Early Impressions

[Matias]

Since the game is in a death loop I think because of an angry RG.

1. Early impressions of the new grid. Is it doing it for you?

2. Early impressions of the lookfor system. Do you understand it? Is it mixing things up?

3. Early impression of Windermere. Is it inspiring any interesting student RP?

4. Early impressions of LLM interactivity. Is the AI RP the bane of existence or can you dig it?

[Oracle]

So far I am quite enjoying the game. I don’t have as much time to play these days as I used to, and I really struggled to find something to hook onto in H5 and H6, but this version seems to be going well for me.

1. The grid is a bit large for my tastes. I usually avoid getting a car or bike as a character because walking helped me to know the grid much better and allow for patrols and being captured / attacked, etc. This time I gave in and got a vehicle. I think I am getting the hang of it though.

2. It took me about a week to even realize the lookfor system was there and then to figure out how to use it. It isn’t as intuitive as I would like. I’m still not sure I have it figured out completely but I am starting to get hits on it and be able to feel more involved, which is nice.

3. I haven’t played in Windermere yet.

4. The LLM stuff is a little janky, especially with its opening salvo. Perhaps it should wait for the player to open the scene instead of jumping to some weird conclusions like it did with the one I was involved with. On the other hand, and I think this vastly outweighs the downsides, I deeply appreciate the chance to roleplay with something (even if it isn’t someone) as badly off-peak player. I play in the hours where in some versions there were only 2 or 3 characters online. Getting patrols or encounters to fire when there are so few players online was painful and just depressing. This time I happened to stumble into an event where the others couldn’t reach in time, so I was on my own. It was really refreshing to have something to bounce my RP off instead of just talking to myself and feeling very weird. I think this holds a great deal of promise for us off-peak players (assuming we can get encounters to go off and get a chance at some karma, too). I haven’t jumped into the dreamworlds yet, but I am also looking forward to trying that out for off-peak RP.

[Dovie]

1. Early impressions of the new grid. Is it doing it for you?

I like the new grid. I like that there are various neighborhoods that have different flavors. It still feels a little too big to me, but I remain open minded. I’m quite excited to see more shops/stores opening up. I hope people will start making use of offices too for RP. I personally love the loft/shop combo layout and wish there were more of those outside of downtown. In general, would have been great to see a variety of shop/store layout types more diversely spread in each borough. The one downside of some buildings is that they feel easy to get lost in, but I think once we get used to navigating the grid, it will be easier to handle.

One aspect I do really enjoy in h7 is peak hours for shops and stores. The reminders are great. Players seem to really flock to those locations to help support RP (and in general it seems like groups tend to congregate and move to various locations). Highly encourage everyone to keep spreading the RP location love here.

2. Early impressions of the lookfor system. Do you understand it? Is it mixing things up?

Admittedly, I need to test this more myself. I did one encounter, which was essentially similar to how encounters in h6 worked minus having an SR account. The thing I would really like more clarity on is whether your PC should also be included in the encounter itself (it seems a little odd to me to run the encounter and also have yourself be a character; I saw this was asked in another thread, but I do not think we have an official answer yet).

3. Early impression of Windermere. Is it inspiring any interesting student RP?

This I can’t speak on as much. I think there’s a segment of the player population that is participating in student/University RP, which is great. Just not my sphere (yet). Because the grid is so large, if you are not organically a student/teacher/WU focused player, you may not cross paths as much. That being said, turnout to IC events has been very positive across the board and there’s been a high player count so it feels like people are trying to form new connections, etc. to get into more RP hooks with one another. I’m hopeful this spirit will continue. I’ve seen class events on the calendar too, which is great!

4. Early impressions of LLM interactivity. Is the AI RP the bane of existence or can you dig it?

I’ve heard of LLM interactivity, but I’m not sure which form of ‘look for’ this appears in. I would be curious of people’s experience interacting with the AI.

[August]

I. Early impressions of the new grid. Is it doing it for you?

The size of the new grid is immense, and it is daunting – but in the long-term? I imagine that it will get filled up with more and more shops, stores, themes and ideas that people couldn’t bring out with the limited space of a small town in h6. No one has to worry about not having a house, there is more than enough for everyone – and caters to every sort of trope. Motel guy? Rent one. Student dorm? All yours. Lofts are incredible, and having a shop and a home in the same place has been down right incredible for aesthetic and convenience. It’s def. doing it for me.

II. Early impressions of the lookfor system. Do you understand it? Is it mixing things up?

I agree with the sentiment that it’s not as intuitive as it should be or I’d hope it would be. I couldn’t make sense of it during the testing phase, and I still can’t. I’m sure it just takes actually using it a few times to get the hang of it, but until I can hold off on *doing* stuff across the grid and focus on them, I’ll stay inexperienced.

III. Early impressions of LLM interactivity. Is the AI RP the bane of existence or can you dig it?

I can dig it when its not done by a player, so this is not bad. It’s a tool to make the world far more alive. Society NPC’s are suddenly ‘alive’, gathering dreamworld xp isn’t such a chore when you’re alone, and it can even be interesting. Generally, I consider this a form of writing practice. Less skin in the game, not as serious, but still something very promising, especially in text-based games.

–
Overall, this iteration rocks, in many ways that H6 fell short of.

[Rosethorn]

Grid:
Like others, I feel the grid is a tad too big but over all I enjoy the thematics, the variety. I’m excited to see the empty properties fill up the list! There’s definitely a lot more room for creativity with the lack of unawareness and everything being out in the open.

Peak hours, also great. I keep forgetting to set them for the rest of my spots but it’s fun to see where the crowds are at varying times and the number of events popping up.

Lookfor:
I haven’t gotten to really mess with this much but I think there’s a lot of room for potential. Shoutout to Thomas and Arachne for their deep dive into Opportunities and Incitements on that front.

It’s all a learning curve and we’re figuring it out together!

LLM:
Definitely janky, but again, potential. I’ve only done one patrol so far and it was hilarious but like, in a good way. I haven’t been able to get the dream scenario LLM to work yet though, so I’m probably doing something wrong if others have been able to.

I think it’s overall going to be a good tool, like was mentioned above – writing practice. Especially if it learns to stop powerposing people lol

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