POST-MISSION ASSESSMENT: WOODHURST

[futurologists]

announcement Hello, Audentes! Before we begin, we have a very important announcement about the future of the game. While we've had a lot of fun here on Dreamwidth, we've decided (after extensive discussion) that due to notification problems, the website going down, and various other factors, it isn't the proper venue for Futurology to really flourish. We realize this is sudden, but it's something we've felt the need to do for a long time now. Futurology is nearing one and a half years old, and it's now or never. We've looked at several different sites -- ProBoards, Tumblr, InsaneJournal, etc. -- but after a long deliberation period, we're happy to say we've finally decided on the new Futurology website! It's probably a little unexpected, but we're certain this will be far better for Futurology than Dreamwidth ever was. It's been reliably up and running since 1999 and has achieved wild popularity for its unique features, and we hope you'll be as excited as we are to embark on this new adventure with us. Without further ado, we'd like to announce our new venue: That's right! The beloved virtual pets website will be our RP's new home; welcome to Neopia, Audentes! To properly fit in with the new locale, we'd like to ask that every character be AUed into one of the existing Neopets species. All pets must be AUed in to Petpets. Due to the suddenness of this announcement, we will give you time to work on your AUs, create accounts, and get adjusted to the new website. The official move date is as of yet undecided, but the sooner the better! Get moving, Futurgooglies!

post-mission assessment ...Okay, we're totally kidding. Happy April 1st! Don't worry, guys -- we're still on Dreamwidth. You will have to AU your characters into Neopets for the upcoming mission, though. Just kidding again, we swear! Now, let's get down to business. With the completion of the Woodhurst mission, we'd like to once again open up a discussion on game observations. To view our previous post-mission assessment, click here. GAME UPDATES BONUS ACTIVITY: Threads used for Activity Check may now also be cashed in for bonus AC coins! STRIKES AND HIATUSES: A reminder that, as of February AC, strikes are now only given for extenuating circumstances and hiatuses must be made before the 15th of the month you intend to be exempt from. To re-read the original announcement, click here. ALASTAIR FILES: On February 16th, we released the ALASTAIR files, which can be ICly found on the magitek. Feel free to familiarize (or re-familiarize) yourselves with the lore and let us know what else you think would be helpful to include! HIATUS MISSIONS: Due to a high number of hiatus missions not being turned in, we'd like to remind you that it is required to send us an official write-up of your character's actions during the side mission. If we do not receive this, the mission will be retconned and you will not be able to sign up for another hiatus mission. Remember, we only require a short write-up, but we need an official record of what happened during the hiatus! If you do not think you'll have the time to do this, you can always place your character on an autopilot hiatus. TRANSLATIONS: We have been playing with the translation feature pretty fast and loose, so we are making some updates! Right now, as stated in the FAQ, all verbal languages are translated through magitek, with written language only being translated in Oska. Going forward, ALASTAIR technicians will upload language packs to characters' jewelcomms during their mission debriefing. This will allow them to read any native languages the technicians might expect them to encounter in mission worlds. (This will not affect characters who cannot read in the first place!) The FAQ has been updated to reflect this change. WOODHURST REVIEW SECRET SIGN-UPS: For this mission, we allowed people to sign up secretly for plot roles as infected characters. Did you guys like this? Would you enjoy seeing a mechanic like this used in a future mission, or would you prefer it not to be used? IN GENERAL: Did you like the mission? How was the tone and the pacing? What did you think about Audentes being undercover this time? Was there anything you would have changed about it? What did you like and dislike? ANYTHING ELSE COMMENTS/CONCERNS/SUGGESTIONS: If you have any comments, concerns, or suggestions regarding the game, feel free to bring them up here! MOD CONTACT: If you'd prefer a more private venue, you can always contact us on the Mod Contact post. BOUNTY/MISSION IDEAS: Specific bounty or mission ideas should be posted here so we can easily access them later on, as well as keep some of the mystery alive! Thanks, guys! As always, we look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Comments

[fintastic]

I'll just itemize my feedback here to make it a little easier to read!

