Mods of Thusia (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thusiamods) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thusia_ooc2012-11-28 04:44 pm
thusiamods) wrote in thusia_ooc2012-11-28 04:44 pm
Entry tags:
DISCUSSION: To Plot and Beyond
Hey guys, your resident mods here with a... not quite a full-out discussion post, but we'd like to get some ideas and points of note out there and your feedback on the matter. Particularly involving the latest plot and currently running plotlines. There have been a few discussions on plurk, but we'd like to have something more formal to make sure everyone has the opportunity to read and get their input on things that'll affect them.
There's a few things we'd like to touch upon with this post, the main points revolving around current/past/future plots and how we as mods can make things more fun for you in the way we handle them. Also on our agenda are things like State of the Game, God Functions, Player Accessibility, and probably more. To keep things organized, we'll be using header comments to cover specific topics and linking them in the post for easy navigation, so once you see a topic linked here, feel free to jump right to it.
CURRENT PLOTS: Moving HQ | Bitey Dogs | Weres
Week of my Life Posts | State of the Game | Affecting the Gods | Nature
There's a few things we'd like to touch upon with this post, the main points revolving around current/past/future plots and how we as mods can make things more fun for you in the way we handle them. Also on our agenda are things like State of the Game, God Functions, Player Accessibility, and probably more. To keep things organized, we'll be using header comments to cover specific topics and linking them in the post for easy navigation, so once you see a topic linked here, feel free to jump right to it.
Week of my Life Posts | State of the Game | Affecting the Gods | Nature
Re: STATE OF THE GAME
Re: STATE OF THE GAME
Re: STATE OF THE GAME
First, the most important question for open worlds is probably: Is the world primarily active or reactive?
Which is to say, is the world itself actively targeting the players and pushing them into events, or is the world reacting to the actions of the players? Both of these have a different play style, and while one's likely to use a mixture of both, there's generally one that shows up much more clearly.
The classic example of a reactive game would be Grand Theft Auto: For the most part, the world itself doesn't care about you until you do something to set it off. This naturally tends towards a period of high activity as things react, followed by a period of low activity as the reaction finishes running its course.
For an example of an active game though, I'm going to use Din's Curse: You have a series of problems to solve that will, if left to their own devices, get progressively worse over time. This results in a high initial difficulty, as early on there's very little one can do about the problems they're presented with. That in turn winds up causing new problems that must be solved until either the player is destroyed, or manages to reach an equilibrium, where they're solving problems faster than new problems are showing up. This generally means that there will be higher activity in the first half, while the second half has a reduction in activity as it turns into cleaning up what's left.
Essentially, a reactive system is dependent on player input, while an active system places the player into the reactive role. There are advantages to both setups, but one should understand the effects it has on the player. For instance, by placing the player into a reactive role, you also diminish their feeling of control over the situation, which makes it better for horror-based stuff.
Of course, this is pretty much a gross oversimplification and I know it. Still, it's fun to discuss this stuff, I think
Re: STATE OF THE GAME
And that worked. Until we reached the equilibrium point. This probably also goes into why "nature doesn't seem like a threat anymore" -- the equilibrium point has been passed. There's a base that's relatively well-protected, we're domesticating plants so that the food isn't poisonous... Basically, there's getting to be less and less of a reason to even deal with nature unless it comes for us.
Theoretically, this would be the point where the world would want to switch over to being reactive, having nature as something that only bothers us if we bother it, while the HQ moving thing is basically seen as an attempt to pull away the agency that's finally been acquired.
Or maybe I'm making too many assumptions. That's likely, I think.
Re: STATE OF THE GAME
Our concern has been that previously we did get comments about people wanting to feel like nature is more of a threat, actively invading their area, but at the same time that threatens that feeling of progress in the whole 'we claimed this area it is ours it is safe'. We've had difficulties working out the balance in how to do this and just ended up... completely dropping the ball on making nature an active presence because of it. But 'let people got out and do nature on their own' ends up with a lot of things handwaved and the mods end up missing things that people are doing with nature because of handwaving or because it's buried in a thread somewhere or in a mingle. We don't know the progresses characters are ICly making and thus sometimes end up completely overriding what they're doing as a result.
It's honestly been just as frustrating for us to try to figure out where the middle ground is as it probably has been for most players trying to work with what we'd left them to. I'd really like to figure out how to move on from here, but at the moment I only have general ideas of things we can do as mods and no idea if they'd actually work or not.
Re: STATE OF THE GAME
But hmm, on the topic of nature, what occurs to me is that there should be a bit of separation between minor expeditions and major expeditions: Minor expeditions would be the handwaved hunting and gathering -- more about getting what you need and getting out before you encounter very much resistance. These things probably would not be a particularly big deal, since they're not likely to attract attention or change things in a major way.
On the other hand, major expeditions would be a much bigger deal and would have larger effects: This would be where "nature is invading" or clearing an area would fit in. They would probably be your monthly nature events, likely linked to whatever the "main" ongoing plot is, and whether they succeed or fail would have noticeable effects. The weekly plot posts would help a lot here too, since you would be able to tell where most of the focus is. Another big advantage to this method is that it lets you give some of the plots a "climax" so to speak, with a key moment punctuated by a major expedition.
Probably not the best option, but it simplifies things and probably makes it easier for mods to focus on what's most important to the players.
Re: STATE OF THE GAME
Re: STATE OF THE GAME
Like. I didn't know this when it happened but in Yukari's OOC post, someone mentioned HQ crushed a lizagon nest and... nothing happened...?
So consequences to things that characters/civilization gods do would be A+++