empatheias_ooc | Mid-Month Announcement: November

— MID-MONTH MOD ANNOUNCEMENT: NOVEMBER —

Hey, everyone! We'd like to thank you all for the feedback in our State of the Game discussion post earlier this month. It's great to hear your opinions on certain things, because it helps us a lot when it comes to making decisions for the game.

We'll be discussing some key points that were raised in response to the SOTG, as well as our decisions regarding these items in this post. Please read through the announcement thoroughly!

» CALENDAR

The main calendar spreadsheet is here as reference.

Here are the basic dates to keep up with:

11/15: Player Plot.
11/17: Test Drive.
11/24: Activity Check starts; Reservations open.
11/25: Boreas Festival Event.
11/30: Activity check end.

» EMOTION TRACKER UPDATE

As always, it's kind of early to tell where the Emotion Tracker is going.

As a reminder, this is just a "mid-month" check to give everyone an idea of where the Emotion Tracker stands. If you haven't had a chance to submit your threads, don't worry! You can still fill out the survey here.

Here is the screenshot for this month so far:

A negative month at the moment, and most of it spread across the Arehtei! Maybe it's a case of the winter blues?

» EMOTION TRACKER CLARIFICATIONS AND REMINDERS

"State of the Month" Entries

Looking at a lot of comments in the recent State of the Game post, it seems that there has been some confusion with regard to what entries are acceptable to log. The previous system before the survey format was introduced placed a premium on "significant" emotions or threads, but with the introduction of the survey format, the option to do something akin to a "state of the month" entry was introduced, where players simply log how their character was feeling throughout that month.

That said, we would like to clarify and reiterate that "state of the month" entries are perfectly acceptable to submit to the tracker, alongside the aforementioned threads. As with those threads, all we ask is for the entries to be reflective of what has transpired during the month and the numbers of a fair amount. Remember, balance is key!

Lastly, we would like to say that we won't be pushing through with mandatory ET submissions anytime soon, but we do hope that with this clarification, more people would be inclined to submit their own entries to the tracker!

Apathy

There's been also some confusion with regard to how apathy works, and as such, we'd like to elaborate on the mechanic given its equal significance as positive and negative emotions as well.

Basically, apathy is logging of lack of emotions. If a character feels nothing where they should or usually would feel something, that counts as apathy. For instance, if a kid gets a gift from their parents and they're an ungrateful brat because they didn't want that gift, it would qualify as a lack of appreciation, and that would count as apathy for Aiada. Another example is if a person who hears about some terrible crime or tragedy doesn't care because it doesn't affect them personally, they might have apathy points for a lack of grief, hate, or anger.

Like negative and positive emotions, apathy can also have a significant impact on the game, so we'd like to encourage players to consider if their character is feeling any apathy. If there are any questions about the apathy mechanics at any time, feel free to ask and we'll do our best to clarify further!

Timing and Repeat Entries

As a note, we do allow emotion tracker entries from threads made in the previous month! Just because a thread took a while to get to the emotional parts doesn't mean that it can't count towards the tracker; we understand that not all threads are predictable or planned, and that surprising developments can happen.

To that end, if you have previously put a thread into the tracker and something new happens to spur on different emotions in your character, you are also free to make an additional entry about the thread to mark the character's new emotions. Just make sure the points for each emotion in one thread don't go over the limit of 10!

Further explanations about how to fill out the emotion tracker can always be found on the page itself, so make sure to check there first if you're ever confused about how to submit!

» OPEN AND ACTIVE PLOT POINTS

Outlining the open and active plot points was a suggestion brought up in the SOTG post, and we'd like to let everyone know that we will be posting these every month in the monthly mod announcement that goes up every 1st of the month. This may not be implemented right away, but we'll be sure to start doing this some time in the future!

We hope that this will encourage everyone to touch on certain plot points, and this may very well be ideas to discuss in the Arehtei Committee meetings.

Which brings us to the next point…!

» THE AREHTEI COMMITTEE

Thanks to the comments regarding the Arehtei Committee in our SOTG post, as well as the ideas of the members of the Think Tank, we will be introducing these changes to the committee ASAP.

