annexedooc | Mod Post: Game Pacing

Mod Post: Game Pacing

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Hi guys!

First off, I wanted to say that I've really been enjoying modding this game so far, and that everyone has been completely lovely!

The point of this mod post is that I've been notified that a few people have found the pacing of the game too fast so far, that the pacing of missions and mini missions leaves people feeling like there's not enough time to do anything other than missions. Obviously, if this is a case and most of the game is feeling that way, I'd be happy to adjust the pace.

I do have a couple of concerns regarding changing the pace of the game at this time:

1) The game started on a half month, but is operating on a monthly basis, which means that the pace as it has been isn't necessarily going to be the pace going forward. There will be two full weeks longer between Mission #2 and the mini missions than there were between Mission #1 and the mini missions.

2) Mini missions are completely optional and intended to serve as something to do for faster taggers that can take on more threads.

I've come up with a few options to address this.

A) Keep the game as-is for the next two or three months and check back in at that time to see if the pacing is still too fast.

B) Remove the Mini Mission mechanic altogether, leaving just the major missions every other month.

C) Space out major missions to every three months and post mini missions on the month between the major missions.

Please let me know in the comments what your thoughts on the game's pacing are!

NAVIGATION

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Please reply here if you'd prefer to keep the game as-is and check back in a few months regarding pacing to see if things are working.

As you mentioned, the mini-missions aren't a necessity to participate in, and having them gives some additional options for people to make open posts with during the off months.

I'd rather see how it goes for a couple months before changing anything!

For whatever it's worth I just got here and am still working on figuring out how to start getting involved/if this is going to work for me, I don't have meaningful input on this yet.

Edited 2022-09-28 05:14 (UTC)

Throwing in here!

But as noted below, I'd hate to lose the mini missions. So if we do end up having to make changes, I'd prefer option C over option B.

I have to admit, I'm one of those who thought the game was moving a bit too fast, though I haven't personally voiced any concerns until right here. I like the idea of waiting a bit and seeing how everything shakes out, especially since the game started mid-month.

Knowing that the game is still relatively fresh, I think keeping things the way they are for the time being would be my preference until we see how everyone feels going forward!

While the game has been kinda fast for me, I'm also used to not being one of the fastest taggers around, so I pretty much expected that. It's also still a brand new game, and probably the excitement will settle a bit as we find our footing.

/Raises hand here.

I honestly don't know what to do with a ton of 'slice of life' time and having a focused and engaging plot that moves along more than it stays still is my jam. The balance right now has been perfect for me personally, because walking around doin' stuff isn't easy to make fresh, at least for me. With missions, it makes my posts and top levels really focused which helps so much.

I haven't felt like I had to participate in everything all the time to be involved, so it would be nice to be able to pick mini-missions, monthly missions, or both depending on pace of RP and how involved you (general you) want to be. It might be nice to wait a little longer before changing things up, just to have 4-5 months under our belt to really get a feel for how it's going.

Edited 2022-09-28 16:24 (UTC)

I think things are fine right now. One caveat I have is that we've had no missions that would be earthshaking, setting-changing, or incredibly mentally or emotionally heavy -- the sort that it REALLY matters how they turn out, so you know what you're doing and where your character is after they resolve. Those might merit a longer break or two, if and when they come.

Seems fine to me!

Please reply here if you'd prefer to remove the mini mission mechanic altogether and stick with just major missions.

Please reply here if you'd prefer to space out the major missions to every 3 months, with mini missions posted on the month between.

I know me and I know how I like my between-mission-SoL-bullshit, so I know I would definitely prefer this option and will probably have the same opinion even if you end up keeping the current system for a few more months. Obviously this isn't a dealbreaker for me and I feel like I can tread water well enough here via backtagging (which I will do until the end of time - I'm still keeping threads active from the first TDM lmao), but I do think it would encourage people to plot things that don't just revolve around missions, training for missions, etc.

That being said, the game is still young, everyone is still figuring out what works and what doesn't, so changing a bunch of stuff immediately might not be the best call. If you did go with this option, I'd say keep October's schedule as planned, then start slowing things down in November (if that wasn't your plan already).

