tushanshu_ooc | Event HMD | Powerdown & Malicant Plot

As before, and for anyone who may have missed it, at the end of every mod-run event in Tu Shanshu, we ~~try to~~ toss up an open dialogue post so that the events can be discussed. This is mostly to see if everybody's as happy as possible with the direction the game is going, whether or not the events could be considered a hit or a miss, that sort of thing.

This particular HMD covers the Meta Power Reduction & Malicant joint event.

What are we looking for?
Feedback of all sorts! Did you like what happened? Did the event run too fast, or too slow? Were you able to feel like your character contributed or made a impact on the event? Would you like to make more of a difference? Has there been too much 'downtime' for the characters, do you have any suggestions to make about future events, etc etc? Did the event run long enough for you? Would you like to see more NPC-driven events, or less? Did you feel that there was enough for combatants and non-combatants alike to participate in?

OBVIOUSLY if you have more comments, questions or concerns than those listed above you can add those as well! This is pretty much just a general list.

Do we already have a focus?
In part, yes. We've identified the following issues with the event and would love to foster discussion on these points:

> Team Structure
There were some players that had multiple characters assigned to a team and others that volunteered and did not make the final teams. This was an oversight on Alex's part and she apologises! That said, do you have any suggestions on how we could avoid such an oversight in the future? Should we limit sign-ups to one character per player?

> Multiple Options
Each team was asked to pick only one option per clue set regardless of their characters' proclivities towards exploring multiple options. This was to reduce administrative workload and tie-in with the reduction of powers. Do you have any suggestions as to how we could make taking multiple options feasible for any future event structured in this way?

Note: Alex here! One option considered and taken off the table would be preparing all of the possible branches off the options and clues before the event starts. This is because I found creating the sets during the event really allowed me to adapt the scenarios to suit the actions of each team in a really organic fashion. In summary, it let the characters further influence the event rather than being stuck on rails (see: swizard). I'd really prefer to find a solution that allowed mid-event creation of the clues without sacrificing the multiple options, tbqh.

> Outcomes
The pre-event survey concluded that players were okay with getting dead-ends for their characters actions and so this was included. Two teams had a major impact on the health of the turtle and a variety had other impacts that lessened Malicant's grip on Keeliai. Do you think we should have included more largescale impacts? Less? More impacts in general? More complete dead ends?

We'd like to emphasize that any and all feedback is welcomed and encouraged! These are merely some areas that we've identified as concerns from our standpoint and would like to hear your thoughts on.

Do we have a form?
Yes, in fact! This time, we're offering a quick text form to help provide some structure to the feedback received. This form addresses some of the concerns we noted on a mod level and tries to give as much freedom as possible to anyone that chooses to use it. Please note that you do NOT have to use this form! It's provided as an option only. :3

Please remember, ANON IS ON for this and IP LOGGING IS OFF so if you have anything you'd like to say but maybe you're more comfortable putting it forth anon that is a-okay! You can also feel free to PM us at this journal, or to toss a private plurk at either of the mod accounts (those being

vonnerdyce or

reignsdown) if that suits your fancy. Any and all comments are welcome, and though participation in this meme isn't required it's definitely encouraged if you're up for it.

Thanks again, guys, and happy turtling!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Did you have characters involved? Via teams or the independent investigations? One for each.

What did you like about this event? As others have said, the extensive amount of work put into it was fantastic and awe-inspiring. I especially liked how much we were able to influence the outcomes with our characters, both in teams and with the investigations, so that characters who weren't involved in a team weren't left by the wayside.

What didn't work out so hot? I'd definitely limit sign ups to one character per player. I think that's more than fair. There's no need to go any further than that or try to find a way to double up for someone if there's space, because the game is getting large enough that, frankly, I don't want you to do all that work that comes with extra teams. XD

What would you like to see in the future? Shorter / less game overtaking events. Though I might be the lone voice on that one, not sure.

Do you have feedback specific to the team portion of the event? This might be a strange bit of crit, but I actually thought you gave us too much to work with in the options. RPers are slow to thread, especially in big groups like this, and I haven't gone over it but I know that my team at least will probably not thread out like 90% of the action. Given how much work you put into it, that seems silly. I don't think we needed more time -- that was a very long event OOCly by anyone's standards -- but maybe less to thread out, and smaller groups. Needing five people to make a decision became unwieldy, to say nothing of how long five person threads take. Maybe three person teams with more simple, straight forward written goals would work.

I have no idea if anyone else feels this way or if half the game loves it the way it was, re: group size and amount of detail provided, but that's my suggestions for limiting how much was assumed and instead getting people to thread more of it.

