Recollé Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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repeter2018-07-08 09:24 am
recollecters) wrote in repeter2018-07-08 09:24 am
Entry tags:
HMD
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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. |
AN ADDRESS TO THE ABOVE;
First of all, thank you so much for bringing these things to my attention. I cannot go forward with fixing the plot or making the game into something greater and we as a team cannot go forward working together to flesh out ideas without knowing where players are at, so I appreciate hearing the feedback! I’m going to address my thoughts on these manners as well, so please bear with me as this comment is probably going to grow very lengthy.
First of all, I agree! I 100% agree that currently this plot feels like it’s not really going anywhere and I would personally like to bring back more plot elements instead of gimmicks or character growth options being a large majority of what’s going on in these months. However, I will also say as a mod team we are working on finding a balance between events like August/February and what's going on now. When initially in its planning phases, there were reasons behind how this plot arc is going which will be addressed below.
Ultimately my goal for the summer months was to ICly have characters go back to their roots, understand the foundation and parts of what Recollé itself is about (with the layers theory, how things are manipulated in the city, what things are happening to the characters themselves, etc) and also work to strengthen their CR and the foundation on which they’re playing. The last few events (May and June specifically) were meant to emphasize teamwork and CR building; it’s why they were “work together to repaint and bring things back to existence” or “work together to complete these tasks!”
The reason this was structured this way was to have a base of CR and IC support for more intensive events, especially our newer characters who apped in prior to this arc. The dream event right now is a lead-up to August and how permanent consequences will come into play. The main intention was to give players a chance to see how different events impact other characters and an alteration of how things are perceived.
Anyway there’s a lot I could say but the bottom line is that in hindsight, I’m pretty unhappy with how I structured these, too! I really don’t like what I’ve created, and for that, I apologize. I have hopes about August at least to re-steer the game in the direction that was originally planned in May and the overall tone of Phase 2, but all of these points are very valid from a player standpoint. As a mod, I had the above ideas and intentions, and I can see exactly why you guys are coming to me with these points.
Planning has been scrapped past August sans what’s planned for October. As the main plotmod, I’d like to re-evaluate what it is the playerbase is after and for that I’m thinking I would like to toss up a generalized “state of the game/what would you like out of the game” post for everyone to lay out ideas or goals they have in the game! Recollé as a whole was created with the frame of mind to have an underlying plot and mystery but at the end of the day it’s a game that we want you guys to be able to create your own versions of characters you love and get fun, amazing experiences out of them.
There are certain elements I’d like to go back to plot-wise for permanent changes, and there are permanent changes we are assessing and working with both mod-side and player-side that we hope will give players a direction and things to react to.
Going back to the painting the town plot, I fully acknowledge and respect that the opinion is that this fell flat and all I can really do on my end is apologize and strive to do better with actually creating events that aren’t self-contained.
Regarding the dream events, we had something more planned for July but as a team felt that playing with that in addition to working with new AUs might have been too busy so we are adding it into August! However, going forward I will be working on pacing in terms of plot elements and things for players to do.
I can acknowledge my own shortcomings and I really appreciate you guys coming to me with mentions of the pacing issues! Even as a player in the game, I definitely can see where my planning as a plot mod versus playing in the game versus you guys playing with what’s written are three very different things. Recollé has had pacing issues in the past, and I will be the first to acknowledge that’s on me and something I am trying to overcome while writing the game to be the best it can be. This summer we’ve tried a handful of things to help maximize the exploration and personal trajectory of characters (teamwork events, events that allow opportunities for open prompts rather than the same prompts 1-5 being recycled and tweaked per person, an attempt at a variety of ways to play with the setting (the four regions, quests, tasks, etc.)) but looking at it I can see that was definitely an oversight on my part how fun this would be for players, and for that I also apologize. The goal was to make the game easier to connect with each other by not having locked-in reactions and prompts, but instead I think I made it harder which isn’t fair.
