tushanshu_ooc | Event HMD | Powerdown & Malicant Plot

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#hmd

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

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

I know this is probably going to be an unpopular view on things but…

There were a lot of things that concerned me about the plot. The biggest one was the power loss/reduction itself. One of the big draws for me at least to join TuShanshu was that it was not a power loss or nerfing game. Having that changed for an extended period of time without any kind of opt out was just bad form. It was like if the game suddenly became journal-based or had a smut requirement for weeks. Especially because the duration of said event was not only unclear at first but it kept getting extended and was teased to go on even longer than that. Even with the ‘it still maintains life’ thing, several characters were rendered unplayable. It could be beneficial to the game to not do such a widespread change again without an opt out. Perhaps a specific zone or area that those that opted out of the effects would be limited to but still able to participate in the plot or even have their own separate objects could help. It’s bad enough that ever landfall effectively locks several characters onto the turtle, having events that happen on the turtle that lock out characters is a bit too much. I am aware of the power surge devices but their laughably small effect time, availability, and the fact that they were whisked away by all powered NPCs at the end of the plot doesn’t make them in any way a solution. Another limiter following the plot feels worse, especially if there are going to be more events coming between now and 100% restoration.

NPCs are another area of concern. Despite the fact that the power drain was supposed to remove all powers and negate tech, multiple NPCs were using powers and technology just fine. While there may have been plot-related reasons for this, I feel it was handled badly. Even if the kedan suddenly lost their ability to shape shift, they still apparently had whatever ‘powers’ the forms they were stuck in granted them. The magic that popped up in places also seemed to give an unfair little edge when there was supposed to be nothing. It came off as another little stab at the characters rendered unplayable by a power loss.

I know players voted for there to be ‘dead ends’ but it feels like there were too little ‘good endings’. Only 2 teams having a positive effect on the turtle’s health seemed a bit low considering the sheer number of teams and characters involved. It adds to a sense of players not being able to have a real significant effect on the plot. Less dead ends and more large scale impacts would have been nice.

The whole team and clue set up I liked. It was a good idea and helped fix some problems I’d seen in other places. Limiting players to only signing up one character for team selections may help in the future. I did feel that there wasn’t really enough for those characters not on the team to do though. Maybe some single-shot leads to follow in a list and let people choose from them with new ones popping up each round of clues based off things the teams did? Such as if a team elected to follow a path that would chase a gang out of one sector but cause them to resurface In another, a one-shot where someone could try to figure out why that gang suddenly popped up or even let them deal with something like the new gang clashing with an existing one in the area. An open-ended thing is nice but making things a little too open ended can be bad too.

Regarding downtime, I feel there hasn’t been enough. The game has gotten considerably darker and more depressing than when I first joined in and while the ‘spa day’ was a nice change of pace, it would be nicer to have some less ‘negative’ events happening.

Finally, I would like to say that the mods are doing an amazing job running the place. I know how hard it is to mod a game and one as big and as active as this one is no cakewalk. But something has been bothering me and it became most apparent I this plot. I’ve noticed that at times, when asked questions regarding plots the responses given by mods come off as pretty rude and dismissive. Mostly towards players that raise some kind of concern, confusion, or misunderstanding towards an event going on. It may not be intentional but it is a little discouraging.

I found the power loss pretty annoying, too. I thought at the beginning it might be fun to play out the angst, but her powers are important to Nita's sense of self and it just got insanely depressing. Combined with getting IRL sick, I just threw up my hands and went on hiatus until the event ended. Knowing the duration of the power loss going in would have helped with that. Not everything is going to appeal to every character/player and I'm fine with that, but more clarity on the OOC side would make it easier to tell which event is which.

I also second the comments about the change in tone. Tu Vishan used to feel like a refuge, but now it feels like a trap. I've been in the game since it opened, so I'm invested in my CR and character development, but I wouldn't app into the game today, since my perception of it has gone from being dreamy fantasy to nighmarish fantasy. Again, de gustibus non disputandum est, etc., but it's something I've noticed. Maybe it was intended to go that way since day one, but I didn't know that, and now I'm feeling that "occasional horror elements" now more or less dominate the game.

We appreciate every form of feedback, positive or negative!

While this reply may not cover all of your concerns, we're hoping to have addressed the core of them. Please feel free to discuss with us further about any points we have missed or not answered to your satisfaction. Also, sorry if the replies seem a bit ferret-y with regards to order; we looked at them at separate intervals and that may make our reply seem to jump to different parts of your original feedback.

