HMD;; August 2013

[capemods]

✖ HOWS MY DRIVING? ✖


New to the game? New characters? Just a little unsure of how you're doing? That's what this is here for, people.

How it works: Comment here - others will reply to that comment with what they have to say, and hopefully many lulz and happifuntimes will be had. We're encouraging asking questions if you don't know why or how a character got to the point they're at in game, and we're encouraging constructive criticism that isn't:

"Oh, you're so good bb!"
or
"I hate you. Diaf."

So make it good! You only get one shot every other month, right? At any rate, before you go off to comment, remember: You will get comments you agree with, and you will get comments you don't agree with; thus is the way of life. Don't take it personal. Don't get angry and start trolling. These people don't have anything against you as a person — unless, uh, they do, which we won't abide by — and we're all here to have fun, right? So let's act like it.

Anonymous comments have been temporarily enabled in the OOC community for the sake of anonymous crit, but as this privilege was abused last time and the moderators had to intervene, as promised this time around we are keeping logging IP on. We will not be checking the IP-addresses unless things get out of hand, nor will we be sharing them ever, but this is a measure in place to help prevent further abuse of anonymous commenting. If this causes discomfort, most players, as well as the mods, have personal HMDs on their journals. You are also free to contact any moderators privately or by PMing this account.

Go forth and conquer, Cape and Cowl.

<b>Player name:</b> <b>Characters played:</b> Character ✖ Fandom ✖ Character DW <b>Personal HMD link(s):</b> (a href = )your link here(/a) <b>Anonymous allowed/encouraged? Y/N:</b> On the concrit threads. <b>Other comments?</b> Explain any life-changing or persona-altering events that your character has gone through in game and if they have changed that character's base personality in any way that could cause someone to go: "Buh-whut."

MODERATORS

Abby ✖ Al ✖ Ali ✖ Amy ✖ Ammay ✖ Annwyd ✖ Archie
Carolyn
Dalrint ✖ Dani
Elle ✖ Erin
Franky
gabbie ✖ Georgia
Jean ✖ Jeff ✖ Jill
Kattu ✖ Kerry ✖ Kiby ✖ King ✖ Kirsten ✖ Kytha
Len ✖ Liz ✖ Lucy ✖ Lumi
Maddie
Nat Squid ✖ Nelly ✖ Nika ✖ Nita ✖ Noodles
olesia
Peps
R ✖ Random ✖ Rema
Sara ✖ Setine ✖ Shadow ✖ Shugo ✖ Stephanie ✖ Sylph
Terana ✖ Trap
win
Yami
Zero

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

this crit is for both the mods and the game as a whole. it seemed better to put this here than to repeat the same thing several times. sorry for the length.

it seems that many of the mod played characters are essentially inaccessible to an entire section of the player base. i feel like i rarely see ruka, nygma, brian, or osborn tagging outside of their cast mates or established cr. it seems like there is some favouritism on display when it comes to which players will get tags from mod characters. cast mates get obvious priority, followed by the same people who've been doing the same things for years. like it or not, the mods are examples to the players in terms of what sort of in-game behaviour is expected, and when nita is the only one consistently tagging new people and people outside of her canons, that is a problem. it really feels like you have to play from yu-gi-oh, dc, or marvel to get tags from the rest of you, or have had your character get in on a plotline years ago. it's really unwelcoming for new players or anyone who wants a piece of the plot pie.

additionally, mod controlled villains are not being played in a manner that hints to their villainous roots. you'd have to be established in the game going back years to be aware of most of what osborn and nygma in particular have done behind the scenes, which makes it difficult to want to play with either of them. they seem to have stellar lives with no consequences, which, sure, they haven't committed visible crimes in the game recently, but what is the point of having them around if they're not going to be doing these things at some point? if you're a new or potential player, none of that stuff that they did years ago is obvious, nor can their lack of visibility and accessibility be easily explained without loads of in game backstory. how can these villains stay above the law for several consecutive years? aside from two-face and brian (whose actions seem to be entirely handwaved,) the mod played villains haven't done much of anything in recent memory that even hints at their canonical roots. this seems like a massive misstep.

