Wellness Check 2022 Overview

[imepro]

Hello, and welcome to Imeeji's 2022 Wellness Check Overview!! We're going to be going over the feedback we received here in detail—we're also still responding to emails one by one, though that will take a little longer than announcing everything here, so we're doing this first.

Please note, we've only included the ones that are broadly actionable on our part; there are a few points that have not been added to this list due to being too specific of a situation or otherwise being something we need to follow up on privately before we can see about taking any action.

We may add more to this page as our last response and responses to our follow-ups slide in through the door, in which case we'll mark it accordingly. Now, without further ado:

Concerns

• SFW/NSFW divide is blurry
  
  • We've reviewed our Rules both on Discord and on Dreamwidth, and we've revised them to be more thorough. You can read them on the revised Rules page, but the TL;DR is that NSFW should only be in specified NSFW-accepted areas, both IC (in tags esp. ones unrelated to NSFW rp partners) and OOC (Discord and Plurk).
    
  • (06/04/2022) After discussion and consideration, we've revised the Rules to be clearer on what we consider to be NSFW.
  
  
  • (06/04/2022) We've added profile codes for permissions regarding both Fanmail and shipping/NSFW. Please check it out here!
  
  
  • (06/04/2022) Regarding mod/game effects that may lend to NSFW content: we generally give allowances for NSFW interpretation as people desire, but these status effects are not meant to be considered NSFW by default. Should players choose to interpret the effects as NSFW, then please make sure to treat it like a Fanmail toplevel when you post it. With consideration to the change in atmosphere, however, we'll also be dialing back/making those options more subtle for the comfort of our players. Thank you for your patience with us as we work on cultivating a more comfy Imeeji!
  
  
• Content warnings are lacking/common squicks are not known
  
  • We've added common squicks to our Rules page, so people are aware of what they should be tagging!
  
  
• Units are small
  
  • You've already seen, but with the introduction of Unit Support, we're hoping to fill out the smaller units a little more! Thank you for your patience.
  
  
• Mingles/Lives posted at the same time as Games
  
  • We've revised our posting rules slightly to request that players do their best to avoid posting Lives/mingles on the first day of a game (unless the Live/mingle is directly related to the game). It's fine if it's the second day or onward (if the game lasts more than one day), and closed posts that are meant to be concurrent with the game as an alternative to the characters involved participating in the game are acceptable, but otherwise, please be courteous in this regard!
  
  
• Godmoding/Power Leveling
  
  • We've been informed that there have been a few players who are somewhat circumventing the whole "everyone is depowered to human levels of ability" thing, whether in bracket actions implying they're definitely stronger than the other person and only not owning them because they're holding back, or otherwise indicating that they're watering themselves down to a human level. We'd like to remind everyone that characters are depowered to human levels of ability already, and we'd like to ask that players be more attentive to how they're portraying their characters' strength.
    
    Powercapping is played a number of different ways which are all valid—some may depower their character to be exactly at the limits of human bodies, while some may depower their character to be typically expected of their body type. Both versions are completely legit, and we're not looking to police that. Instead, we're asking that players make sure to tap their thread partners when power levels come into play so that everyone can get what they want out of the interaction, and to remember that no one in the game should be so incredibly powerful that they can definitely for sure win no questions asked, even if they have unit abilities on their side.
  
  
• Inactive unitmates, struggling with AC, & handwaving one-sidedly
  
  • We try our best to have an AC standard that is both encouraging to the two premises of the game (unit bonding and game mechanics) as well as easily attainable, so as to not be a great stressor to players. There isn't a way to perfectly execute this, and we're aware that at the current moment, our AC is designed such that players may struggle with AC despite their general activity, particularly because unitmate threads require a specific subset of people being active and around at the same time.
    
    After much consideration, we've decided that we want to keep our current AC standards, but additionally add the caveat that if one or more unit members are struggling with making unitmate AC, we'll review the general activity of those on the unit and determine who is inactive among them while having no extenuating circumstances that would cause this. We will issue Notices of Player Activity and increase activity requirements for the inactive players in question, as we feel this will encourage players to be more diligent in being around for their unit.
    
    Of course, this is all experimental, and who knows—this may not work the way we want it to. Please feel free to give us your thoughts as we stress-test this system. Thank you!
  
  
  • We've changed our Rules to reflect the above, and additionally have added another "do not do"—specifically, we ask players to not one-sidedly assume handwaved interactions between characters. This doesn't mean you can't handwave, but rather, please remember to tap your fellow players when you need to handwave a thing so that everyone can be on the same page.
  
