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]

First of all, thank you Ty for taking the time to read our comments and respond! More than anything else, I do want to convey that I'm grateful that you hear us and understand our issues- that alone makes me really appreciate having you as a mod as well as alleviate a lot of the stress/worries. So seriously, thank you for this.

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.

Re: Apps Reopening - I'd actually be really supportive of taking a comm poll to see how people feel about this! I know what my own opinions are (I'd be for opening them up August/September even if it makes a bit wonky down the road), but I'm only one player so I'd rather know what everyone else thinks. As for the TDM prompts being affected by August's event- personally I'm not too worried by this. I apped Elliot during last August cycle, and if anything that made his TDM way more memorable than Noah's (which was Feb 2017's TDM). Elliot's first ever day in Recolle was getting attacked by monsters, he's been traumatized by it to this very day it's great. But again, maybe other players disagree.

Re: Making a How's the Game post - This is something I'd also be really in favor of. I've been in other games that did this, and it's always been good. At the very least you tend to take away a few good ideas and a general sense of how players are doing. Also recommend doing it on a set schedule so it doesn't just come up during crisis mode time.

Re: the murder game - I should acknowledge this since I brought it up. I appreciate the clarification, and I do want to emphasize I'm not begrudging the existence of the murdergame. I will say I think telling players to keep it on the downlow until the game started isn't that different from keeping it a secret and it still produced the same result. As in, word eventually got out through the grapevine and people immediately jumped to the Worst Conclusions, as people do. It really didn't help that it came to light around the same time you guys announced Rec's apps were closing, mod responses were slower than usual, and the Recolle May plot was pretty lackluster. When you explain how it went down from your POV- yeah, all those incidents were separate unfortunate occurrences that were mostly unrelated to each other. But from the player perceptive - we didn't know what was going on, so it made a lot of people nervous/unhappy. That's all. There's nothing you can really do about it now, other than I guess remember in the future if there's another situation like this -- transparency is almost always the better option.

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.

Re: Pacing/Event Prompt Issues - Okay so this is where I get theoretical about stuff and I may be way off base. I feel like an issue with Year 2 and the prompts in the event post is that there seems to be a struggle between having a Linear Game vs an Open World Game for format.

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.

I am looking forward to August's plot! It's nice to hear the dreamscapes will have a lasting impact, and I'm looking forward to what happens. I don't have much to say here, but I'm staying optimistic!

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.

[recollecters]

Hi Yuff! I'll go back to responding individually since you did mention some things I'd like to discuss further as well, so thank you very much for further explaining/sharing! It absolutely helps to get further insight where I'm overlooking things as a plot mod and where we might be stumbling as a mod team as a whole.

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.

[fiddlestick]

I don't have much more to add other than this all sounds good! Thank you so much for listening to our concerns, being open to change, and working with us. I look forward to seeing how August plays out!

♥♥♥