Season Quadric Induction: Feedback Thread

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

Post your feedback for Season Quadric Induction here!

I'll post mine below at well!

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

Eclipse's Quadric Induction Feedback

Alrighty! Time to write up another feedback post. Guess I'll open with the fact that I am obviously biased since I managed to win but I'll try to be as objective as I can. I really enjoyed QI and the moments I enjoyed far outweighed the times I was unhappy. Plus, I think most of my unhappy moments boiled down to one single point. Without further ado, lets jump to it.

The Fated, The Nothing, and Everybody else: Conduits/Traitors: I know this is gonna be a touchy topic and it relates to almost everything else since the season rotated quite a lot around it. Essentially the plot of the game shifted on the actions of two warring sides(later three with the God of Madness deciding he was done with out ****). There were two conduits for every side, excluding Rin the NPC Conduit for the "evil" team. The regular players were not allied with either side and instead had to make decisions as to what they believed as events unfolded. It seemed like a general swing that the majority would side with the "good" guys thus balancing out the existence of Rin. This creates a kind of awkward scenario of how the regular players can "win" since the plot is a conflict between two factions that they have nothing to do with. While I don't think that is an invalid objection, I felt the existence of the players wasn't unimportant to events. It never felt like the Fate or Nothing conduits were the sole factors determining the result of events. Yes, we had more direction than the others with our goals, but usually we had just as hard a time trying to figure out how to accomplish our goals. It created a more interesting player dynamic since both sides could argue with the neutral to try and get them to work with them. It helped the plot and really pushed the players interacting with one another. I had some of the most fun when I was talking with Sova as Girl A when trying to sell my ideology and defend my actions from the more idealist Girl A. I got shocked when I learned Makoto as Emil wasn't a Conduit and was actually just a regular person who wanted the same things I did. The Traitor experience in this game was a blast and I feel it really added to the experience. For regular players it was more spice on the plot and a concrete target to attack or defend for the results they wanted.

The Grand Cranberry Scheme: The Plot: I had alot of fun with the story of QI. I think what makes the story so different is the game DOES NOT center itself on the existence of the players. Even the conduits are just pieces in a grand game being played. Nir wanted to kill Abelvion, Abelvion wanted the worlds to be righted, Xinei wanted the same, meanwhile Cranberry is scheming away. The conduits are just people pulled to specific sides of the conflict beforehand where as everyone else has to decide on the fly. Then, the existence of the players is a kind of coincidence that allows the gods to set their schemes in motion. This then leads to four worlds of everyone trying to figure out what they want and aiming to save or destroy the worlds which in turn affects the plot of the god's battle. There were two stories going on, that of the players and that of the gods. It was a really interesting spin on the standard formula of "HAHA WELCOME TO MY MURDER GAME FIND A WAY OUT!" We never really got a concrete player murder objective(Until Madness) which really set this as a plot game instead of a murder game. It was interesting and even as pawns, it was fun to see how our moves caused things to play out.

