GAME UPDATES

Happy skeleton month! We wanted to touch base with everyone about the game schedule as we head into the holiday season and the new year. We know we’ve stuffed everybirdie full these past events, and want to leave room for everyone to relax and spend time with their loved ones without having to worry about roleplay.

Before we get into the details, we also want to take the time to thank you for making this game a success. There would be no Golden Peacock without you! We appreciate your patience and excitement over the course of this 2024 and we look forward to take what we've learned into 2025.

Without further ado, please see our anticipated shifts for the next few months, as well as few miscellaneous updates!

( we're bringing the turkey )

MOD ANNOUNCEMENT

Hello birdies far and wide! We are coming to you with a major announcement that will impact applications from the June 2024 round onward:


This is a decision we have been ruminating on for some time, and one of the routes we initially considered going instead of implementing a cap. While the cap is achieving its job of keeping our workload manageable, the limitation on slots and stress of open applications rounds is just as rough on us as it is on prospective players.

To aid this, we are adding invitations on a waitlist system; this way, when it’s an invitee’s turn to apply, they can do so knowing a player slot is guaranteed for them, rather than having to compete during a limited timeslot window. You can review the system and its process in full on our new INVITE PAGE.

Additionally, we are raising our cap to 120 players in order to better facilitate processing this first application round and wave of invites. All current players in the game will be able to issue one (1) invite, so there should be plenty to go around!

We are also working on some major updates to our ACTIVITY CHECK, HIATUS, CALENDAR, APPLICATIONS and FAQ pages. We invite you to take a look and, as always, feel free to send us any feedback via the MOD CONTACT.

With love,
The GP Mods

P.S. for all current players: please stay tuned for a part two to this announcement where we cover a few more details shortly part two is available HERE!
 

MOD ANNOUNCEMENT

Howdy, hens and harlots!

With the close of our first official month of play, we wanted to unofficially celebrate and express our gratitude for all of you who have made our humble little game into a real hootin' nest. We've broken our beaks and stumbled our way out of the coop, and it's been a real learning process! We thank you, our players, for your kindness and patience during the craze of 160+ apps, a real chicklet mod team, and your continued understanding as we test these new winds.

We're rapidly discovering what does and doesn't work while trying to innovate on our ideas. One core value we want to embrace is clarity, starting by bringing you this Mod Update illuminating all our changes.

CODES & UPDATED INFO

We’ve made various updates to our codes, generally making things more streamlined and legible. If you still have issues with any particular page, please let us know so we can do our best to make it more accessible!

Additionally, we’ve made quite a few informational updates:

▷ The taken list has more centralized information, including everyone’s rank/suit and quick access to player-relevant pages. If you see any missing or incorrect links, drop us a line and we’ll be happy to fix it up.

▷ A sample app is now available, which includes all the new changes to our application and related processes. If you plan to apply with us this month, please scour these pages thoroughly! Please remember that your applications are your birdie bibles and TDMs are canon. If something is not included on your app, we’ll have to ask you to leave it at the door — you cannot bring it in to Golden Peacock.

▷ Our applications, reserves, and calendar pages have all received updated timelines. We are cutting down the length of the application round to help with our workload. (Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about our promised announcement from last round! Stay tuned for more on that.)

▷ The FAQ has been blessed with some sprucing, codestry, and pizzazz. We're also implementing a change log to keep our answers easily accessible, before the comment pages get too unwieldy.

▷ There's a special new reward: birthday gifts!

If your character had a January or February birthday that has already passed, please feel free to immediately claim your IC Resort Birthday Package. You can either backdate your request, or assume a system update alerted the hotel staff that your character's birthday got missed in the craze of the newcomers and they've re-assigned your character a random replacement date ASAP. Enjoy your special day!

LET YOUR CREATIVITY FLOURISH

Another one of our values here at Golden Peacock is player expression and creativity. In other words, so long as you aren’t trying to “break” the setting or the game itself, you can do... just about anything! The library can have whatever kind of books you want or don’t (though they pivot towards erotica more often than not); there are no weapons, but if your character wants to spend hours whittling a meter stick into a spear, we'll start calling them Ishmael; if your character is craving a specific kind of cuisine, a period set of clothing, or you want to create your own funny bird-punned restaurants — it's all within your power!

