GM events, announcements and Meet the GM

[kiaerulf]

Hello all

This is really a post addressing three subjects but i feel they are sorta linked to each other.

Event announcements:
Let me first say I truly hope you had a nice time and it's great that people take the time to actually arrange events The following is not so much about the Levrus was found event - I don't know anything about what happened and the scale of it. But since its not the first time I hear about unannounced GM events, it was what triggered me to raise my concerns about having (semi) official events without announcing them via the proper channels - the forum and the calendar.

Considering the current state of the game (lack of active players) i find the approach not announcing the events public in a reasonable time in advance is problematic. When people learn there was an official event they weren't made aware of, may make people feel left out and not really welcome in the community. That's not exactly what PS need currently. Its hard enough being new to PS as it is ... or for (some) older players to keep the interest for ps. If things were like 7 or 8 years ago with literally lots of players online (100+) and 50-60 ppl online was considered a slow time, there were plenty of things going on all the time but now there aren't.
If you wish to keep an interested and committed player base you (the GMs) need to let people have a chance of participating in the few events there actually is. Also having more events listed in the calendar makes PS look like an active community which in turn may attract more new players.

I don't know the reasons for not announcing the event to the public in advance - I can only guess ...
And that's what I will do and it will lead me to the next subject:

GM events:
All who has participated in events or have just been in PS while a scheduled event was taking place, has experienced the amount of lag these events sometime create. I'm don't know if its the nature of the events or if it's the server having problems coping the amount of players online for the events. We have also seen how some of these events have ended up in a big mess with out actually reaching any goals set out for the event - the giant hunt for example. Perhaps for such events some sort of mandatory preregistering and limited number of participants may be a good idea?

Another thing about those kind of events: No offense, but I think of that type of events as follow-the-GM because they kinda resemble the kids game follow-the-leader. They don't really require much thinking and doing from the participants. Perhaps its just a result of the number of players attending ...

If I may, I'd like to suggest you perhaps think of another type of events which are not meant to be solved in one big group but either requires people to think for themselves or as a small group. I'd like to mention the treasure hunts made by The Way of the Hammer guild for their festivals. I really enjoyed those. They require you to either do all the thinking yourself or to team up in smaller groups (which could be dictated by the event - older players could be forced to have new player in their groups or new players could be allowed a couple of hints). You have people running all over Yliakum and usually not following each other footsteps.
Other things I'd like to see are competitions like in the good old days: Simple things like Race the DR or a race from Hydlaa to Oja. Perhaps, to avoid too much lag, its necessary to divide people into smaller groups and have them do a run. The best from each group will meet in the finals and race for the trophy.
I'm aware these kind of events usually don't appeal much to RP'ers, but I believe things like a treasure hunt could be given a twist of RP if you add some interaction with an NPC/GM/player to advance to the next clue.


Meet the GMs:
Every other Sunday there is a "Meet the Devs" event where on-going and future development of the game is discussed OOC. From time to time there are GM's at the meeting. But the dev meeting isn't really the place to discuss past, current and future IG events i think.
Would it be an idea to have a similar event "Meet the GMs" where events, ideas, gm related stuff and such could be discussed ooc'ly. It doesn't have to be every other week but perhaps once a month? Would people be disciplined enough to actually make such a meeting meaningful? And are there need for it?


- Kia
Elemental Light

[Taya]

Hi Kiaerulf!

I think there's a big issue here in that no matter what the GMs do or how they handle events some people are not going to be pleased. The team has taken feedback from more than one player who attended events and either complained, criticised or scored them down precisely because they were announced. Others have been unhappy because there is too little RP (though this is often directed toward the behaviour of other players) while others have complained that the RPers stop them having fun on some level (for example, some didn't like that people tried to speak to the giant instead of fighting him and others didn't like that people attacked without trying to speak).

One thing I will ask is that everyone keeps in mind how new the current GM team is. They are still experimenting with different types of events and different ways of running them. They did a series of announced events which feedback has been gathered for and found both positives and negatives (and yes, lag was often one of the biggest issues), and now they are looking at how unannounced events play out and what kind of feedback these will get as well.

My own suspicion is that the ideal is probably some kind of balance between the two, perhaps alternating between RP focused events and other kinds of events over time as well so that there'll be things that are interesting for everyone at different times in the month. I'm hoping variation like this will build up as both players and GMs learn more about what works.


Some specific points:

Another thing about those kind of events: No offense, but I think of that type of events as follow-the-GM because they kinda resemble the kids game follow-the-leader. They don't really require much thinking and doing from the participants. Perhaps its just a result of the number of players attending ...

