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Save the Earth Mods ([personal profile] theearth) wrote2014-05-14 02:25 pm

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pianistofraielin: (Pining over that girl I met once)

[personal profile] pianistofraielin 2014-05-26 06:36 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
pianistofraielin: (Pining over that girl I met once)

[personal profile] pianistofraielin 2014-05-26 07:17 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
pheromonecoffee: (Thought ♪ Daylight burns)

[personal profile] pheromonecoffee 2014-05-27 01:50 am (UTC)(link)
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?"