A proposal from your mods!

[spaceshipit]

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!

Comments

[howcanihelp]

Personally, I am the fondest of the idea of a limited invites system. I'll allow the game growth to slow to a manageable pace while not causing potential app floods just before or after an app lull, or (alternately) at the beginning and end of an app round, but also not cut off growth all together.

A lower character cap and limited invitations seems like it will be the best way to slow everything down a bit without stopping it.

I'm also a fan of the May temporary shutdown for new players, just to kind of give kind of a reset to "people established ooc, crews having a chance to get to know each other" which is about where we were at even just a couple months ago.

[merchantprince]

I'm fine with these things. Limiting invites is cool. Closing apps for a week a month is good and honestly closing apps altogether for a month or two is also okay. App cycles really do suck, but no one can blame you for trying to keep the game tiny.

Regarding the character limit: will people above four be forced to drop their extras? I didn't think so, but I just wanted to ask.

[child_of_bhaal]

Limiting invites, lower character allowance and app lulls all sound like good ideas to me. As one of those new players, particularly with a social character, it'd be really nice to have the breathing room to tag out to other new folk and build rapport and not feel so rushed!

[everydayhero]

def for the limiting invites thing, tbh, and the closed-app windows. CHARACTER LIMIT IS PROBABLY GOING TO BE GOOD FOR ME SINCE I'M PLANNING MY FOURTH RIGHT NOW and really don't need the freedom to do two more

[mysunnydisposition]

I am honestly okay with any/all of these options, but I am really glad that you're doing something to slow growth down a little. I've been here since February and I'm still struggling to find my footing and develop CR, so I'd definitely appreciate a little breathing room.

Definitely in favor of limiting invites, and I think a lower character limit is also a good idea. I... don't really have opinion on app cycles at this point, but I agree that by itself, it probably won't do much to solve the problem.

[killedwithlove]

I like the limited invites, to be honest.

And yeah, closing apps for a while to let everyone settle might be a good idea.

I don't know if it will work, and it would probably be a pain, but to get new people and old guard interacting more, you could rearrange the fleet. Which yeah, as I said, a lot of work and pain, but it would mean people with all new crew.

I can't imagine playing more than four characters per game, so I have no real opinion on the lowering of PC cap.

[serpentis]

These are all good ideas.

I AM PERSONALLY ALL FOR THEM because yes we had something like 40 new characters last month and April is setting up to be even more busy.

[howcanihelp]

Gonna comment here with my 2 cents, I don't think it's really an issue about the old guard and the new folks not interacting much so much as there are SO MANY new folks that the older players/characters don't have the first clue how to start.

For the most part, the ships aren't particularly insular, CR-wise, and I think it would just cause a lot of unnecessary upset both IC and possibly OOC when people have worked hard on their ships and sometimes transferred to be in certain places with certain people. I know both of my characters would be upset and unlikely to actually interact with their new crewmates more than they would be making an effort to just transfer either back to their old ship or back with most (or all) of their old crew.

If the ships were still all identical and there was a real problem about the old guard not interacting with the new people, then I'd say it might be helpful, but as it stands, I think it would just be upsetting for too many people both IC and OOC to do that when it's not necessary either for the player base or (at this time anyway) the plot.

[forcemageure]

Chipping in with liking all of these. The issue I mentioned on plurk was actually a character limit causing stagnation etc etc (like, the game was capped at x no. characters), but that's not want you're considering, so yay!

I do have a question about how the proposed invite limits would work, like: if say the limit is one invite to one player a month, what happens if they don't use that invite? Does it expire or can they be like ....stacked? Within reason, uh. I don't actually have a preference, I think one or two a month would easily do me, this is mostly in case anyone else is interested in knowing.

[got_it_memorized]

echoing what everyone above me has been saying: limited invites is good, app lulls is good, and thank you for acknowledging this and seeking a remedy before a little problem becomes a big one!

[save_the_souls]

Temporary closing new apps for May is good, limiting invites is good, closing apps for a week every month is good too! I like all these ideas!

