MODPOST 1/2

[soul_mods]

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!)

Comments

[soul_mods]

You're mistaking our reluctance to divulge very specific numbers as an effort by the mod team to hide information from the players -- again and we would like to emphasize this: we are not out to get the players. If the denied applicants choose to tell the public that they were rejected during apps and so on and so forth, that's their business and not ours. You may think it's outlandish, but we're not going to out and point out these things when it's not necessary to the rest of the game -- their castmates can either ask us in person or ask them, plainly done. Through this entire post, everyone's mentioned at one point or another how it would be painful to be rejected during applications, so we're a little baffled as to why some players are now supporting a system that endorses that these rejected players be outed blatantly. Please remember that hard percentages are about as specific as hard numbers.

Percentum of acceptances is something more reasonable that we can do, and the mod team will discuss this between ourselves at a later time, after we've dealt with other issues.

[cuzamybestbud.livejournal.com]

I never directly said that I felt that you were hiding anything, I said that it could easily seem to people that you were hiding something from them by not being willing to share this information.

How is it that the percentage of people accepted is reasonable, when, if you take that out of the total 100% you can know exactly what percentage were rejected, which is not reasonable?

I never said that anyone should out those that were rejected in the least, please do not taking what most are saying as what I am saying. I am asking for a percentage, just a number that doesn't even need to be backed with the number of applicants for the round in question. I do not endorse telling anyone who was rejected and why, that is the player/apper's choice alone in my opinion, which is why I am not looking for the exact numbers of actual apps, but a percentage of those accepted/rejected based off it.

[soul_mods]

We apologize if we misunderstood what you said.

Apps aren't just a matter of pass or fail for us -- we have way more labels for our apps than just accepted or denied, suited to the situation of the application. Many apps fall off the game for various reasons, not only because they have been rejected, and these would technically fall under anything outside of accepted apps. In short, to have 95% accepted doesn't mean 5% denied, which is why we mentioned it as a more reasonable number to give. We will be elaborating on what goes on behind the app scene in the guideline we are putting up, so if you have any confusion on this matter, we hope that addresses it.

Also, anyone can count the actual number of apps that we have. We put whose apps are being processed in the reserves page, and the system is explained there. That's why, for example, it was generally public knowledge that last cycle's apps reached 100+.

[cuzamybestbud.livejournal.com]

I apologize, my last comment was written while I was frustrated and flustered, so if I came off as rude or brash that was not my intent.

I was under the impression that applications, at the end of their revision time and acceptance or denial were exactly that, accepted or denied, and that after that what the player chooses to do is up to them. This is why I was referring to the acceptance rate and denial rate evenly, with this explanation I can see what you mean by saying that the one is acceptable while the other is not. Realistically it is the percentage of applicants that are approved that I am most interested in, both a comparison to before this change and after.

[cake-and-dreams.livejournal.com]

This is for this whole thread, really, including your replies to me.

You guys do realize that nobody is looking for specific names of who was rejected, right? Or saying they'd like to out the person that was rejected? I feel like you guys are no longer seriously reading anything we're saying and are just trying to defend the system. :/ Look, I know I can be annoying, I know it sucks to have people questioning you or disagreeing, especially if they're friends or acquaintances. But you're giving me the impression that you're just jumping down Demothi's throat here and putting words in her mouth, and that's not cool. :(

So here, maybe I can spell this out a little better, alright? As RPers, people are generally used to apping at comms where their apps are visible to the public. This is just fact. A lot of comms don't have players email the apps like you do, and I really like that you do that, so ffs, don't take this as complaining about that. I'm not.

Comms with apps visible, which, I'm sure, are most communities, make it easy to see how many out of a total population of appers were accepted and rejected. People are used to this. People are fine with it, usually, or they wouldn't be apping to those places. Nobody (usually) runs around pointing fingers at them and going "OH-HO! YOU WERE IN THE 10% OF PEOPLE WHO GOT REJECTED! 10% OUT OF 30 APPERS! THAT'S 3 WHOLE PEOPLE! BOY DO YOU SUCK!" In a place as nice as this, none of us are going to go talking smack about those who didn't get in. I feel like you guys don't trust us, because that's how you're coming across.

[soul_mods]

If we're misunderstanding what Demothi is saying, then we apologize for it. We don't want to upset anyone, but we hope that people extend to us the same courtesy by not assuming the reasons behind what we do as something inherently bad. If we're sounding like we're trying to defend the system, it's only that we're also trying to make you and Demothi understand what we do and why we do it.

The reason why we want to keep the hard numbers private between us isn't about trusting our players -- it's about courtesy and allowing those rejected in what's supposed to be private apps to keep their dignity should they choose for their rejection to remain a mostly private thing. This isn't solely about secrecy: It's about not wanting to hurt people who have already been hurt by rejection. All of these people keep talking about how the new policy is intimidating; how much more intimidating would things be if we said "Oh, well, of 130 apps, only 1% or 3 people were rejected"? Those three people would feel absolutely awful, especially when displayed in public for all to see.

Please don't assume that we're not reading everything, Boss. Every mod in the game reads the replies posted here. There are several reasons for keeping the applications in private rather than public -- having the applications sent to an email makes it far more efficient for the people reading the applications since we have constant access to them, public applications tend to be inconvenient because we have rather long app requirements (thus will cause more spam with apps that go all the way to comment 15/15), and we got complaints before that public apps were too intimidating. Most importantly, it offers the applications more privacy for any possible discussion that needs to take place between the mods and the players.

Lastly, many, many games have private applications. Perhaps your experience of games is very different from ours and there's nothing wrong with that, but the experience of public apps and their corresponding effects/consequences is not something we want to adapt (again) in Soul Campaign.

[cake-and-dreams.livejournal.com]

we hope that people extend to us the same courtesy by not assuming the reasons behind what we do as something inherently bad

Then you're in luck, because I haven't seen one single person doing that.

When you phrase it that way, it's easier to understand, thank you.

Okay, I shouldn't have taken your head off the first time around, and I apologize. This is, however, another part of my issue. It feels like you guys aren't getting what some people are saying, and it's very frustrating. Please, check and see what people are really saying before you reply. There's no need to explain your reasoning to me like I'm some dumb kid, whether you think I am or not, when I just told you before that I have no issues with the system of emailing the apps. I explicitly told you not to take that comment as a complaint, because it isn't one. That's what's frustrating, is having to go back and forth because of things being misread, and that's what makes it feel like you aren't really listening.

Now that you've answered everybody's questions, I feel better about the new system. I'm still unsure about it, and it makes me wary that it's being changed right after a long hiatus. Whether I'm disagreeing with you or not, I do appreciate what you do, but I think this could have been handled a lot better.