Season Assassin's Pledge Feedback Thread

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

Season Assassin's Pledge
Feedback Thread

Please post feedback for Season AP 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 AP's Conclusion. I will unlock it once Assassin's Pledge officially ends. 

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

*bump*
Just reminding people this is already here.

[Daiwa Scarlet]

*grumblesGuessI'llhavetoputsomefeedbacksinceIplayedmostgrumbles*
This ended up as more of general feedback for games than just this game in particular...

So first off, congratulations on finishing the season. Hosting is... difficult at times...
My first piece of advice would be to host when you aren't quite as busy... Two hours is a bit of a tight squeeze and cut many from the game. Perhaps if the hours were shifted for different days~ Lack of activity only compounds on itself to discourage more players from participating.
For a season focused on assassination, I suppose I'm not particularly fit as a player... I try not to kill after all... I usually just go after plot and whatever else is of interest. These games are basically like a storybook for me.
This game helped me realize a few things. Plot has more functions than just a simple background story, it keeps people interested in the game. It works in two ways that I can think of, perhaps there are more if I sit around for a while. The first is to make the world seem “real” and draw the players in. If they like role playing, then the story gives them clues as to what they can react to. The second is that plot is simply interesting in and of itself. It is similar to a small reward for their efforts in the game, usually just searching. If the plot is hidden and they find or unlock it, then they can even get a sense of accomplishment.
However, this game was overloaded with puzzles. Each puzzle only gave way to another and then the next opens when that gets solved. There was the reward of opening new areas, but the areas lacked... shall we say... spark? The rooms were fairly empty and/or the descriptions did not cover everything in them. I would say that it is better to err on the side of over complication in terms of descriptions as it proves the host tried to make them interesting. These puzzles did not have much of a reward for the players' efforts... and being “rewarded” with more puzzles does not really satisfy the player.
As a side note, telling the player “nothing of note” does discourage after encountering it repeatedly for an hour. Perhaps throw in a bit of description or switch up the phrases you use. Ravan did quite nicely with the shenanigans in Crown. They were interesting even if he ended up telling me that I was basically hallucinating for the past few minutes and nothing actually happened. Masterminds seem to enjoy seeing their players panic and it is actually effective for keeping the players interested... assuming you don't overdo it and ruin your credibility. This might be a personal point, but I really don't like when masterminds lie to their players. If they do something like eclipse had with his claim that everything on the chat is not official, then sure, there was a warning and players have to be picky about what they choose to believe. Otherwise players will assume everything that the mastermind says is truth and finding out that it was a lie can leave players... disgruntled...
Another issue with the puzzles are that they were very linear. One puzzle basically led to the next and anyone behind would have nothing to do. There was no plot for those late to read and the rooms were quite empty. This leaves them with the option of murder, but a murder out of boredom probably wont be the most interesting of murders. The chain of puzzles mean that the player(s) who solve the previous puzzle will have a head start with the next puzzle and in the worst case scenario, solve them all without any aid from others. Puzzles can be a nice point in games which force players to work together.
Interaction is important as it keeps players interested and in turn makes the game more interested for everyone involved, including the mastermind. For the latter half of the game, I was in constant conversation with Hitomi and that kept the game running fairly smoothly, or at least more so than it had been when I was working on my own. At some point, I found myself playing just so that the game could end before things took a turn for the worse. This really isn't the mindset that you want players to switch to while playing...
The ending was amusing and I would think satisfactory to all the parties involved. I suppose it got pretty obvious that we were not going to kill each other. My objective for the game was quite different from your planned endings; I was going to save as many players as I could. Until you made the offer at the end, this meant that I either had to break out with them or end the organization. Perhaps my actions are more clear when seen in this context? Basically I was working to defy your endings right from the start. If you hadn't made the offer at the end, then we would probably have attempted our escape. I will commend you for your quick thinking there, as I'm fairly sure the most obvious option that came to mind was to eliminate those pesky rebels. If it wasn't then I'll state it from our view, it is simply the most obvious move you could have made at that point. We half expected that the next event of the game would be to fight off the 32 underlings and then the Master Assassin himself, if he didn't simply execute us indirectly like that attempt with the toxin. Of course these endings would have been less than ideal for the players and/or the mastermind. If the players escaped, then the mastermind's planned finale would have been unfulfilled. If the mastermind kills the players, then that leaves the players dejected and that is not really a good note to end on. So I applaud your ability to find the third option.
The pin was an interesting little item. It has little plot significance, but what it had was an interesting tidbit that helped flesh out the background of the assassins. For a session where I found next to nothing, it kept my interest for a while. It was also quite a personal piece of plot as there is doubt that anyone else could have found it. This works in two ways, it makes the individual who discovered it feel special, but it could also potentially cut that plot from the rest of the players if the individual did not feel like sharing... or perhaps that individual never discovers the purpose of the piece while others would have. This particular piece lacked importance, but this is simply something to take into consideration for this type of plot. A solution of the other masterminds was to make some plot immovable and/or indestructible. Anyhow, having random little things like this is more important that it seems.
Oh yes, almost forgot... in these games, movement tests one's patience. Players would appreciate if there were less rooms (like how the hallways are split into two empty sections) as it would cut down on travel time.

