So this seems to be the best place to put it, but handling of the August event aside, I'm finding myself extremely... underwhelmed with the way the game as a whole has been dealt with. This isn't a large game, and there are four new mods who I can only presumably applied for the position because they both wanted to help the game and felt they could spare the time and energy to do so.
However, it's taken literally months for many, many things to get done. The solution of registering a trainer's own pokemon for the Ride Pagers was offered as a player suggestion back in the poll post in MAY. Now, I'm not expecting an overnight decision on something like that, a month, or maybe two (presuming new announcements/updates happen at the beginning of each months and the mod team would want more than 2 weeks to look into the feasibility of it) but we're talking six months ago. Half a year. For something that required no effort on the mods' part to implement beyond establishing a few basic rules and doing a quick writeup to add to the info pages.... and the latter of which could probably have been done with the assistance of a player volunteer if the mods were busy. (Speaking as the person who actually offered the suggestion in this case, I absolutely would have been more than happy to help.)
And it's not just that, either. We've been promised page overhauls, which is nice and fine and dandy, and believe me I know how long it can take to code a page if there's any sort of fancy formatting... but while we wait, important updates are being shoved aside, answers to Q&A inquiries are inconsistent with information posted elsewhere or that has been stated in the past, and that's when any answer has been given at all! Badge requests have fallen behind periodically, with some people waiting several weeks to a month or more for their badges.
Again, if something's come up and the mods are busy, like a sudden disaster in the life of whatever mod was handling a specific project, well, that happens. But players aren't being informed of this. If the badge request mod needs to suddenly hiatus because of an emergency and the other mods can't immediately fill in the gap for other preexisting reasons, a simple announcement post of "hey guys, due to unforeseen difficulties requests are going to be delayed, please contact us directly if you urgently need anything" would suffice. It would keep players informed and, perhaps most importantly, make it clear that yes, the mods are working on things and not just failing to fulfill their basic duties. Because the thing is, that's what it looks like when stuff like that happens with no explanation.
Overall, the housekeeping side of things has seemed to be very patchy at best, and frustratingly lacking. Frankly, I don't care if it takes a year to repair all the broken links and weird formatting from poorly copied over code, so long as the relevant information is being kept up to date. I'd rather have a plain-looking but informative list of items and prices than fancy tables. The Aurora gym page could have been created months ago with a more spartan layout and basic information, most of which could be copy/pasted from elsewhere (other page descriptions, comments from question and answers from the players establishing said gyms, and of course the fact that the players themselves are already required to provide their own gym info for easy copy/pasting) and slapped together with a note that it's to be cleaned up and formatted nicely later as time allows. But it would have been there. Instead we seem to be stuck on a long trend of form over function, where making things look pretty is being emphasized over getting the most basic information up to date and available for players, which is incredibly frustrating.
Granted, this may not be the intent at all, and I realize that, but that's how it's coming across and frankly, the history of actions (or lack thereof) of the mods is all I have to go on. Neither I nor anyone else can just magically know what the reasons for the delays are, just that there's been delays. Lots of them. To a frustrating point.
And the kicker to that is that there are players willing to help. I know from talking to people that more people applied for the mod openings than were selected as mods, which means that there's at least a few players who were interested enough in helping to have applied in the first place. There's no reason that resource can't be tapped into. Yet for all the delays (which was, frankly, one of the big reasons people got so upset/frustrated with the previous set of mods, let's be perfectly and utterly blunt here) there's been no requests for help, no acknowledgment that there even are delays, nothing. This doesn't exactly help inspire confidence or boost game morale.
To address events in particular, while events are fun and good and people enjoy them, the last couple months have seemed like it's become very hit or miss. That scenarios aren't being thought out, or if they have been, that execution is poor. It's not that the concepts are necessarily bad, just the execution. When running a game as a GM/DM/whatever you want to call it, and that absolutely applies to running events like this, it has to be geared first and foremost with the players in mind, not the plot. What bait will ICly lure characters and OOCly attract players to participate? What main plot will keep them occupied/interested? What conclusion will provide a suitable payoff for that participation?
Several events have failed at one or more of these at various points. The August event failed hard at both the middle and last one, because there simply weren't ways for characters to obtain hints or make progress or otherwise interact in a meaningful way. Not without correctly guessing an obscure objective that wasn't really foreshadowed or hinted at in any way. It still could have been salvaged in theory even then though if the GM(s) handling the event had noticed the IC floundering and tossed some hints out there. A monk showing up excitedly with another scroll or making an offhand comment that the player characters could use to fill in the blank spots. A legendary seeker pratfalling and spilling a bunch of tabloid-esque fliers featuring a specific rumor about legendary quarrels. That sort of thing. But any time there's a plot-intensive event that ostensibly requires the players to be active participants in resolving it, whoever is running the event (whether a mod or another player) absolutely has to be attentive to what's going on and responsive, and even sometimes improvise a bit for the sake of keeping the plot going. It's this sort of thing that's been notably somewhat lacking.
