Season Azure Amaranth Feedback

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

Season Azure Amaranth Feedback


Yo, post your feedback for SAA here. This was a very depressing game, but I hope some of you had fun exploring its mysteries and darkness even if we all died. Sorry if I made yall sad. Go ahead and tell me what you think was good or bad and why.


Yes, Inspiration is bad. I know.

[King V]

Inspiration - Influenced people to be in-character, but with the whole points aspect, micromanaging, and being unclear how to get points, this mechanic wasn't worth it. I also personally dislike this because getting in-character made me miss many important plot points.

The Mystery - Overall plot and plot progression

First let me just say, the overall mystery had a TON of missing information. There was very little explanation on the setting, or the reason behind the game, which only made it that much harder to grasp just what was going on. There was no information on Corruption, or any indication of it other than the meter increasing or decreasing. If there had been visible signs of it within the game on what it was affecting, it would have been much more apparent what was important or not. I understand this was done to make the game more difficult, and I do feel the mystery was still solvable, but this also brings me to my next point.

The progression and pacing of this game was absolutely horrible. Around 80% of the plot information was unlocked in the last 1-2 hours of the game, and at that point, even if you could put everything together, it still wouldn't be enough to stop the game from ending. Having floors unlock due to corruption is an interesting concept, but it makes the game's progression completely skewed. Realizing what corruption was, and how to affect it was made to be at the end of the game, when the effects of corruption would already become irreversible. The only way to achieve a proper plot progression would be if everyone collectively decided to lower a number which they were only given a very vague explanation of, and this in itself had flaws because the plot that made one realize what corruption did increased the corruption count itself. Due to how the progression in this game worked, missing the last 1-2 hours of the game meant I missed around 80% of the important information in the game. There wasn't any warning given either to which session would be the last one. I feel like this game was made to be lost, unless the 1 in 1000 scenario of everyone working together to stop the corruption happened, which clearly it would not.

Chosen One Syndrome: The Corruption - I feel like this mechanic is extremely sketchy. Accumulating corruption gives you more plot information in the form of Azure Fragments. The problem with this is, due to the vagueness of how corruption works, not everyone will get these fragments. Some people will, purely by chance, obtain a fragment, and then they'll have an idea of how to gain more corruption and get more fragments. This just leads to a cycle of a few people being in the lead of corruption and gaining more corruption and more plot information. Everyone else is isolated because they have no idea how to increase or decrease corruption, and they have no idea gaining corruption gives them more information. Everyone who doesn't gain any corruption doesn't know how it works because the information relating the corruption is in the corruption itself. Add onto this that the game ends if there is too much corruption, so gaining more corruption and getting more plot leads to a bad end. There is also no reward or even indication of lowering corruption, so people who lower the corruption count won't have any idea of how they're doing it or what it causes. This just causes the corruption to increase and consolidates the plot information gained from it to a few specific people, which is exactly what I see in the corruption count at the end of the game. Other than the corruption meter, and flashbacks for the few players who gained corruption, there was nothing to indicate that corruption actually had an effect on the game. No distorting scenery, destruction, or anything like that. It just felt like a side mechanic, and for something so important to the game, I expected more actual in-game indications of what corruption was doing.

The truly terrible part about this mechanic though, is that to those who don't accumulate corruption, it doesn't feel like you're doing anything. It doesn't feel like you're contributing at all, or getting anywhere with the plot. It always feels like you're behind, and you have no idea how to get ahead because you have no idea how the corruption works. For someone who never gained any corruption like myself, I felt like I was missing a ton of context, which, as it turns out, I would have to randomly perform actions until I found one that increased corruption, then begin to figure out how corruption works.

Murders/Trials - Once again, these took a backseat to the game. Having a very vague feeling of corruption, and only a few people who knew what increased and decreased it made people very hesitant to murder in fear of increasing the corruption count and ending the game instantly. The premise was also not very good, with the assumption of 1 hunter and 1 yoloer, there was no benefit to murdering unless you were the hunter and you killed the yoloer. Given, everyone except the yoloer were hunters, but there was also no indication as to who the yoloer was. Maybe if there had been some subtle hints about the setting that made people realize who the yoloer was, people would have been more willing to murder. But with the given amount of information and the vagueness of corruption de-incentivizing people, murder just wasn't worth it. I personally found this very disappointing, since I was ready to do some red/blue theory battles, but as it turns out everyone was too unmotivated by corruption to murder, and the 1 trial we did have ended instantly due to witnesses.

