state of the pre-game!

[officialnotice]

Hello, Pinecones! (Holy shit, it's been a while since I've said that.)

In just over a week, The Pines reopens its gates for you and your characters to explore the quaint mountain town of Wayward Pines and the apocalyptic world around it. In this State of the (Pre-)Game post, we'll be giving you a condensed overview of the changes we've made since Pines 1.0 and other changes we plan to implement in the future, as well as opening the floor to you (the potential playerbase) to help shape the future of The Pines as a whole.

For those who weren't around for the original Pines, parts of this post (particularly parts of the 'adjustments so far' section) may not be quite as relevant to you, but giving the FAQ and other pages a once-over should give you plenty of context for the rest of the post + any feedback elements you might like to participate in.

So! Without further adieu.

ADJUSTMENTS SO FAR

overview: why change anything?

The Pines originally opened in early 2017, closing upon the conclusion of the metaplot's prologue arc ("Arc I") six months later. The decision to close the game was incredibly tough, specifically because The Pines wasn't facing any of the normal 'problematic game' issues - our playerbase was fantastic and proactive, we had a healthy number of apps each month, and we had more than enough plot to carry us through any number of further plot arcs. The trouble is, the game we'd built and the work it took to maintain that game were more than our remaining mod team (2.5 individuals at closure) had the time and capacity to handle, and none of the playerbase had the time or capacity to join that team, so the call was made to close The Pines' gates until such time came that a mod team could be assembled that would be able to maintain the game without experiencing too much stress over it.

It took entirely too long for it to occur to any of us that we didn't have to find enough mods to do the work - we just had to cut down the work to fit the team.

So we did. The Pines has become, for all intents and purposes, a glorified musebox rather than a formalized game. This basically just gives us the leeway to chill the fuck out about a lot of the things DWRP kind of takes for granted that 'games have to have/do'. Our policy, as a team, is to cut out as much hassle as possible so that we can focus almost entirely on making the experience fun and enjoyable for our players, but also for ourselves as mods. In some ways, this makes things easier for the playerbase. In others, it admittedly makes it slightly less convenient for the playerbase in exchange for significantly decreasing the mandatory workload the mod team shoulders each month.

You'll see both kinds of change reflected in the examples listed below.

bi-monthly schedule

One of the most dramatic changes is our new bi-monthly schedule for app rounds and activity checks. Copy-pasted from the end of the FAQ:


On even-numbered months (Feb, Apr, Jun, Aug, Oct, Dec): Application week is the last week of the month, with reserves and a fresh new TDM on the week before that.

On odd-numbered months (Jan, Mar, May, Jul, Sep, Nov): Intro log at the start of the month, CR meme between the 3rd and the 7th, Activity Check on the 7th for a week, recycled Test Drive Meme sometime in the middle of the month.

This March (as our opening month) will be the only foreseeable exception: There will be app rounds in both March and April, and our first Activity Check is all the way out in May.

chiller activity check

On top of being bi-monthly instead of monthly, we no longer have a Activity Points system, so there's really nothing to each AC beyond rolling in to let us know you're alive. We may bring back a points system (with much less policing than our previous one) at some nebulous distant future time, but the Requisitions page we plan to implement covers a lot of what the activity rewards used to, so we'd have to rework exactly what rewards the points could even earn.

chiller application standards

Basically, applications were judged way too strictly before, with an obscenely high percentage of them resulting in revision requests or rejection. That's not really going to be a thing anymore. We're still looking for the same general things in an application, but the app review process itself will be much less stringent.

reserves page

Reserves will no longer have a mod-updated HTML list of current reserves in the main post. Instead, you'll be able to check if a character is reserved or unreserved by CTRL-F searching for their name or canon, both of which will be in each reserve comment's subject line.

less formal modding

Honestly, we're just not going to stress about modding. This isn't a paid job, it's a hobby, and it should be more enjoyable than stressful. Players who bring ideas or requests to us are typically going to get a 'fuck it, have a blast!' rather than policing semantics. New game features will generally be implemented whenever the heck we feel like it, and rather than breaking our necks to meet deadlines even if something comes up, we'll just do that thing when we can.