Secret Sign-ups: Even though I didn't sign up neither of my characters, I really liked it! It was fun to have an air of mystery, and this mystery in particular was the kind that... yes, it might have derailed your plans a little, but in a good way? Suddenly "friendly bonding shopping trip" turns into "shopping trip except my friend is trying to eat me, help?" -- sorry if I'm wording this strangely! It just felt like it threw some nice curveballs, but they were like... softballs.

In general: I liked it! I think it... well, it felt shorter than some of the others, I don't know if it actually was or not, but I thinked that worked in its favor. There's only so much zombie smashing you can do! I think it felt well-paced. Being undercover was hard since I play two non-humans, both in trying to figure out how they would behave ICly, but also just in trying to remember that they appeared human to most people, so describing fins or horns wouldn't make sense. It didn't deter me from tagging at all, and I certainly wouldn't hate it if we did it again, though!

And the most important part, move plotting! Sounds like a good decision, RP in general survived the move from LJ to DW so I'm sure we can do this! I've already decided that Feferi will be AU'd into a Koi, and Undyne will become a Jetsam, while Dogberry will become a Puppyblew. I'm really excited for the next chapter of Futurology's story in this new setting!

[p66]

This is my first mission in Futuro and it's been a blast so far, thank you mods!

Seconding what's said up there for the secret sign ups, I like how versatile it made plotting so it's all good. I didn't take part in it myself but seeing other people plot it out is exciting to watch.

I do have one part for feedback though - in the hospital log, the RNG clue option was open for only two days (if I did my math correctly). This resulted in a rush for sign-ups and people who lived outside of the main playerbase's timezone had difficulty coordinating. I live on GMT +8 and my castmate lives twelve hours apart from me, so trying to coordinate between ourselves already has some time lag since one of us would go to sleep and then the other would wake up to reply to messages. This wouldn't really be an issue if it was individual sign ups but we were encouraged to form groups, which meant that people in the majority timezone had already formed their teams by the time people at the minority of timezones had the chance to read the post. I tried to coordinate with some others who were in other timezones but the nature of timezones themselves made it that we needed a full day for a single message-reply cycle, so it was very tight.

Could I suggest that next time RNG options be extended to longer than two days? This has been done for the following logs (with individual options) which I greatly appreciate, but I would like to ask it to be done for group CYOA especially.

Thank you!

[futurologists]

Hi! We received a similar comment on the February HMD, so we'll just reiterate what we said there!

"We feel as though 48 hours was a reasonable amount of time for players to quickly gather groups and decide which of the five locations they are searching, or, as you mentioned, they could have done it solo. We didn't feel as if extensive plotting was necessary to this RNG, as we didn't require detailed write-ups but rather just a sentence or so telling us who was searching where and what they were searching for.

This RNG sign-up was much more time-sensitive than the previous CYOA thread, so we made the decision to have the submission window be much shorter. Unfortunately, if we want to keep the plot rolling along at the pace we want, we can't always afford to leave sign-ups open for a week or more.

In the future, we will definitely continue to have have sign-ups with longer windows to make sure everyone gets a chance to participate in plot. However, it's likely we will also require shorter windows in the future, depending on what is necessary in terms of timing and plot progression. Thank you for your feedback! We appreciate hearing your thoughts and we will take them into account when planning for future RNGs."

If you have any further questions, let us know!

[ex_adept136]

Secret Sign-Ups: Likewise, I appreciate this feature being implemented! It seemed to work really smoothly, and as others have said that element of surprise was nice to see.

In General: For the most part, I had a good time with this plot and it was interesting. I was impressed by the way the final resolution with Percy was handled, and enjoyed how the bounty board tied into picking up clues and details about his identity and location. Overall it was easy to get involved with, and fun to participate in.

As for things I would suggest, this is more to do with the game itself — I'd like to recommend stepping up AC. Since we're a hard-cap of 80 with a queue that's been pretty consistently around 20 the past few months and we're in a plot-driven game, I feel it would make sense to raise the AC to something more along the "average" game expectation. According to dwrpsurvey, what players most like to see two proofs of 10 comments (action or network), which I think is fair.