Overall - The game suffered from poor progression, vague information about the most important things to the game, and skewed plot differences between players. The only real upsides I can think of are that the atmosphere of the game was a nice addition to the plot, and that getting memories from touching things was a cool concept. Gameplay-wise though, this was a total flop for me.

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

Alright. Normally I don't defend myself here. But this time I actually will, mostly because I feel alot of your points Sea are due to you never actually doing anything. You played for all of a session and a half, and did a few things. You ate food, you randomly assaulted Flynn which you expected to win after charging at him loudly with a shovel. Then you tried to open the doors and on the way, discovered touching the gray bodies. You never interacted with the shards, you never tried to interact with people beyond a "Where is Vernika." I get it, you wanted to be in character to earn inspiration. But please don't be blinded by the fact that inspiration caused you to miss all the plot and all the hints, cause its hard for me to sit here, read this feedback and go "yeah I actually did have those things you said I should have had." You can tell me your overall feelings yes, but don't try to cite the mechanics you never even experienced and tell me they are bad. That is the same as you writing a mechanic, showing it to me and me telling you its bad without ever actually trying it.

The Mystery:
A.I personally like this method of storytelling over the plot doc dump, but that is my personal preference. You don't like it so I can't really debate it.
B. Yes, the majority of the map was unlocked in a final rush, but that was because corruption sealed pathways. It takes significantly less corruption up to open a gate than corruption reduction to open a gate. When we had the sudden surge of corruption at the end areas started unlocking, which caused a slippery slope of more people running into these areas and generating corruption. If the corruption had been going down as it had been earlier then the areas open up at a much more reasonable pace. Mad men do tend to have their thoughts go quite quickly.
C. Perhaps I wasn't clear on corruption Sunrise. If the mastermind's corruption hits 0, that is the mystery win. And don't say you didn't know they existed, Inspiration was meant to encourage making decisions IC but I wasn't punishing anyone for some OOC things that weren't Inspiration. Yes Inspiration was bad and not a great mechanic this time, but don't cite it as an excuse for never trying anything.

Corruption:
A. The Shards of Memory of findable and have contents that are fairly similar to the Azure Fragments plot. They only really differentiate at the end where shards tell you who the doctor is and fragments tell you what this place is.
B. Corruption did have an effect in game. The trial room dome had blue cracks all around that spread and fell back with increasing and decreasing corruption. Examining things while the corruption was high resulted in seeing the world itself slightly shattered. There were ALOT of these things that you missed cause you only ever attended 1 and a half sessions. The corruption also influenced the state of the mastermind. If it went down the mastermind was more sane and actually showed their human form at the lowest levels. I can't accept you accusation of corruption being poor for those reasons as you simply never experienced them.
C. Yes, you didn't feel like you were doing anything, but are you doing anything when you just read X plot documents? Not really. If you didn't like it I can't really deny you that so I won't debate it any more.

Murder/Trials:
A. Ok, you said no hints to the YOLOer when in reality you ran into one of them. Flynn was stronger than you and stronger than everyone. I thought I made it clear he was ridiculously strong. You just yelled OP INSPIRATION and left. Also, your lifes injuries were hints. If you kept an eye on them, only Flynn's ever healed.
B. Can't deny, people don't like to murder in my games. For more than just plot reasons. Yeah nobody murdered and when someone ended up dead it was cause a botched KO attempt.

[Ryohei Sasagawa[Hero]]

a Hero's Feedback
Inspiration - I will say this, the power system was a great innovation but it also was truly a mistake for this game for the what I believe was a game that had potential but was riddled with little mistakes that destroyed it. I believe I can only speak for my inspiration this game which basically involved keeping the peace and making a group of people to keep the peace. My abilities were involved in basically watching over everyone in my group of people(my familia) and calling them to battle if the need ever arose. This was actually my game the actual mystery remained a mystery but I will get to that later. This power system basically took people away from actually solving the overall mystery it was made to keep people in character and did as such because this was the only thing you knew when you got in the game, you actually felt something was happening when you got a point unlike the corruption meter which I will get to. This actually had no linkage to the overall plot at all it was just a tacked on side system to control power progression and depending on what your inspiration was it became harder or easier to fulfill. The main point is this system was a distraction but also kept people in the game as they had something to do even though they were doing nothing to affect the overall game.

