cancrymods: (Default)
"Can Cry" Mod Account ([personal profile] cancrymods) wrote in [community profile] doingtheuglycry2021-05-20 02:10 pm

Avaritia Boss Combat Signups & Feedback Post

Hello, Executors! Congratulations on clearing the Greed Layer of Purgatory and unlocking the Avaritia Underside! The dungeon log will go up on May 27th, so we have a week of so of downtime for everyone's characters to wind down after the heist.

Boss Combat Signups signups are now open! Pop down to the toplevel below and leave a comment there if you'd like to participate. We have three spots open signups will close midnight GMT on May 25th so be sure not to miss out. As a note before proceeding, some small changes have been made to the boss combat signups.

Out of the final group of three characters who will be participating in the combat thread, two of those three slots will be reserved for characters who have not participated in Boss Combat yet. Since we're squeaking close to the planned halfway point of the game, this is to ensure that everyone who would like to try out a Boss Combat thread will have the opportunity to do so. Once all players in the game have taken part in a combat thread, this system will be dropped and the regular blind RNG rounds will resume.

As you may have noticed up from that there post title, though, this post is also a feedback request for the Avaritia mission as well as going forward.

Both in Invidia and Avaritia, I've noticed periods of slowdown/pauses in activity during periods of investigation or mission plotting in which players and characters uninvolved in the plot can be left hanging or with a sense that there isn't anything for them to do. I'll be up front and say – I'm not sure how to resolve this!

This is partly because, in my mind, Can Cry was always intended to be a game driven primarily by player agency and character action, probably closer in spirit to a DND campaign than your average DWRP game. I want players to feel empowered to do cool nonsense anime shit and know they have the freedom to ask me about letting their characters get involved and doing stuff!

In hindsight, though, I'm worried that this freedom feels more like a lack of direction for players, and if there's more we can do to give everyone something to engage with during these slower periods of the game. That said, I'm not looking to massively increase the game's pace or vibe, as I think Can Cry being more slow and chill is part of its appeal.

That's just my two cents, though! Like I said, this is primarily a feedback post for players to chime in with their opinions, so if you have anything to yeet at the mods, please do so!

Thanks as always for your time and look forward to the Avaritia Underside!
emberserker: Casting something. (strings and things)

[personal profile] emberserker 2021-05-20 02:07 pm (UTC)(link)
I'll take some responsibility for the stagnation, and I think it's really a side effect of what DWRP has become. Over the years, it's become less "do your own thing" and more "rely on the plot;" the crack genre that dominated early LJRP has completely died off, and calm downtime posts made by players that have nothing to do with moving the plot along have a stigma of "slice-of-life creep," so we've learned to just avoid playing with the setting. Especially once the Authority's found, there's a feeling of "well, I can't just go around exploring or having fun. A training log or a meeting might do well, but it'd just waste time to do anything else. Surely the arc climax will go up any minute now!" Even if the arc climax will, in practice, take another two months to go up.

None of this is your fault; this structure and encouragement of exploration and playing with the setting is a good thing. It's just that years of DWRP culture pushing the idea of "don't play around once the plot kicks in" is a tough thing to unlearn! I'll definitely put more effort into that as things continue.