Bayushi Satomi
Unwanted Betrothed
Scorpion Clan
Posts: 1,080| Likes: 322
Rings: Earth 4 * Fire: 5 *Air 3 * Water 1 * Void 3
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Post by Bayushi Satomi on Jan 19, 2014 23:00:59 GMT
A Crab don't go anywhere without murder clubs.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 20, 2014 8:18:26 GMT
Let's discuss a bit. First of all, We did not set out to follow the patterns of AEG's winter courts. That kind of 1-1 or 2-1 posting schedule is far too grueling for a two-person story team and a casual player base who have jobs, school, and general life going on. We took a lot of our cues from Emerald Empire 1, where the action was a lot more fluid and player-initiated, affected occasionally by outside forces (in the case of EE1, it was Jay's facebook game, here it's the mandates/voting action). The fact that we even have NPCs like the Empress or the Winds is something we're still playing with and trying to hone to make things as good as possible for everyone. There's certainly a few hiccups as we try to work with the framework that we're still kind of building as we go. With the *admittedly very basic* mechanics we've developed re: the glory shop, we're coming across new and interesting things that can affect the voting actions we have in the game so we're trying to stay ahead of it to make things more-or-less fair, because if things are more-or-less fair than people can feel like they have an effect on the story and that makes it more interesting for everyone. Our goal is to have *something* happen once a real-life week, in order to guide the story and give people something to play off of. This isn't necessary an in-game week, or even an in-game day. Things will move at the speed of plot, more-or-less. Now, people have taken initiative and created threads to interact with one another, which is great -- it's exactly what we wanted, in fact. We're developing mandates that can effect certain plot points, or certain other future mandates, or that can affect future voting actions in the future. It's open, because a lot of it we are waiting to see what stories point us in the right direction for our main action. Open threads are a part of this, it lets people meet and have a reason to talk to each other. By their nature, they are a bit chaotic (multiple people posting at different times when their schedules allow) and for the most part people just have to roll with it and do their best. (Edit) Additionally (sorry I'm writing this in off time at work) the vote depends entirely on favors, which are more or less the currency of the game. It is more symbolic of your influence on the court and, by extension, the empire at large. So long as you have glory to spend, you can effect the vote on the brothers in whatever way you see fit. There's not actually any reason to delay the vote because there's plenty of currency to go around, and it doesn't depend on any kind of IC interaction whatsoever. Deals can be made (or broken) entirely OOC via PMs, therefore there isn't any reason to delay the result and potentially invite an excess of vote inflation (something we're already trying to account for, due to people being awesome and prolific even in the first week). Maybe this isn't what people expected when they signed on. For that I apologize, we could have been better about being clear on this in the beginning. It's impossible to please everyone, but our sole goal is to create a fun environment for people to play in and to explore some ideas we have about our alternate reality setting. So to summarise: You want a casual game that people can play in their own time, but requires around 10-14 hours a day of posting to remain active and able to really influence the game, and because of the extra story happening each week those who cannot be as active are punished because of it, as anything they might have planned is thrown away. You want favours to be an important part of the game, yet they are completely visable to everyone so you know that you can just "outbuy" another clan by counting their clans favours. I think you need to fix the ideals of your game a little
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Bayushi Satomi
Unwanted Betrothed
Scorpion Clan
Posts: 1,080| Likes: 322
Rings: Earth 4 * Fire: 5 *Air 3 * Water 1 * Void 3
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Post by Bayushi Satomi on Jan 20, 2014 12:35:30 GMT
How I see the game mechanics right now:
Mode 1> One doesn't need to be logged or posting all the time. One needs to make awesome things IC, so they are commended by the awesome people around wishing to reward some well written and exciting scene; thus they gain extra glory; thus they can influence the game a bit more.
Mode 2> For the ones who chose a simpler way of RPing their character, quantity can matter, yes.
I don't think mode 1 and mode 2 are mutually exclusive. As I understand the system, it wishes to reward interaction, it wishes to reward good plotting, good RP, it wishes to reward people reading each other threads and not only the ones they are involved in. And yes, it wishes to reward quantity as well. It doesn't wish to punish people for things they don't do, but wish to reward people for things they do.
By the systems logic, good RP can beat quantity. It depends on how fair you are to the other players, of course. You can choose simply not to commend a good RP post. Are you punishing this person by not recognizing his/her obviously Good RP? It's a so personal decision that I don't think we can even discuss it. By now, I simply assume that commending is like a gift we give each other to say thanks for the pleasure of reading a good post, every time we feel like doing it.