Meta Power Reduction
Could you clarify how the event rendered characters unplayable? The reduction was designed specifically to allow all characters to retain sentience, the ability to move, and the ability to survive according to a baseline human standard. While some players chose to explore that further (we had one of the ninja turtles choose to revert their character back into a normal turtle; this was done with the player's stated understanding that it was an exception, not the rule), it was never meant to make them physically incapable of operating. Are you referring instead to a mental or mood incapacitation that resulted from being stripped down to baseline? I'd really like to understand how it rendered a character unplayable for the sake of this discussion and future considerations.

Trust me when I say the intent was always to restore the lack of power cap once the events were over, but as the players have frequently expressed interest in impacting the metaplot, I tried to structure it in such a way that it might not seem that way ICly – to give characters a reason to be invested in the outcome of the plot. We're sorry if it caused you inconvenience along the way.

"Dead End" Outcomes
While we tried to set up the outcomes based roughly on the votes that came in from the players (and there was an overwhelming majority that wanted bad ends to be available), I definitely understand that few "good" outcomes can have a negative effect. To better understand your concern, I reviewed the outcomes for each of the official teams to determine what the final spread of outcome quality was. Based on the defition of GOOD meaning a boost of Tu Vishan's health, MEDIUM meaning the team damaged Malicant's foothold within the kedan or learned something of worth, and BAD meaning there was no net effect on Tu Vishan or Malicant's influence, the statistics were as follows:

GOOD x 2
MEDIUM x 8
BAD x 5

This means that one third of the teams had no net effect, with two-thirds having some sort of impact on the Malicant situation and/or the health of the turtle. Do you feel that these medium outcomes were insufficient? What kinds of large scale impacts would you like to see in the future? What sort of spread would you like to see for good-medium-bad outcomes if we were to do this again?

NPCs
How would you like to see us handle this in the future? I note that we didn't cover off a lot of details about NPC abilities in the OOC posts, with the exception of intimating that Evandau and Eshai were sitting ducks (which they were for the duration of the event). Initially I did not convey more on the assumption that it would help convey why the Malicant threat was so real, but can see where that could be seen as unfair. Should we have clarified that Malicant supporters had access to his power and therefore were not as impacted by the turtle's health?

I'd also like to address the PSDs here. They were collected at the end of the event so that they can be utilised during the August anniversary event, for which details will be posted roughly a week prior to the event. We definitely want them to surface again, but wanted to make sure the full inventory was available for the upcoming event. The intent was not to whisk them away so much as store them and apologies that it came across that way. Regarding the thirty second period - the fact that they had such a short period of use was to encourage characters to use unconventional solutions or lines of thought to the problems they were facing, rather than act as a 'deus ex machina' by which everything could be immediately fixed.

Game Theme
The descent into darker themes has been intended from the game's inception as these characters have been brought to combat in a war against an enemy that seeks to destroy Tu Vishan and all its inhabitants. Tu Shanshu was built with a twenty-four to thirty month metaplot in mind and so the plot is now transitioning to the rough midline of that storyline. We've been trying to temper it with positive events, but do note that it's running darker and darker due to the metaplot, the nature of which has never been clandestine (it came up as early as the first audience with the Emperor, and the information has been readily available from the outset). We recognise that, though are not sure how to balance it and would love to hear suggestions that allow for the forward progression of our metaplot, as well as the other elements you mentioned.

As a side note: Yard Sale is meant to be a lightening of mood and the release of rationing is meant to have a positive effect (not to mention the fluffiness of the Tribbles). We're always open to and would love to see player plot suggestions to help lighten the mood while we work on metaplot.

Mod Tone
In regards to your comments about the mod team coming off as rude or dismissive, we can certainly see your viewpoint, and hope that our explanation better presents our point of view. There are certain aspects of the game wherein explanations necessitate a firmer stance, and sometimes hard lines have to be drawn that not everyone may agree with. While it's our goal to stay professional during these discussions, we are neither perfect nor robots. At times, being succinct can impart a sense of dismissal when our intent is simply to be as clear and concise as possible so that miscommunications or misunderstandings are less likely to occur.

