SONGEREIN OOC

STATE OF THE GAME: NOVEMBER 2023

Hello, Laena your head mod here! At long last, the "semi-annual" State of the Game post! Usually every six months we make these posts to announce any major changes coming up, address any issues, give a tentative roadmap of what to expect content wise, and request feedback from players about events and other things about the game. This was originally supposed to go up in September, but things happened and honestly it worked out for the better. We have a better understanding of where things should go and have some other things we can talk about!

We definitely appreciate player feedback, so please share your thoughts! Comments not screened to allow additional player discussion, but you can always hit our Mod Contact post instead if you wish to contact us privately.

First thing I'd like to address is the player cap! It was originally set to 75, but due to us always edging close to the cap, we have constantly raised it to 90 to just give everyone breathing room. It eventually became our new official cap, but I'm going to lower it to 85. It's only down 5 slots, but it feels a bit better than 90.

To be clear, we never expected our actual player population to ever reach 90. We have been hovering a few slots over and under the original 75 cap for a while now after every app cycle. Thus it was just a high number to allow a fair number of slots open so both players and mods didn't have to stress about having only, say, 5 open slots.

In addition to the change in the player cap, we're going to instate an application cap of a flat 15 slot limit. After looking back through the app cycles in the past year and at how we've been holding steady at or near 75 after app cycles, this app cap seems easier for us to maintain. Of course, if we somehow end up with a larger population we might have to reduce the opening, but this should do for now. Likewise, if we somehow have a larger show of interest and have the space for it, we'll increase. Because I'm just too nice—

We will use the application cap in the January app cycle.

Like in the past, we're just plotting out for the upcoming year, but everything in here should help lead up to and continue into 2025 as well 👀 For the record we have no set endgame and just kind of go year by year like any other "open ended" game, but just wanted to let it be known that as long as we have active players, we'll continue to chug along.

So while we're not going to give a month-by-month schedule (because we suck at that apparently), we can give a rough outline!

• Orkili. We have already introduced Orkili, and as we mentioned in this month's notes, it's not done yet! It will eventually become another city just like Dragefjell (Dragon Island) that characters can visit and be another potential location for activity and events. Of course, it also has a bit of world plot importance as we have hinted at in both the event and subsequent investigations. What could they be?
  
  
• Another new place! Oooh aaaah. Yeah that's all we can say for now, but a lot of past events including Orkili are leading up to this! The…when has been a bit tricky as development has taken a bit longer and we're not trying to rush anything. Not to mention the other events that crop up. So we're looking at maybe January or March, whichever will work best. Hopefully January since it will flow well with some other things coming up, but if not, March should work.
  
  
• Seasonal events. SO we do have our usual seasonal events, and sometimes they change depending what's going on, but just wanted to at least list out the few out there so everyone can keep it in the know, especially if wanting to work out your own player plots!
  
  
  1. Christmas. Since December is just around the corner, we do have a holiday event planned! That is indeed Santa and Christmas related. Expect the same for 2024.
     
  2. Flower Festival. Held every April, it's pretty much as it says on the tin. Very springy, very flowery, very festy.
     
  3. Summer Beach Episode. Because everyone needs a fun summer event. But who knows maybe next year we'll fling something different for it. This usually happens in July.
     
  4. Anniversary. In September! This year there wasn't much of a festival event, though there was one in 2022. Always hard to say for certain what will happen this far down especially since game development can change, but we usually try to do something that has a big change for the game, like Orkili this time (I say this as if we've done this more than two times—). Or maybe something special will happen if we don't manage to do it another time... 👀
     
  5. Halloween. Another common seasonal event in October. We may try something different for it next year, but it'll depend on what events have occurred before then and if it would be better ot have something chill or something more meat (and spooky nightmare) vibe to it.

And that's our general outlook. This is not including any player events that may pop up! But for anyone who'd like to throw one, be it public or closed, big or small, you can at least have an idea of how the year will look so you can plan ahead.