there are concerns over how city hall is being handled. i understand that we have a pc mayor, but it seems unfair that only a few characters/players have access to the city's government, and that anyone who does want access to it has to go through this small group of players. if city government is to be run by players, at the very least it ought to be up for a vote more frequently than every three years. it comes across that you, the mods, have given free reign of the city government to a select few players who are then able to pick and choose who can access it. i'm going to be blunt here: it reeks of favouritism and it makes myself and others uncomfortable having individual players in charge of something that important. there are no checks and balances in place, no room for dissenting voices, and no foreseeable way for characters outside of that pre-established niche to have any real impact.

on a different subject multiple players have had issues with being harassed or feeling like they are being ostracised especially over the last several months. every week, it seems, someone is upset because they've had their tags repeatedly dropped or ignored, or someone else has received a profanity riddled comment on their hmd. people are dropping the game because of the hostility, and if this trend continues, there will surely be more drops. entire casts should not be made to feel like they are unwanted or unwelcome, especially when for great stretches of time they are the only players actively posting. players shouldn't feel like they need permission to tag with people they don't know for fear that they will be on the receiving end of hostilities. this may be preaching to the choir, but attitudes need adjusting, and quickly.

the recent app to drop ratio is also concerning. since mid-july i've counted 30 characters dropped from the game with only 13 coming in to replace them in that same span of time. we're not getting enough fresh blood to replace those who are leaving. the game seems to have reached a point where storylines are so entrenched and complex that they are nearly impossible to dive into without either being talked through it or without asking newcomers to wade through years of backstory on their own and hope for the best. c&c is not seen as especially welcoming to new players, and this is something that must be addressed if the game is going to survive this winter. we need to come up with a way to attract new players and keep our established players feeling welcome and safe. right now the game is failing at both of these tasks.

activity wise, the game has slowed to a near crawl. compare 91 posts in the main community by 23 august, 2012 to 35 posts by 23 august, 2013. there have been 38 days of 235 days with no posts so far this year, compared to 2 days of 235 days by this date last year. open logs are going untagged or receive a fraction of the response they did a year ago. player events are fewer and more far between. there is also a large number of players (and mods) who have openly expressed apathy toward the game in recent months. people are less invested in this game, and if it's going to remain open, there needs to be reasons for people to care. i believe all the factors mentioned above are contributing to the rapid slow down of the game, which will ultimately lead to it closing.

part of this comment is simply venting. i cannot offer easy solutions, but bringing these concerns to your attention is important. i've mostly enjoyed my time at c&c, but i can't justify staying in this game much longer if it continues falling apart like this. at the rate we're headed, i would be shocked if the game survived to the new year as anything beyond a musebox. changes have to be made for the game to continue and i sincerely worry that it may be too late to make those changes. i don't think it's out of line to start discussing a potential end for the game, or at least give a satisfactory resolution to the now two-year plus ongoing vulcanus plot. even something as simple as a better updated timeframe would be beneficial instead of knowing things will recur again vaguely in two months, as has been the fashion all spring and summer. i am not advocating a premature closure, but i personally would rather see c&c come to a fun, inclusive, dignified end than slowly watch it peter out as it has been since last winter or close suddenly because of a massive drop and general apathy.

[(Anonymous)]

I want to add my support to this comment, because I think a lot of these issues needed to be addressed and anon did a appropriate and well thought out comment about them. I wish there were easy solutions - I love this game and I love playing here, but I think the first few issues contribute a lot. While I don't believe there's any intentional favoritism going on, it's hard to deny what it looks like. Unfortunately, to any players who wish to app it's extremely intimidating when not only the players but the mod team themselves seem to be tagging exclusively with one group of people. Life happens, that's understandable - but more than anything, the mods need to be the example for the game and set the pace and style that activity will take. If the example that is put out looks unfortunately tinged with favoritism or inaccessibility, it reflects poorly on the game and can breed the same behaviors in turn. That said, I also know mods cannot and should not be expected to row the boat alone.

