tushanshu_ooc | A Suite Proposal

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A Suite Proposal

~~see what I did there with the pun~~

Hello Chelonauts! As part of our game changes, one thing that I'm looking at is a suite realignment: that is, condensing the Foreigners who are spread out across the housing blocks into smaller groupings to help encourage new CR to be built.

There's a couple of options that I'm testing the waters with and they are: keeping everyone in separate suites but filling the housing blocks (so basically the same setup as now, just with more neighbours) or condensing everyone into roommate/flatmate housing, and with OOC versus IC logistics for both options. Either way there will be IC justification (Evandau orders them, etc) for the change, so this post is for discussion and ideas of what players would like to see.

The primary goal for this change up is to open new CR for characters (which translates to more plotting, more character development, and easier ways to make AC!) so while you're welcome to use your characters as examples for or against various options, this is mostly focused on what you as players feel would benefit you the most.

Based on the outcomes of this discussion, there will be a poll put up later for people to actually make their votes on the matter. This is just for people toss out their ideas and the poll choices will be built from these.

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A later comer to this part of the discussion and reading over everyone else's comments there is something coming up here that I do think needs to be mentioned, but let me put in my own personal opinion on how to go about this first. I do apologize for all of the tl;dr here I just woke up not too long ago and I might be rambling a bit.

nowthatsfunny listed four options that could be used and of hers I do think that three has the best potential since it allows flexibility and player choice, but I personally would go with a fifth option that is a mix of 3 and 4. Everyone is required to take a roommate, but we as players get to choose OOCly whether we put our characters into the randomize hat for rooms or if we sign them up with a designated roommate we set up beforehand (like say I could put Kaldur into the randomize list, but I might sign Toro up to room with Bucky or Jim), while still leaving the option open for characters to move around ICly if they want. But just as with the current state of the suites, if you move in with someone else and use their console, it's theirs login that shows up not yours. It would allow players to have a choice, while also setting up the precedent of a flat ruling across the board because really if you give players the choice to randomize or to have personal rooms I do see many taking the latter option and defeating the purpose of rooming in the first place, which is to open more options for CR that they didn't previously have.

Now, if we did have an IC way to go about the rooming and housing blocks that would encourage CR just the same, I think

nowthatsfunny's option 3 is the best one to go with. Maybe if we had a people housed off in areas set up by their skills and what use they would have in protecting the relocated kedan, doing recovery and repairs around Keeliai after the bombings, or something like that it could work. This is an option that I don't have as many ideas for at this moment, but I think if we chose to go with it, we could come together and think up a several good ones. At the moment though, there doesn't seem to be a good IC reason why some characters would be roommied up and others wouldn't and it would create a bit of disconnect should new players come in and wonder why they don't get that same option.

Of course none of these solutions matter when looking at this post right now what I am seeing is quite a few comments saying "Players would handwave anyway so what's the point." We are the current playerbase. When they say "players" they mean us. We are the people in game right now who are going to be affected by this change and will be the ones who will help it sink or swim. It is very important to consider how this would look to new players and potential appers, but the main focus is going to be how will it affect the people in game and how will we handle any changes OOC and IC.

There are multiple comments about how CR between roommates can and will be handwaved. Which is true, it happens easily in games where roommates are a requirement from the get-go. Some handwaving is undoubtedly going to happen. These comments say there is no point to it if it doesn't make CR happen between people, which I disagree with. The thing is that we as players cannot be forced into doing anything. Roommates and housing rearrangements are not going to make us make CR, they can only create options that facilitate easier CR making if we the players choose to utilize them. So are all the mentions of "CR will just be handwaved" our playerbase saying that if this option was open to use that we would not bother using it? Are we admitting right here that this is something we'd wave off and put in the periphery instead of putting it to use to build new CR?

Because in that case, if the playerbase is saying we would rather handwave CR if roommates were to become official, instead of using them to make new CR (whether with roomies or new people in these new housing blocks), it really does defeat the whole purpose. You as the mod can move things around and do what you can to open up CR opportunities, but if we the players are already saying we aren't interested in using the options you give us, you shouldn't be wasting your time putting in all the effort.

I'm not saying this to disparage or point fingers at anyone who has brought up that handwaving can and will be a thing. The exact opposite, really. This is something you need to know now before it gets any further into the planning or official stages. If this is what we say we are going to do if this happens, you should know about that when making your decisions on how to proceed with the game. There is nothing wrong with being up front about what we are or aren't interested in or willing to do. Honesty is important and if we are saying we're not interested in doing anything with this besides handwaving, it's us saying stop right here before it gets any further.

So the first question I guess we should be asking as a game is not "should we make roommates a thing," but instead we should be asking ourselves are we willing, interested, and invested enough in taking the new options this would open up and doing something with them. Because if the majority of us aren't, then why bother doing it? It's waste of our time and yours.