Important trials, all two of them: The Trials: So, I didn't remember that this was supposed to be a heavy trial season until we got a ways in and people started remarking about it. The trials were.... a mix? Some trials were just trials, simply and enjoyable. This would be the trial for the murder of Alice in blood shift. The S4 trials were... less interesting if only because I wasn't sure how to approach them. Later on when I learned that Kubota being caught and the curse disproven would destroy the world it seems way more enjoyable, since people had concrete objectives in the trial. Normally its, Trial, If you are the culprit try not to get caught if you are not the culprit try to catch the culprit. Since solving the trial wasn't the guarenteed good ending I feel people stepped back out of fear of helping the wrong side. I know I tried to help the killer cause I felt that was the "evil" thing to do when in reality it was the other way round. Good design once I understood later on, but when it happened I was confused and never really felt like I knew how to approach the S4 trials. Season Fate was the turning point. I went into the first trial with this expectation of what I needed to do, which was not let the culprit get caught. Problem was it was a plot trial and there was basically no way to get the culprit safe and away. Again, later on when I understood the design choice, I think it was the correct move to force the trial to end that way. Problem was it really sapped my desire to push trials since I knew at that point I could just get Plotted on and lose it despite my best efforts. Wasn't a part of the Afterlife Trial, but it seemed interesting enough. There was the player murder trial after that which was basically just filler but it worked. Final trial was more like an RP session than a final trial, but that was fine since it wasn't the QI final trial. Code M didn't have trials! Erika kind of replaced it, but that was more a 1 on 1 get away with it argument for killers. So less a point of enjoyment and more a bar of expectation to kill people. TF didn't have any real trials. Blood Confrontation wasn't a world for trials at all. Neither of those are bad, but it kind of matters a little since the finale is what it is. The Murder of Abelvion and his trial. This trial had everything it needed to succeed, a killer who wanted to get away with it, an interesting murder setup with the 6th world, and a perfect setup for a final Machinegun Talk Battle. None of that happened really since it turned more into an RP session than trial. I don't feel it took much away from the season, especially since 3 people were alive at that point. It felt like the game just couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a trial game or not. When it did it was really well setup and great once I understood. When it didn't I usually didn't feel like the lack of trials was a problem, but it was strange to just go from constant trials to the barren space that was Code M and TF and BC before the big ABELVION finale. Maybe something in TF and Code M just to keep things flowing better.

Permanent Death and No Trials: The Hub Area: So, I liked the whole we had one life in each of the worlds unless revival was in play, but it did feel like the hub area was really REALLY dangerous. Unlike the game revisits, there was NO TRIAL system in play for the hub area until the Abelvion Trial. This was.... awkward. Especially when we had Conduits of Madness go mad trying to kill everyone. It made the hub area this kind of no man's land that was just an unhappy place to be. I feel there needed to be SOME KIND of thing to discourage murder here. Which is weird, since murder didn't happen there until Madness came into play. So I am not sure if its necessary to add, but I was always on the brink of a heart attack while in the hub area since getting killed meant the end of the game for me. Normal of games, but kind of strange when we get back to the Trial heavy season thing. Its not a bad thing, just felt it was a strange point that didn't really mesh?

KILL EVERYONE: The Madness Objective: I like the God of Madness deciding he is done dealing with us. It fits the story and the nonsense it causes also was an interesting story aspect. It just feels random though with the finale being based on Nir vs. Abelvion. With everyone dying and killing it really detracted from the end game since so few people were there to experience it. The objective just suddenly made murder in the hub area a big goal and it basically destroyed the group experience for TF and BC and the Abelvion trial. Maybe you expected more survivors, but still. This objective dropped the player count SIGNIFICANTLY and the final stuff was less impactful with so few people. Again, alone, not a big deal and a cool plot point and challenge to overcome or complete. When meshed with the events after it, it just doesn't seem to quite fit?

Machi-Wait did this happen?: Machine Gun Talk Battle: We had like.... one of these? The afterlife Isumi vs. Kirigiri one I think. I like the mechanic! Thought I would have to use it to defend myself in the final trial and it kind of seems like it worked for the afterlife trial. Really can't say a whole lot about this since I wasn't directly part of one. I like it still? I feel like this a repeated Feedback section. Like I said this somewhere before.

A serious case of Deja Vu: The Season Revisits: I liked revisiting seasons. You replicated old events in a new light and it was fun to experience. They really help flesh out the story of the players competing with one another, but add very little to the story of the gods. Each world felt unique in its challenges and goals, which I enjoyed even if between them I was totally lost as to what to do. My only complaint is the revisit to TF, where I had nothing to do as a Conduit of Nothing. Perhaps give those people something more meaningful to do, like assist with the setup of the trap or just something simple. Sitting in a tree for four days of sessions wasn't terribly fun and I had no incentive to do anything but hide.  Besides that, worlds were fun and well done. I felt it was slightly harder than it probably should have been to find plot necessary to know what to do to destroy or save a world, but that might just be me.