While I have no fixes and can only reiterate that anon's comment should be taken seriously and that anon is not the only person to notice these trends, I would like to offer a few suggestions:

The first would be to try and update information posts with coherent information surrounding major events and key players. I understand we have a timeline post with what's happened, but I think updating the welcome information with the relevant in City information is crucial. Those are allegedly from the DOI but seem sorely out of date with what the DOI should know at this point. The city handbook could do a much better job of informing both characters and players of what to look out for, and likewise instill a better sense of urgency and want to fight with the characters. (I would suggest redoing the colors (https://sites.google.com/site/doicityhandbook/) to make it a little more visual friendly.) I know there is a difficult balance between too much information to read and not enough to understand but between the playerbase and the modteam, we should be able to come up with both the detailed and cliff notes version of what is accessible to players and characters at this point. I especially want to stress the character side - I've heard a lot of complaints that the game is, at times, too "slice of life" and that characters are complacent with what is happening instead of really working against what are actually issues, if the information is kept up to date where characters can access it, then it might eliminate some of the lack of understanding that there are serious threats.

Secondly, if this game really intends for the characters to be heroes, there needs to be a threat. For the characters who actually take Vulcanus seriously, there are few opportunities to fight back. Recently, there have been large plots involving information gathering or the hostage crisis, but these do not sustain the game outside of those instances. The threats don't always need to be Vulcanus-related, but "heroes" ought to do something heroic. I have noticed only a few logs involving NPC villains, but players can only get so far on Character X beats up NPC Y. Part of this could be improved upon with the villains in game - especially with mod-controlled villains, and I refer you back to anon's comment - but if there were to be a system of some kind in place listing threats in the city (minor or major), it could spark more actual heroic shenanigans.

Finally, I believe there should be an overhaul in the manner in which apps are handled. There was a time when cnc was huge and the app system made sense. It made cnc seem like an exclusive, difficult to get into sort of game which (in theory) bred good writers. Unfortunately, those same standards have caused cnc to seem elitist and difficult to join, traits that don't exactly encourage new players. With accusations of favoritism already coming from the playing-side of things, screened application comments don't help. Furthermore, screening applications leaves potential players with no idea what kind of applications are quality or not and makes the entire process seem very intimidating and potentially unfair. Once again, I don't believe the mods are actually being unfair in this matter but appearances are everything when it comes to new players and the potentiality of the situation counts a lot more than we would like to think. Even more disconcerting is to hear people talk about what has been accepted or hasn't, and comparing those applications makes it seem like the voting system has led incredibly unbalanced standards to be placed upon players depending on who has voted that round or not. Added together, these things make it almost exceedingly difficult for new players to decide to app into the game, as they are justly uncertain about what might happen during the process.

Ultimately no one can say what will or won't work to get cnc back into gear to be the kind of game I know it can be, but it is certain that if things continue as they have been it never will. As a player who wants to be involved here, all I can do is offer suggestions and point out where things seem to fall apart and hope that we can try and fix those things to better the game in the future.

op

[(Anonymous)]

i think the above anon has made some really excellent points (and i'm glad to know i'm not alone in these concerns.)

overhauling the application process would definitely be a step in the right direction. i can't count how many potential players have expressed to me that they would be interested in c&c if only our app standards weren't so intense. i'm not saying we need to have laxer quality standards, but there is no reason to screen applications. a sample mod app is available, but one application isn't necessarily an indication of what the standard really is. unscreening applications would give new players a real sense of what you're looking for. in the past i too have heard complaints that certain applications were seemingly judged more harshly than others and that alarms me. i think that the more transparent the process, the better. right now there is genuine confusion about what is an acceptable application and what isn't.

another thought is regarding advertising of the game. atp is a fine resource, but i feel like it isn't utilised very well. if there was more of an official presence responding to player ads, we might be able to reach out to people who may not have considered c&c before. perhaps if the mods themselves are unavailable, a member of helpstaff could do it? i don't want to start volunteering people, obviously, it's only a thought.

while we're on the subject, as the other anon pointed out, the game is pitched as a superhero game, but that hasn't been happening on a regular basis for quite some time. individuals seem to be keeping the spirit alive, but aside from the modplot, masked heroes haven't had much reason to do anything in the city. i don't think it should be entirely on the players to constantly do logs against npcs. there ought to be something going on besides vulcanus, otherwise it seems like false advertising.

i think what the other anon suggested regarding the information pages is also very important to consider. it's difficult to navigate and it isn't up-to-date, which really does lead to confusion both among characters and players. there is a gap between what is ic knowledge and what is ooc knowledge, and unfortunately it isn't always easy to tell which side of the line any given piece of information falls on. it's also not very streamlined and seems to be scattered all over the place, with inconsistent tags being used to mark them in the ooc community.

