Season Crown Redux Feedback Thread

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

Season Crown Redux
Feedback Thread

Please post feedback for season Crown here. What did you like, what didn't you like, what could use improvement, or what is fine as it is.

*This thread is being generated prior to Crown's Conclusion. I will unlock it once Crown Redux officially ends. 

[Indrid Cold]

Rating: 6.8 out of 10

The season had some ups and downs, but I did have some fun here and there. I did feel that the season had some problems that shone through the good bits a lot of the time. While the settings were good and the mastermind was helpful, the ghost system felt very broken and unbalanced, and my own death was instantaneous with no chance for resistance. The puzzles often were very jumbled around, and the boss fights felt disorganized. I did enjoy the plot, though, and have had some fun during this season

[Kai, Prince of V]

Tell me your favorite moments, what you liked most about the season, what you disliked, whether you thought it was too hard or too easy, if you had fun, what you thought of the plot and the puzzles, what you think should've been different, what you thought of the mastermind(s), and you overall impression!

[King V]

As a returning player, I already had some information on the gist of the plot, and was very surprised that things didn't change much from the original game. It sort of made me lose interest in the plot by quite a bit, so I won't comment too much on that part.

From a player perspective, the game was all right. Not extremely exceptional, just about average. From a mastermind perspective, however, there were a lot of points I felt needed work.

The game itself felt very disorganized. There was no item/weight system, meaning all items only followed logical standards for holding. This would have been fine, except there was no easy way to tell what objects in each room were movable or could be carried. This required reading through the room descriptions, and while they were descriptive, they were also long and one could easily miss things that were in them. I spent a good portion of the early stages of the game trying to find some string, and finally gave up and used thread instead. I had no doubts there was string somewhere in the game, but reading through each room description multiple times trying to find it left me discouraged.

The wide variety of puzzles along with usage of specific puzzle items in order to solve them, in itself was fine. However, this coupled with aforementioned item issue and the puzzles having to chain into one another made them difficult to get solve, and also left players who wanted to try and solve them in an awkward position, since the long chain of puzzles would have already been partially solved, and the important puzzle items would already be in possession of other players. All in all, the puzzles forced more cooperation and communication than what would be normally seen, which is great for plot-focused players, but quite bad for murderous players, who usually want to keep to themselves so other players don't discover what sort of plan they're setting up.

I also feel like the mastermind was far too lenient in this game, and used their mastermind powers too often. When players want to do something, letting them struggle and try to find the solution to their problem on their own adds some challenge to the game, and makes accomplishing things much more satisfying. However, if the difficulty is too high, then players will often be struggling too much and may eventually give up. This sense of balance wasn't there in this game. It felt like the difficulty level was adjusted too high for most of the players, but giving an excessive amount of hints to lower the difficulty made it seem like the game was just handing things to them. Although I can understand how a new mastermind like Vicky doesn't know the current playerbase too well, and would construct the game differently than how he expected players to react to it.

The constant use of mastermind powers was also, for lack of better word, contradictory. Not using mastermind powers adds consistency to the game, you can have a good idea of what to expect if you try to do something, and also have a good idea of the consequences. Using mastermind powers adds balance to the game, you can correct certain errors and misjudgments by the players to make the game more fair for everyone playing it. The thing about this game is that, it felt like the game was made to be unbalanced, and then during the game a large amount of mastermind power was used in order to balance it. This unnecessarily degrades the game's consistency, while the issue of balance feels like it should have been adjusted during the planning stages. Once again, I can understand how Vicky doesn't have an extensive understanding of balance for these games, so this issue wasn't really something that could have been fixed easily.

In summary, I don't have too many issues with Crown Redux as a player (except those unintuitive verbal bullets, but Vicky already admitted those were a mistake on his part), but there are a lot of things that irritated me as a mastermind about the game.