Just piggybacking to this comment since it addressed some of the same things I was going to write my comment for:

Powers
I didn't mind the power nulls for the plot from the standpoint of it gave all the characters roughly the same stats to work with. I think it's very easy for regular human characters to get overshadowed in large scale plots like this one, something I've both seen and been on the receiving end of in other games, and it's not fun at all. It also discourages players from wanting to pick up non-powered characters which is one of my favourite things about TuShanshu, that you CAN play a "regular" character here and not have them get completely steamrolled.

As one of my characters who COULD have technically been rendered "inoperable" by a 100% complete loss of power, I fudged things enough so he could still participate because the "bare minimums to survive/be human" for this type of characters was, after all, left to player discretion so I was able to keep him active which I appreciated and yet was still able to play out the effects of power loss. I know the mods never intended for any character to become so reduced that they were physically unable to participate in the plot (as that defeats the purpose of having an interactive plot) so perhaps a little more emphasis on it being to the player's discretion would help next time? Just for clarification so everyone understands.

That said, I would have liked to see powers partially return or work sporadically (or under certain limited conditions) towards the tail end of the plot. The PSDs were (unfortunately) a non sequitur in that they came in late enough and had such a minimal effect (hence my question of whether the 30-second charge could be stored) that honestly, they really could have been eliminated from the plot completely and I don't foresee anything as having come out differently.

Game Tone
Not a crit but just an opinion, but I like the progression that the game is currently taking. I haven't been here since the opening so I can't speak to what it was in the beginning but over the last 6 months I don't find the change in mood oppressive at all. It's like reading a good book, we're building towards something. I think there are enough light events like the spa day, the tribbles and the upcoming Yard Sale to balance things out still. This Malicant plot was very heavy certainly, but I think you've done a good job framing it with events to balance it.

Plot Setup
I really loved the choose your own cluventure approach to this plot and I hope it can be done again in the future.

The PSDs were actually created because of Bruce Banner's efforts in his own mini-investigation, and were included in the overall plot because of those IC efforts, it's not something that we would have included on our own as a mod-related option.

My mistake on that particular piece then! But same sentiment on the power null still lasting the entirety of the plot.

Power Reduction -

That may have been the intention but it didn't quite work. Using Rockslide for an example, he requires super strength to move a massive rock body. Cutting him off from the powers made him effectively a garden statue. There was also the mental and mood incapacitation both IC and OOC. As has been stated by myself and others, we joined a game advertising no power loss and no nerfing. Having a multi-week powerloss event with no opt out was a severe blow to motivation. The fact that there's still a cap is only helping to eat away at the motivation. It makes it feel less like the players have impacted the plot that way.

Outcomes-

The 'medium' impacts were not sufficient, no. Especially because there really isn't any visible IC or OOC impact. Just a blurb and nothing really changed. A general impression has been given that players can't even follow up on any of the loose plot threads until whenever the next metaplot event is so it makes them matter less. A more sufficient spread would have been
GOOD: 8
MEDIUM: 5
BAD: 2
Bad ends being available doesn't mean they should be so frequent.

NPCs-

I really didn't see there being a point to Evandau and Eshai being sitting ducks. Big deal, they still have a castle and an army and were pretty untouchable by any players that may have wanted to try anything against them. The enemies having access to that just makes it a little more unfair and makes it seem both OOCly and ICly pointless to have the characters brought in if they get nerfed out just as easily as everyone else.

This is immediately raising a concern. The PSD being used again? Are they being whisked away again afterwards? I really hope that doesn't mean we're getting another power loss or some other major negative thing dropped on our heads. I also don't see how some characters having powers back would be a deus ex machina. The machines were limited and it would have helped to balance out the general unfair feeling that the enemy being fully powered when everyone was supposed to be down to 0.

Theme -

It may have been the intent but it wasn't something advertised. Things are getting a bit too dark. As was mentioned above, the darker themes and events are becoming a bit too oppressive. It lends towards the feeling that players and characters can't really have much effect on things. I appreciate the bits of effect we've been able to have which are a welcome change from what I'm used to from other games but I came into a more light hearted and 'fun' game that's dragging more towards 'grim and gritty'. It's like what I mentioned in my initial comments, as if the game suddenly started shifting towards a smut-based theme or something like that. I'd also like to note, it's very unlikely that the majority of people went digging through other characters' threads in the Emperor's audience. Especially not if those threads happened before someone joined. Also, I don't really think IC threads are the best place to put the OOC nature of a metaplot without some companion pieces in the OOC.