The Mystery - Overall plot
This is what I come to these games for I seek to solve the mystery, I wish to connect all the pieces of the puzzle, collect all the plot and figure out the truth behind this world that I find myself in it is my main goal I care not for murder not one bit, in my opinion this mystery would have been fun to try and solve. Alas I did not find a single iota of plot so clearly I missed out on why I play these games in the first place. The flowers being a drug was a bit dark but made sense...I'd like to seriously be able to write more about this but as I said I found no plot in-game, it was only at the end did plot from square 1 to the big revelation be revealed to me as well as most people. New players who don't know any better or would just feel its the learning curve but this was my 6th or 7th game and thus all I felt was depressed.

Investigating
I need to make a specific section for this as it truly is a shame...I went room to room examining everything I seriously literally sent paragraph's asking to examine everything in the room the tiles, the wall even a random gray stain but alas nothing vital was given to me because this system wanted us to touch things to #investigate. Now this is my weak spot, I know this I have made it very clear that I suck at finding plot and thus kept on searching and searching for plot but not saying to touch anything it was at a loss cause in my opinion it was the biggest failing of the entire game. I would think asking to investigate something would count as touching it or better said I would think it needed not be so strick the need to say I wish to touch something. The first time at least for the first time Eclipse could have said "as you investigate so-so your palm grazes the top of the item and you receive the memories" maybe then this failing would not have been a failure but a masterful stroke of genius. I mean there was nothing to suggest the need to touch anything at all, it completely misses the standard concept of investigating from previous games which as I said before is perfectly legal as its a 3 star mastermind game but this design choice was its biggest failing as a game. This was probably why I spent the whole game gaining inspiration as I could not find any plot at all. I was there for most of the game save for 2 sessions that starting session and one of the 3 hour sessions.

Corruption Meter
I saw this as important thought that at least stopping Zagi from doing stuff was stopping this from going up but no this was only concerned with people getting away with murder, MM conversations and flowers. The thing that actually annoys me is that even getting the correct killer did not purge any corruption even if it was a really obvious trial corruption should still have been purged by getting the correct killer. Now someone argued why would she care if a few of us dies but that can also be said to why would corruption go up if someone gets away with murders as they said why would she care. This was important I could tell that much during game but I only found one flower. This was on the day I was searching the whole fort top to bottom, it seems like Eclipse was rather busy that day so when I left the room prematurely I got an earful for breaking an unwritten rule but besides that point. In leaving the flower alone and it disappeared I didn't think much of it because I thought it was a trap by the Mastermind, Florain. I mean she was playful so picking up a flower could mean death so there is the clicker I could say this assumption was stupid but I tend to tread carefully. I repeat I only found 1 flower the chance to find a flower was 1/5 chance if I recall correctly so trying to lower corruption was much much harder than raising corruption where you had to find bad memories or murder. This was actually a pretty cool mechanic but it being veiled in mystery on how it is affected left many players as sea said afraid to murder as such the only murder happened in a fight.

Trials
Now I mentioned this before but for such an intricate trial system that got no use besides that one time, it is hysterical by the way. That I say this again that finding the correct killer gave no purification of corruption...it is justice being sought it should do something. I guess it could be argued that getting no corruption by catching the killer is a win in itself but even -50 corruption would have been nice for all the time that could be wasted in the trial. Now to the meat of this the only trial was of sans heat of the moment murder of Zagi. It was quite simple not much awesomeness happened in the trial so that is all I can say the trial room seemed much more receptive then the overall map when it came to showing if we were solving the mystery in the trials case the mystery of the murder in the world maps case the mystery of the overall plot.

personal acknowledgement
I don't think if I had three more weeks I would have ever found any plot I was too used to the usual examine this, look through the drawers ,check the computers and basic investigation tack that I used from previous games to have ever realized that I needed to actually touch/interact with objects for plot. Even after being told that plot was ambient it never occurred to me that a slight change of approach would have given me what I wanted. That being said I have been in my fair share of games and know for one this one game has taken me on an emotional roller coaster and not the good kind. I still am in awe of the amount of time I invested in this game to find nothing, I mean being top in inspiration was nice as well as making my own mafia familia in game but it is not my main aim when I join a game.

