May Midmonth

[moustre]

Midmonth Mod Post: May Hello, Aefenglom! Here's your monthly midmonth mod post. First, as always, some reminders. They're pretty brief this month: • Our Fourth Wall event is still going! (With Network Post) here. As a reminder, we will be changing the comms back to members-only commenting on June 1st so ongoing threads with fourth wall characters will need to be moved to overflows on personal journals after that. • Our activity check begins on May 25! While we'll have the requirements on the activity check itself as a reminder, here they are right now so you can start figuring things out: 10 comments minimum from you across two threads OR one network post/log/top level made by you with at least 5 comments from you and a second, separate thread with at least 5 comments from you. In addition, players are allowed to take a strike if they have at least half of the necessary activity; Fourth wall threads do count for AC this month. Inbox threads and personal overflow threads also work - they just have to be from the current month! • The calendar has all these dates as always, so check it out! Now then - onwards! The Aefenglom Journal What a strange Maiuril it has been! A full year since the first group of Mirrorbound arrived in our fair city, we hear directly from the Coven that there was a bit of a mishap. Instead of the mirrors in the old and mysterious Looking-Glass House, according to reports, new Mirrorbound have been popping up like daisies from every reflective surface in the city! Citizens are quite alarmed to have found themselves with new guests and Mirrorbound seemed quite alarmed to drag themselves out of the river or fountains. Despite their unorthodox arrival, we hope they have enjoyed their stay. But how long will it last? According to Nerissa Bell herself, she doesn't have the answers we seek, only theories. These new Mirrorbound, according to her expertise, do not seem as firmly bound to our world as those who have come before them - perhaps, more accurately, should we call them Mirror-unbound? Regardless of what happens in the coming weeks, Aefenglom extends its welcome to these wayward travelers, despite the panic they caused among the citizens on their arrivals. State of the Game So as you all know, we as mods have been trying to figure out the best way to manage the growing game size and find a way to balance wanting to let interested players join and have fun, while also not overwhelming ourselves when it comes to the worldbuilding-and-lore-intensive plots and extras that have always been part of the game. It has not been the smoothest ride, between this and the pandemic, but we appreciate you all sticking with us through it. We've been talking among ourselves about what to do going forward and we all agreed that we don't want to give up on the things that make Aefenglom what it is to move to a structure with more generic events and less personalization - but these things are made more labor-intensive the larger the game grows. It's not a bad problem to have, we love how enthusiastic everyone is! But things are and no doubt will continue to be a little harder for us with RL in its current state. Ultimately we came up with a plan that we feel will be the most beneficial for both players who appreciate more plot and lore focused events and for us, without the stress (on everyone) of hunger games-like capped app rounds. We will be moving to a game cap of 140-160 (exact number to be determined) characters, and queue applications. This means apps can be submitted at any time, starting in July, but will not be processed until space has freed up naturally. We do understand that this means there will be a fairly long wait involved for space to become available. This leaves June. We will have an application round in June, and will not cap the number of applications we will process for this one round. We do realize this is counteproductive with going to a game cap, but we do want to give everyone who has been swept and wants to re-apply or who couldn't make it through a capped round at least one chance before we roll out the queue. Since we will not be capping applications, the round will only last 24 hours from the time applications open. It's a short window but we want to have time to be able to process them all before it's time for an intro post. There will not be a June TDM, as the fourth wall has already served that purpose - fourth wall threads are absolutely welcome as samples. We fully expect that there will be hiccups in the process but we hope this will eventually help the game reach a balance for both the playerbase and for the mod team, because we do hope to get back to exciting events that explore the game world and deal with the plot. It will take some time but we appreciate you all sticking with us as we figure things out! Nothing is ever 100% set in stone, and we do welcome feedback if there is anything we have overlooked. We're only human after all, and learning as we go. We may change things up or adjust if we feel it's necessary but this is the general plan; we know you all wanted app round news! OOC Updates • Applications will next open in June. We will not being having a June TDM, but fourth wall threads are certainly acceptable as samples! • June's app round will not be capped. Reserves will be open for a week before apps open, as per usual. Apps will only be open for 24 hours, but all applications submitted within the time period will be processed. • After June's app round, we will move to a total game cap of 140-160 (TBD) characters and applications will only be processed as space is freed. • We've decided that we will start doing a 24 hour warning before the end of AC from now on. This will be the only warning we will give, and we will not be pinging individuals who haven't responded, but with everything going on in RL, we feel that a reminder would potentially be helpful for some. Feedback We're here again to offer everyone the chance to give some feedback, if there's anything that you've noticed or would like to possibly seem implemented! Talking Points: • Info posts that you'd like clarification for. • Quests. In general, what kind of quests would you like to see more of? How can we improve with these? What's working, and what isn't? • Plot investigation feedback. We've gotten quite a few good investigations, and honestly it's been fantastic seeing what everyone does with their information. • Events. What type of ones would you like to see, what ones are working, what aren't? • General feelings on: the game, the timing of posts, how events and such are set up, etc. • And more! Tell us what's on your mind. We honestly appreciate all kinds of comments, and we want to make Aefenglom a wonderful, fun, and comfortable game for everyone who joins. This post will remain unscreened, so if you'd like to take something to a more private venue, you can either PM us or comment here.

