So, while I was gone, there seems to have been an event, which lead to a lot of complaining, as events usually do. It was repetitive, boring, you name it, you complained about it.

So, I got curious, what will be a good event for the players? Will it be... this?

So, for once, the world won't be on the risk of being destroyed. Whatever it is will be pretty calm and peaceful. Failure to succeed will not cause huge ideological waves of change, or make the soulless eat the world, or make the other organizations rape your puppy. It won't contain vast amounts of boring and repetitive work, such as lighting spire nine times. (Incidentally, how about making the required items for these quests immediately respawn after they've been used to empower said object?) It will contain several waypoints where whatever Org (does it even have to be org, can't it be Guild, Archetype or even Race?) who had most success with the mechanics gains a slight reward, even if it's just an illusion of a reward more than an actual reward. Then let the final conclusion be determined by a combination of not only the mechanical success, but also about how the main subject of the event views those who have participated. (In other words, does the event main characters like or dislike how the citizens of Gank'n'Grief or Snugglebunny has treated it?)

Hmm, let me see if I can't create an example.

A new NPC is wandering around the mountains of the basin, apparently looking for something. Natalie, a novice from Snugglebunny meets this NPC and decides to try and speak with her. The NPC introduces herself as Green, and after a bit of inquiring, Natalie finds out that Green is searching for Herbs. Natalie, being the kind person she is, offers to help and Green tells Natalie about how to create a bag to keep the herbs fresh, and what herbs she needs. But Natalie ain't a herbalist or a tailor, since she's an alchemist. She asks her city, but no, no one can help her with that. So instead, Green asks Natalie to bring her some commodities. She eagerly goes to gather those commodities and when she comes back, Red has also arrived. So too has BBEG and Lackey from Tombstone, and they're Herbalist/Tailor so they have already begun gathering those herbs for Green. Course, Green also remembers that Natalie wanted to help, so Red makes that bag for Natalie and Green tells her how she can use the bag to pick up plants. Natalie eagerly starts to help as much as she can, but it just ain't enough with everyone else suddenly so eager to help, and when she returns with a full bag, Green has already gotten all she need and is about to go back home, and show those who helped her what they helped her with. Of course, Natalie's been working so hard so Green lets her come along too to the small village. Turns out Green is making a greenhouse and experimenting with planting herbs there. Course there are lots of other folks here too that you can speak with.

Not much happens immediately, and people begin to leave. Not Natalie though, who's been pretty curious about this new area. Just as she walks around, something happens. After a bit of commotion, it turns out that Blue has been poisoned by a snake. Violet can make a cure for it, but he'll need some essence to power the cure. (Hey, Alchemy requires power, so why not?). Lots of people keep trying to get essence for this cure, and Natalie too, but everyone bigger than her has already gotten lots of power so she only gets a few motes of essence at all. So instead she spends most of her time speaking with Blue and trying to comfort him in his pain. Eventually, the Darkcutters give enough essence to create a shadow cure. Blue's healed, but not through the effort of Natalie. Still, Blue is very happy with the comfort she gave.

But then, lo and behold. little Yellow found one of the essence pieces that Violet was going to use to make the cure and, being the little child she is, ate it. And now she's very damaged by it. Only a Ritual led by Indigo can help save the poor little girl. Snugglebunny takes the chance to blame Darkcutters in front of the villagers and they begin to fight. Grief'n'Gank and Tombstone both jump into the fight and they all create a huge mess that some of the less violent members of Grief'n'Gank take advantage of to help finish the ritual. Natalie, confused by the sudden violence and what she can do to help, decides that the best a little novice like her can do will be to soothe Yellow and give the girl some relief in her pain, while speaking with Orange and help assure him that his daughter will be fine. Finally, Whitewash from Grief'n'Gank finishes Indigo set up the ritual and Yellow is fixed up just fine.

And this marks the end of the event. Who won? Grief'n'Gank, Tombstone and Darkcutter each "won" one part of the event, but it was Natalie, a citizen of Snugglebunny that were most involved in the entire event. She was the one who made the strongest impression on the rainbow villagers, and thus it is likely that she would end up most liked. Sure, the other organization got most points on three different parts, but Snugglebunny gets bonus points because Natalie actually cared for the plight of the villagers. Was it enough to surpass the mechanical victory of the others? Maybe, maybe not. That depends on how well they did the mechanical part, but the roleplaying will definately have an impact.

This is just a (horribly bad albeit hopefully a little funny) example, but I think it'll fix some problems that apparently appear with events.

