I wanted to give a little bit of festival feedback, but first I want to say thank you to all the GMs who put a lot of hard work and time into the festival, the alterations, and the events around it.
I will admit that going in, I was a little leery of a new (well, reused) area for the festival but once I learned my way around, it was really nice having something different. The spider was becoming a bit of an unending sprawl that even with Genie and having a map it was easy to get lost.
A couple of suggestions in relation to the area: Please consider for next year putting a single entry gate into festival area where the dolphins drop you off. I understand that it needs to break groups in order to validate the tickets, but having FIVE different things that do this is a big rough. It can make it really frustrating when you're trying to shop and explore with friends. Or if you have to make a simple bank run because you ran out of plats midway through and you have to play the joining game no matter how you do this.
Please put some sort of check on the seagulls if you don't end up getting rid of them next year. If you happen to have to walk away while in a room with them, they just keep leaving droppings on you. And while it's a bit funny (and a lot gross) it can get you sent to the junkroom. We have other checks in place to try to prevent this, please add one to them!
And lastly, please, please change the messaging on the vine. I understand this is probably leftover from ages ago but it really bothered me that the vine is basically your creepy uncle during the holidays that hugs you a little too long and pats your butt. And the only way to avoid it is to log out and let the login mechanics take you to the pier (which is questionable for avoiding game mechanics). If another character tried to pat the butt of any of mine, I'd either feel I had consent to stab them or that I should assist to a GM about sexual harassment. It's not okay for a game mechanic to do this.
Alterations: This started out feeling a bit slow and bit too restrictive. I do feel like it really picked up in the last week and a half with more general choices, and a lot of merchants putting in extra hours to make sure people had a chance to get something done. Though I said it at the start, I want to again say thank you to the GMs for putting in all the hours of hard work. With an extra large kodus to Urdesas who really helped make this festival for me personally.
A couple of suggestions here: I love that we had some rare and neat alterations being done. From moongates, to avengers, to tattoos, and features. (And others, but I'm not listing them all!) It would have been really nice to have a little more leeway on how many of these were done. I understand trying to keep things rare and harder to obtain, but since they are so very rare, it might have been nice to have the option for a few more. For example the tattoo merchant was done very, very quickly. It would have been nice if they could have done 10 or 15 if it kept going fast.
Please consider being a bit more open and informative ahead of time about what some merchants will or won't do during certain more limited sessions. This would be very helpful on both sides. It lets us as the players be ready for what you're offering. The GM who did the avenger and tree alterations is a great example of how to do this. Posting the rules and general information for these alterations ahead of time was very helpful.
Merchant madness. I understand that this is a bit of a game and with most games there is a chance to "lose" and while I thought the GM who RPed the dyer was adorable, from the player standpoint, it kind of feels bad to get picked for something that is so much more limiting than the other options. This being said, I understand that some people enjoy this sort of thing and that's fine. I also understand that I had the option to not take part.
And lastly for me, the shops. It was great to see some old favorites return with new stuff. To see brand new shops and some fun new items. I won't go into another post about goose turd-hued things, instead I'll focus on a few other random thoughts I had.
I'm a little puzzled by the amount of shoes, boots, and other footwear from a culture that doesn't really wear shoes but at the same time it amused me. Like they as a race decided we liked shoes and put out a bunch of shops to show this. Same with cloaks.
I would have loved to see a shop or two dedicated to Merelew racial clothing, or other items. They wouldn't have even needed new nouns, just describing how they look. It might have also been fun to see a Prydaen shop, since there was one for Rakash and S'Kra, and even a Kaldar/Gorbesh-esque one as well.
I enjoyed the gem holding jewelry that they had in a couple of shops, and that more than one shop made use of color changing clothing. Items that change color make me happy since they become so much more versatile for my playing "barbie dress up" with my characters.
Bridal Belles was one of my favorite shops, the items were well done and lovely. I enjoyed the foci shop for the same reason, even if I rarely use foci.
It was also nice to see a much broader selection of clothing that is suitable for men, even if I was a little sad for my girls who like dresses. I also want to say thank you for not making most of it gender restrictive. I think anyone should be able to wear just about anything if they want to.
I'm not going to touch on the game, since I only really played Otter Smash and my only complaint there was the lack of actual otters to feed the clam meat to. I'll let other people go into more details on these.
Overall, I want say thank you to the staff and the players who made this a fun and enjoyable festival.
Player of Eruwyn.