Different flavors of logic: Colored Verbal Bullets: Eureka it works. Purple and blue or both fantastic, creating your own reds was great if awkward, and greens let you shut up stupid arguments. Eureka it works.

A Mishmash masterpiece?: The Big Picture: Looking back at this game, it doesn't feel like one game, but many combined into one with a giant plot. Heck, as I type this I realize. This feels like a friggin series of seasons compiled into a single one. New rules in each world, new objectives, even if the end goals were the same, how people got their changed every time they moved worlds. Powers even got adjusted when we made the jump from Fate to Code M. Each piece was fun, but when moving between them it felt disjointed, like the overarching plot didn't quite exist until later on. I felt like I had purpose the entire game because of my Conduit goal, but I can definitely understand people who had trouble moving from one piece of the puzzle to another since they seemed to be jumping from one story to another, instead of continuing their original story. But what I like the most about this game..... and I will be shot by people for this.....

You want to win? Make your own Ending: Multiple Endings and Extreme ending variety: The Conduits had their goals, but what I REALLY like was the way regular players could step up and if they decided to, just destroy the crap outta the "main" plot story. Madness players just blowing up everything with murder. It isn't easy in the slightest to kill everyone, but if you darn well decided you want to, then bam you can do it. If you wanted to gaiaphage it up, you could do that. And none of them were easy. I do feel that every game's goal needs to be for someone to win. Everyone losing is no fun. But this game set things on a path and if someone stood up, decided they were done with that path, and went at it with all they had, they could change the ending. Was kind of the whole theme of the season right? Will you follow the end result for the world or change it? How will you change it? This wasn't a game you could just float along till the end and figure out the mystery to win. This game belonged to the people who were willing to stand up and put their money where their mouth was. Makoto blew up a world basically on his own. Blood Shift hinged on the determined players fighting it out at the finale with all they had. Fate was carried by an afterlife trial of good guys(If carried somewhat by C being nice). Code M was saved by people getting serious and doing stuff, like me shooting myself in the foot by killing 3 people and getting away with it. I felt this was a game that rewarded hard work which is tough to do on a regular basis. If you wanted to win, you had to look for the plot, you had to follow the plot, and you had to act on your decisions. Even the conduits had to do this to some degree, figuring out the world end or world save routes.

That one thing I mentioned at the Beginning: Mastermind Player Disconnect: This isn't so much a problem with the game, but what I realized caused most of my unhappiness in game. This was when me and Sea thought we were on the same page, but we weren't. Me not being entirely sure what my powers did, Me not properly conveying to Sea my actions in the finale, Me misinterpreting the entirety of S4 assuming Noire had to survive since death was their fate, but in reality Noire was already dead. And this ISN'T a problem with one game. This is something I feel every mastermind struggles with on a day to day basis. I might make a special topics lecture about it and start a discussion on the best ways to fix it. This Disconnect is natural because I can't read Sea's mind and he can't read mine. But the fact that I bring this up as my main point of unhappiness, considering its an almost unremovable problem in games, should speak volumes about the quality of everything else. Everything else was fun.

Final Thoughts: I REALLY enjoyed QI, not as a murder mystery game, but as a Game with Murder and Mystery. If that makes sense. This game wasn't bound by the regular ideals of murder mystery. It was its own story and a fun one too that took what the other murder mystery games had and twisted them into its own narrative. Props C, you did it again. You make a lot of good games.

