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balance_ooc2019-10-13 12:15 pm
balancemod) wrote in balance_ooc2019-10-13 12:15 pm
State of the Game #2
 1. AN INTRODUCTIONHey everyone! It's your best friend, your roller of cursed rolls, your tree whisperer- team... here. It's been a real good while since we've done a state of the game, so we figured it's a good time now, all things considered since the last mission, to start talking about our thoughts, think about where Balance is headed, and solicit some feedback from you. The first time we did this was right at the end of our first mission. And Jay talked way, way too much in it, but he was absolutely gushing with love at all the amazing things we've all gotten to accomplish as mods and players in the game. For this State of The Game, we'll take a similar format at analyzing ourselves, thinking about the future, and make some adjustments to the logistical meta of the game, but we want to take the focus off of us and put the microphone in your hand. Let's have some good conversations. First of all, how's it going? Is everyone enjoying the adventure? 2. WHAT WENT WELL/WHAT DID WE LEARN?○ Our turn around times are really good and our ability to personalize plot makes this game highly differentiated from any other game out in DWRP right now. ○ We've restructured how the mod team is set up. Prior, it was just Jay and Diane on plot, with Kat handling NPC's and Anne handling list modding. As of right now, everyone does a little bit of everything. It allows us to all flex creativity and segment out work that needs to be done. As we move forward, we're talking about moving one of the four of us into a metaplot mod role- IE: a mod whose sole focus is bringing us closer to end game and making sure we've gotten all the metaplot beats laid out and ready to be followed. See the sections below for more information on that. ○ Unhinging ourselves from the mindset that everything needs to be on a set schedule. If you sit down to tell a story and you have to rush through the really good, meaty, juicy parts, then are you actually experiencing it in the best way you can? Probably not, and we guess that you feel the same. Taking a look at how dense some of the dossiers and missions can be, and realizing that there's so much stuff that you can do with plot, we often take a look at logs, response rates, how involved threads are going- and decide that we need more time. Pulling ourselves away from a very strict plot/downtime/plot/downtime schedule has allowed us to not worry about timing and open apps when it makes sense to do so rather than throw a dart at the calendar and commit to it. The flexibility has created windows of opportunity for us to both catch a breath and see where we're at, and give you all more time to thread out the things you really enjoy threading out. ○ Limiting RNG requests gave us some lift in a time when we sorely needed it. A lot (read: most) of the last mission had two of our mods (Kat and Anne) doing a majority of the showrunning. It was a ton of work, and although it was insanely rewarding for us to see how things played out, it also took a lot of time to get all the wheels turning and making sure we were on top of interacting with you. 3. WHAT CAN WE DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME?○ We spoke a little bit about RNG up there, but there's some additional thoughts about it that we'd like to share and get feedback on for improvement. What we've learned, and this is a tough one to find a solution for, but there are a lot of times RNG rolls are requested and they don't naturally produce threads. That makes sense in some cases- not every detail you find is going to be something that you want to grab a thread partner with and hash out. But in the same regard, we've noticed that some things that we thought would actually help create CR or push new, personalized threading experiences with haven't actually done that. Some people are content with claiming an RNG roll and talking about it, but not necessarily doing anything with it. Rather than create disincentives to roll, we continue to try to figure out a way to make them worth the while of doing- for both the plot's purpose as well as your own threading experience. ○ We as a team recognize that in Wonderland specifically, there were some concerns about the first and second logs not being as tightly connected and linear as they should have been. We completely own that, and we're sorry! There were a lot of factors that contributed to this less-than-perfect transition, but we do want you all to know that we're aware of it and working to course-correct so that this issue doesn't come up in future missions. Our hope is that designating one person to be metaplot mod assists with smoothing the road significantly in the future — see more on this in the section below. ○ As a point of clarification, we also want to address those nasty DC18s from Wonderland, which we recognize got people a little frustrated at times. While that's totally understandable, we do want to emphasize that DCs that high will not be the norm going forward! Wonderland was designed to be almost impossible to win, but while future missions will increase in difficulty in other ways, DCs will stabilize again to more of what you're used to. It's important to us to put this out there again just so people don't stress! We promise that in the next mission there will be more reasonable DCs and a failure won't end with anyone becoming a humanoid bear. 4. WHAT CHALLENGES ARE AHEAD & A REQUEST FOR HELPSup, Jay specifically here. When I created Balance, I had a very clear picture of what the game would be at open, where it would be around midpoint, and what the ending event would be. As some of you know from listening to The Adventure Zone, you already kind of know where this is headed, even if we've taken a lot of turns off the path along the way to bring something "familiar, yet