Happy New Year!

2014 is going to be a big year for us; in fact, it is the year I am defining as a "game changer" for DE. The last time we had plans this big, it was back in 2009 when we moved onto a new sim, whole new city build, and launched the character registration system. After lurking on sim for several months last year, receiving and reviewing 20+ detailed feedback emails from active group leaders, and pouring over the 50+ responses from the survey that was sent out a couple weeks ago, we took a hard look at ourselves and know it's time to evolve. Here's what I've come up with:

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We need business and faction leaders to be the forefront of management. We have been too dependent on admins and GMs to approve every little detail in the community; we’re going to change our culture of management starting today.

In the last year, we’ve taken a lot of flack about the way we’ve setup our management. For one reason or another, there is this perception that everything has to be “approved” by an admin/GM and that’s not the way a healthy community is run. Please consider the following changes I’m implementing:

• Group leaders should be at the forefront and the role of admins/GMs is to support them. I personally consider everyone on staff (security, moderator, GM, and Admin) on the same level - the same team; the difference are responsibilities and abilities. The role of an admin and GM is to send notices, make sure everyone is on the same page, and handle OOC issues. Any questions received about groups to management will be deferred to group leaders. We will just deal with leads who make bad decisions on a case-by-case basis 🙂
• I have defined 5 areas of focus for each GM and admin to head up for me (ie. Group Proposals, Digital Media, Story Weavers, Community Events, and Mentors). Each team leader will be encouraged to recruit people from the community to help. I will be posting the responsibilities/goals for each focus in another thread once team leads are assigned.
• Shade (aka Bean) has been promoted to Admin while Warumono (aka Kyo) will continue his role as GM.
• We are seeking a new GM and are happy to take recommendations from the community. I will make a post about what that role entails shortly.

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We need to incentivize diverse and fair role-play; we should recognize players for it. We’re going to expand on the Character Evolution System and offer role rewards for those who grow their character in the city and participate with different parts of it.

While preserving the idea of applying for a specific role, instead of automatically receiving an “innocent” or “deviant” title, everyone will begin as a “Denizen”. However, when first registering via the Character Registration Portal, players will have a chance to identify with a “path” similar to the roles we’ve offered the past couple years. As their character interacts with the police, hospital, jobs, on forums, and missions, they’d be rewarded with unique roles. These rewards are simply recognition of players who have spent the time diversifying their role-play and participating in the different parts of the city - essentially those who go through the flow of developing their character. We can even open up the idea of people earning the right to use a gun in their RP since we can make sure only experienced RP’ers who are well rounded and seasoned with such a system.

We will aim for an end of February or earlier launch date for this change. Everyone will default to Denizen (similar to the single title DE once had before) and as they interact with the PD, their previous history will be taken into account to expedite existing players to earning roles. The “paths” for existing players will be derived from the starting role they had applied when they first joined DE.

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We need to focus on creating a more sticky experience for new players. We’re launching a new feature of the character evolution system which will automatically and randomly offer missions/quests for both new and existing players to stimulate role-play and help get acquainted to the city.

As of 2013, we had a total of 11,475 total new character applications submitted between all ALTERSCAPE communities; 9,492 of those were accepted. On average, we process about 100 apps per week in DE alone.

This year, I wanted to put heavy emphasis on retaining those users who go through the process of joining but don’t expose themselves long enough to discover the benefits of staying. As part of the Medical and Police database, a scaled down version of the Character Evolution System was rolled out in DE about 2 years ago. I am planning to roll out the full version this year which will include the ability for people to “earn” new roles based on RP with the medical and police system, the new missions/quests completion, presence in businesses and on sim,  as well as forum usage.

For the quests/missions, imagine being a new player who just joined Dead End. They will receive missions with various complexities (ie. visit the Hospital and get a full check up, “A relative dies and you’re feeling a bit sad; go drown yourself at Lulu’s”, etc.). Using the various ways we track role-play on sim, we could automagically stimulate optional role-play opportunities and reward players who participate in it - both new and old.

I’m hoping to launch ~25 missions this by the end of March, followed by another 25 missions by the end of the year.

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We need to expand the Mentor program. We’re looking to recruit seasons role-players who are willing to be accessible to new players and to run orientations once a month or two.

Welcome Orientations and Workshops are a great way to bring new players together and educate them on the community. It’s also an opportunity for new players to find other new players to start up stories. I’d like to expand on this and start a group with one or two people who are willing to take charge of the concept and work with me.

I’ve developed an easy copy/paste transcript that can be used by anyone who wants to volunteer an hour of their time every month or two (with enough volunteers, ideally we can schedule one every 2 weeks). Each orientation would be promoted in the form of an IM to every new players when they are on the sim the day of it. Mentors who aren’t RP’ing can also hang out in the OOC area and take on any questions.

If you’re interested in leading this new initiative, please let me know. I’d like to get leads and a solid base of volunteers in place by the end of February.

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We need to continue to innovate on community security and protect more efficiently from griefers. We’re launching the next generation ALTERSCAPE Security HUD and reporting system

The security system is being overhauled and has been designed to offer the following:

• warn players and log it
• teleport home players who don’t respond and log it
• estate ban for 1 week players who are griefing or continue to ignore security requests and log it

The ability to estate ban from the HUD is a more efficient way of tackling griefers. Additionally, I want to expand on the telephone information booths we have around the city to allow people to submit abuse reports on members who are harassing them and to also automate the banning of non-members who are griefing (ie. DE member could report a griefer, and if 2 other players also report the same name, the security system will automatically kick in and ban said griefer and flag an admin when it’s done).

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We need to work on making the role-play environment more efficient and lag-free. We’re going to do an object audit and make sure we standardize as much as possible on common decor items.

Mesh is pervasive in today’s SL culture. While clothings and furniture looks amazing, the textures on multi-face mesh objects are commonly large texture files (1024x1024). That’s 4x to 8x more than the standard 256 or 512 textures I launched the rebuild with.

We will be standardizing on common furniture and retexturing objects where possible. I’m aiming for a full audit complete by end of March.

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We need to improve various aspects of DE that have been noted through surveys and general feedback. We’re going to act on points that were made in the 50+ response survey that was recently conducted:

• Add an email requirement to the character registration portal so they are emailed confirmation if their registration was approved or declined; this will also include instructions on how to initiate a re-invite themselves in case SL fails to send the group invite. We have already improved the turnaround times of approvals within 24 hours - whether SL is reliable enough to send group invites is another story.
• Proposals need to be expedited; if we don’t have enough community feedback, admins/GMs will communicate and approve. Our goal is to provide approval within 72 hours of submitting a proposal.
• Roads and spaces need to open up a bit more in the center; I want to encourage people out of the center square and we may change the teleport landing area to somewhere more central to the entire sim than just Lulu’s.
• Survey indicates communal stories like the blizzard are quite popular; we’ll take more ideas from the community and do more.
• I’m going to experiment with creating interactive mesh NPCs in the less used areas so that people can at least RP being served as customers while RP’ing with other live players.
• We need to encourage creating more RP events, from small to big, so that players know there’s somewhere to go and RP in a larger group of people - it helps with the new and more shy players. The daily in-world message you when you enter the RP area includes a list of upcoming events now that is pulled from the website.
• We'll add another sim and grow the Dead End estate and RP area!