week 5 game update

[afflictionmods]

Hey again, everyone! We're already five weeks into the game (?!) and we hope you guys have had a fun time so far. We've been evaluating the game and we also received some really helpful feedback that we're going to take into account for these final few weeks. We have some updates as to how we're approaching this game, and we hope that these changes will be exciting and helpful for everyone.

• AC + AC Rewards. As stated in the chat, we will be allowing Saturday event threads to count towards AC and AC Rewards. We apologize that it took us so long to be flexible on this; ultimately we wanted to make sure people were present throughout the week and not just on Saturdays. However, given the amount of effort put into top levels/threads and the structure of all of these events thus far (including W1's), we will be allowing Saturday threads to count towards AC moving forward.
  
  
• CYOA timing. To give people more time to hold IC meetings/town halls, we will avoid having W6's CYOA take place ICly on Friday. The CYOAs for this week and next week will ICly take place on Thursdays to give you guys that extra day to hold your meetings.
  
  
• Event structure. Affliction is a new kind of game and a lot of the events have been pretty experimental. We've been hearing that you guys liked the group structure of W1's event, so we're looking to have the W5 (and hopefully W6) events be similar in nature. We're going to try to tighten the structure on the events and provide more incentive for CR building and exploration. W2 and W3's were good learning experiences for us, and while we enjoyed seeing everyone's threads, we also had some good takeaways on how to improve event formatting. We realize that there may be times in which not everyone can be present at an event, but since Saturday events were baked into the game's pitch, we decided that it'd be best if we stuck to our guns on that and had events with more structure and intensity. That being said, if you miss a Saturday event and are struggling to handwave your character's involvement, please come and talk to us and we can provide a solution for you!
  
  
• Tone of the game + IC consequences. Affliction is a pain sharing game and we could certainly afford to lean more into that. You guys have been doing a great job at utilizing it thus far, but we're hoping to push it more for these last few weeks. With that being said, we're also going to be firmer about IC actions = IC consequences. We've been a little shy on this front but we think that amping up the stakes and going harder on consequences for big actions would greatly benefit the game. We're hoping to make the threats in this game a lot more visible, too, and to take the game in a darker direction leading up to endgame.
  
  
• Weekly logs. We're hoping to be able to give you guys more things to interact with for the weekly logs, whether it be through surprise events (i.e. Chongyun + Kawase, as well as the one for today) or more interactive Weekly Tasks. We hope that these additions and changes will provide more incentive for CR building, even if we only have a few weeks left.
  
  
• Modding style. So this is something we've reflected on quite a bit, and while we really valued flexibility as one of our core values, we feel like we've been a little too flexible. Memshare was a good example of this. We should have been firmer in the framework we provided for it to avoid confusion, and while it may have not been something that would've appealed to everyone, it would've been better to have that structure rather than be loose with it. We think that being firmer about guidelines and modifying on an as-needed basis (rather than making constant adjustments in large quantities) will help a lot with clarity for our events.

Just like last time, comments to this post are unscreened, and the mod feedback post is open for you to use as a private way of contacting us at any time. Thank you guys again for your participation and enthusiasm these past few weeks; we hope to end Affliction on a high note and we truly appreciate you all!