different" to the experience of playing here. For those of you who are canon blind to the series and are here for the wild ride that is the Balance Arc, strap yourselves in. It's about to get a little more wild. I've seen people on plurk state that we're about to start end game. And, honestly? Yeah, we're not that far from it. There are two missions left, along with an end game event, and then we'll be signing off on the last chapter of the story. We hope you enjoy what we have in store, but there's a good deal of metaplot that's going to start hitting everyone in the game very quickly from here on out. You've already seen it with Maya and The Man known as The Hunger, in the penultimate CTA for Il Prigioniero. You've discovered a whole lot about weird umbrellas. You've heard about planar research. There's still more to tell and a long road to keep going and unwind that yarn as we get closer. We just wrapped the final application round for the game. Due to events that will happen shortly, it will be impossible for Lucretia to attempt to bring in new Reclaimers from other planes of thought. That's a spoiler, but- it's also important to the logistics of the game in general. The last mission will accompany one short application round... but will only be available to people who were previously in the game at another point in time and wish to come back. We'll be transparent about the process when the time comes, so please bear with us until then. So what's left? The next arc. It's gonna be a wild . . . time. For this arc and beyond, we need to be candid: the volume of mod work we are going to be fielding will increase significantly. In an effort to try to anticipate this, we're in the process of a little restructuring. While we haven't yet made a final decision on who will take on this role, we are shifting our four-person mod team from two plot mods, one NPC mod, and one list mod to three plot mods and one metaplot mod. The job of the latter is going to be refocusing and streamlining continuity between mission logs, improve integration of metaplot naturally into mission plots, and overall keep an eye on the endgame prize. What we want is a really smooth six-month landing here, and in order to have that we need somebody thinking in the long-term. What we'd like to ask of you all is something we've asked before: we could use another set of hands! While the role of a fifth mod would be fairly flexible, including some list upkeep, some RNG work, etc., what we really need is someone to be there to pinch-hit when we've got a high volume of things to do (for example, when mission logs first drop) or when one of the team is indisposed. This would be hugely, hugely helpful for us, so if you're interested, please send a PM to the mod journal! We welcome you in advance. 5. WHAT CHANGES ARE COMING TO BALANCE? MOD ANNOUNCEMENTSWe've taken a look at the path ahead and the anticipated end date of Balance, in comparison to where everyone is along their path progression. Beginning with this post and effective immediately, bonus AC may now be submitted twice per AC period. This allows the acquisition of two path actions per month, provided two separate threads are supplied in addition to the required AC. Go forth and level up! That said, it's also unfair for the newer characters to come in without a little bit of a power bump to catch them up to speed. Realistically speaking, if we were to allow the number of actions in that we've allowed in the past, many people would never reach an advanced path. To that end, we've decided to up the allowed apped-in path actions to expand to 7 (or 6 + 1 canon power). In short, anyone who hasn't obtained at least 7 path actions as of this post may immediately claim them. 6. PLEASE STOP TALKING AND TELL US WHAT YOU WANT US TO DOYou are so valid! While our mod contact page is always open for feedback and suggestions, we'd love to see your thoughts too in the comments section below. It's a good time to celebrate everything we've done, talk about where we can find areas to improve, and of course, feel free to leave love notes for your fellow players that you've interacted with. No path patch notes this time around, by the way. We feel like we've hit a sweet spot with most of what's available there without overtuning anything in particular. We look forward to seeing the advanced paths open up real soon! That's it, everyone. Be amazing! blurb code by photosynthesis |
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And the sense of community we have as a game really feels in the spirit of things. I've made some incredible friends here and everyone is always up to do some wacky shit and y'all are just fantastic. As much as the mods do for us, the player base is also spectacular and I'm glad to know all of you.
I joined Balance because I absolutely love The Adventure Zone, and I really feel like this game has kept up the spirit of what makes the podcast so special while still creating a wholly new experience. I'm so excited to see how the rest of it plays out, and god I can't wait to bring Kenpachi back in a pirate outfit for the finale thank you god.
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Please give us a shout if in the future any of the things that you are enjoying mechanics- or environment-wise aren’t working as well as they should be. We’re here to fix that toot sweet.
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I think my biggest gripe has been with the RNG, but most of my issues have been also noted in the body of the post. I think the limited rolls helped a little bit, but it's hard to find that balance between threading it out ala DWRP and following the rolls ala DnD. I admit that I don't have much of a solution right now (as the only one I can really think of might create more work and that doesn't help), but I'll continue to meditate on it. Short of possibly more encouragement to actually thread out the rolls in some capacity.
