Melodies of Life Moderators (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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melodiesooc2016-07-13 08:22 pm
melodiesmods) wrote in melodiesooc2016-07-13 08:22 pm
Mod Announcement / OOC Discussion
Hello dear players! We are aware of the concerns expressed by many of you since the conclusion of the latest event and we’re going to do our best to answer them. Furthermore, please feel free to use this post to ask us any question, hand out suggestions or ask for clarifications—Just as you would in any other OOC Discussion Post.
• Event Severity
We are aware this event was very heavy and its consequences will likely persevere for many. We would like to apologize if the first NPC Letter on Mognet has led you to believe the Heroes of Light fell out of favor with the NPC population at large or if you perceived it as a form of punishment for the event’s results. This letter was mostly about the actions of a few characters, however the NPC in question doesn’t care about such details. Biggs is a NPC who has always been rude, inconsiderate and whose opinion the Heroes of Light is less than stellar. Out of all the “friendly” NPCs, he’s always been the one vocally expressing his disagreement with them. He even voted against granting them a house and mognet rights. His opinion doesn’t reflect the opinion of the other NPCs, far from it.
However, please be assured not all events will be as heavy in the future. As we are getting closer to the game’s conclusion, of course events and their repercussions will be growing more serious. But there will still be light-hearted moments as well as cute events in the future. The Anniversary Event, Revelations, will be player-driven and will only be as light-hearted or as dramatic as you’ll make it.
Nevertheless, Melodies of Life remains a game based on the Final Fantasy franchise. Beloved characters might die (remember Aerith) and peaceful approaches can only be an answer to so many issues. Even though ideally everything could be solved through talks and peaceful solutions, it might not work with every enemy encountered (imagine if the protagonists had tried negotiating with Kefka or Hojo). This doesn’t mean negotiations and peaceful approaches are doomed to fail: they might work in certain situations and they have worked in the past. But they are not an universal solution.
• Failures and Successes
And this does tie in directly into the next point: the idea behind Melodies of Life is that players can shape the plot and the ending will be decided from the action of their characters. Player actions directly affect the plot, and even the Cluedo event was born out of player actions. It happened as a direct consequence of Narasimha being freed from the imperial prison, much like The Answer. But player actions also led to brighter results in the past: the defeat of the Thirteen Moogles, meeting up with the Queen early, befriending a faction of the Empire, saving multiple locations through the discovery of the Mysidian Tower, discovering Palitutu's hidden laboratory, saving Aqures Ixen and Esdham from the Empire, etc.
Even though right now the negative might seem important, please do not let is overshadow past successes. Right now, the positive consequences of player actions far outweigh the negative consequences.
• Endgame
All of this will play a role as we’ll move into the game’s conclusion. Endgame will start in the first quarter of 2017, with the final app round being either from January 01st to January 08th, or from February 22nd to February 29th. We’ll divulge more about endgame this fall. Please look forward to it.
• IC Consequences for IC Actions
Obtaining a good ending is very possible and in many respect you are headed there, however, getting a bad one is also a possibility. Which leads to another point: please be careful when interacting in events or threads where a lot of players and characters are involved. A single person might be able to ruin the efforts of multiple characters, and this isn’t fun for anyone. Of course, if your character is a nihilist and wants everything to end, then they have every right to try and trigger a bad ending. However if your character aims for the good ending and gets in the way of other characters trying to trigger the good ending, please consider how your actions might affect the other characters.
And if you do act, never forget IC actions have IC consequences. As it is, a lot of characters are currently suffering from the IC actions committed by other characters, while the characters who conducted these IC actions show no sign of character development. We are not here to police how you play your characters and what you should do. However, if you do something that has a significant impact ICly, then you are expected to play the IC consequences of your character’s actions— For the better and the worse. It is not fair if your actions affect other characters, but you immunize your character to any consequences. Character development is at the core of roleplaying-- And to a larger extent at the core of any writing work. No good story happens without its characters evolving.
• Godmodding
Last but not least, another point we would like to address. In the latest event, certain characters grew very close to godmodding and one thing has to be clear: the Jobs aren’t powerful enough to accomplish certain feats that were described. Please, always keep that in mind. Godmodding isn’t only using more powers than a character should have: it is forcing actions upon other characters, and this is not allowed.
