Trial 2 Postmortem

[faentasy]

Hello everyone! This week, one of the cases in Once Upon has ended in a scapegoat result. As this is a scapegoating game, we do expect this as a possibility for any case, but upon reflection, we do feel that we as mods have contributed to this result in the way we have mishandled certain situations during the course of the trial and investigation.

For example, there were multiple points where we had given out evidence incorrectly, which affected how certain parts of the case would be interpreted. Due to that, you guys lost precious time for discussion since you needed to wait for corrections. Furthermore, we understand that the instructions for voting were confusing and alarming to hear particularly at the end of the trial, which made an already stressful situation worse. Lastly, we also acknowledge that we as a moderating team have the responsibility of making sure that all cases are fair for all players and that ultimately, the buck stops at us. The moderator team of Once Upon apologizes profusely for our mistakes and will take measures to avoid making those same mistakes in the future.

We also want to make it clear and reassure players that due to the issues mentioned above, all the abstains were specifically counted for SQ, as having Yeager scaped for this case would be unfair. In future cases, we will be moving forward with a simple 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. majority to decide voting results and not counting abstains.

In addition, we would also like to leave this space as a place for feedback about the cases so far. Please feel free to discuss with us any concerns and thoughts that you may have, because we want to make this game an enjoyable experience for everyone. Please don't hesitate to be honest, especially if it helps the game improve. We as a mod team are here to listen and take into account your feedback.

By default the incoming comments are screened, however, if you'd like your comment to be unscreened please feel free to note it in your post and we will get it done right away.

Thank you very much for your time, and thank you for playing in Once Upon.

Comments

[vogelfrei]

In the case of evidence, I am not entirely clear if the evidence re: which hand was used and which height was the culprit was meant to be a case-solving clue or if it was something the mods tried to accommodate our questioning on. If it's the latter, that is awesome in concept! I love being able to question into every direction and engage with a case 3D rather than being led through a la point and click.

But in the event where both players and mods wind up so confused by a line of questioning, maybe it would be better for the mods to say 'hey, don't get so hung up on this, there are other directions you can question that are better pre-planned' or to just go 'the character can't tell'.

That's... pretty much all I got, thank you for your hard work! And please unscreen this!

[faentasy]

Hello Luna, thanks for your feedback! You have a really great point about lightly redirecting players if they get too far off-track. In this case, that definitely was something we should have done since the height determination talk was not a case-solving clue while handedness was not a critical piece of evidence. We always do try and accommodate different lines of inquiry (especially since sometimes players do hit on angles that we don't expect that lead to the right conclusion) but you're correct that we definitely can step in and establish some boundaries if things veer too far off track.

[amortristis]

I think moving forward there should probably be a bit more of a push to keep the trial discussion mostly IC - I think a large part of the issue also stemmed from OOCly falling down the rabbit hole of what hand did what in what direction, which I think also ate a considerable amount of time for something that, in my experience, hasn’t really helped decide a culprit beyond splitting hairs. So I definitely think a push for things to go IC or a "hey this is super inconsequential" like Luna suggested would probably help a bunch.

The fact that this all was on Discord too runs the risk of alienating players - not everyone is constantly present enough, or has the stress of trying to juggle their own case with several different platforms, and it makes it seem more integral to knowing what's going on in the game than has been explicitly stated prior.

Thank you guys for your hard work so far! This has been a good time. Feel free to unscreen.

[faentasy]

Hello Pom, and thank you for your feedback! We definitely agree on the whole "discussion should be done IC" thing instead of on Discord or through OOC channels because like you said, it does leave some players out of the loop. We'll be more vigilant about this happening from now on and we'll gently nudge players to theorize more ICly instead of in chat.

[mathodical]

Hi mods - thank you so much for doing this, and please feel free to unscreen my comment.

First off, I want to thank you all for the effort that has been put into the game, I've been really enjoying myself, so I would definitely say that my experience overall has been a net positive one.

In terms of feedback, particularly with the trials, I do think, however, that there were some teething issues with regards to the amount of information that was provided, not just with regards to the trials but also in terms of general information provided. I've taken to noticing that there are some questions that have been asked repeatedly on Discord by multiple people, which brings concerns that some things may have been "lost in the shuffle" so to speak. For instance, I think it should be common knowledge about the time between trial and investigations, for instance, that they take place on the same day and that trial happens immediately after investigations, but I don't see that information anywhere other than on Discord. I think it would also be helpful in terms of playerbase deciding on character actions if we knew how long IC-ly characters had for the investigation phase and the trial phase, for instance - if the investigation phase was about 4 hours from 8am to 12pm on Friday, characters with longer investigations like body autopsies and the like could IC-ly be busy doing investigating for the entire 4 hours, and those whose investigations wrapped up earlier would also have an idea of how much time left they could have for PCs and other CR building, especially in the intense wake of a murder wreaking havoc on character emotions and the like. Putting this information at the top of investigation posts would probably be helpful, since it's a good place of reference to look back at. Things like how the shop/regains would work ICly would have also been helpful to put on the shop post (like there are no shop records).

I appreciate that new mechanics - like multiple votes for double murder cases like this! - shake up the game and make it more interesting, especially if it spills over to an IC reaction, but I guess my feedback would be that they would have needed to be introduced maybe slightly earlier and more in full if possible such that most people are clear on an OOC level what to do even if their characters wouldn't be. I play a character who would bully the MM or other characters ICly for deets and wouldn't necessarily share information unless absolutely necessary, but I wouldn't want the quirks of my character to affect OOC knowledge of the game. I also think the clarity of the instructions and new mechanics would be helpful for the mods only so people don't ask too many questions, especially when it comes down to the wire - since today's cases were both large and complex and confusing and I'm pretty sure it's only going to get more wild from here, so if anything that would also help minimise mod stress.

I will agree with Pom and Luna below on the IC discussion vs OOC discussion and the confusion about evidence - I do get that this is meant to be a scapegoat game and sometimes there's a lot of evidence involved and some of it may be meant to mislead/be red herring type of evidence, but I do think that this particular case for Gin's did suffer from a "too much tiny evidence that we didn't know what to focus on" so some mod direction would have helped on focusing the case a little bit better, especially in the later parts of the trial.