Feedback post

[vicedirector]

Congratulations on achieving SevenVice's Golden End! You guys did great.

Thank you everyone for participating and doing your best. For all of us, this was our first time modding and it was a learning experience.

So, feedback!  If you guys have any feedback you'd like to say, please say so here. You can leave praise, constructive criticism, advice, etc, but please keep it constructive. 

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Comments

unscreened please!

[mourns]

I won't say much in regards to how the game was modded. I feel like Eski laid out all of my thoughts pretty well. I do feel like Eski's kindness and willingness to help was taken advantage of to a degree, and a lot of responsibility was placed on her despite her having a lot going on IRL.

Ultimately, I feel like you didn't handle things so bad near the beginning, Anna — the game ran pretty smoothly despite some bumps with the trials, and it seemed like you mostly were just wearing yourself a little thin by being the main one working on murders, which I get and sympathize with. It sucks when you have to do everything by yourself, or when people are generally uncooperative — that can be a big speed bump in the creative process and be discouraging or disheartening when working on other things in game.

Despite this, I do feel as though a lot of important matters were ignored and there was too much of a reliance on handwaving key plot elements. It doesn't feel good to feel like someone doesn't want to thread with you, and I noticed several threads that hinged on mod availability and prompt responses going unfinished — some examples include Rhys, Morrigan, Gilbert, and Break's traipse through one of the doors, Ranulf's kill log, Sans's threads with Belphegor (which were finished eventually), and Break and Rhys's kill log. People apply to murdergames to RP, so when handwaving and not finishing threads happens frequently.. well, RPing really isn't happening as it should.

I feel as though the main issue with the metaplot was how much it hinged on empathy, as well as it's heavy usage of original lore and vernacular — I'll discuss both these separately, and why I feel like they were an issue.

In regards to the role of empathy in the plot, I felt as though it locked certain characters out from plot points — along with this, it seemed like there was a disconnect between intent and execution here. Miata in particular was meant to be a sympathetic character, but it was difficult for that to be conveyed at times, and often it seemed like she teetered between being a tragic character and being quite unsympathetic. Along with this, it incentivized interaction with Miata, and made it to where only characters who ICly made an attempt to get to know her were privy to the ongoings of the metaplot. It seemed like, because of this, heavy assumptions were made of the characters in the game, which is why I feel like characters like Morrigan, Break, and Gilbert were locked out — it was assumed that they would not cooperate with Miata, and thus were not 'invited' to help out. If anything, the players locked from the plot could have been PP'd and been asked if it would be IC for them to help. It doesn't feel especially good to be effectively ostracized from the plot of a game, especially one that you've been active in, because the character you play is mean or difficult to get along with. I think, because of this, some players felt pressured to make OOC decisions for their characters for the sake of the game's metaplot and NPCs, when it really should be the other way around — a game's NPCs and metaplot should serve to facilitate IC decisions for the characters. It seemed as though Anna had a set ending in mind, and didn't want the game to bad end, so it made players stop caring because their IC actions would not change anything anyway.

I think Eski's endgame proposal would have worked better here — players should feel like they have both OOC and IC choices in regards to where the plot goes, and what Eski proposed would provide that.

The role of empathy in the plot also led to some other strange things — in particular, I took issue with the role of Lettland and how it was situated as basically fantasy Lithuania when Lithuania was being played in game. It made it seem as though the game was specifically about Lithuania saving the fantasy country at times, which, I believe, resulted in characters dragging their feet through the endgame, because their players didn't know how exactly they were meant to contribute.

This leads into what I perceived as an issue with lore in the game! Key plot points were not revealed into much later — this effectively took out a lot of the 'mystery' of the game's metaplot, and instead turned it into a strange sort of political plot, which I don't think any players not included in the moles could have predicted based on content provided up til that point. I'm all for a game having a strong metaplot, and I think the game could have been quite interesting if it was explained a little better. Along with this, the way magic worked in the game was not really explained in detail, and when pressed it was just referred to as 'unique', despite Katerina seemingly being a normal girl who dabbled in magic. I feel like this was a missed opportunity for other players to get involved — someone like Morrigan and Selena could have been given IC roles here, or even characters like Papyrus and Sans, due to possessing an affinity for magic. Even characters with abilities not pertaining specifically to magic could have been useful — Break and Gilbert have experience with contracting otherworldly beings, Clover is effectively a psychic within her own right, Rhys and Alisha are adept at orating and negotiating, but ultimately these characters were underutilized.

This is, of course, where the oft-cited criticism of the NPCs comes into play too. It was unclear at times the role that the demons played in game, and, for a while there, it seemed like they were mostly going to be irrelevant — until the very end, of course, when endgame hinged on the demons involvement. I think this is why feet were dragged through most of the endgame — players were unsure how things worked ICly and not a lot of direction was given, so no one really knew what they could and couldn't do in regards to the magic. Basically, this ended with the game having a deus ex machina ending — everything was conveniently tied up, and it didn't really feel like the players earned a good ending — though I understand why, after what happened with the original endgame, it was best to end it this way.

The role of magic and lore also effected the mechanics of the game quite heavily, but in ways that I felt were unnecessary — characters in the graveyard were unable to do much of anything for many, many weeks, due to not being able to see anything outside of the hotel for seemingly no reason than just to be restrictive. This was a mistake, in my opinion, and one reason why a lot of players seemed to bail once arriving to the graveyard. There was just nothing left to do, and hauntings can only be so fun for so long, especially when they required heavy mod mediation.

In summary, I did enjoy Vices, but around the halfway mark it really started to lull itself into becoming undone. Please don't think of this as a diatribe against you, Anna, because I do realize that you cared about this game a lot — but if you intend to mod a game again, I think you should consider taking some of the advice here. Thanks for reading.