Like the title says. This is the feedback thread.

What did you like? What do you think could've been done better? Was the story okay, or was it pretty blah? Tell us what you think needs improvement and what can be changed. This feedback will help for future story arcs.

I liked the story, liked how into it and 'apart of our world' it became.

Disliked? How we'd clump together, it made RP somewhat chaotic. Advice for future arcs: Find some way to seperate everyone into smaller groups so that things can be spread further apart and kept easier to deal with. I.E. having multiple 'teams' in different areas fighting different bad guys, though understandably this can change for different situations.

More organization for the more complicated bits lol. I think tonight really illustrated those need work hehe. The story was good for the most part... I'd like to see more filtering down of little things next time around I think, though. I guess I mean more little things for players to seize upon and develop their own little threads to weave into the bigger story overall... if that makes sense. Like, more things for people to connect into their own stories instead of just one big epic thing... And now I think I'm rambling and repeating myself, so I'm going to stop there lol.

#2194879 Mickenzy wrote:

More organization for the more complicated bits lol. I think tonight really illustrated those need work hehe. The story was good for the most part... I'd like to see more filtering down of little things next time around I think, though. I guess I mean more little things for players to seize upon and develop their own little threads to weave into the bigger story overall... if that makes sense. Like, more things for people to connect into their own stories instead of just one big epic thing... And now I think I'm rambling and repeating myself, so I'm going to stop there lol.

Yes. Ways to feel connected with the plot and not swept up in it are vital. Plenty of people feel intruding if they have no personal IC stake in the matter, and providing impetus for action is always good.

Food for future improvement

The main reason I distanced myself from the entire production, the utter lack of OOC contact between players from text fighting with no regards to asking what players defenses might be to offering no information or clues on situations, to not asking permission before involving people or declaring outcomes of events. Communication is important, its not fun to be told what happens to my character for a plot I'm not interested in participating in because no one mentioned that it was all a setup. That did seem to be getting better towards the end there however.

Not everyone has to be involved in every step of event. As much fault of players as organizers, back off and let other people do things, and don't be afraid to say 'no' to people getting involved when it gets to be too many to handle. Mass RP is only fun when 20 people aren't all trying to do/say the same thing at once.

Be aware that not everyone is going to care about The Plot of the Month, and consider not having villians/opposition events constantly on Champions RP, just once in a while. I know a couple of us pretty much had to resort to other channels or tells to be able to discuss anything but the plot for a bit.

Just some pocket change thoughts.

#2194974 Kai wrote:

The main reason I distanced myself from the entire production, the utter lack of OOC contact between players from text fighting with no regards to asking what players defenses might be to offering no information or clues on situations, to not asking permission before involving people or declaring outcomes of events.

Between this and the fact that anytime I tried to investigate off of things happening in Champions RP (I'm looking at you chronic static interruptions that served no purpose other than to start another round of rambling speculation in the channel) it went nowhere and basically felt like a massive waste of time since it didn't contribute anything. As mentioned by others in this thread and the future events suggestions thread, not everyone needs to be the hero - there are far too many heroes for everyone to be THE hero - but if it feels like what you're doing doesn't matter at all there's no motivation to be involved.

It ends up feeling more like a 3-D movie than a roleplay event: it looks like you're involved, but you have no impact on the script. It would all happen the same way if you weren't there, and that kinda sucks the fun out of a movie that advertised interactivity as one of its selling points.

...oh, and when an RP event becomes watching a half-hour long stalemate duel, complete with ((bracketed interruptions complaining about how your hold is always landing and mine never is wait how are you blocking while you're held stop a second I have to figure out why my haymaker isn't working)), that's...yeah. Woo. >.> Really, if both the duelists are at full health after twenty minutes of pewpew, could we maybe pretend we're there to RP and figure out a resolution to the conflict?

Thats why I like textfights.

Not to put myself on a pedestal or anything, but I liked the fact that a relative nobody like me was able to come up with a plan, and have it actually be listened to instead of ignored on account of nobody know who I am :X . But even if it had been someone else's idea, I liked the fact that the players were responsible for finding a solution, not the people running the plot, had a big impact. Furthermore, during the final battle, I liked how Azu GM'd actions and gave everyone a chance to act. If people were ignored, it was only due to the complete chaos that was going on. But I think he did his best to give every participant a chance to... well, participate.

The whole thing actually "felt" like a community RP, as opposed to an RP where a villain and maybe his close friends dictate everything while other people have a minimal impact, and I'd love it if the next plot was like Mind Games in this respect.

However, it could have been a bit organized. One issue that needs to be addressed is villain actions on Champions RP. A lot of people don't want to be involved in the plot, and that's fine, but then there's people like me who often are just hoping something will happen. So, if we can work out a way where people can announce events without forcing reactions from people in CRP, that would be nice.

Other issues... well, like people said, as fun as that final battle was, it was chaotic. I often lost track of what was going on, and sometimes people were ignored simply because the person they were attacking didn't notice their action. If we can organize this a little better, that'd help.

I heard about the Champions RP in-game channel before I came to this website, so the first I heard anything about Mind Games was hearing a couple of people talking about some horrible, possibly nigh-omnipotent villain called "Superior" while I was lurking on the channel. I kinda wondered if that was someone's character in an RP event or some part of existing Champions lore, but didn't really get too interested. Then, later that same day, I heard people talking about Flynn getting killed. That caught my interest. Although I would have been more impressed (with whoever plays Flynn, I mean ) if he'd been RP perma-killed, it was still very interesting. I didn't ( still don't ) have my characters fleshed out enough to join IC events just yet, but the problem I WOULD have had if I'd tried is the lack of a write up of what's happened in-game. I read the setup post and there were some vague hints and references to things in update posts, but nothing that would let me get up to speed and join in. OK, after I started writing this and before I posted, I noticed Crimson's post suggesting a way to handle this, so I'll just voice my support for his idea.

