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FEEDBACK POST
MOCK WEEK FEEDBACK POST
So the mock week is over!
This week...it fulfilled some of the expectations I had regarding how this’d go. Some things went great! Other things went well, other things didn’t work as expected, and some will need some serious rehauling. This mock week’s purpose not only was to introduce the setting and what kind of things could happen during the game, but to test the mechanics and see what’d need tinkering, and on that regard it could be said the week fulfilled its purpose.
We’ll need some feedback to work on and tailor this experience for your enjoyment! Please take some time to leave a note about what worked and what didn’t, if there was anything that discouraged you from posting, or if there was anything that should be changed for the main game.
In general these are the three big questions to answer:
Please leave your opinions and comments! You don’t have to limit yourself to answering only those three questions, touch any topic you want to touch!
This week...it fulfilled some of the expectations I had regarding how this’d go. Some things went great! Other things went well, other things didn’t work as expected, and some will need some serious rehauling. This mock week’s purpose not only was to introduce the setting and what kind of things could happen during the game, but to test the mechanics and see what’d need tinkering, and on that regard it could be said the week fulfilled its purpose.
We’ll need some feedback to work on and tailor this experience for your enjoyment! Please take some time to leave a note about what worked and what didn’t, if there was anything that discouraged you from posting, or if there was anything that should be changed for the main game.
In general these are the three big questions to answer:
1: Was there anything that may have dissuaded you from participating more in the game? For example, seeing a locked post for an event and deciding to wait for it to be over?
2: Did you find the 1:2 ratio confusing? Do you think you could get used to that ratio, or should a more common 1:1 ratio be used?
3: At what time should investigations on Friday be opened? Would you prefer them to happen at noon, or in the evening, say, around 7:00 PM EST?
2: Did you find the 1:2 ratio confusing? Do you think you could get used to that ratio, or should a more common 1:1 ratio be used?
3: At what time should investigations on Friday be opened? Would you prefer them to happen at noon, or in the evening, say, around 7:00 PM EST?
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1. I do think it would've been a better idea in regards to the tasks event to maybe have the announcement immediately done so people wouldn't be waiting. Because I waited thinking it was a good idea but it was at the beginning of the week and took awhile, so it limited interaction for that particular day. Also, as a side note, I believe that it'd be better for announcements/and sign ups for tasks should be on the same day. Especially if there's going to be a time limit.
2. I think a more common 1:1 ratio should be used and furthermore, make sure that the dates for everything (i.e., sign up end times) are in a format that is not military format (aka just normal...) That confused a couple of people I know, besides me, so please adjust this one element to make sure there's less confusion in the future.
3. I don't have a preference.
Misc:
There's an issue I wanted to address with the trial in regards to evidence -- I don't mind there being not a lot of it as long as it can be used to somehow point to an individual when assembled, but you want to make sure it is also something that can be discovered. Keep in mind that we had some players that are new to the murdergame genre so maybe that should've been more simple than vague. But honestly my biggest issue of all is somehow being unable to undercover the murder weapon.
It was an issue because of the fact that there wasn't much definite evidence to point in someone's direction so it could've helped with more debate instead of people being left in the dark and confused. If there's less evidence, especially if it's important, you're going to want to make sure it's something to be found.
I honestly got lucky myself in figuring out it was Mira and it was honestly a blind guess. My runner up suspicion was Wayne and, yeah, you're not going to always catch the culprit in a murdergame. But once again I want to reiterate that it's a mock trial and if people are struggling with debate/piecing together evidence in a mock trial then something's wrong.
That's all I have for now. It's not as elegant as I'd like but I hope I got the point across. Hope to see you guys around again!
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Hilariously when looking up Wayne's gun I noticed it came in a .20 model.
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2: Did you find the 1:2 ratio confusing? Do you think you could get used to that ratio, or should a more common 1:1 ratio be used? I didn't really find it confusing, but I would prefer a 1:1 ratio. It allows for more character interaction, I think.
3: At what time should investigations on Friday be opened? Would you prefer them to happen at noon, or in the evening, say, around 7:00 PM EST? God above, I would truly appreciate it if you could open them just 3 hours earlier. 12PM EST is 6AM for me. I managed to wake up at that time the first few days, but ended up crashing shortly after waking up. 'twas not a good time.
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1. I didn't wind up top-leveling, but I do think the locked post was a bit of a deterrent towards that on 'Thursday' only. I don't have a problem with reveals being left til the IC time they occur, though since this was a mock trial that only lasted a week, it probably could have been done sooner so people would could get the most out of them.
