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jigokuooc2022-09-29 07:43 pm
jigokumods) wrote in jigokuooc2022-09-29 07:43 pm
Entry tags:
Plot/Event Feedback Post + open discussion!
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.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. 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.
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.
no subject
mod tone in posts
First, I wanted to talk about this comment from the post:
"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."
I feel like this comment is missing the mark a bit. As mods, it IS your job to exert some control over player plots. Ideally you won't have to do much and can be mostly hands-off, but it's your job to make sure player plots fit into the game and don't conflict with either the main plot or other player plots. As mods, you are the only ones who know exactly where this game is going! And because of that, you're the only ones who know if player plots will have a negative affect on the game in the long run. Additionally, as mods, you can require that players communicate their player plots on the OOC comm. Which I think you should, because we're already having trouble with "players not in the discord are missing out on things" and that is a huge problem when the discord is optional and not everyone is using it. I wouldn't say every detail should be outlined in OOC comm posts (Like reading Agatha's post below about the plans to drop Aerith, I do think Aerith's death in it being kept quiet is a good idea, because that's the ultimate climax of the plot in the first place) but the general idea of "an attack is happening at this day and time" or "this weird thing is happening over in this part of town" is something that can and should be discussed on the OOC comm ahead of time.
I guess my main issue is that your initial comment sounds like you're trying to push player plots away from mod responsibilities in an "if things go sideways then it's not OUR fault, WE didn't make this plot", when it's not really about 'blame' to begin with and it actually is your job to proofread plots and tell players 'no' to parts of the plot that won't go over well. If this wasn't your intention in the first place, then re-wording what you mean in regards to the player plots may be a good idea, because this is what it sounds like to me.
Also, I want to point out that this is just one instance of a problem I see happening over and over in this post here: accountability. It feels like the mods are trying to throw their hands up and go "hey, this stuff isn't our responsibility, don't get mad at us!" Which is a Very Bad Thing for mods to do, honestly. You are the mods, this is YOUR game. You get the final say on what happens and doesn't happen. This is because, as mods, nearly everything that happens in your game actually IS your responsibility. So trying to back off on the responsibility when things go sideways isn't a great look, because you had every opportunity to say 'no' to everything that's happened in this game. If something goes wrong, you need to own it! You need to say "we wanted to do X thing but it didn't work out as we planned. This is what we learned from it and what we're going to do going forward." I feel like that is kind of showing in this post here, in some places? But in others there's still that tone of "it's not our fault", and that's not helping.
I want to say too, I think this is something you can fix going forward. As long as you take that responsibility now and continue to be accountable for the happenings in the game, things will be okay.
picking players for special things
I'm going to keep this part brief since a lot of players brought up transparency already, but I just wanted to express some thoughts and methods that have worked for me in the past.
I think others have it right on the nose to say that just grabbing people randomly and going "hey, do this" (like how Eski and Nik have expressed below, in regards to Hizen and Kate's involvement in things so far) really isn't a good method to get players to do tasks in this game. For one, it relies on you mods to specifically seek people out for the job, which is possible to do in a small game (like, how big the game was when it opened) but really isn't feasible with a game of this size. I expressed it in another comment, but it's really not fair to you guys to expect you all to remember all 180+ characters at all times and what they're all good at. And secondly, it's not transparent enough. When all we have is private chats with mods asking a player to do something, that's where accusations of mod favoritism come in. Especially since this game is anon-mods and we don't know who the mods are, it's very easy for people to look at that lack of answers for how characters are picked for special plot things and go "this character is getting Special Stuff and we don't see why, this is clearly mod favoritism."
So I think you should post monthly sign-ups with brief descriptions of the kinds of characters you're looking for with these requests. So for example, for the bombing plot, you could put out a notice that says "We need one character for a plot thing this month. Said character needs to be a member of Tamamo, 0 star rank, and ideally someone who just apped in this last round." Or as another example, you could say "we need a member of Shuten who will carry out a hit on someone else", or "we need someone from Tamamo who works as a courtesan" or anything else like that. Then you let people who qualify sign up, and then you either RNG from the list or pick the 'best fit' from that list. Though I must specify, you need to state ahead of time if you're going to do 'RNG' or 'we're picking the best fit from those who sign up' so the players know exactly how characters are being picked, and there should be a "cooldown" of a month or two before a player can sign up any of their characters again. You don't have to give the full plot details when you do these signups, but just having a "hey we need people for A Thing" in the plotting posts will go a long way towards providing the kinds of transparency players want.
