foundationmods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
foundationmods) wrote2020-05-13 02:39 pm
foundationmods) wrote2020-05-13 02:39 pm
(no subject)
Hey guys, it’s the mod team here. Today in the discord chat there was a discussion about a few issues some players have been having with the game, and we wanted to address them.
Some people expressed that they are not happy with how the game has been going this round. That they feel like their actions don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. We mods have been quiet on that front so far because we’re trying not to spoil things that are to come, but at this point we feel like it’s better to give some spoilers and show that what you do matters than to keep it all hidden and let negative feelings fester.
This is a doomed round. We have said it time and time again. Every character in the game for round 5 is going to die. This is not a hidden fact, we advertised the round based on that premise: that this is a mission that went wrong and got a full party wipe, and that the previous round characters are watching it to learn what went wrong and try to correct the mistakes of the past.
But just because it’s a doomed round doesn’t mean that a character’s actions don’t matter. For one, we couldn’t even have a round without you guys to play in it! But beyond that, what’s at stake here isn’t just ‘doom doom doom’. Everyone is going to die, but what happens to their souls is still up in the air.
That’s the secret of round 5. Everyone’s going to die, but depending on the actions during the round, their souls can possibly be saved from the curse rather than outright devoured and destroyed by it.
What the in-betweeners will be able to do about the miasma is set in stone. Regardless of how the round ends, their task is the same. What changes here is what happens to the R5 characters once the round is over.
And so far, you’ve all done a great job of steering things in the right direction! Even with how cautious everyone has been, and how the characters involved have butted heads far more than in previous rounds, you’re on the right track. It’s actually amazing to see, because you all took it in a direction we didn’t expect. “Hope springs eternal” is what we thought would happen, given experiences in past rounds, but “this is suspicious, I’m going to wait and see what’s going on” has actually managed to keep the group from tripping up and stumbling into a bad end.
Here is a list of things that have affected the plot so far. This is by no means a complete list, we went through what we have been keeping track of and picked out key things to illustrate our point here.
[SPOILERS under the cut.]
• Dazai touching Todd and making him freak out.
• Everyone’s efforts at finding the ‘diary’ entry and piecing together what it is
• Date using his eye to xray certain areas and figuring out key information without setting off traps/things we thought were unavoidable deaths, as well as revealing something plot important early (the brick walls)
• Yachi using her powers to deactivate death traps without getting hurt
• Giovanni keeping everyone fed with soup instead of making everyone rely on morale-lowering crummy food
• All of the healers doing everything they can to keep people alive in those first couple of weeks
• Romani and Saphir doing excellent jobs as doctors in not only keeping people healthy, but in also figuring out medical and technological-related clues that most would have missed due to their lack of experience.
• Those characters who recognized the patterns in how the rooms shifted and moved key objects to the static area instead of losing them forever.
• The attempts to figure out what’s going on as a group and not individually
• Week 3’s arguments over the vote (deciding how to vote out someone under unfair conditions had a HUGE impact on the game)
• All of the different ways to disguise meetings (telepathy, distracting ghosts, hidden coded messages, etc.)
• Sissel’s escape
• Subete trying to fight the vessels at his trial, the reactions and Crow's sacrifice.
• Various people pulling each out of potentially dangerous situations (Marona pulling Dazai out, Seteth saving Gil, etc)
• All the discussions and moral dilemmas and devil's advocating has contributed.
• People asking the Vessel questions and attempting to figure out exactly what rules the miasma/curse is working under.
• The very tragic mistakes of “I was just trying to help, but things went so wrong”.
• IN general, people utilizing their strengths to overcome something or knowing their limits. Or attempting to use their strengths and finding disaster instead.
[Spoilers end here.]
And this has all been great! We’ve been trying to juggle things so that everyone gets at least one shot to do something meaningful. We’ve probably slipped up a few times here and there, but we’re trying. And we think that, as far as ‘balancing the load’ and giving everyone a shot goes, we’ve been doing pretty well.
There’s still more to come too. There’s two specific hurdles that have to be overcome for everyone’s souls to be saved. We don’t want to say what they are, because we want you guys to figure it out on your own. We believe in you. But please trust us when we say ‘what you do matters’.