The Arehtei Committee will be renamed the "World Restoration Committee", extending the scope to all plot-related matters and not just focused on the Arehtei.
There will now be an OOC post for all committee members to track to assist with communication. See here.
There will no longer be an activity check for the World Restoration Committee members.
As suggested, we will be guiding the committee for a few months until players have enough to work with and can use the committee for various player plots and the like. However, we won't be doing this right away, as our new mods still need to get the hang of things. Please bear with us!
Bi-monthly logs will still be provided, but participation is not mandatory, as there is no more Committee AC. The logs will include a list of current issues/events for participants to make use of.

We hope that these changes will make the Committee feel more accessible, and that it will be a helpful tool for players looking to engage with and become more involved with the plot side of things, as well offer opportunities for in-character networking.

» THINK TANK AND MOD TEAM UPDATE

We would like to thank everyone who applied to be part of the Moderator team and the Think Tank, as well as those who expressed interest in it! We now have two new head moderators, as well as a new member of the Think Tank.

As mentioned in the State of the Game post, two moderators cannot run this game on their own, and that if we couldn't find two moderators to take the seats of Slip and Ryn, we would be moving to endgame. Fortunately, we have a lot of dedicated players here who have to decided to step up to help manage the game. For that, we're very grateful, and we would like to formally announce that Empatheias will continue to run as a game indefinitely.

Your new mods are Christine (Kanji, Ignis, and Snow) and Steve (Junko)! Please give them a warm welcome! They're both very eager to get to work, which means there are a lot of good things in store for you guys! Slip and Ryn will stay on the mod team until the end of the month to help out with the turnover, and you guys will be stuck with Monica and Ryoko for a while longer.

Also helping us out as a member of the Think Tank and as the new NPC player for Aiada is Reena (Red)! We definitely look forward to working with her!

We understand that there have been a lot of shuffling in members of both the Think Tank and Mod Team since May 2017, and we would like to ask for everyone's patience and understanding as we try to reorganize our side of things in order to keep the game running smoothly!

As per usual, if you ever need to contact us, please do so through the official mod channels: confidential mod contact or through a PM to the mod journal.

We've realised that sometimes, we take a bit too long to respond to some queries, and we'd like to apologise! As such, if you haven't received an answer in 72 hours, please don't hesitate to poke us or send us another message. Thank you!

» AREHTEI AVAILABILITY AND ADVENTURES/EXCURSIONS

The Arehtei page has been updated with the new players as well as their availability.

As we are a new team, we need some time to settle down and get a feel of things. In lieu of this, we will not be accepting any adventure/excursion requests until January 2018. If you would like your characters to go on adventures to previous locations without mod guidance or Arehtei presence, then please don't let this stop you. You are more than welcome to come up with your own adventures! Of course, if there are any questions regarding certain locations, then we would be happy to answer them to the best of our abilities.

We have also discussed as a body the idea of Arehtei commenting to character network posts in order to boost their presence and make them more visible to the community. Do you think this is a good idea, or would you prefer that the Arehtei are only available during certain events and through appointments? Let us know in the comments!

» ACTIVITY CHECK CHANGES

In order to cut down on extraneous work so that we can focus on more important aspects of the game, starting in December, we will no longer be compiling usernames for the monthly activity check danger list. However, we will continue to post a reminder around the same time and link it on the mod plurk, to help players who may miss it or forget!

As such, please make sure that you are aware of the timing of activity check! As stated on our rules page, AC runs during the last seven days of every month.

» PROFILE AND NAVIGATION CHANGES

Along with the shuffling of the mod team comes one a change in both the layout of the community's profile, as well as the game's main navigation. Both layouts should be more streamlined now!

We are also planning on revamping the Game Info/FAQ page to make it an easier read for everyone. Please look forward to this in the future!

And that's it for now! If you guys have any questions or concerns regarding any of the above, please don’t hesitate to comment to this post!

Mid-Month Announcement: November

BOREAS FESTIVAL QUESTIONS/CONCERNS