Comments

[clickclickbang]

Quick question, but do fourth wall event threads count for AC?

[moustre]

As we stated above, fourth wall threads do count for AC!

[clickclickbang]

Oh pfft so you did. Whoops!

[bolstafir]

What date will apps be opening in June? Or will that be revealed with next month’s calendar?

[moustre]

All relevant dates will be finalized on June's calendar, but most likely the 24th.

[bolstafir]

thank you!!

[weirdnecro]

Hey Mods! Thanks again of all the things that you've done, but I've got a few questions!

1. Plot Investigation. Has there been a method or a way that information is going to be streamlined or that there will be some sort of check in for outstanding investigations? Will there be suggestions on how to make it more accessible, or will there be some limitations on how many investigations per player?

2. Events. Will there be the continuing trend of having more slice of life events in Aefenglom, or will there more that are related to the world and the ongoing plot? Will there be ways that the characters can outwardly effect the world, and possibly player plots that allow it as well? There seems to be a lot of threads that we could follow, however it's difficult to say if we as players would be allowed to do so.

3. Is there any plans for expansion to the mod team in order to work with how big the game is becoming? Or will it stay the same?

Thank you for your time!

[faithlikeaseed]

Tagging onto this, as an addendum--co-suggestion--something to Nammah's 1: Would it be possible to get an estimate of the waiting time to get plot investigation information back? That would help for planning plots & maybe trying to think of weird questions we have well in advance of when we need the answers back, haha.

[moustre]

Unfortunately it often depends on the information requested and whether it has been established or needs to be written from scratch so to speak, mod workload, real life workload, and amount of write-up we have to do. As mod and real life workloads can change quickly (especially lately) and things need to be prioritized, we are not able to give any sort of accurate estimate.

Ideally going forward we would like to take no more than two weeks for a response, but we cannot promise this. If something is very time-sensitive, we request that the player lets us know up front and we can try to push out a response quicker.

[faithlikeaseed]

Thank you! Even knowing there's a range of response times for different types of requests helps for planning purposes.

[moustre]

1. We are still working on this as far as our dismally slow response time, apologies. We're hoping to get up to speed very soon as things calm down a little. As far as making available the information gained in investigations, it's up to the player involved to make use of it, but we're always open to talking about incorporating things into game events if the player wishes to. Currently the only change we might make is limiting the amount of investigations a player can begin in a certain time period, but we're still in discussion. Sorry we don't have more for you right now!

2. We will be moving away from the more slice-of-life style events to incorporate more exploration and lore elements. Not entirely, since we understand the importance of occasional downtime ICly, but slice-of-life events will be more rare and dispersed throughout the calendar. Part of the reason for the last few months has been because we thought during the height of the pandemic, with everyone's motivation at a general low, was not a great time to push plot-intensive events, though. This did factor into our decision to move to a game cap after June - we didn't want to permanently go into a pattern of more generic one-size-fits-all events and we hope to get back to more exciting things very, very soon. As for player plots and event suggestions, those are always welcomed! The mod contact page or through PM are both good places to get in touch with us on that - we're always glad to help make things happen.

3. Unfortunately we can't give you a definitive answer on this one. Even if we did open up mod applications to take on another pair of hands, we aren't guaranteed volunteers. Understandable, with many players still dealing with RL. If someone would be interested in joining the team, we would encourage them to drop us a PM with what tasks they would be willing to do and we would definitely consider.

[gehennawind]

Def get the impression that the game size will exponentially balloon next app round (game closures bumping numbers up too, prob)— opening up applications for a slot or two on the mod team sounds like something that'd potentially help manage the size boost, especially WRT to investigations lag, events, etc. (I'm probably not saying anything that isn't a "well no doy", and life permitting any of it in general! No volunteers are guaranteed, for sure, but it seems worth a shot? Though full disclosure, I'm not part of the solution, I know I wouldn't be a volunteer.)

Despite that!! Thank you for opting to temporarily nix the app cap this coming round; it'll be really exciting to see all the new faces and the return of some folks who got swept. :> I'm one of the many, many folks who've been exhausted or out of it on most given days, but here's hoping May and June are at least better in that sense, even if quarantine continues.

[moustre]

We do expect that there will be quite a few apps, but it didn't seem fair to have a small capped round and then immediately go into a game cap system where we might not process any apps for months, depending on the rate of drops. It is something we are able to plan for like this, however.

As far as adding more mods, we are not currently planning to put out an official call but we do encourage anyone who would want to volunteer to PM us and we will consider. If it becomes necessary in the future we will put out a more official request for mod apps though.

[bolstafir]

Another question really quick--since there was only check in AC in April, would you consider allowing us to use threads from April for May AC? I did a lot of memoryshare stuff that's still ongoing but the 4th wall event began during my finals so I didn't participate in it as much.

I understand if that's not possible, though!

[moustre]

Unfortunately threads eligible for May's AC will still have to have been started in May. We cannot take April threads for May Activity Check.