Conclusion
This Murder Mystery Game could have been great, could have left everyone feeling like they tried their **** hardest to stop corruption but it wasn't enough I mean it caused me yesterday at the close to have a calm anger because I was more mad that I had spent so much time finding nothing then actually losing. It is the helplessness this game instills in its players, the complete lack of information, the investigation expectations that have made this game fade into obscurity as it could have been so much more but it's one saving grace was the inspiration system without it I would not have been able to stay in game, I would have been bored out of my mind nothing to do, finding nothing, to use an example I'd closed the game browser and go and played some minesweeper. Thus I must give this game a 6/10 if not for the supposed bad part of this game, inspiration, I probably would have rated it a 3/10.

[John Dark Souls]

『Okay, I guess its time for me to write up my feedback on the season too. But before I do, I should make few points clear: 1.From before the season even started I expected it to end in Bad End. 2.I chose a character that didn't care for winning the game at all and continuously RPed them without going OOC so I took 0 actions throughout the game that would lead me towards one of victory conditions on purpose. 3.I also didn't interact with anything plot related on purpose because you can guess how much Zagi cares about it. So, with all these 3 points taken in mind, I would say my feedback might just be a bit of looking from the side even though I actively participated in each game session except for after I died. Anyhow, gonna go from point to point as I think of them as I usually do.』

『"I AM ZAGI! HATE ME! FEAR ME! WORSHIP ME!"』
『I think this is the most important point I need to make, so I am listing it first. As I said already, I expected the game to end in Bad End and said so openly before it even started and so during the game I did not try winning the game at all. And I even ended up being murdered during my random actions too. But nevertheless, I really think that I am the one who enjoyed this season most. Of course, looking at it from opposite side, would make this statement: "In order to enjoy this season, you should've given up on winning and just enjoyed RPing or doing other random stuff." which might not even be entirely wrong. But, leaving that aside, personally, I think I am one of the reasons for game ending how it ended because what I did throughout the whole game was picking fights with everyone I saw. I think not a single day of the game passed without me picking a fight with somebody at least once. I caused many many fights thus I 1.Kept people busy from exploring and finding plot, figuring stuff, being concentrated and thinking on how to solve mystery instead of thinking of how to escape the hell away from Zagi. 2.I made Eclipse constantly have to do fights while other people that weren't participating (in most cases minority considering its me, but still) still continued exploring and sending inquiries to Eclipse. So, while game was certainly difficult to win, I am proud to say that I surely made it even more difficult to everyone in exchange for having as much fun as I did with the game. So blame me too for the bad end even though corruption I got was meager 10 and considering that I healed 10 making it 0 change to corruption (if you exclude Sans killing me in fight I started, but I don't even blame him for reason explained later)』

