Recent Event Opinion

Calais

Incoming just-my-opinion post, which I hope will come off as polite and constructive criticism -

Regarding the most recent event layout.
Summation: Hey, I'm a clearly evil mob with a choice for you: BAD CHOICE A or BAD CHOICE B, and no matter what you do, you help me.
"But, what if I would never help you in a million years but still want some sort of resolution to this event that will complete even if I try to kill you or otherwise find some way to oppose this concept?"
We didn't code for that. This mob is abruptly immortal and if you do Bad Choice A, you help me, if you do Bad Choice B, you help me, or if you do nothing (which perpetuates the AFK-chatroom theory), people who will make Bad Choice A or B will help me and by that virtue, you'll still help me. When most of the people in the opening room of an event agree that they don't want to help the character (in this case, the Shade), and then those that DO consider helping get snarked at by that mob and then decide they're not going to help someone who is going to call them names, but you still can't do anything about it anyways.

It's generally not my idea of a good time to judge someone's storyline or roleplay, as most who know me will admit I try to encourage whatever RP people choose to have, but after playing this game for over a decade, it's really frustrating when the theme of any admin-run event is always You-Thought-You-Had-A-Choice-But-We're-Actually-On-A-Linear-Path (like when you play Fable and you're promised your choices will affect the world around you!). More than that, the venue to any resolution is a repetitive, boring mechanical concept - in this case, a day-long worldwide reflection-/shardfall with minimal to no PK interest due to scale and inability to properly track who is doing what, for the meager reward of six to ten lines of unfortunately typo'd story.

Now, ignoring the mechanics of the event (collecting reflections by standing still for x time with the use and potential waste of other tediously collected materials), the limited choice construct (help the bad guy or help the bad guy or do nothing and help the bad guy), there is still the very real concern that there are many, many other things to do with my time. It is my hope that Imperian is that thing, but when things like this happen, I ask myself, why am I doing this? It is more fun to capture/breed/maim dinosaurs on ARK. It is more fun to engage in wide-scale PvP on Rift. It is more fun (I hate you, @Ulynt) to puddle around my budding farm on Stardew Valley. It is more fun to play Bloodborne, or Primal, or almost any other game, than to engage in an event that is going to be several hours of just rutting around for these reflections, wasting resources to harvest them on the thin hope that I'll get some lore that is interesting, and even boding that, that it will have any realistic or interesting effect on the world around me. I end up asking myself why I come back to Imperian, when after well over a decade of playing, the consistent design has been to events that require X number of hours of tedious interaction with minimal reward on a world-wide/org-level, and usual no personal reward at all.

The solution, is of course to stop coming back to Imperian and leave it to those that like that sort of thing, but whatever else gets said here, there are only four people who have been, in my current interactions, in any way positive about the event (mostly by virtue of not being negative) - @Jinna, @Caelya, @Vasharr (neutral is perhaps more accurate), and @Sadey (at the beginning).

This is just my opinion as someone who plays games for fun and reward. Regardless of what happens, I'll still puddle around Imperian and probably spend more money on credits for the thinly veiled excuses I give myself. There is, as we've been promised, more to come of this event and maybe this event will be the one that fulfills those promises. But honestly, that's been said before, and much of what's happened has remained lackluster.

I am, of course, always happy to brainstorm or send ideas on, despite none of them being what the administration is looking for at the time because to do otherwise is only complaining. If players or admin are interested in a brainstorm session, I'm happy to endeavor to contribute.

Jules

I really do have a strong gut feeling (and fear) that long term, this leads to nothing less than the game having gods again, or something that might as well be gods.  Who knows, entity upgrade or something - and people already try to crawl up entities' butts whenever they're around .  Or... something like that, which I absolutely -hate- (because I hate the game having any kind of divine for so many reasons, no matter how great some of them are individually), but I think enough people want "omg gods" that that is where we're going sooner or later .  So, honestly, I'd let this unfold.  I think it's going to be something up your alley - eventually.  