We ask that you inquire and/or inform the mods primarily when you feel like your character has incurred or would benefit from some kind of punishment (we'll try to make these sexy or CR-building!), or it seriously affects so many people it needs to be run by the mods as a player plot. Think of it like the difference between someone deciding to throw a house party, and someone deciding they're going to livestream the kidnap and murder of multiple characters. If it isn't excessively criminal or pertinent to many others, feel free to use the setting to the fullest!

ACTIVITY CHECK RESULTS & REMINDERS

We want to congratulate everybirdie on passing AC this past round! In the future, we will not post or plurk any reminders for AC, so please remember to get your submissions in on time. If you feel you won’t be able to make activity for any reason and it’s too late to hiatus, reach out to us as soon as you get a chance — we’re always happy to accomodate players in case of emergencies, since at the end of the day IRL will always supercede RP.

FEBRUARY APP ROUND & GAME CAP

And at long last, the part you’ve all been waiting for — that formal announcement on applications we said was coming.

▶ THERE WILL BE A CAP ON HOW MANY APPS WE PROCESS.
After much debate, we have decided to process a maximum of 50 applications total from new players, due to the workload that app rounds put on our team.

You are not included in this 50 total if you 1. are already in the game, i.e. apping second or even third characters, or 2. were given revisions in the previous round. We feel this is the most fair way to do it since many of our first round revisions were for small things like incomplete applications, and without the cap, would have been processed at that time. You will still need to get your reserves in, though! This does not grant you any sort of priority or acceptance guarantee, only that we will look at your app, even if it’s submitted at the last second.

▶ PREVIOUS DECLINES MAY REAPPLY.
We have also decided to go into this app round with a blank slate for all previous declines. This is in part due to our clumsy handling and the lack of sample app to give the general populace an idea of what we're looking for. The only exception would be for those players we explicitly had ban discussions with in private, outside of the application system. We hope this helps ease the hurt and confusion players felt as we worked the kinks out of our system.

Going forward, declined characters are permitted to reapply up to two more times, for a total of three application attempts. After a third decline, you will no longer be able to apply for that character. Being deferred due to a player or canon cap does not count as a decline.

▶ PLAYER AND CAST CAPS ARE NOW IN SESSION.
Furthermore, we will be capping the game at 100 players after this round. For this round, we will be accepting up to 25 new players out of the 50 applications we process. We want to give everybirdie that last chance to squeeze into the coop, since we didn’t originally plan on being a capped game, meaning we’ll be temporarily over our cap after this round. The only exception is for revised apps from last round — we will be processing these apps as if there were no caps at all, as there were none at the time the revisions were requested.

This means that future application rounds will only be open for current players to app seconds and thirds until we fall back below 100 players. This is as large of a game as we feel comfortable modding while still being able to exercise the personalized flourishes and individual player plots we love doing, and allows us to stay somewhat public and welcoming of new blood in the future.

For casts, all individual canons will be capped at 10 characters. The only exception is for original characters, which will be capped at 12 characters instead. We may re-evaluate these cap values as the game progresses, but our aim is to keep any one canon from dominating the game as we grow.

▶ TDMS WILL ALWAYS BE OPEN.
Just because we might be capped doesn’t mean we won’t always want to meet you! Everyone is welcome to play on our TDMs as much or as little as they’d like, whether they plan on apping that round, a future round, or never. We ask for samples from the past 2 years, so if you’re concerned about them expiring, you have plenty of time.

IN CONCLUSION

Thank you for letting us host you here at the Golden Peacock! May this thick, juicy update help fill any holes in your experience thus far.

More seriously, the interest we’ve received has so, so far exceeded the expectations we had for our humble little game, and we hope we’ve made a good compromise between maintaining our vision for the game and keeping it as open as possible. We also added a more experienced hen to our modly flock earlier this month to help us hatchlings with communications; this update was partly hatched out of their eggs. Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback for us, and enjoy your stay!