ANTICIPATED NEW FEATURES

While we've made a number of scheduling and maintenance adjustments to The Pines already, the gameplay itself is still basically the same as the Arc II laid out just before we closed in 2017. That being said, there are a number of new features we plan to implement over the next few months. Here's what we've figured out that y'all have to look forward to so far:

page: requisitions

While it can generally be handwaved that anything available in a typical 90's town can be found in Wayward Pines, there are times when characters need a little something that isn't on the menu. Ortech recognizes this, and will be implementing a Requisitions Office (and Requisitions Delivery Service) to account for those needs. This page will be where you can put in Req orders on behalf of your characters. This can sometimes even provide them with items from their homeworld, if any have been found! More details on what this page does/doesn't cover will be released on the page itself.

(Anticipated release: early April.)

page: mutations

Little-known fact: If an aberration (or 'abbie', or 'murder potato' depending on how you ask) chews on you, or if their blood enters your body in any way (e.g. bleeding into your open wound), or if you for some godforsaken reason try to fuck one (why), you are now infected with their mutagen and will legitimately begin to manifest symptoms of rapid evolutionary mutation! Fancy that. This page will outline the details thereof, providing a Your Mutation & You roadmap to help you figure out which symptoms your character might manifest based on their biology, personality, and your stance on body horror. Not to worry, though: Ortech is more than capable of removing the mutagen from an infected individual's system and reverting them to their pre-mutagen state, assuming they're in range of medical attention and make the choice to seek it.

(Anticipated release: mid-to-late April.)

page split & revamp: housing & businesses

The current Housing & Businesses page will be dedicated exclusively to housing, and we'll be creating a new Occupations page (or whatever we end up calling it) to encompass both 'civilian' jobs/businesses (basically all of the jobs available in Arc I) and a new batch of more survival-oriented departments. Ortech, as a general policy, wants to put Wayward Pines as much in the hands of its citizens as possible over the next few months, and to work hand-in-hand with those citizens when possible. This means that characters will be able to hold jobs in combat-oriented security, in life-sustaining agriculture, in survival-skills education, in advanced science (Ortech is ready and willing to share their labs and resources with qualified individuals), and in many more crucial facets of the continued survival and development of Wayward Pines. Ideally, these departments will soon be ICly run by player-characters too!

(Anticipated release: late April or early May.)

adventures and dangers from your canons

Characters and their belongings aren't the only things that have ended up here in this foreign, apocalyptic world. Monsters and other dangers have likely arrived here right along with them! Over time, we'll be running mini-plots (or opening the floor for player-run plots) surrounding dangers or adventures from your characters' homeworlds.

But wait, there's more! Considering there's literally nothing lore-wise that limits the dangers/adventures to canons currently being represented in-game, we can just as easily feature monsters and other dangers from whatever the hell canons y'all want - including original 'canons' you've made up yourselves.

While we don't intend to make this the main plot of The Pines, dealing with threats that were brought from other worlds just like your characters will likely be a reoccurring subplot for as long as players seem to be enjoying it.

(Anticipated release: June? Maybe? Whenever it's organic, honestly.)

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK!

This is basically all to make the game more fun for y'all to play in. As such, we want to hear from you!

part 1: a genre poll

We did this poll once before, concurrent with the initial release of Arc II in Pines 1.0, but with a new playerbase at hand, we'd love to hear from you again!

If you have a minute to spare, pop on over here and check whichever boxes interest you the most. This game features all of the themes and concepts listed, but the results of this poll will help us decide how much weight each one should receive in the goings-ons of each month.

part 2: suggestions & feedback

We'd love to know what you think of what we've outlined above, especially the anticipated new features. If you have any neat ideas of your own that you think would be fun or helpful, we'd love to hear those too! We can't promise that we'll implement them, but unless it dramatically increases our workload in some way or changes the face of the game as a whole, we'll definitely give it some solid consideration.