  
• Lack of consideration for unitmates regarding drama, both on-screen and off-screen
  
  • We've expanded our Player Conduct section to include taking consideration toward other players, especially unitmates, when it comes to drama plots. This is also your friendly reminder to please be diligent in tapping your unitmates and important CR when hosting or contributing to drama, especially if your character's contributions may be off-screen (such as disappearing from the dorm for X number of days).
  
  
  • Additionally, we've noted in our Infomodding section that in-bracket negative/antagonistic commentary may dampen a thread partner's experience—negative CR is of course encouraged in Imeeji, but sometimes getting that extra flavoring can result in frustration due to being unable to ICly address (negatively or positively) the flavoring. Plus, some players want the in-character mysteries and tensions to be as natural as possible, which may include not getting spoiled through bracket text. This is not a ubiquitous experience, however, so this isn't a hard rule, but rather, our request that you please tap your thread partner to check if they're OK or not OK with it!
  
  
• Uncertainty with regards to mod processes
  
  • We've added a spot in the Mod Contact & Process part of the Rules to outline our process when handling player complaints and conflicts! Let us know if we should add anything else to it. (the rules page got really long 💦)
  
  
• Dice rolling frustrations
  
  • We understand that there are players frustrated on multiple sides of the spectrum—people who are not satisfied with how random chance can result in instant death or otherwise huge punishment, as well as people who are concerned with dice mechanics resulting in players being too invested in dice results.
    
    Full disclosure: We don't have a strong solution available yet! What we can say is that we'll be more discerning when it comes to dice rolling mechanics, and we appreciate patience in this regard.
  
  
• Games have a trend of strengthening off-unit CR rather than on-unit CR
  
  • We're going to be vetting future games more—especially trauma games—and brainstorming more on-unit strengthening games. Thank you for your patience!

General Requests (mostly: we're working on it!)

• More plot-related events, especially more plot-related events that are more accessible for characters to stumble into
  
  • We are working on this one—after player conflicts/emergencies, it's the task that we're most percolating on. For now, thank you for your patience, and you're always free to email us at imeeji.productions @ gmail (or directly to the mod account at imeeji.p @ gmail) with ideas.
  
  
  • Related: We are going to workshop Downtime Actions a little more and work out a more timely turnaround for players! This we swear!!!
  
  
• More corruption options that aren't tied to exploradoras
  
  • We see you, we read you. It shall come. 8)
  
  
• Incentives for people to create and interact with smaller Lives
  
  • Because imeeji is not a scarcity game, this is a particular roadblock for us. We don't want to necessarily reduce points, as we feel this is punishing to those who host Mega-Lives, and we also don't want to make things too complicated for ourselves or for you guys. We're putting our brainmeats together for this one—if you have ideas, feel free to send them to the mod email!
  
  
• THIRDS FOR PULSE
  
  • 

Game Requests

• This is just a list of game request types, spoken out into the open so all our gamerunners also know what kinds of games people are desirous to see. Thank you all for your input!


• Trauma game requests
  
  • Simple/short trauma games (ex Collar Game)
  
  
  • Games that injure/damage characters in ways not directly tied to losing
  
  
  • Choose Your Own Trauma (from a list)
  
  
  • Direct PvP
  
  
  • War room style trauma
  
  
• General game requests
  
  • PvE games that force unitmates to work together to overcome an obstacle or reach a goal (ex Capitalism, Oregod Trail)
  
  
  • Paired unit games
  
  
  • Unit bonding games, especially games that allow for unscored runs
  
  
  • Unit bonding games that don't necessarily involve emotional honesty
  
  
  • Memory share games
  
  
  • Games that last several days
  
  
  • Bingo games
  
  
• Rerun requests
  
  • Mukuro's poison game
  
  
  • Hadassah's Flowers of Heaven game

AND FINALLY, we have a question that has come up a couple times, so we'd like to publicly address it:

When is Imeeji ending/Will Imeeji have an end date?

While Imeeji does intend to have a finite run tied to plot, the everythings of 202x and general rollercoaster of life means that we haven't been able to make a plan with a set framework for how long the game is intended to run.

HOWEVER!

Life is perhaps finally becoming stable for mods—we'll know within basically the next month—and we are committed to getting things planned out for the future. What we CAN say is that Imeeji RP will likely be going on for at least another year, as there's a lot of plot to go through before we can start wrapping the game up.

Thank you all for sticking with us through these four years—Imeeji's birthday is already coming up!—and may the fifth (haha get it it's may) be fruitful in Imeeji hijinks and endeavors!!