recollecters: (Default)
Recollé Mods ([personal profile] recollecters) wrote in [community profile] recallings2018-03-04 06:03 pm

FEBRUARY FEEDBACK;

Hello everyone! 🦄 As promised, we're here with a feedback post for February's event and we'd like to chat with the player base about how everything went down, see what worked and what didn't.

We learned a lot after August's event and we took several steps to try and help fix a lot of the errors that came from the summer plot to ensure they didn't occur for February. We wanted to make this particular event as fun and stress-free as possible. However, there are a handful of things the mod team themselves noticed while running this event that may have flagged concerns for you guys as well.

💠 Team Assignments We realize that some of you were moved to teams outside of what you requested in order to make things fair number-wise, but we also realize that the group sizes were quite large and may have made planning objectives a bit difficult.

💠 Objectives. The pacing of some of the objectives may have been slower in some places than others with some players finishing assignments sooner than others in their objective sub-groups. In the future if we do something like this again, we will have secondary objectives ready to roll out for those players who wish to have something additional to do.

💠 Assignments. The mod team recognizes that there was a bit of a delay in some weeks when it came to handing out assignments and sub-objective write-ups per group. While there were several outlined objectives prepared, the delay came from assigning all four groups several objectives all at once while mildly customizing objectives based on who was in what sub-group.

In the future if we do something like this again, we may alternate so that one pair of groups gets their assignment info first and then the other group gets theirs slightly later to balance and improve the turn-around time. Alternatively, we may put a cap on the amount of people who may sign up for a plot in order for the mod assignments to be more manageable based on numbers!


Those are the main things we noticed ourselves and we'd like to open comments to you guys to discuss what you liked, what you didn't like, what worked, what didn't work! Specifically, we are interested in any comparisons some of you may have based on August's event in comparison to this one! While we may not answer every single comment individually, we are planning to read everything and take the feedback into account for going forward in the game.

In addition, we will have a comment in general for plot feedback as a whole for past events and etc! In this comment, you can leave us your opinion on past events and what sort of events you'd like to see in the future. Our goal is to make this game fun and dynamic for you guys and the only way we can only do that is by taking feedback.

Finally, now that February is over, please be sure to check out the new assignment board, the revised world regains page, and as always the NPC inbox is wide open.

We appreciate you guys and for coming along on this wild adventure with us. Thank you so much for your time and attention!
standalonehuman: (TogusaSmile)

[personal profile] standalonehuman 2018-03-05 02:14 am (UTC)(link)
I loved this event. I had been banking on the thought that if we succeeded that these places would become permanent game locations, and I thought it was the best reward at the end. I was really motivated to do things with Pesgare in the hope that it would have a long-term effect, and it really feels like we did. Having that kind of an impact on the setting was the best part of this event. The four places were incredibly unique and different from each other, and I look forward to exploring them all more outside of this.

I liked the outlines that the mods provided for objectives, so it didn't feel like we had to ask you for more information, or for the results of every action, so we weren't taking up your time. In August, it felt like we needed more supervision, and I'm glad that we could be out of your hair more this time.

The event section within the city was great, and I liked how it tied into the out-of-city objectives.

Finally, the emotion bonds allowed for some really neat RP, and it was a good way to get at least one guaranteed piece of CR within the event groups, I really appreciated that.

Overall, 10/10!
godcards: (Default)

[personal profile] godcards 2018-03-05 02:26 am (UTC)(link)
The things I wanted to say have already been noted, so I'll keep this short and sweet with the one thing in particular that I think could be tweaked:


The all or nothing rewards for the exploratory group seem unbalanced in comparison to the city group. The city group needed a minimum of 15 comments for a freebie, which hey, that seems reasonable to me, but then with the exploratory groups it was the all or nothing rewards with a 30 comment minimum, which is a lot hard to achieve when you're threading with three other people. I'd propose to have a lower minimum (like 15 comments) to get one regain as well, regardless of group. How you want to split that across threads isn't such a big deal, but the vastly different minimum requirements seemed odd to me. While I appreciated the bigger reward for 30 comment requirement, a lot of people in my group didn't reach it. It's kind of disheartening to be like, five comments off and feel like your contributions to the event mean nothing. Even with players being contacted after the event wrapped, going into future events with a fairly standard minimum seems reasonable and fair, and if there's an intensive group (like the exploring groups) they could have an additional, higher requirement for more rewards. Just not 'all or nothing.'

