Monomods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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superhighschoollevelooc2014-08-10 10:50 am
monomods) wrote in superhighschoollevelooc2014-08-10 10:50 am
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Feedback Post!
As with last round, we've decided to have a feedback post for round 2! Thank you all once again for participating, and for those of you who didn't get a chance to participate thank you for coming along on this wild and wonderful ride with us anyway. While we're especially looking for feedback from players to see what we can do to improve and upgrade the workings of the game itself, anyone can comment with anything in particular that you noticed. As with last time, the only thing that we require is that you put a name to your critique - to that end, anon commenting is disabled.
There are a few things that we as a mod team are aware of, and things we've been working to change! Those issues and changes are the following:
First of all, you have our sincere apologies for the way a few trials and situations played out this round - there were a few things that were accidentally set up in such a way that was completely unwinnable, and while it was unintentional on our part that doesn't excuse the fact that it was frustrating and unfair to our playerbase. We're sorry, as a lot of that was on us from an organizational standpoint, and we should have implemented changes to our system a lot more firmly than we did, more quickly than we did.
On that note, a few details regarding the way we set up trials have been changed. From here on, there will be no more asking Monobear to conceal crucial evidence, nor will the mods be issuing "saves" from the bear for any reason outside of "We completely screwed up in giving you guys sufficient evidence."
Don't worry, however! We have also changed evidence protocols to streamline the entire process. This is something we received crit on in the last round, and while we had rough patches in this round as well, we've worked out an organizational system that will allow us to see immediately whether a trial is solvable, both with regards to the culprit and figuring out what happened.
From here on, we'll do our best to ensure that there are no more trials that are accidentally unwinnable. Again, you have our apologies, as well as our gratitude for your patience and understanding.
The other things we've been working on improving with this round include:
Increased efficiency and clarity in handing out evidence during investigations: This is something that really came to our attention this round, and we've been trying to improve the way the mods communicate with the players during the investigation in order to prevent confusion or overly-startling "The room is covered in blood" moments.
Improved pacing: The last few weeks of the last round were said to drag quite a bit, and this time we really tried to focus on keeping the energy of the game up. (We would like to add the caveat that while there was a lot of slowdown during the few days before the trial, that was more or less inevitable, because that week is an incredibly busy one on our end while we prepare to roll endgame out.)
Increased player autonomy: We wanted to avoid an overly-scripted game in which the plot was handed to you. As such, we worked toward allowing for more player-induced sidequests, more "rewards" for taking initiative where appropriate, and actually letting the players themselves decide exactly what sort of ending they wanted to the game. (There's another caveat here: the Golden Ending was an option, not a guarantee, and choosing to gun for that ending and not giving up until they got from it everything that they wanted was entirely a player-made decision. They earned the hell out of that Golden Ending, and it was entirely their choice as players to do so.)
If there's anything else you can think of that didn't work, or anything that did work that you particularly liked, we would like to hear from you! All feedback will be read and taken into consideration, though we may not respond to every one or implement all suggested changes. Of course you're free to discuss amongst yourselves, as well, as long as you keep it civil.
Once again, thank you so much for participating in this round of Dangan Roleplay - it's been a pleasure to work with you as a mod team, and we hope that it was as enjoyable to play in as it was to run. You all did so well, guys - thank you all, and hopefully we'll see you again for Round Three!
There are a few things that we as a mod team are aware of, and things we've been working to change! Those issues and changes are the following:
First of all, you have our sincere apologies for the way a few trials and situations played out this round - there were a few things that were accidentally set up in such a way that was completely unwinnable, and while it was unintentional on our part that doesn't excuse the fact that it was frustrating and unfair to our playerbase. We're sorry, as a lot of that was on us from an organizational standpoint, and we should have implemented changes to our system a lot more firmly than we did, more quickly than we did.
On that note, a few details regarding the way we set up trials have been changed. From here on, there will be no more asking Monobear to conceal crucial evidence, nor will the mods be issuing "saves" from the bear for any reason outside of "We completely screwed up in giving you guys sufficient evidence."
Don't worry, however! We have also changed evidence protocols to streamline the entire process. This is something we received crit on in the last round, and while we had rough patches in this round as well, we've worked out an organizational system that will allow us to see immediately whether a trial is solvable, both with regards to the culprit and figuring out what happened.
From here on, we'll do our best to ensure that there are no more trials that are accidentally unwinnable. Again, you have our apologies, as well as our gratitude for your patience and understanding.
The other things we've been working on improving with this round include:
Increased efficiency and clarity in handing out evidence during investigations: This is something that really came to our attention this round, and we've been trying to improve the way the mods communicate with the players during the investigation in order to prevent confusion or overly-startling "The room is covered in blood" moments.
