State of the Game

[tabularasa_mods]

State of the Game As many of you have likely noticed, the game has seen a large number of drops in February and March. Tabula Rasa is a small game that is reliant on player submissions and character activity by design, so this has obviously had an impact on not only the remaining playerbase, but also on the game itself. Fewer characters and players in the game means less overall variety and activity in threads, and we also understand that seeing close CR drop can have a negative effect on morale. We as a mod team have felt this as well.

We are not planning to close the game. We want to reassure everyone that the current mod team is fine with running a smaller game compared to where we started, so please don't be concerned about us closing the game prematurely. For all of you that are still interested in staying in the game, we see you and are willing to put the work into keeping Tabula Rasa alive for as long as those feelings remain. Despite the low frequency of new applications, we are getting new players, and we also want to give these players a fair chance at playing in the setting as well.

We also realize that the sudden drop in characters and morale during February and March may make it difficult for some players to hit their AC minimums. As this is an exceptional situation and we would much rather keep interested players around, activity for March will be waived and strikes taken in February will be lifted. You may still submit your regular AC for influence points, but any player who checks in this month may remain in the game. This will be a one-time deal, though we will be monitoring the game’s size and activity over the next couple months in case any adjustments to the current AC may be needed.

In light of this situation, we want to touch base with everyone and see what we can do to improve the current situation. Part of this post will be our personal assessment of the situation, but you can also consider this an open feedback post. We would greatly appreciate to hear the thoughts of any current, previous, or potential players - if there's anything that you feel the game is lacking, or if certain mechanics have been difficult to engage with, or if there are parts of the game you think we should focus more on, we want to hear it! We will be responding to all feedback on this post so we can all have a discussion on how we’d like to move forward.

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Applications & New Players
Firstly, some positives! TR is a game with a small player cap, so any chain of drops can have a huge impact on the game. Despite the large number of drops, our rate of new apps has actually stayed about the same since October 2020 (about 2-4 apps each month), and the game has stayed very close to its maximum player cap from its launch in July 2020 all through January 2021. We rarely received apps while the game was at cap and the initial launch of the game garnered more interest than we were able to accommodate, so we're optimistic that the player slots can be filled up again given enough time.

We'd like to step up on getting the word out now that we have an abundance of open slots, so we'll be looking into ways to improve our TDMs and extend our advertising to reach more players.

Player-Mod Communication
We'd like to take a moment to address one of our own concerns: a lack of communication regarding feedback and player concerns. As players ourselves, we occasionally see conversations among other players in the game bringing up personal concerns and issues with the game's mechanics. However, we want to stress that we cannot respond to feedback and concerns that are not given to us directly. We do not have every player added on our personal accounts, and it should never be assumed that a mod has seen something because you posted it on your personal plurk. Moreover, we cannot respond to personal plurks in a mod capacity, so we cannot offer any solutions to your problems.

We can't force anyone to talk to us if they don't want to, but as mods it's been at times frustrating to see concerns shared on plurk that we could very easily fix, only for the player to drop sometime later without having approached us at all. Please, talk to us! We don't hold it against anyone for choosing to drop - sometimes a game just isn't the right fit, and that's fine. If it's something you feel could be improved or that someone else might struggle with, though, we want to hear it!

Plot & Engagement
We have asserted from the very start that TR is a game without a metaplot - this is something that remains true. However, we also feel that we haven't been able to properly convey what our vision for the game is, and that this has led to players feeling that their character's actions don't have meaning or that there's no possibility of any long-term game plots. We've tried to address this a couple of times now, but as the same issues have continued to come up we'd like to try one more time to explain our perspective on this and how we've been handling things on the back end.

Tabula Rasa is meant to be a game that focuses almost entirely on character actions and input. When we have said “this game does not have a metaplot,” what this means to us is “we do not have any predetermined plan or storyline for this game to follow.” This seems to be the sticking point for a lot of people - the impression we've gleaned is that some players see no reason to explore, investigate or experiment within the setting because they as a player know that we haven't hidden any mysteries for them to find. However, this has never been the impression we intended to give. We do want players to explore and interact with the setting, and we want players to feel like their actions have an impact on the game, and that these actions may ultimately build up to larger plots and storylines.