From the onset, Songerein has always been pitched as a game that doesn't have an overarching plot—and that remains true! Songerein is still meant to be an open sandbox for players and characters to do things and make their own arcs and stories. However, we do still have some plot, such as the Story Eater arc that we finished up earlier this summer, and in growing and expanding the world, it's inevitable that we have to drop some more "plot" to keep things going.

But we hope that this helps keep things fresh and interesting for everything, especially as we've entered our third year. So it's about time we change out and freshen up the toys in the sandbox—and hopefully it will help characters in developing and progressing whatever stories players have set.

As to what it is, we hope to introduce some new nightmare mechanics to the game that players will be able to play with. For the most part, nightmares and nightmare energy are usually considered as a bad thing, but through past events and Orkili, we've been teasing out that that isn't necessarily always the case. While they are naturally on the "bad" side, it's still possible to try and use nightmares to the character's advantage, even productively.

On that same token, we'll start to look at the negative consequences of dreamotion energy. As the saying goes, there can be too much of a good thing.

Along with this, we hope to expand the world a bit. We don't necessarily mean adding new locations (though that's always on the table), but until Orkili, everyone had been isolated to the circle around Reverein. It's a big world out there, surely there's something else beyond or even within the Wastelands. For the most part, we're just looking for ways to expand our events so we don't end up recycling too much. I can't say for sure how much we'll be able to get next year, but so long as we keep chugging, this will be the natural way to continue expanding Songerein's world into 2025 and for however long the game is open.

Now with that all said, we are always open for suggestions! If you have some cool idea or thought about something for how the game works, please tell us!! We are but a small team, and we're always open for fresh new perspectives and will try and bend around as much as possible to make something work if we can. So if there's something about the nightmares or the dreamotion energy or even kinds of places you'd like to see or play with, tell us!!

Soo… While we've been including bits of fairy tales where we can, it's clear we haven't done much with them lately. This is also true of dreamscape events. Because we had been focusing more on the actual world setting, both have taken a backseat.

Thus in 2024, we'll be trying to incorporate both more in our future events. We did mention expanding the world above, but dreamscapes are included in those means to do so. We also plan for December's event to be a dreamscape, so that should help kickstart us off a bit.

Of course, we're not going to try to shoehorn a dreamscape event if it doesn't fit, but we will try to where we can, even smaller ones.

One other thing we had considered was having occasional events where canon elements and/or settings bleed into the world or as a dreamscape event. This is inspired by the Legend of Zelda Hyrule setting bleed that occurred after the Story Eater battle. Something of this nature could be a full blown event or part of an event depending on what's used. We can also combine canon elements since some canons are similar to each other. Of course, we would also need help from the players in the cast to come up with ideas and may require players to help write prompts as they would know the content better. But these are just some of our initial thoughts!

If you have any suggestions for an event or certain kinds of prompts you'd like to see, let us know! You're always welcome to submit something on the PlayerPlot/Event Suggestions post.

That should be everything, and this is where I get on my hands and knees and beg for your feedback. Whether it's just to say, "Sounds cool, boss!" or "Hey can you add XYZ" or even "I think this event was kind of meh don't do it again" I would really, really appreciate it. I won't lie here, for the past few months I've been kind of scrambling because I'm not sure if the directions we're taking are working or not. We get very little feedback for either good or bad, so it's hard for us to judge if we're doing things well or if there are some underlying concerns that we have no idea of.

So, if you do have a complaint or concern about things happening in the game, let us know! You can even use the Mod Contact if you'd like to discuss it privately rather than through an open public post here.

But in the same vein, please tell us if you there's something you like! I'm not looking for praise or compliments, I just need to know if the direction we're going and the content we're putting out is working for people. We know we can't make everyone happy, but it helps if we know where we're hitting the right notes and can work from there.

We appreciate everyone who has come through and played in the game, and we value everyone's participation and presence here. We really want to make sure everyone is having fun, and the only way is to get that feedback.

Thank you everyone! Looking forward to 2024 and things to come!