2. I was okay with the 1:2 ratio. In fact I really thought it was kind of neat how the 'mission' was able to factor into Naoto's alibi.
3. My personal opinion is that the evening would be nice if you're willing to do it at night! It just jives better with my schedule.
Misc:
As a culprit, I'm really satisfied with how this case went! In a scapegoating game, it should be considered valid for the culprit to get away with murder or to come close. That should be the culprit's goal, just as it's the village's goal to catch them. Compared to the everyone-dies style, it's fair to have a higher standard of mystery solving, and it's BETTER if the critical evidence is well hidden. People should have to think outside the box and solve the murders. That's what we are here for.
I think the one thing that I immediately saw your trial as lacking, however, is an IC way for all characters to examine the evidence rather than wait to have it presented to someone. Because this case relied on subtle evidence, there should have been an easier way for characters to look it up. Because even though Waver suggested a residue check and Faba pointed out that the scented and unscented removers existed, no one really paid attention. If it was all compiled IC though, it would hopefully have been easier to revisit later in the trial.
Here are some examples of this format:
Findings in trials from Murder Manor
The mail room in investigations from Parasomnia
XAMINE app in 15 Strangers R2 (the way Joey and Dio did it is the best imo since it had IC information AND a link to the part of the thread they found it in.)
You really need something like this to make the evidence ICly accessible by all characters. Otherwise you wind up waiting for someone else's character (usually the one who found the evidence) to post it before you can discuss it, and it leads to stalling. Plus I think it makes people think harder about it if they have to write down what the evidence is themselves.
However, I remember you were debating between whether to have a suspect list or not in your game. Seeing how confused everyone was, perhaps a suspect list is something to reconsider. I'm not personally sure if it would have made this case better or not, since Will, Naoto and Alfin were the runner ups and I'm certainly not sure I would have guessed them as the outstanding ones - I can only guess how much more easy or hard it would have been if there had been hand selected suspects. It was interesting to see that happen organically, so I also kind of liked not having a suspect list. We maybe should not have made the third evidence 'profiling' though, seeing the way they constructed a completely unexpected one. Haha! So either a suspect list or higher priority for hard evidence might be the way to go?
There is also the fact that we had no actual character profiles in this mock trial so that may have contributed to the lack of things to go on. If we had a profile I might have been able to slip in that Mira likes fruity ice cream flavors. And etc. Really it's your call, but those are the ideas I have.
Thanks again for making this game and with luck I'll see you in the main round!
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For your questions:
1. I think the only thing that really caused hesitance to post for me was the time delay between the top level for the first day going up and then the mission announcement coming in - it felt like everyone was waiting for it and as if the day wasn't officially opened for posting yet. I think making these things come up simultaneously might help.
2. I think I can work with this ratio.
3. My preference would be noon, because my timezone is 6 hours ahead of EST. I could still manage to attend 7:00 EST so it wouldn't be a dealbreaker for me though, no worries.
And I think that's it from me, I had a great time and I'll be back ♥
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2: Did you find the 1:2 ratio confusing? Do you think you could get used to that ratio, or should a more common 1:1 ratio be used? ......I forgot?
3: At what time should investigations on Friday be opened? Would you prefer them to happen at noon, or in the evening, say, around 7:00 PM EST? It was fine for me. But I'm used to it going up right as I'm leaving work or on the bus home. I did have some trouble with the voting window though.
Only really problem I had was during the investigation. And that was how would news be spread? Because I left it vague if Wayne had heard about the body being found or not cause he'd avoid police and was the opposite side of town. But that might just be character specific.
Most my actual issues with things like activity and that was just life punching me in the face.
Overall I like the idea of murdergames were the culprit can escape. It handles the problem of 'This person is already good at murder and getting away with it'. It's also less worrying for me cause I always focus on the wrong stuff. And the whole accidentally voting wrong and dead ending the whole game.
And as much as I like big dramatic confessions. It seems less like working it out sometimes and just waiting for the culprits player to post it.On the votes. I might as well say Wayne voted for Naoto. Oocly I was pretty sure it was Mira. It was the small-ish, not strong enough to carry the body and Wayne talking about guns with Naoto before. Nagisa could have been voted for too there, but he seemed a bit more competent at the whole body disposal bit.
