Plot/Event Feedback Post + open discussion!

[jigokumods]

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Recent Feedback Response

To start; an apology While this is a feedback on issues that have existed prior to it, we definitely feel most of this falls on us for how the mini event/"get to work" log was handled. Enthusiasm got the best of us and we threw out way too much with too little time for players (especially the large amount of new players) to really adjust to what we were doing or what was going in.

People who've been in the game for awhile know this was not a usual thing. Yes, the mini-event will usually have some major plot elements, but certainly nothing on the level of what we put in this most recent one and it was a mistake on our part to do so. It overwhelmed too many people, and pushed things too far and too fast, narrative-wise.

We don't intend to retcon what happened (it's honestly too late for that) but we do apologize for letting out enthusiasm get the best of us and assure we will be much more mindful of pace going forward. In fact, the crux of this feedback is about that: pace. Well, that and transparency.


Breathing Room This is going to be implemented in a few ways.

The most important is that we will not be having an app cycle in October. Applications will be essentially frozen until January 2023. A cap is also being considered, but we will see where the game is at the time we open apps again before revisiting that conversation, but for now, no new apps will be accepted for the next four months.

The Wasteland/Iron Bear/Haniyasu plot, the main plot, is going to be re-evaluated and made to be paced out over a longer period of time. Right now, we're looking at not closing it until November, and Toraguma's initial "we move out in 2 weeks" declaration will not turn out to be true, for IC reasons we can honestly pretty easily cook up.

We hope these two things give the game way more room to flex and for folks to actually find their legs beneath them in the game again.


Plot Info Dissemination We will start this by stating that while we have often played our cards close to our chest, it has never been the intention of the mod team to make the plot deliberately obtuse or impossible to decipher. Usually we only hold onto things if the reveal of said information is planned as part of another post. The most recent example of this is the bomb's nature being revealed by Toraguma in an IC post shortly after the mini-event.

That being said, this isn't a very tenable system sometimes, and this is one of those times where people were becoming understandably frustrated at the lack of ability to do anything besides reactive play, which is not what everyone is here for.

As far as character investigations and OOC questions go, know this: we will always tell you if you're going down a dead end. If you are on a cold path, we will let you know so that you don't feel like your time was wasted. That being said, not every question we're given is going to produce the most interesting answers. There is a certain level of player creativity that needs to be expressed to get to things, and this is a factor that is always going to be more impactful than character rank or their established CR in determining if the answer given will lead them somewhere interesting.

We are treading a fine line between allowing players to Find the Fun and guiding players where we want them to be, and it's hard to get this balance right. We like to think we've mostly done well with it, but sometimes things fall short of ideal. We never want people to feel like they're being railroaded, but we also don't want them to feel like they're completely lost.

We want to emphasize two things that genuinely help here, on the player end. First The Story So Far tag, and being sure to read up on what's happened before. These summaries cover the major beats. We also recommend reading other players' questions as they come in, to avoid retreading ground but also sometimes another set of eyes can find something others might have missed. Make the questions a collaborative effort. These are the tools players already have, but we are also want to provide more to that end.

We are open to suggestions on how to help with this process. Again, know that it is not our intention to lock plot information behind obtuse logic or NPC interaction or character rank or anything. None of those factors should be impacting folks ability to engage with the game's plot. We feel we're falling short of our own ideal here, so help would be appreciated.


Plot Transparency. This is less about game-wide plot and more about how things like player plots and smaller mod-run things are handled.

First, we want to put eyes on our brand new Player Submission post for substories and player plots. Previously, these were done through the mod contact page, mostly for the sake of convenience. Unfortunately, the comment screening in that post has caused big gaps in player awareness of what's going on, so instead we're moving all stuff related to player plot submission and subwtories to THIS page, so that everyone can see, and participate, in what's being planned.

You can also use this page to pitch ideas for your characters that you'd like mod help with. We used to do these through the mod contact page or DMs, but we want to move these to an open, public space so the process becomes more transparent and no one feels like anyone else is receiving special treatment.

If you have world-building, IC game history, or other similar types of IC questions, please ask them on the FAQ rather than on the Mod Contact page. This allows for all plot and setting related questions to be visible to all players. We have updated the Mod Contact page to reflect these changes.

We would like to emphasize that we cannot control, and have no intention to control, how players disseminate information on their own plots. However, if either the player with the plot or we as mods feel the plot in question could impact anything outside a small circle of people, we will strongly encourage players to actually make use of our OOC comm for plotting purposes, or at least for a heads up. We do hope this helps with the transparency issue.

