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integrating2016-07-13 06:13 pm
onemind) wrote in integrating2016-07-13 06:13 pm
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STATE OF THE GAME - JULY EDITION
YE OLDE STATE OF THE GAME
Hi friends! We've been tentatively planning a State of the Game for a while now, but given the concerns over the current mission log we thought it might be best to tackle this now. We want to hear what's going right for you with the game, what doesn't work as well, and any suggestions you might have both in the long and short term!
Further, if you want to jump in and skip past the rest of this to provide some general feedback, feel free to. The section below is some directed spitballing in reference to mission logs and general game mechanics that has been on our minds; while we'd love direct feedback in relation to this, don't feel obligated to work through it if you don't have the time or inclination!
As always, thank you for your enthusiasm! We look forward to your feedback.
THE LONG OPTIONAL PART
If you have Abby on plurk, you've probably seen some brainstorming and discussion happening there between us (Abby and Donna) and some helpful players. In general we feel the current mission log, while brimming with potential, hasn't quite managed to hook the response desired from players. In an attempt to build momentum and give Concordia a slightly more directed feel, we made the executive decision to largely handwave the IC planning stage of the infiltration and bout it out missions, prefering to leave organization to OOC brainstorming and coordination. In retrospect (and in casually talking to a few players), we feel that was probably a mistake on our part. While we wanted to emphasize that the mission was very open to interpretation and approach, we feel that especially with the Infiltration Objective we probably gave everyone too much freedom and that may have resulted in a lack of organization and made the objectives difficult to approach. Basically: OOC planning is boring for everyone involved and rather than expecting everyone to get their ducks in a row OOCly so we could jump straight to the action, it may have been better to give everyone time to work through these thoughts on an IC level instead.
Right now our thoughts for tackling the current mission are this: We'd like to do a slightly backdated IC 'network' thread instead of simply handwaving at the top of the log description as it currently is described in the mission log itself. Our current thought is a sort of 'check in' through the mental link from Carata and Nirad early in the day of the mission, giving characters a chance to discuss what they've learned, what they've done, and how they think they'd like to approach the missions from that point in character. This would gives characters time ICly to work through the plan and figure out who they're teaming up with, what they're doing and how to approach problems in a more dynamic, organic environment than asking players (and mods) to do it OOCly. We hope this will make the Infiltration end of things a little more directed and easier to play. For the Bout It Out end, we plan to top level Kun-Kun for the final round of the fight. Originally we intended to let the log play out longer and then eventually thread jack an existing top level for this, but think that simply top-leveling with Kun-Kun or his reps might be the more effective approach at this point.
All this said and done we definitely don't want to skip past the objectives because they have a lot of potential and we have a ton of faith in you, the players, for being creative and doing awesome things with them. If it comes down to needing to handwave and move on, that's understandable and workable, but we'd prefer trying to recalibrate and give it a little more time first. Given how many of our tiny playerbase have been on official or unofficial hiatus, this seems like the least invasive way to do things for now. We'll be doing as much patch work as we can to make this run, but we'd love feedback for how we can run objectives like this more smoothly in the future. Is there too much freedom? Would it be better to have events like this more strictly 'on the rails'? Would you prefer IC planning to OOC planning or would you just prefer OOC planning be more directed (ie ' this, this and this MUST happen' instead of 'you can do anything! there might be complications though!')?
In general, we feel like we've done a not great job at emphasizing the fact that players are more than welcome to make up and mess around with the world as they desire, including creating NPC randos of their own. We feel this failure on our part has manifested really strongly in this log especially. We've given you a huge world to play in and a lot of flexibility, but have done a poor job of making sure players feel comfortable with that level of freedom. Right now we feel like the mechanics we've set up instead are encouraging players to wait for mod-driven NPC involvement/direction as opposed to driving events themselves which is definitely not our intention. For one, it makes things boring for you! We want your characters to have the most agency in this world; two, we have rather limited schedules and don't want to limit your play on our availability.
