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Soul Campaign Moderation Journal ([personal profile] soul_mods) wrote in [community profile] soul_ooc2011-10-22 08:12 pm
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MODPOST 1/2

Attention, Soul Campaign!

We’re opening reservations in a little over a week, and the mods would like to make some announcements regarding changes being made to the application and reservation process. These changes have been in planning for a long time, and is one of the reasons why we went for the break.

Reserves Page and Application Cut Off
The reserves page will open on November 1, 2011 as planned. The application cycle will be from December 16 - 23, 2011. Cut-off for next cycle will be December 15, 2011, 11:59pm EST.

Changes to the application form
We made some changes to the application form, which you can see here. The sections remain the same, but the text explaining these changes have been revised to make them clearer and more streamlined. We’ve included a secondary reference page linked in the application, which includes guidelines that will hopefully make the application easier for players to fill and the application cycle/process much faster than what we’ve been doing before.

We changed the weapon section so that weapons will only have one general ability. There will be a separate post to detail how this will affect current weapons (but don’t panic, we’re not going to make you change yours if you don’t want to).

Last, a summary of the events in the game since its beginning up til the Europe event has been posted in this page.

New revision process for the applications
Starting the next cycle, we will no longer entertain revisions for the Character Information section of the application. This section includes the character’s history, personality, abilities, and weaknesses. We feel that players who know their characters well should be able to write their applications in a manner that makes this section understandable to the application team. Any application whose character information section the application team finds lacking will immediately be rejected.

The other sections (SC-only section, meister, weapon, soul description, samples) will go through the usual revision process if necessary, since they are all sections unique to Soul Campaign.

Beta-reading system
However, since we will no longer be allowing revisions for the character information during the application cycle, we will be offsetting this with a beta-reading system to help players make sure that their applications pass the standards of the game.

How will this work? In the reserves page, the applicants commenting on it will have the option of asking for a beta-reader from SC’s pool of current players. You can volunteer to beta-read theirs and help them with their applications by replying to their reserve comment.

We’d also like to minimize the risk of applicants asking for a beta-reader and not getting any -- to do this, the mods will be collecting names of people willing to be included in a pool of beta-readers every cycle, and we will assign them to a lonely applicant.

If you’d like to volunteer, please reply here, and indicate any preferences (or non-preferences, for that matter!) on series or canon that you have. We appreciate it! App team members may also volunteer, but this doesn’t guarantee that the app will pass.

Test drive meme
We will also test something for next cycle. We will put up a Test Drive Meme in Soul Skirmish, to be linked to the reserves page. This will give the prospective applicants and the current players space to tag each other before the application cycle, to give the applicants a taste of the game before they come in.

The meme will include several scenarios that the characters can play out, depending on their choice. Some will be serious, while some will be more light-hearted. Soul Campaign is a plot-heavy game that depends on consistent relations and interactions between characters, as well as emphasis on world news and events; we’d like the applicants to be more aware of this as they app into the game.

Please note that threads in this meme will not be accepted for Activity Check. Sorry. :c

Whew!
So that’s it for changes! Please note that the new revision process, beta-reading system, and test drive meme are all still under testing for now, and we may adjust them depending on how December pans out. We appreciate your patience!

The second mod post will be up soon after this, so make sure to check it out, especially if you have weapon characters.

For questions about this post (and its links), you can ask here or email us at soulcampaign@gmail.com. (Don't worry if some questions take a while to answer, a couple of the mods are going on a short vacation for a couple of days. Thank you for your patience!)

[identity profile] lionborn.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 11:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, I wouldn’t call it your bad as long as you and the mods who approved it get what is meant, but as a sample it is… Too well-phrased? You have a wonderful way with words and it might be because English is my second language, but even though I checked out Jade’s Weapon abilities before and thus should know what is being said but I still don’t get it. As far as I can understand the part shown as a sample covers the HOW it works but I keep missing the details that explain WHAT the ability/attack that is being spoken of actually is besides vague terms of manipulating energy that is taken from the environment.
My best guess so far is still that it has to be some kind of Captain Planet Soul Menace, I'm very sorry about that. ^^;

Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t think twice about it and just shrug it off as me failing to translate something in a coherent way and ask you personally should the need for knowing it arise, so this is nothing personal, it really isn’t. I enjoy interacting with you both on an IC and OOC level and I feel bad if it comes off as me trying to call you out because I really don’t. What I want to try to do is to give feedback to the changes and new app form.

My point still stands, though, examples are meant to be understood easily by everybody and – call me the idiot I might be – I don’t feel that the first example does fulfill that requirement. :(

[identity profile] novelvision.livejournal.com 2011-10-24 05:56 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, if you do want the truth...the actual mechanics of how it works is actually that complicated in the canon itself. The most I can translate it to in understandable standards would be traditional magic, but magic is a) The sole domain of Witches in-game and b) Not what I was going for. I thought of finding someone else's sample to use for this but if I'm not mistaken, Jade may be the sole pure elemental weapon.

I may do a more proper write-up if it's needed but that will have to wait as I'm on a technical hiatus now for rather odd reasons. Apologies!

[identity profile] lionborn.livejournal.com 2011-10-24 11:06 pm (UTC)(link)
Thanks for your consideration, but I think you are still misunderstanding me a bit. My problem with it as example is not as much about the explanation of the ability being too complicated (I can understand and fully respect you for wanting to keep things close to canon!), but rather that it comes off as an expert explaining the confusing inner mechanics of a very complicated machine while forgetting to ever mention what he is actually talking about. It could be a hair-dryer, a racing car or a missile! The explanation is good, but because an important detail is missing it is still difficult to understand what is being talked about to anybody who isn’t an expert as well.

TL;Dr: What is Jade's ability in Weapon form? What can the Meister do by wearing the demon glasses? That - the most important - part is not mentioned in the example and is what I’d really love to know if I were to turn to it for help as a player wanting to app. Without this information, it is hard to tell whether it is an example for a 'normal' or an 'elemental' Weapon,too - I still wouldn’t know if you hadn't told me. If you can add a line that says that it is meant as an example for a Weapon with elemental powers (as opposed to the second example) and another one that says what his Weapon form can actually do the example would be good in my opinion!

…Of course this is only my two cents on the matter. I don't mean to blame or lecture you about how to fill a part of your app, my only concern is with its use as an example that is officially used. I think that a lot of make or break of what this new changes bring will depend on how good things are being explained and easily understood examples are core points for that. Sorry for nagging!