Another part of the 'transparency' problem is answering why some players are able to get information through asking questions, while others who arguably SHOULD be getting information are being shafted. Again, this was covered more by other people, so I'll keep this brief. But I think an easy solution to this- and I saw some people touch on it too- is to just have a 'Q+A' section when new events go up and specify in the section which kinds of characters will be able to get extra information. "if you have questions ask here. If your character works X job at Y facility, they may be able to get extra information." And then give out information as people ask. Also, don't be afraid to tell people the same things! You don't have to give out unique information to everyone, it's okay for several players to get variations on "yeah we saw someone in Tamamo garb plant a bomb but we don't know who they were" when they ask questions, it's realistic that people would get the same information. Especially because, again, we have 180+ characters and nobody expects you mods to give out 180+ different pieces of information with each plot post.
the elephant in the room
I'm kind of hesitant to bring up this last point because it's talking about a specific player (albeit without mentioning their name, but I think many people will be able to figure out who it is anyway), but I do feel like this needs to be said. I'll try my best to speak vaguely because I don't want to be shitty and cause the player a ton of stress about this, but it DOES need to be addressed in some capacity.
I don't want to go too much into detail about what happened, because again, personal information and all. But basically, a certain player anonfailed with the mod plurk, revealing that said player has access to the mod plurk and is very likely a mod. And really, I'm not personally concerned with the possibility of them being a mod. What I AM concerned with, however, is the fact that several people have directly asked the mods "hey, is [player name] a mod?" and that screencaps of the anonfail have been given to the mods, and yet the mods have not said a single thing on this. There hasn't even been a "we're not going to comment on this, we're anon mods" comment on it, which is the bare minimum of what I would expect in this situation. In fact, the opposite has happened: comments got screened, then anon comments got turned off, THEN it got set to "members only can comment". And while on one hand I do recognize the desire to avoid people shitstirring just to shitstir, there was at least one player in this game who used a sock account to bring their concerns to you anonymously because they were worried about retribution over saying anything at all about this. And ultimately it was all for naught, because you screened comments and STILL haven't said a single thing about this situation. As with other problems in this game, I feel like the issue isn't the identity of the player involved (though I do know some people disagree with me here, and I invite them to speak on it as well), but rather the lack of transparency as to their part in this game and what they have access to.
Again, I don't want to go around saying anything about this specific player or their past. I literally have never played in a game with them before, we don't really have any CR here (not because I'm avoiding them or anything either, I've just been having shit luck with my health lately and my tagging has been slow), and I don't really have an opinion on anything about their past because I just plain don't know them. But what I DO think is that, if there are players who are uncomfortable with this player, you are doing them a huge disservice by not addressing this situation and instead taking actions that make it look like you're trying to sweep everything under the rug. And again, I don't want to talk about this player's past or the identities of anyone who might have problems with this player. I'm pretty sure EVERYONE in DWRP has at least one person they don't want to interact with under any circumstances, and what I'm about to say is coming more from a place of "this is what I would expect anon mods to do if they have people who have specifically told them 'DNI' and know that these players might not know that they are interacting anonymously with someone they don't want to interact with."
At a minimum, this is what I think you should do:
1) give some kind of statement on the situation. If I were in this situation I personally would come out and say "yes, [player name] is a mod here" or "no, the player is not a mod, but they helped us make the game and thus have access to the mod plurk and journal". It's a foregone conclusion at this point, we KNOW the player has access to the mod plurk. But I would also understand if you went with a "we're not going to confirm or deny the identities of ANY mods, because this is an anon mod game" post, as long as you're saying SOMETHING about it. The players want to know that you are listening to them, and at a bare minimum they deserve an acknowledgement that you are reading these questions people are asking.
2) if this player does have access to the mod journal and plurk while not being a mod, I would remove that access. Mod accounts are for mod use only IMHO, and letting other people see private correspondences with mods when they themselves are not mods is a HUGE violation of privacy. (Disregard this point if the player in question is a mod though, I don't expect them to stop being a mod just because they anonfailed.)
3) To ease concerns about interacting with people they don't want to interact with, I think you should state a public message along these lines: "as anon mods, we know you're putting a lot of trust in our hands. We also recognize that not everyone wants to interact with everyone. So we want to assure you that if you have ever expressed that you do not want to interact with one of us, then we will not place your characters in our specific factions and we will let other mods answer your questions. We know it's a lot to say 'we'll do it even if you can't possibly know, just trust us', but this is the process we're going to follow and we want you to know what we're going to do, even if you won't be able to see us doing it." I think this applies to all of the mods too, since anyone can have problems with anyone and we all want reassurances that the mods will respect our boundaries. If you were non-anon mods, these two points (not placing someone into a faction run by a mod they do not want to interact with, and also having that mod sit out from talking with that player/making decisions about that player) would be pretty standard anyway. Trusting the mods to follow this same process even if we can't know for certain that they are is very important to keeping the game running.