Overall, I did love the concept of the event and I appreicate the work put into it! I know this isn't going to be 100% smooth sailing but I mean, I'll definitely be participating in future events.
godcards: (11.)

[personal profile] godcards 2018-03-05 02:57 am (UTC)(link)
Hey, that seems pretty reasonable. I think it's great how you're willing to be flexible and to work with the player base! Thanks for being an understanding mod team and for the hard work you put forth.

[personal profile] compendiem 2018-03-05 03:03 am (UTC)(link)
(group 3)

February's event did run a lot smoother than August's, and I'm super pleased with how all the kinks were worked out in regards to the objectives so that there was a lot less hand-holding overall! (Though Ty was also in our group, so having her on Discord for small, quick questions/clarifications might skew my personal perspective on this)

Having sub-objectives was something that was also on my mind, so I'm glad it was brought up above! I know that I'm a fast tagger and during the first three weeks of February, I also had very large chunks of time to sit down and boomerang threads, so I admit to being a little bored compared to how August's was. I did juggle two event groups in August, but I still think it was a bit slow for me. Maybe because there were ~double the amount of people in each group? So that the number of tasks were about the same, but (maybe this is just how our group split things up and other groups did it differently) for the most part, we had 3-4 character groups and that alone made things a little slow. In August (city, Cognac specifically) I remember each week I would have multiple threads with different people to complete tasks (both objectives and sub-objectives) so that was good for keeping me busy but also for getting to thread with lots of different people each week. In February, I tagged out as much as I could in travel/downtime threads and also topleveled, and even after that, my character did not manage to interact with half the group. Not a huge deal, but it was potential for cr which I'm always greedy for and I was a little disappointed I couldn't do more with everybody. Having so many people in the group also made the Discord overwhelming (my personal problem, maybe, I know I'm easily overwhelmed and thus stopped popping in after a while unless there was something I wanted to discuss). Otherwise, I think our group organized everything well— thanks, Ty!♥— it was just... a lot, for me, personally. I like smaller groups, because they feel easier to get to know each other both ICly and OOCly, which is what Cognac felt for me over the summer. But I know that splitting everybody up into smaller but more numerous groups is a lot more work to mod, so the change in structure this time around was good on that front. One thought I toyed with was having the same 4 groups, but splitting each location in half so that Team A and Team B get essentially the same objectives and everything, maybe customized a little depending on the characters, but OOCly they'd work independently and maybe that might be easier to coordinate. idk!! I'm just spitballing here.

Overall, it was a very fun event! The heart stone and partner link(!!!!!!) mechanics were A++++++ and I absolutely love and appreciate all of the "actions have consequences" in terms of how everything we did affects our characters and the game as a whole, rather than how August seemed a little more like just going somewhere and bringing back info. Thanks for a great time♥


EDITS THIS IN!!! another thing I really appreciated was allowing for communication between groups and the city this time- I know that August's was a special case, but having communication open and also the one break day kept my cr together and I'm really thankful for that.
Edited 2018-03-05 03:08 (UTC)
openhanded: (animated) (☆take me there)

[personal profile] openhanded 2018-03-05 03:42 am (UTC)(link)
Hello mods! First things first: thank you SO MUCH for this plot! I'm sure putting together this event felt a bit like a trust fall, but I think you blew it out of the water. Seeing as I was in the August plot, too, I figured I should throw in my two cents.