I know that I've also felt behind a bit in the game, and missed some important things that came up that might have been discussed in the discord chat and things like (which I recognize is just sort of the Nature of Things and my own decisions), but I do really appreciate it when we have the summery posts in the logs with the links. Those have really helped catch me up. Idk if there's really a way to fix that either, but I figured I'd note it.
Again, thank you for a really fun game and I really look forward to see where this all goes because I got no idea. (I mean, I got some because I've listened to TAZ but I got the feeling there's some tricks up those sleeves)
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We are pretty pleased to hear an overall consensus that the limited RNGs were a positive addition. Candidly, much of the reason for our choice this past mission was because we needed to limit our team workload somewhat, but it seems like it ended up being helpful on the player side, too. That gives even more incentive to implement it in the future.
Regarding summaries in the CTA OOC posts as we did in Wonderland, we’re happy to keep implementing those in future missions! It seems as though they were helpful to a lot of people, and the frustration of feeling as though you’ve missed things is very real, so we’re definitely going to use those consistently in the future.
Again, thank you so much for taking the time to leave feedback. We appreciate it more than you know!
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i could see some sort of hybrid mechanic coming into play? But again, it's a lot and I'm not sure how it would be implemented.
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I think we can be more liberal in how we approach the rolls, though- sometimes people submit things that aren't necessarily required for RNG to have an answer to, and we try to be really cognizant of when that happens so we can just say "hey, go for it!"
We'll have to think on this. We're so close to the end of the game, that maybe if we deter from the standard mechanics we've done up until now in an experimental style, we'll try something a little different.
Thanks for the ideas!
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I'd also like to state how grateful I am for an interactive community. I was out for a month and a half, pretty unable to focus on the game, and yet it felt so easy to catch back up, between the spreadsheets of information we learned and the summaries given. Both players and mods were open to communication and a great help in integrating back into the game in record time.
Basically, I love this place. I hadn't thought I'd be able to do long-term games again, but now I'm finding myself sad that the end is in sight. Excited to keep the Balance train going, for as long as we can.
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We talked a bit about it in the discord but I think making it possible for everyone to make character tags would be a good idea! Especially since we aren't getting any new canons, it'd mean it's one less thing for the mods to do, and everyone could just edit those as we see fit.
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Our goal at Balance is to foster great communication between players and mods, but we really couldn’t have the level of mutual support and communication that we do without a playerbase that is, as a whole, the absolute best ever. As such, we’re really excited to hear that you feel that good vibe too! It’s never easy to come back after a long hiatus, especially in a plot-heavy game, but we are really glad that you felt supported when you were trying to get your feet back under you. If you are ever confused about anything, please know you can reach out and holler at us, because chances are if one person’s lost, several people are.
Finally, regarding tags, they can officially be created by any member now in
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Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything in the game that's felt badly done or that needs improvement. Having things done by RNG is really the best way to do things so it's always fair and a game of chance. It's frustrating to hit a brick wall from a bad roll, and I admit the reason I didn't play things out on the last mission after my roll for Christine was that there really wasn't anything I could do with a thread partner that would move the investigation forward. But I would much rather have RNG decide how I do than be in a game where I feel like I don't have a chance because the plot is always held by a few players.
And honestly, I think reducing the amount of rolls we get was helpful because it made us stop and think about what we were willing to investigate, as well as make sure players couldn't just endlessly be investigating stuff until they hit pay dirt. The way the CTAs run by RNG as well as having to sit the next one out has been really good too. The only slight concern I have is in requiring a certain archetype to sign up, like when we were really lacking in the smart archetype. Maybe that's something to reexamine, especially since you've opened CTAs up to everyone because of a lack of signups (has it been once or twice now? My memory's bad).
But overall, I think you guys have been doing a great job. The way you've rewritten TAZ to keep us on our toes while adding in some familiar things (ANGO, my boy!) has been really seamless and I've enjoyed it all so much. Thank you for all your hard work. It's been appreciated beyond words!
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Regarding RNG, we do want there to be some balance between realism (ie hitting a brick wall from a roll, as you say) and playability. Your point is well-made: there are some rolls that simply aren’t conducive to playing out, and part of our job is to include as much actionable content in rolls as possible. One thing we will say is that in the future, while we will have limited RNG per mission log, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll return to one roll per log. That was a pretty unique case for the final log of Wonderland. As such, on the chance that one roll does end up a dead end, you’ll have at least one other chance in the future. We hope that makes sense and is helpful!