I sort of understand why some people who are not horrible sycophantic power-mongers like gods, but I also feel like the things those people want (and that I actually want too) are better served by admin giving good "pushes" as NOT divine characters playing alongside player characters.  Those people want some "guidance" from time to time, a framework, and a good divine actually can provide that.  But honestly, so can something like the Shade... (I really like the Shade btw, as a character).  That said, the Shade doesn't tend to give options most players like so far, and to be fair, they do sound kind of lackluster (and there are just two again, rather than maybe allowing each circle to work for something clearly in its own interest).    

Khizan

You are a terrible Antiochian.

The shade is the good guy.

Calais

@Khizan - I think you were there for the conversation about drawn out sssss. That is CLEARLY a bad guy. I watch TV.

@Jules - I'm not sure you caught where I was going with that post - it isn't the event, or the potential outcome of the event - so much as its the here is an unavoidable mechanic that will suck away hours of gameplay doing something that isn't actually enjoyable to yield a reward that is hopefully okay, but not personally rewarding, and in previous experience, will inevitably not matter anyways (see death-of-gods-and-stagnant-orders-yields-entities-with-stagnant-cults/sects, or death of demons yields pseudo-demons, or no-shrines-but-just-kidding-shrine-system, or now-we-have-circles-and-there-are-clear-lines-but-we-ignore-these-lines-a-lot, et cetera).

Jules

Oh, I agree that the mechanic itself looks to be potentially tedious, although I haven't gone about collecting yet, and might not now that our shrine war is over.  I think that is what you meant.  As for the event being "on rails", sometimes I think admin really does have to put an event on rails in at least some respects.  It isn't -always- bad, but it definitely can be.  I haven't seen them actually do a preordained outcome yet though - especially not for something conflict driven.  Other than when say, an event is definitely going to introduce a new system (like plagues) - in the sense that that event was going to end in "hey, we got plagues now, enjoy".  I did definitely clue in on you not liking the skeevy choices, that also feel like they might be "on rails" (I really kind of like the skeevy choices, but I know from the last Shade event that many do not, so you are in good company).  But the scope of your post (now thread) is bigger than that, too.  

Ohm

I generally don't like the collection mechanics

What would have been cooler is if the reflections spawned bosses. Or mini-quests or showed you some more flavor. 

Right now it is just like shardfalls. 

Calais

I agree that some things (most things!) must be on rails, but I can't really think of any major event that hasn't been 'preordained'. Because 'major' events are only done to introduce unavoidable concepts (entities, shrines, horde figures which is working towards something). There's rarely (and by rarely, I mean must've been but I can't remember any) an option to stall or derail an idea - say, the Urzog thing, Ozreas snuck into Stavenn, had a discussion with and ultimately killed the 'important' mob and the RP response of the admin was pretend it didn't happen. In this event - the group at the mob got riled and tried to 'kill' the Shade. Instead of RPing some sort of defense, or attack, or killing @Ozreas (who is admittedly limited in his solutions to things he doesn't agree with), they literally ignored the attack in its entirety, healed the mob, and pretended it didn't happen. No death of the Shade, some new creature approaches, or something bad happens. No the Shade stabs Ozreas in the face because don't attack what you don't understand and Ozreas is brutally murderer, unleashing the rage of his masters. Just nothing. Back to business, go get those reflections.

It is a horribly blatant reminder of: there's nothing you can do but go along with this until its conclusion, and even if we give you a choice, it's only one of two odd choices (if you're lucky) that we've considered and will allow. If just you and Susie from down the street were roleplaying, and Susie culminated in stabbing you, you wouldn't ignore it. You'd react. Because roleplay is reacting back and forth. If you don't want to get stabbed, and you happen to be the admin, you should probably consider that beforehand and make some sort of plan for that outcome. Because history has shown us that Imperian players react by stabbing.

