takamagahara | November Activity Check/HMD

Welcome to another Activity Check!

The AC will run from November 23 through November 30 and ending at 7PM EST. If that's confusing for you, just look here.

In order to pass AC, you will have to provide TWO proofs of your activity. What counts as a proof of activity? Simple! Any one or more network threads consisting of ten (10) or more comments from your character OR one or more log threads consisting of five (5) or more comments from your character. To make AC easier for you, we've created a nice little flowchart for you to follow. Remember, comments must be from Nov in order to count. That means anything from Nov 1 through Nov 30 will count towards AC.

Please copy the appropriate code, fill out the necessary information, and paste it in a reply to this post.

For Characters Accepted In November:

For All Other Characters:

In addition to the Activity Check, this month will also have our mandatory bi-monthly HMD.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

My one comment here of critique I have for the game is made of multiple parts and might not have the easiest of solutions, but I'd appreciate it if you heard me out. I loved this game and its premise, and I also believe you are all good mods. But in light of a recent thing with rpanons, I feel like this should be addressed without saying a blanket statement like "this game has incompetent mods/direction and they get way with it". I don't think that's true at all! But at the same time, I can understand where that impression may come from.

I feel like the encouragement of TFS as a slower, easygoing game is starting to have a stronger effect on the game's atmosphere and direction, especially with the game's size. Now, a slower-paced game is great and suitable for a large variety of players! But I think it may be having a less than desirable effect on the two things above.

I can't speak for a playerbase, but I've noticed that people accept the most basic part of the shinki/god system and then be done with it. Sometimes there's a nora or two, and and ayakashi'd shinki. That was really cool, but anyway. This led to... well, I don't think people were intentionally disregarding the important things like blight and god's greatest secret, but there have been incidents related to that, and I guess it confuses other players who aren't informed, or deters players who are informed. We also have the third minority that probably thinks that the mechanics don't matter and are encouraged by this, but I'd like to pretend that's just a hypothetical group. I know that you guys have been working hard to make these things accessible, and that it's hard work. I wouldn't know if there's an issue with getting more detailed information about Noragami elements since I'm not canonblind. But if there really is an issue with that, or the game gives the impression that there is such a problem, I do have a solution. It's not the most gentle of solutions, but I think it would at least help. My suggestion is that the information pages about gods, shinki, and Noragami things need to be stressed more as mandatory reading, not just supplementary reading for when the need for it arises. I think the problem is people think they don't need to know x or y thing, but when they realize they do, it's hard to find because because of impatience/panic and mods aren't always around to answer questions quickly. This game borrows enough mechanics that, while it's probably okay to say you don't need to know Noragami, saying that it's okay means that the game will provide those players with what they need to know to eliminate any chance of confusion. That might require tweaking of the FAQ and the 101s for shinki and gods, but I think the crucial thing may be to lay out what can/can't or should/shouldn't be done as a god or a shinki. I know that this really deals a hit to the whole laidback vibe that you want the game to have, but this game is also getting bigger and little issues like people having trouble finding information start getting bigger. Or at least, it looks from an outsider perspective like people aren't informed and the game looks a little worse for it. I want to stress that it's not the sole fault of any one player, a group of players, or any amount of the mods.

My second concern is the direction of the game. I understand the system of a combination monthly intro/event is really easy for everyone, and convenient too. Lots of players enjoy them for those reasons, and initially, I liked the mix of things like prompts and tones. But it's definitely starting to make its own pattern, and may give the impression that you as the mods are growing less creative or are settling into routine. I don't want to suggest rehauling the system of it, it's what can be done with the game's slower pace that's nonnegotiable, but I'm more wondering if there are things you might want to try that could make it feel less repetitive, if you're open to the idea at all. I think maybe occasionally breaking up this one big log into two separate logs, like a meet and greet for the new characters, and later (IC a few days, OOC a week maybe) a more dedicated event log, might help.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope things can improve in some way and you all still love what you do for this game.

Hey! Thanks so much for taking the time to write this up.

We definitely agree that the FAQ should be made mandatory reading. We'll be stressing that a lot more in the acceptance notices and on the applications page from now on. On top of that, we'll be stressing the fact that any questions should be directed straight to the FAQ, pressing people to look up the answers that are already listed there.

As for the system, we are currently working on setting something up that will allow us to post up month-long 'events' that will allow players to bounce off of some different ideas in order to keep their characters active through the month, and still maintain the monthly event log. Hopefully this will make the game more engaging, but if it doesn't pan out the way we would like within the first couple of months, we will definitely be taking more suggestions for how to improve that feel for the game.

Again, thank you so much, and I hope we can keep providing you a fun game to play in.

November Activity Check/HMD

Re: TFS Mods

no subject