The payoff has been a problematic matter as well. The IC items were brought up as an issue with the August event, as well as the lack of IC explanations for what happened and why. But event the October event, which definitely had an appropriate level of IC rewards for the style of event it was, ended up being kind of anticlimatic for all the build up. Sure, wild pokemon rallying is cool, but what was to stop all the trainers with their dark types from having banded together to do the same thing? Why do just the generic wild pokemon care so much, when Darkrai itself could have had a hand in telling off the presumptuous little troublemakers that are trespassing on its domain?
And sure, these things may be easier to see in hindsight, but it's also something that very, very much should be thought through before an event is even launched. I won't give specifics because that would obviously spoil the surprise, but I have a potential player-run event idea in mind I've been toying with, that I refuse to even do a full writeup for until I know exactly all those points I mentioned: what the plot hook is, what incentive there is to keep characters engaged for the entire plot, and what the payoff at the end is. Until I have a clear idea of all three, or at least enough to start working with, there's little point proposing the event at all. Even just having the beginning and and ending is a good place to start, but the ending just cannot be something that feels like it was tacked on as an afterthought, and that's the problem with some of the events here lately.
So what I'm saying is, I think that first, we need way more communication than we're getting. Sure, life happens sometimes and you can't do a thing about it, but when you're in a position that other people are relying on you to get things done, it's only polite to let them know what the delay is rather than leaving them in the dark. This goes for responding to inquiries and such as well. Respond to the Q&A questions, get on the game's official Discord channel regularly to address the questions that periodically come up there, etc, be visible and accessible.
Second, prioritize. As I said, fancy formatting updates are nice..... but ultimately unnecessary. What this game needs is information to be kept up to date and consistent, not one person getting a specific answer in one place and someone else being told a different answer elsewhere. This ties back into the first point, because communication with players is a GREAT way to catch inconsistencies, because believe me if a player made an inquiry and got answer A, they can probably find the thread where it happened for reference when it comes up again, where when you're the one giving the answers it can be hard to keep track, sure. Let players find and report broken links or out of date pages, and respond to and act on those reports to encourage that to continue, as it'd save the mod team enormous amounts of time hunting those things down for themselves as players stumble across that sort of stuff by accident all the time. Thus freeing the mods to focus on bigger issues.
Finally, maybe take a step back and reevaluate the hows and whys of what's made some events a roaring success and others a flop. Go look up online guides for first time DMs in D&D or other tabletop games for ideas and references of how to design a game/campaign/event that will engage and reward everyone involved. If needed, run an idea that's already been gone over to death by the mod team by a trusted player to get a fresh set of eyes on it. That sort of thing. There's obviously some really great ideas coming out here, but as the saying goes, no campaign survives contact with the players, and knowing how to deal with that is just as vital to structuring events in a game like this as it is for a game like D&D.
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However, it's taken literally months for many, many things to get done. The solution of registering a trainer's own pokemon for the Ride Pagers was offered as a player suggestion back in the poll post in MAY. Now, I'm not expecting an overnight decision on something like that, a month, or maybe two (presuming new announcements/updates happen at the beginning of each months and the mod team would want more than 2 weeks to look into the feasibility of it) but we're talking six months ago. Half a year. For something that required no effort on the mods' part to implement beyond establishing a few basic rules and doing a quick writeup to add to the info pages.... and the latter of which could probably have been done with the assistance of a player volunteer if the mods were busy. (Speaking as the person who actually offered the suggestion in this case, I absolutely would have been more than happy to help.)
And it's not just that, either. We've been promised page overhauls, which is nice and fine and dandy, and believe me I know how long it can take to code a page if there's any sort of fancy formatting... but while we wait, important updates are being shoved aside, answers to Q&A inquiries are inconsistent with information posted elsewhere or that has been stated in the past, and that's when any answer has been given at all! Badge requests have fallen behind periodically, with some people waiting several weeks to a month or more for their badges.
Again, if something's come up and the mods are busy, like a sudden disaster in the life of whatever mod was handling a specific project, well, that happens. But players aren't being informed of this. If the badge request mod needs to suddenly hiatus because of an emergency and the other mods can't immediately fill in the gap for other preexisting reasons, a simple announcement post of "hey guys, due to unforeseen difficulties requests are going to be delayed, please contact us directly if you urgently need anything" would suffice. It would keep players informed and, perhaps most importantly, make it clear that yes, the mods are working on things and not just failing to fulfill their basic duties. Because the thing is, that's what it looks like when stuff like that happens with no explanation.
Overall, the housekeeping side of things has seemed to be very patchy at best, and frustratingly lacking. Frankly, I don't care if it takes a year to repair all the broken links and weird formatting from poorly copied over code, so long as the relevant information is being kept up to date. I'd rather have a plain-looking but informative list of items and prices than fancy tables. The Aurora gym page could have been created months ago with a more spartan layout and basic information, most of which could be copy/pasted from elsewhere (other page descriptions, comments from question and answers from the players establishing said gyms, and of course the fact that the players themselves are already required to provide their own gym info for easy copy/pasting) and slapped together with a note that it's to be cleaned up and formatted nicely later as time allows. But it would have been there. Instead we seem to be stuck on a long trend of form over function, where making things look pretty is being emphasized over getting the most basic information up to date and available for players, which is incredibly frustrating.
