Miracle Live! School Idol Roleplay (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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miracleliveooc2021-11-14 09:06 pm
miraclelivemod) wrote in miracleliveooc2021-11-14 09:06 pm
(Dress Rehearsal) Feedback Post
It's time to wind up the Dress Rehearsal for Miracle Live! School Idol Roleplay with a feedback post! Thank you once again to everyone who participated. I'd love for any players to comment about what they liked and what could have been done to make the game better that can be put towards the full round next year.
Full disclosure, I haven't modded in a very long time, and I apologize for my rust. There are some things that I noticed that I'd especially like feedback on to improve:
-Sustaining interest. While the Dress Rehearsal started with a burst of activity and there was another one at the Opportunity, play started to decline as the week went on. This was especially clear with the Live, which was supposed to be the goal that the entire week built up to, but not every player replied to the post and all but one of those replied only to the Preparation. I know that life happens and there are lots of other priorities, but I'd like to know what I could have done to keep things going.
-Communication. There were a few misunderstandings and some things that seemed to take people by surprise, and I'm very thankful to everyone who brought them to my attention (and sorry that the rules channel in the Discord was locked for weeks!). The best way I can think to improve this is to make it clear what time of day things will be posted, rather than what day; that way, if anything needs to change, it can be brought up beforehand (as happened with the Live, where the last two portions unlocked at 3 rather than 12 after feedback). I'm open to any suggestions here as well.
-NPCs. My intent was to have NPCs not only appear at plot beats but also respond to toplevels and/or post their own in order to give the players more to respond to. You could run into Wakaba at school, if you were reading B♡nd then you'd get a reply with the contents of today's news, and more, as teased by the appearance of another NPC in the ending to serve as a teaser for the main round as a "rival" character. In practice, this worked some of the time, but could have been done better, especially with regards to the Aftermath section of the Live. I'd like to hear any feedback on the NPCs, what made people tag them or not, and what could have been done better.
If there's anything else you can think of that didn't work, or conversely, if there's anything you really liked about the Dress Rehearsal, please let me know! The feedback post is open, and please feel free to discuss amongst yourselves as well.
Thank you all very much once again. This was a lot of fun and I'm glad it all worked out well. Hope to see you all next spring!
no subject
My feelings on ML overall are very positive - I think you have a solid foundation for a game and you've translated the vibe of LL into game mechanics very smoothly. While I do have some things I think will need retooling before the game's full opening, none of them are massive issues and can be fixed relatively easily if you also agree they need touching on.
I'll start with the things I enjoyed then touch on what I think needs work and how I think you could fix them.
Bond & Live Writeups: Both of these aspects of the game really worked and were, I think, probably the most effective part of the dress rehearsal in terms of making me feel invested and inspired. Getting to see feedback on the group's activities in such a way does a lot to make their effect on the world tangible and it's also just always exciting to see people talking about your characters in rp lmao. Bond reports really hit on that same "the girls are gossipiiiiing" energy as spotting your cr talking about your character in other games so I definitely hope that's something that gets carried forward to the main game.
NPCs: Wakaba was a welcome addition as a sort of helpful hint character and I think it was good to have a representation of the student body outside of the club. I do think this is something that could be expanded on in the full game, but given that we only had a week, I don't think that's something I can comment on just yet.
The Vibes: This isn't something that's super easy to pin down, but I think you did a really good job at capturing the general feeling and energy of Love Live without resorting to just re-treading canon ground. Things feel authentic and familiar without feeling repetitive and I'm excited to see what your plans are for the full story!
As for things I think need fixing for the full round, all of my feedback on that end is to do with the schedule and the timeframe set up for the game as it is.
I personally don't think the schedule currently in place works very well for the game as it stands. Introducing the Opportunity on Tuesday and having the Live take place on Saturday only gives four days for players to both work out OOCly what they want to do for the Live and potentially play it out and ICly, I feel as though it strains believability that the girls are able to get all this done in four days. My suggestion would be to have things run on a two-week schedule – introduce the Opportunity on the Tuesday of Week 1 and then have the Live take place on the Saturday of Week 2. It'd give players and characters a lot more room to plan and play out idol stuff.
I also struggled to feel connected to the setting in any meaningful way, though it's entire possible that was because of the truncated length of the dress rehearsal. However, I do think there needs to be more detail put into fleshing out the school in particular – the setting page seems to mostly cover trivia and I don't have a strong sense of what it would actually be like to be a student at this school. What are the classes like? What other clubs are there? Who are the teachers? Similarly, despite being a friendly community, there's very little information about the people who live in Maizumi – I think fleshing out the setting a lot more would go a big way in terms of making people feel more engaged and invested in the game.
I think that's about everything I wanted to cover. I hope it was helpful! As I said at the start of my comment, I have mostly positive feelings about the dress rehearsal and I think you have a solid foundation for an interesting game on your hands so long as you can apply a bit of polish to the parts that aren't working so well.
no subject
You have a good point about the week structure. That was my initial idea, actually: having an Opportunity one week and the Live the next, and only shifting to a weekly schedule during the final stretch because the Opportunity for the entire month is advancing in the Love Live. I'd changed it to weekly for fear that players wouldn't feel they had enough to do, but you're right that it is more believable and probably less stressful to go back to the two-week system. I'll take this into account for the final game.
I'm also glad to hear your input about the setting itself. The final game is intended to have more NPCs, such as fellow students, the Ao-Mart shopkeepers, and multiple rival school idols, and that was cut down for the Dress Rehearsal. However, you have a good point with establishing the atmosphere of the setting and how that would help with engagement.
Thank you very much! I'm glad to hear from you.
no subject
I liked Wakaba's use as a source of both opportunities and complications greatly, and like what I'm seeing with the new NPC whose name we don't yet know. I feel like she didn't exactly have room to breathe since we hit the end of the test period before getting a lot of thread with her.
More fleshing-out of the setting could be useful, and one side activity I might suggest to throw in alongside the lead-in to the main run of the game would be groupwatching Love Live proper.