Our local Peter/Graham pointed out for some characters this might be hard with network, so requiring three proofs of 7 or something of the like could be an alternative to this. It's come up in discussion with people I know in the recent past that with the requirements being so low, some characters are almost never seen, or barely engage the plot, so I wanted to come forward with this suggestion.

Outside of this, I'm pretty happy with the game as a whole and glad to be a part of the community. Thanks for another engaging mission!

[p66]

I'll +1 to the AC boost. I play a character who rarely engages in network but the mission-based nature of the game makes it very easy to start action threads so 7 action comments per thread is not hard to achieve. So maybe 7 action comment threads can count as a proof and two threads like that would fill AC.

[grunehexe]

Here to +1 on feeling like AC should be increased. Considering that our current AC is quite on the light side, the mission/plot heavy nature of the game, and the fact that our queue has prettily steadily been high the last few months, I think it's only fair as long as the character cap stays where it is.

Of the two examples of ways to up AC listed above, I prefer the three proof system. Asking for (3 x 5) 15 log/action comments or (3 x 7) 21 network comments per month still seems reasonable, and it has the added bonus of proof of interaction with more characters. Naturally, I think if people are busy they should totally be able to just take a hiatus if need be, but for those who don't.

However, I'd be glad with any increase in AC, no matter the form it took.

[figureitout]

I'm also +1-ing the AC boost, though I do have some points I disagree with here. I do think our AC is rather on the low side and it could use increasing, but boosting it to two threads of 10 comments, to me, feels like not the ideal solution: longer threads like that are often an advantage to those who can boomerang easily, which depends on work schedules, timezones, etc; and furthermore, sometimes threads wrap naturally around 5-6 tags, especially if we're talking about long action comments, and "forcing" it to a higher comment count, I feel, would just make it more difficult to tag, or result in shorter tags to keep the thread going. I've had this system in a previous game, and it ended up being changed exactly because players felt it was hard and discouraging to feel like you'd threaded out a great thread, but it was two comments short from AC and so wouldn't count.

So essentially, I agree with Rizu above, that a proof system of "more threads, same comment count" is what I prefer as well, mostly because I feel that AC is supposed to measure your activity, not your ability to match timezones with others or boomerang a lot. And activity-wise, isn't "more threads with more people" a better sign of you being involved and active, rather than "same amount of threads with same people, only longer"? Especially as having to make those few threads longer can carry it with the danger that people pick a few similar-pace taggers and just focus on those threads, instead of tagging out a lot and consistently across the board.

If the AC were to be boosted up to, say, 20 comments, but it could be (3 x 7) 21 network or (4 x 5) 20 log comments (or the 15 suggested by Rizu above), I feel it would still be reasonably easy for people to achieve, but result in more tag-outs and more involvement, rather than just asking people to keep tagging the few threads required for AC a little bit longer.

[assent]

I am also +1 here that adding one more thread to the count is a decent compromise. 3x7 or 3x5 or 5,5,7 as a mixed effort is not impossible, or it shouldn't be. Doing the maths that's only a minimum of 15 comments a month aka one comment every 2 days in a 30 day month as the AC requirements do seem low for a game that is capped in my opinion.

Actually threading things out and getting involved is what it means to be in a game rather than just in PSLs or a sandbox, and those that have responded here I know I have seen around on different posts and actually responding to things and no one is discrediting that from what I can see? You can be a slower player and be involved. I would say it's more about being fair to what the kind of game this is: a plot heavy, mission based game that has a cap. A bare minimum of 15 (rather than 10 as it is currently) shouldn't be asking for too much.

It would be difficult but if there was also an option of having word counts involved in the comment count (longer tags taking less comments for AC etc) that would also be handy, as I know some players write a lot but can't tag as often and that should be considered too?

Hopefully this makes sense I have been in marking hell for like 3-4 days now and words are blurring together [bleak]

[dishearten]

I was already namedropped here but yes +1 to AC boost. though i do think 3 proofs over longer proofs would be better, since I experienced the 10 comment chain and know with experience how hard it was to get some convos to that length!

