a playerplot myself. I have to say I'm a little surprised you don't have an internal calendar in place as it would make your lives much easier IMO.

Thank you for being honest with your reply to me, I appreciate that a lot <3

[lucetimods]

Masa beat me to it, but that's pretty much precisely what I was going to say. I'll be honest and admit I was one of the mods that had no idea about the Black Beast plot - I think the initial plotting post went up while I still had finals, and I just never really heard of it through the grapevine after that.

And that is a failing of ours! So we actually are putting things in place THIS VERY DAY to help rectify that situation. You'll see a post up in the Luceti community shortly.

Apologies for the screw-up, anon.

SA

[(Anonymous)]

I'm really glad to see this post go up, I hope it serves as both a help to the playerbase and your mod team! It can get tricky to follow plots when not everyone is linked together on plurk, this seems like a good idea to me and I'm grateful for the fast response and action you guys have taken! (And you don't need to apologize to me at all!)

[(Anonymous)]

I'm really glad to see the plot coordination post go up, and so quickly as well. Thank you for listening to your players, mods!

I would personally like to see more coordination amongst the different mods in general, as well, especially when it comes to interpretation of the rules. And I might also suggest that solid clarification with regard to the rules for keeping memories for re-apped characters would also be very helpful at this point in time?

And last of all, I have to bring up consistency in application processing again-- I've seen some good apps forced to do rewrites apparently on a mod's whim while really blatantly terrible apps were passed by the same mod. It's really discouraging as a player when you feel like you're being unfairly picked on, and I had a couple of friends I'd encouraged to app drop because they felt that was the case. I personally think it would help to have an official second-opinion system for canons the mods aren't familiar with, since that would also take some of the stress off the mods who have to rapidly research an entire canon in order to judge an app. I've been in games before where they did that and it seemed to work well.

Just two cents, nitpicky because I have very few nits to pick with you guys. You do awesome work, keep it up.

[(Anonymous)]

And I might also suggest that solid clarification with regard to the rules for keeping memories for re-apped characters would also be very helpful at this point in time?

Agreed with this, and also on the point of changes to history and character and when a reset would be needed because the changes are too vast with characters currently in play along with reapps. This way everyone can be on the same page with that.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with the clarification here, though I'd like to say in my opinion siding with allowing players to keep some sense of history even in the face of resets / drops after some time or multiple characters is better. I think since we're all here to have fun, it would be kindest to make our rules work out so that players can have fun doing what they want to do, not force people to re-do their CR when they'd rather not.

da

[(Anonymous)]

i disagree. we had someone forced to lose their memories last cycle because of a change in age. and that wasn't even an intentional change on the player's part but new canon information contradicting their old guess.

if someone had to wipe their character's luceti memories that recently, it wouldn't be fair to say that now it's suddenly ok to keep luceti memories (vague or not) even in the face of changes in the character's history if those changes contradict their old app.

i agree that clarification on this in the rules would be nice though. afaik there were mod statements about this before but they're scattered about and hard to find. even mentioning this in the faq would already help.

dda

[(Anonymous)]

While I agree that wasn't fair to the mun who had to reset, but I also agree with the other anon who'd like to see some sense of history kept.

Personally I would like to see than no one else has to again, rather than force everyone who wants to make minor changes in the future have to do the same thing as well.

It's important to be fair to the entire player base, and a part of that is making changes to rules as needed. Why not just clear up the rules, cut back on a few to make them more reasonable, and have them be fairer for everyone from here on out?