HMD

[recollecters]

HOW'S MY DRIVING?

HMD - JULY Welcome to Recollé's quarterly HMD! Due to feedback from the playerbase, we have opted to switch from bi-monthly HMDs to an HMD once every three months. Players are encouraged to post to the HMD, though it is not required; there is a comment for mod and game feedback, as well. While anon is not enabled, socks may be used. However, any harassment is subject to being frozen or deleted, and if that should become an issue we will move the HMD meme to a members-only community such as our OOC community. Please remember to be respectful of your fellow players while offering crit and feedback. Thank you! MOD/GAME FEEDBACK COMMENT.

Comments

[fiddlestick]

In regards to the current summer plot, I have to say I feel the pacing of it needs some work. When Phase 2 and this plot were advertised, I got the impression we'd get a more serious plot where our actions do matter- a complete departure from Phase 1 where it was "whacky event of the month but nothing too serious". And then when you guys announced you were closing apps for the plot, I had hope that something really big was going down this summer.

Which we're in month 3 of this 4 month (?) plot and....tbh, I'm really struggling to see how this is different from Phase 1 other than we know it's not Retrospec causing the events (maybe?). I haven't gotten any real sense of weight to our actions (there was an attempt mid June to have update posts? But that was the only one), nor does the game feel any darker than it did last year-- if anything I'd argue year 1 had more gravity to it - as August and October were suspenseful in their own right, and even March 2017 had some suspense too with the secrets plot.

Meanwhile for this summer plot so far we've had:

Painting the Town which was a cute gimmick but really had no dire impact on the characters other than them being annoyed and having to paint stuff. If anything, I feel having all of May devoted to it (and having it be a background event in June) was too much, as there really wasn't a month worth of stuff to do with it. 2 weeks, or having this paired with something else would've been nice.

NPCs noticing stuff didn't lead to anything, because they disappeared the next month and seem to be back to status quo this month (unless I missed something).

NPCS disappearing again no long term consequences since they came back next month. There was potential with this that just wasn't used. What would be the long term consequences of everyone disappearing? How would people manage supply? What do you do about kids with disappeared parents? What if you get sick? There's so much that could've been played with, but it wasn't. Instead it was kinda treated like a side thing due to the next point which is-

Bingo Games these games were fun, but they kinda took up all our energy in June so we couldn't focus on the NPC disappearing and the weight of that. Not to mention, they were yet again pitched to be more serious than the first year bingo game, but other than it had more effects than more freebies- it didn't feel that way at all. Most of the prompts were pretty dang tame.

New AU I like this idea, I really do. I feel it's a great way to explore stuff we didn't think of when we apped, and make our characters question reality. This plot component alone makes me understand better why apps were closed. There's a lot that can be done with this. The problem is that like the NPCs disappearing, it seems to be already getting overshadowed by--

Dreamsharing while this plot idea is really cool and I am playing with it, I can't help shake the feeling of "didn't we just do this in October with nightmares?". It is the same plot with a different coat of paint.

I want to emphasize I don't think any of these plot ideas are bad ideas, they are actually all good ideas. But I have issue with the pacing of them and how they're utilized. You're either spending way too much time on an event that doesn't have that much to work with (May and the paint plot), or you're cramming too many gimmicks into one month so stuff that could be explored by players are shoved to the side (June and the Bingo plot). And because of this, the plot still ends up sounding much like a Phase 1 plot - weird monthly gimmick happens but no serious long term consequences.

Maybe all of this is leading somewhere in August. I don't know August's plot, maybe it'll be incredible. But so far the build-up of to August's plot has been pretty lackluster because of poor pacing and people have felt it. So far, the events have not lived up to the hype you've given us. Throw that on top of closing apps until the fall despite summer being the busy season for RP and the knowledge that you guys are involved with a murdergame on the side (which for the record, idc if you do a mudergame, mods have every right to do what they want in their spare time, but making it a big secret just made it come off way worse) - and it's led to a lot of discontent folks.

Which I know, there's no real way to change things this late into the game. But I guess for next time I'd advise that if you're going to hype up a plot, please make sure the entire plot is paced well enough to live up to the hype. I know you've guys said before that you have the plot planned out 6 months or a year ahead of time- which is cool! But I wonder if that's caused you guys to have a different scope of the timelines than the players. Rpers tend to focus on plots in month increments (as that's how often we make AC)- not 6 months to a year. So what seems like a short amount of time to you guys from your 6-month to a year perspective? Seems like an eternity to us players.

Also another idea is maybe re-examining August/September's plans to see if there's any possible way to push apps reopening to an earlier date- since I feel that'd help. Though I fully admit I don't know if that's feasible or not.

[complementing]

+1 to all of this, especially everything in relation to the hype and pacing leading up to August.

[recollecters]

Hi Rayne! Thanks for the comment; in order to streamline everything and address all points that you and others share, I've written up an HMD address that I hope answers all of these. Please let me know if there are questions still unanswered, and we truly appreciate the feedback!