[Falin Touden [Ven]]

Okay........ So my feedback isn't going to be too long. Unfortunately I didn't get to really get into this season due to the playing times. I think that is one of the things I liked about the previous seasons I've played, both Vicky and Sea had two different time slots within there games, so most players can at least play one. For me it's early evening for you Americans which suit me better as after 3 am I usually die from exhaustion...

Other than that, I thought the idea for the game was a very good one, and also from the introductions I thought the game was going to be an active one. But due to the schematics of the game being a killing mechanism, the active players were dying out quicker than I think you suspected, due to these two or three kill combos that were occurring. Also during the times that I was online I found similarly to what ghost said, little plot. Being also behind I found stuff for puzzles that were also being sorted out.

This is why I joined up with Hitomi and Ghost near the end of the game, I was going to join in, but again I missed it... Gah! STUPID SLEEP! I believe this why Ghost dragged me around like a puppet.... Thanks again :L So overall I just think due to your busy schedule and time periods the game didn't flow as well nicely as it should of... but a nice attempt at a first game

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

Eclipse Feedback: Assassin's Pledge

This is our first official 1 star mastermind season being hosted. Perhaps I had my expectations too high for someone's first time, but I am going to be brutally honest here. I am going to bash most everything and praise very little. First game so I will hope that these issues are because of that and not due to laziness. I apologize beforehand as I can get a little scathing below, but please remember I am writing these monologues so that people can improve themselves.
Sorry if its a little brutal.

The Room Threads: I have to get this out of the way first. All the room threads are dreadfully boring and empty. Room descriptions were very short and succinct. There is a table. There is a tablecloth. The floor is tile. Ok, the game is a very murder heavy game, the goal of the season is mostly to kill other players so perhaps the detail isn't important? WRONG! Heck, the weapon room which is probably one of the most important rooms for murder has one of the shortest"Various weapons have been strewn about the room. The floor here is tile." I will address why in another section. In addition to rooms being bland empty or all very very similar, the available items are also very limited. The first couple rooms only offer vases and paintings which is a repeating theme in ALOT of rooms. This facility is a training facility so it would likely have lots of training stuff? Well we had a three session buildup to unlock the training section, for a couple mostly empty un-descriptive rooms. Its very disheartening to not get anything from the map. It turns what should be a building into a series of white squares on a grid I am managing in my head. These simply needed to be more detailed. Other things that are apparent, having six labs with pretty much the exact same layout and items. Its a pointless trick to throw in more rooms. You simply could have had the massive various items stacks in storage and then little bits in each lab instead of massive stacks of 50+ in EVERY lab. The extra labs don't contribute in any meaningful way. You can add fluff rooms to encourage murder stuff and open more areas for things people don't want to be seen doing, just careful overdoing the fluff in a single section.