In terms of CTAs, you’re right, we have opened up CTAs a couple of times now to all players. The last time, Wonderland, was because we actually ended up having almost as many slots in our CTAs as characters in game. The goal was to include as many people as possible, but obviously this was a slight miscalculation on our part in terms of matching archetype to CTA and needing to stretch a bit to ensure we had enough participants overall. While we don’t have a hard-and-fast solution to that right now, we will be looking at CTA archetype requirements in terms of the overall number of each archetype in the game a little more carefully in the future. We do agree it’s something that could stand to be tweaked!
Again, thank you so much for your input. We appreciate it more than you know!
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That being said, I do have some concerns that I wanted to bring up, even if they're already covered by the post itself.
1) The DC18's. For Wonderland, it was a great concept and I really think it drove home that it was out to make the characters suffer by making us band together to mitigate our losses, but I was definitely feeling a real sense of fatigue towards the end of Part 2, well before CTA's opened up with even more high DC's. A difficulty spike is important (especially if we're heading into endgame!), but I'll... just say I'm really glad y'all were aware of that as a Concern and are looking into other ways to represent that. Failing forward, y'know?
2) I don't know how I feel about the suffering dice, in hindsight. I love them as a concept! Insert dice, get customised, impactful bit of Suffering to put on your character for the whole of Wonderland. Except... when coupled with the high DC's, and seeing every team put them in as a hail-mary in the CTA, I can't help but worry it felt like we... had to? to avoid failure/death/game-wide trauma. That +2, as was joked about a lot in the Discord, could be a hell of a modifier in the right hands. (But I also liked them because they were really cool and unique and it let characters push the roll that little bit further if they had to and aaaaaaaaaa- you see my dilemma?)
3) A tiny note of worry about rolls for path actions. On one hand, nothing should ever be a case of "oh you have [this], you win!" - on the other, it kind of sucks to fail a roll for one and just be told "you get nothing, good day sir". I'm not sure what to do about that, though, and it's not even been that frequent - I'm mostly putting this here as a "thoughts?" one.
4) AND YOU GUYS. GUYS!!! I'm taking a moment to pick up a newspaper and bap y'all with it. Being fast and punchy with modwork is all fun and... uh, games... but y'all have lives too. Please remember that and try to give yourselves time to breathe and process things and... like, play, too.
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1. Candidly, not only are we aware that DC18s for the rest of the game would be miserable for the players, it would also be pretty miserable for the mod team. It’s definitely not sustainable, as you mentioned yourself; even for one mission, it was a lot to deal with. The difficulty spike was always intended to manifest in different ways with Wonderland as the Spiders Georg of missions, as it were.
2. Pulling back the curtain a bit, the Suffering Dice were meant to be our nod to a similar mechanic in the TAZ Balance arc of the same name (although it sounds like you might be aware of this already). As in that arc, they aren’t really meant to be optional; Wonderland exacts its toll, and in order to succeed you have to make sacrifices. In fact, working with that kind of modifier in part 2 was part of the reason for the DC18s in the first place: everything is more difficult, here is a handy IC mechanic for characters to make random but personally significant sacrifices in order to increase their likelihood of success. So in that sense you’re not wrong.
We do feel, though, that the way those things were meant to tie together got lost in translation quite a bit. Paying homage to something in the original work is all well and good, but it also has to make sense internally, whereas it sounds like to some it felt a bit gratuitous. This is one aspect of our overall concern regarding internal logic and linearity between logs and between missions. We want things to flow together more seamlessly than that!
So, while we don’t have any intention of using a Suffering Dice-like mechanic in the future, we’re definitely going to keep this in mind going forward. It’s important to look at mechanics from all angles to ensure that they make sense from a player perspective and from an IC perspective, not just from a mod perspective.
3. This is an interesting point, and one that we’ve been thinking about as people gain more diverse path actions. Where we’ve run into issues has largely been in group rolls with a number of characters providing relevant path actions that improve the likelihood of success. This is awesome and exactly how the game should be played, but sometimes we do run into a situation where 8 characters are in one party and they all have a relevant path action, which could conceivably give a +16. Especially when it comes to highly plot-contingent rolls, we really can’t give that much of a buff and still have it be randomized; at some point it stops being RNG. At the same time we agree, it sucks to say “here’s my path action” and not get anything out of it. How we’ve been working it thus far is by using our collective best judgment in setting a cap on buffs per roll. The downside of this is that it really has to be on a case-by-case basis, depending on plot relevance and other factors. We’re happy to hear further input on this matter, though, because we do recognize that it’s a concern.
4. You are kind, and we do sometimes need the reminder! In fairness to us, modding for y’all is an incredibly rewarding experience, and we’re grateful and very honored to be able to make this game the best it can be for everyone. Thank you for everything that you do!
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