So then the biggest question we have for you guys is what can we do to help you feel more comfortable taking control? Is it something we can do ICly or is it something better articulated OOCly? Should we provide you with more setting information? Less? Would it be good for mission runs to have a section of 'what you can learn' so you can more effectively interact with the world without needing to turn logs into massive ten character threads? By and large, we're committed to creating interesting framework for you guys to tell stories in but ultimately we want you guys to be driving the direction, action and momentum of them. We feel thus far we haven't been doing a stellar job of that. Anything we can do to help you tell stories more effectively is our priority, so if you've got an idea for this specifically please do share. Currently one option we're spitballing is the possibility of giving a bullet list of hard-fact current-mission relevant 'clues' your characters could get from NPCs, hacking, etc, that could be used in threads if you feel it's relevant to your character, but we're sure there are other ways to approach this too and we'd love to hear your thoughts.
As always, we also wanted to take the time to thank you for your patience and enthusiasm. We love this game and love everyone we've had the opportunity to play with. We feel like Station 72 is a pretty unique experience and despite the learning curve and the challenges of running such a small, tight knit game, we've ultimately found it incredibly rewarding. You guys are awesomely creative, super enthusiastic, and have been very patient with us as we figure out what the hell we're doing. This has been a great, collaborative experience so far and we look forward to coming up with ideas together to make it even better for everyone.
Thanks all!
CONCORDIA MISSION: OVERVIEW • DAY :008 - :013
NAVIGATION • PREMISE • FAQ • RULES • GLOSSARY • SYMBIOTIC SKILLS • ABILITY POINTS
NAVIGATION • PREMISE • FAQ • RULES • GLOSSARY • SYMBIOTIC SKILLS • ABILITY POINTS
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In terms of how to approach missions like this in the future, I'm of two minds, and I think part of it is because the Bout it Out circumstances required very different things from the Infiltration. With Bout it Out, they had a clear objective (get to Kun-Kun, talk to his reps, and this had been decided in advance), so top-leveling with them from the go seems good (with people talking in their own individual top levels about each other or faking competition or whatever).
With the infiltration, I think there were a lot of moving pieces. I personally perceived it less as "no one had freedom" and "there is a lot of freedom as well a lot of people to work with." I think having a clearer idea of who's doing what and who's going where would have helped a ton in getting this started.
I don't think, given these two circumstances, that we necessarily need to be told what to do? I think we've all worked it out, but maybe with a mission that has a lot of moving parts, it can be decided who's doing what in advance with distinct headers so players can reach out to one another and set up individual multiple-person threads.
I think otherwise, you've done a great job in working things out and giving us a lot to work with! Plus, you always take our ideas into consideration (and the cool part is that Bout it Out was a player suggestion, and you worked it into the world and mission objectives—which is rad!). I just think that this particular mission/event log probably needed slightly more organization especially since both, in playing, are very different circumstances.
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Bout It Out at least got moving, which I think is partly availability but partly also that it was a little more clear how they were approaching things, and also had more leeway for a lot of things to happen at once. Not like, okay, first someone has to get this info, then someone has to deal with this alarm, then someone will sneak into the office, etc etc where if it's not already decided who's doing which part, everything gets jammed up.
I don't think having the freedom to make our own mission plan is necessarily going to stall things every time, but I do think we need to hash those OOC plans into a more clear IC one where everyone has an idea of what part they're involved in, in order to get them off the ground. We had a rough timeline worked up on the Bout It Out side, too, and I think that also contributed to that half of the mission at least getting tags, even if it's been slow-moving. And I think an IC network post can help getting everyone on the same page with that, too.
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and arguing with nuns.I also agree that having freedom to make up our own mission plan isn't going to stall things. I do think that for specific events like Bout-It-Out and the Infiltration the log might benefit from being broken down into top levels for different parts of the plan, especially ones that involve NPC interaction. Exploration/freedom seems to work better in between pre-planned events, like with the whole mess we made on Avera, very little of that was pre-planned and it ended up having huge effects on the characters that spurred a lot of neat cr/development.
