Special Discussion [PLEASE READ]

[cityship]

It has come to the mods' attention that there is a signficant chunk of players that have concerns about the health of the game and think it's dying. Unfortunately, this means that everyone's in a holding pattern waiting to see what happens and the problem with this is if we collectively do this as a game, we might not make it past rebellion.

So the mods have decided to address the issue head on to discuss it.

For our part, the mods want to encourage people to send in plots, tag around, invite people for June, and put up posts. We'd also like to take suggestions and answer questions and want to try to reassure you that we will do whatever we can on our end to make things fun. Our response times for plots and answering questions about things people can do in the game are down to only a few days (usually 3-5 for complicated issues/questions). Sometimes we can even get a response back the same day or just 1-2 for simple issues. If players want to run plots, we can definitely get an answer back to you very quickly, and in the case of milk runs, you pretty much have free reign to do those whenever or however you want. So now's the time for us to ask the question: what do you need from the mod team to have fun? What things do you want? What things might you want to see?

What things would players like to see from other players? This is also a good place to discuss that. As of right now, close to thirty people have posted for and made AC, which means that there are a good chunk of players that have have at least some interest in continuing to play. (Hopefully that will be reassuring to those of you worried about mass drops.)

At this point, the game is really only what we make it, and while there were a lot of problems over the last year, we are very dedicated to working on the ones that were on the mod end. The game can be made fun again, but now that the backlog of work and mod duties have been caught up, it is definitely something we need to discuss and cooperatively work on and confront head on as a group.

So discuss away, and please plurk and replurk this to your heart's content, point other players you know to it via AIM, etc. It really is something we need as many eyes seeing as possible.

EDIT: Please keep commenting, even if the mods don't respond to each of your individual comments. We're incorporating all the player feedback into our discussions about this in modchat.

EDIT 2, EDITINING: The mods are going to have a big modchat on Friday the 25th to iron everything out and probably have communication go up then or over the weekend.

Comments

[sawedoffgenius]

I agree with basically all of that. Huge blanket statement, I know, but you touched on a lot of points that ring true and point to deeper issues within the game.

One of the biggest recurring problems here is that newbies have a difficult time starting out, and that CR is slow to come by. I think they're really the same problem - like you said, OOC communication always precedes CR development. If you do manage to thread with someone spontaneously, you generally have to track them down and arrange to thread again. When I joined, the official stance on this situation was, "Well, bloody well track them down! What are you waiting for?!" Even at the time I felt this was a bad idea that could only lead to... basically, where we are now. We need to actively work on this as a game and, as much as the mods are doing all they can (hi), nothing we do is going to help much if the playerbase doesn't make a concerted effort as well.

> Schedule friending+plotting memes, at least once a month.

I will see your memes and raise you some structural changes. I don't know about other people, but the form-like convention for these things just does not work for me. As much as I am loathe to admit this, when those things come up I skim past practically everyone and only read/tag the posts for characters I already wanted CR with. I know I'm not alone here, because in memes past Clef has seldom gotten tags. Artoo, on the other hand, does very well. These memes are great for greasing the gears a little, but I don't think they're helping the people who really need it.

My suggestion: Ditch the form, replace it with a short blurb - possibly phrased as a want ad. "Snarky robot seeks people to troll bffs. Must have interest in AIs or electronic devices + patience for emotive beeping. Will bring own translation device if necessary. Contact: [my plurk/aim/email]" This format has the potential to be both informative and entertaining, and since it's short nobody has an excuse to skim.

> Players need to reach out more and be willing to tag outside of their circles.

Everyone says this, yet it does not happen. People pay a lot of lip service to tagging new people, but when you have a big open thread they're more likely to tag people they already have CR with (or want CR with) than unknown quantities. It's human nature. Telling people to reach out is about as effective as telling people who don't get tags to make more interesting posts. (In fact, when you confront people about contributing to one problem they will often blame the other.)

Suggestion: We can't make people tag each other, but it wouldn't hurt anything to add one little field to the AC form: "Did you make any new CR this [however long]?:" A simple yes or no is fine. Comments would still be screened and there would be no penalty for answering no. It might make people think more about their tagging habits, though. Plus, it would give us an idea of who the more open players are, which relates to the next point.

> Mod-run events involving randomized groups of characters.

This is tricky. We have enough trouble getting people to tag into plots they signed up for themselves. Just assigning random people to stuff? I have my doubts about this.

Instead: Use the system above to find out who the more open players are, privately arrange a plot with them and some random new(er) people. It would still have to be mod-run, but this might actually encourage people to reach out more. (You'll get to be in more plots!) This should create a positive feedback loop. In theory.

> Increase AC.

I hate that ACs exist. There, I said it.

That said, yeah, ours could really be tighter. Before we make them more frequent, though, I would like to see us try things like using different criteria. One open log or comm post per month is not a lot to ask and could significantly improve both CR building and overall game liveliness. I have concerns that it means that lots of people would post stuff and no one would tag it, but... well. Baby steps.

[punchedoutdestiny]

Okay, that want ad CR meme idea is friggin' brilliant. Just sayin'.

[on_your_nerves]

I agree. I like it. Maybe we could do the usual watercooler but people could do a blurb for what kinds of character hooks other players could hook into.

Like for Sherlock, I'd say: I'm looking for new friends for Sherlock that call him on his jerkiness, people that can have contentious relationships with him where we can try to force them to work together, and characters that have epic hatefests with him.

That helps people realize ways they could interact.

