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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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If the goal is to improve participation, it might be useful to consider how votes with many participants differ from normal vote cycles. Memorably, the vote to go with Itachi or stay in Leaf had a huge number of people voting between very distinct paths.

The lurkers do have opinions about the path of the quest, but a majority of vote cycles are about optimal distribution of shadow clone hours to an already determined goal. Even topics like Hazo's ninja superpowers are already determined for the next several-thousand XP (or more). All of the decisions seem to be buttoned down already.

I think this was showcased in the way that difficulty checks for Rune research were handled. Hazo prepped a scattershot of ideas to find the contours of what Runes were best suited to. But, any kind of optimization or formal experimentation on this space would have required winning multiple plans (e.g. designing seal chains to explore how helpful Veterancy would be). That's not a realistic ask for a new player. (For the record, I saw that Stompy did a lot of work to try and fit as many possible suggestions as possible! But there was undeniably an obstacle to involving new voters in the research planning process.)
 
Sir Stompy said:
Not counting votes for the first 12 hours wouldn't stop people from posting plans and said plans calcifying. Additionally, there is nothing stopping new players from suggesting updates to existing plans, and many players don't even vote until the end of the cycle.

It sounds like what you want is a moratorium on plan making and not voting. But perhaps I am mistaken.

Furthermore, the sad truth is that new planwriters often write bad plans. I certainly did when I was a new player. This shouldn't surprise anyone, it is skill they are still learning.
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This, and -- new players frequently make uninformed votes, and then do not make themselves available to have themselves informed.

I would be fine if they did so knowing all of the factors that're important, but when there's a Big Vote and someone repeatedly makes banner posts at the top of every page to get new voters to vote for Their Thing, that doesn't exactly encourage thoughtful voters.

e: Which would be fine in most quests! But fucking up here means game over. So unless plans are made with more of a QM guiderail, I, uh, can't say I'm properly enthused about getting a bunch of new voters in any case.
 
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Sir Stompy said:
Furthermore, the sad truth is that new planwriters often write bad plans. I certainly did when I was a new player. This shouldn't surprise anyone, it is skill they are still learning.
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I think what we really need (to make the quest more accessible to new players) is a guide for how to write plans that are good and not bad. But I don't think anyone is interested in putting the work in to do that anytime soon.
 
eaglejarl said:
  1. (Minor point) Bosses cannot be summoned away from their territory without some prep time. The amount of time can vary widely depending on numerous factors but is generally very roughly on the order of half a day.
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Are you also retconning the Condor Boss being summoned to fight Kei/Ami/Naruto then? Because it strains belief that they gave them half a day of prep time in knowledge that it would allow them to summon their boss.

(Kei, at least, would be discinlined to do so regardless because she wouldn't want to disadvantage the Condors further.)
 
Cariyaga said:
e: Which would be fine in most quests! But fucking up here means game over. So unless plans are made with more of a QM guiderail, I, uh, can't say I'm properly enthused about getting a bunch of new voters in any case
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A bunch of new voters and plans would be fine with me, to be clear. I am confident that more eyes on our problems can only help or be neutral at worst. That said, I don't necessarily feel like we need to bend over backwards to accommodate them.

A +1 XP incentive per unique 10 voters who post >4 times in a voting cycle might help too, but FUCK calculating that lol.

A 12 hr voting moratorium is fine IMO. I don't really think it will move the needle, but I don't really think it'll hurt either.

I have seen some wild stuff proposed, like rotating planwriting ie. no longer doing democracy. All of that is off the table.

The basic facts remain that this question has an incredibly high bar to entry and that there is no way to lower it much, we can nudge it, but removing or even drastically lowering it it is not possible without other tradeoffs the QMs are not willing to make.
 
acidshill said:
I think what we really need (to make the quest more accessible to new players) is a guide for how to write plans that are good and not bad. But I don't think anyone is interested in putting the work in to do that anytime soon.
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It's very subjective too, 100% vibes based. It's fundamentally a soft communication skill in a community of (fondly) autistic nerds.

