POLL.

[futurologists]

Hello, worldhoppers! Now that you're more settled in, it's time for some polls! The questions are as follows:

★ How often would you like app cycles?
If apps are monthly, the app cap will most likely be lower. Bi-monthly, there'll be a higher app cap. It could be less often as well. There could even be only one app round per mission, depending on your answers to the next question.

★ How long would you like missions to last?
The current Chantes mission is slated to take closer to six months. Shorter missions will mean they're a bit more fast-paced and action-packed, since there won't be much time to hang around. Longer missions will be bigger and more complex, likely with several different stages.

★ How much downtime would you like between missions?
'Downtime' means time back at Oska. If it affects your answers, know that Oska will become more important as the plot moves on. If you'd like a few months, there will still be things to do; however, they'll be less pressing, and a little more sandboxy.

★ Would you like a character cap?
The game is geared towards a smaller amount of characters, ideally. However, it's important to hear your thoughts, too! If your answer is more than 70 characters, give a ballpark number of what you'd like in the comments. Currently, the game isn't particularly suited towards more than 100 characters, but adjustments could possibly be made.

★ How much ALASTAIR NPC involvement would you like?
Currently, the focus is on world NPCs, not on ALASTAIR. Although there are plans to involve them more when Oska becomes more important, currently they're not as important. Would you like a lot of interaction with NPCs, a medium amount, or have the focus be entirely on NPCs in the current world?

The poll can be taken here. Please feel free to discuss in this entry! Any other suggestions are welcome as well; the goal here is to make the best experience for the most amount of people possible.

Comments

[becauses]

On character caps, I don't have strong feelings about anywhere between 70 and 100 as a player. It depends on what you guys have energy for. I think you'll need a per-player character cap if you want to stay under 100, though.

On frequency of apps... on one hand, it sucks when there's only a few slots and apping turns into a race to hit submit at the stroke of midnight. On the other hand, waiting two months to app for someone who's not in a game yet is paaaainful. I guess I suggest monthly for now, and scale back to two-months if the app cap fills up within a few minutes of opening. I'm also the person who replied with "Keep applications open all the time, hand out 'accepted but on a wait list' notifications, and pull people off the wait-list and into the game every week or so based on the number of drops in that week." But I know that can be unwieldy ICly and OOCly.

On downtime and NPC interaction, I'm personally not a fan of SOL, so I'd prefer shorter periods of downtime, or that the downtime come with a healthy dose of NPC interaction or learning about ALASTAIR.

[blazeofkings]

I like app queues. I think that could be a good compromise? It depends on turnover like if people are sitting in the queue 2 months that's no good but I think at that point apps would just have to be closed indefinitely until there was significant turnover no matter the system if there's a cap. But yeah I like that idea!

[strictdiscipline]

+1 to maybe more NPC information/learning about ALASTAIR during downtime, I think that'd be pretty neat if the mods have the time/energy for that.

Also I haven't been on the side of having to wait two months for apps but I can definitely see how that'd be frustrating. 8( Starting out monthly and scaling back based on responses seems like a reasonable suggestion.

[becauses]

I had really bad timing once and realized I wanted to app into a game right after apps closed. Oops.