Elokia

Without giving anything away, as it's still early on in this event. Here are my two comments:

• It's not as it seems 
• Gods are never coming back

Jules

Yeah, pretty much - with the overall "preordained".  That would actually be fine except it sounds like what you don't like (and what I also don't like) is them potentially bringing back something they got rid of for good reason (gods, demons, shrines) in a pseudo form that might as well be the same damned thing.  If I am perfectly honest about it, we've got some good shrine fights, but I wouldn't say I actually -like- shrines.  They really could have never come back and that would be okay.  They're tedious at best, and at worst, while I will admit you want some "passion" from players, the amount of rage they seem to induce from the side that isn't doing as well is probably beyond the desirable level of investment.  So, things that went bye bye for a good reason, overall.  

And on the micro interaction level, I am often okay with an unkillable mob in some cases, and a mob that is going to repop in pretty much every case (after all, this is what players do).  BUT, say, with the last event, let us kill Tomas (or the Shade) and he stays gone for a little bit at a crucial time, not just "keep turnin' in those bones".  Make him tanky enough that we have to control the room to do it.  Something like Ozreas killing a key mob without too much trouble honestly feels like an oversight to me.  Key mobs should almost always be hard to kill, not doable for one person, for sure.  Having it do something in retaliation after the fact... feels situational.  Would definitely need someone driving the mob at the time.  But yes, having more interesting interactions on the micro level (even though the overarching event is going to introduce, or re-introduce "thing"), would be an upgrade.

Ozreas

Elokia said:

Without giving anything away, as it's still early on in this event. Here are my two comments:

• It's not as it seems 
• Gods are never coming back

Silly small mortals

You not know of source nature

Legion win always

Calais

@Jules Yeah, pretty much!

@Elokia I've heard that one before, you fiend. I'm optimistic, but I've been that before, too.

Septus

Legion winsss alwaysss*

Just sssaying.

Iniar

geez louise

Let's talk about a hypothetical.

Let us say, we create a story where a young intrepid hero™ is asked to slay a dragon. What would an ordinary person™ consider a reasonable amount of choice? Would seven alternate endings be sufficient? Nine? Fifteen?

Would the dragon surrender to our young hero?

Would the dragon corrupt our young hero?

Would the dragon turn out to be the long lost shapeshifting lover in our hero's tragic childhood™?

Would the dragon turn out to be the assassin designated for our hero who in truth is the bastard child of the exiled queen of Dragon-topia™?

Let us say, hypothetically, for some uncanny reason, our dungeon master decides to work backwards from the proposed endings. If you converge back the story lines, you could end up with 2, maybe 3, omg-4 serious storylines™. If we're serious about this, we put in some serious man hours into each storyline; let us say, 7 man hours a piece. That is 28 man hours. If we really want to be the RP-leet™ then I guess we could splurge on the detail ("... his pearlescent eyes fired like the embers of drunken dwarf's dying forge, the fury in his oft impassive mannerism all the more startling for its violence... ") and go ham - 25 man hours a piece. That is 100 man hours. We are here, after all, to roleplay™ aren't we?

So hypothetically, let us say we have a story-prompt (hero finds dragon), we have 7 outcomes, and we have 4 major storylines. Let us say, hypothetically, one play-through is maximal at 3 hours. Each viewer, making 4 major decisions with a density of 1.3/hr, is only exposed to 3 hours out of the (hypothetical) possible cumulative total of 10 to 28 hours from a total input of 100 man hours. Now subtract away the dilution of group decision making™, and you'll start to see why this is an absolutely rubbish yield™. Each decision needs to be felt by the players both individually and as a whole. Rubbish yield™. And there is only one play-through.