The only thing I'm uncertain about is a character limit, mostly because well- most of the time they tend to be unnecessary rule? While many of us have been in the situation where we've apped TOO MANY characters (oh god the flashbacks), I think for the most part muns tend to regulate themselves and eventually figure out what number of characters they can reasonably handle on their own (usually by trial and error). And while I'm definitely not one of them - there are muns who can handle 6 characters in a game, and I feel them being limited might cause them stress or unhappiness?

(I mean sure, you could also argue there are muns who can handle more than six and be active, but in my...dear god, 12 years of RPing (?!), I've met a grand total of like 2 muns who could reasonably do that. 6 tends to be the average max from what I've seen for mun character loads. So if we must have a character limit, stick with 6.)

And just...idk, it just seems like an unnecessary rule change to me that might bring stress for some in what's supposed to be a relaxed game. Especially since as you said in the most, the problem hasn't been the influx of new characters as just new players that haven't had any chance to settle OOCly and we haven't had a chance to give them the super warm DF welcome we want (I love you new players i do!).

[howcanihelp]

tbh i say 4 is good because I've met VERY FEW people, myself included, who could really satisfactorily handle more than 4 characters at a time. I'm definitely a fan of the character limit also because then you're not getting "random impulse app # 5", who could end up being awesome or end up fading within 2 weeks, you're getting a more thought out, "yes I actually think I can sustain this character" sort of app.

Just my opinion tho.

[save_the_souls]

Eh see I've met more than a fair number who can handle 6 over the years. I mean it's not the most common thing, but it's not super rare either? And again, I'm definitely not one of them, my own personal limit is 3-4. But I have met enough of them to consider it an actual possibility (unlike the ones who can handle more than 6 who frankly, are so rare finding one is like finding a unicorn).

As for the impulse thing...I've seen that still happen even in games where the limit was 2-3? They would just play character roulette instead and constantly drop another character to app a new one (which is arguably even more annoying for other muns since our CR is getting constantly dropped). If someone does have a chronic impulse app problem (as in they do more than they can handle on the regular, since we've all done that impulse app we've regretted at one point or another), that's probably something that should be handled in a case-by-case situation.

IDK my general stance on this is that we're all adults here (or nearly adults if there's any muns in their teens here), and since this is invite-only - for most of us this isn't our first rodeo RP wise. So. Most of us have a good idea what we can handle, or we'll get a sense of what we can handle after a bit of trial and error (the ones who DON'T sort that out after a number of months are much rarer). So having the mods regulate that just...isn't that necessary? At least, that's how I feel.

[save_the_souls]

Commenting to agree with KM regarding rearranging the fleet. I have characters who are slow burns when it comes to building close CR, and switching around their crew a lot would just make it even harder to make strong CR with them (trust issues man). Plus if we slow down the rate we get new characters some- then we won't constantly have to make new ships full of new characters. They could just get sorted into open spots on the older ships where drops happen (and drops will happen. That's just RP). So there'd be a chance for new characters to mix with the old!

That said, if there is a reason someone wants to move their character to a new ship, I will say it's totally cool for a mun to submit a ship transfer without their character ICly doing it! They can even ask their next ship is randomly chosen if they don't have a specific ship in mind. I know I did that with Allen a few months back because his first ship was nothing but inactive characters (who all got swept for activity no less)- and it worked out really well! SO if someone does feel things aren't working out for getting CR on their ship, that's totally an option.

[killedwithlove]

As I said above, I don't really know that it was a good idea, it was just an idea.

I concede that it could really screw up rp for some people and none of us want that.

[forsometimenow]

Nthing liking the idea of limiting invites and having temporary app closures. The game has exploded with new players even since I joined last month, and I admit it's been hard to keep up with who is where, who plays who and who's doing what. Giving us all some time to breathe and get to know each other would be super, and doing something to slow down the game's growth will, I feel, make it a more enjoyable and welcoming experience for everyone.

As someone who modded and handled apps for a game that had app cycles, and who plays in a large game (Mask or Menace) with them, I can attest to the fact that cycles don't do much to slow game growth. Mask or Menace, for example, had to institute a hard 35-apps-per-cycle limit, and even then those slots have gotten filled within the first few days. Granted, we're not nearly as big as MoM, but I feel the point still stands. It can also put pressure on players if they feel like they need to rush to get an app in before the deadline, rather than giving them the flexibility and choice of apping whenever they're ready to do so.