On our part, small side plots run by the mods themselves will now be a matter of public accord as well; we will make use of this post to host them and will make the OOC process more transparent than it has been before.

Our hope is this increased transparency will lead to less feelings of FOMO or other anxieties associated with seeing plot things pass one by without feeling like one had a chance to impact anything.


Use of the OOC Comm/Discord issues. This is two fold because it kind of relates back to the same thing, even if they don't seem attached at first.

Namely, we'd like to see players making more use of our OOC comm for plotting purposes. On our part, this means throwing up an OOC plotting post for every major IC log now, mingle/mini-event/main event/etc. On players part, while we certainly can't make anyone do anything, we would like to see more player plots fleshed out on the OOC comm (and the previously linked Player Submissions post) vs doing so on the game discord or plurk.

Furthermore, it should be understood that our helpful Discord Mods (Eski, Dany, Fii, Min, and Caitie) are not game mods. The job they volunteered for is to help run and organize the Discord, and should not be approached about game issues, including about where and when people engage in plotting.


Future Issues Another thing we want to emphasize is we can only act upon what has been presented to us via official contact methods. Unless the issues are brought to our attention via these methods, we may not be aware of them at all.

We are grateful for the folks that came forward with feedback about the issue, but the scope of the issue wasn't realized until we were informed about player sentiments in other places. Even if it's something seemingly as little as feeling as if your question wasn't answered well, just please let us know via official contact methods. We want this game to be a fun and engaging experience for everyone.


Please feel free to discuss things below. We mentioned we're open to suggestions about better means of handling player investigations/questions, but we're also just open to discussion about all of this in general. We want people to feel like they can have these discussions without it boiling over into frustration.

Comments

[paperpusher]

Could you clarify if this is a change from how rank was thought of/treated in the past? Specifically in terms of access to the faction leaders and getting missions from them (I'm thinking of things like the hit put on Yizhi, or the sabotage orders from Tenkohime).

To be clear, I don't think there's inherently a problem with characters with IC rank having access to more IC resources and jobs, just so long as those things are distributed fairly and people have the option of opting into them. I liked the suggestion Eski shared on plurk of a post like "looking for someone to do a mission, must be at least 2 star, going down in the next few days" that people can reply to if they fit those specs.

[itstillhurt]

Strongly agree with this, opening up missions in advance- even if you obscure the details- and making the selection process for them a little more open would probably do a lot to make people feel better.

Something as simple as "Blind recruiting for missions" OOC that would be translated to being chosen IC, and then you could just set requirements beyond that as needed.

It would prevent the feeling of being arbitrary or inaccessible, if nothing else.

[kaientai]

I'm just tossing out some thoughts here, but I think since it's a yakuza/organised crime situation and not a military, the reason for the loose interpretation of ranks is that it is not a hard, set in stone chain of command.

Ryouma having 3* influence in one area he personally has a lot of influence in might get him somewhere in one plot but in other areas he will get nothing no matter who he is because his rank doesn't carry the same weight with every NPC or situation he deals with. In fact, his rank and visibility has been such a hindrance to him personally gaining information that he has had to adjust and delegate information gathering to other characters because he doesn't have the skills or people just know his stupid face. He tried to use that influence to get information out of Kaberou twice and it didn't work, but another much newer character was able to get really useful stuff because he had a better skillset, which is cool!

A reason why characters with no rank or low rank getting highly sensitive missions might be that they have a good skill set for it or because a faction leader might want them to prove themselves. This is not an uncommon thing in this genre and a lot of these genre flavour things make things more interesting, in my opinion.

This is mostly what I'm thinking when the mods are suggesting that people get creative about how they access information regardless of what rank their character has. If something doesn't work, you can always try something else and ranks shouldn't be necessarily seen as a requirement. Setting up "must be 2 stars to apply" type missions sound nice but would probably end up gate keeping a lot more people than it encourages.

That being said, the Department of the Enma probably DOES have way more of a chain of command, so it might be interesting to come up with more faction flavour to flesh some of those things out specifically?

[itstillhurt]

This definitely seems reasonable from an IC perspective, and I appreciate that logic.

However, I get the sense that the OOC frustration is largely because it feels shaky, inconsistent, and difficult to work with as players. That player vs. character thing is a pretty significant distinction to the reason people want more clarity.

Put it another way, it's totally fine that A, as a low-rank character, would still be picked for a mission owing to having a relevant skillset that B, a high-ranked character, does not.

But when B's player is trying to find opportunities to involve B in the plot, and they're investing heavily into ranks because they believe it will push B into central plot focus whether B wants it or not, it will be very frustrating for them to be passed over for A and left with nothing, especially if the reasons why are never articulated or clarified.