So while I don't always comment on some of that has to do with emotional bandwidth and the hours I'm awake versus the hours it seems most of the game is awake, I do actually look quite a bit in the game Discord. And from what I've seen we have quite a few members who are vocal about having some physical challenges. We're coming off of Summer and the students that we have and I'm not sure how many we have are going to be going back to school and parents are going to be having their kids back in school. That's going to tighten people's time up significantly. I'm also extremely well aware due to my job we're heading into flu season and we're heading into covid season pick up. The flu seasons are going to be worse for the next couple of years because we haven't had bad flu Seasons due to the covid precautions. And covid is despite many people want in the pandemic to be over a very real and present threat and it's going to be worse. And while it may not be incredibly fatal it does have a long-term impact on recovery and disability and I think we as a game need to be mindful that we're going to have people go down as they get sick. So I think the fact that there's already been concerns about the pacing of the game and we're heading into a time of the year where it's going to be rough means that we need to reevaluate it. I also know that there's probably a few people who participate in Nano and will be hiatusing through November so having a mission in November is going to be very difficult to say the least. And I grouped the comment below mine go ahead and keep the mission for October but November definitely needs to be an easy month simply because of Nano and also to see how the fall is shaking out. We're also heading into the winter holidays right after that and I know that is generally a slower time for people it's a lot of stress there's often travel it's just generally rough so I just want to be kind to people and don't want them stressing over a hobby. I also note makes the missions more interesting if you have cr steaks. So having some time to develop CR with people would make the control danger of the missions more thrilling.

Also throwing my preference in for spreading things out a bit more.

So far the game really feels like it's just gone from bouncing from mission to mission related thing to mini mission back to mission again with no real time for anything else to develop. I know we started on a half month and that skewed things slightly, but I don't think that's all it is.

I'm a little concerned about how CR feels more like it's something that gets talked about and never really played out. I'm not saying I want this to be a Slice of Life game, because I'm not. But I do feel like the game could benefit from having more time that's less focused on missions or things directly linked to a mission.

I did vote for Option A, but thinking about it I do agree with your comment about things bouncing from mission to mission at the moment.

I am also not wanting a slice of life game, but perhaps more space does need to be carved out for slice of life events. (Which the relief log is good for - but it's also mission-adjacent, so it's not a complete break necessarily)

I like having stakes and things for character to reaction to, but big stuff once a month is a little too much for me to really dig into. A month on and month off is about right for me, and the 'downtime' gives room to really develop CR.

This pacing would work very well for my schedule (personally). I typically tag once or twice per day (depending on how busy my inbox/day is) with maybe one tag during weekends, so I'm heavily biased here. It would be nice to have some time in-between for other non-mission/world building/CR things!

To be honest, because I really like Annexed, I was just going to deal with the pacing of missions as best I can, for as long as I can. I check the Discord as often as I tag and don't contribute to conversation much over there. It's been well over a decade since I last played in a game and it's difficult for me to anticipate anything at this time, so my two cents here is very present/me-centered. However, the people itt have made some very good and thoughtful points that put the future into consideration which I agree with. I'm not sure if my little add on here will be as helpful, but I hope it offers something.

I'm torn between this and option A. Personally, the current pace is way too quick and I've barely gotten to most of my mini-mission threads as of right now. As you pointed out, it will slow down from that, but I think that probably just puts it at "keep up with the mission stuff" level, and not so much having time for whatever else. I am a pretty fast tagger when I'm "on" but that definitely isn't always.

I do love the idea of the mini-missions as something optional to keep mission stuff going for the people that want more plotty stuff to do, so I would definitely like to keep that mechanic in place and just space out the bigger ones more so it creates the room for players to find whatever balance they want.

I like this idea, or at least making the mini-missions feel a little more optional. I like that there's a lot to do at our leisure for people who aren't into slice of life stuff, but for those of us who like to do quieter more reflective threads in between missions, it can feel a little overwhelming to try to get involved with everything, particularly when regains were tied to a mini-mission this time. I know I'm still playing catchup everywhere right now despite being very interested in the game and my CR.

Please post any alternate thoughts or opinions on the pacing of the game here.

Though I did give my opinion above, I'll also add here that I think it might be worth considering reserving item regains and similar stuff for main missions in future, because that's the kind of thing that would lean towards making people feel like they "have" to participate in mini-missions. On the other hand, it does make sense to me to treat item regains somewhat similarly to an activity reward, so I personally don't mind reward stuff happening on mini-missions.

I agree with making regains part of main missions.

