I'm going to try to keep this brief and not repeat what some others have said. They've gone over it better than I could anyway, and I don't think there's anything anyone's said that I disagree with. But that includes the praise, too. I do think you guys did a great job engaging players and being very approachable OOC! You were very willing to work with the playerbase (even/especially the silly stuff) and always gave prompt answers to question. That was great! The amount you tried to tailor the memories to everyone and the effort you put into personalizing the character notes was amazing. There were a lot of small details I was very impressed with due to how ambitious it seemed. The worldbuilding was certainly a very, very, very good part of this game and it looks like you guys had a lot of fun coming up with details.
However, and I know I expressed this before, I do think it's a little worrying that you want Round 3 to be even more ambitious. There were times when it seemed like you were rushing to put stuff together on little sleep, such as when you were writing memories last minute. I recall at least once that Eski was doing a map an hour or so after the weekly post was supposed to go up. I don't know if it was because you guys were busy or what, but please take care of yourselves... Personal flourishes are great, as is the item system (which, I think ended up being something you guys overextended on and ended up dropping. I think this is completely fair, it isn't easy to do items much less come up with something unique and fun every time, but I think doing as Luna suggested and having a generic list ahead of time or simply doing away with it entirely will help you guys) but if it ends up being more stress in the long run or causing you precious sleep then I'm not certain it's worth it.
I echo Kohaku, Ripley, Iwai, and Snake's players sentiments on the plot importance of Ichigo and Gabe's relationship. I'm... not entirely certain why that was the focus of the second half of the game, if I'm being entirely honest. It felt like the entire first half was dedicated to worldbuilding—which is where a lot of the overwhelming plot details came from, I think. The thing is a lot of these details, in hindsight, felt very superfluous to the overall plot of the game. Take away everything about the resort besides the "SCP, living entity" and the entirety of the endgame plot remains intact. I'm not entirely positive that's a good thing. There could be some merit in the concept of "rebuild the relationship between these two" if it were presented in a different way, I think. An example off the top of my head would be: maybe have Ichigo choose town roles and Gabe choose mafia. Gabe could be trying to take over the SCP and Ichigo could be trying to stop him, so the mafia's goal is to eliminate Ichigo's side (knowing full well the characters can be brought back + are dispensible anyway) and cause chaos in the SCP. Then you could figure out how to hide information, manage mechanics, justify IC decisions, etc..
I'm also really not sure what the stakes were supposed to be for the final trial. I'm certain there were some. My best guess is if the characters chose to execute Gabe, Ichigo would lose control and kill everyone or half of everyone. I'm not entirely sure that's a good way of doing things though. It felt like the entire final trial was on rails and there was no point to arguing with Gabe to apologize to everyone. In fact, it... it honestly just felt like making him apologize was purely catered to making Ichigo feel better...? What did the characters actually gain by arguing with him to apologize versus choosing to execute him or simply saying "nah let the Foundation handle him, whatever"? And that's putting aside that it is a very weak punishment for everything he did. It's the equivalent of giving him a slap on the wrist. And putting even that aside, the fact that the apology was a prerequisite of good end assumes that only those who had a "good" moral leaning were "right." Even then, I would argue that absolving him isn't morally "good," but by making it the correct choice for Golden End it felt like that's what you were saying.
Um, actually. I don't know how to say this and I don't know how it was in Round 1 but... I do, uh, feel like this round you guys had an issue in general of putting a lot of importance on your characters and NPCs. I can understand why, honestly. We all enjoy playing our characters and for NPCs especially it can be easy to lean on them for story progression. But outside of Ichigo and Gabe, I think there maybe was an issue with Atsushi as well. The fact that he had contact with Lambda, spoke of her first, and that he said she had multiple conversations with him made me a little uncertain. I understand your reasons for giving Atsushi the Cleaner role, but if he was going to have that much interaction with an important background NPC, I wonder if it would've been better to give it to a player. I think you guys mentioned she approached a few different people so maybe it's just that those characters didn't speak up, but it was something that made my brow raise. The fact that Atsushi's player plot was used during break week and advertised in the mod channel kind of made me uncomfortable too. I guess if I'd been watching Atsushi I would have been able to predict that the Friday/Saturday plot of that week was going to be about him and, honestly, if it was stated outright it was about him then it's my fault for missing it. But while it was advertised as a non-essential plot, I didn't expect it at all to be a player plot. I expected something like a Holiday dance for Saturday. Something silly but fun that people could miss if they wanted and could backtag if need be. Those expectations are on me, of course, but... I really do wish it had been advertised as a player plot instead of being put in the announcement channel. I think you guys would have gotten more interest from Atsushi's CR if it was. Atsushi's CR could have taken up the limited spots in the tiger fight too. I ended up volunteering and, honestly? Had no idea what to do with the Atsushi stuff because my character had no CR with him. There was no emotional impact for him at all beyond Cynthia's death, which is okay for him? I think it definitely would have been more satisfying for Atsushi's CR to land the spot vs. someone he didn't know, though.