I don't think anything needs to change as far as the way you guys have been setting up the OOC plotting logs, there's enough information there to start moving - personally speaking, sometimes my own lack of initiative is because I'm worried about bogging you guys down with too many requests for extra information or NPC interactions. I don't want to make more work for you!
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But that being said, judging from what I saw about the two missions and participation on my end and what was being planned I felt the Bout It Out missions really allowed themselves for that sort of free for all of Avera, and how unplanned that could be.
The issue I found myself running into on the infiltration side was that there was so much, both IC and OOC, that needed to be bounced around, and there being a particular set of things that had to happen cancelled out that free for all nature that we used on Avera. With Avera, we could be very like my character, either way, is going to X place, what will they find??? Who wants to run with this??? And people could come and go as they felt like around those escapades and we could work with the ramifications of other people's actions in a round about way. It didn't need a lot of planning, and you were wonderful in givings us lots of info about things that could happen and we could choose to interact with or not. But in the case with infiltration we need to do particular things and everyone needs to be on the page with what everyone else is doing and what their outcomes are to do X thing. Basically there was a lot of OOC planning required and it didn't quite lend itself as easily to a free for all. I know at least for me when I sat down to write a top level for it I would get very like "wait, how should I break this all up? Where are people going first? Is my character present for this, but didn't a bunch of people want to do that, ahhhh" and I ended up feeling overwhelmed with the amount of things because I felt like it was something that would be approached really precisely as opposed to being very free for all and that I needed to work that in across the board. Though also on me: playing a character requires a bunch of info dumps, so that probably didn't help it much, but also they didn't quite lend itself to being as organic in like thread flow or even beginning threads as it might of? Basically, tl;dr having it that open left it really difficult to know the best way to approach planning or how my character was approaching planning and where I should really begin with something like that.
Which I think having some process of designation would help when dealing with missions like Infiltration just to get the ball rolling? Whether that's an IC post or an OOC sign up for this aspect or that, etc, etc. In this case, I do feel a certain amount of specifics do help as far as people in places go. With the type of game this is, we luckily still have a lot of freedom for people jumping into threads and going from them as well, so yeah I don't think it needs to be a lot, just something to help cut it down into smaller sections, sometimes (!! not for every mission, stresses that a million times ah ) I think would assist.
TL;DR I THINK yes an IC post would really help to get things moving! Or alternatively in future missions like Infiltration, maybe some sort of system in which more fiddly missions are broken up into aspects of like "X, Y, Z, please throw yourself at which one you'd be interested in especially / character will be present for" as a starting point so that people don't get muddled too much with what's happening. Not so much "on the rails" but just as a beginning movement.
Ack, right, I hope this was helpful, and as ever I am having a blast! TY so much, I love the heck out of this game.
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- I think IC guidance will definitely help. I'm not gonna lie, I'm here primarily for the character relationship aspect of the game over the nitty-gritty action (which is just what I prefer to play in general, and I love that this game allows for both), so I'm okay with just playing out the pre and post situations and handwaving what requires a lot of moving parts.
- That said, I like bullet lists a lot eyyy
- I always approve of more NPCs a++ let's do it everyone
- I can't think of anything else except you guys are doing a great job ok
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I'd also like to add that the thing I love most about this game is player initiative instead of handholding (I feel like making our own decisions rather than having someone else dictate how exactly to act adds a sense of character agency and responsibility) and I definitely don't want to lose that. Going forward, maybe on the OOC posts it would help if we give you guys a concise, simplified overview (Phase I: Ted will disable the alarms, while Tim acts as a distraction) and you can give us either a randomized or specified general sense of success or failure or middle of the road pass (Ted can't disable the alarms and needs to find a workaround, Tim has no problem keeping the guards occupied etc) while ultimate mission success or failure is still up for a vote, meaning we all have to figure out on an IC level how we're going to get from point A (working alarms/ preoccupied staff) to point B (successfully stealing the declaration of independence as was voted).