Some players (even the majority) seem to like this format, whereas others, like yourself, are less than impressed. The number of players often is an issue here though, and I've also noted clues left by GMs which can lead to more direct actions/control on the part of the players being overlooked by them. But this is part of the learning process again. Sometimes a thing that might have seemed obvious to the event planner won't be obvious to players after all, and when this happens the GM is forced to play follow the leader or nothing will advance.

Idealy, players should also be able to make decisions the GMs haven't thought about, for example, in the Cager event someone decided it would be a good idea to request help from Barrin. The team hadn't considered this as a possible outcome and had to get quite creative, even switching who played which roles at one point so that someone would be available to get Barrin involved.

Even when things do seem overly structured and predetermined, for me the ideal is that the solution to a problem won't need to be handfed to players. But this also means the players need to show creativity as well. It's not an easy balance, but one that I hope will get easier.

Would it be an idea to have a similar event "Meet the GMs" where events, ideas, gm related stuff and such could be discussed ooc'ly.

I'll leave this for the GM team to decide, but it seems like it might be a good idea.

[iridia]

All the lag and crashes caused a lot of chaos in the events with big groups, which are already quite an undertaking and chaotic by nature.
As soon as the chaos hits, the big events tend to move more to OOC and indeed end up as follow-the-GM situations instead of players taking initiative or those who do are simply not heard or seen.

This caused a lot of disappointment among players, leading to bad reviews.
But trust me, we were just as disappointed, if not more, that a great idea couldn't be executed like we intended to.

That is why we are looking at different approaches for the events. If anyone felt left out, my appologies, this was not our intention. We are trying our best to run good events with the tools we have.

If you have any ideas and want to lead an event with the support of a gm in the background, I can help you with that!"

Keep in mind though that in the end the succes of an event for a great deal depends on the players and their input for RP. We only provide a setting for you to take part in. What the players make of it is fully up to them.

We are very much aware that there arent many active players around. So we have also started to be more visible IC with Guards or with small spontaneous (un-official) events. Like the robbery on Harnquist which we did sunday afternoon.

Personally, I don't feel comfortable with starting/announcing events by pre-registering. Noting you mentioned players might feel left out on 'spontaneous' events, I think this might be even more so if players miss the pre-registration or are nr 11 when we are doing an event for 10. Where as the 'spontaneous' events would still include everyone online at the moment the event is announced or started IG.

I think a more IC approach where the event more or less announces itself by small rp's or clues leading up to it, would be the best approach. This is more interesting and makes it easier for players to be more involved.

Even when things do seem overly structured and predetermined, for me the ideal is that the solution to a problem won't need to be handfed to players. But this also means the players need to show creativity as well. It's not an easy balance, but one that I hope will get easier.

In the end it will always be up to the players to RP the event into another adventure for their characters. So I absolutely agree with Taya.

Which leads me to the Meet the GM's, which would be a good place to also discuss these type of things. Will be noted on the agenda for our next meeting, will let you know more about that afterwards.

Meanwhile feel fre to contact any GMs you see in game. We'll try our best to help.

[bilbous]

I would like to suggest that you keep track of who participates and try to ensure that it isn't always the same people. This is not always easy because of people with multiple characters and accounts, but that does not mean it is not worth trying. It is easier to justify having the same people in them if you make an effort to include the ones less commonly attending. I don't suppose there is any back end server statistics about which characters spend how much time in the game, but if there was it would be useful to match that against the participation lists you might generate. This could give you a clue as to who to approach.

Still it is probably too much work for unpaid GMs.

Don't mind me, I'm dreaming in Technicolor.

[Eonwind]

My opinion is GMs can start an event at any time they want to and in my opinion it's not something that is excluding people but if (in time) the GMs would be able to play bigger and smaller scale events on a regular basis not announcing some events can encourage people to log more often (just to see what's up) instead of just logging in for the big events and deserting the game the other times.

As for the GM meeting looks like a good thing but if a new event is too much of an issue to make we (the devs) are very glad to host the GMs in the Dev Q&A meeting and listen to your (the players) events ideas or proposal.

As usual complains will be dealt with harshly with castigation, IC incarceration and whiplashes

[cdmoreland]

I love both types, announced and spontaneous. I use to stay up late just to catch when Tazen would drop in to have one. And then things like Sarko showing up on EZPC at Harn's as an Ulber always got the blood pumping.