『"Fate Hinges upon this Number." AKA Corruption』
『Just as Eclipse says on the Corruption page, whole game is literally controlled by the number that is the corruption. It is an invisible number that haunts all players and that all players should be conscious of in order to win. Just by the whole word Corruption, you can already guess that it isn't anything that is good for your health. And the fact that game already starts with a number higher than 0 implies lots of stuff. I instantly figured that getting number too high would trigger bad end and so kinda tried raising it up without ever doing anything OOC which ended up not affecting it in the slightest. But in any cases. The corruption instead being the corruption of MM's mind and whole place being inside of the mind, it made an interesting and unique mechanic. But, alas a broken one. Corruption started at 750 and if it reached 1000 it would be bad end and if mastermind's corruption which is the initial 750 but counted differently reached 0 it would be good end. To decrease MM's corruption, you literally just had to eat the flowers and then you would transfer her corruption to yourself. Flowers randomly popped as you examined stuff with certain chance. So as long as you figured out how it worked, you could just spam examining every room and eat all all all the flowers and then boom, even though total corruption would stay at 750, you would still manage to decrease MM's to 0 and thats happy end for you (but maybe not your sanity). But... That is... If you even figure out how that worked... And that is, if nobody else did anything at all while you were at it. There were millions of ways to increase corruption. Do the hangman guessing game (basically murder somebody) MM asked you for and you raise corruption depending on how brutal your murder is. Refuse to do murder and search for plot, find plot clue and then increase the corruption even more still. And I don't even remember what ways decreased it other than interacting with MM and some inspiration abilities... Our player base is basically split on: plot solvers, murderers and useless sheep if you ask me. First 2 which are most active are will raise corruption doing what they do best. Last 3rd will either fully afk or do nothing helpful which would just leave corruption as is. That combined with already high starting number, makes it extremely hard lowering corruption. What makes it even worse is the fact that Corruption number is... A COMPLETELY OOC SYSTEM! Our characters don't know of the number and any of it's changes. So for anybody acting IC, acting upon the number forces to people to break their character. There were also no immediate noticeable clues of corruption affecting the world. Yes, Eclipse just said that examining things would reveal changes done to them by corruption, but... WHY WOULD ANYONE EXAMINE SAME THING TWICE OR MORE TO SEE IF IT CHANGED BASED ON WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT IC?! And in the very end, this was but an in-game indicator. This was no explanation or no clue on how corruption is related to stuff unless you already knew the plot or somehow miraculously guessed plot. And that would still not tell you how to lower it anyway. I think the system could've been much better even if starting number was 500 OR plot didn't add to corruption(since it doesn't make sense that MM loses memories when you interact with them while memories still remain for other players to touch and interact as well) OR you could give out any kinds of clues at all about how to lower it... BUT! When you thought it couldn't get any worse! A final nail is struck into the coffin by next mechanic.』

『Roleplaying not just for fun - Inspiration』
『Inspiration is basically this game's power system and a main motivation for RPing. Doing what your character would do IC and acting IC will earn you IP-Inspiration Points which you would be able to use to unlock more powers. Thats what you would think it is and so you will try to RP as much as you can and then act disappointed why you didn't get any inspiration for that absolutely obvious little monologue you did to the wall or something. Inspiration has 2 triggers: 1 is doing just what your profile PM says you must need to do and second is doing something original IC that would amuse Eclipse greatly. (second might sound biased, but I truly think Eclipse wouldn't be amused that easily and theres no way he would be amused while you didn't if you did something like that that would earn IP to you) But, regardless of how it actually is, most players still turned the Inspiration system into the chains for themselves forcing them to Roleplay as a character that they chose that didn't fit the role they wanted to play in the game. Tbh, I think: "You reap what you sow." Don't pick a character that would limit your actions if you stay IC as them and blame the system made to award you for RPing and not force you to do it for it. Blame yourself for not thinking it through and choosing better character. But still, that doesn't change the fact that this system is acting in negative way on the game. It makes you want to act IC. But that is exactly what makes you reluctant to act on an OOC thing that is the corruption meter and examining things in unusual ways needed for finding plot clues or examining things multiple times to see how corruption affects the world. I think that combination of this system along with kinda already not so well executed Corruption is what enforced the Bad End on the game. But personally, I liked Inspiration System, though I was about to abused the hell out of it to get op amount of IP after I revived if game didn't end because I earned inspiration by executing revenge on anyone who has done stuff to me and I purposefully lost fights to almost all active players and then make you all never walk this earth again.』

『NO DOCUMENTS EVER! or How to get plot』
『The game had a very unique plot docs. And by that I mean only 2 written docs in whole game and others being flashbacks from interacting with Mastermind's memory. Which made much more sense considering the game is set within a young girl's mind. BECAUSE OF COURSE EVERY YOUNG GIRL WOULD REMEMBER BIG LONG COMPLICATED DOCUMENTS WORD BY WORD, RIGHT?! Just touch an object related to memory, and boom, chains of memories act and you get a flashback from the senses and memories of the mastermind. I liked how this was done, and it was very easy to learn how it works after you do it at least once. And if you don't. I blame you for being weird and not trying to touch an obviously wrong blue liquid on an operation table or a shining azure hospital sign that was even colored in blue on the item list with only a sign "LOOK! THIS IS SUSPICIOUS!" being leftout (but placing 2 signs near each other isn't fun) in the game where Azure is obviously the signature color meaning its something important. Didn't touch the signboard so not sure if it was a trigger though because it was all shattered from what I think was corruption and I thought I might cut myself or something with flying shards. Be it this or Emerald complicated pic docs and reports, I really like what you are doing with plot! o/』