TR doesn't have a predetermined story to tell, but it also didn't come with a setting, either. Instead, we built a setting out of what players gave us - through imprints, as well as through character actions and interest. The plot is meant to work exactly the same way: we look at what characters in the game are doing and we create a response to those actions. The world giving itself a name and identity (“Kyo”) is a direct result of character actions, for example, and would not have occurred if characters hadn't decided that an entity was in charge of the world. This is a relatively minor development, but larger plotlines could be created in the same way, simply through characters asking questions and coming up with their own theories.

To give another example, not too long ago a number of characters in the Persona cast decided that Mementos was a suspicious location and that something must be hidden there. We took note of this and built our April event around the idea of something being down there that characters would need to investigate. The continued earthquakes have also been a part of that.

All of that said, we realize that this isn't just an issue of players misunderstanding things. We want changes to the setting to be something of a surprise, but it would be difficult for us to throw together a fun and satisfying event on short notice while also balancing imprints and keeping the queue from falling behind. This means that we've had to sit on ideas for months at a time before being able to reveal anything, and it's understandable that it would appear that character actions aren't having any impact due to this. While we can't always speed things along, we can communicate better about what we've seen and what we have plans to respond to. We hope that this would also encourage players to come to us with plot ideas or share what we may have missed.

What's Next?
Moving forward, we have a few options. This isn't a formal poll, but we'd like to hear our players' thoughts on how you'd all like to proceed, so please feel free to let us know if there's a plan that works best for you or if you have any suggestions.

• Option 1: Keep the game open. The game will continue as normal with the current playerbase, and we'll make further improvements to the game as we go. We'll plan out our current plot to conclude around the game's 1-year anniversary in July, after which we will re-evaluate the situation with everyone to see where we want to go next. This way we can give players a satisfying ending point if needed while still leaving things open to continue if interest is maintained.
  
  After this re-evaluation, either the game will continue on as planned or we'll look into option 2.


• Option 2: Put the game on hiatus with the intent to reopen later in the year. TR has a lot of unique aspects to it compared to more traditional DWRP games, and while we're proud of what we've managed to create with everyone, we've also realized over time that we could've organized things or built certain mechanics in a much better way. Changing up these parts of the game would be very difficult to do while it’s still open, however, so we would need to put the game on hiatus to restructure. We would also be able to use this time to build on the game's shortcomings and prepare an actual plot in advance, so there would be something substantial for everyone to look forward to upon TR's return.
  
  We do have some ideas for this that we'd be willing to expand on, but we also realize that putting the game on hiatus could cause it to lose steam. Still, we'd like to keep this idea on the back-burner for now. We think there's still a lot of potential in TR's concept and the setting that we've all created, so we don't plan on giving up on it until we've exhausted our ideas.

As we said before, we're not looking at closing the game right now and we're happy to continue running things as long as there's player interest.

Finally, thank you for taking the time to read this post, and thank you to everyone that's supported and contributed to Tabula Rasa thus far! A game can't exist without players and we're incredibly grateful for all the wonderful people we've brought together. As we said before, we'll be responding to all feedback here so please feel free to give us your thoughts so we can have a discussion together as a game on where to go next.

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Comments

[blue_eyed_obsession]

I want to start off by saying that I have greatly enjoyed my time at Tabula Rasa, and I too would like to see it continue into the future. The players I have met and interacted with here have been fantastic, infusing the game with their creativity and with a unique cast of characters. I will also say that the mods have put a lot of work into constructing this malleable environment, crafting the various information pages, and supplying the regular updates and various events.

With that being said, I'm just going to go through the issues I've either seen or experienced in my time here in hopes that it might be of some help moving forward.
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First and foremost: I don't think a lengthy hiatus would be good for momentum. I'm fairly confident I could remember where I left off cr wise but I'm not sure who would stick around awaiting a reopening, or would just take it as a chance to move on to other games. I was also hoping we would make it to the 1st year anniversary as expressed by others before me.

