Event Result Notes!

[avalonmods]

Hello everyone! The log will go up shortly, but we wanted to make sure to deliver the poll results and information so you have it. Please click on the cut below to see the points breakdowns, results, NPC info, and bonuses.

Total characters: 235 (main comm membership -mod journal -unprocessed drops counted from inbox)

Percents are rounded UP to the nearest percent to be as kind as possible.

Avoid extra tragedy: 15%
Minimum percent to succeed: 20%
With unlocked bonuses: 25%

STONE GIANT = MISSION FAILURE
24 participants
6 qualifying threads x 3 points = 18 points
-1 player disruption
Total points = 41 / 235 = 19%

Result Notes:

• As the party catches up with the stone giant, the leaders of the ritual (who will have come with) will tell people how to activate their spirit guardian: hold their hand out before them, palm up, and cast their most powerful spell before them. As the spell casts, recite "Use my life to strengthen yours" and give the spirit guardian a name. It may come to you at that very moment, as if it is a part of you. The tattoo will then burn and glow as if magma on the skin, and the spirit guardian will climb out of it as if it is a portal allowing it into this universe. It is a shadow creature, and may take a meaningful form to the character (their favorite animal, the silhouette of someone important to them, a cool character that deeply affected them in their childhood, up to you!) Those who did not go this route can find out how to release them later.
• Those who released their spirit guardians to help fight will be thanked by the spiritual leaders who had been prepared to lead the Fall Equinox Ritual, and be rewarded with a vial of water each. It is said to be ancient water from the time of the Stone Giant before he was originally laid to rest. Placing it on the lips of someone will draw life back to them no matter how long they have been dead without ritual or locating the person's spirit. (leicesters, colchismagecraft, mayoninofukucho, silky_bearing, tantailizing, and impostersyndrome receive. Others provided no evidence of tattooing in threads.) Though they did not succeed in stopping the giant, their trials in receiving and growing the guardians and being brave enough to bring them to fight are worth rewarding.
• NPC Notes: Archimedes will meet the party halfway there with horses to speed their journey to try to catch up with the huge steps of the giant. Characters who fought this route will be allowed to keep their horse if they so choose as thanks for their bravery, so long as they haven't shown cruelty to animals in the past. You do not need to feel obligated to take the horse if you do not think you can care for it, Archimedes is happy to take them all home.
• NPC Notes: Morganna is displeased. She is likely to ask higher prices on those who find her summoning spell for the time being, and unlikely to assist in soothing things over with the fairies...
• ...Many of which are also displeased. The reason why will be revealed by those who went to Celliwig.
• The stone giant kneels down in the middle of the Forest of the Felled and, once the spirits are completely consumed, let out a loud, ground shaking yell. The glowing stops and he ceases to move. The spirits appear to be gone now, and the forest travelable.
• The Forest of the Felled will be added as a location at the end of the month.

DRAGON = MISSION FAILURE
29 participants
14 dragon slaying experience x 1 point bonus = 14 points
-1 player disruption
Total points = 42 / 235 = 18%

Result Notes:

• Celliwig is burned to the ground. Survivors will be making the trek to Camelot, making Camelot overcrowded between both Celliwig and Lestari refugees. Space will be strained; characters may be asked to room together with other people in order to make room for more people.
• The dragon flies away once his job is done. There has been a fair amount of damage done, so he is injured. Location is unclear, we may find out more later!
• The last person to fight the dragon is (but fails to slay): Feral Hawk (@notquitetamed) - Can invite any other players to do this thread with you. However, since it was a failure, you can choose to pass it to the next person if you do not want your character to take that role. Please let us know ASAP if you choose not to do this and we will pass it down to the next person selected via RNG. However, the dragon reveals the following information: It is the necromancer's fault, and therefore Celliwig and Camelot's for waking Kymbyr, that the Stone Giant was awakened and its home was destroyed. Now Celliwig's home is destroyed in turn. It doesn't stick around to attack after that.
• Authorities and players who attempt to find Kymbyr will find them with one arm around Yanira, broken out of jail thanks to wonderful participants in this month's dark web quests. They say the following: "You woke up a great Necromancer to clean up a hells gnarly forest. You're welcome. We're skipping town. I'm totes thinking Miami. Not telling when or where, but you guys are going to save eeeverything, so I'm thinking it's just another long nap until we're free." (Bonus not unlocked, so Kymbyr and Yanira get away.)
• Celliwig will be archived in a comment as a former location. Ruins of Celliwig will be added as a location at the end of the month.
• NPC Notes: King Arthur will have been present and attempting to help with slaying the dragon.