Anyway, I've never done any in-game RP with "text-fighting" so witnessing that when I lurked on the sidelines of the final confrontation was interesting. One person got forgotten by the mod and someone else attacked but missed the reply and had no idea what had happened, but it went a lot more smoothly than I would have expected. Having more than one mod, preferably using voice chat to keep sync'ed with each other, might help. Seems like in a situation like that, everybody would want to be present, but really it seemed like at least 2 different things going on which could have been handled separately. The magic group performing a ritual and the fighting group going after Superior probably could have been happening in different spots, each with its own mod. The mods could either use their own channel to tell each other when there was an event that effects the other group, or again, preferably just use voice chat.

Something else I noticed, about which no one here can do anything, of course, is that this game needs more emotes, or a way to run an emote animation with your own text. Sorry, not really relevant to this thread, but it was the only other thing I thought of while watching the event.

I think every single suggestion already made has been excellent. And good points all around.

I wasn't even going to be a part of the storyline at first. I didn't like it, to be honest, it felt overpowered and odd. But then, as Kai said, it got much better by the end, with people kind of going for what they wanted to keep the plot moving and not dominating the RPing of everyone else on the channel. That was good, because I don't want to RP the same story every single day, and like Mick said, people need ways to weave their own storylines into the big one.

More organization seems to be the key here. Maybe someone would be in charge of an OOC writeup after significant events? Or maybe in IC writeup? When stuff happened in Mind Games, I happened to know someone who would tell me everything she knew, but not everyone is like that. Also, the fighting may need to be tweaked a bit. I know that some aren't comfortable with PvP, like myself, but the text fighting was tough with so many people, and a lot of people started off fairly confused about who was doing what and when. Oh, and I swear I tried to pay attention to your attacks, Leetsepeak, but what with sending tells and talking on other channels such, I always felt I was late...Sorry.

Overall, the Mind Games plot had a very "supervillain" feel to it, but it could use some work. Which is alright, considering it's the first big one here on CO. I both disliked and enjoyed it in turns, and I think it just would have been a little better with some more OOC organization. But overall, it was fun.

I came into this whole story fairly late, really only participating a part of the final battle. From the odd stuff that came across the Champions RP channel, like news of someone's death and events getting started, it was easy to get the sense of the conflict. Small, annoying things like the random channel interruptions made it hard to pick out just when and where I should try to jump in or where I might be treading on an event already set up OOC or if there was even an event to join. With all of the confusing messages that got thrown around the channel, I had to come to the forums here to understand what was happening.

After seeing things firsthand at the final events, it made a bit more sense and I was able to enjoy the story. The final event was run fairly well for an event in a very public place with so many people, even if it did get chaotic at times. The GM comments, OOC comments, and IC actions all got mixed up so that I was behind sometimes, but other people in this thread have already addressed that problem with some solutions, so I won't repeat them. It just seemed like nothing helped the heroes to last thirty minutes more than the villains needing to search their chat logs for prompts.

I wonder (and I'm just wondering) if it could benefit from a Mind's Eye Theatre model where there is an OOC game master narrating events and determining certain unsolvables.

Perhaps it is just a matter of personal preference, but I detest the notion of my actions or my character's actions being determined by another OOC 'GM.'

Then again, I can control myself. Some are... less fortunate, though I certainly know that doesn't ring true for most if not all of CORP.

A GM doesn't have to dictate anyone's actions except that of NPC's or the surrounding environment. An NPC says something like "You all feel the ground beneath you start to shake." Or if a text-based fight happens s/he can say "X successfully defends against the first of Y's attacks". I'm just talking about resolving matters that would be left fuzzy without an arbiter.

I'm not talking about an RP cop who says "You can't do that" or "Your are compelled to obey" or "You find him attractive." That's just lame.

I'm just suggesting someone to set the scene and resolve the unresolvables. That's why GM's were created in the first place. I'm as much for player/character autonomy as anybody, but some central control is helpful or else you have anarchy.

#2199830 @redaqua wrote:

A GM doesn't have to dictate anyone's actions except that of NPC's or the surrounding environment. An NPC says something like "You all feel the ground beneath you start to shake." Or if a text-based fight happens s/he can say "X successfully defends against the first of Y's attacks". I'm just talking about resolving matters that would be left fuzzy without an arbiter.

I'm not talking about an RP cop who says "You can't do that" or "Your are compelled to obey" or "You find him attractive." That's just lame.

I'm just suggesting someone to set the scene and resolve the unresolvables. That's why GM's were created in the first place. I'm as much for player/character autonomy as anybody, but some central control is helpful or else you have anarchy.

Well, this is what I did as acting GM: I didn't do any narration or specific posts to be all "Now you're all hurt, die die die." What I ended up doing was point to a specific number of players and told them to attack or react. I broke it up so people wouldn't be acting all at once and tried to make it so if one hero was attacked, another three could react to the person being hit. I tried doing a bit of turned based thing, mostly so it could keep SOME kind of order with the 15+ people we had there. @_@

Mass crowds RPing together is always an issue from a management perspective between the chat buffer, read/response time and people's general inclination to react to everything they can possibly react to rather than just actions that directly involve them. Trying to RP out a 10-person orgy is a clusterfuck in less pleasant ways than one would hope given the setting.





...what?