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.
no subject
+ 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.