[John Dark Souls]

『Hmmmm... Lets see, lets see... Just from what am I supposed to start to start listing all these things and impressions about the game. Well, lets go with my usual what comes to mind first. Okay, gonna open with the most important thing.』


『The Style of the Game』
『I don't even have any other fitting word to describe it other than style. The game was just made completely different from your normal murder mystery games hosted here. Usually the games play out as a kinda mystery or murder or just battle action themed games with the main themes fully standing out and showing what game it is. Like for example S4 and TF (and most of Sea's other seasons) are all about mystery and plot but also with murder objectives, BloodShift and Season Fate (and most tier 1 seasons) are mostly about murder and winning although they still have plot trials in the end, and then there are random action and battle based seasons like Code: M and Season Dice(though it wasn't included in QI). But QI did something amazing and combined everything together with some ridiculous alchemy magic whatever and turned it into a single event and action-packed wild roller coaster ride towards that last part of the plot. The game didn't really require you to do any of the 3 above while also requiring you to do all of them and then some more. There was always action action action and each time it was something different. The season required you to really think out of the box and not just sheep around though I bet even sheeping would've net you some interesting moments if you just so happened to be at wrong place at wrong time which was basically everywhere most of the times. Let me go through other parts related to this to kinda explain.』


『Different roles』
『At start of the game there were just 3 roles. Conduits of Fate, Conduits of Nothingness and just your usual Ordinary Players. Conduits had some level of understanding of what was happening around and what they had to do at start + they got some fancy abilities stuff to help them in their cause, but the book you find like in very 2nd room of the game already explains that game will be all about saving or destroying worlds and how that happens. If you didn't understand from just the book, well, then RIP you. Its true that conduits kinda get the abilities that help figure out some of the details with how to approach the stuff while ordinary players might be a bit oblivious, but clues were scattered on the worlds and even outside them in intermediary area about what had to be done or prevented. At this point you might just kinda think like: "But obviously conduits have an advantage! They know how to win and they have powers just to do it!" BUT NOPE! The fact that you have a clear condition to win, means you have a clear condition to lose. The conduits just kinda had to be conduits and push their side towards victory if they wanted to win the game. And Ordinary Players could always choose whatever side or even betray that one and then side with the other whenever they wanted and still profit and survive and maybe win? That kind of freedom wasn't given to conduits unless they decide to abandon their goals for whatever reasons. But yeah, all in all, system itself was balanced, even if every ordinary player going "I want to be a villain!" or "I want to be a hero!" or one of the two roles being afk or lazy about their job could easily break the balance. Next point also somehow helps balance. And there were also more roles like conduit of Madness that you could get in Code: M which provided also other roles.』


『The variety of objectives and goals to destroy/save the worlds』
『It goes without saying that each world is based off different season and each season had different host, different style, different result. This made things that had to be done to save or destroy worlds different each time. And at some point in the game people who were trying to save the world were helping destroy it while people trying to destroy it were helping save it. Let me just give example: To save S4 you needed to make everyone believe the curse is going on, make them decide to lynch Zwolf and have him escape and then piss off Emil to make him burn down the mansion. To destroy S4 you needed to make everyone understand it was a murder, give out that kubota is alive and just break mystery and calm everyone down. To save Fate you had to solve them trials correctly and explain situation to Mystio and actually I'm not really even sure what. While to destroy I guess destroying both Wheel of Fortune and The World or murdering original players would've done the trick. For Code: M, to save it you had to make Erika go crazy and get afflicted with Madness with all the murders going on around everywhere while also letting her into the final trial room and providing her with aluminum so that she couldn't be exploded by her collar by Oliver. And to destroy Code: M, you had to give her aluminum super early and allow Erika to escape, not murder at all and not have her go crazy, or not allow her to enter the final trial room or just kill her permanently which was easier said than done. All this variety made every world visited unique and every journey it's own.』