There’s also the complaints that the dead haven’t had much to do once they have died. And while it’s true that we don’t have a typical “do this mission in deadland” like we did in other rounds, there have been other things for the dead to do.
[SPOILERS under the cut.]
1: Provide a face to the antagonist. The miasma/curse is the real enemy here - as it is the whole cause for the ghosts becoming so hateful and twisted - but a (currently) faceless cloud of negative emotions is hard to struggle against. So the dead have been filling that role. They’re the ones the living need to be careful of. They’re the ones who can increase the miasma levels for the living.
2: They have been directly controlling how the effects of the miasma play out. They can increase the miasma levels for the living. They can influence the living’s mood and invite those negative feelings that bring in more misma. They’re the ones that can affect their own miasma effects too, as it’s entirely possible to (albeit temporarily) calm a ghost and make them less rage and more of who they were before. We don’t want to explain exactly how this matters, because we don’t want to basically go “do X, Y, and Z to get the best ending”, but what we can say is the ghosts’ attitudes on everything WILL matter going into endgame.
3. The strength of the dead and learning what works against them affects how strong the curse is and what the characters will need to do soon to get a good ending or bad ending.
4. Exploring the tragedy of death and how it makes their character feel. This is very much a key part of the round: the fact that the dead are not gone, and that despite how they act once dead they’re as much of victims in all of this as the living are. Many of you have been exploring this in post-death threads and it has been fantastic.
5. Motivating the living to do what they need to do to escape. This is partially because ‘oh no they’re scary ghosts’ and partially ‘oh god what’s happened to them is horrible, we need to get out to both spare ourselves from this and to find help for them’. Even if we already know how that is going to turn out (with everyone dying), those thoughts can and should still be explored.
[Spoilers end here.]
And honestly where we think the trouble this round is coming from is that: “you’re all going to die” is being seen as the end point. The finale. That all things are leading up to that and it’s not worth doing anything once that point has been reached. That was never our intention from the start. We’ve tried to supply tools to further the goals of “an untimely death can result in twisted and horrible things” and “what do we do when hope alone isn’t enough?”. Another major theme is “it’s about the journey, not the destination” - this round was conceived as a flashback round with an ending (the barrier going up and the group tpk’ing) being set in stone, but that the actions of the characters during it matter for the ultimate decision of “so, what do we do about this now?”
Once again, this was not hidden from everyone. This was known from the start. But even in the grand scheme of “we need to find Tages and save the Foundation from being run by a literal villain if we don’t want things to get worse”, there’s still a place for a very personal story about struggle against terrible odds.
Things have been stressful, and the three of us haven’t been on our best ‘mod game’ this round either. Between everything happening in the world, Maple getting sick, the sheer number of hours a week we’ve been spending doing modwork (12+ PER DAY when normally outside of investigations/trials it was far less than that), and some other stuff going on behind the scenes that we would prefer to address to people individually, us three have been stressed far beyond the usual amount for a round of SCP and it’s shown. We do apologize for that. But ultimately...we’re human. All three of us have our own feelings, our own problem areas, and our own mental well-being to look out for. And honestly? That’s been pushed to the limit this round. But everything we do, it’s out of an attempt to give everyone at least one chance to do something cool, and to hopefully deliver a satisfying round by the end of it. And we’ll try to be better about it all too.
Also, please respect that sometimes it boils down to ‘this is how we want to run it’? We try to be flexible, but sometimes we have to make a call that might not be what you personally agree with. But we’re doing it with the intent of both giving everyone a chance to shine and for constructing a cohesive round that doesn’t fall apart under closer inspection. Whenever we make a decision, we ask “how will this affect the game as a whole?” and try to make a judgement call based on what’s best for everyone in the game (and, sometimes, what we can physically do, given our life schedules).
With that said, we would like to ask for some patience with finishing up this round. We know how easy it is to get into a loop of “this thing bothers me, so I’m going to be upset about it for a while” and linger on that thought as it becomes worse and worse. We’re hoping that being open with our intentions for the round here will help clear at least some of those lingering negative thoughts so we can keep going with the round.