It was an improvement on every level! I liked the open communication between the city and the groups, as was noted above, so it didn't feel like we were isolated or being railroaded into this one thing. I liked having less pressure (to an extent); I was in Group 2 this time around, and the attitude was a complete shift from being in Team Brandywine last time. We were able to joke around and have fun and make shitposts rather than constantly worrying about deadlines. I also liked having an NPC who seemed like he actually... cared? While I love me some cyborg Morgan Freeman, I felt like our opportunities to interact with August's NPCs, despite working for them, was really limited. I won't beat a dead horse here, but that was part of why Team Brandywine brought nothing to the table after August's event-- and that was telling.

I liked not needing to have my hand held in order to advance a thread, and the quirks in the event were charming and fun. I felt like it was super exciting to see what everyone else was doing because everything felt somewhat personalized. I also felt like the paces given were true to what I signed up for.

I also love love LOVE the introduction of the quest system. So far the next phase of the game is going exactly how I hoped it would! I've been in two previous games with quest systems and I absolutely adore them, whether they give fancy rewards or not. It's just... cool to have something for my character to work toward.

Here are the things that stuck out to me, that weren't quite what I expected and could maybe use some tweaking:

  • Objective deadlines. Up until the event started I was under the impression that we had the entire month to finish all three objectives, when in reality, we had an uneven number of days for each one. The 'get the bulk of it done' criteria is what I'm talking about. We ended up having to rush Objective 2, for example, in four days-- most of which was during a work week. It was a bit stressful which wasn't as fun. I'm fine with only having so and so many days to meet the bulk of the objective deadline, but I would like to have more than four days next time, and at least be told 'oh yeah in the middle of the month you're gonna want to have 2 objectives done'. This was sprung on us fairly suddenly.

  • Objective thread counts. This one you've heard already. 30 was really steep for people in 3-4 person threads. Our first objective was finished within 5 turns, which meant I had to squeeze the other 25 in somewhere across the month-- and considering we were rushing that second objective, none of us could afford to fluff it up a bit until after everything else was finished. It looks like you tweaked the rewards for the lower tiers, which is a really great thing! But I still think lowering the comment count, especially for the slower groups, would be a better move next time.

  • Group sizes. This will require more work, so I understand if you just toss that out the window, but I think the group sizes should have been slightly smaller. I think the 1-4 pace guide was great, but splitting some of the bigger groups in half and then keeping the same pace would have been easier for some. So instead of having group 1, 2, 3, 4 etc you could have group 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b... you see what I'm getting at. I don't think it'd be necessary for every group (oh god, the DND style objectives) but it would probably help with my second point about objective comment counts. My comment count for August (which had a much smaller group) versus this month was more than twice as much, and I think having the bigger subgroups was part of it.

    I think that's about it. Overall I'd say I'm very happy with February's event, and despite my wall of text here all my suggestions are very minor things. You guys really do listen and take our suggestions in consideration. I'm really excited to see what the next year brings!♥
  • Edited 2018-03-05 03:43 (UTC)
    openhanded: (animated) (☆it's nothing to cry about)

    [personal profile] openhanded 2018-03-06 03:58 am (UTC)(link)
    Thanks for responding-- I certainly didn't expect it!

    I'm glad that you're flexible enough to change with the game. That's a really important part of modding, I've discovered. You don't necessarily have to implement every suggestion, but it's good that you recognize the shifting needs of the playerbase.

    - Adding onto the first point, my subgroup didn't get our objective to start until late Saturday night. So that's probably part of why it felt rushed. Some of that was on us as we waited until Saturday morning to finalize everything (not wanting to leave people out), but regardless, it's all stuff that you've acknowledged, so I don't expect to have that happen again. And we'll be prepared if it does, I hope!

    - I'd be fine with a character cap on big events! I understand that splitting groups is freaking insane so I won't be disappointed if it's something that never gets implemented. That's a LOT of extra modwork and it may just be easier to lean on the quest system in the future. That said, there's probably a few people in the game who would be happy to play 'plot fairy' and NPC/run small parts of plots, if you asked. (I'd volunteer if I wasn't dying at work.)

