QUOTE(Fain @ Jun 27 2008, 08:48 AM) 526604
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.
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.
Well, I know it was a bad example. If I thought it was gonna be anywhere near useful, I'd use the plot-board.
Anyway, I do think quite a few people remember the Pierre and Lions quests (well, those who got involved. I've had no such luck so far). The problem is though... that there aren't any problems. People don't speak about it because there's nothing to complain about. Sad as that sounds, it seems to be true. But that means that you could take a few pointers from those exact events. Perhaps if I can try to respond to each point individually.
You can involve politics, but you need to excersize caution. The way it was done in the Raziela event is NOT the way to go. I know I may be beating on a dead horse, but I want to pull out a few points. First of all, regardless of how you view it, in that event, three organizations had something to gain from harming Celestia. If you even want to treat it seperately (the binding to Faethorn and the demon branding), one part was two organizations (the forests) ganging up on Celest. It was a sneak attack, and even more, it created political tension that ruined a lot of hard political work. When involving politics, try to make it even, and try to make the conclusion cement current political mainstream, rather than dropping a huge block into it. I think Estarra aired the idea that trustworthy individuals from each organization could be dragged into the discussion about events, something I think is a great idea because they can give alternate views and point out areas where someone could get an unfair advantage. That assumes that you can get at least one individual from each organization, but it's a thought which I think can be beneficial to the game as a whole. From what I gather, Serenwilde was involved in the recent Isune event, though it was intended to be between Celest and Glomdoring. This gave Celest an advantage, which apparently was later evened out by Magnagora, but it seemed to favour Celest. Maybe I got the wrong impression alltogether, but if I was right, that would be something that could've been weeded out prior to the event with feedback from the player group.
Now, when it comes to delaying tactics, there are a few things I think one should keep in mind. If I take the "gather herbs" idea from earlier, then you can add various delays to the "quest". You could require an obscenely large amount of herbs. You could have her leave and return in periods, which require you to gather 100 herbs then wait an hour for her to return with wanting more herbs, you could have a roc swoop down to steal her bag and make it so that she requires new commodities to capture the roc, or you could just have the container spontaneously combust. The point being that even though they are delays, there is the appearance of progress. That is an important thing to remember. People want to feel that they are accomplishing something, making progress. If all they do is dropping essence in hopes that one pearl will change colour, then they won't feel like they are accomplishing much.
Continuing the delaying part, then if you do it like it was done with the Isune event, then each part should count equally. Every single spirit influenced should count for an equal amount of points, and rather than waiting for a set amount of points to be reached, it should work like hamster hunts where you just keep on collecting points until the time is up and then the group with most points will be victorious. Even if they did worse in the last hour of the competition. While one should always stay sharp, it doesn't make things as "fun", and more than anything, events should aim to be fun. You can't please everyone, I know that, but you should still aim for making the event as fun for as many as possible. You don't have to win to have fun, as long as you felt that you had a fair chance and were doing something interesting during the event.
In fact, you should be very careful with losses. The side who loses something to an event will very often feel themselves screwed up badly because it's an event and thus there is no simple counter-quest that can be done to fix. I'm not saying that you should remove them. Just that you should evaluate carefully how much it actually adds to the feel of the event.
While I can't think of anything specific to go with this so late, I just want to repeat two of the points I made earlier.
QUOTE
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 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.
I hope it clarified my intentions. I love events in general and don't want them to be stopped, but I think my thoughts can be used to make events even better in the future.