Thank you everyone for voicing your thoughts and giving us the time to address it while we can still do something to help clarify on our end or make adjustments as needed.
Some people expressed that they are not happy with how the game has been going this round. That they feel like their actions don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. We mods have been quiet on that front so far because we’re trying not to spoil things that are to come, but at this point we feel like it’s better to give some spoilers and show that what you do matters than to keep it all hidden and let negative feelings fester.
This is a doomed round. We have said it time and time again. Every character in the game for round 5 is going to die. This is not a hidden fact, we advertised the round based on that premise: that this is a mission that went wrong and got a full party wipe, and that the previous round characters are watching it to learn what went wrong and try to correct the mistakes of the past.
But just because it’s a doomed round doesn’t mean that a character’s actions don’t matter. For one, we couldn’t even have a round without you guys to play in it! But beyond that, what’s at stake here isn’t just ‘doom doom doom’. Everyone is going to die, but what happens to their souls is still up in the air.
That’s the secret of round 5. Everyone’s going to die, but depending on the actions during the round, their souls can possibly be saved from the curse rather than outright devoured and destroyed by it.
What the in-betweeners will be able to do about the miasma is set in stone. Regardless of how the round ends, their task is the same. What changes here is what happens to the R5 characters once the round is over.
And so far, you’ve all done a great job of steering things in the right direction! Even with how cautious everyone has been, and how the characters involved have butted heads far more than in previous rounds, you’re on the right track. It’s actually amazing to see, because you all took it in a direction we didn’t expect. “Hope springs eternal” is what we thought would happen, given experiences in past rounds, but “this is suspicious, I’m going to wait and see what’s going on” has actually managed to keep the group from tripping up and stumbling into a bad end.
Here is a list of things that have affected the plot so far. This is by no means a complete list, we went through what we have been keeping track of and picked out key things to illustrate our point here.
[SPOILERS under the cut.]
Click HERE to open
• Dazai touching Todd and making him freak out.
• Everyone’s efforts at finding the ‘diary’ entry and piecing together what it is
• Date using his eye to xray certain areas and figuring out key information without setting off traps/things we thought were unavoidable deaths, as well as revealing something plot important early (the brick walls)
• Yachi using her powers to deactivate death traps without getting hurt
• Giovanni keeping everyone fed with soup instead of making everyone rely on morale-lowering crummy food
• All of the healers doing everything they can to keep people alive in those first couple of weeks
• Romani and Saphir doing excellent jobs as doctors in not only keeping people healthy, but in also figuring out medical and technological-related clues that most would have missed due to their lack of experience.
• Those characters who recognized the patterns in how the rooms shifted and moved key objects to the static area instead of losing them forever.
• The attempts to figure out what’s going on as a group and not individually
• Week 3’s arguments over the vote (deciding how to vote out someone under unfair conditions had a HUGE impact on the game)
• All of the different ways to disguise meetings (telepathy, distracting ghosts, hidden coded messages, etc.)
• Sissel’s escape
• Subete trying to fight the vessels at his trial, the reactions and Crow's sacrifice.
• Various people pulling each out of potentially dangerous situations (Marona pulling Dazai out, Seteth saving Gil, etc)
• All the discussions and moral dilemmas and devil's advocating has contributed.
• People asking the Vessel questions and attempting to figure out exactly what rules the miasma/curse is working under.
• The very tragic mistakes of “I was just trying to help, but things went so wrong”.
• IN general, people utilizing their strengths to overcome something or knowing their limits. Or attempting to use their strengths and finding disaster instead.
[Spoilers end here.]
And this has all been great! We’ve been trying to juggle things so that everyone gets at least one shot to do something meaningful. We’ve probably slipped up a few times here and there, but we’re trying. And we think that, as far as ‘balancing the load’ and giving everyone a shot goes, we’ve been doing pretty well.
There’s still more to come too. There’s two specific hurdles that have to be overcome for everyone’s souls to be saved. We don’t want to say what they are, because we want you guys to figure it out on your own. We believe in you. But please trust us when we say ‘what you do matters’.