It's too bad though, because it's something that I, and I'm sure at least a few others, would definitely work with for new CR. But I agree, if the masses would just handwave, I wouldn't put all that work on the mods for so little benefit.

(Also not saying that handwaving is bad or anything, there are always portions of play that make more sense to be handwaved, and if you're not interested, you're not interested. I wouldn't blame anyone for just plain not wanting to do something they don't think they'd have fun with.)

I agree with this. I'd really like to see this happen as I am someone who would benefit from it a lot but you are entirely right, if people aren't interested then there's little point to wasting time doing it. Right now, I feel like the mods would be better off trying to jumpstart the game some other way and abandon this idea.

What do you think would be a better thing to tackle to get things going?

I wish I had a good suggestion, honestly. Like I said, I really like the roommate idea personally but I feel like if most of the game is "meh" about it it's not going to do much to break the already prevalent malaise of "meh".

I think the idea of forcing characters together is on the right track but in a situation that is not easy to handwave. Something similar to missions but more focused on character development and learning about other characters instead of just completing a specified task. One of the things I am struggling with and it might just be me but maybe others too, is that the missions and current changes in the game, now that I am lacking in CR, don't really that important because they're kind of impersonal changes. Clara is usually motivated by helping and supporting her friends but now that they're gone, the war doesn't mean much to her. She'll fight because it's the right thing or because she has to protect herself but I am struggling to find a way to give her a stake in it. So I guess my suggestions are an event where characters are forced together might be considered and ways to make current changes on the shell feel more personal.

The missions have been written with both some physical and moral issues to tackle, and ones like the Endai one where the most prudent course of action was also the least morally clear one, have tried to give characters opportunity to develop by taking them outside their comfort zones. I realize that missions have only been up 2 months but we went from something like 50 signups to 12 between March to April. There will be some events that ask people to work together in upcoming weeks that focus on the current siege of the city but I don't see how that's going to be more emotionally impactful to chars if similar options were already available?

I'm not trying to be critical for the sake of being so and I apologize if I'm not being very clear in what I'm saying. But I think a big issue for the missions is that they are optional and slightly secluded. I do think that there can be an exciting urgency in situations that are thrust upon characters versus ones they icly opt into.

So I think missions are a cool addition but they're also just that, an addition. And the Endai mission isn't ringing a bell off my head but the first and only mission I signed up for definitely had the feel of "go place, do a thing, reap a reward" and also unfortunately never really went anywhere. So perhaps if there were a way to make missions feel more imperative and maybe a bit more structure to them to help move things along. I also agree with what was said below that it would be really cool to utilize the dreaming and death planes more. In the meantime, I'll be excited to see how characters can come together in the siege. Maybe that will be a really great jumpstart!

Anyway, this is just my 2 cents and my experience. I may be totally alone in these thoughts and I don't have any modding experience, so obviously am speaking from a place of ignorance when it comes to implementation.

Edited 2014-05-06 01:30 (UTC)

This is as good a place for any! How can I make missions more imperative? Some things I've considered are shorter time frames to complete them, more obstacles, or bigger variety of outcomes. Though I really want to be careful to make them "challenging" without being so hard they're not fun to write out OR that only certain types of chars end up able to do them.

As far as structure, where would you like to see more of it in the missions? (If you could use examples from the missions we already had in March and April that'd be awesome so I know what to change.)

Well, starting off with structure, I feel like it might work better for the mods to kind of set up stages and then allow players to branch off ideas from these set stages. One thing that I thought worked really well was when we the plot with the Tu Vishan being poisoned back in like June or July of last year where players were put on a team and they were given options that they could vote on that lead to a specific outcome.

Though if the mission were to be more open than that, perhaps the mods could post the missions and just simply have stages that are preset. Like for the mission Clara went on, perhaps we could have had a few prompts about what is going on at the party and what is happening in the rioting crowds etc instead of putting it all on the players. Though I know this is more trouble on the mods so perhaps it would only work if there ended up being less missions to choose from.

As for being imperative, I think all the ideas that you have would really spice up missions to play in, but I do think it would really help to just try to come up with better IC incentives for missions. Perhaps promises of returning home, or someone returning, or something that would really make characters want to do it. Even if those promises are false or loopholed.

Or maybe missions that focus on exploring the characters that have to do with dreaming, like something popped into my head where maybe characters are in the world of dreaming and there is a riddle that relates to one of the characters and everyone has to reveal something like a dream, a bad memory, a guilt that plagues them and they have to find who it relates to the most? Honestly, I just pulled that one out of my ass but just things more like that. I hope that's maybe a little bit helpful!

I really like the idea of doing something more in the style of the missions during the turtle's poisoning! It was a fun, like an RPG inside a RP. However I think that would work better in a fast, quick tagging way that let the mods weight in with the consequences of what was happening at the moment- and I understand that kind of tagging isn't for everyone (it isn't for me, honestly) and that it would imply a lot of work for the mods.