『Conduit of Madness and Madness objective』
『When the game finally entered Code: M another God was introduced. The god was literally in all meanings unrelated to whole conflict of Nir vs Abelvion and whatever other gods involved. But do you think a god would be pleased when some other random god decides to destroy their world as part of some random conflict? Of course not. Mad Host was pissed. And so they just wanted to spoil plots of both gods and just murder everyone there was and stop the game. And so ordinary players who decided to enter the shrine despite of all the warnings about going insane received a new objective of murdering everyone including even themselves. Before that point there was never really a motive to killing anyone in Warp Gates. And there weren't even any IC sources stating that killing anyone at warp gates making them die for good. Meaning the global motive till then didn't quite exist unless war of the two different conduits. And it was introduced like right before the end. Making it an extremely difficult bonus murder objective. Well, it might sound kinda biased since I was basically the one afflicted and killed all but 2 other players (3 if you include Rin), but for a game that didn't quite had a murder or any danger like that it was a nice spice of letting a shark or two into the cage that was Warp Gates and show that worlds are really affected by what players are doing and that are outsiders who think ill of the whole game plot-wise. The fact that it only went into the play by the end also makes it much more fair since there wouldn't be any folk murdered on first day in the warp gates and who would be unable to participate till the end. And if you were active and fought back but still lost, well, you could've always been killed by any of the traitors thinking you are in the way too.』


『Trials and MTB』
『I loved the trials in the QI. But tbh, I never even once thought of QI as trial-heavy or trial-focused season after it started. To me it was all about events I get dragged in. But anyhow, I was involved first-face in most of the trials that happened except the first plot trial in BS that I missed while I was asleep. First was the Raiden murder in BS that honestly felt all but too easy and obvious. Then there was murder of Youmu that was done by Sova. And considering I was literally used as scapegoat to distract Shion and many other people by Sova who made them all attack me with a random frame and then did a murder during that time while I was unconscious. So since it was super obvious who done the murder to me, I decided to take it upon myself and MTB her. But then I got faced with having to point out exact points which made me run intensely all over the mansion until I met Kubota and went on a ride that kinda traumatized Girl A against Emil and his axe and I couldn't push the MTB through to conclusion. And then there was a Hagakure murder that Kirigiri, well, actually both Kirigiri and Sova were same person aka Rin, but anyway, from start until some time before murder I was always with her and did all kinds of RP and stuff together but then while I was away for a sec she goes and murders Hagakure who we both agreed on trying to save. I never activated the MTB there because I knew I didn't have enough evidence and I would be shot down since I couldn't investigate during trial. Thats kinda what I felt most bad about the system, I feel unless you investigated every single thing in details, popping MTB isn't just useless, but is actually detrimental since it is quite likely you might've missed just 1 little thing and culprit would use that against you to make it so nobody can vote them down again. In any case, the Isumi and Rin murders were fast and easy and refreshing but nothing to mention about them. And the final trial of QI just felt like a nice RP session. Well, the plot kinda made my head explode for some reason, but I guess it was just because I was super into it. And in the end I decided to just end it in a self-sacrifice kind of way because I just couldn't bring myself to vote Rin down. Otherwise, I was never bothered by presence or absence of the trials on any worlds. And it felt like they were where they were supposed to be and weren't where they weren't.』


『Lots of NPCs and RP opportunities』
『Each of the worlds had like 4 to 6 NPCs that not only you could interact with but who also interacted with themselves. This made the game worlds feel really alive and allowed for much better immersion. And I almost always had somebody I could RP with so it was amazing. Later on I even got an awesome voice in my head to further RP with o/ So yeah, very amazing indeed. Though it must've been really tiring moving all of those around especially since you didn't make any alters and used linking pics when moving NPCs instead. Much respect for how you managed to handle NPCs while also handling players.』


『Overall』
『Lets see... What else was there to mention... Not sure if I missed anything, if I did, remind me. Anyhow, overall, I think the season was definitely one of the best I played if not the best. And I had really lots of fun through all of it. And the ending was just the kind of ending I like for my chars, definitely deserving a mad girl who killed over half of the cast xD My only regrets are having no time to give stylish deaths to my victims and that I kinda wish I had a bit more opportunities to RP as mad Girl A~ In any case, the season was awesome, thanks for your hard work Sea. \o/』