Ha, the drift Kippie posted looks like it’s been playing in a bloody swamp. Which is delightful, BUT I can kind of see it not matching the event theme? The various vibrant shades we’ve gotten all are sort of, well. Thematic. At least to some degree. Which makes sense considering it was a roleplay event with lore involved; bloody swamp baby is all well and good but somewhat weird with the icy soul etc in mind.

...but I might yet drift my baby. For funsies. P; Although it DOES match is surrogate mother…

But anyway, the sprouts are adorable and awesome (the cheek crystals remind me of kitty whiskers too!) and I love them. And will enjoy inflicting mine on Lena. *^* Who…deserves a baby covered in sharp points, tbh. It fits her.

We’re almost done combing through the feedback and getting the feedback summary ready to go!  My goal is to finish that tomorrow or on Wed, and also do the raffle then! :D

In total, we had 118 responses to our feedback survey for this event.

• 67% of players adventured solo, and 59% adventured as a group (this is over 100% because many players did a solo and a group run).
• For group formation, 47% of respondents formed the group themselves, 27% were invited to a group, and 18% were part of staff-formed groups.
• Respondents who roleplayed solo did so for a variety of reasons: most commonly because they were worried about finishing by the deadline and/or they were worried they wouldn’t post enough for the group’s needs, followed closely by having a preference of working by themselves.
• 62% of respondents felt that groups of two would be an ideal adventuring size.  43% felt solo would be ideal, 31% felt groups of three would be ideal, and 8% felt that groups of four would be ideal.
• Roleplay histories were varied.  31% of respondents had never roleplayed or roleplayed very little (1 - 2).  49% had roleplayed frequently (4 - 5), with 20% choosing the middle ground (3).
• Most respondents feel very positive about creating their own worlds and stories (95% chose 4 - 5) and roleplaying (93% chose 4 - 5).
• 64% of respondents thought the pacing of this adventure was just right (3), with the second most, 29%, thinking the adventure felt a bit too fast (4).
• 58% of respondents thought the pacing of battles was just right, (3), with 26% thinking it was too slow (1 - 2) and 16% thinking it was too fast (4 - 5).
• 80% of respondents thought the amount of guidance was just right (3), and the rest would have preferred a bit less (7% selected 2) or a bit more (13% selected 4) guidance.
• 40% of respondents felt the complexity of the mechanics was just right (3).  48% want to see more complexity (4 - 5), and 9% want to see a bit less (2).

Overall, the response to this feature was overwhelmingly positive. Even so, there were many areas identified that had room for improvement. We’ve done our best to include the major themes seen in the feedback, regardless of feasibility or whether some contradict others:

Battle mechanics:

• More variation or in attack styles would be nice (e.g. ranged, magic, weapon types, etc.)
• Visible die rolls would be a good roleplay prompt, letting you know if you “just barely missed” or “missed by a mile”.
• Missing multiple times in a row is boring. It’s difficult / tedious to roleplay a bunch of misses.
• More detailed weapon statistics would be helpful in making decisions.

Mechanics that detracted from the experience:

• Purchasing items from the shop was very tedious.
• Chapter prompts were sometimes specific enough that they contradicted previous player posts. Sometimes there was too much narration, sometimes not enough.
• While narrating flavor for a sword swing or miss can be interesting, doing so for every strike is tedious.
• Some players felt that the mechanics were complicated and unintuitive.
• Many players would have preferred to be able to see the individual die rolls.

Mechanics that added value to the experience

• Instant responses/bone monster narration.
• Story twists or character development opportunities due to unexpected die rolls.
• Being able to solo roleplay was very important.
• The inventory system was pleasingly simple.
• The encounters, prompts, and flavor encouraged creative thinking/character development.
• The variety of actions available allowed people to play true to their characters.
• The variety in storyline and encounters kept the adventure fun across multiple playthroughs.
• Attack mechanics/HP tracking provided a pleasing overall structure to encounters and battles.

Mechanics that players would like to be changed

• Dice roll mechanics: being able to see the dice rolls.
• Dice roll mechanics: mitigating frustration / tediousness of multiple misses in a row.
• Shop mechanics: streamline item acquisition.
• Inventory: items should be more fleshed out / interactive.
• Items: more variation in weapons / items and their stats.
• Characters: encounters should take character abilities into account (e.g. flying, magical ability, personality traits, etc.)

Mechanics that players would like to see added

• Giving items to other adventurers in the group.
• Development of character stats, classes, skills, etc.
• Magical attacks and ranged weaponry.
• Visibility into die rolls.
• Visuals and illustrations of scenes and encounters
• Developed NPCs with dialog trees.

How would players like to see adventuring feature developed

• We should make adventuring a recurring event type.
• Adventures should not be limited to events, but should also be available outside of events.
• Outside of use in events, adventures should be open-ended with no time limit.
• It would be nice to be able to opt-out of HP tracking, dice rolling, etc.
• Having options for less guided/more sandbox adventures would broaden the appeal.
• Many players would love to be able to create their own adventures for others to enjoy.
• Be cautious to balance adding features and complexity against general simplicity of use.

To sum up
There was a treasure trove of ideas and suggestions. Most of the common themes are listed above, but there were also a lot of other great comments/feedback that were less common but are nonetheless being considered.  Our next step is to figure out how to balance what players want from the feature, brainstorm mechanics for some of the more nebulous desires, balance reward versus effort / time-to-implement, and go from there!

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Thank you all for taking time to give us feedback!  It is fantastic we have an ideal test audience to help us sculpt our feature to be something unique and catered to our community. 

As mentioned above, our immediate next step will be to figure out what sort of changes we’d like to make according to feedback we’ve received, and then to start making those changes along with streamlining and furthering the development of the tools necessary for to create new adventures.  Stay tuned for more information about our next steps, and how you can get involved!

Everyone who participated will either get a gem or a Crystal Soul openable, randomly chosen.  With 118 participants, 59 prizes will be Crystal Souls, and 59 will be gems.  You can check out the raffle, held at 6:30 Server Time tonight, below:

The feedback rewards have been distributed!