Regarding this month’s event! Generally speaking the intention was to play around with the new AU during “waking hours” and the old AU/canon memories during “sleeping hours.” Again, looking at it from a player perspective I can see how this wasn’t clear and I apologize for that. August’s event will be utilizing the new AU further, along with the dreamscape, and the layer theory to tie all of these elements together.
Popping back up to one of the other comments, if the game would prefer to re-open apps at the end of August rather than September, this may be perfectly feasible! The main concern mod-side and player-side is that by going on a bi-monthly schedule, we run into what we ran into last year. Apps open in August, apps open in October, and apps open in the last week of December when a large majority of players and the mod team will be busy with holiday obligations, etc. A potential solution would be doing back to back app rounds October and November like we did last year as well. One of the other things would be that a TDM would be occurring in August, therefore running right into the middle of August’s event which is a carry-over and part two of July’s event. However, if that is something the playerbase would like, we will float the idea and work with it.
A personal apology to Len, as we do acknowledge that June’s event could have greatly clashed with your player plot. This was oversight on our part in gauging an estimate of the pacing of players playing with the elements and bringing back NPCs in waves.
Popping up to another comment! We realize that June was especially rocky with regards to mod responses and turnarounds and we apologize. I’m going to mostly address things based on my own personal ongoings and such.
The murdergame wasn’t something I felt the need to personally address at the time of its conception as the Recollé mod team decided on the summer line-up + discussions of closing apps prior to that and I joined the murdergame modteam a short time after that game started its inception. Looking back at it now, we should have just even made a mention of the potential of apps closing back when we were thinking about it rather than an abrupt announcement in May and for that I apologize as well. In addition, we as a team did not address this at the time as I am the only mod helping to mod the game and also the three of us had played in a short-term game before back during August’s event. I’ve brought up the murdergame in a handful of my plurks in passing on my regular timeline but I’ve moved most of my short-term game stuff to a separate account solely so my personal timeline wasn’t cluttered with mod-things from the second game (as a lot of PPs are sent during short-term games) and I could have a distinct separation for the two of them. It wasn’t meant to be so much a secret as it was something I did not feel warranted an announcement to Recollé as a whole as it was a game run on the side privately with three other mods. At the time of agreeing to be a part of the mod team for the short-term game, my schedule was clear enough to be able to upkeep mod duties in both games in addition to playing in my games which is another reason this was not brought up. I can see how not knowing the details would make this look unfair and poorly reflected upon by the playerbase, however, and I apologize for that as well. It wasn't necessarily meant to be a secret, but rather something that was more contained and manageable in addition to running Recollé as well. While we did ask our players we invited (a mixture of four mods' friends lists) to keep chatter to a minimum until the game's start, it was with the intention of keeping the game at a controlled size we could maintain rather than secrecy of its existence entirely.
Things I didn’t anticipate were real-life happenstances with my work schedule that meant being on a computer working on projects for long, extended periods of time in addition to our busy season starting two months early (May) and working overtime hours. I will admit that there was a period of time in which things were slower on my end due to attending modwork post-work which led to some sloppy work. Quests from last month were delayed due to this as well, as I personally did not want to hand out sloppy, half-assed quests and I reached out to the quest requesters after time had passed to notate the situation. (I’m mostly emphasizing “I personally” as I’m the mod behind quest-writing and I don’t want my own mistakes being pinned on the other mods.) Things we as a team didn’t anticipate as well were real-life happenings for the other mods as well that led to internet outages, being bound to mobile internet, health issues and being on erratic, different schedules in which it was harder to pin us down simultaneously to answer questions or get second opinions.
Moving forward we have a better system in place to keep these things running smoothly in the upcoming months, and we apologize for the delays and bumps over the last months.