This shit is hard. I remember being on the outside of the inner planwriting circle wanting to get skyslicers tested on the Dragons and it took months of sustained effort (IIRC anyway). That was for something that actually turned out incredibly well.

If new players really want to get involved, I suggest joining the Discord and chatting there with the other players (please set your username to your thread name) it helps build relationships and trust, both of which are useful for drumming up support for your ideas.

That'll get you faster responses and a place to spitball ideas. I wish I had done it sooner.
 
Zampano said:
If the goal is to improve participation, it might be useful to consider how votes with many participants differ from normal vote cycles. Memorably, the vote to go with Itachi or stay in Leaf had a huge number of people voting between very distinct paths.

The lurkers do have opinions about the path of the quest, but a majority of vote cycles are about optimal distribution of shadow clone hours to an already determined goal. Even topics like Hazo's ninja superpowers are already determined for the next several-thousand XP (or more). All of the decisions seem to be buttoned down already.
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I think this has way, way more to do with people not participating as often. The small, relatively inconsequential votes are all kinda important but they just like are not very engaging and so much of it is planning for a plan that is 10, 20, 30 updates out. That kinda stuff is just never going to be enthusing for people that aren't already part of the process. That being said, I don't think that this is a solvable problem by changing the voting system or adding bonuses or w/e else. It's just kinda inherent to the XP system and our power level compared to all the threats we have to deal with.
 
Sir Stompy said:
This shit is hard. I remember being on the outside of the inner planwriting circle wanting to get skyslicers tested on the Dragons and it took months of sustained effort (IIRC anyway). That was for something that actually turned out incredibly well.
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My take: Planwriting consists of like seven independently difficult or energy-intensive things:
  1. Reading the thread so you know what people care about
  2. Reading the discord so you know what people care about
  3. Understanding enough of the mechanics when it's plan-relevant, as it often is
  4. Decoding all the half-stated, half-in-progress, thrice-codenamed agendas
  5. Actually writing the plans, in the endorsed bullet-paranoia style
  6. Being live to feedback during a plan cycle
  7. Engaging in politics to convince people your take is right
And then you have to do all the above often enough that people trust you.

I consider myself 'experienced but retired' in this respect. The politics was the part I found the most unpleasant, but it makes a lot of sense and I don't really see an alternative. The codenames OTOH definitely seem like an artificial problem people could just solve by coordinating better. Most of the others just seem like high standards it would be costly to do away with.
 
Speaking as someone who really shouldn't be identifying with the lurkers for as often as I've posted; making plans feels hard, and making a winning plan feels genuinely impossible. I don't feel like I'm being hyperbolic. The idea that I could come up with a plan that has even 50% original content and 50% content from the currently leading plan would probably lead to a plan that has ~75% good content at best. Now, to be clear, this is a feeling, not necessarily a reality. The largest part of why plans are so daunting is that it feels like we have no margin of error; every single mistake or missed opportunity is ruthlessly punished by the highly intelligent adversaries we've been cultivating for nine years. The best I can hope for, then, is to submit myself into the greater social-machine of plan generation by throwing out fragments of things that I think are good ideas. I pushed for the Ino-Hazou-Akane triad, I pushed for Hazou-Akane originally, and even contributed an idea that has been hugely impactful to our combat loadouts (Remote Explosive Seals). Being a small part in this ecosystem is fun enough for me, but I can't imagine it is for too many others, else more people would be doing it.

