As stated in the post, the vast majority of the playerbase is interested in increased austerity. However, approximately two-thirds of that vast majority wants the increase to be relatively minor. We're basing this off of the results in the final section of the poll ("Section Eight: Tone"), where most responders' "this is where I want the game to be" rating was only a few points higher than their "this is where I feel the game is now" rating. As for the myriad ideas in the rest of the poll, there was actually a good deal of diversity in most people's reactions! There was a small group of players who were gung-ho for nearly every change, but most players were much more all over the map, feeling positively about some ideas and negatively about others. Details like this aren't visible to anyone who doesn't have mod journal access, but they're vital things to take into account.
Regarding the ability to add to the setting, there seems to be some confusion between "luxuries" and "changes". There's a huge difference between "now the pool has a water slide", "now one common room has a weird???? tree in it???", "this floor has a creepy mural now" and "all the chairs in this common room are gone because they were broken into bits for shivs and haven't been replaced." Changes to the setting can be positive, neutral, aesthetic, or negative, and the really luxurious ones are likely to be trimmed as part of the reductions mentioned briefly above. Based on the screened comments we received, the main issue for most people was not the idea of characters being able to affect the setting, but the difficulty in keeping up with changes/having correct IC information without having to dig through threads of comments/feeling blindsided by something they didn't know about, so that's what we're most trying to address.
Regarding the mistletoe, while a clear majority did vote to nix it, a sizable enough portion really, really, really wanted to keep it that, after much deliberation, we decided to give it one more year with further tweaks above and beyond what we've done in years past. It's a long-standing TLV tradition that is, historically, enormously popular in terms of actual play and which kickstarts a lot of CR at a time when people are often too busy to engage in more in-depth plots, so it's getting one more chance to see if we can bring it to a place that feels more acceptable to its naysayers. If the adjustments to the meme allow for a successful compromise, then we want a chance to figure that out before throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But if post-December polling shows that we didn't succeed, then it'll be gone going forward.
As you've noticed, we're generally leaning conservative in a variety of areas. As we mentioned, we had a lot of comment responses along the lines of "austerity sounds fun, but not too much". Everyone here chose to join the game as it currently is, and while we're interested in it continuing to change and grow - especially given the popularity of at least some shifts! - we would prefer to be cautious and not pull the rug out from under anyone.
And finally, as far as roadmapping goes - like we said in the intro to the poll, this poll was just a preliminary interest check. We have a metaplot outline that some of these ideas (increased restrictions to Admiral requests, restrictions on warden travel, and some amount of supply scarcity, for starters) have already been slotted into, but we don't have a step by step guide for precisely what is going to happen when, and for how long, and to what severity - because by and large, those are things we plan to tweak and adjust as we move forward, based on how they play out in practice. Likewise, November is a port month and we're planning to use it to test drive some of the port-related suggestions we polled for, but we're not at all at a stage where we're prepared to say "this is how all ports are going to play out moving forward".
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Regarding the ability to add to the setting, there seems to be some confusion between "luxuries" and "changes". There's a huge difference between "now the pool has a water slide", "now one common room has a weird???? tree in it???", "this floor has a creepy mural now" and "all the chairs in this common room are gone because they were broken into bits for shivs and haven't been replaced." Changes to the setting can be positive, neutral, aesthetic, or negative, and the really luxurious ones are likely to be trimmed as part of the reductions mentioned briefly above. Based on the screened comments we received, the main issue for most people was not the idea of characters being able to affect the setting, but the difficulty in keeping up with changes/having correct IC information without having to dig through threads of comments/feeling blindsided by something they didn't know about, so that's what we're most trying to address.
Regarding the mistletoe, while a clear majority did vote to nix it, a sizable enough portion really, really, really wanted to keep it that, after much deliberation, we decided to give it one more year with further tweaks above and beyond what we've done in years past. It's a long-standing TLV tradition that is, historically, enormously popular in terms of actual play and which kickstarts a lot of CR at a time when people are often too busy to engage in more in-depth plots, so it's getting one more chance to see if we can bring it to a place that feels more acceptable to its naysayers. If the adjustments to the meme allow for a successful compromise, then we want a chance to figure that out before throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But if post-December polling shows that we didn't succeed, then it'll be gone going forward.
As you've noticed, we're generally leaning conservative in a variety of areas. As we mentioned, we had a lot of comment responses along the lines of "austerity sounds fun, but not too much". Everyone here chose to join the game as it currently is, and while we're interested in it continuing to change and grow - especially given the popularity of at least some shifts! - we would prefer to be cautious and not pull the rug out from under anyone.
And finally, as far as roadmapping goes - like we said in the intro to the poll, this poll was just a preliminary interest check. We have a metaplot outline that some of these ideas (increased restrictions to Admiral requests, restrictions on warden travel, and some amount of supply scarcity, for starters) have already been slotted into, but we don't have a step by step guide for precisely what is going to happen when, and for how long, and to what severity - because by and large, those are things we plan to tweak and adjust as we move forward, based on how they play out in practice. Likewise, November is a port month and we're planning to use it to test drive some of the port-related suggestions we polled for, but we're not at all at a stage where we're prepared to say "this is how all ports are going to play out moving forward".