another point i meant to make earlier and forgot is regarding the way information is presented by the mods. i realise i'm presenting you with a big wall of text right now, but i think it's almost universally acknowledged that a giant tl;dr wall of text is a really poor way of presenting information. the modplot information posts for new vesuvius were nearly indecipherable in places due to the length and sheer volume of information therein. likewise, the caste logs were not easily navigated. i felt overwhelmed by what was on my screen. i don't think there is anything inappropriate or wrong with providing details throughout, but one thing that i would have found useful would have been an easy to read summary of the major points at the bottom of the post, so that we could skip down to the summary for the gist of the situation and use that to decide if our interests were piqued or not.

a final thought (before i forget it) is regarding the content of the new vesuvius plot. several players were made very uncomfortable by the content of the plot (the torture aspects, violence, suicide, etc.) normally, the solution would be to scroll past that stuff, but the way the plot played out, it was all but impossible to ignore what was happening. i personally was uncomfortable with the notion of having to sign up for the plot before being assigned a caste, as certain castes were exposed to different levels of trauma. with situations as potentially triggering as the ones portrayed in the plot, i felt like it could have been handled much more thoughtfully. it seemed like the only way to opt-out completely was to hiatus, which really isn't fair to players who were not keen on participating. while the concept was certainly an interesting one, c&c isn't branded as a horror game, and considering 75% of the time it seems to fall into slice of life, it struck me personally as insensitive and out of place.

Small addition

[lucke]

I haven't been here long enough to criticize the game at all, but I'd like to throw in my support on one particular concept: Making the Hero game more Heroic. I know that's a HUGE request (we're basically asking you to pull satisfaction for us out of the air) but I think it would go a long way engendering excitement and participation.

I think the couple mod plots I've seen thus far have been really great at showing this. But if we had something minor to fill the gaps between plots it would add some excitement?

I, for one, have no idea how this would be accomplished. Maybe something to the effect of mini-plots? A Network blurb about an ongoing bank robbery or a rampaging monster? Though this would pit against NPCs... And I hear that's not enough of a solution.

Honestly, I haven't got a clue how to make this work. I'm just adding my two cents. I'd really like to do more than just handwave 'Lancer is out in the city, hunting for baddies'. A good ol' super-villain event might be just the trick.

But other than that I'm having a lot of fun here and I hope to play here for a long time. ~<3

[olesia]

Hey anon! I'll be the moderator responding to your comment, and I appreciate all the time and effort you've put into bringing up all these points. I want to be sure I address them all in my response, but unfortunately for me, it's taking a little bit longer than I first anticipated! So, I wanted to let you know that a response and (what I hope can be) further discussion is forthcoming, rather than leave a long silence until then.

[olesia]

Alright, there's a lot here to take in, so please forgive me and let me know if I skip any major points. Though I am head moderator, I can't and won't be speaking for the other moderators with concerns to the way they play their characters within the game; such concerns should instead be directed to them (and me, with regards to mine) directly, in our individual HMD threads, as they are there for that purpose. I understand that you placed them all here for the sake of not being repetitious, but I believe it would be better for all parties involved if you would do so on those concerns, if only so you can be more specific with the characterization/demonstration concerns and suggestions you have.

For my own IC activity, I will reiterate that my recent participation in game has been significantly lowered due to several hiatuses taken over the past couple months (as I mentioned in my own HMD thread); because of this, I had limited both the number of threads I took on, as well as the scope of my active CR, so that I would not be overexerting myself, or leaving others hanging. This was additionally taken as a precautionary measure, so as to give myself time to accomplish what moderating duties would be necessary during this time as well, be they the scheduled sort (applications, plotting, etc) or unscheduled sort (everything else). Maybe this was a mistake in judgment, but I felt it would be unfair to engage in new CR with new players during a period in which I knew I would not be able to resolve threads in a timely manner. While I have explained my reasons, and what steps I will soon be taking to help correct this, it is true that my activity has been poor these past two months.