[punchedoutdestiny]

Bingo. And much as I like filling out forms, this makes things easier to go through both in the filling out manner and the reading manner.

[quixotically]

The reason why the meme I put up had a form was because, well. As a new player who didn't know most of the characters in the game, I was thinking that by having people write up summaries of their characters would help in general. In the past, I've seen plotting memes where people weren't asked to post anything, so there were character names and... no information, so it made it hard to come up with ideas for interactions. I actually stole the form from a game I was in

I do like the idea of a "Wanted Ads" style though -- it would give enough information to go with but wouldn't risk tl;dr. Mostly.

As far as re: people tagging outside their circles -- This is always one of the hardest problems to solve. I think having the question would be a good idea, because, like you said, it would make people thing, but :|a I'm not sure it'll be enough. But maybe in combination with other ideas like those mentioned below -- IC-forced therapy, planned open posts ("day in the life"-themed stuff?), the random-things-to-do wiki page -- it would be a good step to take! Especially considering your idea for randomizing mini-plots with new people.

Re: mod-run randomized plots -- Oh, no! I should've specified; I didn't mean randomly picking people and assigning them to things. I was thinking more along the lines of very large-ranged things, wherein lots of people sign up and then get randomized into groups, because I've seen that kind of thing work very well in other games (at least temporarily). But considering the problem of getting people to tag into things they signed up themselves, that probably wouldn't work.

I do like the idea you had, though. I think that could work out really well!

I think changing the criteria for the AC would be as good an idea as making it more frequent (by which I intended to be changed to "once a month" instead of "once every two months," I should've specified that, too). I agree it shouldn't be just asking for posts, though -- offering an option for threads instead of posts is something I've seen in other games, and I think it's a good idea.

[sawedoffgenius]

I'm not picking on you specifically. I remember we had a meme like that before and it was essentially the same. Maybe there's like one CR meme form that floats around all of DWRP. o_o Either way, it's not just that meme or even just this game - I find those things problematic in general.

The whole 'want ads' idea is based on ideas in this post. The writer is talking about RP memes where everyone tags ICly, but I think the same principles apply here: make things as open-ended as possible, and focus on character types/tropes. More importantly, the brevity of the format enables people to suggest what they want in CR without going into so much detail that they end up excluding people.

In reality, it might be too gimmicky to work more than once - I don't know. It might actually depend on the character. This format would probably actually work better for Clef than for Artoo, because Clef is much more of a complex character so what I would write would change every time. Artoo's, on the other hand, could get pretty repetitive - not that I would mind, because he doesn't really need the help. |D

On the randomized plots - oh! XD I WAS CONFUSED. That makes more sense. I do have to say, though, that multiple teams → more plot runners, generally speaking. This is a good idea that we should incorporate into modplots already in the works, however. If I had thought of it when I put Puzzle Box signups up, I would have used it then - the 'psychic' part of that plot was actually written for people with any powers whatsoever, not necessarily just psychic ones. (I wasn't expecting so many actually-psychic characters to show up!) With a few minor tweaks to the set-up/lead-in I used, randomization could actually have worked there - and I'm sure it'll work for a lot of plots in the future.

The whole 'people tagging around' thing - yeah, I really feel that the question would be one of those tiny details that might help but won't make too much of a difference. More (open) slice-of-life posts would definitely help, though.

As much as I like games that allow the option to use threads for AC, I have really mixed feelings about using that option here if we're also going to make AC more frequent. Part of it is that in other games it seems to encourage fast threads and discourage backtagging, and it does both of these in equal quantities. If our implementation of it is lax enough not to hurt, in other words, it's also going to be too lax to help.

Another problem I have with that is that I think we need more posts more than we need faster threads. My experience in other games tells me that people who post more tend to have more CR. I think this is because they're operating under the assumption that they're in a fast game. This causes them to check the reading page more often (which has been a HUGE problem here since before I even joined), and also tag more posts in general in order to keep up. In essence, thread requirements make threads move faster but post requirements make the overall game move faster - what we really want is the latter.

[quixotically]

Going to focus on re: AC in this comment --

In my experience in another game (specifically, luministi), having the option to use threads instead of a post for AC worked really well for the kinds of characters who tagged around more than they made their own posts. I remember seeing somewhere -- either on plurk or in this post, idr -- that one of the worries with increasing AC is that then everyone will make posts and not tag each other, I think the thread option would help -- that way, people don't have to make posts to pass, so it'd hopefully reduce post clutter and add more to tagging around.

I think the problem you mentioned -- that it would make threads move faster instead of encouraging new posts -- entirely depends on how the playerbase decides to handle the changes. Some people may be more likely to make more posts; maybe others will be more likely to tag around. It's hard to tell until it's actually implemented, which makes deciding something like that all the more difficult.

[bonnypiperlad]

I still to need post more coherent thoughts on things overall, but chiming in on the AC at least. I also have to agree with what Mala's said here. Personally, I'm one of those people who tag around posts much more than make my own posts. Having to come up with a post every single month to make AC is not something that works for everyone, so I think having the option of either a post or a set number of threads is a much better idea.

Some people may well embrace the idea of doing a post every month, but I would rather see less posts with people actually tagging into them then a front page full of posts that people aren't responding to because they're too busy trying to come up with a post of their own for AC. It's not going to encourage interaction, in my opinion. They'll just sit empty.

I am not opposed to the idea of a higher AC, though. I simply think that doing posts only is not the way to go with it.