Do you have feedback specific to the independent investigations portion of the event? Just that I adored it and how willing you were to work with me. :)

Would you like to share any other thoughts, suggestions, or opinions about the event or game? I have now gotten SUPER invested into the health of the turtle and I loved seeing the plot have a real effect on the overall game. So that was awesome.

Edited 2013-07-21 12:42 (UTC)

When it comes to the length of the event, we were aiming for a good balance between sufficient time to do things and taking too much time overall. Personally, I found the event too short to allow for really detailed or extensive cluesets for each team -- as they were limited only to three per, with the third being the results. Do you have any suggestions of how we could balance that with the desire to have such an event run not quite as long?

We've heard some similar feedback regarding the level of detail in the cluesets and are considered a more open approach in the future. This may result in smaller teams, which raises an interesting challenge: How can we make such an event inclusive without having too many teams?

To elaborate: With fifteen teams and a five day interval for cluesets, the event ran long and involved a lot of administration that had to be handled primarily by one mod to prevent duplication of clues or contradictions in outcomes. The positive to this was that we could include almost half of the available characters in-game. With smaller teams, should we increase the number of teams? Or decrease the total number of players involved and run the risk of it coming off as exclusive? Any thoughts that you could offer would be greatly appreciated.

Edited (I CAN ENGLISH) 2013-07-21 17:50 (UTC)

Event length is definitely extremely tricky to balance out. I feel on you there. There was an odd problem with the event being too short to allow extensive threading, but too long in that it limited players in what they could do with their characters while it was going on. In the future, I'd suggest forward dating intensive scenes like that so people have a chance to thread out further along before it comes up ICly in game.

I also think that smaller teams and less detail (and therefore less direction) will make it go faster. Creating an anticipation and uncertainty for the outcome would provide more incentive to participate faster, and make it easier with less IC information to contend with. So maybe more frequent, but far smaller clues-- not "this happens over the next five days" quite so much. Though that might get logistically difficult for you as having too many clues to give out. You might consider writing out loose environmental "scripts" such as Caro and July suggested above, and then it becomes a simple matter of copying over details that have already been decided.

As far as being inclusive, I don't think events like this need to be quite so wide scale. That might be part of the problem that generated the feeling of characters that aren't involved being left out, and new arrivals being boxed in at an awkward time. Limits such as one character per player, no characters that were participating during the previous event, and RNG'd who does get to participate from that resulting list might work best. But if you keep things cycling and don't allow characters to participate two events in a row, you should by necessity get a good distribution and variety.

tl;dr trying to include everyone and give them tons of things to do is really laudable, but I think as the game grows to this size it's going to create more problems than it solves. Players usually want a certain freedom to do their own thing and ignore what's going on, and when it's orchestrated on such a large scale, that becomes difficult. Keeping the events smaller scale would solve that and the organizational / work overload problem. People would just have to be considerate about who signs up.

ETA: basically what I'm trying to say is that I would be okay with fewer and smaller teams. It's just the nature of the beast that plots don't allow for everyone to be equally important, and that's okay. We're all writers here. if no one's monopolizing the plot important roles then I don't think it should be an issue.

Edited 2013-07-21 18:02 (UTC)

Thanks so much for the additional information. We'll keep this all in mind for future events in general. <3

Piggybacking off Chels ~~because creepers gonna creep~~.

I really liked the team thing for the decision making, but I agree we basically didn't thread anything. I don't think this is a bad thing; I still got fun CR out of it, had a blast, and became closer with those players (which is fun!).

I, personally, just think that it should be taken into consideration for future events. 'Okay, this one was a big team mostly ooc event, now we'll do a partner/3person event to focus on ic threading/etc. With any team randomly assigned, you run the risk of mixing activity levels and such. I don't think that's something that goes away, really. Just means maybe finding more ways to vary things in future. :v

Yeah, we're definitely going to try and focus on aspects of group events that allows people to have more organic means to thread with one. Maybe the next event we do we'll have a segment for 'projected availability or preferred thread speed'? Do you think that might work, or would that seem too much like a punishment for slow/fast threaders?

I think preferred speed is good, but wouldn't go with projected availability. Like I might be able to go fast if pushed, but would prefer a little slower. And those who are slower but willing to make an effort could select a little faster. It could even be a range thing, but that.. might make more work for you guys.

Then those who are unavailable can say 'handwaved or super slow' kind of thing, but those on daily can be like 'boomerangs' or whatever. (I wouldn't do more than 5 levels at most, probably 4 if it were me).

The only concern with this would be that it's less random then, of course. "I want to be on a team with my friends, so we'll all pick the same speed to encourage probabilities" or whatever. But I really don't think that would be significant.

I think this idea has great potential!

Event HMD | Powerdown & Malicant Plot | June 16th - July 13th

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