Player Survey

[atlasmods]

Hey everyone! It's been a wild first month here at The Atlas, and the mod team would like to thank everyone for hanging on while we got things rolling. There have been some ups and downs, things we've needed to work on, and some good fun had! We've done a bit of looking inward on our end, and now we'd like to look outward and see what everyone thinks so far in order to help improve and grow the game. To this end, we'd like all continuing players to please fill out this form with as much information as you'd like to share. Everything said here will be read and considered as we prepare to move into the next couple months and the next stage of the game. While we know we can't please everyone, we would like to see where we might need to fix or change things to make a game that everyone can enjoy.


1. The Overseer Drone 24-Hour Event
While there was a good amount of participation, the turn-out was much less than expected. Those who did participate, we appreciate your efforts and are working to figure out an outcome for you! Those who didn't, was there a specific reason? Were you not sure what you could or should do? Was it simply a bad time to run an event? Is this sort of event not fun or interesting? As the previous 24-hour event had gone rather well, we'd like to know what was on everyone's minds going into it.

2. Discoveries
There has been talk of revamping discoveries to make them less mechanical and easier to handle on our end. Are you happy with the current system? If yes, what do you like about it? If no, what would you change?

3. Pacing
There has been some concern about the game moving too fast, or characters not having time to settle. How is the game speed? Is there too much going on? Would you prefer less intense events to let characters relax and interact in non-stressful situations? What elements did you enjoy the most so far of the first month?

4. General
For now the game is taking place on Kharas, but soon enough it will be opening up in a big way. With that said, what sort of things would you like to see? What might be interesting or fun to engage with? What would make your playing experience that much better? As newer mods we are all learning as we go, and if things haven't been working we would definitely like to try to change that for a better mutual experience.

5. Concerns
Outside of these categories, are there any issues or problems that you've seen? Things that haven't gone as smoothly as you'd like? Matters that you feel need to be brought up on their own merits? There are a couple issues that have already been addressed (using a real world cipher instead of completely randomizing an alien language, and tone on mod/OOC posts for example), but if there is anything else that has been hampering enjoyment, please let us know.

Comments

[lefthandfree]

To start, I want to say I’m greatly enjoying this game so far, and I love the setting and attentiveness to events you lot have given us. Boney was a real treat as an NPC, and I’m excited for more such interactions in the future. Thank you all for your hard work!

1. The Overseer Drone 24-Hour Event
I’m on a much needed holiday right now, so I’ve taken something of a step back from RP to take that time for myself. That aside, a single thread event for the entire game feels really chaotic to me, so I felt strange about tagging in (even only once since that might've been all I could manage with the other things I've had scheduled for my holiday)

In the previous event, I was on the Stay team, and I think that worked particularly well for me since the Stay event felt much more “at your leisure” than the thread for the Trilobite Queen. It was much more comfortable for me (personally) to go at my own pace and not feel rushed by the speed of others tagging. With the Boney event, I also felt less rush since the timespan was longer, and we only had three people in our thread, which made it easier to keep track and reply as needed. When it’s something like 24-hours and everyone has to ping a single thread to get in on the action, it feels like it'd be bit like a constant bum rush, almost like a shouting match. That thought alone took away most of my interest in possibly making time to get a few tags in rather than just one, but again I’m on holiday right now, so that’s something of a specialized case anyway.

Seconding the suggestion on sign-ups with RNG for who makes it into an event thread. Otherwise, there could also be a few threads going rather than a single one (if it’s possible with the particular event) to prevent confusion from what essentially feels like everyone talking at once.

2. Discoveries
My opinion is similar to that of Brandi’s. I’m a bit confused on the best way to use the system. There’s things I’d like to do, but I don’t know if submitting a Discovery is necessary for them, and that often keeps me from carrying it out because I feel strange needing to ask about everything to actually do something. Because of that, I’ve just stuck with the Event posts since information is predominantly laid out there for me to use, and it makes it feel much easier to go with the flow.

Also, while I do love the idea of RNG, I think it’s also not the best used as it is now. It puts all characters completely on a level playing field with everyone else, but there are times when a character may be more or less intuitive than others at success with discovering something and that’s not taken into account at all. For example, Bucky would excel at a scouting/searching Discovery, but if you give him a piece of advanced tech, he would have greatly reduced chances. Give him organic matter instead? Now he’s above average. Since all of that is nuanced information per character, I know why it’s not used directly into calculating success, but it also means players will be more disappointed with a failure for a Discovery they felt should definitely been a success.

3. Pacing
Justine summed it up pretty well. It’s both too fast and too slow at times. It’s a bit rough. I wanted to do stuff with the storm, but people had moved on really quickly, and I felt awkward going back to it when most everyone was already doing other things. But then there was not much to do between Forgotten City and Mark of Atlas for my character to feel engaged in. ...but then Mark of Atlas had time critical portions.

Also seconding a bit of what Brandi said. It feels a lot like we’re hopping from event to event, and my character doesn’t have a good idea of who he’s even working with. Maybe a encampment mingle post could help?

4. General
Seconding Justine again. I’m generally the type that’s brimming with plot ideas, but I’m having a really hard time figuring out what kind of things I can even do because a lot of the universe is spoon-fed and needs discoveries for our characters to move forward. While, yes, that is a mechanic used specifically for the characters to progress, you’re also preventing players from knowing any more than the characters at a given time which makes it hard for us to dynamically world build upon or create plot ideas with.

Stuff that they would be able to inherently pick up aren’t that easy to pick up either. For example, while I have a gist of the climate, I don’t actually know how it actually works on Kharas and how likely another storm might happen. I know information about Kharas is being limited to add to suspense so that we can be just as surprised as our characters when certain things happen, but players are still left with very specific information that can’t be used without us wondering if it was only for a given location or if it applies elsewhere as well. Are the trilobites still hanging around? Do they wander around and still end up in the encampment so that the survivors need to fight them off on occasion? I mean, is there even an encampment still? I don’t know any of these things for sure because world information is scattered with event information.

5. Concerns
The only thing that comes to mind is getting a warning reply on my AC submission comment. That was genuinely jarring to me, and I’ve never needed to explain that situation before. I understand it was likely to let me know it doesn’t meet requirements since you guys don’t have an AC warning period in this game, but I denoted in my actual comment that I was working on it still. To add to that, it immediately prevented me from being able to modify the comment, as should have been implied would happen from my having said I was working on it. The same thing happened for Brandi, and it kind of made a mess of things. Per what’s written in the actual AC post, I didn’t expect my comment to be looked at until after the 27th, and it all felt really awkward because I was being called out publicly for something that I was obviously aware of. Perhaps in the future you could reach out by PM instead to make sure we’re aware? That would have made the situation a lot less awkward for me personally.

[thephix]

+1 for me on the RNG aspect of discoveries which I forgot to mention in my thread

It seems like a very tabletop aspect to me, which is fine, but then usually in a tabletop setting characters' skills and experience are taken into account when the die is rolled, which it isn't here because we haven't got stats up for our characters

I'm not sure if there's an immediate solution that doesn't just create my work for you guys, but I just wanted to toss my two cents in with Curt.