More importantly, each junction in the storyline needs not only to offer a choice, but needs to strongly appear to do so; otherwise, a choice really is only recognised in retrospect™. How does one achieve this? Give away that the story will offer Reward A if you choose Choice A, and Reward B if you choose Choice B? How do you compel participants that their choice is meaningful without giving away the end-consequence immediately? How do you convince people who want to believe that their choices have no impact that their actions will eventually have consequences outside the scope of their imagination?

I don't disagree with you @Calais. I just think this is a problem that we all know about; choices are illusory at best - more importantly, none of the storylines have generated feeling™ in me. This to me would be more important than having a choice - as a part time player, I wouldn't be involved in a major decision any way. Yet none of the stories in the last 12 to 18 months have gripped the imagination, partly because Imperian as a game and a society has been watered down, partly because I have less time, more money, and partly because the central characters in these stories have no central role in Aetherius. They don't oppress me, oppose me, persecute me, vindicate me, enhance me, or hurt me, my allies or my enemies in any lasting shape or form. They are the ghosts of stories and I am not interested in ghosts.

Calais

@Iniar This is all extrapolating expansively - I just want the very real option to not slay the dragon at all and to turn on my king, especially in a situation as given where it is clearly against the best interests of the world to work for a king that is quite frankly evil. I don't think that to be an outlandish thought. While I admit that it would be amazing to have THAT many choices, it's completely unrealistic. I oppose the idea that the basic consideration wasn't made for what was very obviously a popular disinclination to help a clearly controversial mob wasn't made available.

I also agree with your concerns about the quality of the storyline, though in my case, it's more specifically in the standard as indicated by the administration's refusal to react to a situation they should have foreseen (Imperian panics and attempts to kill mob). Even if the solution was so simple as to make the mob laugh off the attempt, haha, I'm important, that's better than, "I forgot to make the mob unable to die and am now ignoring that that even happened." Maybe not everyone is good at writing an indepth plot and storyline (God knows my little Warden quests are frail at best, but I cherish them), but you should at the very least react to what occurs in a way that is considered in-character. I don't expect everyone to be Mark Lawrence or some sort of delightful twist-and-turns genius - I definitely am not.

Anette

I've ... had next to no interest in this event.  The outcome they keep hinting at seems fixed, and the actual mechanics are tedious at best - search for several minutes, find reflection, alt-tab to something more interesting for 60 seconds.

Either give me agency or give me a storyline compelling enough that I want to see it's conclusion.  Right now this feels very much like the Drekathi event in Aetolia did to me, and that's what made me quit playing Aetolia ultimately - some realms-changing event that I have little to no agency over affecting that is basically not very compelling a story.  I think in a big way the gods were a good locus for that - they were central characters, everyone knew who They were and what Their Thing was, at least in theory.  The vacuum that absence has created has a big sign saying: "Immediate Help Wanted: One Compelling Antagonist".  Khizan's mentioned this before and it's very true: the storylines and conflict in general in the realms has suffered from there being no one that was really willing to step up and wear the 'antagonist' hat. 

I must admit I comment out of some ignorance, because if you're not directly involved in this the information you're presented with is threadbare at best (the announce posts were the limit of it until I read this thread other than poking at a few reflections the first round).  But that in and of itself is a problem.

It comes down to this for me: unless you put an inordinate amount of time into this, you're getting almost nothing out of it.  The lore stuff I've completely missed because I wasn't in a certain room at a certain time.  The quest experience from gathering reflections is so nominal as to basically be not worth my time, and if I do participate I'm basically painting a target on me for the realm's many bored PVPers, and you know, increasingly, I'm starting to not blame them, it's the silver lining to what would otherwise be a kind of dismal cloud.

Here's my question as a player:  What's the sell?  What reason do I have to become involved in this?  I don't see one.  Certainly nothing that would appeal to Anette in character save perhaps morbid curiosity over Eloweth, but that's not going to happen.  If you're going to ask me to trust you that it's worthwhile, I'm going to say that I then think the event is poorly designed.  A player that's putting time into participating in a game event should get something worthwhile for their time.  While what exactly is worthwhile is subjective, I definitely don't think nominal quest XP is enough.

