On events

[gonger]

Dear all,

During a recent Dev Meeting we talked about an information text on events, which could be included on the Events webpage, and the in-game help.
Below please find a first draft. Comments / corrections / additions etc. are strongly encouraged.

Best regards, Gonger.



Events are announced on the PlaneShift website: http://www.planeshift.it/calendar/
If you want to join an event, check the start time, and make sure that you have enough time. Normally events take between two and four hours.
Events are open to all players, so even newbies are encouraged to join. Events are also a good occasion for newbies to meet people, and to see who role-plays how. Newbies in general have no mounts, and therefore will move slower than experienced players. At crucial event points, Game Masters will ask all participants to wait for everybody to catch up. Please do not complain about this.
Please note that these are role-playing events, so act accordingly, and try your best to play along. Most of the time many players will join events, so things will often be a bit chaotic. New information might change a situation quickly. Be flexible about this.
There will be moments when many players present also means many spells cast. This might influence the way PlaneShift is running on your computer. Therefore it might be a good idea to lower your graphics settings in the PlaneShift Launcher.
During the event most players will join a common Group for easier communication. Please use this Group for event purposes only. For example, do not spam the Group with comments that have nothing to do with the event.
In the beginning of an event, the Game Masters will register players. Normally no action is needed from your side, but make sure that you are registered properly. Click your Quests icon, select Events, and check that the current event appears there. If not, please "/tell" one of the Game Masters.
At the end of an event, you should receive a reward. If not, please "/tell" one of the Game Masters.
After the even, please vote on the event, and give your feedback. Once the event is complete, click on it to do so.
Most importantly, have fun, and make it fun for everybody else. Thank the Game Masters if you enjoyed the event.

[tman]

Events don't necessarily have to have a reward, do they?

[Taya]

A reward isn't guaranteed. And even when there is one, there's no guarantee it will be something any particular player wants or finds useful (though hopefully it will be to some). Sadly pleasing every single player who attends is almost certain to be impossible, so we don't try and do it.

The current pattern is to reward a certain amount of tria to all participants, and then, depending on the event, a limited number of players may be given an additional reward. This isn't something anyone should expect though. A reward isn't the point of events and sometimes it won't be appropriate to give one, depending on what happens during the event itself.

[Pierre]

I have always loved the GM events, they are not only interesting but they crack me up, how we all behave and the twists and turns, the planned and unplanned.

I *strongly encourage* rewards of both pp and tria for these events.

It helped me immensely training a new char to be rewarded an amount of pp it would have taken me months to get on my own (I think it was as little as 1000).  It feels unfriendly to give a few tria, maybe, and then some other rewards to a few.

I feel like our efforts, as players and GMs (devs, and also GMs partially, have other things to do like advance the game), should be to make the game incredibly interesting and fun, and worthwhile to build a character here.  That means training a stat enough to be a robber, a fighter, a mage, etc.  Training stats to assist those chars takes A LOT OF TRIA and A LOT OF PP.  Millions of tria and hundreds of thousands of pp.

You don't have to worry about powerlevelers or people who want to max - worry about the people who want one stat high, like agility if they want to be a robber, charisma if they want to be a healer.  And help them out.

It is really incredibly hard to get a character together to play.

Please let's don't be stingy with the tria and pp.  If you want to reward based on player stats, no problem.  But help out the newbs.

[Lumi]

Pierre, like Taya said : " Sadly pleasing every single player who attends is almost certain to be impossible "

They do reward tria most of the time to everyone.  And why not worrying about powerlevelers ? Aren't they part of the game too ?
The point of an event isn't to analyse each player needs and act accordingly. Point of event is to have FUN. Enjoying a giant "all together" RP. Nothing less and nothing more. An event is made for that. It's nothing linked to developping a char, training stats or helping a "newb".

[Taya]

I'm aware of what is needed to raise a new character, and did recently make and raise a new character's stats just to test it out. I was able to fund tria from my main of course, but you can't hand over pp, and my experience was that pp is actually quite easy to acquire. Maybe more rebalancing is still needed, because of course I can't help but compare to how much pp was needed before the last big set of changes to skill/stat training, but I would say the difficulty curve in terms of affordability has definitely been moved in the right direction and, more importantly, if there are still problems it should be directed to the devs, not left to the GMs to address in events. The GMs can't get at or fix the underlying cause of these kinds of issues, and events often can't run often enough to make a big enough difference for enough players for something like this.