[futurologists]

Hi! Thank you all for your feedback; you can consider this a response to everyone in the thread, as we've read all your comments.

We contact players privately that we feel have been struggling for activity, and we've been tightening up the strikes and hiatuses system to be as fair as possible. If we make more AC changes, it will not be to penalize someone for not meeting another player's measure of plot involvement or activity. Due to the varied themes and events of our game, everyone engages with the plot in a different way, and we will continue to encourage that.

While we as mods already keep a close eye on activity and will continue to do so, we've heard the concerns about AC and the mod team is currently discussing it. It's likely we will be asking for more player opinions on this soon, so stay tuned!

[grunehexe]

Bonus Activity: Definitely appreciate this. It's a tiny thing, but since the Bonus AC is capped at 100 points I'm still filing threads from previous missions, so it was always a bit of a pain to track down months' previous AC to find out which threads I had already filed and then make sure to skip those, etc., so! Thanks for making my filing life easier.

ALASTAIR FILES: Loving having this! However, one thing I would love to see here is a summary of past missions. I think it would make a good general record to have on hand, and it could also serve as a good handwave-able knowledge resource for people who app in new characters, since there's a good chance they probably ask other chars. about such things, but there's only so many threads you can do asking about that. Also just kind of cool to see all the stuff that's been accomplished so far? I know mods are probably busy, so players could help by supplying links to plot important things that happened in each mission?

OTHER/AC: I think AC should be raised a bit, considering the mission-nature of the game, the long queue trend, and current low reqs.

Thank you for everything you do, and long live Futuro!

[futurologists]

Hi, Rizu! While we had summaries of previous missions in the past, we found it difficult for the mods to keep up with the detailed descriptions we gave for each mission. However, we will consider bringing it back in a truncated version. Thanks for your feedback!

[daimeinashi]

BONUS AC: this was a great change, thank you so much for this. it really helps make things less complicated to keep track of!

ACTIVITY REQUIREMENTS: going to chime in with a dissenting opinion about ac reqs!! i think the current comment counts are fine as they are - to tackle the issue of players being barely present, however, perhaps an additional requirement could be added to ac wherein players are required to briefly describe their character's activities that month, including at least one plot relevant activity?

ALASTAIR FILES: also amazing. i loved the bits of metaplot in here. maybe some files on other teams or prominent members of ALASTAIR/Zymandis? Also +1ing Rizu about the summaries of past missions on there.

TRANSLATIONS: i really like this from an ic standpoint, since it makes sense for them to implement this change. oocly i hope we get an event or two of magitek failure so we can play with language barriers in written form or otherwise in missions :D

WOODHURST/GENERAL: woodhurst felt a lot more highly specialized than the perdition's rest mission. while i was happy to see the return of the cyoa (which i hope continues to be utilized in future missions), when i struck out on RNG for both the pre-hospital round of investigations and the hospital investigations, it seemed like there wasn't much left to do to affect the metaplot of the mission if my characters weren't able to contribute to finding the cure, leaving them relatively in limbo until the final log, while in perdition's rest there were various angles from which to affect the mission throughout, e.g. stopping the mining via diplomacy or force, keeping the bandits at bay, going after the Deemers, etc.

i am also unsure about the usage of majority rule to decide the fate of percy. although i did not sign up for the encounter, i agree with the suggestion i heard on plurk that perhaps it would've been better to sell percy's fate as a plot slot in the AC bank. for example, if the vote had turned out differently and the majority of players in the encounter chose to save percy, the characters that couldn't be convinced out of murder in the ic discussions would have had to suddenly cave, despite the fact that they included characters like koltira, who could easily overpower most of the game.

i understand, however, that keeping the encounter open was likely a means of offering closure to the characters and players, and majority rule might have been the fairest way to go about the ultimate decision. perhaps in the future, if the plot slot is not an appealing option, such final encounters can be decided the way they were at the end of perdition's rest, when characters who found miz poppy were determined via RNG?

