theearth | Mod contact (unscreened)

I'd like to offer some constructive criticism on the way mod plot is being handled.

We haven't had a game-wide plot since the item monsters appeared in March, and that plot self-resolved two weeks later when the aliens landed, despite the claim in every plot post that no plots are self-resolving. A lot of players, myself included, were waiting for the latest plot post with high hopes, only to be disappointed by how limited its scope was. It's not that the ideas were bad ones--it just wasn't enough. We waited a month for a plot post that didn't even bring us a game-wide plot, and now we're stuck waiting another two weeks to see if maybe the next one will actually give us something to do.

The game has lost over 30 players in May alone. Many of them cited not feeling involved or not being able to get involved or having nothing to do as their reasons for dropping; many more probably have the same reasons but left them unstated. The game's going to keep bleeding players if that doesn't change.

The ways characters can interact with the events in the most recent post are limited. Geoff's open-door policy is a neat idea, but it's limited to characters in Locke City, or characters who are willing to phone a stranger. All the school-aged kids have finals to worry about during the week he's offering to meet. Some people aren't going to want to overcome the effort hurdle involved to meet him in person. The possessed car is also a neat idea, but it's another sign-up plot with only 5 slots, and your potential for interaction if not picked is limited to encounters in passing. It's not open-ended enough to actually give people something to do with it. Both of these ideas would be fine as-is if they'd been accompanied by a broader game-wide plot, but on their own it still leaves most of the game with nothing to get involved in.

Both of these events could've been expanded into something game-wide, too. Just off the top of my head:
- Geoff hosts a live video chat Q&A in addition to inviting people to come see him. This expands the opportunities for interaction to characters who aren't quite invested enough to take the initiative to meet him in person--or for characters not in Locke City, and the video part ensures that he's not giving up his charm person advantage in the process. (Alternately a reddit thread, if his charm-person effect would still work through text for people who've already seen him.)
- The possessed car temporarily animates other cars at random when it drives by them. This gives players a lot more options for how to interact with the event and many different ways to have their characters affected by it.
- Whatever's gotten into that one car has also got the public transit vehicles acting up, doing inconvenient things like opening the subway doors 50 feet from the platform or on the wrong side of the tracks, busses dropping off passengers at the opposite side of town from their stated stops, light-rails that keep stopping in intersections and holding up traffic, etc. These kinds of things allow for PCs to be affected by the plot while going about their daily lives, and that kind of inconvenience creates an excuse for IC proactiveness.

For every plot post, you need to ask yourselves how Average Joe Reincarnate is expected to interact with these events. If you aren't chosen for a sign-up, is there still opportunity for you to interact, or are you limited to just reacting? What's the scope of interaction possibilities? How many possible outcomes are there for plot encounters? How many possible paths are there to a solution? What can the average player, not picked for a sign-up, not proactive enough to dig up buried plot hooks, do with their characters while waiting for the metaplot to progress?

The question you need to have in mind when writing every plot post is, "Does this give the average player something to be involved in?" If it doesn't, make it. If there are plot reasons why events can't be expanded to allow more opportunity and more options to players, either change the plot or add on another, broader-scope event to go alongside it. Every plot post should make sure everyone has something to do. This is not the same as force-feeding your players plot; it's making sure they have plot hooks to hold onto and run with.

Part two: game plots are not supposed to be self-resolving.

In Season One, that meant players had to figure out a solution on their own and then cooperate with the mods to implement it. So far what I've seen of Season Two involves the mods handing the players a solution and then implementing it themselves. This isn't interactive. It doesn't allow for players to shape the game or to change plot outcomes.

A good example from S1 is the tainted water plot. Players had to figure out what was causing the problem, track it to its source, and then find a way to stop it. The smear campaign they came up with was a very clever solution that didn't require superpowers to participate.

In S2, we had the item monsters. This could have been an ongoing plot with a similar scope, requiring players to track the monsters to their source and then figure out a way to stop them from generating. Instead, the mods solved the problem for us by having the aliens fix it. There was a lot of lost opportunity there.

I realize that event was the old mod team, but in the most recent plot post, the new mod team seems to be sticking to the same philosophy. We're being handed a solution for the possessed car, pre-packaged, with no way to affect the outcome. When I joined this game, the main draw was that players drove the plot. Now it seems the plot is driving itself, and players can only sit back and watch.