As someone who is pretty much willing to post [chi] Inferno Vulpix and be done with whatever the current 400 words on Shadow Clone optimization is, I have no problem treating this quest like a Representative Democracy. I've been playing with everyone long enough to get a feel for what people's positions and values are vis a vie the quest's goals, so in absence of understanding the nuance of a plan that is a set-up to a foundation for a position we might be in six months from now, I trust that at least one of you will lead us to an outcome I like.
eaglejarl said:
That's actually a whole discussion that I would like to have at some point... is it high effort because 3.3 million words is too much to read, or because we give you freedom to order a la carte as opposed to off the menu, or what?
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To directly answer the question(s):
1. 3.3 million words is a lot to read, but it's not like all of that needs to be reviewed before any average plan cycle. We're all here because the writing is good, anyway.
2. I'm sure you meant a la carte as a simple linguistic metaphor, but that's not what's happening. A la carte would imply we had a menu to begin with, instead of a gesturing signal to drop into a new situation, analyze relevant variables both present and potentially looming, and then discuss amongst ourselves how to write a plan of action in as few words as possible that both addresses present and future problems, and tries to get ahead of the next random disaster we're destined to face. And then do it again in three to four days. That's pretty stressful.

Something that I've been thinking about for a bit, is that empowering Hazoupilot has been a pretty good thing for us in aggregate. I feel like there would be value in a small write-up at the end of (vote-opening) updates that indicates what Hazou is thinking about at the moment in regards to priorities, or anything he feels is weighing on his mind. It doesn't have to be long, and it doesn't even really have to include any suggestions of action, but a glimpse into what our man is thinking about would feel like a great place to start for me when thinking about what things to address.
 
Spector29 said:
Something that I've been thinking about for a bit, is that empowering Hazoupilot has been a pretty good thing for us in aggregate. I feel like there would be value in a small write-up at the end of (vote-opening) updates that indicates what Hazou is thinking about at the moment in regards to priorities, or anything he feels is weighing on his mind. It doesn't have to be long, and it doesn't even really have to include any suggestions of action, but a glimpse into what our man is thinking about would feel like a great place to start for me when thinking about what things to address.
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This is a good idea, I feel.
 
Sir Stompy said:
It sounds like what you want is a moratorium on plan making and not voting. But perhaps I am mistaken.
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You're right, I meant a plan-making moratorium. Thanks for the catch.
I suggest trying a ~12 hour moratorium on plan-making at least in the form of not sharing completed or semicompleted plan writeups.

Sir Stompy said:
Furthermore, the sad truth is that new planwriters often write bad plans. I certainly did when I was a new player. This shouldn't surprise anyone, it is skill they are still learning.
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Fully agree, but makeing it easier/faster to learn good planwriting is a win for everyone.

Creating an interaction tier between "not contributing" and "regular/veteran who persisted through a year of frustrating onboarding" would make the quest way more welcoming, and better pipeline interested but uncontributing readers into contributing regulars.

I think a planwriting moratorium would serve both of these, and have other good side effects.
It's strongly worth trying for a bit and seeing how it works.
 
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Cariyaga said:
Are you also retconning the Condor Boss being summoned to fight Kei/Ami/Naruto then? Because it strains belief that they gave them half a day of prep time in knowledge that it would allow them to summon their boss.
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That came up in QM conversation, actually. We do not feel that it needs to be retconned. I'm not sure if the explanation of what happened is obvious or completely impenetrable from the player side, but there is one.
 
eaglejarl said:
That came up in QM conversation, actually. We do not feel that it needs to be retconned. I'm not sure if the explanation of what happened is obvious or completely impenetrable from the player side, but there is one.
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The answer is appreciated. For what it's worth, it seems completely impenetrable to me and I think it will likely also seem that way to many other players. If you're willing to say more about it... was the Condor Summoner just better at planning than we expected or did advanced summoning techniques/Condor spacetime jutsu/??? reduce the baseline 12 hours needed? Does the 12-hour preparation last forever until you spend the charge to summon the boss?

As far as I can tell it seems to be universal to multiple other summoners regardless of Clan, so perhaps it being Condor-specific is mistaken. Curious what guesses other players have.

I realize that an exact answer would likely be spoilers but a basic "at least one of the things you guessed was at least close" or "everything you guessed was way off" would be appreciated if possible.
 
