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

[sediments]

APP CYCLES
i don't think bi-monthly apps are too much of a big deal, but i do think it might be better to have monthly app cycles at least at the beginning! everyone is still sort of getting a feel of the setting, so there would be less of a gap between existing players and newer players, and then once the game sort of gets settled in with the plot, perhaps slow down the app cycles so that it's easier to integrate newer players/pay them more attention so they don't feel lost!

MISSION LENGTH
this really depends on what sort of content the mission involves! i think it's fine to have varied lengths - shorter and longer missions, as long as the events are paced all right. ideally i figure two mod events a month would be good pacing?? again, it really depends on what we want to get out of the mission, and how much time it would require. i don't think there's anything wrong with spending an extended amount of time on a mission (six months ish?) and getting really attached, or the opposite: being ripped away after only a short time.

DOWNTIME
unless there's some plot related shenanigans to be had, i don't really think downtime should scale more than a month...! though ofc, it really depends on how things go c:

CHARACTER CAP
i think a cap of 100-150 is fine! coming from a mission oriented game, there were so many types of characters - some that were heavily involved with the plot through npcs, some that were involved through player interaction, and some that didn't care for the overarching plot. even within these, characters got involved in different ways, and it was interesting to see. that said, i wouldn't like to see the mods overexert themselves, and if any more than 100 seems too unwieldy, then that's fine with me!

NPC INVOLVEMENT
i think this is case by case... like perhaps when plotting posts go up, players can ask about potential npc involvement? like, "can my character talk to an npc about x?" or "what will the npcs do if my character does x?" if there are set npcs with personalities that would lend themselves to interacting with pcs, then that's fine with me, and if not then that's also all right. personally i prefer log threads with npcs over network threads, though i understand that's a lot of work! so really, however the mods think it's best to use npcs to weave the story...