Announce post #3143: Cursed Event

Tetchta · November 2020

For what it's worth, I do feel like clarifying that my defenses of people complaining probably comes across as me thinking it's great and super to drag volunteers and people trying to do creative stuff, which isn't the case at all. I wasn't one of the people who complained about the event, I just think we could all try to be a little bit more empathetic to our fellow players as a whole.

I'm really bummed that this ended up deflating a bunch of volunteers' hard work, and honestly I was pretty stoked about this event, even with its warts, and am sad to not see it reach a satisfying conclusion. I have some critiques of the event, but I actually think it was mostly covered in here. I do wanna add to the pile of saying that the anon channel was a big issue.

But I also get WHY it was there. It was to create a mystique that made you feel a part of something--like we were part of a hive mind. I think there may be a way to make that workable in the future that avoids bad faith actors (and, I'll be totally honest, I wasn't on my best behavior in the CURSED chat either. When people started acting up I didn't exactly try to diffuse things).

I think a way to maybe avoid this in the future would be to kinda go with the Dark Souls/Bloodborne message system, where people have a predefined set of communication formats and words to choose from. This doesn't ELIMINATE trolling and abusive behavior, but it can curtail some of our worse impulses. Something like

PLAYERNAME is TOUCHED/UNTOUCHED?
Is PLAYERNAME among us?

This could be a nightmare to program, and would require a ton of upfront work, but it could also be worth the investment if it's something that gets recycled for future events. Just an idea, I'm sure there are others.

Drayne · November 2020

I missed this event. Was it a pun on COVID19 or something? If so I can understand how that would be both clever and really inappropriate.

Also, how's the flu this year?

Tiur · November 2020

Nothing to do with Covid. It is a piece of soul from a long dead person being spread by intentional touch. It has no bad effects beyond occasionally having an in room tic. It was a game of mafia where no one knew they were playing until they switched teams.

Legyn · November 2020

I didn't know the event was going on until Legyn got cursed, which I thought was a neat surprise. The downside is that I didn't feel any paranoia about getting cursed, which may or may not be a problem depending on what the design goals were. Either way would have been fine with me.

The concept was really cool and I like the idea of CURSE HELP RP, but I wish it had more information. I wanted to do things that wouldn't be too disruptive to Legyn or other characters, but I didn't know what was happening with the event or where it was going, so I couldn't think of anything I could do or RP out that would be relevant. Spreading the curse was something, but everyone I tried to spread it to had it already, so I kind of just gave up on that. I wasn't sure what I could do without breaking discretion either. Would I get outed if I went to the tomb to learn more about what was happening? Was there anyone in Spinesreach I could coordinate with? The Cursed channel was difficult to use - there were too many people on and asking for their names so we could work together felt like it was going against the spirit of having an anonymous channel.

There are definitely things Legyn could have done as part of the Curse: infecting people with mutagens, terraforming Spinesreach into a desert, blowing up Monolith sigils, dropping a token with a Lemniscate effect to help someone else spread the curse. The problem was that I couldn't get a good read on what the boundaries were or what would fit the narrative of the Curse.

In hindsight, having a global channel for the cursed people probably made coordination too unwieldy, and there should have been some simple quests to give people something to do while they waited and to explain the lore of the event more clearly.

All that said, I liked this event and I was really looking forward to seeing the next stage.

Tetchta · November 2020

If I'm being entirely honest, I never really got into the RP of the curse that much. I'm not sure why, I'm really a pretty serious Roleplayer, but the entire thing felt too meta and "gamey" for me to really take it to a character level. The RP stuff like "you forgot about the curse if you were cured" seemed more like a thin veil to justify not spreading information on the game (which I get). Part of me wonders (and I can't believe I'm saying this as an Aetolian RP Elitist) if this would've been much easier to manage if it had been entirely a metagame we were playing as players that just happened to take place on the Aetolian server.