I'm just gonna hop in and +1 all of this. This post is the first thing we've really had in a month and it feels like since the new mod team stepped up it's been nothing but "stay tuned until next time!" Between announcement posts and plot posts and promises of what's coming next it's gotten to the point where a lot of my friends are just saying "what are we doing here?" In the past month we've lost nearly 50 characters. That's a quarter of our taken characters, and a lot more people are having trouble finding things to do as a whole. I know Geoff is going to be speaking with people, but that excludes the entirety of Vegas. I know there are vermini in Vegas, but that excludes Locke. As for the car, that's only one thing and it's neatly presented and solved in one plot post. I said earlier in a private conversation that as a plot, you're presenting us with a climax and no rising or falling action, let alone exposition or real resolution--because we don't know what problem we're solving. Just that it's solved. It seems like busy work on a day you have a substitute.

I know the game is tailored more toward super powered characters, but I had hoped that there would be a way at some point to get Jacuzzi involved. I suggested a lot of the public transit options, actually, mostly thinking about ways everyone could participate. Characters who are unpowered but interesting, and characters who are younger or older or less likely to out themselves are suffering, I think, because a lot of the bigger plots do require superpowers and life-risking.

And I'm not saying this plot is a bad idea. What I'm saying is that it would have probably been better if you'd implemented something game-wide first. While I know you mentioned a reaction post similar to the wise snake post, it isn't very similar at all--there was a way for literally everyone to get involved at that point. There were smaller snakes, rescues and first responders to be dealt with, making it something that the whole game really could get involved with. If we'd had a variety of things going on, everyone could have jumped on it and gotten involved again. Now we're stuck waiting until June 8th going "is there actually going to be something for us then?"

We do acknowledge that people are waiting on more, but for anything it might be worth at this time, I can promise that we do have a plan - it's true that we could have and probably should have capitalized on more in the most recent plot post, in getting it together our focus was more on the plot elements that its contents are meant to tie back into.

We've also probably been much-overestimating the need for some manner of "transitional period" after what's happened this month - players are demotivated and several are on hiatus and with that in mind we might've been punking out, as it were, with a "but we're not going to grab your hands and force you to play again, if you're not ready yet", when, honestly, it is a mod's job to get players excited, and to reel them in is a good thing, not a bad thing.

In any case, we do much appreciate your time in and offering all of this - trust us, it will be taken to heart. While we are hoping that the next plot post will "refresh" on its own even as it is, we will be asking as many questions as we feasibly can in regards to its hooks and events. You're right - what this game could really use and deserve right now is to be impressed.

Edited 2014-05-27 02:17 (UTC)

I'm going to chime in here separately from Blue and mention that your suggestions absolutely have merit, and thank you for coming by to mention them to us. Part of this whole thing is that for players it's been a month - but the mod team only got really put together two weeks ago, and I know on my part, at least, it's been an adventure, shall we say, in getting a handle on everything and putting it into action. We wanted to ease back into the developments coming in June, but in doing so it looks like we've had somewhat too slow a start.

We're still putting together the next plot post, so as we go forward with discussion we'll definitely be keeping this stuff in mind in order to offer more wide-spread opportunities and hooks to run with.

It seems to me that it might be useful for the plot calendar and the new player-plot post to be linked from the userinfos.

Relatedly,

saveyourselves's info still links to the old mod contact post, rather than the new ones.

We're actually working on a full navigation page, but the newer pages will make it into the userinfo in the next day or two. (The coding needs to be rearranged.)

Thanks for letting us know about the userinfo at

saveyourselves! I could have sworn we'd gotten them all, whoops.

Honestly I find it appalling and a serious overstepping of your bounds as game mods that your response to someone reporting a non-game-related argument on plurk was to give the other party a warning instead of just advising the person with the complaint to defriend them and come back to you if the problem persisted.

You are game mods. Your jurisdiction has boundaries. If you expect your players to respect each others' boundaries, you also need to respect your players by respecting the boundaries of your own authority.

Hello, anon.

The warning in question was administered as a result of the player repeatedly causing friction and uncomfortable situations for other players, culminating in one particularly hostile attack on a certain player. It was not an isolated incident, it did not take place solely on Plurk, and we received several corroborating reports and additional evidence that merited the warning.

The behaviour that we were shown was completely unacceptable, and we feel that it is our duty as mods to keep other players from being subjected to it. As such, we administered a warning to ensure that it doesn't happen again. We feel that we should also note that several of the players who came to us said that this was directly affecting their time in the game to the point where they were considering dropping.

Hopefully this clarifies our decision.

Regarding the latest NPC post:

It has been four days since Geoff tagged back. Some characters are still waiting on the first reply.

I understand that playing NPCs can be exhausting, since many characters flock to the post. However, a four days wait is frustrating, especially since currently this is the only plot related thing most of us can get involved in. How are characters supposed to get information when it seems like the threads are dropped right after the starters?

I know you guys have a life, and I’m not saying to drop everything and boomerang, but more consistency would be appreciated. As you say on this page, playing NPCs is a group affair on an as-needed basis. Between four head mods and four helper mods, could no one find the time to tag back at least once during these four days?

