After reading through other comments on this post, I'm following up with the question I asked above here.
There's an implication in some of the responses that players "expect" to be handed plot details in exchange for leveling up in rank, and so the official mod response is that rank is just for IC flavor/new avenues for CR and that investigation results depend on the character's skills and creativity in approaching the problems. This is imo both overcorrecting in its response to (a misinterpretation of) the problem, and implying that the problem is with players for not thinking outside the box enough. I have indeed seen the mods tell people that certain avenues of investigation were a dead end, often when they were coming up with creative ways to approach the problem. That's nice that we don't have to keep chasing our tails, but one of my questions is... why is that a dead end? I'm thinking of, for example, a lot of responses to Ringo's kidnapping; I saw so many people trying to brainstorm ways to get involved in the form of asking the mods for more information, all of which went nowhere because the plot needed her to not be found to enable the Wasteland plot. That's fine! But the reason so many people were asking after it in the first place is because trying to engage with events in this game has often felt like crossing your fingers and hoping you come up with the right question to ask the right way to get you somewhere. Like, maybe the answer IS trying to track down the kidnappers. Who knows, because all that's in the post is that someone came in and pulled an NPC out the door, boom, end of event. The surprise twist doesn't give us anything to do except to play out our "oh no what's happening" reactions.
Earlier in the post, you guys have clarified (presumably in response to the idea that IC rank automatically gets IC plot info) that rank isn't used like this (whether this is a shift from how it's previously worked or if this is how it's always worked). I agree that characters regardless of rank should be able to find clues when they investigate if it makes sense. What I'd like to call out specifically is that rank clearly does matter for the things referred to in this post as "small side plots run by the mods themselves," assuming this is stuff like Kate planting the bomb in the Shuten warehouse and Hizen getting told to do a hit on Yizhi. If there are other instances of characters being given surprise plot opportunities by the mods (vs. responses to things when they reach out), I don't know of any that have been given to non-ranked characters. That's fine if everyone knows it's an option. So is rank purely IC set dressing, or are these mod plots only available to characters who have rank? How will they be distributed in the future? You reference these being public, but does that mean that the mods reach out to the characters and then follow up with an FYI post on the public plotting page that something is happening? Or are these sorts of things no longer going to occur?
(I also should clarify here that by "surprise plot opportunities," I'm not referring to the off-hand mention of random characters as points of contact in the event writeups. I appreciate that this is probably a way to make people feel more included/recognized in the game without rank to go along with it, but it's an odd thing to do to assume that players are available to take up a heavier role in that particular event and not really advancing plot the way the other examples are. I'm assuming no one has been asked about this OOCly in advance based on my own experiences with something from my canon being referenced in a mingle post.)
On the subject of how players are essentially required to ask questions of the mods in order to get plot information, the mods have had some very curt responses to players asking questions that the mods seem to think have already been answered. I'm thinking of these two examples both because of the strength of the mod reply but also because in both cases, the mods misinterpreted the player question: Question re: smuggling through the wasteland Consolidating OOC questions on one post
I appreciate that in the first example the mods went back to apologize for having misread the question, but personally, why should I bother asking more out-of-the-box questions to the mods when there's a chance I get an exasperated response about me having some detail about the game incorrect? Both of these responses imply that the person asking the question has either missed something blatantly obvious like the fact that people ask questions on the substory post or are trying to contradict established canon. These sort of responses from mods do not give me the impression that you love answering questions and it's not bothering you to ask questions. In a plotting scenario, I'm more likely to give up instead of clarifying and then be quietly frustrated when someone asks essentially the same question but gets something out of it.
no subject
There's an implication in some of the responses that players "expect" to be handed plot details in exchange for leveling up in rank, and so the official mod response is that rank is just for IC flavor/new avenues for CR and that investigation results depend on the character's skills and creativity in approaching the problems. This is imo both overcorrecting in its response to (a misinterpretation of) the problem, and implying that the problem is with players for not thinking outside the box enough. I have indeed seen the mods tell people that certain avenues of investigation were a dead end, often when they were coming up with creative ways to approach the problem. That's nice that we don't have to keep chasing our tails, but one of my questions is... why is that a dead end? I'm thinking of, for example, a lot of responses to Ringo's kidnapping; I saw so many people trying to brainstorm ways to get involved in the form of asking the mods for more information, all of which went nowhere because the plot needed her to not be found to enable the Wasteland plot. That's fine! But the reason so many people were asking after it in the first place is because trying to engage with events in this game has often felt like crossing your fingers and hoping you come up with the right question to ask the right way to get you somewhere. Like, maybe the answer IS trying to track down the kidnappers. Who knows, because all that's in the post is that someone came in and pulled an NPC out the door, boom, end of event. The surprise twist doesn't give us anything to do except to play out our "oh no what's happening" reactions.
Earlier in the post, you guys have clarified (presumably in response to the idea that IC rank automatically gets IC plot info) that rank isn't used like this (whether this is a shift from how it's previously worked or if this is how it's always worked). I agree that characters regardless of rank should be able to find clues when they investigate if it makes sense. What I'd like to call out specifically is that rank clearly does matter for the things referred to in this post as "small side plots run by the mods themselves," assuming this is stuff like Kate planting the bomb in the Shuten warehouse and Hizen getting told to do a hit on Yizhi. If there are other instances of characters being given surprise plot opportunities by the mods (vs. responses to things when they reach out), I don't know of any that have been given to non-ranked characters. That's fine if everyone knows it's an option. So is rank purely IC set dressing, or are these mod plots only available to characters who have rank? How will they be distributed in the future? You reference these being public, but does that mean that the mods reach out to the characters and then follow up with an FYI post on the public plotting page that something is happening? Or are these sorts of things no longer going to occur?
(I also should clarify here that by "surprise plot opportunities," I'm not referring to the off-hand mention of random characters as points of contact in the event writeups. I appreciate that this is probably a way to make people feel more included/recognized in the game without rank to go along with it, but it's an odd thing to do to assume that players are available to take up a heavier role in that particular event and not really advancing plot the way the other examples are. I'm assuming no one has been asked about this OOCly in advance based on my own experiences with something from my canon being referenced in a mingle post.)
On the subject of how players are essentially required to ask questions of the mods in order to get plot information, the mods have had some very curt responses to players asking questions that the mods seem to think have already been answered. I'm thinking of these two examples both because of the strength of the mod reply but also because in both cases, the mods misinterpreted the player question:
Question re: smuggling through the wasteland
Consolidating OOC questions on one post
I appreciate that in the first example the mods went back to apologize for having misread the question, but personally, why should I bother asking more out-of-the-box questions to the mods when there's a chance I get an exasperated response about me having some detail about the game incorrect? Both of these responses imply that the person asking the question has either missed something blatantly obvious like the fact that people ask questions on the substory post or are trying to contradict established canon. These sort of responses from mods do not give me the impression that you love answering questions and it's not bothering you to ask questions. In a plotting scenario, I'm more likely to give up instead of clarifying and then be quietly frustrated when someone asks essentially the same question but gets something out of it.