However, the same cannot be said for the rest of my team, and I feel that your criticisms are skewed—perhaps by an unintended confirmation bias, or abstract standards—and factually false. You mention that the only member of the mod team you see tagging around is Nita—but the fact of the matter is, Nita is the most visible player among the mod team simply because she is literally the most active player in the game this month by a mile, and it seems a little unfair to criticize the mod team for not meeting her pace when next to no one in the playerbase on the whole comes close to that same marker, either.

I don't normally like calculating or publishing figures like this, but considering the misconception and false conclusions drawn here, I feel it might be necessary. When I say Nita is the most active "by a mile," I mean that in terms of comment count, out of eighty-plus players in game, there is only one single player in the entire game who has posted enough comments just to surpass her halfway marker. As she recently introduced a new character with a very comment-heavy first post, this sort of number skew is understandable, but I hardly think it's fair—to either the moderators or the rest of the playerbase—to say that the moderators have to be more than twice as active as everyone else in the game as a standard.

As you may be aware, Leah has been on a full hiatus for a significant portion of this month, and thus not available to tag around. However, Gabbie and Sara both have been very active in participation in-game, and I feel have been providing an excellent example; Gabbie's in the top ten of most active players, and Sara's in the top twenty, in terms of total comment counts across both communities. These high rankings exist, even while Gabbie is currently midway through a full hiatus that would exempt her from Activity Check and its standards, and Sara is devoting much of what free time she could be using for tagging to instead organize and put together the upcoming modplot. Considering these factors, they're doing far more than I would expect from any given player to consider them active.

Furthermore, on average, and excluding characters that have not tagged any network posts in August, the average number of separate network posts a single character has tagged is currently at three. Gabbie's most active character, Felicia, has tagged into seven entries; Sara's only character, Eddie, has tagged into six. These numbers are higher than the character average. Additionally, Gabbie's roster has tagged into a cumulative 15 entries, which, when compared to the activity of other players with multiple characters, has her tied for second place for highest number of entries-tagged, behind—once again—Nita, who has on my last count 17. Two posts isn't a lot, discrepancy-wise, and considering they would sometimes tag the same entries as one another, I have to admit it seems strange to me that were someone looking to measure the activity of the mod team, that they would notice the one and not the other.

I could go into activity in logs, as well, but this is already getting long in just this one point, and the numbers there illustrate a very similar pattern—as I'm sure would looking into backtags for posts made in July. These new threads also vary between old CR and new, and I know they all work hard to ensure that they do what they can to foster new CR and tag new players. Due to my recent hiatuses, as mentioned above, I have dialed back on similar measures in order to better divide my time between the game's IC field and the OOC moderator aspects, but this should be corrected soon. If you have further concerns about any given moderator's activity in terms of play, or of character balance, such concerns should be directed to the individual in question, or even to the activity concerns post. (This, of course, also applies to any concerns you may have towards a player's activity, rather than a moderator's.)

If there's specific CR you're seeking for yourself, I do really recommend talking to the player you want this CR with directly. It may be that, despite a given player's otherwise high activity, they seem less active in comparison to someone else simply because they might not have CR with you, or with your close CR at the time. It's unfortunate, but even when branching out and tagging new people, it's next to impossible to have CR with everyone in game, and it can be difficult to downright impossible to know if someone you don't have CR with does specifically want CR with you, but hasn't communicated that desire to you directly.



With regards to your concerns towards "mod controlled villains" — characters played by moderators that are not specifically plot NPCs are meant to be judged and treated like any other character in the game, rather than as some special class ranking higher than the rest of the game. We still write applications, we still have to meet activity standards; we have to have our character plots approved, and scheduled, just like everyone else. While we can sometimes participate in moderator-run plots, our characters cannot reveal information that we as mods would know, discover any information that another player character had not already revealed, or otherwise do anything that would take a pivotal role or a spotlight in a plot or event meant for everybody. C&C isn't our personal sandbox; it's a game for all of its members. While I don't believe you're asking for, for instance, the Green Goblin to become the biggest bad in all of C&C, I felt it might be useful to clarify that when we play our characters, we play them as players, not moderators.