• Event Severity
We are aware this event was very heavy and its consequences will likely persevere for many. We would like to apologize if the first NPC Letter on Mognet has led you to believe the Heroes of Light fell out of favor with the NPC population at large or if you perceived it as a form of punishment for the event’s results. This letter was mostly about the actions of a few characters, however the NPC in question doesn’t care about such details. Biggs is a NPC who has always been rude, inconsiderate and whose opinion the Heroes of Light is less than stellar. Out of all the “friendly” NPCs, he’s always been the one vocally expressing his disagreement with them. He even voted against granting them a house and mognet rights. His opinion doesn’t reflect the opinion of the other NPCs, far from it.
However, please be assured not all events will be as heavy in the future. As we are getting closer to the game’s conclusion, of course events and their repercussions will be growing more serious. But there will still be light-hearted moments as well as cute events in the future. The Anniversary Event, Revelations, will be player-driven and will only be as light-hearted or as dramatic as you’ll make it.
Nevertheless, Melodies of Life remains a game based on the Final Fantasy franchise. Beloved characters might die (remember Aerith) and peaceful approaches can only be an answer to so many issues. Even though ideally everything could be solved through talks and peaceful solutions, it might not work with every enemy encountered (imagine if the protagonists had tried negotiating with Kefka or Hojo). This doesn’t mean negotiations and peaceful approaches are doomed to fail: they might work in certain situations and they have worked in the past. But they are not an universal solution.
• Failures and Successes
And this does tie in directly into the next point: the idea behind Melodies of Life is that players can shape the plot and the ending will be decided from the action of their characters. Player actions directly affect the plot, and even the Cluedo event was born out of player actions. It happened as a direct consequence of Narasimha being freed from the imperial prison, much like The Answer. But player actions also led to brighter results in the past: the defeat of the Thirteen Moogles, meeting up with the Queen early, befriending a faction of the Empire, saving multiple locations through the discovery of the Mysidian Tower, discovering Palitutu's hidden laboratory, saving Aqures Ixen and Esdham from the Empire, etc.
Even though right now the negative might seem important, please do not let is overshadow past successes. Right now, the positive consequences of player actions far outweigh the negative consequences.
• Endgame
All of this will play a role as we’ll move into the game’s conclusion. Endgame will start in the first quarter of 2017, with the final app round being either from January 01st to January 08th, or from February 22nd to February 29th. We’ll divulge more about endgame this fall. Please look forward to it.
• IC Consequences for IC Actions
Obtaining a good ending is very possible and in many respect you are headed there, however, getting a bad one is also a possibility. Which leads to another point: please be careful when interacting in events or threads where a lot of players and characters are involved. A single person might be able to ruin the efforts of multiple characters, and this isn’t fun for anyone. Of course, if your character is a nihilist and wants everything to end, then they have every right to try and trigger a bad ending. However if your character aims for the good ending and gets in the way of other characters trying to trigger the good ending, please consider how your actions might affect the other characters.
And if you do act, never forget IC actions have IC consequences. As it is, a lot of characters are currently suffering from the IC actions committed by other characters, while the characters who conducted these IC actions show no sign of character development. We are not here to police how you play your characters and what you should do. However, if you do something that has a significant impact ICly, then you are expected to play the IC consequences of your character’s actions— For the better and the worse. It is not fair if your actions affect other characters, but you immunize your character to any consequences. Character development is at the core of roleplaying-- And to a larger extent at the core of any writing work. No good story happens without its characters evolving.
• Godmodding
Last but not least, another point we would like to address. In the latest event, certain characters grew very close to godmodding and one thing has to be clear: the Jobs aren’t powerful enough to accomplish certain feats that were described. Please, always keep that in mind. Godmodding isn’t only using more powers than a character should have: it is forcing actions upon other characters, and this is not allowed.
no subject
It's easy to fall into the mindset that characters are meant to 'win' a scene. If you want the good ending, you have to work for it, but what's considered a good ending for one character isn't always good for another. A violent character's idea of winning would be slaughtering every last threat on the map. A kind character's idea of winning is making the Grinch's heart grow three times bigger. Without really knowing what the best outcome is, or how to achieve that, players are going to butt heads OOCly on what to do, and it can be frustrating. It also leads to a lot of godmodding where characters effortlessly destroy powerful monsters, use incredible abilities to completely wreck the opposition, and never take any damage.
