Feedback and Input!

[bravenewmods]

The first of our announcements tonight is a call for feedback and input! Brave New World has been open for approximately a month, and we've just finished our first major event! Thank you all for joining us throughout this process! While we've had a ton of fun modding and playing so far, we'd like to check in every so often to see how you guys are feeling. As mods, we aren't always aware of how the game appears and how certain mechanics of the game work from the outside, and we'd like to make sure we're open and receptive to any issues that our player-base might perceive.

In terms of mechanics, these are some of the issues we currently believe could be improved:

Wild Pokémon Encounters:
When we were planning out this aspect of the game, what we really wanted was to capture the feeling of running into something unknown - the excitement of walking through tall grass and coming across a Pokémon that you've never seen. We feel the RNG model we're running with really helps encapsulate that idea, and we've had a great time running all of the Pokémon threads that have come about because of it.

However, we decided early on that it would be impossible for us to run every single thread. It would be simply too much work, which is why we compromised early on to say that we'd only run undiscovered Pokémon. We are feeling, though, that this means that some people would like to thread things out and will not have an opportunity to do so either because nobody they know is willing to thread with them or for other miscellaneous reasons.

Our plan, therefore, is to ask for help. This plan will be further detailed below, in our next section.

If you have any other thoughts about how else our wild Pokémon system could be improved, please let us know! We will take your thoughts into consideration, but we may or may not be able to utilize the ideas. However, it will be valuable for us to get a sense of what you guys want to see.

Player Plots:
Player plots are an important part of this game and something we definitely want to encourage so you guys can get the most out of the RP! While we as the moderators have lots of intensive plot planned, player plots will be important to flesh out details and make new discoveries and add new technology to the world. You want to push beyond the boundaries of the map? Go for it; we have more areas in the works. You want to start building a smaller settlement in the middle of the swamp to facilitate travel? Go for it; we can add the Sinking Swamp Palace to our Information Pages. You want to use a dowsing rod to search for gold in the Verdant Forest? ...Well OK maybe that won't be too successful but we can see about having you stumble across a hidden cave system and open up a new, smaller area with other Pokémon.

We want to encourage player plots and reward creativity as much as possible, but once again, it's a lot for us to handle on top of our other work. Our original idea was to give any relevant information to one of the players in the player plot and allow them to act as Log Deputy to do the necessary NPCing. However, for one reason or another, this may not always be feasible, especially for Player Plots that are for the character development of a single character.

Our solution to this is to... also ask for help.

Which brings us to the plan!

We are asking for people who would be willing to help run wild Pokémon and player plots to help us out! This is how things will work: we'll choose a certain number of people to be official Helpers. When a player plot is submitted, we will contact them with our scenarios and ask one of them to run the log. The Helpers will also be free to help contribute ideas as to how the log should go.

In terms of running wild Pokémon, these Helpers may be contacted any time you'd like a Pokémon thread NPC'd, whether already revealed or not. Of course, you are still free to ask your friends, but these people will be officially there to help you with your needs. If they are unable to run the thread, they can send you on to the next Helper. There may come a time when all of our Helpers are busy; we apologize if this is the case, but we ask that you understand if it happens.

As an incentive, our Helpers will receive advance information on some of our events and plots and will have the opportunity to help craft the world as it evolves. If we ever want an extra mod entirely, we will also be picking one from amongst our Helpers.

If you are interested, please go to this page. You may also volunteer to only run Pokémon or to only run Player Plots as you wish. Helpers will be contacted and chosen within a week's time. We ask that you be generally familiar with Pokémon to be able to play out the bonding threads, and we ask that you generally have a good level of activity and are able to see threads to completion.


That said, please respond below with any other feedback you may have on the game in general, on the event, or on the two issues we've outlined above. If you do not feel comfortable responding with your journal, you may comment anonymously. Comments will not be screened because anon feedback will not be able to see our responses to them if we do so.

Thanks again for a fantastic first month and we hope there will be many more to come!