[Falin Touden [Ven]]

Okay my review on season crown redux. I actually thought the season wasn't too bad, as a new player I had to spend the first day running around the first floor receiving plot items that other people had already found. This meant a lot of the early puzzles were already broken. I could understand why Vicky did this as her season was never fully finished before, but it was a bit... Empty. I liked the room system, it meant for people who was struggling to get into the game, they could sit in that room (Just for a little while so they were safe). However with that there was some.... Disagreements. Obviously I did get killed in this game, I wouldn't of minded if I had a chance to fight using actions from my phone as my laptop has currently broken, but I was literally hit behind the head and knocked out, and then killed, thanks Sea, so it literally just meant waiting around until I died. As I was knocked out, I actually had to go and find out that bits of mirror was stuck in me and I was slightly burned.

So because I died I became a ghost, which I wasn't really use, apart from had little sessions with ghost as we'd try to figure out what was going on (Ghost will always be better than me, I understand this now :L), even though Vicky said she told me what I could do, I was still really confused, was I still a player? Was I dead? Then to find out we'd been revived and stuff I didn't see the point of the murdering in this game. But to be fair, my laptop broke, so I probably should of just focused more.

So overall I did like the season, the puzzles meant we had to work together and yeah... It was good

[Satori]

My feedback on Season Crown: Redux~

Pregame: The pregame was a great way of getting a taste of what to expect in the main game and helps set the atmosphere of the game. It also serves as good practice for masterminds to try and mess around with things before the actual game.

Plot: The plot was intriguing and really set the atmosphere of a royal setting although those who still remembered the whole plot from the first Crown would feel spoiled and don't have much motivation to play the game since they know most of the plot already and since the plot for Redux was still pretty the same as the first Crown.

Plot/Puzzle items: Giving each player specific plot/puzzle items was pretty neat since everyone has something to contribute to the game and forces cooperation between players though the downside is if one or more players are either AFK or keep their plot items hidden from everyone else then it would create major roadblocks to progress. Fortunately this wasn't much of an issue.

Powers: The powers were pretty awesome at least for my powers and they made me feel superior and boosted my confidence especially in fights where I usually suck in although in a game where almost everyone has OP powers, there will always be imbalance between certain powers (Like Nox's abilities which made him pretty much god like and even broke the game on several occasions) and I tried not to go too overboard with my powers like I did the last time Crown was hosted (When I used my prediction ability to instantly solve trials and ended up breaking the game...) but all in all, I didn't have much of an issue on this.

Puzzles: Most of the puzzles were pretty challenging which required people to work together and some intuitive thinking to get through them. Although there were time we were really stuck on a certain puzzle, we still manage to solve them (With a bit of help from Vicky).

Duel System: Personally. I didn't like the duel system for Redux because the battles were too fast paced though it was probably mean't to make battles more realistic but when translated into a forum setting, you didn't have to register and assess the situation while things were going on and typing your plan of action also takes time depending on your action. Its mostly suited for those who can think and act on the fly and and if its a 1v1 fight but not really suited for boss fights especially when multiple people are involved since some people might have trouble trying to keep up with whats happening because events are going too fast.

Boss Fights: The boss battles were pretty intense and I really got involved in them since I was playing a conqueror although as it was discussed on the Skype chat, Most of the battles were a slog since they required a very specific way to beat them (Like the Previz fight which required his sphere to be broken in order to kill him thus making the first part of the battle pretty much pointless.) I think these battles should be open to alternate solutions on how to deal with them but at the same time doesn't affect the planned outcome set by the mastermind prior to the game to reward players for creativity.

Ghost System: Unlike Sea's Afterlife system, the Ghost System in Redux still allowed dead players to roam around the map and interact with their surroundings with some advantages and disadvantages over the living players. I say this is a great way to make dead players not feel bored or useless and they could still contribute to the progress of the game even though they are unable to win. (Indrid is a great example of this and as a ghost, he was still able to help the players a lot by acting as a ghost shield on several occasions and even solved one of the hardest puzzles in the game.)