As the 3 biggest religions in the world said somehow: do to others as you would have them do to you.
Accounting Favors:
For me, it is part of the strategy and part of the fun. In EE1 we used to receive reports of how voting were going so far, so we could push ourselves a bit to get better results. We could manage our alliances, relocate votes/clicks to other activities, etc. I understand people who didn't play the game can think differently. But for strategic planning, some information is essential.
Storywise, it has some logic, as courtiers can have a reasonable understanding of the influence and power other clan can possess and manage in a given moment. Yes, they could push themselves to outnumber other clan's influence, isn't it part of the court game?
Anyway, it is part of the plugin system Proboards can offer (some of you know I've checked). I know Proboards doesn't provide a PERFECT way to get a RPG going and yet, at least it provides some good alternatives as the ones we see running here. Ooh, well, and why not coding a plugin which manages the favor system, or the voting system, even better? Coding a plugin for Proboards which can run seamlessly with the other plugin this forum needs is not an easy thing., and the admin know it better. I also don't think it's even a real problem. I like the way it is right now. Basic. Simple. Rewarding RP.
But, for the ones willing to "keep the secrecy", I believe returning favors into glory and using the Imperial Treasury to keep your glory far from other's eyes can be a solution.
Waiting People:
Waiting for other player to come back is a nice thing to do. But, when we have more than half of the active player base in a single thread, for instance, maybe not everyone wish to wait a single player's return, if it does not interfere with their PC's immediate actions. Everyone has IRL schedules. It happens in forums. It happens in MMORPG. It happens in a tabletop RPG session as well. If a player can't attend the session, other players will assume his/her character was there, bland-acting most of time, and will carry on with the game session. He/ she will not get the session's XP, of course. It seems fair for everyone. Creative players will have excellent excuses IC for their absence in the next session, though, that can be used later as good plot hooks. Which may lead towards good chances of XP gain, by the way.
Then, you can just adapt this general RPG consensus for a forum, and you can see it's not viable waiting everyone to come back for being allowed to move forward. Reasonable players do it all the time (moving forward with the game if a character's absence is not interfering with you own's PC's imediate actions. If it does, however, contacting the said absent player can be a good solution to know what to do next).
There's also the possibility that absent people have the time to post, can even log in everyday, but are just feeling uninspired (whatever the reason, I'm not judging here) to post something. Should this fact to be allowed to delay an entire thread for 3 days, 1 week, 1 month? How long people are supposed to wait until they are assumed to be "forgiven" for moving on?
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Post by Bayushi Kimiko on Jan 20, 2014 15:31:53 GMT
We are already working to resolve the issue of having to keep up with high post counts. The solution we're looking at right now, since it's easy to implement, is having much higher rewards for completing Imperial mandates, which add to the story we're trying to tell and result in a lower posting burden on those who still want to have a decent chance to affect the voting actions.
We are somewhat in beta mode on this, so a bit of tweaking as we go is not surprising.
We are always open to suggestions on how to make the experience better. Feel free to shoot us a PM with your ideas.
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Bayushi Satomi
Unwanted Betrothed
Scorpion Clan
Posts: 1,080| Likes: 322
Rings: Earth 4 * Fire: 5 *Air 3 * Water 1 * Void 3
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Post by Bayushi Satomi on Feb 13, 2014 11:11:21 GMT
Guys, I'm proposing a thread which will most likely work like a prelude for Kaneka's wedding. This event (the wedding), was scheduled to take place in the spring, most likely after the Topaz Championship. As we have few players actively posting, and we were consulted about our wish to move on from the Winter Court, some plots previously arranged with some players to happen in Crab lands can "stir the waters" of the forums (or so I think).
--- The official thread with the Shogun and the Empress, in my opinion, lacks the necessary clans presence to be of effect. Any conflict in the scene, as Crab and Crane seems to think very alike in this matter, other clans being not represented, any decicion the Empress or Shogun take will be followed by those clans. Whatever they decide, will be what will happen. The mandates threads are waiting the proper parts to respond and it's not in control of the other players involved.
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That's it: this "prelude" thread and its possible subthreads will give you space for properly arrive and interact with other characters in Yasuki Yashiki and surroundings, seal deals, make allies and enemies, etc. before the Wedding. If there are interested players I'll open it today.
We Crab are scheduling "Kaneka's wedding celebration" Thread for the next Friday (that's when we'll open the thread, though it can extend for a while).
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Post by Asako Chisato on Feb 13, 2014 11:49:36 GMT
yes, please
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