// POST-EVENT FEEDBACK_

[eluviomods]

// POST-EVENT FEEDBACK_ With our first event concluded, we'd like to hear from you about what you thought! There are two components to this feedback post. ➣ Mod Feedback First, we would like you to tell us, the mods, what you thought of the way the event was run. What worked? What didn't? What did you like? What didn't you like? Through watching the game communities and some player feedback, we've identified three areas that seemed to cause some issues and would like to hear any thoughts you might have on both of them. PACING: Because this was the game's first plot event and we acknowledge the slower pace of DWRP these days, we thought allowing the playerbase a month to work through the mission would allow plenty of time to thread, explore the setting, and complete logs without a significant amount of backtagging that might slow things down. However, we noticed that approach didn't seem to turn out to be as helpful as we thought it would. So we would like to hear your thoughts on how to achieve a good balance of time to thread versus not slowing the game down to a crawl. Currently, we're considering providing less OOC time to complete events and missions in the hope of encouraging things to move along more quickly. PARTICIPATION: When slots are limited, it's important that the players who sign up to take part in missions or events participate. This means actively playing with the group you sign up for and participating in logs, posts, or OOC communication. To encourage players not to squat on slots, we have a penalty system in place. Currently, if a player signs up for something that's plot important or has limited slots and then doesn't participate, that player will be ineligible to sign up their character(s) for the next two missions. If there are other ways you believe might encourage participation or discourage signing up for a spot and then not participating, please let us know. MOD GUIDANCE: We've been made aware that some players are struggling with the level of freedom provided to build the game environment along with us. Player contribution to the setting and the environment as a whole is a vital part of the collaborative game experience we want Eluvio to be. We want you to feel comfortable creating the details inside the framework we provide. How can we help you achieve that level of comfort? We can't restrict player freedom too drastically or we run the risk of micromanaging everything you do and that's something we expressly want to avoid. We do intend to provide a little more structure to the next plot than what was provided for the Oros Mission and we're always available to answer questions about what characters can do in a particular setting or during a plot. But if there are other things you think would help, we want to know. Aside from those three points, please let us know if there are any other areas that we need to take into consideration. In order to avoid repeating the same responses, we may not be responding to every comment, however we will be reading them. ➣ Player Feedback The second component of this post is to give you, players, the opportunity to discuss your experience with the event. Our hope is that having a venue for open, honest communication with one another will help alleviate frustrations and enable things run more smoothly going forward. We ask that you please keep things civil and respectful. Discussing frustrations is welcome and encouraged. Insulting one another is not.

Comments

[genice]

Pacing:

I won't reiterate things, since I see the responses up above, so just glad you guys are looking into this! Every kind of plot deals with a different pace that works best. In this case, it's a smash and grab — in past experience, I've seen those kinds of missions work best on a tight time frame, to keep people motivated and completing things on time. So I'm glad you're looking into this!

Participation:

a. If plots are going to run once every two months, I suggest actually shortening the penalty time down to "sit out the next plot." Asking someone to sit out as a punishment for two months makes sense and should be motivation enough to participate when you sign up! Having them be unable to participate for four months is more liable to drive them to drop instead of try to improve activity, participation, or engagement.

b. My biggest concern here is now on an IC front. Do you guys have a plan of action in mind to make it viable on the IC front that anyone who has been so badly burned this first time around will have any reason to go along with future missions requested by the captain and/or the ship?

Right now that occurs to me to be the biggest problem going forward, since to stay In Character there are many who cannot have a repeat of this "go in blind, be told nothing, be told even more nothing when they get back, and by the way, you helped enable the genocide of two species and the nuclear winter of their planet."

It doesn't matter what's being offered on the OOC side of things if the IC side makes it improbable to remain IC and still participate in this game's mission actions. Out the gate, the PCs have been set against the entire NPC crew by merit of being kept in the dark and used to these means with no explanation or apology. Which is good, as far as encouraging players to investigate the Eluvio, but it's where I wanted to ask what the mod team had in mind for how and why characters will participate in future missions. Because it is extremely bad as far as building any trust or reason to follow the orders of the captain, and if mission plots hinge on PCs voluntarily signing up, we've been partially hamstrung.

c. I'm also going to agree that having multiple slots for things that are resource missions would make sense, since both small groups threading things out tends to go faster, and resource missions are a good opportunity for people to get down and strike up or build on new CR without feeling the need to be competitive to get a resource mission slot, or have a really big team heading down to pick up the same resources.

Mod Guidance:

Personally, once I know what the limitations and boundaries are, I'm happy to run with whatever and figure things out or make them up as I go. I feel you guys have done a good job with this when it comes up, such as letting us know what kinds of plots do or don't need to be signed off by you! I appreciate those clarifications, and I know I'm still adjusting to properly keep them in mind and run with things as feels fun.

Two points I did want to bring up!

One, when world building, questions like "what is the general tech level" helps me as a player know the framework of what I can then BS into the sunset about existing on world. I know that I personally don't need more than, say, "Industrial Revolution." Or, "Futuristic Sci-Fi." Or, "Stone Age, for the most part, but randomly they have advanced weaponry."

