Idea Post!

[livebait]

Hello Aather! In the interests of making Aather the best game it can be, we'd like to toss around some potential ideas for what you'd really like to see in the near future!

Since the game has been running incredibly strong for over 3.5 years now (///), we want to make sure we're keeping things bright and engaging, while still staying true to the game as it is and what's made it what it is.

We've had more open slots recently largely due to a lot of characters moving to Happy End or Legacy after being played for several years, and game turnout is a little lower lately (probably also because some of us have been doing this game thing for longer than we've lived in any one place in real life, I don't know about you); and we've also dropped down to a bit of a quieter pace that's a better fit for the playerbase at the moment—but some of these are fairly big changes functionally! so we want to make sure we can continue adjusting and growing the game to fit that.

The mods have some ideas for things we want to do in the future (and I'll make note of some of them in this post!), but we'd also like to hear:

❥ Game or event ideas you'd like to see! Games that we ran two years ago you really liked, or just "a secrets game" or "a costume game" or anything like that. Things we haven't done in a while you wanna see again, or things we've never done that you have a good idea for.
❥ Plot hooks or directions you'd like to go in. "I want to find out more about why there's always a tree in the Ring" or "I want more helping Personae break roles" etc.
❥ Elements that would help you or your characters be more engaged!
❥ Other things that would be cool—quests? Abilities? Themes? Laser beams for Burupya?

At least for this post, we would really just like to hear ideas and suggestions—nothing will be definitely going to happen and someone might have an idea that you don't think would work for you, but that's okay! We are also not looking at making any changes to activity/game structure & functions at the moment—just gameplay, please!

For now—please help us with suggestions about what you'd like to see and we will do our best to make some things happen! If you have multiple ideas, please feel free to leave them as separate comments if they're about fully different things.

Thank you as always for being such a stellar playerbase, and please do always feel free to come to the mods in private if you have questions or concerns or suggestions or pictures of kitten paws.

Comments

[aristocritical]

In preparation for some Darkness-fighting miniplots I plan to run in the future, I'd like to know what sort of balance the players would like between straight-up combat events and less conventional methods of "fighting" that function more like quests and exploradoras. I'm hoping to use both for fighting the Darkness, but I'm considering how to balance the two!

[idkmybffnirvash]

I have two fighters, so I enjoy a straightforward fight. I think Aather is very strong at that end . . .

As for the non-fighters, I've always been put off with exploradoras. I'm not good at them, so it's hard for me to lean that way. I'm interested in quests, though. I feel like that would be a great way to do back-up and support, especially if the non-fighters can provide something that's not available to fighters. Status effects might also be interesting for non-fighters to deal with . . . Like if the fighters get plagued with self-doubt rather than, say, poison, so they need help from non-fighters to get back on the field. It could be a good way to strengthen CR and leave people with open room to do whatever they think is most fun.

[glorious]

My own personal preference is usually to lean in favor of noncombatants rather than run something more strictly for combatants. Playing primarily RPG characters, I'm usually able to easily participate in either combat or noncombat events but a noncombatant character is 'locked' to whatever doesn't involve combat, and may be locked out of an event entirely if it's heavily centered on fighting. So usually erring on the side of 'not enough combat' still means that characters aren't locked out entirely due to a lack of skill/their heart recently exploded/their only fighting skill is cardfighting/etc.etc.

Another solution for this is to keep combat a primary focus, but allow characters to go off and do weird things to aid in the fight. I usually have most fun in a fight thread when I can compensate for my character's lack of skills by exploiting the terrain in some way, like removing a door to use it as a shield/luring monsters into a hole/etc.etc. So fight sequences with some detail given to the environment could offer creative noncombatants a way to handle a fight in an unconventional way without having to rely on their keys' Care Bear stare feature.

That tends to be my own personal preference though, but there's definitely more room for adding key features that could be used in fights though I admit I'm blanking on what they could be.

[idkmybffnirvash]

keyblades, you're thinking of keyblades

[glorious]

...I even had significant KH CR, I have no excuse.

[simple_not_boring]

Paying attention to this thread.

[selfequipped]

I'm going to straight up say that if we have a darkness event (or events), I'd prefer to move away from fighting-based events, in part because a lot of these fighting events require players to be located at a certain place at a certain place for a certain number of hours. Inevitably, these types of events cut people out. That isn't to say that darkness fighting is bad. Giving characters the visible satisfaction of kicking ass is important!

But for big events, I'd like stuff like ... back in the day, there was a mosquitoes bite people with darkness event. And what I liked about looking back on it (I'd been temporarily out of the game at the time) was that it was self-directed. Players wrote the characters darknessed/dealing with darkness on their own terms. I think plots like this, with some directed mingles, would be really successful with the state of the current player base.

Again, that's not to redirect things from fighting. Fighting should have some payoffs in these plots, too, and have a place, but I think plots that play more with intrigue can be fun. Having darkness mimic people, having darkness affect personae, etc.—I think these can have some amazing long-term playoff.

[yoloath]

I actually love fights, but I think the most fun I had was like… a thing where people split off into smaller parties and each party had a thing to fight in a timeslot. It was smaller and allowed way more interaction between the fighters. Bigger fights, I find, limit the number of fighters interacting with people outside their CR to a fairly major degree. I loved having an excuse to have people calling advice to each other "watch out for x!" "can anyone y?" etc etc. Of course, that would probably take multiple runners and a more fluid setup, and bars people not in those small groups from participation, but I'd love to see it come back as an option.

And options are really what I like having— having noncombatant options, combatant options, all sorts of things. The smaller party thing holds true across the board, though. I've always felt more like I have an effect on the plot if it's not THERE IS THE ENTIRETY OF AATHER HERE, DO YOUR THING, be it combatant or non. I think those events are good for raising overall unity of Aather, but I also like smaller events with multiple runners where people can have more of an individual effect— like the paths with the mirrors etc in that one plot event.

Also what other people have said, even when it's not my bag. (I love combat and exploradora, haha \o/ but variety is always good! Nobody can be happy 100% of the time but with more variety more people can be happy some of the time :3)