[edit] I'm put in mind of something Warren Spector said of game challenge design in PC Gamer a long time ago, paraphrasing: 'Its important to give the player bread crumbs.  Give them a trail to follow.  A thread to hold on to and start to unravel the story or mechanic you're presenting to them.  If you don't then you can't really blame the player for feeling aimless'

Ohm

Can the collection time on reflections please be reduced. It is incredibly boring in the current format.

Also can the round end when 251 reflections are collected for one of the sides (Legion/ Eloweth). There seemingly is no value in collecting any more during the round (save the minor Quest XP)

Juran

I get that you want  them to be interruptable, but one minute 500 times per orb is a pretty collassal investment of time.

Elokia

ANNOUNCE NEWS #3330

Date: 3/27/2016 at 17:47

From: Jeremy

To : Everyone

Subj: Reflections Change

 

A couple of changes to the event in regards to collecting the reflections.

 

1. The time needed to collect a reflection is shorter.

 

2. The round will complete when one side, Legion or Eloweth, has enough reflections to guarantee a memory orb will be created for that god.

Penned by my hand on the 24th of Bellum, in the year 101 AM

Khizan

I, unsurprisingly. don't care about the lore. My problem is that the mechanics are incredibly boring.

Even after the change, the big problem is that all the reflections are spread out over the entire world. This dilutes them too much for any real conflict to happen over it, especially since you can't even be sure who else is hunting them until you meet somebody at one of them.

The mechanics are so boring and the stakes are so seemingly pointless that I honestly don't care enough to participate. 

Cyr

I'm not really a huge fan of the shard dump for the sake of being a shard dump mechanic. Most of the people I know with huge stockpiles collected very few, and decided they didn't care, so you're not really killing any of the major stockpiles, and there's no reason for them to want to dump shards into it, because you've been so deliberately vague on what happens next, that "winning" the reflection collecting isn't something any of us care about, so it's not really accomplishing the purpose of depleting the major stockpiles of shards. 

Khizan

This event doesn't work for me because it's boring and repetitive and it gains me no apparent rewards but lore that I have no reason to care about. The mechanics are also boring and repetitive. 500 reflections scattered across an entire world, and you can only PvP people in the process of collecting one. The reflections are too dispersed to breed conflict, the harvesting is too boring to be enjoyable and too unrewarding to be worthwhile. So this event sort of fails on multiple levels.

The previous Shade event was a bashing event. That's boring and repetitive, but bashing is also worthwhile and profitable. Over the course of that event I gained a great deal of gold and experience, which I turned into aspect perks, and my Sect gained a great many shrines due to the constant inflow of faith. And the bones all coming to a pair of central collection points meant there was a definite conflict point and objective; we could blockade those points to prevent the competition from scoring points. While I know a lot of people complained about the lore/RP side of it, this event was mechanically sound and rewarding. 

Here's the changes I'd make to the current event. I'd reduce the amount of reflections per fall, reduce the time between falls, add a slight random factor to the fall times, limit them to falling in one area only, and I'd make that area open PvP until all reflections were harvested. So, basically, I'd just make them into shardfalls. Also, I'd do, say... Eloweth, Legion, and a god from the Demonic pantheon as well. Thanatos or Nemesis probably. This is because this event is doing the exact same thing I complained about previously; it is giving a two-sided objective to three factions. And, again, you have the 'evil' choice of Legion and the 'good' choice of Eloweth. This has been one of the most consistent complaints about your events for a long long time now. 

Why do you keep doing this? You do this every time.  If you only want to design around two possibilities, just drop down to two circles already. Three circles, three choices. This should not be that complicated, it was managed in all the early events. 

Lartus

If Eloweth wins, everyone in Antioch and Ithaqua gets a Divine True Disfavor for a real life week.