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1. What dissuaded me, if anything, didn't have much to do with the mods or how the game was run overall, but rather player participation. It seemed like there were a lot of inactive players, and that was really disappointing to see. On the other hand, mock week doesn't have ac for a reason, so it can't be helped if work suddenly comes up or whatnot! That's all understandable.
I had an idea for a top-level, but didn't want to overwhelm myself before the task reveal and decided to wait. Multiple people were saying they were waiting for the reveal, too. As a result, nothing was done Monday morning and afternoon. What would solve this is to let people know that it's just an announcement for the day or just a sign-up, not an event you can interact with, so people know to go ahead and top-level instead of waiting.
Instead the players were left in the dark and as a result, the game looked dead - and it was only the second day.
2. The day system is confusing. A ratio of 1:2 would work if you didn't use dates, but rather days of the week and go on a vague week 1, week 2, etc system. It's fine to tell the players "week 1 will last two irl weeks" and the next weekly post will mark when week 2 happens. There's no reason to add actual dates unless they somehow matter in the plot. Mock week was fine, but I can't imagine having to keep track of this in the main game.
3. On Monday, the post times were way too early for a day with announcements/sign-ups. The post went up at 10 EST, which is 7 AM for the PST people. First off, that's the devil's time and wow why. Second, Monday is the first work day of the week. That's too early for anyone and if I recall correctly by 4 PM PST/7 PM EST, there still hadn't been any top-levels. That is a lot of time lost. Some of it had to do with the lack of communication re: announcement/sign-ups though.
The takeaway from this is on weekdays, a fair amount of people have work and/or school. Events need to be later in the day. Somewhere between 3-7 PM EST as a start time would be a good compromise.
In my opinion, investigations don't need to take as much time as a trial, so it really depends on when the mods are free to be around and do it. Again, I think between 3-7 would work best if the mods can handle that time.
Other stuff: Nick, you need to let your co-mods know more things in the event that you're not around so they can answer questions in your stead. I got a lot of "I don't know. Only Nick knows" when asking your co-mods questions. I do understand that this is your first time running a murdergame and it is hard sometimes to share all the ideas floating in your head, but it is definitely something to work on and would probably help your co-mods a lot in the future.
The plot: Interesting! I can't even begin to guess where you're going with it, but that is a good thing I think! But I do have a question... Why debit cards? Are you going to be tracking them in the main game? Do players get a weekly limit in the main game? I don't really see the point in having them otherwise if the players get an infinite amount of money because that just equals everything is free anyway.
The Sergeant: I really liked his personality! I thought you did a great job with that. At the same time, I felt like you wrote yourself into a corner re: player answers. I don't think we got much in the first Q&A with the sergeant aside from "there's a mastermind that's not me," which he said to multiple players in different ways. Ultimately we got the same info and didn't really have much to share with each other.
The Fire Event: I loved that you were open to different routes with that. It was really disappointing, however, that the entire thing was resolved in basically one tag after someone yelled the NPCs into action. Were they gonna let their town just burn to the ground if a character hadn't yelled at them? Did these firefighters not get any training whatsoever? The entire thing was fixed by NPCs, even though it started off really strongly in terms of player driven actions.
The Trial: Mods did not tell players to present evidence. Nor did they remind players when evidence was missing. If you're doing this type of game where you need the players to present information, you have to remind people and gently discourage people not to participate in the investigation UNLESS they can be present early to present the information. Otherwise, it's not fair. I think in this case they either didn't know they had to or forgot. I didn't do investigation because I knew I'd be late to the trial, for example.
The case itself was fine, except the part about the storm which really confused players I think and made it hard to figure out what the conclusive evidence was. Does heavy rain not wash away the smell of gunpowder even when rain is a known scent controller? I think for a mid-week case, it would have been fine! I personally do like really subtle clues. But it did seem too hard for a mock trial case, as by the end, only a few players had any suspects in mind. The case stalled for a really long time even with a catherd.
The timing for the task was also up in the air. And the first answer I got from the mods about it was vague and did not actually answer anything. Thankfully, it was edited with a better answer. I do like that players could use it in the trial as counter-evidence for their alibi. That was good!
I think to help with this issue, you should have a second or third mod check for evidence logic.
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ok wow god I know this is super long, but I definitely don't mean it in a "YOUR GAME IS BAD" way at all! since you're looking on how to improve things, these are just my opinions on what could work and what didn't work. I really do hope the main game goes super well and that all the players have the best and most fun!
thank you so, so, so much for all the effort you put into this!