Communication: This is definitely something that I feel could use improvement. Personally, I know I don't utilize the Mod contact/Faq page enough, or even something like the organic imprints. Plurk just feels easier to interact with since it's not only in real time but I'm able to converse back and forth with other players and hear their opinions on various elements. Mostly it's just is about things we would like to see, or thoughts on current events. I do get why that would be less convenient for the mods however and I never expected them to follow everything on that platform. I'm never really sure what is enough to either suggest for organic imprints or to submit for the mods to look over and weigh in on. I'm not sure why but I guess I feel discouraged to use the provided avenues because it's all very impersonal. I don't know who I'm talking to and how casual to be, or not be. I respect that the mods want to be anonymous, however it's more of a challenge for me to initiate communication under those circumstances if that makes sense? I don't want to waste anyone's time, or make it feel like I'm just spamming the page with inane content. It's different when you know you have a connection to someone and when you're unsure. Plus I do think there is benefit in being able to openly discuss any issues among the whole of the playerbase, so we can compare notes and be on the same page.

Plot: I was never someone that specifically required a meta-plot. I was also just going with the flow to see what cropped up and how things transpired- however some characters do need something a little extra to motivate them other than "How can I get out of this place and go home". Honestly, I am playing a character that has strong inclinations and reasons why he wouldn't want to linger here (since he needs to be caretaker of his younger brother, best his rival, and run his business) however some of the cr he's built here has made it more difficult for him to straight up want to pull up stakes and completely leave the void behind him. Not every muse found something to ground them here, those characters would need something to better anchor them.

I also will admit that there have been times when I felt like there was little I could do to contribute to the adaptations of the world, but again- part of that was because my aversion to posting things to the organic imprint page. Also for guarding my points like a miser- since I was a lone canon warrior at the time I had this like self-imposed pressure to be careful with what I asked for or I could miss other opportunities later (I also had an obsession with points gathering). I overthought a lot of things like "ok I would want this" but "what would everyone else want?". I shouldn't have let it consume me but I did. That's on me, but I think it does highlight an issue. I'm not sure how to go about it, but the way the system is designed can look discouraging to smaller casts. Although I can accept that maybe that was just me?. See, this is one of the concerns I've had but I'm not sure if it's actually a non-issue. Maybe no one else perceived things in this manner or felt like they were unable to keep up with some representation from their character's previous experiences. I've since found my chill, but it took me til January to get there.

I do think letting us know what might be in the works will have a positive benefit. You can keep some mystery about it, but dropping some hints can assist in psyching people up for what they think might be coming. Admittedly, I didn't know we could come to the mods with plot ideas.

Something else I think the game could benefit from is maybe having some events that encourage players to go to a certain location. I know a lot of the time the 'event' is the implementation of the imprints however there's not always a reason for the characters to look into these new additions. My character tries to stay on top of investigating changes because he's a wouldbe control freak he likes to remain informed but there could be some untapped potential better utilizing resources we do have. These could also involve temporary conditions not all of them have to be serious, some could be more humorous. A healthy mix would keep it interesting.

This next issue I have might also be a me thing. I don't know: I recall in at least one or two updates where only specific groups were really affected, and I struggled to find something to work with in those periods. The species system is an interesting one, but for plain, average, humans- it can be rough sometimes when that's all there is in an update and you can't directly use it for anything.

Also, I would like to see events where players need to work together more, preferably with people outside their usual circles. It's been a long time since a randomizer has been employed. Sure, I'm not saying to use that gimmick for every event, but I would like to encourage some muses out of their comfort zone since some stubborn persons might stick to their usual circles when they can swing it.
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I know I'm probably forgetting something, and I probably should have heavily edited what I did get written out but, here it is. Plus, I know I have some things to improve on myself. Communication needs to be a two-way street after all is said and done.

I just want to restate, I love the game and the people in it and I wish only for it's success!