affliction mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
afflictionmods) wrote2022-05-27 06:19 pm
afflictionmods) wrote2022-05-27 06:19 pm
week 1 feedback post
Hey everyone, congratulations on making it through Week 1! We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did; that being said, the mod team wants to address some issues that we've had modding-wise – none of which we think we can't fix – and we'd also like to talk about what we're doing to fix these issues.
Phew, okay! That's about everything we could think of for this post. We just want to be as transparent as possible so we can hear your thoughts on the aforementioned issues, issues that weren't mentioned, proposed solutions, etc. We want to do our best to nip these things in the bud so they won't continue to be problems throughout the rest of the game. We want to make sure that the game succeeds, even if it's only for a few weeks, so any feedback would be extremely helpful.
That being said, we'd also like to know about what's going well! Let us know what's working for you so we can continue to do these things moving forward.
Comments are unscreened. If you'd like a more private way to give us feedback, our mod contact post is always open. Thank you guys for your support and enthusiasm! This may be a game that the mods started, but this is your story, and we would like this to be a collaborative process because this RP is for all of us.
- Deadlines. There was a lot of confusion on when things were due this week, and that is 100% on us. We made things pretty complicated on that front, so to try and smooth things out moving forward, we would like to implement the following adjustments:
- Make deadlines uniform. 6PM EST seems like a good cutoff time for signups/rewards/etc, so we will try to leave it at that for as many things as we can! If extra time is needed, we will provide extensions as requested, but otherwise the deadline for most submission-based things will be 6PM EST.
- We'll also aim to continue opening things at 2PM EST, though if this needs to change based on mod availability, we will let you know ASAP. We're also considering making Saturday the events the exception with a start time of 12PM EST instead of 2PM, just so things don't cut too far into dinner time.
- Weekly tasks will share a deadline. Using this week as an example, we should have made pep rally and getting creative be due on the same day (and also at 6PM EST) to prevent confusion.
- OOC Bulletin. We will continue to update the OOC Bulletin and keep dates in chronological order for easy viewing. We'll do a check-in in a few weeks to see if it's still needed; if not, we will discontinue it.
- Links. We will also continue to add links to signups and such to the weekly logs.
- Clarity. Separating events via links and timing announcements appropriately should help with this. We also would like to provide more details in centralized locations (i.e. put time/date/event basics with the announcements, so they don't get lost in chat).
- Make deadlines uniform. 6PM EST seems like a good cutoff time for signups/rewards/etc, so we will try to leave it at that for as many things as we can! If extra time is needed, we will provide extensions as requested, but otherwise the deadline for most submission-based things will be 6PM EST.
- Activity Check. This actually leads us to our next point, which is AC. Because we have a lot going on (CYOAs, tasks, rewards, etc.), we want to make the schedule less cluttered. We're still going to be checking for AC, but submissions will no longer be required. We are switching to AC Savior instead! This means that we will be using a program to check for everyone's activity, and we will not be asking for you guys to post to the AC page anymore. We see that you're active, engaged and enthusiastic, so we don't feel the need for player-based AC submissions. We will run AC Savior checks on Saturdays after the events, and as long as we see that you're meeting the requirement (10 comments + 5 comment minimum per thread, 2 threads, 2 different characters) you're good!
- Typos and accidental misinformation. We made a LOT of mistakes this week regarding timezones, dates and general game info, and we truly, sincerely apologize for the confusion and any worry our errors may have caused. We will be more diligent in proofing our (and each others') announcements and posts to avoid as many mixups as we can.
If there are any questions that we don't have a clear answer to right away, we will double-check our pages or with each other first. We've been pretty hasty with our responses and as a result we began valuing response time over (perceived) accuracy, so we will take some extra time to check our answers moving forward. - AC Rewards. Gestures at the sweater mishap! We are going to be more careful about being thorough for our rewards and specify if things are single/limited use. If there's no specification, feel free to assume it's got unlimited usage.
- Plurk. We've been forgetting to post some of the bigger announcements to Plurk, so we'll set reminders for ourselves to post things like Saturday events and weekly logs to our mod account.
- Discord. Re: pinging, we are going to do it a lot less frequently, because we don't want to blow up your Discords with notifications anymore. Sorry about that, everyone! We will be a lot pickier with how we ping the chat, and we're looking into trying out Discord events as a way to remind people when things are happening. We'll still post to the announcements channel + Plurk, but we'll hold back on pinging unless it's something important.