I'm at fault there - my apologies! It was by mismanagement and mistaking priorities that I fell behind, one of those instances of which being assuming the wheel of Geoff for the post with the new plot post to plan for.

Tags will resume today, but in the meantime, we certainly will confer when/before there's a chance of tasks lining up to be in position to juggle so that everything is locked as someone's first-order priority to tend to for as long as it's active. (I suppose I'm still getting used to having a full team with whom that can be done!)

I was going to comment again about the lack of tagbacks in Geoff’s post, but then I saw there were some tags today so first - thank you.

However, I still feel it needs to be addressed - a ten day wait between tags is long, especially on a plot relevant post, especially in a game with 1:1 OOC : IC ratio and especially when you already got crit about it. It honestly seemed like you guys ignored it until today.

As I said in my previous comment, I the know mods have lives but I get the impression that you can’t keep up even with an eight people team. One example is Geoff’s post. Another example is the warehouse discussion post/OOC vote regarding Geoff’s plan. It was supposed to go up some time last week, according to the June 8th plot post. Nine days passed and the post hasn’t gone up yet.

I’m sorry, but it doesn’t look good. We haven’t had new apps in almost a month, there have been many drops. All this through no fault of the current mod team, but if people lose interest it’s your job to help them get it back. As fun as the current plot is (and it is fun, in my opinion, with various things to play with) how can players be invested if the people in charge of the game can’t keep up their own schedule?

This is really more of an HMD type thing but could you guys add "calendar" to the front page links? I know we have one, but it's not easily found.

We're working on a complete overhaul of the navigation and will make sure to include the calendar in a prominent place, thank you for the suggestion!

Queries.

July calendar?
Test drive? (12 days overdue.)
Plot post? (31 days and counting.)

I don't insist on plot posts as often as in the beginning of the game, but FAQ says "Often, but chaotically." I don't see that happening.

"Often" has in the past meant zero to two plot posts a month, except for the opening and the time around the season finale. We had one proper (8th) and one intermediate (19th) one last month, and plan to have at least one this month, though the timing was set to be towards the end of the month, mirroring May and April rather than June. The amount of time between proper plot posts that that would have caused is something that should have been taken into consideration more firmly, and we'll move it up some to shorten that timespan.

Thanks for the reminder about the test drive! It will be up shortly. Just for future reference: In the past, the test drives were put up by both players and mods whenever they felt it necessary to post a new one. That is a tradition that we'd like to go back to after this one, which is also why the test drive shouldn't show up on the calendar again. So if you ever again feel that the test drive is overdue, you're welcome to put it up yourself.

As for the calendar, we seem to have gotten or wires crossed about whose task it is to maintain it, something that we will fix now. So it will hopefully not happen again and we'll fix the calendar itself asap (I only noticed that it was out of date this morning when working on a new navigation, and am both delighted to see that people use it and deeply sorry that I didn't catch earlier that it is currently useless). Apologies for that one.

The June 8th post was a catch-all for all the plots in both Locke and Vegas, while the June 19th post only regarded specific Locke plots (and was behind schedule). I think it's reasonable to expect one catch-all plot post every 30 days or so.

As Kira said, we simply miscalculated how long it had been since the last plot post and that we're already working on moving up the next one. Thanks very much for your patience!

See, here's the thing. That post on the 8th set up the spaceship meeting (which half-materialized a week late and has had no followup that I could find), the blackouts/ghosts (continuing, theoretically, but just kinda there), and the Thundercompound opening (over) for Locke, and the cultists (continuing in the background), auroras (continuing, but non-interactive), and the Incident at Lake Bellagio (complete) for Las Vegas. Six events, of which three can possibly have any discernible continuing effect and one appears to have been abandoned without notice. This does not strike me as enough for two months.

As Kira said (and as I said to the anon above), we simply miscalculated how long it had been since the last plot post and we're already working on moving up the next one. I'd also like to personally apologise for any delays in plots going up and such, since I've been having problems with my health lately and that's at least partially responsible for setting things off track.

Thanks again for your patience!

Hello! I just wanted to ask, is there a reason that it was never announced that a selection had been made regarding those who had signed up for the mafia kidnapping plot?

I had asked about getting Nick involved with this and was told he might be able to have a higher level of involvement, depending on who was selected. I expressed interest and said I would keep an eye on the results of the sign-ups, and then nothing else happened. I had no idea that anyone had been chosen until the IC post went up today.

Unless I missed an announcement - and if I did, I apologize - I'm really disappointed at the lack of communication here. It feels like it's been getting harder to get involved with the main plot of STE, and I think more and clearer communication on behalf of the mods regarding events like these would really help.