• It does not force itself onto politics, by introducing dograping moments like Raziela.
• It doesn't make any side lose anything, and thus doesn't force anyone to participate. It doesn't even promise a prize for the "winner" (though it should, even if it is something as minor as 100 fruit comms)
• It does not award the group that can abuse mechanics or get the biggest gank-group, since physical combat will be secondary and mobile rather than focused on one room.
• It encourages roleplay, since victory is not determined solely by mechanical actions but also by how your character acts.
• It isn't tedious. You don't have to empower hundreds of angels or collect thousands of jellyfish, but instead you have to do lots of different things.
• It creates more visible change. Rewards and progress are wonderful motivators.

Well, those are my ideas anyway. Take them or leave them, but I think it'll make a suitable base for discussion regarding how events should be handled.

You, sir,need drugs. Lots of them.

I love your nickname for Celest. Heh, Gank'n'Grief

Not even joking..
that was me at the new Tolborolla quest.

Except I was with Sarrasri so I got to help and we actually did it.

Ok! Quickly reading through what you've got here, I can break it down into three small stages:

1.
- Wandering NPC needs herbs, if no herbalists, NPC asks for comms
- Once herbs/comms given, NPC invites PC to small area incl. greenhouse.
2.
- Different NPC poisoned by snake. NPCs require essence to power cure.
- Essence given, NPC cured.
3.
- Different NPC eats stray piece of essence. Requires ritual to cure her.
- Reqs for ritual not specified.

There are two main difficulties here: the first is that this event requires the creation of a new area and new mobiles (which may take a builder 3-5 weeks to do), the second is that what we've got here (depending on the complexity of the ritual stage) is going to be done and completed in something under 20 minutes. But this is quibbling - you said that this was to be an illustrative example.

The thing is, though, that we do events like this! Anyone remember Pierre and the Lions or the quest for the Shallach River Station (or as Prisch mentioned, the recent Tolborolla event), or any of the other little mini-events that get brought out on a semi-regular basis?

The problem comes when the event needs to be big and epic and involve as many people as possible - that's when we start to pull in politics, and win and lose conditions, and that's when we have to bring in delaying tactics. Players are really good at completing quests and events in a fraction of the time you expected, which can turn a great idea into a damp squib when player X has finished it all in 3 hours not 3 days. Finding delaying tactics which aren't tedious is hard, and if any of you have ideas we'd love to hear them.

Your aims are spot on, Kira. Now see if you can't apply them to a world-ending, super-event.

Can we let out Kethuru again?

Yep. I think I mentioned them in the other thread as examples of nice little events when I said on the whole they've been decent recently.

As for large events with less "tedium": One idea is more "mini-stages"-- kind of like what you did with the last event, but without each stage being 9 hours long. That length is, itself, somewhat tedious. If you have, say, 6 to 9 little stages along the lines of the two stages from the last event with a maximum of 3 hours each, you can spread them around the clock, giving all kinds of time zones the opportunity to participate. At the same time, each stage should give a partial solution, so that there is a sense of "moving forward".

For example, during the Nocht event, after the flame elementals appeared there was a stage involving that arrival. Once that was complete... they just kept arriving, for quite some time, dropping flame and newbies. It got old after a while because it went on for some time-- so, with this suggestion, maybe 2-3 hours after that the "next stage" would have occurred (the one where we went and found the mirror and bound them up again). This still gives the Commune time to work together on defeating the menace, without developing as much a sense of "What are we doing this for? There's nothing we can really do..." Now, that would have messed up the time schedule a bit, so there would have needed to be another stage: Perhaps an Avatar of Sun (weakened somewhat), for example, could have put in an appearance for another 1-3 hour stage of the event, causing some sort of mayhem before being put away.

Is this the perfect solution? Of course not. There are always going to be some complaints, either about the way the event's structured (or what's actually occurring in the event). A lot of us are invested in this game as much in our own way as the volunteer Admin: We have our own views on how things (should) work, our own opinions, and sometimes they clash rather strongly. Even so, I feel it's a good base to work off of, and it *is* something that's been done to a smaller extent in the past. Unfortunately, this also will take a large amount of extra work for each event than a longer / straighter event with 1-2 stages of organizational involvement (I fully understand that). I do believe that the extra investment of time will pay off in terms of player happiness, however, when everyone can participate and every bit seems to matter.

It is just a bit demoralizing to have a 9-hour-long event when you know you've lost in the first 1.5 hours, and the rest of it's just trying to hold off the inevitable.

