FEEDBACK POST

[cartesio]

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:

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?

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!

Comments

[paciscere]

Thank you mods for the game! I really enjoyed the CR I made, and it was really neat to see you guys try different things. It was really sweet of the mods to gently encouraging us all the time plurks.

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.

With regards to the locked post, I think it's a little more complicated than simply "dissuaded from participation." It was an issue with communication - which, I think, is a general problem this mock week had. The Monday announcement wasn't supposed to be interactive, but nothing was said to the players about that so they assumed it was an event - which made a lot of players wait for it to go up before doing top-levels. Tasks also should have gone up with the post, not later in the day, especially if it was only sign-ups. What you're doing is forcing people to either hold their top-levels because they don't know if this is going to be an interactive event or what - or to make a top-level before the unlock and risk having to make another top-level later in the day. In a fast-paced game where everyone is trying to manage their inbox to avoid burnout, this made it really frustrating to plan around.

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.

Also, 23:00 PM EST? Why? If you're going by eastern time, use the standard for it. Don't switch between standard and military. I'm dumb! And please don't announce the times of events and things ON THE DAY OF. The announcement plurk went up at 6 AM PST to announce times. I wouldn't wake up that early if my house was on fire. But most importantly, you should have plurked it the day before. It is just extremely poor planning otherwise and needs to not happen in the main game.

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.

There was also a lot of hand-holding in the event. It's fine to list what's available, but it's up to the players to decide if it's useful etc. Telling the players "If using water is only going to make things worse, then using a different thing should be good, right? The extinguishers are going to be of help, but more potency could be useful" shouldn't be necessary unless everyone is stuck on what to do. You should have stopped at "it's going to take a lot more than extinguishers to stop the fire." Let the players figure it. That's the fun!

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.

It was also really hard to tell what evidence was IC knowledge and what was OOC knowledge because not all of them were present in a top-level or a spot easily visible. Yes, we could have clicked the evidence link, but was that all presented in the same manner in the trial? People word things differently, which is part of the fun and a good advantage for the culprit! So there was a lot, a lot of doublechecking for me, personally.

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.

--

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!

[doublelammy]

Definitely agree RE: player participation, but a friend of mine brought up a good point - this past week was a busy week for universities! So I think mock week just kinda fell at a bad time for a lot of people, but it was definitely disheartening to see what felt like over half the reserves just... not show.

[nevergraduating]

This is Fishy just cribbing off of Soup's comment since it reminded me of something as I was stalking the week!

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!