Ni here to second this. Generally, I don't respond to HMD because my own personal general philosophy is that actual actions speak louder than just posting "we will totally implement this" or "we will do better!". But I can confirm that a lot of the problems in this round specifically was because real life events severely and clearly negatively impacted how we ran R6. No way to sugar coat it-we were not remotely at our best this round and communication was no bueno.
Just to put into perspective-we were originally meant to have a larger mod team, which included the person who had come up with R6's canon as part of the overarching plot to begin with and who would have been the resident expert, which would have given us six people working on the round. Of those six, five of us had major Real Life events happen either in the months or even weeks or days leading up to R6, had to drop out of R6 as a result of Real Life, or had something happen during R6 itself, all which resulted in breakdowns in communication and just generally being able to participate fully in modding. The R6 canon expert also had to drop from modding and as a result, I ended up being the resident expert, more or less.
Not going to get into what others were going through, because that is not my business to say, but in my case, aside from work (which is also part of why we set R6 when we did, it was supposed to be best for me and everyone else), I ended up getting sick, as has been mentioned, during Week 3. It was a shitstorm to say the least. We probably could have (and, thinking on it, probably should have) even delayed the round, but ultimately, we didn't.
In regards to delegation, I'd been doing my best to try and do a better job delegating duties, because we didn't want a repeat of R5, and so I had been generally limiting myself to NPCing living Kyuubey/IT, investigation clues, posts and Vending RNG-ing. But as Kay said, Stuff happened, Real Life dumped on nearly everyone, and even having documentation and giving explanations to everything didn't always help those who hadn't been modding the whole time, because not everyone was as intimately knowledgeable of the plot as I was as head mod. (And even then, I got one somewhat big thing wrong about AWiT canon despite knowing the canon pretty decently, and didn't catch it!) As a result, at points there was little choice but for me to jump in and do stuff. In the end, the buck stops with the head mod.
In regards to the distrust mechanic. It's pretty much what Kay said, with the intent of both tying into the meta plot, and trying to prevent the things that...it ultimately didn't prevent. But the intent is also tied into communication and how we communicated it, and ultimately the fact of communication being the opposite of optimal because of the factors that hampered nearly everyone on the mod team comes back into play.
I could keep going, but in short: we sucked this round, and in particular with regards to communication. We are definitely aware we sucked this round, regardless of the reasons that hampered us. It's a big reason why we are taking a vacation to try and recharge, to reorient, and hopefully not have what happened this round to happen again. (And knocking on wood for the Real Life factors.) Also, to take the time to make more clear delegation of duties and backup duties now that we don't have to worry nearly as much about the overarching game narrative.
For me, I've been modding 15 Strangers for a little over three years now. When I am a part of a project I am invested in, I invest very heavily, and this game has been no exception. Even as I am writing this, I am working on bits of R7-mainly just the maps, but go figure. However, R6 really drove home that we all need to take a break and not simply be focused on 15 Strangers and developing it 24/7 during whatever non-working hours I have, but I especially need to step back from the grind for a bit and I am well aware of this. Because modding, as much as I love modding this game, can be a grind, whether the game is successful or not. It can be a drain on the health, no matter what. I'm still trying to recover from all the sleep I lost from last weekend, even though I and everyone else am glad that things turned out all right in the end.
I guess TD;LR is: we hear you guys, and we are very well aware of these very big issues that especially plagued this round. While there were reasons this was so, it doesn't excuse the issues, and we intend on making sure this doesn't happen again when R7 comes knocking.
no subject
Just to put into perspective-we were originally meant to have a larger mod team, which included the person who had come up with R6's canon as part of the overarching plot to begin with and who would have been the resident expert, which would have given us six people working on the round. Of those six, five of us had major Real Life events happen either in the months or even weeks or days leading up to R6, had to drop out of R6 as a result of Real Life, or had something happen during R6 itself, all which resulted in breakdowns in communication and just generally being able to participate fully in modding. The R6 canon expert also had to drop from modding and as a result, I ended up being the resident expert, more or less.
Not going to get into what others were going through, because that is not my business to say, but in my case, aside from work (which is also part of why we set R6 when we did, it was supposed to be best for me and everyone else), I ended up getting sick, as has been mentioned, during Week 3. It was a shitstorm to say the least. We probably could have (and, thinking on it, probably should have) even delayed the round, but ultimately, we didn't.
In regards to delegation, I'd been doing my best to try and do a better job delegating duties, because we didn't want a repeat of R5, and so I had been generally limiting myself to NPCing living Kyuubey/IT, investigation clues, posts and Vending RNG-ing. But as Kay said, Stuff happened, Real Life dumped on nearly everyone, and even having documentation and giving explanations to everything didn't always help those who hadn't been modding the whole time, because not everyone was as intimately knowledgeable of the plot as I was as head mod. (And even then, I got one somewhat big thing wrong about AWiT canon despite knowing the canon pretty decently, and didn't catch it!) As a result, at points there was little choice but for me to jump in and do stuff. In the end, the buck stops with the head mod.
In regards to the distrust mechanic. It's pretty much what Kay said, with the intent of both tying into the meta plot, and trying to prevent the things that...it ultimately didn't prevent. But the intent is also tied into communication and how we communicated it, and ultimately the fact of communication being the opposite of optimal because of the factors that hampered nearly everyone on the mod team comes back into play.
I could keep going, but in short: we sucked this round, and in particular with regards to communication. We are definitely aware we sucked this round, regardless of the reasons that hampered us. It's a big reason why we are taking a vacation to try and recharge, to reorient, and hopefully not have what happened this round to happen again. (And knocking on wood for the Real Life factors.) Also, to take the time to make more clear delegation of duties and backup duties now that we don't have to worry nearly as much about the overarching game narrative.
For me, I've been modding 15 Strangers for a little over three years now. When I am a part of a project I am invested in, I invest very heavily, and this game has been no exception. Even as I am writing this, I am working on bits of R7-mainly just the maps, but go figure. However, R6 really drove home that we all need to take a break and not simply be focused on 15 Strangers and developing it 24/7 during whatever non-working hours I have, but I especially need to step back from the grind for a bit and I am well aware of this. Because modding, as much as I love modding this game, can be a grind, whether the game is successful or not. It can be a drain on the health, no matter what. I'm still trying to recover from all the sleep I lost from last weekend, even though I and everyone else am glad that things turned out all right in the end.
I guess TD;LR is: we hear you guys, and we are very well aware of these very big issues that especially plagued this round. While there were reasons this was so, it doesn't excuse the issues, and we intend on making sure this doesn't happen again when R7 comes knocking.