If Legion wins, everyone in Antioch and Ithaqua gets a Divine True Disfavor for a real life month.

These are the choices. Muahaha

Septus

We'd make them tie.

Lartus

*thumbs through @Arakis' rulebook.*

In the event of a tie, both sides must continue to fight for dominance for the next 24 hours. Should a tie continue past the 24 hours, Everyone in Antioch and Ithaqua will not bear a true disfavor but must play Midkemia with me for a week. :V

Ohm

Khizan said:

This event doesn't work for me because it's boring and repetitive and it gains me no apparent rewards but lore that I have no reason to care about. The mechanics are also boring and repetitive. 500 reflections scattered across an entire world, and you can only PvP people in the process of collecting one. The reflections are too dispersed to breed conflict, the harvesting is too boring to be enjoyable and too unrewarding to be worthwhile. So this event sort of fails on multiple levels.

The previous Shade event was a bashing event. That's boring and repetitive, but bashing is also worthwhile and profitable. Over the course of that event I gained a great deal of gold and experience, which I turned into aspect perks, and my Sect gained a great many shrines due to the constant inflow of faith. And the bones all coming to a pair of central collection points meant there was a definite conflict point and objective; we could blockade those points to prevent the competition from scoring points. While I know a lot of people complained about the lore/RP side of it, this event was mechanically sound and rewarding. 

Here's the changes I'd make to the current event. I'd reduce the amount of reflections per fall, reduce the time between falls, add a slight random factor to the fall times, limit them to falling in one area only, and I'd make that area open PvP until all reflections were harvested. So, basically, I'd just make them into shardfalls. Also, I'd do, say... Eloweth, Legion, and a god from the Demonic pantheon as well. Thanatos or Nemesis probably. This is because this event is doing the exact same thing I complained about previously; it is giving a two-sided objective to three factions. And, again, you have the 'evil' choice of Legion and the 'good' choice of Eloweth. This has been one of the most consistent complaints about your events for a long long time now. 

Why do you keep doing this? You do this every time.  If you only want to design around two possibilities, just drop down to two circles already. Three circles, three choices. This should not be that complicated, it was managed in all the early events. 

We won't let anyone harvest reflections is a choice, no?? Of course it kind of defeats the purpose of the event. 

Ohm

Currently I see the event suffering from a free rider problem

-someone- will be motivated enough to collect these reflections, waste time and waste shards. The quest XP it gives is small. It doesn't give any advantage in the event overall. Nor does it provide any achievements or quest honor. 

I can eventually come in when the Shade speaks and do all the cool pew pew anyways. 

Finally round after round - there is a fatigue that sets in unless you are super motivated. 

Anette

Everyone with sense who values their time is probably just waiting for the grand reveal anyways, since it seems self-evident it's fairly set what's going to happen anyways.

Esmyrsia

YOU KNOW NOTHING, JON SNOW.

Lartus

Is @Esmyrsia, @Ohm's mommy?

Ivellios

I logged on last night after not playing for a few days due to work, real life ****. I gotta say, the actual event of collecting reflections is boring as all hell.

Calais

@Khizan I figured the spread was too large for proper PK and that that would vex you. Also, that there's no sense skill to determine who is harvest what/where/when. Even if it changes to shardfalls 2.0, I think it'll still be strained.

@OhmI disagree about not harvesting being a real choice. Sitting on the bench when you want to play but can't ICly or OOCly validate doing it is more a failure on the planning of the event than a valid choice for a player. I do agree with the leeching 'problem', in theory, but I guess if someone is going to do it, kudos to them. Sharing and caring and so on - I say as someone who stopped collecting.

@Anette @Esmyrsia At this point, the plot twist had better be one heck of a twist. I'm probably going to have an emotional break down if it turns out exactly like we're all expecting after all of the no-it-won't promises. I'm feeling more optimistic about the end of it, though, if it's going to be different!