On a mechanic level for everything re: tiger fight: more transparency for rolls/the formula would be great. I understood the concept of "you get what I get, it's bad," but there were a few times both in the kill log and in the Saturday fight where the rolls seemed completely arbitrary. You would roll for one thing but not for another. That could be on me, I could be dim and simply missed what it was for or perhaps you forgot to put a roll down, so take that with a grain of salt. On another mechanic note—I think putting the amount of turns the tiger was distracted would have helped out immensely. If the tiger looked sufficiently distracted, I'm fairly certain Vanitas and Gerome would have run off sooner. That, in turn, would have made the thread go by faster.
Only other thing I have to say about that is it may have been wiser to start with Atsushi transformed rather than spend almost two hours building up to it as it would've been faster.
Beyond all that, I think maybe you guys need to hold back a little more in the chat. You let a lot of stuff slip. Sometimes it's small stuff, sometimes it isn't. Mostly I think it's because you're excited to talk about everything and the effort you put in, and the effort you did put in is honestly wonderful. It's great to be proud of your work and the details you put in and want people to notice them! But sometimes it was stuff that could have been a greater twist if it were revealed later or implemented in a different way. Mainly, I'm thinking of Lambda. If you guys waited to talk about her in chat until endgame, I bet it would've been a huge shock. As is, I think a lot of people assumed she was the one who started the game as soon as she was mentioned.
Moving away from NPCs and plot, I want to bring up the mass vote trial. Again, I agree with everyone else here. There needed to be a warning about the time limit and I think by this point you understand that, however... Frankly, I also think you needed a content warning. The mass volunteers could easily have made players uncomfortable. While I understand you can't control your players, it should have been an easy guess that a lot of characters would volunteer. The concept of volunteers came up during the first trial and even during the third. This was a very self-sacrificing town so I'm a little unclear on why so many volunteers weren't anticipated. There were better ways to handle crowd control (use Cleaner to kill more often, use Mole to whittle down numbers, add a TP killer role that had to kill), and I think stopping at the minimum survivor pool count would've been better than continuing. Without the ghosts around to talk to the survivors, the final week was very quiet.
Tangentially related: AC was too easy. Activity was more than high enough that players should have been able to get 20 comments in 2 threads. Please consider making the mandatory amount of threads for AC 2 instead of allowing players to split it over 3-4.
This has gotten a lot longer than I intended, l-laughs... If I came across as blunt, I'm very sorry. I don't mean to be harsh and I don't mean to sound too critical, so I hope that isn't the case. There's a lot I think you guys did very well here, even if I think there's a lot that didn't quite work. I very much so enjoyed my time and my CR in the game and would be thrilled to join future rounds!
no subject
However, and I know I expressed this before, I do think it's a little worrying that you want Round 3 to be even more ambitious. There were times when it seemed like you were rushing to put stuff together on little sleep, such as when you were writing memories last minute. I recall at least once that Eski was doing a map an hour or so after the weekly post was supposed to go up. I don't know if it was because you guys were busy or what, but please take care of yourselves... Personal flourishes are great, as is the item system (which, I think ended up being something you guys overextended on and ended up dropping. I think this is completely fair, it isn't easy to do items much less come up with something unique and fun every time, but I think doing as Luna suggested and having a generic list ahead of time or simply doing away with it entirely will help you guys) but if it ends up being more stress in the long run or causing you precious sleep then I'm not certain it's worth it.
I echo Kohaku, Ripley, Iwai, and Snake's players sentiments on the plot importance of Ichigo and Gabe's relationship. I'm... not entirely certain why that was the focus of the second half of the game, if I'm being entirely honest. It felt like the entire first half was dedicated to worldbuilding—which is where a lot of the overwhelming plot details came from, I think. The thing is a lot of these details, in hindsight, felt very superfluous to the overall plot of the game. Take away everything about the resort besides the "SCP, living entity" and the entirety of the endgame plot remains intact. I'm not entirely positive that's a good thing. There could be some merit in the concept of "rebuild the relationship between these two" if it were presented in a different way, I think. An example off the top of my head would be: maybe have Ichigo choose town roles and Gabe choose mafia. Gabe could be trying to take over the SCP and Ichigo could be trying to stop him, so the mafia's goal is to eliminate Ichigo's side (knowing full well the characters can be brought back + are dispensible anyway) and cause chaos in the SCP. Then you could figure out how to hide information, manage mechanics, justify IC decisions, etc..