I realize that'd be a bit more work for you guys (and you already do a lot) not to mention a playerbase vote to employ, so just consider this me mentally tossing spaghetti at the wall, because with such a tightly-knit group of players and mods, it just seems like we can relieve a lot of the general "I had too many options and no risk" issues with something like this in place. Even with Bout it Out having just a randomized list from the roster of player-character participants of who succeeds in their final fight vs who fails could have prompted some crazy lineups!
Anyway, novel written, I also want to thank you guys for always listening to us and being so engaging and patient: I know it isn't easy to give us so much creatively to explore and engage with, and so much of that is why I love this game more than I have any right to.
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Also, I have always felt that July/August are terrible RP months because most people are either on holiday or just want to go out. And then during Autumn/Winter they come back like bears getting ready to hibernate.
With that said, I acknowledge these are small excuses that have a small impact to what is happening in the game right now. As mentioned above, with a small game like S72, it is strikingly obvious that people are missing/busy. It is one of the cons of a small game - but the pro is that you know well the player base and that can be used to your advantage and how to tip the scale in your favour. I want to make clear that this is what _I_ feel, I don't want to speak for anyone.
I will go a little bit against the flow and say that I feel there is "too much freedom". What I mean is, there are way too many variables, I find, and always too much information and too much to do and you end up not really knowing what you should do and if what you do has any meaning/impact - which, for a game like this, is kind of a big deal. I'm not saying people want a "main character role". I'm just saying most things here feel like they might have a big impact but they always feel-- I don't know, vague and kind of "ehn"? I think the biggest problem comes from the fact that while this would work well if it was a real life, face-to-face kind of game where your actions get their consequences/answers right away, it doesn't really do well in an online RPG, where you have to wait for an answer and the time can vary due to multiple factors (timezones for me, for example, are hell), which can lead to a lack of interest. Again, I'm speaking for myself, but if I'm pumped and end up having to wait 2/3 days I end up kind of lazy. I'M NOT SAYING YOU GUYS ARE SLOW, BY THE WAY. You're pretty quick and prompty and that's pretty cool, but answers generate more questions and you end up getting stuck in a loop of OOC developing and no IC write up. Personally, I am not a fan of overplanning OOCly. In fact, I really hate doing it, lol. I'm saying this 'cus I'm very comfortable with you guys, and I know you know I don't mean any ill by it, and I respect you guys so I want to be completely honest and don't want to give any bullshit. Anyway, OOC planning isn't really RPing for me. It's not fun, it's boring and I'm not really playing a game of chess where I need to plan ahead and draw out strategies for what my character is going to do. It kills the fun aspect of RPing which is actually playing it out and seeing the consequences happening in real time. Obviously, if this is a thing that everyone likes going forward I'll just have to rethink my situation since I don't want to impose on others, not really my style.
Also, for all the OOC bullshit I hate doing, I always do respect the OOC =/= IC rule and so sometimes I struggle on how did my character get this information/knows what to do without being too farfetched. Again, this is my problem rather than the games, but I like being open and honest with y'all. I guess I'm not 100% alone on that because of the request for IC info post but tbh a goat would object to information being passed on via mindlink but a goat will climb on rocks when told not to, so a goat will not have her opinion considered (what I mean is, I WILL FIND A WAY).
I think the first step should be assigning roles. Like, have one/two options people would like to be involved in (or have an open "randomize" option), split up the people and give them their mission objectives. I feel that sometimes there is too much to read through and there ends up being a lot to do, but nothing to actually carry on without, again, extensive Q&A and it just gets kind of repetitive. Again, speaking for myself, and I know this has NOTHING to do with the game except space, but I still have to shake off That Game (tm) fear of "if I do one thing that is not in the expected zone, I'm fucked" and that is definitely on me, but it doesn't help, I feel, that there is no guidance. I mean, there's a big difference between getting spoon-fed and getting a helpful shove in the right direction. Know what I mean?
But I understand people love this freedom. I think there should be a middle ground for it. I don't think it will cut anyone's fun to have assignments, because at least everyone knows what they're doing. When giving information, you should have fixed options, but if people want to veer away from those, leave one open to "what if my character, instead of punching McDick in the face, kicks him in the nuts?". I had a really good idea about how to go around for it, but I literally just forgot it and I've been staring at my fingers for (84) years and cannot remember. I'll... get back to you on that.
