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driftfleet_ooc2015-04-13 11:42 pm
spaceshipit) wrote in driftfleet_ooc2015-04-13 11:42 pm
Entry tags:
A proposal from your mods!
On April 6th, the Drift Fleet officially turned six months old! In that time, this game has bloomed into exactly the sort of cozy, creative nest of friends that we had hoped for, so everyone deserves a huge pat on the back! You've all made this place an absolute joy to be a part of.
And probably as a result of all this awesomeness... the game has also grown much quicker than we'd ever expected. This last week in particular has shown that the game is growing exponentially, and I think we're mostly all in agreement that Drift Fleet was never meant to support a huge, rapidly-growing number of players.
So, before we burst open at the seams, we would like to propose a few changes to the infrastructure of the game. We (Red and Stick) have talked about it a lot and considered many options, so what follows is what we so far believe to be the best plan of action. Please read this over, and let us know your thoughts-- both positive and negative, pros and cons, whatever you want. Either reply here, or message the mod journal if you would prefer to discuss something in private.
Thank you in advance, everyone!
→ The Problem
After a hard look at how the game has been growing, we believe that the biggest problem right now is the sheer number of new players entering the Drift Fleet every week. Some of these new players are not only scrambling to get their characters acclimated ICly, but are also struggling to get integrated into the OOC community as well. Already-established crews don't get much of a chance to get to know the new characters on their ships (let alone their players) before there's another wave of new people. Established players are finding it harder and harder to keep up with intros, tags, and so on... Which is all helping cause the feeling that the game is speeding up and leaving many of us behind.
Our first and foremost goal is for this to be a game that feel relaxed, welcoming, and feasible for all tagging speeds, regardless of size... and the steadily-rising number of new characters each week is starting to make this difficult. It's overwhelming to previous players, and it's definitely unfair to the poor newbies trying to establish roots here, especially if they came here expecting a smaller, slow-paced game.
→ The Proposed Temporary Solution
We want to give both mods and players some time to recover and settle in a bit, as well as buy some time to decide on the specifics of the more permanent solutions. As such, we are proposing that the game temporarily closes to new players for a short time.
Right now, we would like to close the game to new players at the end of April, and give everyone the month of May to breathe and settle in before we considering opening apps again. That way, there will still be a couple of weeks for new players to get their first apps in, and a month after that to have stable crew interactions, strengthen CR, or catch up on our inboxes. By June, we will have decided what changes we are officially going to make to the app process as a whole.
During this app closure period, players already in the game are still free to app new characters. If someone drops their only character from the game but wants to come back in with a different one, that's totally fine. The closed door during May will only apply to brand new players who have never been in the game.
→ The Possible Long-term Solution(s)
While there are many options for what to do in the long run, this is a list of our favorites. We're currently considering some combination of these to help ease things in the long-term, depending on what you guys think.
• Limiting Invites
The option we currently like the most is establishing some kind of a limit to how many new players a current player can invite at a time. Right now we're thinking that each person would get one or two invites per month. In our excitement to gather new players, the invite-only aspect of the game has become kind of negligible, and we'd like to get back to our original roots. We would like the Drift Fleet feel more like a welcoming, close-knit bunch of friends again, and we think that this option is a good way to do that.
• Character Limit
So far, this hasn't been a problem... But since so many of our players are only playing one or two characters anyway, we'd like to go ahead and officially bring the character limit down from six to four. We can always adjust this later on, depending on how the playerbase changes.
• Shuffle Intervals, and/or App Lulls
While we've talked about application windows and app cycles, we're personally not big fans of them for several reasons--they tend to cause floods of new characters with every opening, they're hard on the app readers, and seem to encourage a lot of impulse apps. Overall, they don't seem to help population control much in the long run.
However, it's been suggested that we try something that's kind of the opposite. Instead of having windows in which apps are open, we could have small, periodic windows in which we don't accept new apps. It would be a regular interval during which everyone can settle in and catch their breath, and the mods can use this time to work on the game itself (or take a break!). For example, we might decide to have one week a month where apps are closed, to start with.
Another variation on this theme is the possibility of spacing out or staggering the Shuffles somehow, but we haven't discussed this one much, and we're not sure how it would affect new players and characters not placed in a crew yet.
---
So, these are our thoughts, and we would love to hear what all of our players think of them--oldbies and newbies alike! We want the Drift Fleet to stay the relaxed, fun, and welcoming place that we had planned at the start, so please throw in your two cents on how you think we can best help that happen.