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eaglejarl said:
That came up in QM conversation, actually. We do not feel that it needs to be retconned. I'm not sure if the explanation of what happened is obvious or completely impenetrable from the player side, but there is one.
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Would you be willing to tell us? There's a lot of uneasiness going on with some of the recent WoGs, and more information would help to better soothe our concerns.
 
faflec said:
What about Asuma summoning Enma for a debrief on the Dragons? Hazou had to tell Asuma to do the summoning, and he did it right after.
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Or Oro Summoning Manda on a dime for city defense:
eaglejarl said:
"Also, were Orochimaru to fight inside the walls, there would likely be a great deal of collateral damage. He's known for summoning Manda, the Snake Boss. That thing is so huge it will trash entire blocks just moving around."
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We should just rule that all the Boss Summons were busy during the BotG or some shit, it's what actually happened with Gamabunta.
 
Huh. I'd always assumed that, memes aside, Boss Summons actually were summoned to the BotG, but were so useless that the combat involving them was off-screened (same way nearly all the nameless jounin were off-screened). This was a significant factor in my modeling the Seventh Path denizens as ultimately sucking combat-wise. Consequently, I'd been thinking that the other players piling hopes on Cannai usefully contributing to the Riftwar were 25% based on him being unusually hard to summon (Dog is one of the stronger clans, so perhaps Cannai isn't as useless as the others), 75% distilled copium.

That Boss Summons apparently were supposed to matter, and that their non-contribution to the BotG was caused by some action of the Akatsuki that might not be in play this time around, actually raises my evaluation of our chances of victory.

I agree that "Pain did this" seems like the most consistent, least retconny, and least unfair-to-players explanation.
 
Sir Stompy said:
I have seen some wild stuff proposed, like rotating planwriting ie. no longer doing democracy. All of that is off the table.
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I am also completely opposed to that, except in cases where we elect the Almighty and Merciful @Noumero. Long May He Reign!

EDIT: I did not realize that Noumero posted right before this. Whoops. The joke was that Noumero essentially never writes plans, but when he does, they usually win in a landslide.
 
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faflec said:
We should just rule that all the Boss Summons were busy during the BotG or some shit, it's what actually happened with Gamabunta.
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That or their summoners simply didn't have the chakra to feel confident in summoning them AND defending against being sniped by every enemy before their summon could act.

Sir Stompy said:
This also seems completely impenetrable to me unless she has some unknown spacetime hax.

Conjura should have been fighting a war and far too busy to be on standby for weeks(?) waiting for Kei's team to attack her Summoner.
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Given that Oro/Manda and Asuma/Enma have also had Bosses pop in quicker than 12 hours, I think the answer may be that the 12-hour prep gives you a charge of whatever IC nature that lasts a long time, potentially indefinitely, until you expend it to summon the Boss, and Boss summoners keep one saved up as a matter of SOP. It's what lines up with the info I have about which Bosses have been summoned how and why Hazo doesn't know this yet (has never had the chakra needed to summon Cannai and observe how long the summonability is good for).
 
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DanZapman said:
I realize that an exact answer would likely be spoilers but a basic "at least one of the things you guessed was at least close" or "everything you guessed was way off" would be appreciated if possible.
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I fear the lash of @Velorien's "I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed" tongue-clucking far too much to actually reveal secrets. I will suggest one point of attack: what is/was different about the Condor Boss and her clan's circumstances as compared to the other Bosses and their clans?
 
eaglejarl said:
I fear the lash of @Velorien's "I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed" tongue-clucking far too much to actually reveal secrets. I will suggest one point of attack: what is/was different about the Condor Boss and her clan's circumstances as compared to the other Bosses and their clans?
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Understandable, and the suggestion is very much appreciated.

For further speculation among other players and myself... Might be something to do with the Land, then, and Enma and Manda already had affairs in order versus Cannai currently being at war? Conjura obviously got kicked out of hers at the time.
 
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eaglejarl said:
I fear the lash of @Velorien's "I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed" tongue-clucking far too much to actually reveal secrets. I will suggest one point of attack: what is/was different about the Condor Boss and her clan's circumstances as compared to the other Bosses and their clans?
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They were fighting a total war for their very survival so their Boss had time to swan (condor) around on the Human Path to help her Summoner?....
 
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