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

[watermemory]

"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."

Factually no. The rushed event has been a major focus, but it's also caused other issues to come to light that have been noted and criticized in the past. There's been enough plausible deniability that I personally thought was individual moments of "that's weird", but in retrospect I realize were parts of a bigger underlying issue. I know people have made crit in the past that has been ignored.

I'd like to emphasize that, with regards to the rushed event, it really can't be understated how unwelcoming it has been to many new players. So many newbies I've seen have no idea what is happening, how to get involved, what events even lead up to the current plot, what's even expected of them as members of a given faction, and how to establish a CR base to get any foodhold in the game. That's a major concern.

The rushed event has also meant that players who are slower-paced (which this game has a lot of, see the 8-comment AC) or international players who rely on backtags, either have to rush themselves, or sit things out, or drop older threads to stay current. None of those three options are appealling.

"People who've been in the game for awhile know this was not a usual thing."

Waggles hands. While the Blood Storm event was generally paced more evenly (foreshadowed in Get To Work then all of June to experience the main event) the conclusion to it pretty clearly ran into scheduling issues and bumped up into TDM. Not the worst thing in the world but still an indication that scheduling is a prior issue.

On that note, while I was a randomized participant in the Blood Storm conclusion and enjoyed the log, it raises a different issue that I'll go into later.

"Applications will be essentially frozen until January 2023. A cap is also being considered"

~180 characters at time of comment, so yeah.

"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."

The bounty storyline needs leeway time, so yeah.

"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."

True, in that event questions have gotten "this is a dead end' responses.
Please don't think that just because one person gets a question response in their inbox, they can't look to the side and see someone else ask almost the same question and get a different one.

One example is during Tanabata. All of Sutoku asking questions, many of whom have connections or are sneaky, and get hardly anything about Kaberou… And now a massive infodump about Kaberou comes to light that frankly contradicts what was said before?
Another example is this bombing event. Why does a Shuten lieutenant, who works closely with Jiro and has a direct professional line to something like the warehouse, ask the fire brigade about the warehouse fire and get nothing, but an Enma officer gets first dibs?
Why, in the July mini-event, did a newly-apped character learn about gyokuto's secret instantly, when that's been a mystery the entire game, and it says in the game's FAQ that yokai/mythical player-characters won't get special treatment from the game? https://jigokulogs.dreamwidth.org/47812.html?thread=6723012#cmt6723012

"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."

The summaries that go up after the fact, so people who would have wanted to participate have no idea what they missed until it's too late?

"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."

Why do players have to sift through however-many comments, in the hopes that one of the responses is going to have what they want to know?

Why should so much basic intel be locked behind "ask the right questions" ? Isn't that so much more work?

I had been under the impression that questions were more for tidbits and side-stuff, but that has not been the case at all. Why did I have to ask what the video broadcasted to the entire city even looked like?

If the answers were consistent across the board, wouldn't it be easier to have an ooc event post of what you could find out based on your tier?
"A 3*** character could find out this: [...]
A 2** character could find out this: [...]"
etc.

By the way, speaking of rank influence, why was Tamamo behind the bombing of Shuten's warehouse, yet most of Tamamo, especially higher-ranked characters than the person carrying out the bombing, were completely in the dark?

"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."

Engage with it more than reacting it, you mean?

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

What? Player concerns were about the game-wide plot's transparency. The multiple events/incidents that occurred adjacent to the bombing were all part of the game-wide plot. Would you like to address that part?

"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."

So I have gone over the full response post a few times, and this is the part that hangs closest the the biggest issue in this game.
Everyone has noticed that only a handful of people get opportunities, get extra intel or perks, get IC-recognized authority regardless of rank or activity, or get major involvement in the main plot, and other people who try, or who are active and on-paper should have rank and authority, are given nothing. I'm not going to name names but everyone can see it.
You might think you're giving people perks and gifts, but I can tell you that multiple people who have been picked to be a mod "teacher's pet" have been deeply uncomfortable with their status, have realized that their wishes to be involved with the plot and community have been twisted into favoritism, and don't want to be singled out anymore.

Even in events that invited people outside of that circle have been structured in deeply weird ways. I'm going to use the Tower Expedition as an example. The teams were randomly picked, yes, and it was a result of player participation and work.
It still all came down to the rest of the game watching 8 people be the main characters.
In retrospect, I do not feel good about my participation. Even with player participation, the door should have been open for a wider effort. In-game victories, or defeats, in a game of 100+ people, need to be shared across the game.

"We would like to emphasize that we cannot control, and have no intention to control, how players disseminate information on their own plots."

I'm doing my best to respond to this productively, but I can't believe this. This is a mod response from a team who has clearly seen the crit about hidden information or information that's hard to find because it's scattered across random logs/posts and event question threads in two communities, and it says, "It's your problem now." Okay.

"On our part, small side plots run by the mods themselves will not be a matter of public accord as well"

Why?
Do you not trust people to infomod?
Why shouldn't events that affect the game setting and have ramifications for everyone be kept a secret?

"Namely, we'd like to see players making more use of our OOC comm for plotting purposes."

After people asked why the OOC community wasn't in use for plotting and there wasn't an ooc event plotting post for the bombing event, you mean? I'm sure you're not taking credit for someone else's suggestion, because that would be bad.

"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."

You're lying.

I know for a fact multiple people have brought up crit, both to your face and in the screened post, and gotten nothing or gotten told "We'll work on it" and nothing has changed. There is no reason to believe anything will change now.

I think you need to take a long and hard look at what you really want a game for. Do you want to run a game for 100 people and give those 100 people a chance to shine? Or do you want a sandbox of 10 with an audience of 90? This isn't a question of "Yes, if they want to participate," because I see people time and time again jumping to ask questions or get interested in the plot or take their faction premise and run with it, and I see them get no-sold or stopped in their tracks, and only a handful ascended to the role of main character.

I'm not here to fill seats. Bye.

[jigokumods]

We'll take time to address most of this but we should immediately point out that "small side plots run by the mods themselves will not be a matter of public accord" was a typo, as it should say "now be a matter of public accord", and has been fixed. We're sorry for any confusion that caused.

[bratherine]

By the way, speaking of rank influence, why was Tamamo behind the bombing of Shuten's warehouse, yet most of Tamamo, especially higher-ranked characters than the person carrying out the bombing, were completely in the dark?

I mentioned this in my comment where I go over things related to the bombing from my point of view, but since I commented after you made this comment, I can try to clear this up:
On an OOC level, having Kate involved in the bombing was a last minute offer the mods gave me when I asked about Tamamo subdivisons/things going on in the clan to get an idea of where I could take her long term. Due to the proximity of the decision to the event, it probably would have been very difficult to get other PCs involved without delaying the event. I have my own feelings on this but hindsight is 20/20, and I'm just trying to clarify the reasons behind this and nothing else.

On an IC level, I can only speculate based on my conversation with the mods, but I believe the point of keeping the mission hidden from other members of the clan was a simple case of "the fewer people involved, the less likely anything is to spill out to other clans". On top of that, it also means that Tamamo members aren't acting in ways that would cause suspicion to other clans when the bomb happens. But I think it's a case of the last minute nature of this OOC that feeds into the IC reasoning, so.