Final Trial: I think the final trial had been executed well and the process for figuring out the plot was taken step by step since the mastermind would ask us questions regarding certain parts of the plot. Much of the trial also involved less theorizing and more of stating the facts based from the plot that has been found.

Overall: I had a lot of fun in the game despite its shortcomings and I really feel I've accomplished a lot especially since I managed to kill the Princess and even took over a kingdom which is my greatest achievement in MMG thus far~

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

Well, I totally thought I had posted this a while back, but I must have dreamed it. Posting it now.

Eclipse's Feedback



My feedback for crown will be in a similar format as to my other feedback style messages, but there will be some additions. The additional content will relate less to the season and more a judging of how the mastermind(s) performed and things less relevant to the season directly. As everyone knows, Crown Redux was a unique game in that is was an "Unpause/Redo" of the the previous Crown which occurred around a year ago. I will comment more on this further down. Also, I was not excessively active as a player in Redux, I WAS however constantly monitoring security logs and speaking with people behind the scenes to try and keep things moving so my overall game knowledge such as specific puzzles will be lacking. With those bits in mind, let's begin.



Princess Rank: Vicky Masterminding: Starting with the main mastermind for Crown Redux, Vicky. Sea put it very well in that he called the game "disorganized." As I was watching you mastermind from my position as head admin there were a number of things that came up and, as you well know, resulting in me having to step in and speak with you. The largest of which was the fact that the game map was not entirely complete as of the start date of Crown Redux. It was my failing that at this point I did not immediately stop the game and declare a different season as next. I never expected to actually have to enforce that rule, so I was no fully prepared to replace you and still have something occur afterwards. Even more damaging to your mastermind responsibility the part of the map that was constructed was almost ENTIRELY the map for the old crown and the count of new rooms could be measured on a single hand. I needed two hands to count the number of times you edited those old threads, but no more. This was a gross dereliction of duty on your part. The map should be 95% completed when the season start date occurs. I leave that 5% for secret rooms or special situations. With five floors total and three of those new content. You had generated such a minimal amount of content on the forum I was in shock. I will comment on Ravan in his feedback, but he generated a pregame map THE SIZE OF THE FIRST TWO FLOORS in Redux. In the span of a week at most he fully built on the forum what you had at the start of Crown just living off the previous seasons work. So it was VERY possible that you could have had those other 3 floors up by the start date. Early on the season you also handed ALOT of work onto Ravan. He hosted the entire pregame and a number of the early sessions. You only really stepped in for examinations and some personal actions involving powers(assuming what I weaseled out of Ravan was not biased). I verified this by who had made the most edit actions on the forum. Over the first couple days of game you had around two edits. Ravan made around 2 full PAGES of edits. Please note that the size of the edit isn't important, I just have lines telling me X was edited at X time by whom. All of these things really led me into a period of worry about your ability to continue the season. By your own admission you considered just dropping the season and quitting, Ravan was stressed enough to make a similar statement when he was speaking with me. You did start pulling things back together afterwards and rode out the storm. Managing actions, events, and the creation of the map as players unlocked it. It is not enough to totally redeem the start, but its enough to not have me punish you beyond what has already been done. You are going to remain a tier 2 mastermind until you can prove that you can generate all the content for a season prior to even stating you are ready to host. I will also exempt myself from your next season and you will be forced to show me all your content in whatever documentation you decide to use so that I can monitor you and verify you are indeed preparing. Ravan saved you somewhat in Redux as he informed me you had the future floors generated in your documentation, but not the forum. That is my advice to you as a mastermind. You need to sit down and really prepare for a season you are hosting. You will not always have someone who acts like Ravan and keeps the boat afloat until you get your stuff together.