I'm also really not sure what the stakes were supposed to be for the final trial. I'm certain there were some. My best guess is if the characters chose to execute Gabe, Ichigo would lose control and kill everyone or half of everyone. I'm not entirely sure that's a good way of doing things though. It felt like the entire final trial was on rails and there was no point to arguing with Gabe to apologize to everyone. In fact, it... it honestly just felt like making him apologize was purely catered to making Ichigo feel better...? What did the characters actually gain by arguing with him to apologize versus choosing to execute him or simply saying "nah let the Foundation handle him, whatever"? And that's putting aside that it is a very weak punishment for everything he did. It's the equivalent of giving him a slap on the wrist. And putting even that aside, the fact that the apology was a prerequisite of good end assumes that only those who had a "good" moral leaning were "right." Even then, I would argue that absolving him isn't morally "good," but by making it the correct choice for Golden End it felt like that's what you were saying.
Um, actually. I don't know how to say this and I don't know how it was in Round 1 but... I do, uh, feel like this round you guys had an issue in general of putting a lot of importance on your characters and NPCs. I can understand why, honestly. We all enjoy playing our characters and for NPCs especially it can be easy to lean on them for story progression. But outside of Ichigo and Gabe, I think there maybe was an issue with Atsushi as well. The fact that he had contact with Lambda, spoke of her first, and that he said she had multiple conversations with him made me a little uncertain. I understand your reasons for giving Atsushi the Cleaner role, but if he was going to have that much interaction with an important background NPC, I wonder if it would've been better to give it to a player. I think you guys mentioned she approached a few different people so maybe it's just that those characters didn't speak up, but it was something that made my brow raise. The fact that Atsushi's player plot was used during break week and advertised in the mod channel kind of made me uncomfortable too. I guess if I'd been watching Atsushi I would have been able to predict that the Friday/Saturday plot of that week was going to be about him and, honestly, if it was stated outright it was about him then it's my fault for missing it. But while it was advertised as a non-essential plot, I didn't expect it at all to be a player plot. I expected something like a Holiday dance for Saturday. Something silly but fun that people could miss if they wanted and could backtag if need be. Those expectations are on me, of course, but... I really do wish it had been advertised as a player plot instead of being put in the announcement channel. I think you guys would have gotten more interest from Atsushi's CR if it was. Atsushi's CR could have taken up the limited spots in the tiger fight too. I ended up volunteering and, honestly? Had no idea what to do with the Atsushi stuff because my character had no CR with him. There was no emotional impact for him at all beyond Cynthia's death, which is okay for him? I think it definitely would have been more satisfying for Atsushi's CR to land the spot vs. someone he didn't know, though.
On a mechanic level for everything re: tiger fight: more transparency for rolls/the formula would be great. I understood the concept of "you get what I get, it's bad," but there were a few times both in the kill log and in the Saturday fight where the rolls seemed completely arbitrary. You would roll for one thing but not for another. That could be on me, I could be dim and simply missed what it was for or perhaps you forgot to put a roll down, so take that with a grain of salt. On another mechanic note—I think putting the amount of turns the tiger was distracted would have helped out immensely. If the tiger looked sufficiently distracted, I'm fairly certain Vanitas and Gerome would have run off sooner. That, in turn, would have made the thread go by faster.
Only other thing I have to say about that is it may have been wiser to start with Atsushi transformed rather than spend almost two hours building up to it as it would've been faster.
Beyond all that, I think maybe you guys need to hold back a little more in the chat. You let a lot of stuff slip. Sometimes it's small stuff, sometimes it isn't. Mostly I think it's because you're excited to talk about everything and the effort you put in, and the effort you did put in is honestly wonderful. It's great to be proud of your work and the details you put in and want people to notice them! But sometimes it was stuff that could have been a greater twist if it were revealed later or implemented in a different way. Mainly, I'm thinking of Lambda. If you guys waited to talk about her in chat until endgame, I bet it would've been a huge shock. As is, I think a lot of people assumed she was the one who started the game as soon as she was mentioned.
Moving away from NPCs and plot, I want to bring up the mass vote trial. Again, I agree with everyone else here. There needed to be a warning about the time limit and I think by this point you understand that, however... Frankly, I also think you needed a content warning. The mass volunteers could easily have made players uncomfortable. While I understand you can't control your players, it should have been an easy guess that a lot of characters would volunteer. The concept of volunteers came up during the first trial and even during the third. This was a very self-sacrificing town so I'm a little unclear on why so many volunteers weren't anticipated. There were better ways to handle crowd control (use Cleaner to kill more often, use Mole to whittle down numbers, add a TP killer role that had to kill), and I think stopping at the minimum survivor pool count would've been better than continuing. Without the ghosts around to talk to the survivors, the final week was very quiet.
Tangentially related: AC was too easy. Activity was more than high enough that players should have been able to get 20 comments in 2 threads. Please consider making the mandatory amount of threads for AC 2 instead of allowing players to split it over 3-4.
This has gotten a lot longer than I intended, l-laughs... If I came across as blunt, I'm very sorry. I don't mean to be harsh and I don't mean to sound too critical, so I hope that isn't the case. There's a lot I think you guys did very well here, even if I think there's a lot that didn't quite work. I very much so enjoyed my time and my CR in the game and would be thrilled to join future rounds!