But maybe something between that and the logs where we get to interact with a NPC? Like the turtle (or baby turtle) dreams, they were extremely dynamic and helped move the plot forward a lot. So maybe instead of giving us x mission and let us thread it out we could have more NPCs to interact with that could change the way the plot went?

IDK if I'm even expressing myself clearly...

I understand that interacting with NPCs does open up some avenues of plot exploration for players, but the reason that we've only been providing framework for missions so far is so that it didn't rest too much on us to keep the actual mission rolling forward.

That's not to say that I want it entirely hands off, because I'm already working on incorporating some different elements that were suggested on the HMD post, but we've been wanting to run an average of 5 missions a month and being NPCs for those in a dynamic or guiding role equals a LOT of tagging. For reference, the baby turtles dream log has 1100+ comments to it, just that one log alone. So that's 600+ comments for the mod to be writing, not including other tags, not including modwork, even if spread over a month that's a lot.

Not to mention if the mod in charge of that NPC isn't available for a few days (like myself, this week's been crazy with back-end modwork) I wouldn't want players to be stuck and unable to progress a mission log because they're waiting.

I definitely want to keep those NPC logs like the baby turtles in play, I do want to do another one again in the near future, but I can't feasibly see this as being a regular enough occurrence to replace players generating their own interactions, like on the missions.

Something I have considered recently would be if the doorways that had been opened up to the Realms of Death and Dreaming became even more unstable and thus people could fall into them accidentally like what happened during the previous landfall event.

Perhaps the new housing blocks would be centered in an area where the doors are more prominent. Perhaps the configuration of the rooming assignments could be involved with how the doors are affecting people or it could just be that people randomly run into each other more often in these realms because of it. The combined efforts of the people in the housing blocks could be needed to keep these doors in check or to survey what is found inside of them?

Another option could be something involving the baby turtles and their safety (or them protecting kedan and Foreigners?) if it doesn't interfere with other plot aspects with them.

Definitely I'll consider the portals as something to open up for more regular play, though if have to think about how to tie them to the housing if that's the route we went.

Well... I'm not sure how I'd phrase a poll that said "are you interested in doing ANYTHING in the game Y/N?" but I agree, I don't want to do the work for no benefit. I know that mody people I've talked to said that they're struggling in the game because of all the drops and lost CR so that's what I was focusing on.

I definitely get what you're saying about that and I don't think the sentiment behind this post was misplaced. I personally love the idea and would jump into it no problem because it's a new way to build CR that at least pushes people closer together. As the current housing is set up, no one has to even talk to their neighbors or acknowledge them. They can come and go without even seeing them, so I think just pushing people more into each other's paths is a good start as long as people as willing to work with you and try it out, see how it works.

I was just pointing out it seems that as a playerbase, we want CR and we want to things to do to build it, but with minimal change to the way the game has been going. This just won't work considering that the way the game has been going is exactly why this post even needed to happen. I wouldn't want you to get stuck doing the work only for it to be an option majority of us wouldn't use or would want built-in work arounds for. Having too many opt-out options in the end would really be the most detrimental because it creates the atmosphere that no one has to do anything with the new CR options and thus few will do anything. And it makes it hard to enforce when new players come into the game.

You make a great point about people saying "players" will do X, Y, Z. I notice, though, that you address the issue without being specific in the concern either. I think specifics would help, based on the excellent point you're making.

So would you, personally, be interested in the CR of roommates or would you be more likely to handwave?

I, personally, would use it if it was implemented.

You're right in my initial comment I didn't say "I would use this," but that's because I personally stated the option I would find the most enjoyable to use (a fifth option that goes for required roommates with player's choice of randomization or personal choice of roomie). I figured my stance was obvious since I'm promoting the roommate options.

I did state it directly in the comment to Li above yours, too, but yes I would jump on the roommate options. I think it's a great way to build CR and we need more options open that make it logical for characters that wouldn't normally interact to get to know one another, beyond "they walked past each other on the street."

Ah, sorry. I wasn't sure if that was a general "I think this would be best for the game" versus "this is the option I personally would prefer most" and didn't read every comment! Again, I apologize.

It's okay, really. I understand since I did tl;dr there a lot and probably wasn't as clear as I could have been. I'm down for roommates in general, and if I wasn't I would state that straight out, since like I said honesty is the most important thing. If we just go along despite not wanting it and not being willing to try, anything we do is doomed to go badly.

We all need to be upfront about what options we actually want and would be willing to work with, not just what we would begrudgingly follow because we think we have to or we feel like the game with sink or something if we don't.

Honesty is definitely important, though I think there's still a distinction between "what's good for the game" and "what player X wants." Even the majority isn't always the right choice, if a large percentage of the minority would drop as a result of the majority's vote, etc etc. (As a disclaimer, I'm a PR person who tends to think of things in terms of brands/products sometimes.)

Agreed on the latter, and again well said.

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A Suite Proposal

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