But the thing is, in any good story, there has to be conflict, and things going wrong. It's easy to sympathize with characters in a book that really struggle and get down on their luck. It leads to character growth -- the fall before the rise to glory. Accomplishing a goal is so much more satisfying if there's elements of risk and failure, because a guaranteed success is just plain boring. In a roleplaying game, however, conflict and bad endings can feel more like a punishment. 'Did I choose the wrong thing? Are people mad that things turned out this way because of my character's words and actions?' It can put some players in an uncomfortable position when the line between IC and OOC starts to bleed over.
I feel like I'm sort of riding the line with Elsa/Ellie as a result. I thought Cluedo was a fun event, but I'm constantly fretting about playing a villain because of the divide between roleplaying and gaming. I absolutely don't want to spoil anyone's chances for getting the good ending for the endgame (I'm pretty sure all of us want that OOCly), but when people say they wish there were more villains around, I'm not sure if that's true. Do you want someone to really ruin your character's day, or do you want a punching bag to show off how awesome your character is? Are you winning the scene, or roleplaying? I know that with Elsa, she's not going to ever fess up about the prison break and implicate those who were involved. She doesn't regret her decision, and figures it's her responsibility to deal with the fallout. She wants to kick Narasimha's ass and thinks he's an ungrateful bastard, she's not going to mope and regret and drag her hands down her face moaning 'what have I doooooooone.' It's just not the kind of person she is. (Besides, heaven knows we have enough characters doing that already after being made to murder everyone, bless their pure hearts.) So hopefully there's no frustration where people want to yell at her and blame her for the prison escape. I kind of feel like there might be? I have no idea. I just know she's not going to apologize or think she's in the wrong.
Back to this plot in particular. What worked, and what didn't? I think for the most part, the set up and carrying out of the event was a hell of a lot of fun. I enjoyed not knowing who was going to die, and who was going to murder the shit out of someone, and I often woke up in the middle of the night because I knew that was the time new announcements were being made about what happened next. I love not knowing, but a lot of the enjoyment from being unspoiled has to come from trust in the mods not to screw our characters over just for shits and giggles. (My brother does this in D&D, and I refuse to let him DM because I know he's going to make goblins tie us up and pee on us, and send in overpowered characters to take ours down several pegs.) A lot of complaints were going up in the middle of not only this event, but previous ones too, and that stresses everyone out because it creates this irrational fear that our characters are going to get traumatized and humiliated when there's no proof of this. Relax and trust that things are going to be fine. If something terrible DOES happen that you're not cool with, THEN you should say 'hey I don't like this can we change it.' But flipping out because something MIGHT happen doesn't make much sense. It's fine to express concerns, but some people get way too frantic and make a lot of baseless accusations that riles everyone up.
What I think could be improved boils down to two things, the first being for the mods: If it's next to impossible to get a good ending, I feel that should be said so right up front, so no one goes into an event feeling frustrated about their character's actions amounting to nothing (or worse, leading to a disaster that they thought could have been prevented). While that can be fun to RP out (who doesn't love self-doubt angst that leads to character growth?), it's nonetheless aggravating if there was a secret better way to handle things that didn't disappoint the other players. I feel bad if my character isn't smart enough or strong enough to help and then contributes to a downer ending, when everyone else was doing the right thing (or at least perceived as doing everything right). But if the outcome of a plot is going to be dark or sad anyway, and players know this from the get go, it's easier to get into the right mindset for set the proper tone in writing. There were a lot of questions that came up during the plot as well that didn't get answered, like how much a character is allowed to remember after murdering someone, what allowances could be made for investigators that would be IC without infomodding, etc. Keeping things spoiler-free is a lot of fun, but sometimes a little more direction to guide things along their proper course can be incredibly helpful. Players like to know where they should be aiming and what their boundaries are. Biggs criticizing the characters for being too soft was just an NPC being who he is, I know that. But even knowing that, it still felt as if there were an underlying message of 'You didn't figure out how to beat the villain and save the innocent people, and here's a character to tell you that you're stupid.'