One thing I think it would be really nice if the admins would do is to give players some OOC indication of when an event is going to continue. I'm not sure how you'd do this, I guess you could just make an OOC announcement when one stage ends that the next stage will begin at XX:XX GMT. Does it distract from immersion? Sure, maybe a little - but the benefit is that players who want to make sure they're around for the event don't have to stay logged on 24/7, they can just log off and do other things and know that they can just plan to be back at the time when the event starts back up. I know this was one of the things that frustrated me back when I still played regularly - if I participated in the first part of an event and wanted to make sure I caught the second part, the only way to do that was to just stay logged on even though I had no indication of when it was going to continue or sometimes even whether it was going to continue at all.

...

Oh, I knew I forgot at least one something!

I was going to suggest that, at the end of the mini-stages, the Admin could (occasionally, if it fits the event) do something like, 'X says, "Celest, you have done admirably so far, but there is much more that must be done. We will have to wait for the first quarter of the moon to continue, so take the time to prepare yourselves." (That's obviously a bit stretched, but eh). That gives people the chance to, as Shamarah said, take a break, or help novices, or do other stuff without worrying that they're missing out on the event. A lot of the time you won't want to actually do that to preserve some of the mystery of when it'll continue, but I doubt it would hurt if done occasionally.

There seems to be an event... happening.

I actually thought the latest event was pretty good.

It was obviously more simplistic in nature compared to the Isune/Viravain one, but sometimes the playerbase needs reprieve from the boring repetition of bashing, talking, rinse repeat and this was exactly what the doctor ordered. At times it can create the illusion that the player is part of a linear storyline and they aren't just spending hours mindlessly staring at their computer screen.

The latest event being a little event, yes? If you look up, most of the discussion is about the Big Events. There's some comment about the little ones (mostly that the little ones *are good* for specifically the reasons you stated, plus some), but it's mostly trying to bring up points / comments / suggestions for the big ones.

OP is identical to the Tolborolla scenario.
I thought it was near perfect.

For the big events though, I would like to see a subtle way of implementing time announcements (IC or OC, it doesn't really matter). It seems that most of the outcomes for these critically change something so with that being said, it is only fair people are aware that they are progressing or changing a certain way. Although one could argue that if you aren't around to participate then it's your fualt.

Yes. You said that very early on in the thread, and then Fain made this post:



Which is where the focus of the thread changed. As such, it's no longer really talking about the little events (such as the Tolborolla one) since that's already been stated to be what the playerbase in general is looking for in little events. Now it's more looking into Big Events and the pitfalls associated with them.

I personaly hate having respawn timers dictate the speed of an event. I understand the need to draw things out but respawn limiting is a not a fun mechanic. When the players figure out that the task they need to do is going to take X time no matter how many work on it or how fast they are or how skilled they are it causes many to just not even bother participating.

This is the big problem with lighting the spire for example. It is not just that it is rather tedious to wander around looking for squid or how annoying it is to check the spire for the colors. The problem is that it really only takes like ~4 people to do as the squid respawn timers are the limiting factor. There is also no point in doing tricks like using teleport targets or pyramids or whatever because if you go too fast all you end up doing is sitting around waiting for repops.

I strong agree with the comments that if you -must- drag something out for hours/days you do it in some semi-clearly defined stages with clear feedback to the players when they need to work and when they need to stop. I would also suggest that the better you do with a given stage the less over all work you need to do or the better the outcome. Give some kind of incentive for "winning" each stage. These stages should be no more than 2 hours I would say as well.

Not ever event needs to be run this way, but you are just going to see massive burnout if you keep having events that require 8 hours of sustained effort.

The level of frustration with the spire last time was so high that most players were borderline ooc disrespectful about it over the city aether. There were multiple people making snide comments about how finding squid was related to enlightenment or how we should look into breeding more as we clearly are making them go extinct. When a player base that is mostly IC in public starts to make snide comments you have clearly pushed a mechanic too far imho.

Oh yeah, last comment on that. If an admin steps in to make a task easier for whatever reason try to not make it such a blatant thing. Perhaps the spire quest just lends itself to this but if an Elder can just light a few spires it makes no sense why they do not just light all of them. I would suggest in the future having some NPC (who dies in the process or whatever) or even just unknown world affect speed things up. This gives some kind of IC cover to the players. When a god basically tells you something along the lines of "well I could, but tedious work is good for you, get to it" it just is meh (not that we did not appreciate the help!).

Read rest of post.

I'm quite aware you edited that in later, yes. My point still stands to the original post.

I love you, Xenthos.




In the back of my head I think it's best not to put things like event clocking into the game but in the same instance it'd probably improve the event experience for some people dramatically. I know what it feels like to miss something.