Mod Announcement + Feedback!

[sodder]

In Regards to the AC

Hello everyone! We are here to discuss the what we all know has become a bit of a burden on some of you: the AC.

First and foremost, we would like to apologize for not making an official post about this at the time of its announcement. There was an error in communication on our end, and we genuinely do apologize for not providing a more appropriate platform for discussion.

Our adjustments to the AC were abrupt and sudden, and we realize that we gave very little notice for this change. Again, we apologize for that. Due to that poor timing, we are allowing all players to either choose to use the newly formatted AC we have available, or rely on the old AC for this AC round. We plan to officially enact the new AC next AC round that will be posted in December. This will be the AC post for November's AC. Granted, this is assuming we collectively come to an agreement on the new AC. If bigger adjustments are made, we will give appropriate notice for that as well. You do not need to worry about another sprung-upon announcement.

We are fully aware that various players from our game have provided helpful criticism on Plurk. As always, we are more than open to feedback and have provided this post so that there can be a player base discussion on what people might be confused about, what other people might think could help, or if people who understand the new AC being able to provide help to those that don't.

AC is never an easy thing for anyone, mod or player base alike, and we apologize as we stumble towards trying to find the best AC possible for our community that suits as many players as it can possibly suit. Unfortunately it will be impossible to work well with everyone's schedule, but we are completely open to trying to accommodate everyone as much as we can within reason.

We are open to advice, recommendations, and constructive criticism as it will help our game grow to be a better game.

Again, we apologize for how this was originally handled. We always try to attempt to ensure that all players can access new information, and will make sure another lapse like this does not happen again in the future.

Thank you to everyone who has brought this to our attention on our Plurk about this, as well as the few players who have made sure to directly speak to us! We are glad it was brought to our attention in a respectful way so that we could respond appropriately.

We hope to hear from all of you soon! As in our past mod feedback posts, we will not respond to the feedback here, but will read everyone's statements very carefully and eventually make a follow-up response to everyone's concerns.

Thank you!

In Regards to Changes

To better discuss the reason behind some of our changes, we'll explain the core parts we find important:

➟ We have been spoken to by numerous players at various times that felt like log points should generally be worth more than network points. While it's a generalization to say that most logs are usually longer than most network posts, we also know that it's very difficult to properly measure quality against quantity, so we unfortunately have to rely on generalizations. We know some network posts can be just as thoughtful as log posts, and some log posts can be as short and sweet as network posts, but we have collectively figured that the opposite is usually more accurate.

If someone has a better idea for measuring out the value between posts, feel free to make mention of it below!

➟ As this is a story driven game, we do have a certain pacing we want to keep in mind for our plots. This is the reason behind capping off backtags to three months. We felt this provided ample time for players to wrap up old threads while getting involved in new threads. You are more than welcome to backtag to your heart's desire, but we will only reward tags as old as three months in order to encourage players to stay up to speed on the game's story in general.

➟ Our three tag minimum is purely to ensure that threads do not get abandoned.

➟ We felt like top levels, open posts on the network, or open posts on the log community are usually very thoughtful and require a level of committed work which is why we decided to allow that be half your base AC. This was seen as particularly useful seeing as most people do one of the three in a month anyway.

Those are the changes we felt were the most important to our update, and the changes we would most like to keep relevant in our changes.

We do plan on streamlining our information. One of our players did inform us that the page felt overwhelming due to its length, only to realize most of it was FAQ or examples. We understand and agree with this criticism, so we plan to streamline all of that information onto a separate page that can be used as a helpful resource to players who might need it for AC.

We also, in general, hope to clarify things more smoothly in general. If we come to realize other important changes need to be made, we will make sure to do so!

We look forward to hearing from everyone!

Comments

[oversight]

In my experience, adding more variables to try to balance an already complicated system isn't going to have the desired effect.

I didn't have a lot to add that hasn't already been said (and agree with pretty much all of it on some level), but I will cosign that the way that AC is tracked and calculated makes the collection of bonus points (and anything beyond providing base AC) undesirable enough for me personally, that I'm unlikely to do so going forward. It's bookkeeping, and I understand that the intent is to reward effort, but it's needlessly laborious.

What was this change meant to solve? What is this system meant to maintain overall?

We call it "activity check" but the most heated debate isn't about activity, it's about bonus points and effort. Value is mentioned and I'm hoping that's meant in purely a mathematical sense (an estimate of monetary worth, i.e. points) and not in the other sense (the importance, worth, or usefulness of something).

Why do we have to consider anything more than a 1:1 ratio for points? I think the suggestion is that the game is rewarding effort (not value) but I'm concerned that the definition is based on "log vs. network."

It's difficult to tell if log = prose/action spam and network = text/audio or if it's just location, location, location. Actual definitions may exist, I don't know, but this is my current interpretation based on what I feel log and network refer to in this particular post.

If you want to encourage "effort" by defining the worth between the two based on your system here ("most logs are usually longer than most network posts"), then why not pay out points by the word? It would be more effort to calculate AC, but how much more? If people are already using spreadsheets, someone could surely write a script for that.

It begs the question: Who benefits from a more complicated system? Not the players doing the calculations, nor the mods who have to check their work.

It's important to acknowledge that no one is getting paid to mod and it can be a hugely thankless job that can needlessly puts a microscope on someone on a personal level. Those who are able and willing to volunteer that time are ultimately trying to provide something for nothing, so the changes should always be considered from that perspective (from all sides, I believe, player and mod alike) and approached with respect and a willingness for discussion. It's good to see that's happening here.

I honestly appreciate all the attention to detail afforded in this game, but I think if I can offer the suggestion, I would say the mods would be better suited by making processes easier on themselves and everyone else by removing the concept of assigning value or effort to one type of comment over another and returning to a 1:1 ratio for points.

[4thwaller]

+1 to all of this. Somehow you said what I had bouncing around in my head but didn't know how to say it and made it eloquent.

[nojockey]

tbh I actually want to cosign yours as well, especially re: not needing to value log comments at a higher point value than network comments. I hadn't really been thinking about that because I was too busy actually trying to understand the mechanics at all, but when I consider it, some of my network tags are just as long as my log tags? video and voice tags for me, and for many other players it seems, often have just as much introspection and description in them as a log tag might, so it does sit a little weirdly with me to value the log tags differently just because they're written in the log community.