Hiya - it didn't even occur to me to announce that the selection had taken place, since we did so only a couple of days ago. Entirely my bad! I've been horribly scatterbrained lately and can only apologise profusely. We'll be sure to make sure things like this get announced in future.

Eugen has icly contacted the FBI about the situation, so it's safe to assume that Nick can be as involved in that side of things as you wish him to be. Albero is hard to trace, but obviously this won't be as much of a problem for those with mafia contacts - a quick planning post for this sort of thing will be going up soon!

With regards to plot involvement: the cultist meeting and Badri's post are both ongoing and welcome backtags, if those would suit you at all! There'll also be ongoing mafia things (the nature of which are largely dependent on player actions in regards to Robyn's kidnapping, which I'm sure Nick would be welcome to join in with) and events related to the giant... lobster-crab-thing in Vegas. Hopefully something amongst that lot sparks some inspiration in you! 83

Thank you very much for the quick response! I understand that things can get hectic, and thank you for the assurance that you'll take more care of this in the future.

However, Nick doesn't just have contacts in the mafia, he's actively working for them. Per my discussion with the mods, Nick would have been approached by Albero and told that they would be kidnapping a network member, and that Nick would be responsible for taking care of any legal repercussions. I was supposed to check back in when the kidnap victim had been picked to plot further.

Nick was supposed to have prior knowledge of this event, and I now feel like I'm playing catch up and trying to figure out how to work with what's already happened. I feel bad complaining about this because I'm the only one affected by it, but I wanted to make the reasons I'm upset clear. I don't expect anything to be changed, and I'll keep an eye out for the planning post and work with people to figure things out from here.

HELLO IT'S STILL ME

I'm sending you a PM right now with some additional IC information, if that's alright! Again, I can only apologise for my own case of brainfuckage here and will try to make it up to you as best as possible.

(And never feel bad about complaining! You are free to kick my ass as necessary. >8V)

You forgot the date entry posts for the media post.

Thank you for the heads-up!

Plotty related thing here in which Tony is going to hunt and take down the mafia NPC that had been posing as himself and starting fires. I do want to try to work this into being a good echo thingy but for now nothing else of particular interest. If anything does happen I can update this for you!

Updates would be much appreciated, thank you!

The clinic was saved, much chaos ensued, and an NPC chameleon mook ended up being rescued instead of eaten XD

I assume that this NPC is Luca Dantonio? If so, are there any plans for him?

Yup that's him. Attempted rehabilitation and coffee fetcher? They'll have to protect him like they would any numbered that don't look especially human. That and keep an eye on him at least for now to make sure he's not going to run back to his boss with information. Not that will be a problem for long. I'll prod the others for more info on that too.

You'll npc him yourselves? And would it be okay to approach you about involving him in mod plot at some point?

Lexi (L's mun) will be in charge of him if that's okay? Since she's the entire reason we didn't eat him XD. And of course I don't see any reason why not!

Very awesome and perfectly okay!

Edited 2014-12-12 22:13 (UTC)

Hey there! I have a media post I want to post, an interview with Energy Up after the sting on Espresso Yourself. The last media post only goes up until mid-November, though, so I was wondering if there was another one going up pretty soon (before Nick's plot next week), or if there was something else I could do with it (post it in the main comm, in the latest media post despite the date being later?)

Thanks!

Hey, thanks a lot for the heads up! The media post's times have now been altered to go up to the 8th of December (aka after Nick's plot - simply because that is when there will be important new things/changes to write about for the "general current state" section).

That said, you may post it both to the main comm of the media post, depending on if you want to interact with people in reaction to it or not.

HI AGAIN. In this log I was asked to NPC a chameleon goon and named him Luca Dantonio. He was intended to be a throwaway thug, but he's young and kind of a coward and the log's participants all wondered if he could be added to the NPC roster as a rescued villain and a candidate for rehabilitation. Apparently, no one wants to kill this guy.

That is totally possible!

KIRA \| HEAD MOD

	TIME ZONE: CET \| GMT+1 PLURK: narwa AIM: janteslaw PM: narva
MARK \| HELPER MOD

	TASKS: AC and upkeep of lists; apps. TIME ZONE: CET \| GMT+1 PLURK: marcuswolf828 AIM: marcuswolfrpg PM: marcuswolf828

To get in touch with a mod, please use the above information. Contact to any of the mods, or the mods in their entirety, can also be made by commenting to this entry. Anon is enabled. Comments are unscreened. To leave screened comments, please go to the screened mod contact post. Please do not message the mod plurk. Playing NPCs is a group affair of all mods on an as-needed basis, as are applications. Please contact a head mod about them.

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