I think advanced planning of things like this would help a lot. It would probably cut some of the surprise and suspense, but there's the rub- we're playing a game for A's player and B's player to have fun, we're not scripting a drama for HBO. OOC satisfaction/fun/engagement necessarily outweighs IC consistency and narrative flow.

[kaientai]

I get what you're saying! And I think that that might be some of the confusion here:

But when B's player is trying to find opportunities to involve B in the plot, and they're investing heavily into ranks because they believe it will push B into central plot focus whether B wants it or not, it will be very frustrating for them to be passed over for A and left with nothing, especially if the reasons why are never articulated or clarified.

I feel like ranks give you more ability to have your character do stuff and be in charge and have responsibility but doesn't automatically come with the guarantee of plot hooks or information. I've always taken it to mean that your character has earned more trust within their faction, so in Ryouma's case getting the faction to back him on a deal when he's earned 3* is way more likely than it would have been if he'd tried to do it with 1* as the narrative is concerned.

There is probably no way to guarantee that just because a character has a certain rank that they're definitely going to get plot relevant information because that's hasn't been the purpose of them so far? That's why OOC activity = IC rank always made sense to me because the idea that your character is being active enough to "buy" more influence in their faction is exactly that: people see them out there and are more willing to work with them and not just because they're lieutenant so-and-so. Sort of the "I know a guy who knows a guy" type deal. If you have 3* a lot more people are gonna know you're the guy and you're trusted. I absolutely get where you're coming from how this can be confusing on an OOC level especially if you're new though, so it's a hard balance to strike.

I guess I'm hoping that this might help as a suggestion, if nothing else!

[itstillhurt]

Stars only resulting in different treatment from the faction or different comparative authority across factions is a completely reasonable standard, and I strongly agree that this is a good way of doing things, it means the oldest and most-established characters won't monopolize the spotlight either. As long as it's well-articulated and consistent, that's totally fine.

I suppose what it boils down to is this: Whatever the OOC route to opportunities for participation in the plot, it needs to be clearly outlined, because as long as the process isn't visible it will feel arbitrary.

If it's not stars, that's totally fine. If it's stars on specific occasions and not on others, that's also fine. Hell, if it's just stars, I don't love that but it's at least impartial.

But it should be transparent, communicated when it's relevant, and consistently applied, regardless of what the answer is.

[saintclaire]

+1. Rank has to either have tangible, clear-cut meaning and purpose to players IC and OOC, or it's completely meaningless.

The way the system is now, anyone could have their crass and irreverent character slice-of-life it up and shoots the shit with people on Ember for a week and get enough points to buy them a rank; this would be by-the-books use of the system as-is, but it would look completely nonsensical IC for that character to have authority and influence.

However, anyone could have their responsible and driven character try to engage with the plot head-on and engage with the faction in earnest, maybe get enough points to get rank, and then encounter dead end after dead end because rank doesn't actually afford them access to anything.

[kaientai]

Yes, I definitely agree that transparency and clarity will always be best regardless. Probably the best thing for it is for it just to be clarified based on what's happening. For example, if it's something like the bombing where it's sort of an information free-for-all and information hasn't necessarily come down from above to high ranking characters, that can be clarified on the prompt itself so no one is surprised that their faction rank isn't necessarily yielding information?

I also just want to toss out the suggestion of using reward points to buy in-game influence beyond the star ranks. Not only would it be a real, tangible way to say "hey look, my character has this much!" but in addition to star ranks it can be another way for a character to gain a foothold in the setting and use up a lot of those extra points a lot of us are sitting on and I think it could be really fun!

[itstillhurt]

This would be a cool idea and maybe worth adding to the rewards page, honestly.

Though I think it'd be important to ensure that expectations were set and calibrated appropriately for what exactly the rewards for that might be, both IC and OOC, first. Otherwise it's just another avenue for people to maybe feel like they misused their points.

Anyway I'm fully a quarter of the comments on this post so I'm gonna shut the hell up for now.

[silentscout]

I feel like the idea of "this newer character gets the highly sensitive mission because they have a specific skill that is useful for this" could still go hand-in-hand with the mods posting a general call for people to do special things. They would just have to say "must be 2 stars and/or have [insert specific skill here] to be considered". Also, there can be a balance between "must have requirements met to be picked" and "anyone from the faction can apply OOCly, but we're going to RNG pick the person who is ICly chosen for this mission".

Ultimately, transparency for the process is a good thing. Plus this makes the whole process easier for the mods, since I certainly don't expect them to remember the specialties of 150+ characters.