Items, Murder Tools, Keys: I mentioned rooms were empty right? They are minimal in description and with like one exception all the rooms have basically nothing in them item wise. Weapon Storage, a room you expect to be loaded to the gills with assassin relevant items hung up so that you can walk in and have all the tools you need. Well if you only need a sword, a hidden blade, or a throwing knife you are set. In comparison, the KITCHEN has more items than the weapon room and that's only because of silverware. Items are less of a deal if you have intricate room descriptions, because players will find items where you have not listed them. The lack of both however just leaves me with very little to use. Also, just setting a key in the middle of the floor... really? Or hiding it in the single lone item in one of the nigh on empty rooms? You did this TWICE in the opening of the Training Hall stuff. Key cards just sitting out with only two pms away from getting them. "I sneak around the room to it" "I rip open the dummy with my bare hands." Then the pm to pick it up. Why? You might as well have just left the doors unlocked. This all comes back around to what is the game attempting. This game is a game about assassinating the other players. You had already provided a motive for players to try and kill one another, baiting them with a key in the open doesn't encourage assassination. It encourages people to just attack out of rage and not actually make an interesting plan for murder. So I want items to do that. I have walked up behind people and stabbed, smashed, slashed, and all other things before. I don't care for only being provided the items to do that and nothing else. This game was supposed to be for pleasing murderers, but all I got were some bladed objects of varying length, an army of vases, and two bedsheets. Oh and alot of spoons and forks. Also, the "Various Items" idea where players can just get almost anything. This can be used but you shouldn't repeat it over and over again. Yes, it opens up murderers to pull any item out of a stack but you need more innovative people for that so you have to give at least some basis for what items are there. More in the room description to hint what is there. Various stacks only work if there are SO many items that would be too difficult to list out every item and its quantity in the thread. Various chemicals was also a not so good idea(And I should know! I did it in Emerald!), it didn't work in emerald and I don't think it works here.

No Murder Till Trial Room: Okay, yeah that makes sense. If we don't have a trial room its kind of awkward to commit murder and then have a trial. The idea isn't bad and I too have done things where murder is initially forbidden. The difference between mine and this is that I had a good reason and way to unlock murder was very simple. Simply entering the one room to get the first piece of your murder motive and it was timed anyway, if it took too long I unlocked murder regardless of who hadn't. You put the trial room behind three or four puzzles. Why? You advertised this to murderers and then you slap them in the face by telling them to solve your word games before you let them do what they came to do? Its the most notorious murderer of all this game. It killed joy. This is what I attribute the complete lack of participation in trials. The majority of your players signed up and got told that they had to compare some pictures, push some buttons, and then solve a word game before they could do what they came to do. That was when they closed out the tab and said they were done with it. If the game wasn't reliant on murder or we had to actually go looking for out motive it would be ok, but you gave us a murder goal right out the gate AND even complained that nobody was killing each other WHEN IT WAS FORBIDDEN. I lost all motivation to participate.

So much murder: So we are assassins. Right? That means will kill before the target can react? So are you telling me I see the person trying to kill me throws a knife at my neck and then I can't move so that it doesn't hit my neck? Do I not notice them drawing their weapons to prepare? Aiming the shot? Are we already trained assassins? I thought we were students so how can someone aim, draw, and throw a knife from a hidden place in a pinpoint accurate way with the speed that another person cannot dodge. If we are both trained, then why don't I notice it as a fellow assassin? It doesn't really work either way. If it was from behind then it happens. "You feel a sharp pain in the back of your neck, you perish." That is fine, but if you are going to tell me the name of my killer and tell me exactly how they kill me then you better explain how they did it in my vision without my getting any chance to react. Also you should almost NEVER tell someone who killed them. It takes ONE PLAYER who is pissed off and yells their killer's name in the main chat for things to go to hell. Much bigger games, with much more work put into them have been instantly destroyed by one such moment. The killer insta quits, since they are screwed anyway and everybody else ends up turned off and affected by the negative atmosphere. These moments are great moments to encourage more interesting planning in murder. You proverbially slap the killer in the face with "you draw your blade as you approach them and they react." You don't have to punish them heavily, just negate that murder attempt and make it obvious they did something foolish.

Color Cloaks: Did this even matter, like at all? Even the barest of SHSL style stuff at least defined personality. As far as I am aware we didn't even receive a cloak let alone a cloak of that color. Since you made it such a big deal we couldn't have any duplicates it seems like this should be important. Its a wasted opportunity if it isn't. Even if you just gave everyone a cloak of their color it would be cool as the cloak storage might actually matter, being able to secure a cloak not of our color. Seemed like a cool idea, but again, if you didn't actually have it for anything but identifying players, major wasted opportunity.