[ex_adept136]

I think my concern with a summary is it can be abused as a method of hand-waving, rather than necessitating actual involvement. And in a mission-based game one might argue most anything is somehow related to plot.

[p66]

Re: the fact that people would have to cave including characters who can easily overpower the game, I think the issue here is that we have a character who can easily overpower the game, which begets the issue that the character deciding to use force against other characters would necessitate some sort of OOC hoop-jumping. Especially if a group of characters who are superpowered and decided to stage a coup or something ICly that can be tough to handle.

My suggestion here is to depower exceptional characters so that they can be on a tier with other characters of the same superhuman power bracket like Peter for example, so the issue won't come up in the first place. Peter is pretty powerful but his infection was mitigated by having multiple characters of the same/similar power bracket like Haise and Reika, so it solves the 'needing OOC hoop jumping' problem and it made a nice player-plot as well.

[apoptotic]

+1 AC: As Val pointed out, the game had already dropped from a 10 min. req. for network threads to 7 due to the nature of the game, which tends toward more succinct information sharing. 5 log is also more than acceptable as ( at least in my experience ) those tags tend to be much more involved and thus take more time.

And let's be honest: a lot of us study, work or work/study. That tied to the nature of the beast, which involves plotting and playing with people in different time zones means many are obligatorily in the medium-to-slow range. Speaking for myself who is in this camp, I haven't had any trouble meeting AC during my time here. But when requirements have been higher ( such as in past games ) it does mean I'm more concerned with trying to meet AC each month rather than just enjoy my time rp-ing.

[futurologists]

Hi, Batty! Woodhurst was geared towards characters who are more skilled mentally than physically, but we feel there was still plenty to do for all characters, whether it be hunting zombies, investigating the sewer claims, or helping citizens continue their daily lives in the wake of a zombie apocalypse. In reference to striking out on clues, we attempted to make every clue given plot-relevant in a way that would make sense once all the pieces were put together and give ideas for how characters could follow up. However, we will attempt to be more clear about all possible avenues characters can take in the future.

The mods discussed how to handle the Percy encounter at length and decided this would be the most fair way; we wanted everyone to feel as if their vote counted and their voice was heard to avoid OOC discontentment. We engineered circumstances so that there was no other option than murder or letting him escape, but if the vote had gone the other way, we would have written the outcome in such a way that subduing was more likely than murder. No characters had to "cave," per se; they were not asked for permission to kill Percy, and can continue to feel that he should have been subdued. With regards to superpowered characters, we trust our players to be mindful of other players in their RP! We have not had any issues in a year and a half of the game regarding this, so at this time, we don't see it as an urgent problem.

As a last point, we have determined who faced off with "Big Bads" by RNG and plot slots sold in the AC bank before; for example, the Michel encounter in Chantes was determined by RNG (while also asking players to take into account suitability before signing up) and the encounter with Jonathan Black was chosen via plot slot. We will continue to take various approaches in the interest of fairness, and to allow for variety! We want to ensure that we cater to all our players, whether they prefer a group approach or a one-on-one approach. It is likely we will be using a different approach next time, so keep an eye out for that!

Thank you for your feedback! We really appreciate it and will continue to keep it in mind as we plot for the game's future.

[feytality]

-I enjoyed the secret signups (and in general I think having players get a chance to be infected alongside the npcs was a nice interactive touch) and would love to see more! The pacing/length felt organic and I think it was just the right length. I did like the mission files as well, though I agree that it would be nice to have them for previous missions, as well! As a newer player there were many plot details I found out through IC happenstance, so it would be nice to have a little more information available OOC. I also like the translation addition, and the simplifying of bonus AC. Thank you for that.

-Also, I'd just like to see I really appreciated the mods being mindful of game tone, ie: details like the infected still being alive, or symptoms being staved off by physical contact, and etc. This was a pretty intense and dark plot, but did so without straining playability, so I was really glad for that.