『YOUR FATE ALSO HINGES ON A COIN FLIP AND DICE ROLL! AKA Awkard fighting system』
『If you roll heads, you kill the person, if you roll tails, you KO them. This is something I faced when KOing Giotto when I was fine with killing him and something I was murdered with when Sans wanted to just KO and pacify me. I'll just say it outright: I hate this system, can you stahp pls? Apparently I'm a skilled assassin skilled even after amnesia yet still its completely up to luck whether I KO or kill somebody when I want to KO them and murder them in a specific way. I know you say that you are unforgiving to murderers, but is forcing RNG into people's method and forcing them to commit sloppy murders because of luck screwing them up the way that you do it with? If so, I would also like you to stop that either. Not to mention when your opponent can open their mouth and scream out "COME TO MY AID, ELEVATOR!" while you are in the middle of swing of pebble sack to their head. What would you have done if I actually got screwed up by RNG and murdered him? Let those 3 people come in, witness my murder and then execute me in trial just like that. Would that even achieve anything or let anyone have fun? Would Hero wasting IP on something like that have fun? Would people who won't have to solve trial but nevertheless have to go through trial theory system where they just need to say Zagi killed Giotto have fun? Would you have fun having to deal with trials like that? Pretty sure nobody will. Don't misunderstand me though, I don't mind Sans murdering me. But the reason for that being him trying to KO me but being screwed by luck is what I hate. Just justify it with him hitting my Life's Injury with the spade if you think I should die and have Sans regret not thinking his action through and being executed because of it. Don't make it "Welp, RNG screwed me up, ah well, whatever, just execute me and lets move on". Moving on. In first fights I caused, fights were all fine and fair. But that last elevator fight was... What the hell was it? Turn-based? First turn I and Nami move and then second Sans and Joseph move? When all are against me? Sorry, but this isn't an RPG, fights don't work like that. I know you are doing lots of this stuff based on D&D systems but this isn't D&D, its MMG.』

『Map』
『Map was simple and clean and very fitting to the setting. It also worked like one giant clue to the plot so it was very nice. Felt very small after all the big-mapped seasons but that might have just been because of getting too used to big ones. Otherwise, very nice.』

『Trials』
『I wouldn't call that disappointment a trial even in my sleep, so lets just assume we never got to witness the Red and Blue truth mechanic just like that one mechanic in Season Tertiary Fusion.』

『YOLO and Hunter』
『I think that clues were more than given out. But, I want to correct you again Eclipse. You are saying that you could guess Flynn was YOLOer because his injury healed, but in the first place, that is an OOC motive since we don't know each other's injuries unless some people mentioned them in the Pre-game or in random talks. But what silly person would just go and reveal their weakspot in a murder game? And for me personally, Zagi slept through more than half of convos and then just not listened to the remaining ones so that ruled out even that possibility. But I was able to notice that Flynn was a special role thinking he was the Hunter. And after I revived knowing that I am not the YOLO, I planned to go kill him to see what happens if non-hunter killed Hunter so I might just have cleared game via YOLO murder if game went on. So I think this mechanic was done well enough.』

『Overall impression:』
『All things considered, I still had great fun in the game and enjoyed it very much! I might've ranted a lot on mechanics but since Zagi pretty much ignored all of them to do his usual Zagi stuff, I still had fun. I might have had less if I chose a different character, but if I did, a game might've stirred in a completely different direction too so who actually knows.』

『P.S.I think this game suffered from what Zircon suffered: Incompatible mechanics. Zircon was a season with guns to shoot each other but motive and Redemption threat acting as a hard wall and here we have Corruption - the most important part of the game that is discouraged by Inspiration and IC because the meter itself is OOC.』

[Ravan]

I'll throw my feedback out afterwards, I have slave labour work tomorrow at an ungodly hour, so I'm off to bed now. I'd like to say that a lot of the complaints feel really weird personally, as almost all of this could have been doable by anybody, and a number of the issues a few of you guys had were self-imposed restrictions you placed upon yourselves for the sake of being more in character, which isn't entirely wrong, but you can't blame the host for those restrictions. It'd be like deciding to play an RPG with only your initial equipment and complaining about the difficulty, or something akin to that. I guess this post comes off as rude and I'm sorry if you feel offended, but when somebody as incompetent as myself gets this stuff, I really don't see how you guys don't get it.