Prince Rank: Ravan Masterminding: Next we have the secondary mastermind, Ravan. I have less feedback for you as you were not responsible for any amount of content as per my understanding. Vicky simply said you could do a pregame and let you do as you wished. This resulted in a multi floor extravaganza with boss fights and puzzles and other such things. What you did is impressive, a feat I expect of all one star masterminds, but it was out of sync with the main mastermind. You were "hired" via application to be the Prince and assist in hosting. You chose to do a pregame and put a ton of effort in to construct a map and host ALOT. You kept the Crown Redux boat afloat for quite a while and with reasonable results considering this was your first time. My advice to you on this is to be more in sync with the other masterminds of a season. You simply cannot go wild on your hype train and construct what some could view as a small season. It undermines the other mastermind, Vicky in this scenario did not expect the HUGE pregame. You behavior allowed Vicky to be lazy in the map construction and as a host since you were on top of the situation and hosting the MOMENT Vicky walked off. Effort and willingness to help are great things to put forward, but you went way out of sync with your partner, when you both should have known EXACTLY what the other was planning. You and Vicky fell out of tune with one another and respectively Vicky was allowed to get lazier and you got more excited and hosted for 14 hour sessions. YOU WERE NOT CHOSEN AS A SECONDARY MASTERMIND TO BE THE MASTERMIND! Your job was to assist Vicky, not carry them. The key word is moderation, everything in balance. Moving on, the next topic is your communications with myself and players. You told me a number of player powers and things I should not have known in your rants to me trying to get rid of stress and reveal to me what was going on. Perhaps you wouldn't have done it if I wasn't the head admin, but you need to try and tone back how much you just reveal to players, even if they are the head admin. If they are a responsible player you are hurting them by making their ability to play the game more limited as they have to intentionally play with just their IC knowledge. Vice versa a player may abuse that information you give them and suddenly someone's special card, their last trick, has no meaning. Control how much information you feed out, especially when you are not the main mastermind. Last comment. I bugged you about hosting too much and you vanished for college. Your role as the prince didn't change. Even if you can't host you should still try to be present periodically and play the NPC you were assigned. Your hype train crashed and you just died after Vicky got their stuff together. Perhaps Vicky told you to back off, but you should have understood you can back off and still be involved.



Dual Core Computer: Dual Masterminds: So..... This kind of backfired on you guys and at the same time saved you. Perhaps if this hadn't been here then perhaps Vicky would have actually built the game on time, or the opposite, they wouldn't have and the season would have died before it ever began. Communication and information between you two was not optimal and it resulted in some issues. You two had different understandings on some player's powers. Vicky, you sometimes neglected to update files instead just remembering it in your head which resulted in confusion on Ravan's side. Also, you both tried to host at the same time. During these times I was never sure who to pm who about what. Yet apparently sometimes you both gave fight responses to players, going so far as to result in a fighting have to be rewound as if it never happened. I think the existence of dual masterminds in this season was a major issue on the overall success of the season, but I cannot say it would have been better without.