Mod Tone-

It does better explain your point of view but it doesn't really address the concern.

Power Reduction
There appears to be a misunderstanding here then, because it was clarified directly with Santo's player that he would not be rendered inoperable as a result of the power reduction. This discussion occurred in a plurk on the Victor player's timeline and the relevant passage was:

The Quagganator:
He would retain sufficient strength to move his body

PIMPSLIDE:
So that's okay even if it's still above baseline human?

The Quagganator:
technically, yes; though that extra strength would be dedicated to moving his body. if he tried to move himself and say, a ten tonne truck, that wouldn't work so hot

As you can see, it was directly clarified that he could still move about with strength sufficient to operate, just not lift ten tonne trucks (et al).

Outcomes:
We'll definitely consider changing up the spread in the future based on this feedback. Meanwhile, we are going to be allowing some follow-up on the threads, but have asked players to hold off as a matter of giving the mods time to recharge on providing plot details. Between fifteen teams and a number of independent investigations, we exhausted a lot of our "queue" ideas for things that characters could do. Once we've recharged a bit, we'll be able to provide details about follow-ups.

NPCs:
The intent was to allow characters with the perogative access to these NPCs if they desired. No player expressed direct interest for the duration of the event. The option was, however, made. We will try to communicate this more clearly for future events.

The PSDs are likely to come into play during landfall events, where Tu Vishan's power has long been established as being insufficient to sustain powers on land. They could be redistributed to the characters for these events, which is why they were gathered up in the first place.

Theme:
We've received some additional feedback regarding updating the premise of the game to reflect the tonal change. This should, we hope, assist in elaborating the current state of the game to new players in greater detail than we currently have out there. Would this assist in addressing some of your concern for incoming members?

Re: theme, I had no idea the game was intended to go in a darker direction either. I know I don't spend as much time digging into previous audiences and events as much as I should, but this came as a bit of a surprise. Rewriting some of the profile intro should help that, I think?

I do have a general question-- how much further into horror is it intended to go? Basically, how dark is 'darker'? I wouldn't consider the Malicant event too much of a deviation from standard fantasy novel levels, but straight up horror is definitely not my bag and I'd like to know in advance.

The game itself has horror elements, but that will never be the intended core of it. Tu Shanshu's theme is that of strife -- war has been referred to repeatedly and that's the theme we're currently planning to go with. We consider that to be a 'dark' theme, but not horror.

Hopefully that answers your question? Let us know if further information is needed.

Ah, okay, phew! I definitely understood while apping that there would be horror elements, but I've liked the extent to which they've been incorporated so far, wherein you leave most of the severity of the effect up to the players individually.

War is certainly a dark theme but not one that will impact every character the same way (uniformly negative / deconstructive) as a horror game would, so I'm relieved, lol. That's all I wanted to know!

Power Reduction -

But he still was inoperable for the remainder of the event. Player choice or not, it was the result of the power nerfing. Regardless, such a massive change for such an extended amount of time is something I really feel should have included an opt out for players that didn't want such a big change from the game they signed up for.

NPCs -

I believe no one asked because there didn't seem to be a point in doing so. It wasn't really made clear there was an option to do it and as I mentioned, they still had their palace and army which made it exceptionally pointless.

Will the PSDs be available at all outside that? Unless they are, it still comes off as 'all powerful NPCs take away things, haha players can't do anything!'.

Theme -

It would but it doesn't address that my concern was over current players and not incoming members.

I'm just going to jump in quickly here to clear up that I wasn't dissatisfied with the way the PSDs were implemented at all. As the player more or less directly responsible for their existence, I was actually thrilled to see that they would be used again later, and frankly don't see what the point to keeping them around would be past the event anyway given that the depowering event is over. There was a short cool down in which everyone regains their powers in stages, but there's not really a reason to use them after the threat left.

Having them show up later would be awesome and way more far-reaching in terms of players affecting plot relevant details than keeping them around while everyone has their powers, imo. Their original function failed (to return power to Tu Vishan) so outside from restoring characters' abilities, they don't have much use. The mods weren't intending to include them at all and more or less only did so because I pursued that line of investigation ICly.

idk, just my two cents here, but I wanted to make sure it was clear that I wasn't dissatisfied with it, myself.