Since you do have specific concerns about how these characters are being played, I recommend you take those concerns to them directly, if you haven't already. I'm none of the players in question, so I unfortunately cannot answer such matters as in-depth as they would with regards to canon and in-game development, but every character is different, and exhibits different traits of personality and motives in different ways. The exposure of a "villainous root" is a tricky thing to judge by, I would say, because there really is no single trait that defines a character as a villain, and even in the case of someone actively engaging in amoral behavior, not every villain is a Gargamel or a Joker or a Rita Repulsa for their canon. In serial media especially, where there are multiple "villains" with different angles, by their nature even the most bombastic of villains would go through phases of higher and lower visibility. I am not as familiar with the canon materials as their respective players, but all the ones under discussion are ones that in their various canons do and have successfully worked to disguise their natures for periods of time, or even subdue them entirely. Brian, from what I'm aware, goes through most of the first season of Dexter before being discovered as a killer. Norman Osborn has his history as the Green Goblin, but he also manages to be made the director of a United States federal law-enforcement agency, and holds that position for a significant amount of time. Edward Nygma, in the aftermath of other canon events, becomes a reformed member of society and opens a legal detective agency, and winds up working with Batman as well as other card-carrying heroes numerous times during that period to solve crimes or locate criminals.

Again, I'm sure they would discuss your specific concerns in more depth, if you wish to address them directly. If you have, though—as with any concern with someone's playing, and where direct communication hasn't seemed to brought about a resolution—please feel free to talk to me (or another moderator, as you like) about the matter further.



With regards to City Hall: "control" of City Hall was, as you indicate being aware, brought about by a player plot that went through the channels of plot scheduling and approving, as would any plot that affects the nature of the game narrative. If a character starts up a business, it's expected that people would contact the player of that character in order to use their business for plotting purposes; if characters start up a clinic, it's expected people will communicate with the players of those characters to use that clinic for plotting. It's polite, to let other people involved know when something may affect their character, and opening those channels of communication would keep everyone up-to-date as to goings-on, player plots, or what have you. The same has and would be true when, for instance, player characters have/had major involvement with the City's police force, prison system, schools, or so on, regardless of whether I or any other moderator had characters participating in such venues.

I can definitely understand that it can be daunting for a player on the outset, trying to get involved into a character or player group that is already established. Wanting a turn, so to say, at an in-game title or position can definitely be both appealing and frustrating, if feeling uncertain as to how to go about attaining it. But as a moderator, it can be difficult trying to strike a balance of fairness: it wouldn't be right, if the players or characters involved in such an institution were deliberately trying to keep new players/characters out and allowing such behavior to go unchecked, but it also wouldn't be fair to, for instance, eject the players or characters who have worked to build such a thing for the reason that they've been there too long. But, in the end, I feel that our game is a community, and foremost in that is the need for communication. Absolutely, if what attempts have been made to communicate with players (or moderators acting as players) involved with that institution have failed, then something would need to be changed, or an intervention taken, and I would be glad to help make things right.

As a token of disclosure, I do play a character with very limited involvement in this arena, and am OOCly friends with a number of its players; above that, though, I am still a moderator, and I do not choose the sides of my CR or my friends simply based on that criteria. That involvement and those feelings are ones I will put to the side, such that I can look at a situation more objectively, and determine the best and most fair course of action based on the evidence I find and is presented to me. If you are, or someone you know is seeking CR or involvement in this venue, as always I do of course recommend communicating with those players directly, either through IC or OOC methods. If it's some form of plotting regarding that venue, the plotting post is available, and we do and will offer advice through that channel if there is some specific or even unspecific goal you have in mind, but are uncertain as to how to get there.

If, however, you have gone through the routes of communication and been rebuffed—your comment reads to me as though you are in a stage prior to this, but I may be wrong—then absolutely, please talk to us about it. If the players involved are in fact engaging in behaviors that run counter to the objectives of the game, then appropriate action would be taken. As far as I am aware, the players in question have all stated publicly that they are open to new CR, as well as plotting, especially in regards to City Hall. Additionally, they have recently been taking steps in-game to provide IC "ins" to City Hall—the job fair this month, for instance. However, as I mentioned before with regards to myself, even if someone is open to new CR, or plotting, it can sometimes be difficult to know if a specific someone wishes to pursue those things with them if those desires aren't clearly expressed in the first place. Players involved may not be presenting themselves as open directly to the involvement a specific individual may want simply because they haven't been made aware of the interest in the first place.