Anyway! I hope I’ve addressed everything that you guys have brought up! I’ve read these comments repeatedly to try and ensure everything is touched upon but please let me know if there’s something I’ve accidentally missed. Alternatively, if you would like to talk to me personally knowing now that a large portion of this is on me, please feel free to message me via plurk (
Thank you guys very much for all of this, and I hope we can all work together going forward to make the game fleshed out to its full potential and deliver on what we’ve promised and have been slow on delivering. Edit: I left out another thought, whoops. You guys have been a fantastic playerbase and I'm glad to hear there are still parts of all of this you like even with all of these shortcomings! We'll do our best moving forward to work with this crit, address things going forward, and make sure we all find a happy medium with everything. Thank you again!
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I do have a couple points I want to bring up in response to this. I'm not going to address everything because either I don't think it was addressed to me or I don't have a particular issue. so if there's something I don't cover, assume I'm either fine or I just don't have a strong opinion on that issue.
I do really appreciate the apology though!, and I swear I'm not planning to keep bringing up Grimm. I mostly wanted acknowledge it as a factor in what's been causing discontent among players instead of treating it like an elephant in the room.
Year 1/Phase 1 of Recolle was very much the linear style. We had set prompts of what we were supposed to do, and while they were never quite mandatory, there wasn't a whole lot to do if you wanted to do something different other than continue slice of life stuff. August 2017 was a strong example of that. Sure, technically the groups were voluntary groups if you were in the city- but as anyone who opted out can tell you, there was not much for them to do if they weren't in a group. That's about as linear as you can get.
Year 2/Phase 2(?) feels like meanwhile like it's trying to be Open World, but it's not quite making the mark. There's still a heavy emphasis on following the main plot (like in June with the bingo, or May with the painting) - but now with the Open World element the prompts are much vaguer and the event log has gotten pretty bloated with all the stuff available for characters to do. A lot of players feel overwhelmed and aren't sure what to do. And it really doesn't help that the monthly plotting post the past several months has been super vague while the event post has all the details, so there's reluctance to plot out stuff in the plotting post as it might get messed up by the event log.
My big advice is that if you want to do more open world format, I'd recommend rehauling how you do the Plotting Post vs. the Event Log. As in, in the plotting post itself I'd put down all the things that'll be happening for the month (like what's up in the regions, weird changes in town, etc). That way, people have all the information when they do monthly plotting. And then for the event log, I'd reduce the number of prompts in it, and maybe keep it to like...specific optional prompts that could be Retrospec-related missions (or something like that). At least, that's one way you can do it.
Anyway, thank you for addressing all of us. I really do appreciate it. I really do love this game, and I want it to do well for everyone.
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Re: apps + state of the game: I'll discuss this with the other mods and most likely we will put up a post/poll/etc about both of these items to see how the playerbase at large feels about them! The longer I think about it, I as a player would want a "how's the game" feedback post, too, outside of just a standard HMD but we will leave this to the playerbase. It's something to think about at least in regards to making this a scheduled thing as well. Maybe pair it with the HMD's schedule or such.
Re: the murder game: this is absolutely fair and I can definitely see what happened and where I failed to communicate my intentions. Overall I mostly just want to stress to the playerbase at large that Lucy and Megan were not involved in the decisions I made regarding Grimmoired and extend a further apology. Going forward if something like this becomes a thing again transparency will be the default option.
Re: pacing - This is also a very fair point and I'm going to pin this one on me again as the mod who's writing the event logs. I think for me, personally, my fear is that the plot posts would be overbloated with information and the event logs too barebones so it's really more about me specifically finding a better balance (since like…yeah, more information is good information.) These are good ideas and while I can't guarantee they will be used in this specific way, they are appreciated and give a very clear idea of what might be best for the game at large.
With that said, I'll strive to make August's event log more "here were the things you guys plotted on the plot post, but in addition if you want, here are some other things you can do with what you've already found out." The August plot post is going to be a bit unique compared to the last couple of posts as it'll require more information and detailing, but I hope to hit the mark this time.
In the end, all I can really say is thank you very much for taking the time to talk through the concerns and give us a clear idea of what we can do to improve going forward. Lucy, Megan and I really love the game and love seeing players have fun with it so we want to make sure we're doing everything possible to make sure it's fun and not frustrating.
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