thusia_ooc | DISCUSSION: To Plot and Beyond

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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

Threaded | Flat

One thing we'd like to implement immediately is doing a weekly "This is my Life" post as a way for people to get it out there what their character is currently up to and also open up an avenue for players to get others involved in any currently running plot lines they may have going that they'd like to open up more. A post dedicated to plots of all kind, simply put. Yukari's post is a good example of this in terms of players getting their character's reactions to certain plot points known and Aather's story time is what we as mods would like to provide to players to help summarize what happened when during the week. Knowing what plot lines are and aren't open to people has been a concern and in fact roadblock to a few players getting involved/getting others involved, so we hope that with this weekly post we'll be able to knock out that issue and get people more involved in, well, everything!

As a note, responding to the life post will not be mandatory! It'll always be there for your convenience to use. For this week, since we're addressing plots immediately in this post and past posts like Yukari's, we'll be using the comment below as this week's life post.

If you have any suggestions or ideas for other things you'll like this post to have, or a better alternative, tell us in this comment!

Edited 2012-11-29 01:40 (UTC)

Here are a few of the current plotlines running in Thusia, and this section of this post will serve as the 'life' post for this week. If you have a personal plotline you'd like known, feel free to respond to this comment with it! Alternatively, if you have some things going/starting that are related to the plotlines we list below, feel free to comment to the related comment with it. This is a little more informal/loosely organized than what we're planning to post weekly, but we hope it'll still serve the same purpose!

We've discussed this a lot between us mods, and the sort of game we'd envisioned/would like Thusia to be is more of a sandbox type of game where world building/player and character plots are our driving force. Where you could do what you want and see it reflected in the game. Gods in particular were meant to be a way for characters to immerse themselves in the world more, not a roadblock/stagnation point of any means. The game of Thusia has no overarching plot that we're secretly hiding from people; we wanted it to be a game where you were given a world design and could interact with it freely. We realize so far we've been doing a pretty horrible job of showing this, particularly when it came to reacting to plotlines that characters had been going. Or in some cases, inadvertently discouraging players from running a plotline at all. We apologize to everyone who has ever felt this way and we never meant to make you feel like you couldn't do a fun thing.

From here on, how we'd like to handle player plots is not by telling you flat out that x thing won't work, but working with you to have your character try it out and have the results of it come about ICly. There are some things that work against the set mechanics of the game, for example trying to physically kill gods, but we think having a character try it and fail miserably than never trying it at all because they knew from the start it wouldn't work would be a lot more interesting for everyone involved. At times, we may suggest an alternative, because actively playing out everything will put a strain on us we won't be able to handle, but we will work on making sure that things are being tried and results are being seen, not told.

To put it shortly, we've been telling you one thing about the game and running it as another and we sincerely apologize for that. We want Thusia to be open and flexible, so as mods we'll try to be just that ourselves, especially when it comes to the lifeblood of our game, your character plots.

If there's anything you'd like to touch upon concerning the settling of the game into an open sandbox, what we as mods can do to help make character plots feel more integral to the growth of the world, how we can make the world feel more like something you can affect, anything along those lines, please drop a comment here.

Our original idea in designing/implementing gods was that they would be the type of gods born from society and altered by it. Initially, this meant that the views of society upon a certain domain would affect the god related to that domain; if rebellion became associated with hotpants, Zhen Ji would start wearing hotpants.

However, it's been brought up as a very strong concern by god and non-god players that, fundamentally, this design and implementation has been flawed. Having gods be solely affected by society's perception means that god players would be forced to stay on top of the community for their views on their god and at times, have to change their god from what they originally apped without any true consent. Players have also been feeling frustration in being told that their actions and way of thinking could affect a god, then not seeing any results. It's been a lose-lose situation thus far and it's fairly obvious something needs to change.

Some of the suggestions we were given as well as some things we already had going gave us a general notion that we think may work out really well for both parties: that there are multiple ways that a god can change.

1) Society's perceptions of the god
- Our original intent, how people view certain domains or aspect of a god can alter the way they behave, look, offer from their shrines, or even domains from then on. In matters where the community as a whole is Very Set on its view of a certain domain, this could work for a god!

2) Through individual interaction with a god
- As a player suggested, the current community of Thusia is a much smaller one than an entire world's populace and much less unified in its perceptions of things. With an allowance for individual interaction with a god, gods would be able to alter more through their conversations with people. How this happens would be left largely to the god player, but this method would allow most for character impacts on gods, and also allow for gods to play out those effects.

3) The gods alter themselves
- Some gods currently in play have it worked into their history that they've changed their own domains! Either by stealing them from another god, picking it up as a complement to one of their existing domains, etc. This ties a little more to the first method, but it is playable! For example, Zhen Ji thus far has been heavily associated with metal in general and even offers metal as a subset to his priests. Continuing with that, he could theoretically pick up metal as one of his domains, due to the perceptions of people toward him and his own need for it in order to subsist his destruction domain.

4) The gods affect/alter each other
- Another element that's been worked into the backstory of a couple of the gods is that they can alter each other. For example, Selyir's domain of shadows originally belonged to another god, whom was also affected in other ways by that! Eizon has the power to restrain Zhen Ji and has done so, when Zhen Ji was at his lowest in terms of energy. Gods interacting, we think, is a great way to get more of the history/backstory of both the gods and the world of Thusia out to players more and we'd really like for it to happen more often.

These are the four main ways of altering/affecting a god we are considering implementing. If you have any other ideas on how a god could be affected, or suggestions/concerns about these particular ideas, we'd really like to hear them and get player input before deciding what to do. This is open to god AND non-god players, as both will be affected!

Edited 2012-11-29 02:20 (UTC)

A concern brought up was that nature no longer felt like a threatening force. Previously, we had often run Nature Run posts to introduce new flora/fauna to players and also help keep up that feeling of nature is here and deadly. Recently though, nearly all nature interactions are being handwaved and given that nature is one of Thusia's biggest points, it's been really unfair of us to expect you to feel like nature is a continuous threat when you don't see it as such!

One thing we would like to do is get back into the habit of doing Nature Runs to introduce new wildlife, however at a lower frequency so as not to burn ourselves into the ground, as we did last time. Running nature takes a lot out of our current nature runners, as does creating new wildlife, and unfortunately trying to do it every two weeks was still too much for us. But not doing it at all is not cool either. Our current consideration is making it a monthly thing, perhaps at the start of the month, with a majority of new wildlife being introduced then for people to play with for the rest of the month.

We'd also like to get into the habit of using mingles as a 'reminder' of the nature lurking outside your window. A majority of them would be a reaction sort of thing, but we think inserting a few new creatures and possibly smaller scale nature runs (as in nature coming to a couple of you and not you to it) could be plausible! But what we would need in order to make this idea work is help running nature every now and then!

An idea brought to us was to give nature a bit more of a personification in order to make it more fun and less tiresome for people to play. We think this could be interesting, though we are at a bit of a loss as to how to actually implement it.

So! If you have any ideas, concerns, suggestions, or anything at all in concerns to the current playing and playability of nature, please drop a comment here!

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WEEK OF MY LIFE POSTS

CURRENT PLOTS

STATE OF THE GAME

AFFECTING THE GODS

NATURE