[olesia]

We are aware of feelings of both harassment and being ostracized, and we are doing what we can in those circumstances as they come to our attention. Unfortunately, we do not have eyes everywhere, and in many cases we cannot help unless we know someone wants or needs that help in the first place. We have recommended to players feeling anxious of the possibility of being harassed on personal HMDs to enable IP tracking, to disable anonymous commenting, or to overall disable commenting entirely and instead direct any constructive criticism to be left here, on our community-hosted HMD. To members of our game, we this month made an announcement addressing the harassment we've been made aware of, and recommended both preventative measures to be taken, as well as what to do in response to receiving such messages. For obvious reasons, we can't exactly take action against negative actions if we do not know when they are being committed, or by whom—and we will not turn this into a witch hunt, where players would be punished on suspicion of wrongdoing rather than proof of such. We do ask, however, that you—that everyone—do what you can to combat negativity with positivity. Unfortunately, no matter what the circumstances, there will be people in game presently, formerly, and those uninvolved, who will seize opportunity to take potshots at those they dislike, who they wish to make unhappy, or drop, or even who they simply consider an easy target. And while I can understand feeling frustration, or hurt, because of the actions of someone else, we do not condone the use of anonymous bullying or harassment as response to such roots, and ask that you not engage or give any credence to such tactics. If there is problem or conflict, or harassment, or any other matter such as these, we ask that you do bring them to our attention immediately. We may not always be able to come up with perfect solutions, or fix things in a matter of minutes, but we are doing what we can to make C&C a safe, fun environment for its players. We are here for you, and we want to be here for you.



With regards to apps and drops, this is something we've noticed—I am happy to say that we're already taking steps to encourage new players to join, starting with overhauling our approach to such venues as ATP and the test drive meme, and will be working through updating our various OOC information posts to be more up-to-date and accessible. As far as player-characters go—"be less complex" seems a little harsh, but perhaps if we had a meme or something similar where players could briefly discuss their characters' developments in-game, and, perhaps, provide a link to that post/comment on their journal profiles, so that such backstory could be quickly accessed as needed, do you believe would something like that would be a help? Or would that only serve to make things seem more complicated? We have also started the open plot discussion post earlier this week, in an effort to help players come up with fun ideas to slate for the coming month; if you have any comments or suggestions regarding that, we'd be glad to hear them, as we're sure there will be plenty of room for improvement with each successive one.



And while it is true that the game has slowed down this past year (which had slowed from years prior, I feel, in part because of our aging playerbase and the changing amount of free time we collectively have, but also the shift in focus to longer-form logs and longer periods of backtagging), one line in particular here caught my attention. You say, quote, there is also a large number of players (and mods) who have openly expressed apathy toward the game in recent months — could you please clarify what/who you mean by that, at least as far as moderators go? I mean, it's a pretty heavy accusation you're making here, that someone on the current mod team is apathetic about the game, and I wouldn't want anyone to think that we are anything less than fully committed to this game's success and continuation, based on a faulty conjecture or an unsubstantiated rumor.

At present, we're definitely more in the mindset of improving and growing anew, rather than closing down. Things may have slowed down from their former paces, and while some of our dear friends have gone for now, I know C&C still has a very vital heart, and so long as our players still love and care for the game, as I and the other moderators do, then we want to do everything we can to fix what problems we have, improve what we can, and move forward. It still seems premature to me to close; we may not be at an Olympic sprint, but that was never the goal from the start, and it's not the standard by which we should measure our success. If things change in the future, I and the other mods may need to reassess the needs of the game in this regard, both among ourselves and with you the players, but as it stands now, we're here to stay, and we hope that we all can support one another in continuing forward.

I want to thank you for your patience—this took way longer than I was expecting to write, even after the first time I mentioned it—and for bringing your concerns and feelings to our attention. We're going to do what we can for the things we can affect, and in turn I hope you, and other concerned parties, will keep direct communication as a first resort tactic in mind. Again, if there's anything I missed, that needs clarification, or if there's any further comment you'd like to make, please do bring them up—but overall, I hope this does help.

[(Anonymous)]

Among your plans to overhaul our approach to advertising, have you considered any changes to the app itself? I know ours tends to be criticized often for its emphasis on history sections, and that's sure to keep prospective players away.