[loudmouths]

i'm commenting here to +1 this crit! i p much agree with everything you've laid out. i also was under the impression that the game's second year would be getting darker. at first, with the feb plot, i saw shades of that. there was murder and death and some consequences with the heart stones, but... now those areas are kinda just optional spots. there's no real motivation to pursue them outside of "this is a retrospec mission and doing it helps or something." i don't get the feeling that those areas really affect much in the city, as the city itself is still randomly under the effects of... kinda bizarre events. going from the violence of monsters and risk of death in the february event to basically Business as Usual in the city was odd. i do get that there had to be a break period after february, just due to how intensive that event was. that's fine! but it's july now and it still kinda feels like we're on a break, in a way...

so, to address the mods specifically: i do get why apps were closed for this particular event, since it'd be hard for new characters to get involved in all the changes when... they weren't there to experience what it was like beforehand. but closing them for the entire season until fall seems odd to me when there's nothing explicitly heavy or intense going on. i thought maybe the plot was gonna get super heavy and dark and not as accessible to newcomers, but so far it's just been painting and AU changes and random missions. those things are fine, but they're also not particularly dark or heavy. don't get me wrong, i LOVE the chance to change my AU for keigo; it's something i even considered dropping and reapping to do. but the issue i have specifically isn't with those events, it's just the tone set-up doesn't match what was offered.

however, one of the things i definitely noticed was what yuff pointed out: the dreamsharing is just october's nightmare event again. i honestly struggled to think of things to even write up regarding memory/dreamsharing bc i pretty much went over the spots i wanted to hit in october. revisiting that is doable, i guess, but it got to be pretty difficult to figure out where to go from there on a temporary basis. i think reintroducing dream/memory sharing concept is great, but i think it would work better if it was like a... constant option, so to speak? rather than a temp event. a side effect of something bigger, perhaps, that we're free to mess with as needed.

alternatively, if you wanted to introduce the dreamsharing as a sequel to the nightmare event from october as a one-off rather than a persistent effect, that'd be fine if it had a deeper catch to it. such as: people sleepwalking/in a trance throughout the day the longer they go without intervention in their dreams/memories... finding it harder and harder to wake up until dreamsharing is successful... something that puts a darker spin on the overall event instead of it just basically being a projector or slideshow of someone's experiences. that's hard enough to really work with, so having a bigger consequence and more weight to it would help make creative juices flow, i think.

one could say that this event was meant for people who weren't here in october to experience it, which is fine, but if that's the case, maybe tweaking it a bit so us veterans have something more to work with would have helped. maybe reintroducing the characters' tenure badges that were displayed on their retrospec IDs ("[x] amount of months on retrospec," anyone else remember those?) and have that come into play regarding characters who have a grip on what retrospec and the city are about vs newer participants. maybe characters who have been in the game for several months to a year experience slightly different/warped versions of events vs the "standard" version for those just joining us, for example.

but my main critique is basically... i don't feel like the plot is going anywhere. it felt like it might be headed somewhere after february, but it's july and it still feels the same as it did last year, tonally. that's fine, tbh, i would have no real issue with the game progressing gradually as a "weird monthly events and character relations/interactions returning people to their former selves" type deal. but as yuff said, there was a sort of expectation that the plot would get darker for year 2. it's over halfway through 2018 and it doesn't feel any darker. i don't need the game to suddenly take a nosedive into grimdark territory for that expectation to be satisfied, but i guess the main takeaway here is that ... well, i don't really know how to say it without sounding patronizing, so bear with me: in the future, consider how feasible your plans are before attaching expectation to them. i get that planning out an ENTIRE YEAR PLOT in advance is... not realistic all of the time, especially down to specific details. but i guess if things need to change or the darker tones need to be pushed back for whatever reason, just make it known! i personally don't give a crap what mods do outside of modding, so long as changes in plans are made known in advance. just a simple "hey guys, due to [whatever reason] we're gonna have to push back some of the darker elements we had planned" is really all i (or anyone else) should need. it might be disappointing at first, but at least it's not a case of "is this what they meant by darker?"


ANYWAY sorry for that massive tl;dr. i really do enjoy this game a lot and the concept has been fun to play with! i mean, obviously, since i'm still here over a year later... BUT YES i want the game to succeed and keep going until it gets a proper end! there are a lot of great ideas involved, but i think the solution is just a cohesiveness that needs to be achieved for things to flow together better! i really appreciate all the work you guys do and thanks for listening!

[recollecters]

Hey Ash! Thanks for the comment; in order to streamline everything and address all points that you and others share, I've written up an HMD address that I hope answers all of these. Please let me know if there are questions still unanswered, and we truly appreciate the feedback!

[recollecters]

Hey Yuff! Thanks for the comment; in order to streamline everything and address all points that you and others share, I've written up an HMD address that I hope answers all of these. Please let me know if there are questions still unanswered, and we truly appreciate the feedback!