I don't have any solid opinion on NPCs, to be fair. I really like Prince and Cathaway tho, but I'm greedy and I want them as regular characters.
Uh. Sorry if this sounds confusing, I'm pretty knackered right now. Hit me up if I don't make sense. I'm really tired. I love you guys. I love everyone in this bar.
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Even so!
Lexa has had a plan for a while that she came up with with Hux to essentially propose a system of organization over everyone. Now, coming from Lexa's mouth, this can sound rather rigid, but the way she handles her people in her world, it's a lot lot lot more loose and I think it can apply in game.
Basically, what she wants is for everyone to first say what abilities they have and what strengths they are so that they can be expected to carry out certain duties during missions (investigating skills or flying overhead and getting the gist of things or hacking or whatever), while also ensuring that the information is shared. Obviously, some people are going to be reticent or difficult about sharing, but she does think that part of the issue with the Nest is the freedom.
The other half of this plan is ensuring some kind of stable buddy system. People check in with one another, or check in within a circle of individuals (outside of the brood construct) to make sure things like Parker getting killed or Angel accidentally destroying an android without help don't come to pass (again, or in general). Naturally, this would be a little more on the assumed/handwaved CR side, but it would be a way of ensuring people aren't off brooding alone without help.
The upside of this is that people can use an interconnected system like this to ensure that their characters get involved, either if they're too skittish/dickish/etc. to go alone, or if someone wants to have their characters drag someone along for the ride. Or whatever. I think it can also make people go, "Hey, my character doesn't know how to log into their E-Mail for this plot. Who wants to help with that?" or you can know who to have your character approach for E-Mail help. Whatever.
Generally, more succinctly, the idea is to have them work as scouts/warriors/healers (or other roles, with scouts being a very, very loose term for "people who gather deets") who are essentially agents working toward a greater cause. I think by all of the hosts knowing each other's skills, and seeing each other as competent or potentially competent, they can also work with each other better. This also leaves room for people to have characters fuck off and do whatever they want, because it isn't as rigid.
Other factors are like - is it TOO loose? Should they have at least a sense of who's telling what per the mission? How would this get managed ICly? I feel like it also gives room for some people if they want their characters to be more hands on in herding, they can without feeling like they're telling other people what to do with their characters. This also gives room for malleability from mission to mission. What if a world is particularly bad for someone who's usually the technical guy? Well, there are other tech guys. Or whatever.
I guess this is a long winded way of saying "what if they created a system of scouting/spying and communication and acted on it efficiently IC."
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Like Noodles, I'm really here because I'm super interested in the CR aspects, and the action sequences are a sweet bonus for me. That being said, I think IC guidance/streamlining the missions OOCly would help a lot. By that I mean, the Bout It Out mission had a pretty singular progression of events that still allowed for everyone to pile in and do their own thing if necessary or if the thread took a turn towards the unexpected. With the infiltration, it felt like there were so many potential routes to be taken and each yielded a different outcome, BUT specific things needed to be done to achieve the objective and all that possibility was very daunting. I agree that a designation or assignment approach would have helped a lot with figuring out how to approach that, and/or using a directed OOC approach coupled with an IC post, fwtw.
Anyway I'm a bit late and I'm not sure this is helpful!! I agree with most everything that's been said above me, and I am really appreciative of everything you guys do and how adaptable and responsive you guys are. You guys are the best ok.
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re scouting/in-team systems etc: I'm sure we'll end up talking about this in more detail in our eventual response post, but I wanted to take a quick moment to say this kind of thing sounds like an awesome idea for a player plot or something driven by ooc player/ic character initiative. We want to allow players to create those kinds of structures (or at least try to - we've got a bunch of reprobate characters on the game roster haha) if their character feel compelled to do so.
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(PS. I've been stalking how the Legion runs events out of curiosity/because they're a similar size as this one and WHAT A COOL GAME.)
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Thanks guys!
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