Season IMBA(Imbalance is Balance): Courtier Abilities: Another hot topic in terms of the overall health of the season. The powers of this game were not really set up in a way that encouraged players being equal or balanced in terms of their abilities. I saw a number of abilities and there are some blatant issues in some being ridiculous while others are reasonable. Some players received powers that basically turned them into an unstoppable force of destruction or just destroys any semblance of understanding. Going to use my powers as an example. Nox, could slow down time, stop time, teleport, and construct robots. In the very first seasons, there was an ability known as The Magician. The Magician could teleport anywhere and did not use a movement indicator, which renders them effectively invisible. The simple existence of the magician broke trials in those early seasons because every murder COULD have been the magician. Nox's power is essentially a slightly weakened magician. I could move without being witnessed, teleportation or stopping time. On the flip side, we have someone whose powers are cool, but mediocre. Sova, could tell if someone was not in control of themselves, counter to mind control or influence abilities kind of. Its useful in VERY specific scenarios, but no where else. They have one less verbal sword in trial against them when they murder. Again, useful in a specific scenario, a passive benefit, but it has zero impact on the players strength. And they could command someone to perform a non violent action if they managed to best them in combat. So.... Sova was encouraged to be violent and murder, but was perceptive and did have a way to figure out other murderers. Neat, not op, but not super underpowered. OH wait, I can stop time and that other guy, Raphael could do mind control. He used a electric chip he had to implant to do it, so he had to beat someone in combat essentially FOR COMPLETE MIND CONTROL. That is FLAT OUT BETTER than Sova's version of the same ability. Sova's other abilities don't make up for it either as they might as well be passives. So, the idea of IMBA, is that if everyone is overpowered, nobody is since no one has an unfair advantage over another. This works in specific games. It doesn't work on our site, where getting caught out usually means instant death and removal from the game. So if the guy who can stop time decides he doesn't like you and stops time and beheads you. You have NO say in the matter, and no warning. You are just dead. Removed from the game. Sorry hope you were done having fun, get out. On the flip side, this is a game about planning a intricate murder and getting away with it. When you give me an ability that essentially solves EVERYTHING for me then it ruins my experience as a murderer. I stop time, I cut his throat, I drop the murder weapon, I walk into the next room. Time continues and blood starts flowing. I have no blood on me and I could have committed that murder in a room of 200 people and no one is the wiser. It not only promises to destroy the fun of the person its used on, but it really undermines players who want to play, since you just hand them the "You win" card. Players NEED to feel unique and different from the others. When they have abilities that are powerful they feel that, but you can't just give everyone abilities to make them happy since one players happiness can convert into another's unhappiness. Supposedly two people could stop time, one could conjure up anything they could "understand" from giant weapons to armor, mind control, and then we had a few people who could control gravity(pick up anything and have heavy punches, neat but really underpowered compared to some) or affect the game in very small ways. You cannot please everyone, but you can control the damage. Giving someone a nuke is NOT CONTROLLING THE DAMAGE. Time control, item manifestation, and mind control were nukes. 

Rinse, Repeat, Redux: Crown's Unpause: So this was a "Redo" of the first Crown which was abruptly ended after a decent amount of progress. I won't dwell on this issue long. Never again. If a player wants to rehost a game that has already been played, so reusing the map or plot, but with new players who don't know it, that is cool. This whole unpause bring back all the people from the old game and try to make it actually happen for real this time. Its an easy way out, you can reuse content and be lazy and still "host." Riding on the coattails of past successes happens and is acceptable. If it was really cool the first time and we have 12-15 new members who never experienced it then we can run it again with the new people. Riding on the coattails of a past failure and hoping to fix said failure isn't cool. The new game needs to be just that, A NEW GAME. Not an unpause or a retcon of the first. Nothing can describe the fury I felt when I first found that the first crowns conclusion had been deleted. That game happened and you can't DENY it happened. If it has sensitive information you ask me to hide it, not go and delete it from the archives. You can have a new game reusing old content. Reusing old content that you couldn't be bothered to make successful the first time is unacceptable. I will no longer allow this kind of situations. When you make the bed, you sleep in it.

Replay Value: Reused Plot: As the person who first died in crown, I remember being told THE PLOT. Who the princess was, who the prince was, the conspiracies, the alchemy, and the story. This was a HUGE turnoff coming back into redux since I was essentially "spoiled" to it. Sad thing is, I actually really liked the plot. The whole princess was a ghost thing was a great twist when I first found out about it and there was intrigue. Ties in with the previous statement, reusing stuff is okay for people who haven't experienced it. I had already experienced and I had a power that won by murder by itself. All my motivation was gone and all that was left was an Administrator who was trying to deal with two very depressed masterminds and trying to figure out how to help salvage a ship he sincerely thought was going to sink to the bottom of the ocean. Thank god it didn't sink.