The other crucial point for improvement in an event is directed at the players, as it's something I see a lot of, and that's this: Please don't sign up for a plot if you're not going to actively follow through. This applies not just in this event, but in the one where everyone got teleported south, in multiple player plots, and even in group job/regain quests. Characters dropped threads without warning, or didn't bother tagging into them at all, so everyone kept waiting and waiting for a response that wasn't going to happen. People that carried important clues didn't put their characters in a position for those clues to be found, or flat out dropped from the game. Job requesters didn't let anyone know they weren't going to participate in seeking out an Eidolon. If you want to participate but have a slower schedule, I think it's important to let the mods and participants know that right up front. Not everyone can hammer out multiple tags a day, or even one tag a day, and in a time sensitive event, that can cause a lot of frustration when everyone's going at different speeds, or RL butts in. But the effort to keep up is important for everyone involved, whether you're running the event or participating. If you drop a thread, let your group partners know so they're not left hanging waiting for a response that will never come.
The most crucial element in successfully carrying out any plot (and its aftermath) is communication. Plans can change, interest can fizzle, people get busy. It happens. But if it's going to affect people, let them know right away so adaptations can be made to keep things running smoothly.
And that's my two cents. Overall I think it was a fun and interesting event, and I hope the feedback helps! I'm looking forward to the anniversary event, make no mistake about that.
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Regarding Biggs, the message was intended only for a fraction of the Heroes who hindered the effort to stop Rialynn when she was possessed, but again we understand why you may have felt this way.
We are aware some questions weren’t answered, and apologize for it. For the most part we didn’t see them as the OOC Post was supposed to be for communication between players, but even so it doesn’t excuse our lack of replies to these questions.
Regarding players who might be concerned about terrible things happening to their characters without their consent—We would like to reassure that it will not happen. Whenever something with drastic consequences could happen, we have given adequate warnings ahead of time and always asked for player permission should their part in an event go beyond what is expected of them.
no subject
My only problem was Narasimha, himself. He's this other villain who seems to have come out of nowhere? Now that you explain in here, I can see where it came from, but it didn't feel that way in the moment. Apparently he was in charge of The Answer event? Due to the threads never finishing, my characters never figured that out, I had no idea OOCly. This event was driven by this non-entity who a lot of people seem to know OOCly, so the specifics of the payoff felt like a letdown because of that.
Overall, we knew that things were going to get worse before they got better because of the stage of the story that we're in. Personally, I'm less worried about an ending, and more just focusing on playing each part as it comes.
You guys are still giving us lots of fun events in the meantime, but thank you for opening up communication in the wake of this one.
no subject
As it is, Narasimha is an entirely optional villain who was locked away in the imperial prison. Endgame could have happened without him ever being freed from his prison. To put it in Final Fantasy terms, he is a major side-quest. Whilst the events involving him do impact the overall plot to an extent, rest assured that the prison break didn't compromise the chance for a good ending.
Rest assured as well that the NPCs involved in endgame and the path leading to it will be for the most part NPCs the characters are familiar with.
no subject
To play detective, there has to be a way to investigate. A way for characters who didn't witness the murders to search for clues and minute details at the scene of the crime. In this case it seemed like nearly all the info available came from witnesses. Details about the crime scenes were somewhat incomplete and the one attempt to investigate the other victims led immediately to a dead end. And, while I can't speak for the other witnesses, I know the information I was able to give out was fairly sparse.
All of that said, the event was fun on the whole. And I don't really mind the IC consequences. Things don't always go your way and how characters deal with that is one of the reasons I role play in the first place.
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The alternatives obviously didn't work as well as expected, and we are sorry for it. From my perspective it seemed as though all the pieces fitted together easilly, but that was because I already had the complete puzzle in my mind. We will be careful next time to make sure we give out correct and sufficient information.
no subject