WEEK THREE ( FEEDBACK )

[crossingout]

Hello there, everyone! Once again, Len here with several announcements. First of all, activity check is closed. There will be no item priorities for the upcoming week, because of reasons that will be explained in the rest of this post.

Week 4

I'm going to start off with the shortest, but big announcement: due to Easter Sunday happening next week, the upcoming week will be a no murder week! What does this mean for you guys? We will be having a plot related week where characters get to do things.

What are those things?

It is a mystery until tomorrow. And because of that, there will be no new locations until next week. We hope you guys all understand and continue to enjoy yourselves regardless!

Week 3 Case

First and foremost, I would like to sincerely apologize personally for the mishap in regards to the rope. It was brought up in the last post out of nowhere and I wished to shoot it down in today's trial, as it was something that was not brought up to us personally in the murder PMs, murderdoc, or anywhere else. This was a problem of a huge miscommunication, and I would like to inform everyone to please make sure to check in with the evidence top level before making any wild statements or accusations that may throw the trial into disarray and even cause the trial to ultimately fail.

We, as mods, want a fair trial, and tossing in non-existent evidence is not fair to the culprit or your fellow suspects.

If you're confused on any of the evidence that is provided, please feel free to contact me personally, as I am willing to potentially clarify on most things, given that my answer will not spoil the case.

Also in regards to Zange's involvement - I would like to state outright here to please take her hints with a grain of salt! To be more specific: all of her important clues will be bolded; anything that isn't bolded, please keep in mind that those clues may or may not be fact. This is how I will be handling future cases from now on in regards to that. If anybody has any sort of complaints or comments about that, feel free to give me or any of the other mods a heads up.

Anyway, as a reminder to please use the evidence top level for any and all evidence! This will also include room search write ups. We have it there for a reason, and we would not like for it to be left unused, especially since it's there for the sake of organization.

In other news: we have realized that there has been a big issue in regards to room searches. We've had the problem with inconsistency and people being unavailable to search in rooms due to work, timezones, or something else coming up. As a reminder for everyone: if you're not going to be available at a certain time or day to please let us know beforehand. Same goes for any future dates - since endgame should be happening in about a month, since full, 100% activity is required for that.

Which we're leading for two polls. The first one will deal with room search timing again, and we would really, heavily appreciate that everyone who is playing a living character answer both of these:

Poll #18165

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 9

View Respondents

When do you prefer room searches?

View Answers

Friday, at the beginning of the investigation
5 (55.6%)

Saturday, at the beginning of the trial
4 (44.4%)

Saturday, at 4 PM PST/7 PM EST
1 (11.1%)

Sunday, at the beginning of the trial
1 (11.1%)

How many suspects do you prefer?

View Answers

4
7 (77.8%)

5
2 (22.2%)

Activity Check

This is something that I have to bring up to clarify with everyone, just in case it does come up again in the future: since AC ends when execution goes up, threads that deal with the execution and afterparty count for the following week's activity check. So basically, Week 2's execution and afterparty threads will work for Week 3; so on and so forth.

Also, as a note: not voting will now be counting as a strike!

Anyway, with that being said: if there's anything you would like to discuss, please feel free to leave a comment; this is essentially an open forum post for any input everyone might have. And if there's any personal feedback that you would like to give to us in private, feel free to hit up our contact post! The poll will conclude on Friday, April 21st, and we will be having our next feedback post on Saturday, April 15th.

We would to thank everyone in advance for all of the feedback that you give us in this post and bring up on the Discord chat; it really helps us moving forward and keeping this game running well for you guys!

Comments

[hawthorned]

Okay, so this is another instance of "Maru thinks too long about how to phrase things and may just not be explaining well" but I'll give it a shot.

I do think it is a really good idea to have a list of valid evidence, and using the evidence top level comment more is definitely a good idea. What was making me uncomfortable about the situation earlier with the rope was the way it was handled OOCly - namely, it seemed as though the intent was to quash any and all IC discussion about the rope right then and there since you were saying things like "i'm putting my foot down on this." I understand perfectly where you're coming from on that front which is why I immediately offered to delete tags that would have prolonged that discussion and potentially obfuscated the case. But I do feel like the way you approached this in chat was pretty heavy handed.

If it helps explain where I'm coming from better, my perspective here is that I play a character that manipulates and lies all the time. Simply put, Dahlia heard Zack talking about a rope and Chiaki being tied up, and regardless or whether or not that was factually true, because that implicated Seraphina (who she just frankly dislikes) she was going to run with that and argue for that being the case until someone put a stop to that kind of chatter with evidence to counter that view. Dahlia's a bag of dicks, in other words.

TL;DR I agree 100% that had Seraphina gotten executed on the basis of the rope shenanigans, it would have been unfair but ICA=ICC, and it's just my opinion that telling the player base OOCly "hey this is fake" to keep everyone on the same page and letting the IC convo run its course would have been ideal instead of trying to stifle IC discussion. As long as everyone knows it's a red herring, that's good enough imo. In any case, I don't foresee this coming up as an issue again since there'll be more rigorous checks on the evidence in the future, but I did want to clarify what exactly had bothered me about it.