[King V]

Most of my complaints are from only getting to play for 1.5 sessions, but I only really missed 2 hours of the game. I missed all of the plot contained in the Shards of Memory, sure, but you have to realize that 5/6 of those shards were only available in the last 2 hours of the game. I had actually found several of them and was planning to investigate them when the game began again. Except the game simply ended without warning.

Those last 2 hours held 80% of the weight of the game, and it wasn't even like a proper endgame where the players are given warning that the game might end in the next session. And this progression problem can only be chalked up to the Corruption mechanic.

Corruption had an effect on the game, but I didn't notice it because I was absent. This can be taken another way, because Corruption was hovering at around 750-800 for the entire game until the final segment, the changes simply weren't there. So basically we had little more than "Corruption is important" to go on until Corruption reached the levels which would kill us. Starting the meter at 750, then having visible changes only when it reached around 900, when everyone touching all of the shards would basically destroy the game, is not good progression. Having the meter behave like this makes it seem like the game was made to end badly, with a very slim chance that someone would actually win, something that was condoned in previous games. This also ties into "information relating to corruption increases corruption" because as far as I can see, there were no individual indications to lowering corruption, only Azure Fragments being indications to when corruption increased.

Finally, inspiration. The whole problem with inspiration is that it basically gives you 2 options, act IC, or act OOC. I see a lot of arguments that "you're putting unnecessary restrictions on yourself", and "acting IC isn't an excuse for missing important plot points", but think about this from a player's point of view. The player has been acting IC the entire time and is presented with a hint that prompts them to act OOC. You can either break your IC acting to act on the hint, or stay IC and ignore or try to work around the hint. And let me tell you, it feels bad to break IC acting when you've been doing it for the entire game. Switching between IC and OOC feels even worse because then you feel like you're only doing the IC acting for the inspiration points and nothing else. The effect that inspiration had on the game as a whole was restricting, with the exception of people who mostly ignored it and only acted IC when convenient for them.

I still stand by my original points. As a story, this game was nice, lots of neat interactions with the memories and a fitting atmosphere. But as a game, this game suffered from a lot of mechanics issues. I do feel like a lot of these points are emphasized from me missing the last 2 hours of the game, so I apologize about that, but I also feel they still exist and that the game could have been a lot better mechanically.

PS - I searched around 20 rooms and found 0 flowers. Thanks RNG.

[John Dark Souls]

『I want to counter you on one point Sea. Warnings have been given out probably even more than 2 hours before it. It was in the: "Corruption is at dangerous levels so game will end in bad end if you do nothing about it." But still a warning nonetheless and even one telling that people are doing stuff wrong. If at that moment people stopped doing what they were doing and suddenly decided to bring down corruption, game could've ended in happy end but I guess we both know that wasn't possible at that point considering our situation that we brought upon ourselves in the end』

『Tbh, the whole corruption being OOC isn't even inspiration's fault entirely. Even if there was no Inspiration, people who like to RP heavily would still encounter the problem. But Inspiration encouraged staying IC which made it that bad. And yes, I know that putting a "I AM INSANE TO THIS LEVEL!" meter inside someone's mind would just be wrong for obvious reasons, but it would've worked if there was something less obvious than meter but more obvious than random cracks appearing and stuffs shattering that wouldn't even be a noticed change unless people check something twice (since it could have been something that was supposed to be like that in the first place for all we know like how I assumed hospital sign being shattered originally).』

『Also, yeah, I totally forgot to mention my opinion on the story and plot:』

『"Everyone loves tragedies" or Game's Story』
『The game was basically a tragic tale of Florain. All plot documents were her memories which told you of it as you went through plot. And the fact that as you went through plot you only worsened her conditions were a great spice called irony which is needed in all tragedies. As somebody who really liked Bad Ends and tragedies, I think the game's story was fantastic and the game was basically done great as a story. In this case Florain losing her mind is the true end and any other end is extra and is made to be hard since its like trying to change the Fate that was pretty much predetermined. So from this point of view the game done greatly.』


『Also, as another note: while as I mentioned what was wrong about systems, I never once said it was impossible. Sure, it was insanely hard because of the lack of information, but I still think that with enough guessing from start to finish of the game and good luck (literally since flowers are RNG) it would have been possible to get good end. But hey, when Eclipse asked how difficult we wanted it to be from 1 to 20, who was it that replied 20 or even more, huh?』

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

The 1-20 question actually related to the chance of flowers appearing in examinations. I was using a 20 sided dice to check for flowers and in the end you found them on an 18,19, or 20. Unless you were ghost and your ability said your chance was doubled, in which case ghost found them on 15-20.