Murder Season or Puzzle Season?: I touch on this in almost every one of the above sections. You built the game in a way that does not support its initial description as a murder season. Why do puzzles involving finding a safe behind a painting or word games matter at all in a murder season. Yeah it gives non-murderers something to do but you had murder banned during both those puzzles. Rooms are lacking in terms of murder tools and are not descriptive. Having descriptive rooms threads lets murders be inventive. Don't have string as an item? Oh look there are curtains, I can cut that up into threads. Need something to hold the door closed while you commit that murder? Break that chair down and make a door stop. Need a shield? Perhaps the door of a cabinet would be useful. Need flammable things to help burn the corpse? Maybe the grass in an outdoor section or garden would be useful. A good murderer will make the tools you don't give them. Plus it adds alot to the detective side as they have to discover items that are not blatantly changed in the items, but rather subtle changes in the room description, like something suddenly being frayed. Yet your super empty rooms fail to provide many options for such actions and offer even fewer places to hide things like bloody weapons or clothes. You made design choices the befit a puzzle game, but at the same time you didn't build your map to support either of the two. Your map is kind of a string of puzzles and murderers have limited options to work with. Remember in a game where you need two murders to win and with multiple players you should expect between 4-5 legitimate murder plans. You need to build the season up so that you don't have the same exact plan for two different people being a common occurrence. This issue again demotivates people when the murders aren't interesting and everything else is a puzzle.

Map Layout: Moving a step up and away from the room threads. The overall map layout, and no I don't mean having two kitchens or an east or west section. This map layout is about straight lines. During murder players must move around the map undetected or they may immediately end up discovered and convicted. This means being able to avoid high activity areas and sneak around. Its hard to sneak around people when the only way from Point A to Point B is a straight line and no other route exists. This is the case in Pledge. To get from ANY room to any other room, only one route exists. This means that unless I warp I can effectively be stopped by a single player standing in a hallway. This is a really common issue, but most people don't really realize it. In a murder game the premise of alternate routes, escape paths, and such are very interesting to the story of things, but with single paths you end up with murders that involve very little movement and it further reduces the topics of debate in trial. This is probably a slightly larger issue with the shorter sessions since murdering during those periods is much harder as activity is more concentrated, instead of having people just be around for parts of a longer session. This isn't a necessary requirement to make a game good, but I think its important to consider in games where you want really interesting murders. So perhaps a little bit more interconnecting hallways and ways to navigate the map would help with murder. You layout is in the Dangan Ronpa Floor format. That is, each section of the game is one floor and there is a single path between each floor. It works, but there are flaws with it if you want mobile murder cases.

The Murder Limit and Murder Reports: So, we had a murder with three dead and then a murder with two dead. I kind of expect the additional victims in the first to be due to people walking in on the crime and I want to point out that there should be a murder limit. I should require this in the base rules, but I don't mention it as far as I remember. Killing random witnesses isn't a good thing in a murder game as it rapidly shrinks the active player base(cause a moving around active player gets killed) and its a sign of poor planning on the murderer's part. It just adds another corpse to the scene and breaks the murderer's original plan. Assuming the culprit is screwed by this then they get caught in trial and executed. Obviously this didn't happen in the game but its not cool for the murderer to try and get away with poor planning by just killing more people. Again, game about assassinating, not massacre so try and push that theme instead of mindless murder. Farther onto this, your murder reports are really lackluster. The names and supposed cause of death, but you should include really obvious information like wound placement. Just saying Blood loss for four people is a really big slap in the face to everyone who just glances at the report cause they are MIA during investigation since they know literally nothing. I think you can improve this by adding the information one would get from a basic examination, such as the person have multiple cut wounds in X locations and no obvious poison indicators. On the flip side you need to make a murder report for each dead persons. You can make a single trial for multiple deaths in a single period, but please separate out the reports between victims. Saying there were two victims and then saying the cause of death was blood loss and decapitation, I don't know if they both suffered from both those, or if one suffered from one and the other the other or any combination there of. Even if its obvious to you, it isn't necessarily to anyone else and the first time your sense of logic and immediate understanding conflicts with a player who has been solving a trial under an entirely different premise you will earn that player's hatred. Trust me, players HOLD GRUDGES against masterminds. You can't make everybody happy, but you can make information clear in its delivery so no one can complain about it being "debatable."