-I am in favour of increasing AC to 3 proofs of 5 action comments or 7 network comments. With a capped mission-based game that relies on players to uncover/push the plot, it makes sense to me to require a bit more activity. Adding one more proof rather than lengthening the requirement of threads makes far more sense to me, and if the mods continue to let event logs on the cusps of months be used for either month of AC (which I also liked a lot and would love to see it continued), then I feel three proofs is a fair and good compromise to our current players, as well as ones waiting to be in the game.

-A little note, I know it's hard to predict when the queue frees up and at what point of a plot new players will be accepted, but I am a little concerned that new players being accepted in the middle of big plot development is overwhelming and makes it difficult for them to know when to jump in or how to get involved. I know that apps aren't processed for the last few weeks of a plot and I think that is fair, but if we do up AC, I'd like to suggest more leeway for new players on their first month. Or, if a mission is getting particularly intense, perhaps giving the new players their choice of holding off their intro or jumping into the action.

-I would also like to see more OOC plotting posts! Plurk and Discord are very convenient, but it's easy to miss correspondence or lose track of them. Most people are used to using both now, but I think, especially for missions/mission plans, having more OOC posts to coordinate character actions would be helpful. Additionally, I think it may help the situate the new players or coordinate CYOAS in times of intense plot.

I will come by with more later!!! All in all, I really liked this mission, thank you guys very much!

[winces]

+1 to the ooc plotting posts. they seem to be a dying breed in dwrp in general, especially as plurk (and in some cases, discord) becomes more and more popular. general plurk culture notwithstanding, not everyone has access to everyone else, whether it be due to timezones or small plurk timelines or whathaveyou. i also agree that it would be a nice way to help integrate new players, since our current app queue system tends to dump them at awkward times and they are generally left to kind of catch up with everyone else on their own, which is intimidating enough on its own without throwing the plurk-an menace into the mix.

[dishearten]

how many times did you edit this sipp

wrt newbies coming in the middle of a mission and getting some leeway, I think I agree! Give them some flexibility on ac. I also think considering a buddy system both ic/ooc would help a lot! We did this in eachdraidh and i know it helped me greatly, and i'd be happy to lend either of my dudes to help ease the transition. and it could kickstart some cr too!

[secondnature]

secret sign ups

I like the idea of secret sign ups, but I feel that this one—especially combined with the lack of a plotting post—led to some uncertainty over whether or not people could let their CR know that their character was infected. Over time, I ended up confused as to why this was utilized in this way, as a lot of the team had descriptions about what happened to the infected over time, and therefore they would be able to see that one of their own was getting sick. As someone who didn't play an infected, I found myself uncertain about what my character was allowed to notice with regards to the team getting infected, and I'm still not sure if I played that out correctly.

Therefore, I think the secrecy backfired a little bit—it was good for determining random number stuff, but I do think it led to a lot of uncertainty over how to handle this beyond the initial identification of infected characters.

A better example of how to execute this might be if it were Perdition's Rest, and there was a secret sign up for taraxa-possessed Audentes members. Obviously, as the taraxa are a bit more vicious than Animorphs' yeerks, this wouldn't work out, but if it was possible to free the characters from it, it would be a fun plot in people playing their characters possessed and people not altogether realizing it. In a case like that, I feel secrecy is more logical for follow through.

The general mission

I both loved the mission and can see some of the problems with it. I, too, felt like I was in limbo about some of the options, in part because of the way that OOC plotting was nonexistent unless you had someone on your plurk. There were things I wanted to do when bounties went up that were hard to execute in practice because I don't have a lot of the game on my plurk. I also like opportunities for unlikely characters to team up, and specific plotting ventures are a lot easier to work out without top levels without discussion.

That said, I'm also not a big fan of overplotting, so perhaps there could be a post for bounty discussions or something like that, geared toward specific tasks, so that there can still be a sense of randomness involved with the bigger events. I feel like the bounties are meant to make up the middle ground for events like this one, but it was especially difficult to plot out these bounties moving forward.