We'll continue to discuss and think about our options until the end of April, and we'll inform you of any and all official changes as they are made.
Thank you, as always!
And probably as a result of all this awesomeness... the game has also grown much quicker than we'd ever expected. This last week in particular has shown that the game is growing exponentially, and I think we're mostly all in agreement that Drift Fleet was never meant to support a huge, rapidly-growing number of players.
So, before we burst open at the seams, we would like to propose a few changes to the infrastructure of the game. We (Red and Stick) have talked about it a lot and considered many options, so what follows is what we so far believe to be the best plan of action. Please read this over, and let us know your thoughts-- both positive and negative, pros and cons, whatever you want. Either reply here, or message the mod journal if you would prefer to discuss something in private.
Thank you in advance, everyone!
→ The Problem
After a hard look at how the game has been growing, we believe that the biggest problem right now is the sheer number of new players entering the Drift Fleet every week. Some of these new players are not only scrambling to get their characters acclimated ICly, but are also struggling to get integrated into the OOC community as well. Already-established crews don't get much of a chance to get to know the new characters on their ships (let alone their players) before there's another wave of new people. Established players are finding it harder and harder to keep up with intros, tags, and so on... Which is all helping cause the feeling that the game is speeding up and leaving many of us behind.
Our first and foremost goal is for this to be a game that feel relaxed, welcoming, and feasible for all tagging speeds, regardless of size... and the steadily-rising number of new characters each week is starting to make this difficult. It's overwhelming to previous players, and it's definitely unfair to the poor newbies trying to establish roots here, especially if they came here expecting a smaller, slow-paced game.
→ The Proposed Temporary Solution
We want to give both mods and players some time to recover and settle in a bit, as well as buy some time to decide on the specifics of the more permanent solutions. As such, we are proposing that the game temporarily closes to new players for a short time.
Right now, we would like to close the game to new players at the end of April, and give everyone the month of May to breathe and settle in before we considering opening apps again. That way, there will still be a couple of weeks for new players to get their first apps in, and a month after that to have stable crew interactions, strengthen CR, or catch up on our inboxes. By June, we will have decided what changes we are officially going to make to the app process as a whole.
During this app closure period, players already in the game are still free to app new characters. If someone drops their only character from the game but wants to come back in with a different one, that's totally fine. The closed door during May will only apply to brand new players who have never been in the game.
→ The Possible Long-term Solution(s)
While there are many options for what to do in the long run, this is a list of our favorites. We're currently considering some combination of these to help ease things in the long-term, depending on what you guys think.
• Limiting Invites
The option we currently like the most is establishing some kind of a limit to how many new players a current player can invite at a time. Right now we're thinking that each person would get one or two invites per month. In our excitement to gather new players, the invite-only aspect of the game has become kind of negligible, and we'd like to get back to our original roots. We would like the Drift Fleet feel more like a welcoming, close-knit bunch of friends again, and we think that this option is a good way to do that.
• Character Limit
So far, this hasn't been a problem... But since so many of our players are only playing one or two characters anyway, we'd like to go ahead and officially bring the character limit down from six to four. We can always adjust this later on, depending on how the playerbase changes.
• Shuffle Intervals, and/or App Lulls
While we've talked about application windows and app cycles, we're personally not big fans of them for several reasons--they tend to cause floods of new characters with every opening, they're hard on the app readers, and seem to encourage a lot of impulse apps. Overall, they don't seem to help population control much in the long run.
However, it's been suggested that we try something that's kind of the opposite. Instead of having windows in which apps are open, we could have small, periodic windows in which we don't accept new apps. It would be a regular interval during which everyone can settle in and catch their breath, and the mods can use this time to work on the game itself (or take a break!). For example, we might decide to have one week a month where apps are closed, to start with.
Another variation on this theme is the possibility of spacing out or staggering the Shuffles somehow, but we haven't discussed this one much, and we're not sure how it would affect new players and characters not placed in a crew yet.
---
So, these are our thoughts, and we would love to hear what all of our players think of them--oldbies and newbies alike! We want the Drift Fleet to stay the relaxed, fun, and welcoming place that we had planned at the start, so please throw in your two cents on how you think we can best help that happen.
We'll continue to discuss and think about our options until the end of April, and we'll inform you of any and all official changes as they are made.
Thank you, as always!