Power reduction:
Would you please clarify as to how he was inoperable? The character was specified as still being able to move, communicate, interact with and participate in the events that occurred. It was our understanding that the player chose to use the nerfing to the extent he did to facilitate a reason for a hiatus, which we had no issue with.

The game-wide power loss was not opt-out, because at its core Tu Shanshu is a plot driven game. Setting the plot up to affect some characters but not all negates the effect of the atmosphere we are attempting to convey. We apologize if this is inconvenient for you, and we understand and are taking into account that the event may have ran too long for some people's tastes and will be taking a closer look at any future power loss events, but in order to maintain the integrity of the game itself, wide-scale events are meant to affect the entirety of the game populace. We appreciate the investment players put into their characters and the game itself and regret that we can't in all cases both maintain the progression of the plot, and answer every concern.

Four weeks of power loss out of a planned run-time of roughly thirty months is a very small amount, and we do hope that anyone primarily interested in us as a non-nerfing game would be willing to work with us towards the plot and vision that everyone signed up for upon application to the game despite the roadbump it presented.

NPCS;
There are actually several plots in the works to allow characters to infiltrate the palace, and such things have also occurred in the past. It's our goal to be as open and flexible as possible when it comes to accommodating player plans as relative to our NPCs (ie: during the last landfall we made it abundantly clear that the Emperor could be kidnapped during her visit to Atamsichar, in case anyone wanted that as an available option, and we've consistently said throughout the game's play time that none of the NPCs are infallible and/or indestructible).

But unfortunately, as we are equally fallible, it's very difficult to think up and detail every possible thing or angle that players might want to try or go forward with, which is why we very strongly encourage the use of our plot page. In a game of this size and speed, we effectively need people to come to us with the ideas rather than us coming up with every available contingency, and we have had success in the past creating fun, interactive things for characters to do outside of the direct scope of our influence.

The PSDs will be held in reserve for usage as dictated by plot, but if, say, a character wanted to orchestrate their theft, we'd definitely be willing to organize that, which I believe might help to mitigate the 'haha players can't do anything!' aspect of your concern.

Theme:
The theme of the game has always been very clearly stated on our information page, that we are a plot-driven game with science fiction/horror/fantasy elements, that there are consequences for IC actions (on both an individual and a grander scale) and we have always made the knowledge that characters are here for a fight available, though perhaps, by your comments, not as clearly as we should have. If our current players are unhappy with the direction, we are willing and available to work with them to try and find a middle ground, but there are only so few ways to portray a possible war that don't unnecessarily make light of it or diminish the overall effect.

I enjoyed this event but I think this anon brings up a good point about Landfalls: it's be nice to have one here and there where powers aren't nerfed when leaving the turtle? I don't mean every future landfall, but they're fun events and I know some characters just wouldn't ICly leave the turtle if it meant losing their powers.

The turtle is ultimately the source of the character's metahuman abilities, thus when the characters depart from the turtle, their powers will automatically decline.

That said, we are planning a hybrid event for our anniversary that will allow people to keep their powers for a sort of 'landfall', so that is certainly coming.

(The OOC planning post for that will be up within the next ten or so days, so keep a weather eye!)

I understand what you're saying if you came into the game with the impression of no power nerfing and how upsetting it was not to oocly have a finite and concrete amount of time without powers. I do and I agree it's something that should be taken into consideration.

That said, I, personally, would really hate to never have powers nerfed again. As someone who primarily plays those without powers (I've played Sylar at other games and obviously Johnny Storm here - who, for the record, I dropped for completely irrelevant reasons), it's amazingly refreshing to feel like my guys suddenly matter.

The satellite event felt like it was catered to those with powers. Swimmers found the clones, those who could fly helped with debris stuff, and a mixture of normals and supers fought them - but you better be a normal with advanced tech or know someone, because otherwise you don't really count. I didn't mind. I was hiatused for the beginning of the event and then had my two normals hid for the duration, because there was nothing they could really do and I didn't want them possessed (Johnny went out and fought some). It happens. Not every event is catered to every type.

But that's what made me so excited to see an event where everyone was at baseline. Sure, of course I signed up to play normal characters. I know that they will forever be overshadowed by the supers in most events and that's okay with me. I expect that. But I felt like my guys were more important and had more impact than they would during normal events (including things like the garden), and that makes me even more grateful for this very limited chance to be equal.

I agree with all of that except that if there is going to be another power loss event, I agree with the other anon.

There should be an opt out.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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

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