As much as I like Getting Stuff, it did seem a bit odd to be a mini-mission rather than a main mission reward.

If it did stay as a mini-mission reward, it probably would be best as only a sometimes thing (so that main missions are still the main way people regain items)

Especially to what Blue said about getting regains as a very rare occurrence if they stayed during mini missions!

Definitely agree with the regains stuff. I think the number of people that opted to do that specific mini-mission speaks for itself on how impactful regains are to players, which means that slower taggers that are already at capacity might feel pressured to do more than they can reasonably handle and lead to burnout.

Here I completely agree. I think moving rewards to the main mission is going to incentivize that and make the mini missions more optional. Because it kind of doesn't make them optional it's the only way to get rewards is to participate in them.

To what everyone is saying here about the regains being more rare and part of main missions. Spaces out regains/makes them more rare and also helps keep the flavor of mini missions more optional.

Yeah, this is a good point. The big missions would assume more risk for the characters, too.

I personally haven’t found it too fast - but I’m also aware that I can be a faster tagger in general, and I don’t have other games to worry about.

Even though it’s still early days, I have really enjoyed the Mini Missions - I like that they have more variety and range, and that they’re not necessarily all super high-stakes missions. So if changes are needed, I really wouldn’t want to see these go.

One thing that could also be affecting pacing, however - the main mission we had felt like it was on very short IC timeframes (or at least I think it was? I could be wrong). The impression I got for Mission #1 was that all of it was happening on the same day, which adds to the feeling of compression. It might help if there’s something to note that these happen over say, an IC week (or more) instead, so it doesn’t feel so much like your character is running around Doing All The Things, All At Once.

I definitely ended up confused about how long anything in that mission was supposed to be taking. I just rolled with it and decided it was fine if it didn't really make sense, but it would be nice to have a sense of scale and for bigger missions to have a bigger span of IC time attached to them.

I've thought pacing so far has been good but I'm also conscious that we were coming off the tail end of summer so that may have something to do with me personally at least having more time to tag. I also haven't participated in the main missions yet but thought that timing for the mini-missions was enough to complete at least one of them.

After looking at the calendar more closely, I wonder if it might be best to just move the mini-missions up to allow them more time? So that would have a main mission at the start of one month, relief log later that month, and then mini-missions at the start of the next month with a whole month to do whatever with them before the next mission gets posted.

So that wouldn't be a big change in terms of overall schedule, but it might make the mini-missions 1. more available for the people who want a mission to go on every month since they won't have to wait for it until halfway through and 2. give the slower taggers more time to finish a mini-mission thread if they choose to engage.

I do think a main mission once every two months is pretty reasonable, especially if there aren't really big stakes attached to any of the mini-missions (like item regains as previously mentioned, or a mini-mission not getting enough attention having really disastrous in-game consequences). I think what currently hit my feeling of "too much" isn't the mini-missions being posted when they were, but the fact that I've barely gotten to those threads and there's about to be another main mission happening already.

This seems like it would space things out enough to give those who would like some breathing room a little downtime. I also agree with some of the above commentary about tying regains to the main missions so that mini-missions feel a little more optional and are more for added flavor/something to do for those who like the faster pace.

Definitely in support of this as an in-between option. Not only would it give us some breathing room between major missions, but it would still allow people who want to focus more on missions to have mini-missions as an option without raising the stakes for folks that want to take a break from them for a month.

I like this suggestion! Gives things a bit more breathing room without reducing main missions.

And adding on to that - perhaps the relief log could also be moved back another week? I.e 3 weeks after than than 2. That would give more time to play out main mission stuff before the resolution.

It might also be helpful for people who do want a little more of the slice-of-life side but still want prompting to have an option included in the mini-missions that's just happening around the camp, sort of like a mini-relief-log option in the mix. Things about patching up people who went on the more adventurous missions, organizing supplies for something upcoming, helping people study stuff brought back from the Troop, or whatever. Or something about whatever the locals around here do for fun that our characters might be able to join in on, for something less mission-y. The kinds of stuff that would be more daily life in this kind of an environment.

This is a good idea and I'm going to implement it right away!

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Mod Post: Game Pacing

Questions.

Option Preferences.

Option A.

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Option B.

Option C.

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Re: Option C.

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Re: Option C.

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Pacing Feedback.

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Follow up thought

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