This could be a totally stupid idea and a bad precedent, given how everything is IC all the time, but it also would've sidestepped a lot of the RP issues if it had just been "Hey we thought this game of mafia would be fun especially considering the popularity of Among Us right now. This is something fun for us to bond with each other over, don't take it too seriously, and there will be prizes for everyone." That way people wouldn't have agonized about the IC implications so much. (And fix the problem by making it not transfer by IC emotes, obvs)

Sibatti · November 2020

+1 to the mini game suggestion. In a role play heavy environment like we have in Aetolia, there are way too many complexities and nuances to essentially tell players to RP in a certain way and have it interact with all of the current plots everyone has going on. Even the best help file can’t account for every intricacy and one-off scenario.

You might get away with something like this in Achaea.

Eoros · November 2020

As someone who was one of the few cursed in Enorian at first, I had a BLAST. It caused me to jump out of my comfort zone and talk to/rp with people I normally wouldn't and I found new and creative ways to actually pass along this curse. I appreciate everything the volunteers and everyone involved taking the time to interact with us/craft this. While there were some bugs and things that could have been changed, most of which are labeled, I think it was a cool way to go about it especially since I had been sick for the first week it was going on and suspected nothing.

The fact that this brought so many people together to try and coordinate their next cursed target was incredible: at a lesser? In the mines, in phase.

So, thanks to everyone who put their hard work into this to try and give us some levity during stressful times.

Drystin · November 2020

At first I disliked the idea of this event because of the way it forced a certain behavior on us.. until I read into the help files carefully.

Think of the borg from star trek. You're doing your thing as an individual, then suddenly you're one of them and all you care about is the collective and making others join you. The reason no one should be complaining, is because you could have at any point simply opted out if you just couldn't bare the thought of being a part of it. Very simple.

To IRE - There will always be difficult people who overcomplicate simplicity. There will always be those who find a reason to complain about every little thing. I suggest you simply do not cater to them. If ANYTHING in Aetolia is just too much for someone to deal with, there is and has always been an optout button. It's called qq.

To the players - Some of you really need to lighten up and learn to roll with things. My 2 yr old is less sensitive than some of the behavior I've seen lately.

That said, I enjoyed this event and I'm very thankful for the staff and volunteers who made it happen. It makes me even happier to know that you guys were watching our sneaky antics and getting a kick out of them.

Archelaus · November 2020

I really enjoyed the event overall, and am disappointed it is being cut short. I thought that the mechanics involved were really unique and opened up a lot of interesting roleplay opportunities. I’m glad the admin tried to do something bold and different, and hope they’ll do so more in the future and aren’t too discouraged by some of the backlash. I certainly had a blast! Thanks for all the fun.

I didn’t really see the point in curse chat being anonymous; I think that encouraged a lot of hostility and silliness. This was compounded by there being no easy way to turn it off besides gagging it on our end. Another issue I had with Curse Chat is that it it was used by Admin to communicate to us about the Curse Event, but there was no way to tell it was an Admin. It would have been nice if their messages were in another color or something. I also think that CURSE WHO should have just shown everyone with the curse not just those below you, that would have made coordination easier.

A few other people have mentioned this, but I think it has been hard for non-cursed to find a way to participate besides trying to isolate themselves. It would have been interesting if there was more conflict between the two. One of the few people I’ve seen actually engaging in noncursed rp was @Sryaen . I rather enjoyed seeing him openly warn people on market, but he was directly told to stop.

Sryaen · November 2020

To be fair, I wasn't using the market channel as it was intended. I should have just stuck to shouts.

Tiur · November 2020

I did let it go on for much longer than I should have

Rewards and such will be after the events post. Both so that it makes sense, and because I have a large log to read through for distribution.

Saidenn · November 2020

Tiur said:

I did let it go on for much longer than I should have Rewards and such will be after the events post. Both so that it makes sense, and because I have a large log to read through for distribution.

#VarachfortheArchivists #RotresearchintheReach #HelpusfindnewwaystokillElene

I had tons of fun. I can't wait to read all about it!

Stine · January 2021

Bump. I know that in the 2020 manifesto there's big goals for January, but this event finished well over a month ago. Where we at with the rewards fam?