So yes, I feel like limited invites and temporary closures now and then are the right solution. <3

[spaceshipit]

Just one really quick reply before we both zoom off to work-- we chose four largely because that's the highest amount of characters we have right now, haha. So, no one will have to drop anyone. :}

[save_the_souls]

It's good to bring ideas to the discussion! Sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound like I was out to shoot you down. I know it was something that's been tried in other games with roommate situations, and it actually didn't work out too badly! And maybe it's something we want to consider down the line. Just maybe not right now.

[destinyembrace]

I'm all for what I saw listed. Stricter invite system with limited invites would help tremendously, and just closing apps for a few weeks or so will help. It's been insane keeping up with the new people, and like it's been said before, if you've got an outgoing character, it sucks. Like, it's great so many people wanna join the game but realistically, both OOC and IC, it makes a lot more sense to place a harder limit on how many people are coming in. It IS a reality show, after all; they'd limit the number of contestants and replace as need be.

[wolfuncaged]

+1 on all these things! A stricter invite system will work a treat, as will closing to new players - even if it's just for a month, so everyone can get situated and build up their CR.

I'd say app rounds probably won't make much difference to open apps, other than the fact everyone will come in at once, rather than spread out through the month. Largely it depends on how you'd rather the new player/character traffic to work.

[justamobster]

Nth-ing that these are good ideas, do what you guys need to do. A breather would probably be good, especially since the current pace the game has in terms of new arrivals, shuffles, and plot isn't really allowing you guys much time to, y'know, play. Which is an important part of being in a game, even for mods!

Even if you guys don't want to close applications to avoid the issues that come with app cycles, delaying the shuffle for a bit could help, especially if new characters are able to leave the Marsiva to socialize with the others. I mean, regular television shows I know go on hiatuses for various reasons. Elections, sports, holidays... That and I think it could create some fun tension for characters to be like "? What happened to that weekly thing they usually do? What's going on?!"

But yes. Anything you guys feel you need to do to keep the game small and manageable, you've got my support.

[merchantprince]

Awesome, thanks!

[lord_wizard]

I never chimed in here and realized I probably should, if only to second your proposals. I am very much behind the invite limits, the character limit, and the app close cycle. These would all work out for all of us involved.

I think that these methods could very well give us the size and pace we've been looking for, but if it didn't, I wanted to say that my thinking was leaning towards really restrictive app cycles. Like, only five or six characters allowed in every two weeks. But that's a less desirable option, and I get that. I'm really seeing that as a last resort at the moment.

[howcanihelp]

Yeah, that's fair. I guess I'm a little too used to players who will, even when they can barely pull off AC on any of their characters, continue to app new characters because they have open slots, basically, so limiting to about 4 seems totally reasonable to me to try to minimize how much that happens.

That said, this group, this game, that doesn't actually seem to be a problem, so it might not be necessary.

[wordmiser]

I'm agreeing with pretty much all if your ideas. I think having the first step be stricter invite limits and a short term newbie blackout will slow growth a lot and also ease up on the pressure you guys are under right now.

That being said, I want to mention how great I think you guys are doing and how much I appreciate you creating such a comfortable and welcoming environment as mods for your players. You guys are doing such an awesome job here!

[ino]

I am totally fine with all of these things. Y'all do whatever you need to do to keep this game the size it needs to be. :)

it's ezra, sorry

[acuition]

i agree on all three of those actually '-'b i think they're all good ideas

[radiantwingedone]

I don't have any problems with the ideas. Limiting growth will definitely help all the swamped people get their feet back under them so..

Agreeing!

[ex_frolics736]

i'm brand new but i don't have any objections to these suggestions and wanted to say so!

[openhands]

+1ing everyone else for the most part because part of the appeal to this game is that it's a small little group. i'm obv still pretty new, but i think limiting the number of invites is the easiest way to do population control that won't result in giant fluxes of apps like app rounds do.

i also think the temp solution is a good one so there's a brief period between old and new standards wrt apps.