I guess on a similar line of thought... I'm only speaking for myself on this one, but I would actually really prefer that you didn't use Zange to drop hints and just played her normally. I don't mind hints OOCly like on discord/plurk or what have you if you feel like giving them because the trial is going haywire, but I guess I just don't really feel all that comfortable with how the IC and OOC lines are blurring with Zange. If I'm the only one who feels this way about how Zange is used, by all means continue to do what you're doing now, but this is just my two cents.

[crossingout]

Hey there - I'll go over these one by one so you understand where I'm coming from here.

1. In regards of the rope evidence, I was actually surprised by it showing up on Zack's end initially and had no idea why it had come up in the first place. The player had known of all of the evidence listed beforehand in the murder document as they were heavily involved in the case and it came out of left field when I... wasn't told about this?

I'll be honest here that I should have communicated OOCly the moment I saw it, and I apologize that I didn't. While I don't mind red herrings - in fact, I encourage them, and I wouldn't be saying anything if that was a valid red herring to begin with - this wasn't one that I was informed about, nor was it on the evidence list. In any case, that's my personal thoughts on the matter.

It shouldn't be happening again and I definitely promise to communicate better on that front. Again, I apologize if I was harsh or pushy, that was definitely not my intention in the slightest bit.

2. In regards to Zange: besides the whole debacle regarding the rope, I actually didn't give much in the way of hints in this trial; with the exception of the double death on day two, which was already hinted at in day one with Zack's confession.

Admittedly, I don't get to do a lot with Zange in trials. I can definitely tone her down even more and use her only as necessary - which is to basically make side comments over actually helping out in the trial, for fairness if more people prefer that.

I should reiterate that most of the trials, from what I have seen, have been majorly you guys solving the cases, not Zange. Of course, we can agree to disagree on that part; I haven't been told by the others that I'm blurring the lines, but if more people agree on this front, then again: I'm willing to compromise and keep Zange away from the trial entirely and only make snide comments - ICly - and chime in when things are going completely awry.

The reason why I don't give hints OOCly is because - as people have stated on chat earlier - that leads to OOC discussion over IC discussion and the trial ends up going nowhere. That's my own personal opinion on the matter, so I'm speaking for myself over the rest of the moderator team.

I think that's it on my part; if you or anybody else have any other questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to bring them up with me. Myself and the rest of the mod team are willing to work on this, along with anything else.

[hawthorned]

Ah, thanks for clarifying issue #1, I glad to have cleared up that misunderstanding!

Re: Issue #2: I don't mean that you shouldn't get Zange involved at all. Far from it, actually! I just meant that I think I'd personally prefer if Zange didn't drop hints as an IC mechanism to get an OOC mod point across - if that makes sense? That's also what I meant by blurring IC/OOC, but I was definitely not wording myself well here. IDK, I may indeed just be in the minority here, so feel free to disregard this one if so. I definitely see your point about dropping IC hints over OOC hints though.

Thanks again for the clarifications, Len!

[crossingout]

No problem. Just as a heads up: I'm going to respond to this properly tomorrow morning but I wanted to let you know that I've read this; thank you very much for your time.

I'll also let you know if there are any delays in my response tomorrow as well, in the event that actually happens.

[theotherother]

Hey there, sorry about the delay. Yesterday kind of turned into a mess on our end, but we can definitely see where you're coming from, and we'll take that under advisement for future trials. As we've said before, we're all sort of new when it comes to running a murdergame, so each week we're getting a new feel for what works and what doesn't, and seeing what we can change to provide a better playing experience for you guys.

As always, thank you for your feedback, we really appreciate it!

[hawthorned]

No need to apologize fo the delay, I know you guys are hella busy and this wasn't exactly all that important. And like I said, if anything I say does seem like "eh whatever" to you guys, feel free to disregard it, as I don't take this kind of thing personally! I'm just throwing out ideas and whatever you guys make of them is a-okay, haha.

For the record, I hate how Dahlia's smile icons seem super passive aggressive given the character, but I do think you guys are doing a great job, and I am very grateful for your receptiveness and patience as a team, so thank you :)

[theotherother]

It's fine, I have played so many PA characters then looked at icons on OOC stuff and start second guessing how it looks. SO I REALLY GET YOU THERE.

[shining_finger]

I apologize for not doing a writeup in the evidence toplevel about the results of the room search last week; I wondered if I should, but it looked like no one else had, so I figured I wasn't supposed to. So it's good to have an official statement about that and about the use of evidence generally.

It looks like doing the room searches on Friday when investigation starts is the clear winner, and this suggestion may not be worth much because I may be the only person here who is at work until about 6 PM EST on Fridays, but would you possibly consider starting them later in the evening on Fridays instead of in the early afternoon EST? As it is, I am functionally locked out of participating in investigations because by the time I get home from work, everything has been investigated and there's nothing left to find. If the room searches were moved to starting at the same time as the investigation, that would be one less way that I could meaningfully contribute to the trial portion of the game, and I really would be sad about that. Again, I'm aware that as far as I can tell this only affects me, so it may not be worth making any kind of compromise if doing the room searches Friday afternoon would work out great for literally everyone else, but it's been very frustrating to me that I can't participate in investigations, and so I wanted to at least try to see if there was some other solution.

[crossingout]

Hi there!

Starting the room searches later can be a possibility if the others agree on it, but it's less likely, considering that the players involved have to be available for them. I'll ask on chat when more people are online to see how they feel about it, but that's pretty much my two cents on the matter.