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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!)
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" Maybe the whole lack of revisions thing might seem a little intimidating, but I don't think that should stop anyone who really wants to play here. "
Quotes like these [will all respect and apologies to the original writers as I am not attempting to single them out] give off the impression that it is the determination of the applicant to REALLY want to join THIS game over all others that is what's important, not the content of your app, which is what my reply was commenting on. When there is a very long period between apps, the fact that any small misunderstanding in a personality section means that you could be rejected without any chance to clarify or explain makes it into a test of determination.
While I understand that yes, the word hazing is a strong one, please also note that no where did I say hazing was what was happening or intended. If I had realized people were going to get hung up on the word, I would not have used it, but I really couldn't think of any other term off hand for the belief that people who want to get into a club should do anything, no matter how intimidating or scary, to get in. Hazing is something that to those who support it is seen as a test of determination. In that mindset, it's a gauntlet you run through to prove that you are good enough and driven enough to withstand anything to get into that group. Swap it for "initiation" instead if that works better. I can't edit it to clarify that at this stage because replies have been made.
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Again, please don't assume that the app team and the mods are out to reject apps or are out to look for something wrong in them. In fact, we have about a 95% acceptance rate for all of our applications, so we were more than lenient with previous apps. What the new process does is to streamline acceptances for the benefit of both the player and the app team, and to lessen the frequency of minor revisions in this section. It makes the process less painful on this section, which all players are expected to know about their characters.
It's a matter of having to guess just how exactly a group of people you don't know will expect you to write a character section.
The post already mentions that samples are forthcoming. However, it's not too much of a leap to assume that more plot-heavy games expect the same things from their appers' personality sections -- motivations, focus, strengths, weaknesses and quirks -- these are all standard across the board. We're not asking for a nobel prize essay on your character -- we just want to know that you know the character well enough to play them in a plot-heavy setting. Again, as Kelly has said, the app isn't any harder; it might even be easier if we look at the anticipated decrease in app team clarifications and minor revisions (which is what 90% of them are).
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And personally, I'd rather have the longer instructions as a general thing. I'm hoping the guidelines you guys are putting together will replace them because it can be very hard sometimes to figure out how sections are to be filled out, like how the strengths and weakness sections always are very hard since half the time they're redundant and tend to be just lists (thank you for making that optional, BTW. BIG improvement!) This goes double for the no 2nd chance addition.
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The strengths and weaknesses sections were already just lists before this change. That part did not change at all, except for the guideline we added here to make the instructions clearer.
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That's what I'm frustrated at. Really sorry I keep being confusing about it.
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I agree with you--the logic behind the idea that a scary application will only attract people who will end up staying once the process is completed is flawed. I don't believe it will deter or promote committed players either way, as there are too many factors involved to really predict what creates a player that eventually ends up staying in SC. You are correct in finding issue with that faulty assumption.
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The thing is, I am already hearing from people that it is discouraging. There are now at least two people who were seriously considering the game who have now said that they won't be. While I have no way of knowing if these people would have stuck it out long haul, I know them to be very dedictated in the games they are currenly in. It really concerns me as new characters and players are a very critical part of the momentum that keeps an RP going and I really hope that something like this that has the very real potential to damage that momentum can be adjusted so that it won't.
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Rejection is a crushing thing and pretty horrible to deal with when you really want to be a part of something. The chance that it could happen without any chance to fix something is enough to make people not want to deal with that possibility. Especially if you've had encounters with revision requests before! And with emailed/hidden apps, you're sailing blind to start with because you don't know how often revisions are asked for/rejections are handed out or what's often asked for to try and avoid those pitfalls before hand.
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For what it's worth, I do appreciate both mod and app teams putting up with the flailing over this and being willing to listen.
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And thanks for bearing with my awkward attempts to explain things. I know I'm not the best with words at times and am stubborn as all hell, so really, thanks. :)
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