Granted, this may not be the intent at all, and I realize that, but that's how it's coming across and frankly, the history of actions (or lack thereof) of the mods is all I have to go on. Neither I nor anyone else can just magically know what the reasons for the delays are, just that there's been delays. Lots of them. To a frustrating point.
And the kicker to that is that there are players willing to help. I know from talking to people that more people applied for the mod openings than were selected as mods, which means that there's at least a few players who were interested enough in helping to have applied in the first place. There's no reason that resource can't be tapped into. Yet for all the delays (which was, frankly, one of the big reasons people got so upset/frustrated with the previous set of mods, let's be perfectly and utterly blunt here) there's been no requests for help, no acknowledgment that there even are delays, nothing. This doesn't exactly help inspire confidence or boost game morale.
To address events in particular, while events are fun and good and people enjoy them, the last couple months have seemed like it's become very hit or miss. That scenarios aren't being thought out, or if they have been, that execution is poor. It's not that the concepts are necessarily bad, just the execution. When running a game as a GM/DM/whatever you want to call it, and that absolutely applies to running events like this, it has to be geared first and foremost with the players in mind, not the plot. What bait will ICly lure characters and OOCly attract players to participate? What main plot will keep them occupied/interested? What conclusion will provide a suitable payoff for that participation?
Several events have failed at one or more of these at various points. The August event failed hard at both the middle and last one, because there simply weren't ways for characters to obtain hints or make progress or otherwise interact in a meaningful way. Not without correctly guessing an obscure objective that wasn't really foreshadowed or hinted at in any way. It still could have been salvaged in theory even then though if the GM(s) handling the event had noticed the IC floundering and tossed some hints out there. A monk showing up excitedly with another scroll or making an offhand comment that the player characters could use to fill in the blank spots. A legendary seeker pratfalling and spilling a bunch of tabloid-esque fliers featuring a specific rumor about legendary quarrels. That sort of thing. But any time there's a plot-intensive event that ostensibly requires the players to be active participants in resolving it, whoever is running the event (whether a mod or another player) absolutely has to be attentive to what's going on and responsive, and even sometimes improvise a bit for the sake of keeping the plot going. It's this sort of thing that's been notably somewhat lacking.
The payoff has been a problematic matter as well. The IC items were brought up as an issue with the August event, as well as the lack of IC explanations for what happened and why. But event the October event, which definitely had an appropriate level of IC rewards for the style of event it was, ended up being kind of anticlimatic for all the build up. Sure, wild pokemon rallying is cool, but what was to stop all the trainers with their dark types from having banded together to do the same thing? Why do just the generic wild pokemon care so much, when Darkrai itself could have had a hand in telling off the presumptuous little troublemakers that are trespassing on its domain?
And sure, these things may be easier to see in hindsight, but it's also something that very, very much should be thought through before an event is even launched. I won't give specifics because that would obviously spoil the surprise, but I have a potential player-run event idea in mind I've been toying with, that I refuse to even do a full writeup for until I know exactly all those points I mentioned: what the plot hook is, what incentive there is to keep characters engaged for the entire plot, and what the payoff at the end is. Until I have a clear idea of all three, or at least enough to start working with, there's little point proposing the event at all. Even just having the beginning and and ending is a good place to start, but the ending just cannot be something that feels like it was tacked on as an afterthought, and that's the problem with some of the events here lately.
So what I'm saying is, I think that first, we need way more communication than we're getting. Sure, life happens sometimes and you can't do a thing about it, but when you're in a position that other people are relying on you to get things done, it's only polite to let them know what the delay is rather than leaving them in the dark. This goes for responding to inquiries and such as well. Respond to the Q&A questions, get on the game's official Discord channel regularly to address the questions that periodically come up there, etc, be visible and accessible.
Second, prioritize. As I said, fancy formatting updates are nice..... but ultimately unnecessary. What this game needs is information to be kept up to date and consistent, not one person getting a specific answer in one place and someone else being told a different answer elsewhere. This ties back into the first point, because communication with players is a GREAT way to catch inconsistencies, because believe me if a player made an inquiry and got answer A, they can probably find the thread where it happened for reference when it comes up again, where when you're the one giving the answers it can be hard to keep track, sure. Let players find and report broken links or out of date pages, and respond to and act on those reports to encourage that to continue, as it'd save the mod team enormous amounts of time hunting those things down for themselves as players stumble across that sort of stuff by accident all the time. Thus freeing the mods to focus on bigger issues.
Finally, maybe take a step back and reevaluate the hows and whys of what's made some events a roaring success and others a flop. Go look up online guides for first time DMs in D&D or other tabletop games for ideas and references of how to design a game/campaign/event that will engage and reward everyone involved. If needed, run an idea that's already been gone over to death by the mod team by a trusted player to get a fresh set of eyes on it. That sort of thing. There's obviously some really great ideas coming out here, but as the saying goes, no campaign survives contact with the players, and knowing how to deal with that is just as vital to structuring events in a game like this as it is for a game like D&D.