- Tone of the game. To our knowledge, this isn't necessarily an issue, but more of a preliminary heads up: This week was really goofy, which is totally fine! It was wonderful! Starting Week 2, however, things may start to get darker. We want to be able to deliver on the pain share part of the game. Of course we will always welcome all the silliness and chaos from this week, as long as you guys are enjoying it, and we're trying to give the playerbase flexibility in that regard. We just wanted to clarify that we do have plans for more pain sharing that will hopefully put your characters through tougher situations. We definitely don't want to push things to where characters become unplayable, but people can have a little more suffering as a treat, it's fine.
That being said, we have a wide range of characters here with very different personalities and backstories. It is entirely possible that not every event will be taxing for your character. We will do our best to cover as many bases as possible, and the history sections really help with that, but please let us know if you are having a hard time. We will try to work with you on a solution that'll also be fun for the game as a whole. - W1 Saturday. So the entirety of Saturday was experimental, but this is about the bomb event in particular. It seemed straightforward on paper, but when put into practice, it was a lot more complicated than we expected it to be, OOCly and ICly. A lot of things were not taken into account beforehand on our part also. For full transparency, we are not planning on doing puzzles/events of this exact complexity moving forward; it was a lot of work for us behind the scenes and a lot of work for you guys, too. That being said, if you enjoyed it, you're free to let us know anyway, and if there's enough demand for it, we may consider another communication-based event. We'd tone it down several notches so it'd be way more straight forward, less moving parts.
Phew, okay! That's about everything we could think of for this post. We just want to be as transparent as possible so we can hear your thoughts on the aforementioned issues, issues that weren't mentioned, proposed solutions, etc. We want to do our best to nip these things in the bud so they won't continue to be problems throughout the rest of the game. We want to make sure that the game succeeds, even if it's only for a few weeks, so any feedback would be extremely helpful.
That being said, we'd also like to know about what's going well! Let us know what's working for you so we can continue to do these things moving forward.
Comments are unscreened. If you'd like a more private way to give us feedback, our mod contact post is always open. Thank you guys for your support and enthusiasm! This may be a game that the mods started, but this is your story, and we would like this to be a collaborative process because this RP is for all of us.
no subject
In terms of Saturday's events, we have a really enthusiastic group here, so I think the first event worked especially well because it gave everyone the information and materials they needed to run wild. The second event, I think, needed some more organization and oversight -- it was confusing trying to do it with a character who wasn't good with technology, and doing it on the tablet probably needed a bit more in terms of limits. 300 characters in texting is a lot, and a 'timed' event like the bomb game could have used, say, 50-100 characters only, only being able to communicate using set phrases, or voice-only interactions in separate rooms, maybe. I also feel it would have helped to split up the task into more digestible parts, especially for groups that were doing it blind. For example: one pair each for each task, and information distributed accordingly.
Overall it's only the first week so I absolutely understand there needing to be an adjustment period and events being rather experimental overall. I just wanted to suggest taking in account the structure of the groups, and the fact that people here are really good at making their own fun as long as they have the means to do so.
Also I think you guys have pretty much got the pulse on the deadlines: I don't think we necessarily need the OOC bulletin if that's a lot of work for you guys, but consolidating deadlines and making sure tasks are clearly linked and separated would help a lot. The fewer deadlines the better (I'm someone who has a lot of trouble remembering deadlines so I usually put game deadlines into my phone, but even still it would save my life to have like, 4 deadlines instead of 6, just as an example).
no subject
This means we're going to be more aware and communicative with each other when we receive questions, and do our best to clarify with each other and double check descriptions and writeups to avoid things getting as lost in translation. We're also going to be more considerate of how events and CYOAs are organized going forward, including discussion and consideration for the nitty gritty details, and having more mod oversight and input on an IC level when necessary.
The suggestions for the second event were really good also, and while we won't be doing events quite as complex moving forward, the general advice (splitting things into digestible parts, taking technology into account, etc.) is something we will keep in mind moving forward. We actually thought the unfamiliarity with the technology would add to the chaos -- and it certainly did -- but it should be in a fun way and shouldn't be detrimental to the players' experiences, so we apologize that it made things more confusing than exciting.
We've scraped the OOC bulletin as it doesn't seem like it's strictly necessary at the moment, but we will continue to add relevant links and deadlines to the IC mingles and keep those updated as sign ups etc happen during the week.
Thank you again, Fyre! We'll see you tomorrow!