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

[truecaptain]

WRONG ACCOUNT BUT OKAY A FEW MORE THINGS

-The thing I struggle with most is times for games. Everything is pretty much centralized for EST evening and weekends. Especially weekends. Which I know is all about player availability, but I think it plays a huge factor in the issue I mentioned above about there not being enough characters to easily gain memories for teams! I WILL HONESTLY HAPPILY RUN DAY GAMES ALL THE TIME... I just... need to app a Persona for it, whoops. But if possible I'd love to see people consider doing games more at different times. I know AJ does that! And I know I will if I ever stop chickening out over this app...! But for me personally I'm basically on I guess GMT in terms of availability and so it's impossible for me to make games or I'm late/luckily off (and I know it's the same for a lot of people). But! Maybe it's a thing for Persona players to consider when they plan a game and their availability for it? If at all possible (this is more just a thing I'd like to see post since I know it's all about availability).

-I think it would be really cool if characters who go on like Legacy Quests or Quests to help a specific persona for whatever reason to have a noticeable effect on things. Like Legacy Character going on super awesome quest to fight Darkness!!! But no one can see anything. Like they're out of play, but a little gimmick of the characters currently in Aather seeing their friends having an actual effect on things now and then would be really cool.

-I'd like to see more games that encourage off team cr! Not like mingle games, but the past few trauma games and some of the exploradas recently is a good example. Not necessarily all the time, but I'd love to see it outside of mainly exploradas/squished teams. Like a really neat idea would be a battle of team morals, but instead of a full team together maybe tiny groups and the teams that have the most concise view/understanding might win! Or the most individualistic, etc. It would be interesting to play with!

-I will always, always love Aather plots so much. Mostly because unlike every other game I've been it's very inclusive and so great at being that. I think my major issue with it is kind of similar to my issue with games in that a lot of the major things tend to happen around similar times. I know the whole Darkness wave plot in Camelot I always came home to things being over/winding down so I never knew what to do. So maybe a bigger timeslot and/or like others have said a set time where people can sign up for what is easiest for them to make? (SELFISHLY I WANT TO MAKE IT TO AN AATHER PLOT ONE DAY ;U;) Again I would also happily help with daytime things here too if needed!

-This one is more of a question but is it possible to consider applications to be open permanently while there is such a huge gap in the team slots? Only temporarily until things fill up more and as things stand I don't think it's something that would be utilized a lot or too troublesome. But that way instead of consistently having no one to place each week there's a possibility someone new might app!

Honestly, I love everything about Aather. It has been such a great game and all of my concerns are super minor and more or less fall under the 'poor turquoise' and 'timezone' issue things. ICly the thing that is sometimes the hardest for me is how fast things move from trauma game to the next game. I know we had a few days after the last one and I think it'd be nice to continue that trend? Because I tend to play characters who DON'T COPE and when the next IC day they're having a fluffy game about hugs it makes them disengage and just not worry about it and so they never confront their issues (thanks ron). So maybe a buffer between trauma and regular games would be a good idea? But that's not a super huge issue either.

I REALLY JUST WANT THE CHANCE TO FRIENDSHIP AT THE DARKNESS MORE. SORRY NOT SORRY.

[selfequipped]

I'm going to agree with keeping applications open. I think that would help. I know we closed applications ages ago because we were having too many placements and too many characters thrown into the queue, but obviously, things are different now. Another pro to apps open all the time is that if you do app someone and they don't click, you can always app someone else easily. I don't mean to encourage a high turnover, but I think a number of us are looking to change things up for ourselves (especially in the wake of being in the game for a while). Plus, newcomers can come and join the game whenever. Basically, there's a lot of options available.

If things become unwieldy again, then apps can be closed, but yeah!

[livebait]

This is more of a structure/function thing rather than gameplay, so I don't want to touch on it hugely, but the primary reason I would like to hold on to monthly applications is for team placement. Being able to gather apps together at least every weeks lets me see a number of slots to be filled, and a number of apps to fill them—so I can sort people to the best team.

If we're having a constant in-and-out, maybe that app I got in last week went on a team that was so-so for them, but their ideal team opened up a week later, etc. Or a player that wants to reapp knows that they just have to get their reapp in by the monthly deadline and not worry about I have to app RIGHT NOW or someone else might app and since they don't know my app is coming my slot will be filled! —sorts of considerations.

tl;dr there's a number of reasons and I think on the flipside that having to wait just a couple of weeks to app each time allows for a bit more buildup to apps as well, so I prefer to keep things as they are right now.