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!

[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.

[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!

[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.

[ex_adept136]

Yeah, I get you. It's why I included that as an alternative that was mentioned to me in discussion as well. That 3x7 is up there.

Personally it's rare I get to boomerang, and I've noticed in filling in AC bank that quite a few threads get dropped just shy of the count which is a shame. The ones that do carry on over time, I can get decent numbers, but I think in general boost is a good way to go, whatever form suits the game best.

[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?

[figureitout]

Yeah, I agree! Sorry if my comment came across as arguing against yours, that wasn't the intention as essentially I agree with your point — I just wanted to write out my thoughts so others could follow my reasoning! The alternative you suggested is a good one, too, I won't tl;dr more because I feel like I already did more than enough of that flghfh laughs...

But yeah, that's def a problem I've noticed, too, and again I feel like maybe requiring people to get more threads to the point where they pass AC would be a possible solution to that? If there is a solution, I mean, it might just be a general problem with dwrp that some threads just never make it to AC length, for varying reasons.

The point of my very long tl;dr was that ultimately I totally agree with you and your suggestion, as it stands our AC seems too light for the level of involvement the game requires (or should require), esp with the cap and the queue and all. I may prefer one solution over the other but I'm sure I'll be fine with whatever the mods decide to go with in the end, if a boost to AC does happen c:

[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.

[daimeinashi]

perhaps the summary could require links to in-progress threads? "receipts" as it were. for example in this current mission, one could link their threads in the quarantine or at the mall or discussions about percy or to mission threads that they submitted to the bounty board, etc.

[ex_adept136]

Oh goodness no, I just realized it was super late and I didn't...enumerate both values when writing my post earlier. Looking back on it, it doesn't make it the easiest of reads either, I should strive for more uniformity.

More threads does seem easier than greater length, particularly with the frequency at which threads are at that "abbreviated" stage that doesn't quite count for AC/bank purposes. It was a bummer going through a bunch that were just one comment too short, when looking over ones from over the course of months, but it totally happens. I think you, Rizu, and Katy (on plurk) have a point in that more threads can mean more getting around with various characters.

Sorry if my comment came across as taking any issue; I felt like my own writing wasn't super clear going over it. I've trusted the mods' discretion up to this point and I agree I'm sure they'll make a sound determination, whatever form it takes.

[ex_adept136]

At that point, it seems to me like it's just as well to have the added threads/comments (whatever is best-fit), since it's a little more effort either way. Since threads need to meet a certain requirement for AC length I have to imagine any in-progress would also have stipulations attached.

[daimeinashi]

i guess my concern would be similarly in line with celen's about having the time to reach longer threads, essentially? the idea of providing links for the summaries was basically like, proof that things aren't necessarily being handwaved? a Show of Good Faith, i suppose.

while it's true that threads could just be immediately dropped after submission, that doesn't really mean more or less involvement than say, a character that gets AC via shitposting. (see: kagari's "never have i ever" post receiving well over 200 comments)

[ex_adept136]

I liked Celen's suggestion that more shorter ones, rather than less longer ones, would be a good balance. For me, the good faith is in hoping that no one banks on a single post as their only source of activity and involvement since I figure we apped in out of interest in the plot.

I think this was before your time with us, but in the past we have had a report card for squidge-raising, but that was specifically to determine individual success or failure. There was mixed feedback on it, but personally, it was a bit like homework despite my personal interest in seeing how Haise's squidge did.

Edit: Those report threads also had length requirements, from what I remember, so this might be relevant to the conversation.

[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.

[daimeinashi]

i'm only saying that pure numbers aren't necessarily always a useful indicator of a character's involvement level, is all.

my suggestion was inspired partly by the fact that summarizing a character's time is already a requirement when a hiatus mission is taken, so having a record of a character's time accounted for oocly in one place i think would also be pretty good for the game at large, since a lot of times plotting is done on plurk or personally via discord so it can be difficult to keep track of what everyone's doing.

the squidge report cards were before my time, yes, though i did heartily enjoy reading them while i was waiting in the queue. obviously i can't speak to how effective they were since i wasn't in the game, but from the perspective of someone who loves keeping track of continuity i think such a thing would be a neat feature for future missions.

if the mods feel that reading 80 individual character summaries a month would be a disproportionate burden, though, i do think celen's idea of more shorter threads is a good compromise.

[ex_adept136]

Since I never like to cite things without a source, for anyone reading our commentary: here was the squidge report card post. It was required for AC that round and there were pretty mixed feelings about its usage, so I'm commenting with that in mind.

Speaking of plotting, I do think it would be nice to see more plotting posts on DW, since these felt a little more regular when I was newer (alongside mission briefings, if I recall) and less so nowadays. Discord and plurk are great tools and I'm glad for them, but for reasons you've cited, not everyone can get involved through those mediums. Particularly if they have neither service.

I liked finding out what came next, but I feel it depends on the mission in that respect. It was a little time-consuming as well, since I'm not the thread-tracker type and it'd take forever to retroactively set up. Whatever the mods decide on I'm sure will be after taking all our perspectives into account, so I think it's good we've explored a bit further at least.

[strictdiscipline]

+1 to more threads rather than longer threads if AC is upped, for most of the reasons Celen cited. I also remember ye olde days (shakes cane!!) when we did actually require 10 comments for network proofs for AC and iirc we lowered it precisely because hitting that point was getting burdensome (I think? I have the memory of swiss cheese) so reverting that change seems backwards to me.

[strictdiscipline]

I'd also be in favor of more plotting plots. I don't really use plurk much anymore for RP (or....anything, really) and while I have no issue reaching out to people via PMs and Discord, I know a lot of people feel more at ease with something more public and official.

[figureitout]

hahalfhsf this is literally "Two People Are Unfailingly Polite And Apologetic About Imaginary Rudeness: The Conversation" bless u ren ♥

[apoptotic]

Shakes cane with you. There's the occasional shitpost on the network where threads get fairly long, but by and large network threads here tend to be to the point, particularly during missions. Upping comment count per thread will just take us back to that where trying to meet the network min. was akin to pulling teeth.

[heelies]

I also agree that if ac were to be raised, a greater quantity of threads at 5 comments each would be far preferable to 2 threads at 10 comments each. The majority of my threads reach a natural conclusion before 10 comments are racked up, so I think such a demand would just add unnecessary stress as others have pointed out.

In general, however, I would prefer to leave ac the way it is. With all due respect to my fellow players, citing "what dwrp in general wants" doesn't account for much when the population that would be affected by this change is just the 80 individuals in the game. Moreover, I am uneasy about using the long app queue as justification for tightening ac requirements, as it takes on the feeling of "culling the weak." Yes, it is unfortunate that people often have to wait so long before they can play, but this is a game, not a business, and I see no reason to operate on a principle of supply and demand.

[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.