SPECIAL SECTION: MASTERMIND REVIEW: Mastermind Jay

Reviewing you as a mastermind real quickly. You excelled in a number of things as a mastermind, but had some issues with others. You had the map constructed prior to the game beginning, very minimal issues here. There were some small typoes along the lines of you copy pasting some lines to make similar rooms(East and West tower Connectors) and forgetting to edit what you copied resulting in a west tower connector that went to the "east" tower. Not a big deal, we all make those kind of errors. Scheduling you were fantastic. You set a schedule and you stuck to it. Almost every single session you started the exact minute you said you would and paused the instant you reached the scheduled end. In terms of general hosting capabilities you seem to have done fine under pressure. As far as I am aware there were not excess missed pms and you kept your respond time down to a reasonable level. There was never extreme activity as I am aware besides the starting day, so I can't for sure say you could manage a larger crowd, but within reason you can manage a medium number. What I am going to get you on is your ability to monitor the map. I caught a player warping by going through security logs, but they had been warping SINCE THE SECOND DAY OF THE GAME and the game had been going for 10 days by that point. In addition this player was a murderer and you are EXPECTED to make sure the murderer of all people isn't cheating. You HAVE to be monitoring players who are performing large scale actions. I get being busy with other players, but you need a tab open and following people pming you BIG actions like murder and fights so you can be checking and verifying people are where they say they are. If they had just been doing it for one session I could see it as a one time thing, but they did it for NINE DAYS before I caught them. You have to find the time while hosting to open another tab and track those players in murderous acts, even if it slows down how fast you respond slightly, it is more important to be tracking those people and making sure all is as described or you have impossible trials because the murder was impossible without warping. Editing threads and such you seemed to be keeping up with for the most part. From your pms with me I noticed about a 5-7 minute gap between you oking one of my actions or alerting me to an event and then the change appearing on the forum. This is within reason, although making it shorter would be better. As a review, ignoring the content of the season and merely your ability, you pass in terms of hosting ability but obviously there is room for improvement. Your mastermind file has some things I believe you should edit. If you plan to have long drawn out sections before allowing murder, you need to get rid of that no patience trait as it implies you get your games going rapidly, when in AP you most certainly did not. The other traits are fine. I would reduce your murder difficult significantly as you allowed people to essentially just walk up to a player and kill them without any prior prep. I see no reason to adjust they mystery difficulty number as you mostly just did a string of puzzles and that number can vary depending on the puzzle. I think you are fine to host a 2 star season. Most of the flaws in this season can be corrected once you become aware of them and since this is your first game I expect flaws. I may play a more administrative monitoring role when the time comes however. If you want to become a 2 Star Mastermind, please PM me on skype and we can discuss the exact situations.

PS: I disagree with how you handle murder pms and such, but I disagree with everyone who isn't me on how to handle murders so its fine....I guess. I personally think you are too nice to the culprit when you are trying to pick the most skilled assassin and the killer is essentially just pming you "I throw a knife at his throat."


Final Summary: If I had to describe this season in a single word, the word would be this. Lackluster. Yeah, its a season, it follows all the rules and has all the requirements, but it doesn't have anything that was really good. Pretty much everything was at the barest minimum required. Minimalist room descriptions. Minimalist items laying around. Minimalist characters. Everybody went in with the sole difference being our color which didn't have any impact at all. I never felt hooked into the season. I spawned in and went through a couple rooms, got told I couldn't do what I came to do, not that I could find any real murder weapons anyway, and then got hit with a word puzzle that seemed to have no relation at all to the game itself. The puzzle may have been difficult, but it was boring since it was "just a play on words" or so we imagined. Everything was weak, minimal, lackluster and I never got enveloped in the dream. Where can you improve? Everywhere. There is nothing in this game that I feel is at a point where it cannot be improved simply by effort. More time spent laying out items, more imagination setting up rooms. This game needed more of everything to be good. I did not enjoy myself and based on the rapid decline in activity as days progressed I expect a number of other people felt the same. This season wasn't a good season, but it wasn't a BAD season. As far as I am aware nothing was broken to the point of players raqequiting, but there wasn't anything great either. Nothing outstanding in either direction, lackluster. Your hosting times obviously caused some people participation problems which cemented in people afking, but in terms of review it has no real impact on the creation. That is all I have to say on Assassin's Pledge.