The problem with rewards really does link back to where Lumi quoted me again. More pp might make you happy and some others happy, but there will also be players who laugh at receiving it and find it 'unfriendly' just as you feel only receiving tria is unfriendly. I've seen people get annoyed even when they receive both. I have even seen players laugh over and insult the reward items. Very very few players ever actually say 'thank you' or 'I appreciate that', or seem content with what they get in any way at all. A few only seem happy if they get some super rare reward worth millions. Sooner or later you have to draw a line on what is or isn't fine to give.

We also have to think about those who can't reach events due to timezones. It's not fair to give a big boost to those who happen to play at the right hours to be able to attend events. Then those who can't come would have to watch others shoot ahead of them in terms of tria/pp/rare items. If 1k pp would be a big deal to one person who attended, it's almost certain that someone else would have found it a big deal too and will be upset they missed out. Which isn't to say pp won't ever be rewarded, just that it shouldn't be an assumed automatic reward.

From a personal standpoint, when I run an event or am one of the ones involved in running one, I like to give things out and I try to make it somehow appropriate to the event itself. I also try and make sure that the rewards don't always go to the few players who are almost always the most visible RPers. Those people might get rewards, because they give us something to respond to, something to work with during an event. But so might people who do something surprising or that impresses us in some other way.

Also please keep in mind that preparing for a large event like the ones that have run recently often takes up a few hours time for each GM involved before the event even begins. I'm sorry if a reward seems 'stingy' but the reward should be taking part itself and getting to (at least sometimes) enjoy things that can't be experienced without GM intervention (morphed characters, areas of the map you can't usually reach and so on....)

Gonger - I'm not sure who you might need to speak to about this. I think something like this does need to go somewhere though.

[MishkaL1138]

[...] the reward should be taking part itself and getting to (at least sometimes) enjoy things that can't be experienced without GM intervention (morphed characters, areas of the map you can't usually reach and so on....) [...]

In all honesty, I was kinda bummed for getting what I thought was a "lousy" reward, but the RP that ensues sure makes it all the better. So I got over it.

[bilbous]

As someone who has complained unreasonably about rewards, I would like to apologize again, and offer this thought. Rewards worth are relative to the character receiving it. As a character, bilbous has more money and pps than he needs. If I were to play one of my alts for an event, which is probably something that should be encouraged, generally, pps would be much more valuable and money more useful. For an advanced character skill levels in a difficult to train skill would be more useful. Tying those skills to the event might be difficult, but, for example, if the event featured combat, repairs could be assumed to be required and a level or two appreciated. This would likely make it more difficult for the GMs to decide how to reward and they have a hard enough time as it is. Perhaps standard rewards could be determined ahead of time and posted on the calendar like: Each participant will receive  x tria, y pp, and z levels of skill q, exceptional ideas may result in a discretionary reward to be determined by the gms. In this example x, y, & z can be any number from 0 up.

Further, clear instruction can be indicated in the announcement, such as: mounts are not to be used; low level characters only; or extremely dangerous, be forewarned. People who cannot follow simple instructions should be kicked from the event.

I appreciate that the team tries to be as inclusive as possible and that running an event is like juggling porcupines. These are just suggestions.

[Bonifarzia]

I like the description and only found one tiny typo

[...]After the event, please vote [...]

Concerning rewards: I really think that being part of an enjoyable event is the best reward you can get. You don't expect a refund of tria, PP or items for hanging around until the end of an event, do you? Sure, it is cool if you get some extra reward. For instance, I really appreciated the rare galkard I have been given recently - mainly because I really did not expect something like that to happen. What I want to say here, people should not only stay to the end to receive some goodies, but mainly because they respect the efforts of the GMs who made the event possible.

[Eonwind]

Perhaps standard rewards could be determined ahead of time and posted on the calendar like: Each participant will receive  x tria, y pp, and z levels of skill q, exceptional ideas may result in a discretionary reward to be determined by the gms. In this example x, y, & z can be any number from 0 up.

