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

[eyestitch]

Thanks for your response to previous comments, Ty! I think there was a lot of good feedback there and I think you're doing a good job working through all of those ideas. Like many others, I had a ton of fun with the AU revamp opportunity this month afforded us, and I agree that there's a lot of interesting stuff and creative ideas in the events we have in general, even if they don't always work out.

While I agree with many of the concerns voiced, there's one thing I think I'd like to go into more detail that might be worth thinking about. In short, I think there isn't quite enough ground being gained to sustain interest in a game of this size with an overarching plot that so significantly affects characters lives. That isn't to say that, like, everything needs to go turbo and all the answers must be revealed now!! and all consequences must be permanent!! I just think maybe about a 10-15% increase on things having a meatier weight/feeling more consequential/being permanently affected or altered could go a huge way. Whether it's a good consequence that befalls the player characters or not, I think the speed at which developments happen and the information characters have context for or access to could be bumped up a bit.

For example, I think the disappearance of the world's NPCs could have been a huge moment for growth and an attempt for the characters to find self-sufficiency...but I think it sort of got blown over as something that could be fixed "quickly" by doing tasks, which took away some of the emotional urgency. In general, I think the go-to response for veteran players has been a sort of sad Charlie Brown trombone noise of "oh, that wacky Restrospec did it again/that wacky external force caused problems again/we're being given non-info again!" because things are resolved fairly quickly but with few substantial consequences. And with veteran characters well outnumbering new characters and many of them being very vocal w/ their Retrospec distaste, the new characters take on that attitude pretty quickly.

Similarly, I've noticed that Retrospec posts are getting much harder to respond to, possibly because characters haven't been given many new bargaining chips or meat for discussion to make them feel plot-relevant or like, game-oriented.

The way I see it, there's a huge spectrum of ways events in a game like this can go, starting on the end of "lighthearted" and ending on "grimdark." I think people might be craving something a little further down the spectrum; as some people have said, some of the serious consequences of past events seem to have gotten downplayed in light of the fluffier options, and I wonder if we need a gentle nudge to be slightly more serious...without the game turning into debbie downer simulator. Basically, I guess, some impetus to take things more seriously without

I know that spreading information to players has to be a nightmare from a mod perspective. Dump it via NPC and it looks like an exposition bomb. Give it to players and hope they announce it to the player base and put the pieces together...it's such a tough balance! I did have a random idea for a way an event that's designed to give player characters more substantial info might go, which I'm happy to contact you all separately about if you're interested or thinking about running one, but I don't want to impose, either!

I hope this sort of made sense, and thanks for opening yourselves up to comments!

[recollecters]

Hi Shay! I will be the first to agree that there was a lot of good feedback from the playerbase and I'm eternally grateful. I've been aware that the game's been a little touch and go in the last couple of months but really hadn't noticed how off the mark it was going until I stepped back to review it myself and read everyone's comments. Mostly I really appreciate everyone who's taking time to reply, so thank you as well for reaching out!

I'm going to go ahead and address most of this in a bullet kind of format since you've brought up a lot of good points that I feel deserve to be addressed.

-You're not wrong, and it's something I've noticed as well. As mentioned in the reply addressing everyone, for example we had something else planned for July but as a team felt that adding it in addition to the new AUs might have been too turbo and too much, but I think moderation can be met.

When we started plotting the summer arc, the intention was more of "hey let's not really self-contain events so much and have them tie in to things together and let their impact change things" and that mark was definitely missed. There are elements I'd like to bring back and things that I'd like to have impacting the game itself. Permanent changes gradually coming into effect, things being taken away permanently, etc. Execution is one of the things that needs work from me as a plot mod and I'm hoping with August leading into September things will level out and improvements will be seen.

-re: Retrospec, that's. Also 100% on me because of the way I write that specific NPC and I can see how it's stagnant and boring to reply to. My apologies for that! There's game lore that's ICly not even known to that particular NPC but in the upcoming months we're going to work on tailoring the Retrospec posts to be different. While we can't guarantee they will be plot dumps or anything of the sort, we acknowledge they should be a little easier to reply to.

-If anything, the failure to spread information is also a flaw of my own in that the way we're providing plot information may not always be clear, it's not something people feel they can share, any number of reasons! Initially, we did not plan to have a very hands-on NPC situation when the game started and with the Retrospec liaison we've been trying to find the best balance to keep players engaged in learning more about the meta and sharing it with the game at-large.

-"Basically, I guess, some impetus to take things more seriously without " I think this sentence may have been cut off or changed? But regardless you're right and it's what I hope August will be as we roll into September.

-As mentioned in the reply to the game at large, a "how's the game/what do you want from the game" post seems like something players and mods may benefit from and with that said we would be happy to hear player input! You're definitely free to either hit us on the mod contact or shoot us a PM that we can all look at.

Overall, player input is the most important thing and we want to be able to keep an open channel for players to tell us "hey, this is definitely not working, can we try something else?", so please never feel like it's imposing! Some ideas we will turn down simply because they don't fit our overall vision of the game! Some ideas we will take on and not change a thing because they're great and something we support! And some ideas we might take and massage a little to find a happy medium. Either way, we're here to work with you guys and provide a game that keeps everyone engaged and satisfied.

If you have anything else you'd like to discuss, if the above got jumbled because I rambled a lot or if you just want to chat further please don't hesitate to shoot us a message. Like I said above I really do appreciate you taking the time to lay out these points especially as they're something else to consider and things for us to adjust.

[eyestitch]

Thanks for your response, Ty! If I think of additional things to respond to here, I'll definitely come back, but I'll take some time to think it over!

But I do wanna say re: that incomplete sentence, I originally wrote something stupid and redundant like "Basically, I guess, some impetus to take things more seriously without forcing 'serious' to mean 'bleak' for everyone." I think I intended to reword it to something less goofy sounding or just cut it back to end before the "without." My bad!