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Adding to what was already mentioned about the fire event, I noticed an issue when it came to drawing conclusions for the players; there was a mod tag that stuck out to me that was along the lines of, "yeah the fire definitely was set deliberately". While I can see that maybe you guys wanted to finish up the event (since it did seem to drag on for quite a bit) and maybe the conclusion was very obvious, but it seemed to cut off a lot of room for discussion because it's basically laid out to everyone.
Also just agreeing that you should let players choose their own actions. I'm not saying it's bad to lay out what's in the setting, but the way it's written sometimes seems to assume that a character will do something. For example, in this tag about the foam in the firetruck, that assumes that the players are going to explore the firetruck, which sort of cuts off any other alternative solutions that the players might come up with. Instead, it comes off as implicitly saying that the players have to try using the foam because nothing else will work.
Lastly, just be careful of using the general 'you'. Sometimes it can come off as awkward/godmoddy because not all characters may react the same way or observe the same things! One of the lines I found during the mission was "everyone has the feeling you're being followed", which... I would understand maybe if the stalker was being really noisy and stomping around, maybe everyone would notice but ICly some characters that are more oblivious may not actually notice if it's more subtle. It cuts off ways for characters to react differently because it would feel awkward on the player end to contradict the meta.
Anyways, these are just minor points I noticed and I'm definitely still interested in the concept and setting! I look forward to seeing how things will be tweaked in the main round, and hopefully I can manage to join you guys there!
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In terms of my personal participation, a lot of my inactivity stems from personal things that happened outside of the game, so that's entirely on me and not you guys.
2. I personally don't mind the 1:2 day schedule all that much, so I'll leave it at that.
3. I have a personal preference of noon or later in terms of the investigation + trial times, just as long as it's consistent. I'm in PST, so any time earlier than that is going to be ridiculously early on my end, and I'd prefer to participate in the trial.
Other things: Also, I might be the only one who missed voting and that's entirely on me, but I'd like to suggest a reminder closer to the voting time when votes are due, especially since they're done on a separate screened post instead of a top level. I honestly thought that since I actually missed voting that Sakura was going to get punished for not voting at all due to the warning of 'refusing not to vote is not an option', so I was honestly pretty shocked when she wasn't.
I also agree with the above re: debit cards - mostly because there's not really a way to check how much of a balance a character has, whether or not it's infinite or not since there's no banks around and therefore people wouldn't have known if there was money or not unless they tested it or heard from the Sergeant. But having an infinite amount means that everything is essentially free, not to mention that it doesn't really seem to play a part in the plot all that much; although I can definitely see it being used for a potential motive.
I don't have much else to say that hasn't already be said but thank you so much for running this mock round and hopefully this helps a little on improving and streamlining things so that the main round does well!
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But! Feedback!
1. I think what ultimately dissuaded me from posting more throughout the week was that a lot of things tended to happen at noon, so I was super late by the time I got home and was actually able to tag.
2. I got a little confused by the 1:2 ratio for general tagging purposes - I think it'd just be easier to track what was going on with a 1:1 ratio. That said, I understand the 1:2 for the mission, especially with how ungodly slowly that was going and if it's supposed to be timed for pass/fail.
3. Oh my gosh please do things later in the day. This was going to be my one major piece of feedback, so I'm really grateful you're asking about it. I am on EST, but I work a full time job. While I haven't gotten in trouble for tagging at work yet, it's really not something I want to push my luck on, and tagging on my phone isn't really a viable option - we're not allowed to have our phones out at our desks, because we work with sensitive information. I can't exactly run off to the break room every five seconds if I want to participate in an event or investigation, you know? I can do anything after 5:00PM EST easily, but before that is really a risk I don't want to take. (I say, risking things to post feedback now.)
As far as other feedback:
- Mission structure was a bit weird, but I don't know if that was us or that was the mission direction? I kind of get the feeling that was us... still, it was really hard to jump in late on that, which sucks because that's one of the core mechanics of this.
- RE: trial, I definitely found myself getting frustrated at the lack of any real clues to act on. There was one real clue that pointed to Mira, and it was one we ICly got dissuaded from, which is fine - that's on us. But that was the only clue that pointed to Mira specifically. I know at the end of the trial, a number of people (myself included) were saying we had "literally no idea," and that's... not good, especially when we're looking at all 21 participants!
- Baaaasically everything I have to say is a rehash of what other people are saying, so there's not a ton for me to add. I will get down on my hands and knees and beg again for things to be moved to later in the day, though. That literally might be a dealbreaker for me otherwise, and I really don't want it to be.