empatheias_ooc | Mid-Month Announcement: March

— MID-MONTH MOD ANNOUNCEMENT: MARCH —

Hello everyone! We hope March has been good to you so far. This month’s mid-month update includes your usual calendar reminders and Emotion Tracker updates, as well as information on an upcoming player plot! We also have two polls this month in which we would greatly appreciate your feedback. In the meantime, don’t let the foul weather here on the island get you down, and take care not to let the rising bug population get under your skin! They’re probably just afraid of you as you are of them. As always, please be sure to read this post thoroughly.

» CALENDAR

The main calendar spreadsheet is here as reference.

Here are the basic dates to keep up with:

3/14-3/18: Event.
3/18: Test Drive.
3/23: Player Plot.
3/25: Activity Check starts; Reservations open.
3/31: Activity Check ends.

» 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:

As always, it’s a little early to tell where the Emotion Tracker is going to end up for the month, but at the moment we are back in the green, if only by a little bit. Compared to the end of last month, the situation on the island is much more balanced, which is certainly a good sign! It will be interesting to see what the rest of the month will bring.

» PLAYER PLOT

As indicated in the previous mod post and the calendar above, Ryoko will be hosting a player plot on the 23rd! Kylo Ren is up to his usual antics, which will provide a few interesting effects for characters in Verens to play with for the rest of the month and into the next. You can find more details and ask any questions here!

» CANON UPDATE POLL

It has recently been brought to our attention that there is currently no rule concerning a required wait period before canon updating to new material like there is with applications, where a canon must have been out for one month after before a character can be apped into the game. But before we change anything regarding canon updates, we wanted to ask your opinion! Please let us know if you think that canon updates should have a required wait period to avoiding spoiling other players on new material immediately after release, or if the current guidelines should remain as they are.

Poll #19654 Canon Updates

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 51

Should there be a waiting period for canon updates?

Yes, canon updates should follow the same one month wait rule as applications.
37 (72.5%)

Yes, canon updates should be restricted, but for a different amount of time. (please comment)
4 (7.8%)

No, canon updates are infrequent enough that they are fine as is.
10 (19.6%)

» HOW'S MY DRIVING MEME + POLL

Some players have expressed interest in having an HMD meme on a regular basis. This meme is intended to be constructive and to help each other grow as roleplayers and writers. Of course, while we are having fun in the game, we would also like to remain as in-character as possible. Receiving constructive criticism or general input from others on how we play our characters is a way of improving ourselves.

That said, we would like to poll the game on what you guys think regarding the return of a regular HMD meme. While the game used to host regular HMD memes, they eventually went unused and were discontinued, but after receiving a number of player suggestions, we are more than willing to reinstate them if the response from the playerbase is favorable. Please note that if the HMD were to make a return, it would be entirely optional, and we do not have any intention of making them required in the future. Please answer the poll below and let us know your thoughts!

Poll #19655 HMD Meme

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 66

Should we have a regular gamewide HMD Meme?

Yes
55 (84.6%)

No
10 (15.4%)

How frequently would you like to see the HMD Meme posted?

Monthly (the 15th of each month)
2 (3.3%)

Bi-monthly (the 15th of every other month)
45 (73.8%)

Other (please comment)
14 (23.0%)

Should we allow anonymous responses to the HMD?

Yes
30 (47.6%)

No
33 (52.4%)

If you voted "no" to having a regular gamewide HMD meme, there's no need to vote on the following two questions.

For other comments regarding the meme, feel free to state them in the comments below!

» NETWORK USAGE CLARIFICATION

We've recently noticed a trend with how the network is being used, so we would like to clarify certain things to make sure that everyone is on the same page with how the mechanic works!

1) The game's crystal network system is telepathy based, not device based, so everything involved occurs within the characters' minds! Voice-based telepathic communications will be another voice in one's head, image-based telepathic communications will be the other person projecting an image into another person's mind while (usually) hearing a voice, and text is essentially a simpler form of image, where words appear in the character's mind. This also means that some typical functions of device networks are unavailable, such as copying and pasting, but that there are also additional benefits that are only limited by the characters' imaginations! Emojis live on in people's hearts and minds, after all.

2) The network is private by default unless otherwise stated by the player or players involved, and is unhackable. This means that unless a post is designated as an open conference message, responders to a post cannot view or hear other responses, and cannot respond to them. This means there should logically be no "threadjacking," unless the other characters in the conversation have willingly opened their conversation up to the "threadjacker."

3) Nothing is recorded. Characters cannot go back to a message that was sent through the network two days ago to either respond or view/hear the message (ICly; backdating is fine, of course!). If characters ignore the hum that indicates an incoming message, rather than deciding to view or listen to it, that's it—they won't be able to hear or see it! The only recording of any network messages are the memories of the characters involved, but these are sharable thanks to the nature of the network. It is, of course, limited by how well characters can remember things...

We hope this clears up some things regarding the network. If you have any questions, make sure to check out the network info page, and please don't hesitate to ask for further clarifications!

» MEME COMMUNITY

This is just a reminder that we now have a meme community for all your meme needs! The community is

memepatheias! From here on, we will be posting the Test Drive Meme and Plot/CR With Me Memes on this community. OOC Player Intros will remain on the OOC comm.

Players are free to post on the meme comm with whatever meme they wish to post, whenever they wish.

With the meme comm now present, the latest mod announcement and likely the player intros or the latest event details will be pinned (stickied) to the OOC comm, while the TDM and Plot/CR With Me memes will be pinned to the meme comm each month for easier access.

Any decisions regarding the polls we've conducted will be announced in the April mod announcement.

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! For other announcements in March, you may refer to this post.

Mid-Month Announcement: March

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