4) Going forward, please at least acknowledge difficult questions like this, even if you don't want to confirm anything directly. This whole thing has been festering for weeks now. By not responding and instead limiting anon comments gradually (first by blocking anon commenting, then by making it so only members can comment), all you've done was give people space to go "I knew it, they're covering it up now. Shady mods" when I really don't think that's what's happening here. Appearances do matter, especially for anon mods. And how you handle things like this is how you build trust with your players. If the players can't trust you, then they'll eventually leave.
I think that's it from me personally. TL;DR these are the issues I see in the game, but I think they can be fixed and that the game will do better in the future if these issues are addressed.
no subject
But this suggestion sticks out to me:
What do you do, exactly, when a moderator you've opted out from potentially has multiple high ranking characters in multiple factions, and these factions are repeatedly put into contact with each other for events?
Even in a perfect world where an opt-out is honored respectfully and tactfully OOC (and bear in mind there are many people who justly feel opting out officially opens them up to retaliation) I simply don't see how opting out from playing with a mod's character can realistically happen without closing the player off to a great number of things IC. Jigoku is a plot-heavy, NPC-heavy game, and starred/ranked characters speak with considerable authority on their faction's goings-ons, and have close relationships with the NPCs. Accommodations can be made by other mods, of course, but there is simply no world in which this player isn't getting hamstringed IC. Not being in the same faction helps, but not by too much. Avoiding them becomes as much of a task as actually playing.
That's a really tough position to be in to begin with without adding a lack of communication/unwillingness to engage with the central concern: mods declining to give even a simple statement to assure players that their personal boundaries are being taken into consideration. I'm sure there are many people who are happy to play here anyway and just not get CR with particular players or something, but to opt-out officially is difficult even with perfect communication and promised accommodations OOC, and we don't even have that!
People are justified in concerns about the lack of communication around this, even if it IS just a simple "we've decided not to comment on the identities of our moderators, and as we cannot reasonably accommodate this, anyone with concerns about their identities should drop." Ignoring it is uncomfortable.
no subject
But that comes to another problem: rankings in multiple factions. I'm of the mind that players should only be able to get substantial rank and responsibilities in one faction. If they have characters in other factions that's fine, but those other characters should be limited to 0 or 1 stars. A single player really shouldn't have substantial power over more than one faction, and the reasons you stated above are exactly why: the more factions a player has power in, the fewer options there are for players who want to opt out of that player. It also goes the other way too: if player C decides to opt out of playing with player D, but player C has the highest ranked character in faction 2 and a high-ranked character in faction 3, what options are there for player D? That puts player D (and the mods, since they have to coordinate all of this too) in a bad spot, and while C shouldn't have to play with anyone they don't want to it still causes a huge problem if they have power over that much of the game and now suddenly a player can't effectively play in the game because of that. (especially if D is already in a faction that C controls, and their choices are 'be iced out of all plot for this faction and be unable to do anything' or 'switch factions'.)
(Also I'm specifying 'player' here and not just mod because, while this is definitely a possible problem with the player/mod I mentioned before, it could also happen with literally any player who gets heavily invested in multiple factions. So keeping the same baseline for everyone, not just mods, is helpful here.)
So I guess my ultimate thought here is, there shouldn't be a way for one player to ice another out of the game, even if the icing out is unintentional. The game design should be shifted so that either one player isn't holding up the whole faction (having at least two different players at the top of each faction would at least give people options for who to talk to within their faction), or individual players should not hold substantial rank in more than one faction at a time. Or hell, both is good! Both of these things would be positive changes.
Also I want to say that I don't think anything I've described here has happened on purpose. I think the situations I'm describing are unintended consequences of a system not build to handle DNIs. The good news is that, since they're unintended consequences, they can be fixed! But they do need to be fixed.
+1
Even before I apped into this game, it already felt like common knowledge that they were one of the mods. Everyone told everyone, and we just respected that it's not a topic to bring into the server. I don't know them or have a grudge against them, so to me, personally, the player isn't the problem.
But I think regardless of our own experiences, all of us can agree that the choice to pretend nobody's asked about them and the belief that the topic will go away if the mods all ignore it hard enough is.