LESTARI = MISSION SUCCESS
44 participants
23 healers present x 1 point bonus = 23 points
Total points = 67 / 235 = 29%

Result Notes:

• The majority of participants went to Lestari, meaning that a significant chunk of the population was saved. Survivors will make their way to Camelot, making Camelot overcrowded between both Celliwig and Lestari refugees. Space will be strained; characters may be asked to room together with other people in order to make room for more people. (Players may determine if they choose to play with this.)
• NPC note: Merlin will have come with this party to help with some of the heavy lifting of debris and trying to save as much life as possible.
• Survivors explain some of the rumors around what they heard the giant was: The Stone Giant is an ancient beyond ancient being laid to rest long before the age of men and gods that would swallow deceased souls and pull them into the River of Lost Souls, where they would slowly lose themselves until they cease to exist as separate entities and become nothing but energy to be put back into the universe. In essence, those souls no longer exist and do not go to any promised afterlife. They are just Gone.
• Unlocked bonus: The dragon is fleeing, so he will not be coming back for his hoard, and treasures are therefore available to anyone who wants to spend the time excavating them.
• Unlocked bonus: Along with a fair amount of technology recovered before it was burned, including technomagic spells such as informative holograms, video games you can project your consciousness into, and blueprints/prototypes of cyborg flesh they were working on (technomagic-based prosthetics that react to your magic to act like a normal arm). These technologies will be made available in Camelot.

Please note that October, November, and December are going to be much chiller so this will be the last "heavy" event of the year. (December will be a free AC month as well.) Think of it like the season 1 finale. We don't intend on overwhelming anyone during the holidays.

Comments

[notquitetamed]

Me given a reason to have my character fail at something? Yeah I'm up for it and even have an idea to make it work great IC. Totally am golden with plenty of injury too.

[afoolshope]

I forgot to link my guardian tattoo thread, does that mean I can’t do the prompt anymore? Not getting the resurrection water reward is fine, just wanted to make sure I can still use it as a prompt. Thank you!

Feedback

[heart_demands]

As best as possible, I would like to summarize an overall impression that I have gleaned from my CR, and folks are free to +1 or add thoughts as it pertains to them. Anyone who responds, please be respectful and focus on Constructive Criticism.

1. The game's events are still suffering from "Wall of Text" syndrome. Many of us end up using several RL days just to parse what's going on and reconcile that against what our CR is doing in order to address how our characters respond to events. There's either too much going on in every single event, or the plot-heavy stuff that demands so much text to explain it is happening too often.

2. Due to that turnaround time, many of us don't even have a chance to START a thread before a results poll's time is up. How can I respond if I don't know what my character is doing? For something this significant, a whole month would have been preferable.

3. This is exacerbated by events being started in the middle of the month rather than the start of it, yet AC disincentivizes carrying threads over from month to month -- while rapid-response threads are more important to answering polls.

4. This creates a feedback loop where, over the course of several events, some of us feel overwhelmed by the plot entirely. What is Celliwig? Why do I care? Who are the Lestari? If you're not fully participating in every single event - and have someone around to explain older events to you - you lose enough context to meaningfully participate in the next one.

5. "The next 3 months will be chiller" does not absolve the heavy hits we already took over the last month. I phrased it as feeling like we get to dance on the rubble.

I say all of this as a former mod myself in the hopes that things will be better for myself and others who genuinely want to engage with plot but not at the pace that it's being presented.

[tempredmental]

Yeah... I missed out on adding my vote to the poll (not that it seems my vote would have made a difference in the results anyway, so I don't feel so bad haha) because my tattoo thread didn't get to the actual tattooing in time? Like, there's nothing in that thread, yet, about Keith getting it, but he's going to. So, I'm curious how to handle this, too.

[pureyang]

I also forgot to link my tattoo thread so I am also curious about that!

[roseeclair]

Honestly, I agree with a lot of the points brought up, not to mention that with the Stone Giant scenario, a lot of people didn't know that this would be required to be threaded out in order participate in the poll, lowering the chances of success even more.