Improved pacing: The last few weeks of the last round were said to drag quite a bit, and this time we really tried to focus on keeping the energy of the game up. (We would like to add the caveat that while there was a lot of slowdown during the few days before the trial, that was more or less inevitable, because that week is an incredibly busy one on our end while we prepare to roll endgame out.)
Increased player autonomy: We wanted to avoid an overly-scripted game in which the plot was handed to you. As such, we worked toward allowing for more player-induced sidequests, more "rewards" for taking initiative where appropriate, and actually letting the players themselves decide exactly what sort of ending they wanted to the game. (There's another caveat here: the Golden Ending was an option, not a guarantee, and choosing to gun for that ending and not giving up until they got from it everything that they wanted was entirely a player-made decision. They earned the hell out of that Golden Ending, and it was entirely their choice as players to do so.)
If there's anything else you can think of that didn't work, or anything that did work that you particularly liked, we would like to hear from you! All feedback will be read and taken into consideration, though we may not respond to every one or implement all suggested changes. Of course you're free to discuss amongst yourselves, as well, as long as you keep it civil.
Once again, thank you so much for participating in this round of Dangan Roleplay - it's been a pleasure to work with you as a mod team, and we hope that it was as enjoyable to play in as it was to run. You all did so well, guys - thank you all, and hopefully we'll see you again for Round Three!
no subject
And I'm going to agree with Ran that a timeline written up should be a mandatory thing, not an optional thing. When I was reading up the investigation for the case that I was personally involved in, it was a little difficult - not impossible - to see the entire timeline, but that might have been because neither of the victims were in contact with each other during the entire planning of the case, so that's something to note for the near future. It was a nice surprise on my part, figuring out who the other person was that ended up dying, but if you're going to plan a multiple person murder, I personally think it would be better if all parties involved could contact each other for future rounds.
I also really enjoyed the side quests on the seven floor; I know not everything was gotten to due to either a time crunch of having things missed in general, but I'm not blaming you guys for that at all. I honestly think that the idea of having side quests is great, and I'm hoping that you guys implement this in round three as well so that more characters can jump on that bandwagon.
As for things I enjoyed this round, let's be real. The twists in the game were amazing -- I was honestly surprised that Lysandre was the mastermind and that Adachi was the mole, mostly because of their roles in canon, and I personally did not expect people who had respective canonically "evil" slash "villain" roles would end up being the ones in such important roles, and I'm quite pleased with how that went. Lynsey and Dal, you two did wonderfully in this round in your respective roles, just allow me to applaud you two for that. You guys put on a show, and it was a rather pleasant one indeed.
I didn't even expect our characters to be in Kalos, and I was completely thinking - especially during the time the Information Room was revealed - that Junko, or someone from SHSL Despair could have been involved in the masterminding of this round, and I'm honestly glad that wasn't the case. And the fact that all the characters - sans Sycamore - were Future Foundation members prior to the game and actually knew each other before the game even began was a surprise even I wasn't expecting, and I'm clear positive that not many of us saw that coming.
I also enjoyed the canon integration, and I'm agreeing with almost everyone else who's said it - the fact that Dangan Roleplay doesn't operate on the same rules that most standard jamjar games do - that time still goes on as the game happens, and that there are actually consequences that do have to occur in the end, regardless of what happens.
Another thing to note is that the memory loss aspect was really great and I enjoyed how it was implemented. The Monomono Machine was also an amazing idea to use, and I laughed so many times when Schuldig kept pulling out people's underwear. Henri was also a blessing, and although I did find the name suspicious, I personally had no clue as to what it meant until the reveal happened, so here's to crossing my fingers for future rounds, regardless if I end up participating in them or not.
I was also really happy that this game could have ended in multiple ways. While I'm glad that our survivors did so well that they got us the Golden ending, we might not have gotten it, and just thinking about those endings makes me really excited for the next rounds - because hey, maybe next time we won't to as well from an IC standpoint, but who knows!
As for my suggestions as of right now, the only major one I can think of right now is that as mods, you guys should probably have write-ups of the general areas of the locations for investigations because there are going to be characters who will do a wide sweep of the room, so basically, anything you can see at first glance would be nice.
And, while I'm not doing it myself, I'm kind of curious. Would participants of Round 2 be able to participate in Round 3? If the memory-related things are going to continue being in play and characters are not allowed to talk about certain aspects of Round 2, etc.
If I think of anything else, I'll either edit this comment or post a new comment, thank you so much mods for making this wonderful! And thank you everyone who participated in this round, I had a blast.