I was one of the players who felt the heat about the amount of comments it took to complete a bounty, and while I think a lot of the more action-y bounties should be 10+ (after all, it probably takes that many comments to gain momentum so they actually reach a conclusion instead of petering off and people getting credit for handwaving), but slice of life bounties it can be very hard to drag them out that long if there's not a secondary driving action. (Which, admittedly, is a player thing- some people had really emotional conversations come out of the sake drinking one, but that's not always gonna be the case.)
tl;dr I definitely think bounties with higher rewards should have 10+ comments, but perhaps 5+ for simpler, "cuter" SOL bounties.
EXPLORATION
Definitely agreeing with Tifa that the time crunch was a bit taxing and kept me from really thinking of things, but I do like the idea and think it just needs a little bit of tweaking! I thought the group thing was a good idea, but it was really unwieldy to thread out. The only thing I can suggest to fix that, however, is to let people pick ONE "NPC" to ask a question of and everyone gets their question answered, and then they take that information and thread getting it/offering it out. One of the higher points of ALASTAIR is when people got bits of information and shared it and then people gave the information they got.
It's basically the same thing here, but with less focus on organizing groups.
To summarize my rambling point, say you have an NPC fisherman, an NPC mother, and an NPC baker. A player can choose ONE of these three to direct a single question to and to describe how they approach the NPC. It's... essentially what was already done, but with less focus on groups, because... again that was unwieldy to thread and I never finished a single one, which is sad, and might have had an effect on my overall understanding of the plot.
SOLUTIONS
I agree with Tifa that explorations are a GREAT way of introducing solutions, but the problem here was just a single solution gained a lot of traction really fast and had a lot of support, and while there's no way to predict where the wind is going to blow and what players will latch onto, the lack of a perceived alternate plan with any real evidence was a bit discouraging, and while I LOVE the arguments post in theory and definitely want to see more of it... what it felt like in this particular instance was a lot of people with a lot of evidence shouting down people with less evidence who were mostly just against arranged marriage. It didn't really matter if the other ideas were good or not- no one had any way of arguing against something that seemed very obvious, so it became pointless to contribute or argue.
And one of the ways this can be improved is by....
SPECIALIZATIONS
This event as advertised as being very Negotiator-friendly, and that's awesome! I like missions tailored to specializations, like Woodhurst was tailored to a very fighter/science crowd. But I think what could really help (and certainly give the mods the right amount of structure you need- because I know that SOME structure is needed) is to lay groundwork for solutions that work best for certain specializations.
This ties into what Tifa mentioned about having time to ask more detailed questions- characters will often ask about things that pertain to their wheelhouse or will pursue leads that relate to what they, personally, are good at.
Obviously, you can't put a bunch of specialization-specific solutions into every mission- especially when you have missions like this that skew heavily diplomatic and missions like Woodhurst that skew heavily inventor- but it's a good thought when laying groundwork for possible scenarios, AND will help us figure out how to use our specializations to help with missions.
no subject
I was one of the players who felt the heat about the amount of comments it took to complete a bounty, and while I think a lot of the more action-y bounties should be 10+ (after all, it probably takes that many comments to gain momentum so they actually reach a conclusion instead of petering off and people getting credit for handwaving), but slice of life bounties it can be very hard to drag them out that long if there's not a secondary driving action. (Which, admittedly, is a player thing- some people had really emotional conversations come out of the sake drinking one, but that's not always gonna be the case.)
tl;dr I definitely think bounties with higher rewards should have 10+ comments, but perhaps 5+ for simpler, "cuter" SOL bounties.
EXPLORATION
Definitely agreeing with Tifa that the time crunch was a bit taxing and kept me from really thinking of things, but I do like the idea and think it just needs a little bit of tweaking! I thought the group thing was a good idea, but it was really unwieldy to thread out. The only thing I can suggest to fix that, however, is to let people pick ONE "NPC" to ask a question of and everyone gets their question answered, and then they take that information and thread getting it/offering it out. One of the higher points of ALASTAIR is when people got bits of information and shared it and then people gave the information they got.
It's basically the same thing here, but with less focus on organizing groups.
To summarize my rambling point, say you have an NPC fisherman, an NPC mother, and an NPC baker. A player can choose ONE of these three to direct a single question to and to describe how they approach the NPC. It's... essentially what was already done, but with less focus on groups, because... again that was unwieldy to thread and I never finished a single one, which is sad, and might have had an effect on my overall understanding of the plot.
SOLUTIONS
I agree with Tifa that explorations are a GREAT way of introducing solutions, but the problem here was just a single solution gained a lot of traction really fast and had a lot of support, and while there's no way to predict where the wind is going to blow and what players will latch onto, the lack of a perceived alternate plan with any real evidence was a bit discouraging, and while I LOVE the arguments post in theory and definitely want to see more of it... what it felt like in this particular instance was a lot of people with a lot of evidence shouting down people with less evidence who were mostly just against arranged marriage. It didn't really matter if the other ideas were good or not- no one had any way of arguing against something that seemed very obvious, so it became pointless to contribute or argue.
And one of the ways this can be improved is by....
SPECIALIZATIONS
This event as advertised as being very Negotiator-friendly, and that's awesome! I like missions tailored to specializations, like Woodhurst was tailored to a very fighter/science crowd. But I think what could really help (and certainly give the mods the right amount of structure you need- because I know that SOME structure is needed) is to lay groundwork for solutions that work best for certain specializations.
This ties into what Tifa mentioned about having time to ask more detailed questions- characters will often ask about things that pertain to their wheelhouse or will pursue leads that relate to what they, personally, are good at.
Obviously, you can't put a bunch of specialization-specific solutions into every mission- especially when you have missions like this that skew heavily diplomatic and missions like Woodhurst that skew heavily inventor- but it's a good thought when laying groundwork for possible scenarios, AND will help us figure out how to use our specializations to help with missions.
DOSSIERS
The new dossiers are super cute and I love them.