Like I've said before, it really is interesting and even exciting to give the players this much control of the plot, but in this particular instance it felt like... giving someone the keys to a car and telling them to drive when they haven't had any lessons yet. A crash was inevitable. One good solution I've read on others' plurks is that having more time for event plotting and polls would be helpful. I know this time it was already doubled to four days, but perhaps something closer to a week, possibly a little more might work, like you did for the Tournament polls. That way people with more demanding IRL schedules or with different levels of reading speed and focus have a better chance of participating, and just feel more relaxed in general, while still keeping the high stakes intact.

Hopefully that makes sense. Thank you for being so willing to trust characters with directing the plot and for being willing to listen to us!

+1

[dottedline]

Agreed with pretty much all of this, especially the wall of text that is events. The recaps at the top are useful, but that only does so much and doesn't actually tell us what the options are for the prompts. (Case in point: the goose prompt for this month. The recap just goes "btw the goose is loose" and doesn't explain we can catch or keep them. You've gotta wade through the dense paragraph underneath that.)

I also had no idea that threads were even needed for the poll? And the poll was only up a few days before results were announced? Granted it wasn't as if Azul was going to get involved with all of that, but for everyone else who might have that feels way too short a turnaround time.

Honestly, I think that if an event is going to be this big, it needs to be started earlier in the month or for the lead up to be much, much more obvious. This was surprisingly game-changing, and I don't think any of us expected it to be.

[floatsaway]

Agreeing with a great majority of this, but I especially want to focus on point number 3.

The fact that Events are started in the middle of the month, and AC requirements do not allow for threads to carry into the next month is extremely limiting. I know the AC requirement is very low - a 5 comment thread from your character - but in instances like Events, where player activity is increased, I feel like these should be set towards the start of the month to facilitate that intense tagging speed/activity and THEN bolster it towards the end of said month with quests and the like, which have far less In Game consequences and impact than the large and very Plot Heavy Events.

In essence, I feel like the event and quest schedule should be flipped. Events towards the start of the month, and quests toward the middle/end...or, if this is not feasible, then allow threads to roll over into the next month up to a set date of perhaps a week or so?

Re: Feedback

[eightfoldfiend]

I agree that an event like this probably should be introduced sooner, so people can get threads together and start plotting, even if the event itself is posted at a later time.

It would probably also be nice for events like this to have something on the home front. For example, for Triage maybe some people staying in Camelot to perform a ritual that +1s the other groups? Something that has impact but is low key enough for players not interested in high octane action to take part.

+1

[bakudan_bambino]

Agreeing especially on points made in 2, 3 and 4

[snaccs]

I also had no idea that threads were even needed for the poll?

They weren't.

The only thread ask was if you wanted a bonus for the Stone Giant. People were free to participate without threading anything in advance. It was only for the power boost the tattoos would give.

+1

[theskyaccepts]

I know that I struggle with the Wall of Text and it makes it difficult to want to engage since I can't parse the information. While the summaries are helpful, I feel like they could just break down the information a little more.

While I appreciate the game's event-a-month schedule, I do find that if we're going have to bigger events, that schedule should become a little more flexible.
It also feels like every event just has so much going on, and while the variety of things is great, it also gets really overwhelming and I think some of the events can be scaled back.

[snaccs]

a lot of people didn't know that this would be required to be threaded out in order participate in the poll

I'm going to essentially repeat what I said to Fae below, but there were no thread requirements in order to participate in the poll. The only request for a thread was if you wanted a bonus point against the Stone Giant. Characters were free to be involved with the Stone Giant path without any tattoo threading bonus (both of my participating characters were!)

In addition to 2

[sulit]

I'd like to voice my agreement with all of this, but especially point 2 with a further note of how the tabulating of the poll results can mean railroading the game into event failure:

I've noticed during my time in this game that most polls only generate about 50% participation. On par with that, we had 100 responses in this poll out of 235 characters. This is normal! For whatever reason, about half the playerbase is busy or on hiatus or taking an unofficial break or otherwise occupied on a given weekend; and that's perfectly okay.

What isn't okay is assuming that those not participating in the poll have all explicitly chosen to not participate in IC efforts. That is not only punishing them ICly for OOC circumstances, but also punishing the rest of the game by making their nonparticipation count as a mark against the whole endeavor. Ultimately, this means that the game at large had virtually no chance of achieving these objectives simultaneously. We only achieved the Lestari one by grace of nearly every combat healer choosing that option. As a player, this is incredibly demoralizing and has the (I assume opposite) effect of making it feel like we never had a chance to effect the outcome begin with.

