Durnic
Knight
Greetings Broken Shards players,
The Plot team just finished our first meeting after the second event and we spent a lot of time combing through the feedback. We all know how brutal that last event was and we would be lying if we didn't say that the feedback was pretty much exactly what we were expecting -- some fights and mods were overstated which resulted in the final death toll of 20 resurrections, with some of you traveling through the Circle more than once. We know this, and we know that you all know this but we thought it was important that we made an announcement about it and explain some reasoning.
Firstly, we wanted to mention that we are absolutely humbled by your responses. While the vast majority of you mentioned that the game felt difficult and overstated, not a single one of you were rude or malicious in your responses. There wasn't a single piece of anonymous feedback given, which just goes to show that you trust us as a plot team and as a game to act on your feedback. Thank you. We really hope that in the future we can continue to earn your trust.
Part of the stating problem comes from the fact that we, Alliance Oregon, are doing something truly amazing with Broken Shards that no one else has done in the history of Alliance LARP -- we are running a low-level 2.0 game. There are other chapters that are level capped, yes, but the next closest one is Denver which, at last recollection, is capped at level 27; hardly a low level chapter any longer. You should all be very proud of what we are doing here since it has, quite literally, never been done before.
With that information, even those of us in the playership or on Plot who have played in low level older Alliance or NERO games still cannot fully rely on that experience to help guide us. An example is where the Lieutenants were all swinging for 8s -- we honestly thought that some of the healers would be memorizing Weaknesses and we would be swinging for 3s for a large duration of the Saturday night fight. However, in actuality, the healers were memorizing, well, healing (imagine that), so those spells only came into play once or twice. This is obviously not the only issues with the stating of that fight, and we will be reexamining stating across the board, but I wanted to bring it up as an example of how the playership has subverted our expectations.
As Plot, we do not talk about a "target" or any such thing about how many people we "want" to rez. That just isn't a thing. We do not have a goal to kill anyone, our goal is to make an immersive and fun world to LARP in while having appropriate rewards and consequences for player actions. Deaths will happen, and they will happen at a higher frequency in the Broken Shards because of the amount of resources available to the players, that's a given. We won't pull punches when they are warranted, but killing players is not a targeted narrative choice we are making at any point in the event design process. The 20 resurrections that occurred were partially player choices, partially related to player resources and partially due to overstating.
I will reiterate how incredibly humbled the entire Plot team is by the responses to the last event and our mistakes. It brings warmth to my heart to see the entire playership take one so solidly on the chin and not only get back up and brush themselves off but to smile through bloodied teeth and say, "I can't wait for the next event".
It is truly an honor to play with each and every one of you and I hope that we can continue to learn and prove ourselves to you in the future. We cannot thank you enough for you attitude and the trust you have put in us.
Sincerely,
Broken Shards Plot
The Plot team just finished our first meeting after the second event and we spent a lot of time combing through the feedback. We all know how brutal that last event was and we would be lying if we didn't say that the feedback was pretty much exactly what we were expecting -- some fights and mods were overstated which resulted in the final death toll of 20 resurrections, with some of you traveling through the Circle more than once. We know this, and we know that you all know this but we thought it was important that we made an announcement about it and explain some reasoning.
Firstly, we wanted to mention that we are absolutely humbled by your responses. While the vast majority of you mentioned that the game felt difficult and overstated, not a single one of you were rude or malicious in your responses. There wasn't a single piece of anonymous feedback given, which just goes to show that you trust us as a plot team and as a game to act on your feedback. Thank you. We really hope that in the future we can continue to earn your trust.
Part of the stating problem comes from the fact that we, Alliance Oregon, are doing something truly amazing with Broken Shards that no one else has done in the history of Alliance LARP -- we are running a low-level 2.0 game. There are other chapters that are level capped, yes, but the next closest one is Denver which, at last recollection, is capped at level 27; hardly a low level chapter any longer. You should all be very proud of what we are doing here since it has, quite literally, never been done before.
With that information, even those of us in the playership or on Plot who have played in low level older Alliance or NERO games still cannot fully rely on that experience to help guide us. An example is where the Lieutenants were all swinging for 8s -- we honestly thought that some of the healers would be memorizing Weaknesses and we would be swinging for 3s for a large duration of the Saturday night fight. However, in actuality, the healers were memorizing, well, healing (imagine that), so those spells only came into play once or twice. This is obviously not the only issues with the stating of that fight, and we will be reexamining stating across the board, but I wanted to bring it up as an example of how the playership has subverted our expectations.
As Plot, we do not talk about a "target" or any such thing about how many people we "want" to rez. That just isn't a thing. We do not have a goal to kill anyone, our goal is to make an immersive and fun world to LARP in while having appropriate rewards and consequences for player actions. Deaths will happen, and they will happen at a higher frequency in the Broken Shards because of the amount of resources available to the players, that's a given. We won't pull punches when they are warranted, but killing players is not a targeted narrative choice we are making at any point in the event design process. The 20 resurrections that occurred were partially player choices, partially related to player resources and partially due to overstating.
I will reiterate how incredibly humbled the entire Plot team is by the responses to the last event and our mistakes. It brings warmth to my heart to see the entire playership take one so solidly on the chin and not only get back up and brush themselves off but to smile through bloodied teeth and say, "I can't wait for the next event".
It is truly an honor to play with each and every one of you and I hope that we can continue to learn and prove ourselves to you in the future. We cannot thank you enough for you attitude and the trust you have put in us.
Sincerely,
Broken Shards Plot