Having questions meant to inform me of basics that I can then build off go ignored was incredibly discouraging. I don't want the mods to feel they need to do the world building. I'm happy to do that with fellow players. But if I ask a question, I'm asking for a reason, because it helps allow me to build things in a framework that works for whatever was generally in the mind of the mod team when designing the plot. I don't feel comfortable ad-libbing an answer when there's a stark contrast between "they live in mud huts" and "by the way there are multiple systems we need high level hackers to get past in this temple" without a word from the mod team saying if that should be normal or not when looking elsewhere on the world.

Two, communication! For these gamma missions with the native species, it felt like to me that the mod team wanted to avoid "direct communication through a shared language or interpreter." However, what I was told was no communication at all would be possible. Saying all communication is impossible, full stop, reads like there's no way to communicate concepts at all, not through body language, not through art, not through interpretive dance, not through song, not through participating in shared activities, not through touch, not through liberally dragging someone through a house, etc.

There are definitely species where that'd make sense, based on other limitations (maybe communicating just through lights and colour, imagine a species of jellyfish-natives, etc, and even then you'd potentially be able to realise they do communicate in colours and light without knowing what the blazes you're saying), but the insistence here that no communication could happen at all was difficult to understand.

If I wave and you wave back even just to mimic the motion, we've just communicated! Maybe not much, but we've acknowledged each other. I can then call out hello and not be understood, but that's a language barrier, not a complete inability to communicate. I know I'd personally appreciate a delineation between "no shared language" and "complete and total inability to communicate at all, because the species differences are just too great" in the future. Though going on a mission to observe a species that's completely beyond a character's understanding or ability to form any level of connection with (antagonistic or otherwise) feels equivalent to watching paint dry, or threading out watching paint dry. Tongue in cheek example:

"The mysterious species of tater tots rolled. They rolled all day, in odd patterns. Then they stood up, stared at each other, sang a single note, before returning to rolling. Day four of observation continues to prove this is completely and totally beyond our understanding. Even playing Taylor Swift provoked no response other than a shift in rolling that appeared to mimic what might have been rain, a tsunami, or even the way beads roll off a line. Maybe it was related. Maybe it wasn't. We just don't know.

Beyond that, I want to thank you for the time and energy you are all putting into Eluvio! The fact you're willing to open up these discussions to hear back and decide on what adjustments the mod team as a whole does or doesn't want to make is encouraging.

[eluviomods]

Thank you for your feedback!

Events are not going to be on a schedule of every two months. There is no actual set schedule for events, as the mod events are based on player actions. Not only that, but we are also trying to be completely flexible to work in player run events should they come into play. We have an event scheduled to begin in March, however that is happening directly because of actions taken during the Oros Mission. Punishments are put into place here because interaction and participation are very big parts of the game. It isn't fair to the other players to continuously allow those who sign up and don't participate.

Yes, going forward we do have a plan to get characters to ICly participate in missions. As we've said before, it's perfectly reasonable and expected for characters not to trust the captain or the crew. We are planning for it and in fact are counting on it. When future events require characters to ICly volunteer, we will be taking the general feeling toward the crew into consideration. It is also something to take into consideration that the crew can and often may be just as in the dark as the player characters. They, too, are just doing their jobs.

As for answering questions, we'll do our best to answer whatever questions the playerbase has about anything pertaining to the game. There will be occasions when players will just need to make things up and we'll try to communicate those occasions more effectively in the future. Again, not to repeat ourselves continuously in this post, but the basic part of the game is players contributing to the open world setting.

On our end, part of the trouble we've had answering questions is that many of them seem to be asking for a level of detail we never intended to provide. In your example of questioning Trilk and Fek tech, it seemed as if the intent was for us to provide an extremely detailed explanation, which we weren't going to do as we wanted players to have the freedom to do that. Knowing that general, generic answers like "Stone Age level tech" suffice is very helpful to us and we will do our best in the future to provide at least this level of information whenever possible.

[genice]

Yeah, I do love that it's good that PCs can question what's going on, and once the next CR meme rolls around I'm hoping to see players giving some good thoughts on pursuing those angles so we can bring those plots to you, tbh! I know I have a few ideas I'm waiting to toss out to people, since there's only so much to do on my own, and my character deeeefinitely doesn't have the skillsets for some of these things. Networking! Becomes so important. But yes, thank you! I'm glad you guys already have a gameplan here for handling signups on the IC side as they come up.

(And yeah, OOCly one expects no one much knows what's going on; the way it's been framed for PCs simply makes it seem more like the crewmembers, not so much the civilians, have at least better info access since they weren't sent down planetside.)

Yeah, for me at least as a rule, all I ever want is generic answers to know what I have to work within. If there's something that I really need a specific answer on, it's much more likely to relate to something on ship (since that's permanent! in theory). By and large with missions I won't need detailed answers from the mod team, just the generals.

Thank you so much!