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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!)
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!)
no subject
But, what seems like the main problem for me is that different games require different amounts of detail to be accepted, and new players really have very little way of knowing what level of detail SC is looking for until they actually app. Because apps are sent in by email instead of posted publicly, new players can't go through old apps to get a feel for what the app team is looking for. They could go to the Taken list and check current characters' journals for their applications (which is actually what I did when I apped), but those apps wouldn't necessarily be recent, or the whole app might not be included. (I know some people don't include the samples when they post their app on their journal later.) It's also a lot more work for the applicant. With revisions being possible, this isn't a huge deal because if they misunderstand something, they'll have a chance to fix it with hopefully clear instructions from the app team on how to do so. But with no revisions, it becomes a much bigger problem because everyone absolutely has to get it right the first time.
So, with the way things are right now and adding this new rule, what I feel like you're basically saying to applicants is "You have to write an application we approve of, even though we haven't given you a lot of examples or otherwise demonstrated what exactly we're looking for, and also you have to get it right on the very first try or you're rejected, and you'll have to wait two months to try again." That may not be what you're intending to say, but that's how it comes off to me, and I don't think it's at all fair to potential new players.
A beta system would help a lot with this, but it has its own set of problems too. Like a couple people have mentioned, what if the beta thinks the app is fine but the app team rejects it? The beta could take a lot of heat for that, and would probably feel terrible about it to boot, especially if they were the only beta for that applicant. It's a solid idea, but the way it is right now I think it puts a lot more pressure on the betas than it needs to.
To counter all of that, I'd definitely want to see some example applications put up, so applicants can get a better idea what kind of apps the mods are looking for. (Or even just easily accessible links to good, complete applications that people have already posted in their journals.) A checklist of things to definitely include would also be really helpful, and maybe even a list of common things apps have been rejected for in the past, so people know what to avoid. At the very least, I think lists like that should be supplied to the betas, so they know what to check for and have a better idea of what the app team is expecting. The more information the betas have, the better job they'll be able to do as betas.
...And then I ran out of steam and couldn't figure out how to end this, sob. In short, I don't think the change is a terrible idea by itself, but it would need a bit more adjustment before I'd really be comfortable getting behind it.
no subject
We agree that apps have different reasons for being rejected, and what we didn't go into detail here is that we are also changing the review process in the app team to compliment the change in the app process itself. In the new system, getting rejected is not actually easy -- if the character information shows a good grasp of the character, we will accept it even if there are some minor nitpicks that the app team might quibble over. Most plot-heavy games require that players know their character well enough to state their motivations, strengths, focus, weaknesses, etc -- the app team doesn't require an A+ essay on a character, and we only want to see this core in place for that section.
As for the question on detail -- we are planning on putting up a guideline for beta-readers for what to look for in an app that applicants might benefit from, as well as sample applications that we have accepted in the past. Hopefully, this will address most of your concerns.
no subject
A lot of this confusion could have been eliminated if you'd explained that the process itself would be undergoing some change in the post as well. Because I honestly had no idea that was the case until other people started replying and insisting that obviously this was the case, and if I'd known that my response to this probably wouldn't have been nearly so harsh.
no subject