    Thank you for listening!
    nachetanya: (Rantasmo)

    [personal profile] nachetanya 2018-03-05 05:59 am (UTC)(link)
    Okay so this is almost entirely structural, with me having said a lot of my piece on the positives I saw in this event and going forward in Ty's recent plurk, so I've opted to not repeat myself a lot with the praises here? So uh, if people read this after the fact and it comes off rude that's my bad. In essence, I think:
    + Zee is a great success
    + the world expansion in this event was great and incredibly well defined
    + I'm looking forward to this next leg of the game a lot
    + The material of the endgame of the quests was awesome.

    So I'm going to identify what I see as a few structural issues that I think will be mollified just from how "phase 2" here looks like it's going to be, but I think are nontheless worth mentioning:

    Objective delays and Objective fatigue ... This is going to come off a little strange because I think on the whole (for group 4) Objective 3 was the best one in terms of giving creative individualized arcs which demanded the whole DMing style approach which was done with this event. But he's the skinny: at least for myself I know by then I was starting to get a bit more burnt out on the event and the the whole objective oriented rigamaroll of consulting with the mods to sort of OOCly hash things out (especially with delays in responses in objective 2 and early objective 3). I get the necessity of it, again, and I do think it made for a stronger more personalized experience. But coupled perhaps with group sizes (though we in group 4 at least largely were in groups of 3 which helped a lot) I'm sort of led to question...

    For out Objectives 1 and 2, while the individualization was nice, might it have been both easier on the mod workload and on the players if there was a looser objective definition and sort of a list of possible prompts for people to pick from and run with. Like the whole matter of us being tested by the wolf in objective 2, I did find myself sometimes thinking that a list of trials outright might've made that whole thing cleaner on both sides for organizing rather than waiting on the individual prompts. A lot of objective 1 probably similarly could have been identified with set dressing details and then perhaps people probing for slightly more specific things.

    I'm not precisely sure I'd want to change it to that more broad style, mind, but if it would help with things being gummed up and (perhaps just as pressingly) the fact that while the event was presented as being loose deadlines there did end up being somewhat hard week-ish deadlines if that might have helped.

    But honestly all of that sort of comes together as I say: the whole 1 straight month of intense plot-event every six months model is a little exhausting? Like August way more than this event but a little here, I wonder if perhaps splitting it into a three month timetable for slightly less earth shaking but still plot relevant events might be better on both ends for planning for for lessening a sense of overwhelming fatigue by the end of things? I think this will be abated somewhat by the mission system though, so it might not be ass pressing later on. But it's a thought I know I was having by the end of it.

    Plus, if they were more frequent than six months (and again, I can get where there might be hesitance for this so don't take it as gospel) it might be possible to implement caps on sizes for certain groups which are considered more plot relevant or laser focused for the DM-style stuff.

    Oh actually though one more thing, I appreciated a lot how much there was to do on the homefront and with the ability to contact people out in the signed up for stuff. I think I had as much fun with Natalia and the prompts there without it feeling trivial. Which is a really, really nice feeling. I don't think I mentioned that which is honestly cool.
    Edited 2018-03-05 20:10 (UTC)
    lalliho: (everything will be okay)

    [personal profile] lalliho 2018-03-06 12:53 am (UTC)(link)
    All of my other thoughts have already been touched on in other responses, so I'll just go ahead and go with my minor nitpick... It didn't crop up all that often and working around it was eventually fine (and I am aware that other groups with this kind of objective didn't have this same issue, at least vocally, so it's entirely possible I'm alone in thinking this, BUT), having objective-relevant information being handled by NPCs that are being played by PCs who already know the information and thus have nothing else to really...do...in a constructive manner...felt kind of redundant to me. It more felt like I was given busywork, since to accomplish the "task" set to the initial group, all we had to do was parrot back a mod comment to each other after we all already read it.

    I realize that in this situation it just wasn't feasible to work around given the amount of work stretching y'all thin already, but in the future, I personally feel that it would be best that if there is information that must be conveyed by an NPC, there should probably be a proper NPC available to convey it, rather than this weird echo chamber thing I had an issue getting past. That way PCs can organically react to what's given to them, rather than a handful of players absorbing it on an ooc level first, then trying to work out a way to write this secondary character that must pass along certain information to the other players that also already absorbed that information.