Further, clear instruction can be indicated in the announcement, such as: mounts are not to be used; low level characters only; or extremely dangerous, be forewarned. People who cannot follow simple instructions should be kicked from the event.

I appreciate that the team tries to be as inclusive as possible and that running an event is like juggling porcupines. These are just suggestions.

No bilbous. The reason is: preparing an event to make it inclusive, entertaining, making it fun to play for a large audience as possible is already challenging enough for a GM. Adding even more preparation on top of this is absolutely unfair.
Always remember: GMs are players like you all which instead of playing the game they take the responsibility to make it more fun for you all in a way that it won't be possible for a server to run automatically. If it was for me I would encourage them to award a reward only if they had fun playing the event. Remember the outcome and the enjoyment of an event depends on both the GM running it and the players participating the event. A RP is a story written by two sides not by one.

[Pierre]

More pp might make you happy and some others happy, but there will also be players who laugh at receiving it and find it 'unfriendly' just as you feel only receiving tria is unfriendly.

I've been playing since late 2008 and never heard anyone laugh for receiving pp and tria.  If you have seen this happen, honestly, then ok.  But I find it hard to believe.

Personally, I don't need pp or tria anymore.  I took 6 months to get a new char up to speed with her stats, just finished last week.  I do disagree with how easy it was to get pp.  It was not fun.

I see what you mean about getting pp and tria (and in general advancing a char) as being something to address to the devs.  And it might be that I was misunderstood - I do not think that events could be an integral part of character advancement.  Events won't level a char.

They can *help* a player to advance his or her character.  That is all.  I was SO GRATEFUL for the times when I got pp from an event - you cannot imagine 

And would love it if other players got that feeling too. 

Again, none of this pertains to me anymore because I don't need rewards, and btw Lumi I've got nothing at all against powerlevelers  in fact I love them.

Cheers, all.  I'm not a GM so I've got no say here.  That was my opinion and if it doesn't work for our current GM team, ok.  As Eonwind says, the GMs were players just like us and they should also enjoy themselves, including making decisions on whether to give awards and what type.

[Taya]

I've been playing since late 2008 and never heard anyone laugh for receiving pp and tria.  If you have seen this happen, honestly, then ok.  But I find it hard to believe.

I've seen it happen, regardless of whether you find it hard to believe. Quite likely for the reasons you explain yourself - experienced characters don't need these rewards, and the vast number of characters attending are often those who have been around a long time. Which again, doesn't mean we'll never include pp as a reward, but it's just not going to be automatic thing to get in every event.

I'm also in 100% agreement with Eonwind. I'm certainly not going to announce rewards in advance and I don't think any of the others will. (As a side note, there are a few players who dislike any aspect of events being pre-announced, including even announcing that there will be an event at all. Again, this might be hard for some people to believe, but for others it breaks the immersions/in character-ness of events.)

For the guide, it might be good to add more about what a player should or should not expect from an event in terms of reward. Just to make sure players won't get the impression that there will always be one or will always be a certain thing they'll get.

Random additional note: no GM's player character ever gets a thing for helping out, tria, pp or otherwise. This also extends to players who are official helpers in a GM event. Please remember this if you don't like a reward.

[bilbous]

I have no problem with my ideas not being adopted, they are just ideas from the uninformed.
I also have no problem with no rewards at all. I have the feeling that often enough the special awards do more harm than good. They go to those who are best able to get themselves noticed and not necessarily those with the best ideas, whether or not those ideas are adopted. Of course I think my ideas are always the best even though I know that cannot possibly be the case every time and it is hard to get credit for those ideas that don't even get acted upon.

For the record, I have indeed thrown my tria reward on the ground, the gms are too polite to name names which is good on them. I hope the person who picked them up put the 10k to good use but I suspect they are being used this weekend to contribute to a guild house bid. It is my impression that I tried to put, in main chat, some kind of IC basis for rejecting the reward but I also quite probably went on about it OOCly in gossip. I am not very good at separating me and my characters motivations. Even less, when something upsets me, whether in game or in my home environment.

[gonger]

Dear all,

As interesting as many of the points brought forth are, I still would like to remind you that this thread is about an information text. Maybe a separate thread can be opened to discuss about rewards, and how events are run, etc?

Thanks for listening,

Gonger
 

[Taya]

Gonger - we have suggested you change the section about rewards.