There’s also the complaints that the dead haven’t had much to do once they have died. And while it’s true that we don’t have a typical “do this mission in deadland” like we did in other rounds, there have been other things for the dead to do.
[SPOILERS under the cut.]
Click HERE to open
1: Provide a face to the antagonist. The miasma/curse is the real enemy here - as it is the whole cause for the ghosts becoming so hateful and twisted - but a (currently) faceless cloud of negative emotions is hard to struggle against. So the dead have been filling that role. They’re the ones the living need to be careful of. They’re the ones who can increase the miasma levels for the living.
2: They have been directly controlling how the effects of the miasma play out. They can increase the miasma levels for the living. They can influence the living’s mood and invite those negative feelings that bring in more misma. They’re the ones that can affect their own miasma effects too, as it’s entirely possible to (albeit temporarily) calm a ghost and make them less rage and more of who they were before. We don’t want to explain exactly how this matters, because we don’t want to basically go “do X, Y, and Z to get the best ending”, but what we can say is the ghosts’ attitudes on everything WILL matter going into endgame.
3. The strength of the dead and learning what works against them affects how strong the curse is and what the characters will need to do soon to get a good ending or bad ending.
4. Exploring the tragedy of death and how it makes their character feel. This is very much a key part of the round: the fact that the dead are not gone, and that despite how they act once dead they’re as much of victims in all of this as the living are. Many of you have been exploring this in post-death threads and it has been fantastic.
5. Motivating the living to do what they need to do to escape. This is partially because ‘oh no they’re scary ghosts’ and partially ‘oh god what’s happened to them is horrible, we need to get out to both spare ourselves from this and to find help for them’. Even if we already know how that is going to turn out (with everyone dying), those thoughts can and should still be explored.
[Spoilers end here.]
And honestly where we think the trouble this round is coming from is that: “you’re all going to die” is being seen as the end point. The finale. That all things are leading up to that and it’s not worth doing anything once that point has been reached. That was never our intention from the start. We’ve tried to supply tools to further the goals of “an untimely death can result in twisted and horrible things” and “what do we do when hope alone isn’t enough?”. Another major theme is “it’s about the journey, not the destination” - this round was conceived as a flashback round with an ending (the barrier going up and the group tpk’ing) being set in stone, but that the actions of the characters during it matter for the ultimate decision of “so, what do we do about this now?”
Once again, this was not hidden from everyone. This was known from the start. But even in the grand scheme of “we need to find Tages and save the Foundation from being run by a literal villain if we don’t want things to get worse”, there’s still a place for a very personal story about struggle against terrible odds.
Things have been stressful, and the three of us haven’t been on our best ‘mod game’ this round either. Between everything happening in the world, Maple getting sick, the sheer number of hours a week we’ve been spending doing modwork (12+ PER DAY when normally outside of investigations/trials it was far less than that), and some other stuff going on behind the scenes that we would prefer to address to people individually, us three have been stressed far beyond the usual amount for a round of SCP and it’s shown. We do apologize for that. But ultimately...we’re human. All three of us have our own feelings, our own problem areas, and our own mental well-being to look out for. And honestly? That’s been pushed to the limit this round. But everything we do, it’s out of an attempt to give everyone at least one chance to do something cool, and to hopefully deliver a satisfying round by the end of it. And we’ll try to be better about it all too.
Also, please respect that sometimes it boils down to ‘this is how we want to run it’? We try to be flexible, but sometimes we have to make a call that might not be what you personally agree with. But we’re doing it with the intent of both giving everyone a chance to shine and for constructing a cohesive round that doesn’t fall apart under closer inspection. Whenever we make a decision, we ask “how will this affect the game as a whole?” and try to make a judgement call based on what’s best for everyone in the game (and, sometimes, what we can physically do, given our life schedules).
With that said, we would like to ask for some patience with finishing up this round. We know how easy it is to get into a loop of “this thing bothers me, so I’m going to be upset about it for a while” and linger on that thought as it becomes worse and worse. We’re hoping that being open with our intentions for the round here will help clear at least some of those lingering negative thoughts so we can keep going with the round.
Thank you everyone for voicing your thoughts and giving us the time to address it while we can still do something to help clarify on our end or make adjustments as needed.