If you intend to make a poll like this in the future, not only would I apply the above suggestion to lengthen the poll to several weeks or a whole month, but I would also add a specific option for those who are choosing not to participate. Then you have a clear idea of how many players have explicitly voiced their choices. If at that point you want to make an option difficult, by all means raise the % needed; but it's much more palatable to fail by our own IC actions than being encumbered with something that can't be helped, like OOC circumstances.

+1

[bakudan_bambino]

I can delete this is you may need to edit again but wow I like how you not only pointed out an issue but give information on how to resolve it. Can’t +1 this enough.

[roseeclair]

Okay, to rephrase: when the tattoo prompt was introduced, they didn't know it would be important later. Therefor, a lot of people who thought they could gloss over the prompt or decide later were surprised when that prompt turned out to be an important factor in a plot event. Especially when the mission was failed by such a slim margin.

[sulit]

Thank you! I modded a game for 5 years, so this comes from my own experiences.

[bakudan_bambino]

They try really hard and that shows, and I’ve never modded so I respect everything they do here (and wow five years for you!!)

You are unbelievably welcome and it’s clear you want to help. Reading this was super constructive and a breath of fresh air.

[snaccs]

That I would agree with! I definitely had a moment of "oh, maybe I should have more actively organised something for that prompt" when the poll went up. But it wasn't as essential as people were painting it to be. If some of the people abstaining from voting because they didn't have a thread had voted regardless, that mission may very well have been successful. (I think someone worked it out at needing like... 5 more characters without a bonus? Might be wrong there, but it was very close.)

[sulit]

Exactly, I'm never going to fault someone for wanting to run a good game. It's hard to balance everything, and especially hard to deal with the fallout when things don't go over well with the players, since that's usually held in a public space like this and can feel very vulnerable.

With this specific issue, it just seems like a case of not realizing the effect of using ideal participation numbers vs actual numbers. Every mod would love the whole playerbase to participate in huge events like this, but it's unfortunately just not plausible, and that has to be accounted for in a fair way. Otherwise, you end up with a lot of bad morale and friction between players. In a game this large, less available players don't want to feel like they're forced to be a burden to others, and more available players want to feel like their efforts matter.

[patchricide]

While I do think that there needs to be some schedule consideration, I'm not sure I agree with the idea of starting the event early. At least, not unless there's a lot more that gets workshopped to change with it.

First off, there's the TDM, which I don't think should run concurrently with the event itself, and which I would rather not see combined. Plot events + characters that might not be showing up again... seems like a bad mix. However, starting the TDM in the last third of the month might be cool, and maybe even a better option than the event for last minute activity threads.

Secondly, there's the fact that activity reward threads don't have the AC limitation, they can go on well into other months. However, quests have to start in the same month as they get posted up to qualify for title rewards. I do think there's some trade-off to adjusting its timing too -- if it were moved forward a week or so, the quests would be more visible to new characters looking to jump in. However, if it gets moved forward at all, I would hope the cut-off date gets moved forward too to allow as much time as possible to get those threads started. And I dunno, I feel like that could get confusing over the one month system.

I do think that what definitely needs to be moved up is event plotting, especially if there's in-game consequences at stake. Granted, I know that players might lose some enthusiasm if they have to sit on their ideas longer... but maybe there could be an advance preview of what's coming up, where the mods can give some hints about what OOC actions we should look into (like the tattoo prompt on the TDM, and the upcoming poll for the event)?

[avalonmods]

Great! Then we will leave that with Hawk.

[avalonmods]

Players can always participate in any prompt they want! The linking only counted toward getting bonus points in the poll and the reward. The idea behind it was to give a large boost to increase chances of success in the poll given that September was a busier month for people, so anyone who participated in the prompt was able to claim 3 extra points for the cause. It definitely does not limit anyone from participating on their own terms.

[avalonmods]

Hello! I just wanted to let you know that there is a lot to read through in this and replies to this so we want to give it adequate time and consideration. I wanted to comment first though to let everyone know we see you and are going to take the time to properly consider and discuss received feedback even though we are replying to quick questions on this post.

[heart_demands]

Absolutely understandable. And here I was trying desperately to avoid a "wall of text" on your behalf, in the same place I was explaining about walls of text being a problem. Alas, I did try.

Thank you for consideration of our thoughts.