NOW BEHOLD, MY FINAL FORM: Boss Fights: So I participated in two boss fights, the alchemist and the princess. Alchemist boss fight felt REALLY pointless to me. Boss was immune up until the mastermind stepped in and fixed the problem by exposing his weakness. Kind of undermines the players who you gave godlike powers and then gave them an opponent nobody could fight until you made it beatable. Yeah OK, we were supposed to do something first. THEN YOU SHOULDN'T BE SHOVING US TO RUN INTO THE BOSS FIGHT. Constant pushing in the skype chat to go do it, fight the boss, get everybody and go to town. Why force us to jump into a boss fight that doesn't care for strategy, since you just real timed the fight and let us scream and yell and do whatever pleased us. Then show us its really pointless to even try because we can't win. THEN have you character show up and do it for us. You didn't need to cement the point that the princess is powerful, we all know that. The powers made us feel like we were demigods, but the tone of that gets blown out of the water as we just get slapped in the face repeatedly by the "ITS NOT USE" situations. If you want players to have godlike powers, let them feel powerful too. If you want them to appear weak and overwhelmed, don't give them godlike powers. The whole goal of the fight couldn't be determined. That was my main issue. Princess fight was..... kinda just for humor. We had a murder victor and a plot victor by that point. Random stuff happened and it didn't matter. This was fine as the game by this point was effectively OVER. This fight was purely for the spectacle and to have some last minute fun. At least that's how it came across. That said, you shouldn't put a victory condition hidden behind another victory condition. If we can't fight the princess till we solve the final trial, then why have the final trial be a win condition with stuff left?

Bronze, Silver, and Gold: The winner of Crown: TO THIS DAY, I don't know who really won crown and who lost. I thought C won when he completed his objective first. But then we have a plot winner. AND THEN we have a winner who kills the princess. Not only that, but I was the one being bugged about getting trophies. No. Just No. I am not responsible for telling the poor saps who completed a victory condition but didn't win that it sucks to be them. I should not have to deal with that. It needs to be VERY CLEAR who wins, ESPECIALLY if awards are involved. As of this point, none of the three have a trophy since I was never given an image or description or name to associate with a trophy. There will be not trophy for Crown. We are partway through the next game as I add this tidbit and I still have not received the trophy things I requested and was told I would receive to give to the person I was told was the TRUE WINNER of Crown. You haven't given it to me in such a long time it obviously doesn't matter very much. This should not have been a big deal.

Comments: Most of the other things in the game I felt were either stylistic or not important enough to mention here or it was purely opinion based such as how the final trial was held. I personally don't like the whole "Question, Answer, Question, Answer" setup for final trials, but it works so I don't give it a yay or nay. No items in the room layout threads. Ok, I had some trouble figuring it out, but it was a stylistic choice and was constant across the whole map so I can accept it.

Final Section: Crown gets marks for being OK. It had ALOT of problems that were built upon an already shaky base and cemented in with further problems in hosting. But it held on and the players have told me(some of them) that they enjoyed themselves. I don't consider this season a major success, but neither is it a failure. It gets a passing score as a season. It ran, it happened, it finished. But it tripped over the first hurdle, realized its show was untied, and continues to try and hop over hurdles whilst tying that show. It stumbles across the finish line, but only barely, covering in bruises. From an Admin perspective I am extremely disappointed with the nonsense I had to yell at people about this season as well as some of the stuff I never thought I would ever have to talk about. From a Player perspective I had a minimal amount of fun, as I was unable to pursue any real goal in game without feeling like a cheater. I think everyone involved on the host end of things learned something this game and that is why I don't consider it a failure. The train crashed, so we grabbed our bags and pushed it the rest of the way. I think if the season had more effort before its beginning then perhaps it could have really shone as a great game that could have been an A+, instead it passes by the skin of its teeth, D-.

(I had like 80% of this typed up and I had thought I had totally posted it way back when. But I must have totally forgot who got swallowed up by other things. I tacked on the last few things and am posting it now since I feel its really important to understand my stance on this as the head administrator. Games starting on the same level as this one will no longer be acceptable. Sorry for posting this way late, but it is what it is.)