AC

As someone who has little to no difficulty making AC from month to month, I'm opposed to any AC changes at this time. I feel like the more we tack on conditions to AC just to speed along the queue, the more we begin to overcomplicate it for the players who are already in game who have shown themselves to be responsible. AC is not meant to be a "gotcha" system. I feel like people in this game are, by and large, fairly responsible about dropping when they no longer show any interest or realize that they don't fit.

I actually would like to see how the practice of "have to contact the mods for a strike" is utilized moving forward before any AC rules change. There are a lot of conditions already in play, and all of them seem fair.

I will add that I'm very opposed to plot summaries being attached to AC. What if you weren't digging the plot? The squidge plot comes to mind: a number of people weren't into a plot like that, so they coasted in the last leg of it until it was over. That was fine, as the game allowed leeway for that. But in terms of a "summary" to "prove" that you've been involved, that just demands way too much. A plot summary also doesn't leave leeway for if you're fine at the beginning of the month, but then come down with the flu or something that forces you to step back for a bit. This could be the same as burnout, which also happens in mission intensive games a lot. In these cases, I personally don't take a hiatus if I've already made AC, and I assume that's the same for many others.

[futurologists]

Hey there, thanks for your feedback! In the future we'll try to be more clear about our intentions regarding secret sign-ups, instructions to those affected, and what other characters can know. We were hoping that characters could surprise their CR with symptoms, or be infected without others being totally aware of it, but we realize that those who weren't infected might have been left in the dark OOCly.

As for bounties, we've received a lot of feedback in favor of more OOC plotting posts, so we'll be working to implement those more regularly. That should provide some extra opportunity to reach out to other people and new CR!

Finally, for now we've provided a general reponse to AC matters here.

[dishearten]

secret signups I enjoyed it! I will say tho, I had a hard time figuring out who to infect bc half the list was people i didn't know. more than that really. I felt very awkward coming forward and saying "hey you wanna be infected"? I don't necessarily know how to improve this, though I think in a dif situation it won't be an issue either so ... dunno what i'm really talking about anymore

ac I think boosting ac to 3 proofs a month is a good idea. our queue is constantly so large and it makes the game seem really unapproachable to players that want to join. 3 proofs show a requisite of spreading out more, and perhaps if we want to keep it to 2, one has to be in a plot relevant log? I really genuinely think 3 would be better tho!

general mission loved it. zombies are my favorite. I loved working w mods to run an event and I had a great time. thanks for all your hard work!

percy I don't think this was executed well. I think it makes little to no sense to have 14 chars find the same elusive character simultaneously in the same room and have one side just "oh okay" when the chips didn't land their way. it would only have worked if percy was going to die, and coincidentally that's where the poll went but i'd rather my character not have been dragged into it if it was a waste of his time. if death wins, let the death crew team up and take care of it. the other chars could have never found percy and moved on to other things, or alternately could have found his lab and gotten information while deathcrew heard his motives/insanity/etc.

I sort of get the intention of making it a group event, but that didn't even work because not all characters were included in the events of what went down. so my suggestion would be if another situation like this occurs, let the majority side take over and leave the minority out of it. it spares us the complications of oocly changing our chars mindset in the middle of the action, which would be really awkward no matter what your characters opinion was.

ooc plot posts I am for them, though I don't feel as if they're utilized as much as people think! I had one for the mall event, but it was so hard to plot when I couldn't really show the log itself. so unless they go up simultaneously (which could be an option) I don't think they'll be as productive as they could be, because you can't plot what you don't know about.

move to neopets totally for it, i feel like usernames will be way more free and I can't wait to have a wolfland lupe, bye

[cachemoney]

i just wanted to chime in and say that for anyone whose character was gunning for subduing percy, i am more than happy to thread out any negative reactions since fiona was the one who actually killed him. :) i can't speak for everyone, but i certainly don't want anyone to have to bend characterization and just accept what happened if they wouldn't, and am super open to consequences from other characters.

[twinpeak]

Now for other 2c, in general I did really enjoy this mission! I enjoyed the undercover aspect, even if my guy here blended in a lot easier than most others, and I also really liked that there was personal stake for the characters to accomplish their mission.