Flowers couldn't increase corruption as eating them shifted corruption from the mastermind to you. That is, the mastermind got -10 Corruption and you got +10 Corruption, resulting in a net change of 0 in global corruption. Taking the flowers caused a TEMPORARY decrease in corruption because you removed them from the mastermind but had not taken them into yourself. When the flowers all vanished at the start of sessions that meant you had absorbed those flowers. Same as eating flowers in the end, -10 to the mastermind and +10 to you. Destroying flowers could DECREASE corruption as that straight up removed them from the mastermind, but didn't take them into yourself. When a flower was destroyed the corruption went down 10 and nobody went up. Since more flowers could never increase the overall corruption, the more they showed up would mean one of two things.

A. More flowers are destroyed, resulting in more reduction in Corruption. Easier game to win as its harder to raise the corruption to counter that.
B. More flowers are consumed/taken, resulting in more players with high corruption, causing them to be more likely to achieve Sunset. Easier game to win as its more likely that players steal more of the masterminds corruption and end up being the most corrupted at the end.

I planned for it never to be more likely than a 50% chance, but when I asked the question and said it was serious I really was trying to be serious. A lot of people either thought I was joking or actually wanted 20, so I went with hard as crap to win since that was what I had been yelling when I first made it. I definitely agree I should have increased the opportunities for people to have learned how corruption worked in game. Maybe I could have been more proactive in what characters notice, but I tended to focus alot on telling people their injuries hurt when I probably could have been going, "The moon hasn't shifted in the sky for days, but its darker." That kind of global warning probably would have been a better way to hand out IC motives to work against corruption.

On a random side note. Yes Sova, I do the coin flip thing on head attacks IF the target has suffered from a previous head injury. I added that mechanic to all my games since around 3 quarters of the way through Blood Shift mostly to discourage people from KOing. During that time, Saku was rampant as were many others about just KOing people to search inventories, rob, and other nonsense. They did it on a, "I won't be friends with this guy anyway, he'll never know it was me anyway." While yes, dying cause you got KOed twice sucked, my goal was to scare off people who weren't set on murder but rather on just being mischievous. At the time I used the logic that most people are trying to KO on the "I hit him on the head to KO him" logic, but I felt that most people only differentiated that from a murder head attack by swapping KO for murder. How do these totally random characters know the exact amount of force to KO someone instead of kill them? So none of the characters would know what exactly was too much head damage for them to survive, meaning anyone who went for a KO had to be prepared to try to hide a murder. Specifically with the Sans incident he pmed me and I QUOTE "I swing my spade as hard as I can down on Zagi's head." Honestly what I should have done at that point in time was just killed you and skipped the coin flip. Intending to scare off Sans from the head attack, I asked him if he wanted to kill you and if not he would have to do the coin flip chance. If I had skipped the flip and just said, you kill him and had him regret it later then that situation would have been handled better. He attacked with his full force on your life's injury which in 95% circumstances kills whoever he hits. And as a last comment on that, yes you were a skilled assassin, that doesn't mean you know exactly how hard to hit a man of X size with a bag of an unknown quantity of rocks to not kill him. That was my logic behind those decisions, right or wrong at the time this is what I was thinking.

I handled that poorly and while I do agree RNG death is bad, I don't think I want to remove that mechanic because I don't want the solution for having long murder plans to be, I bash him over the head every 15 minutes so he doesn't wake up. Being able to always pull the perfect KO seems more like an ability than just something everyone can do. Maybe if the use of the KO goes down more I will toss out the coin chance(Saku isn't here anymore either so I guess its probably not anywhere as bad as I might feel it is) but for now its my Redemption threat for KOing everyone.