As someone who plays a normie I appreciated that this mission focused a lot more on snooping and info gathering to progress the plot, but I do feel like there might have been a heavy reliance on cyoa throughout. Granted I do get time sensitivity is a thing and it's the easiest of options so honestly, I personally don't find it to be a huge issue, but it did create some lulls during the months. That aside I do like that bounties were important in finding more plot clues so I hope those continue in the future!

And speaking of cyoa, while I wasn't a part of it I do agree that Percy's outcome might have been better off with buying a plot slot rather than how it went down, for reasons listed above by others.

Also, I would like plotting posts to become a thing! Plurk just isn't doing it for me when it comes to plotting, and I would like to reach out to others' I don't have added more, etc.

I think that's in. In general I had fun with the mission! Thank you for doing what ya do, modlies d('-' d)

[futurologists]

Hey there, thanks for the feedback! CYOA logs are actually quite a bit taxing for us, so you won't have to worry about seeing an increase of them. However, previously we've received a significant amount of feedback asking for more CYOA, so we'll keep trying to find a good balance between bounties, regular events, and CYOA in the future.

As for Percy, in some cases we feel strongly that the IC majority should have some influence as opposed to leaving it to one character (we've responded to like concerns here!), but we realize that it was confusing and could've used some polish this time. While we'll still mix up results via RNG, groups, and plot slots, in the future we'll take this experience and try to smooth out the process!

[heritors]

general mission i loved woodhurst. it had been a while since i had the chance to play anything horror-esque in dwrp, and this mission was perfect for it! but i especially enjoyed it because there was a lot at stake for the PCs — both the infected and the non-infected had to deal with the symptoms, finding the cure was crucial not just for the sake of the timeline, and on top of that they had to find ways to scavenge food/water/etc. the situation made it a lot easier to develop some of my cr on top of having a really solid reason to interact with the setting. in general, i'd love to see more missions like this! maybe not as dark or intense ( though these are totally my jam, they're not everyone's ), but have the setting/mission affect the PCs somehow so that it's more than "let's show up, do the timeline some good, and then leave".

my one nitpick was that the first half of the mission did feel a little slower, though everything quickly picked up once the infected group started showing more obvious symptoms. but in hindsight, it feels like a very minor thing.

for secret sign ups, while i didn't participate in it directly, i'd love to see this mechanic used again later, because secret sign ups are cool.

bounties as someone who likes doing bounty threads regularly, getting a piece of the plot puzzle through them was rad — especially something like the door, omg. i enjoy that these are an alternate way to participate in the plot ( it makes my threads feel very rewarding ), and i'd like to see them continued!

ooc plotting posts / cyoas +1 to seeing more ooc plotting posts! in addition to that, an idea i just had was to open the CYOAs a little after the log goes up ( at the expense of having them open for a shorter period of time, maybe ), so that everyone can get some plotting done before they're submitted! this way people that weren't around/in different timezones still have a chance to jump into groups that have started plotting, and this is something that ooc plotting posts can be used for. i don't know how well that would work from a logistics perspective, if that'd be more work for you guys, or even work in the first place, but i figured i could try pitching the idea in the hopes that someone else can come along and improve upon it.

as always, thanks for all your hardwork!! c:

[keystaff]

Bonus Activity: Yeeees! I was always needing to double check like 'wait did I use that for normal ac though?' so I love the idea of using all of the proofs for ac bank! Thank you mods!

AC Requirements: I could see how this is an issue, with being a capped game and all. We want this to be fair to allow players to prove they are active in the game or if not that this is dealt with for others to move in through the app queue. At the same time, I don't want this getting too intense with then worrying over 'how many more comments do I need?' rather than just enjoying playing in the moment as I usually do. Which I think I see others have already said.

For me, personally, I never actually know what my work schedule might be from one week to the next at the moment while looking for something permanent, so I can't always be sure how much time I might have that day/evening for tagging. I don't want to worry on that if the ac is upped too much. I'm sure others feel the same too.

Secret Sign Ups: I did enjoy the idea of this! I'm sure it could be utilized again in the future for other missions too in some different way other than determining who is infected.