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There have been no events and let's talk about that.
Like it says on the tin. We haven't had any real proper events in an age. We've had things come out that are unfinished, races released without much fanfare (and without languages) and nothing to drive the narrative of the world forward.
Forgive me for assuming, but it seems a lot like being someone who crafts the store for a text game is a lot like being a DM at a table. You create story and plots for your characters to chase down and then they even interact with eachother without your influence. Those moments have weight and are special BECAUSE the world around them is taxing them and bringing them closer together.
Aetolia has no such thing. If this were a table, we'd have all packed up our dice and left the game by now. We don't, likely because a lot of us know what this game can be. It can be intense rp and meaningful npcs and suspense. It hasn't been in a very long time and, let's be real, it's killing this game.
I understand that writing story doesn't make people buy credits (I'd argue it does, but I'm sure I'd be told I'm wrong) but this game needs a plot, it needs story and it needs engagement. I would much rather have a world wide event (and a good one, not some halfassed race drop) than a new, useless minipet. I'd much rather have ANYTHING AT ALL happen in the world than watch another artifact cart go up with some new artifact that will arrive to the people who purchased it buggy.
We need a place to talk about it? Let's talk about it. Let's talk about what's killing Aetolia.
Forgive me for assuming, but it seems a lot like being someone who crafts the store for a text game is a lot like being a DM at a table. You create story and plots for your characters to chase down and then they even interact with eachother without your influence. Those moments have weight and are special BECAUSE the world around them is taxing them and bringing them closer together.
Aetolia has no such thing. If this were a table, we'd have all packed up our dice and left the game by now. We don't, likely because a lot of us know what this game can be. It can be intense rp and meaningful npcs and suspense. It hasn't been in a very long time and, let's be real, it's killing this game.
I understand that writing story doesn't make people buy credits (I'd argue it does, but I'm sure I'd be told I'm wrong) but this game needs a plot, it needs story and it needs engagement. I would much rather have a world wide event (and a good one, not some halfassed race drop) than a new, useless minipet. I'd much rather have ANYTHING AT ALL happen in the world than watch another artifact cart go up with some new artifact that will arrive to the people who purchased it buggy.
We need a place to talk about it? Let's talk about it. Let's talk about what's killing Aetolia.
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"It costs you nothing to assume that we are acting in good faith."
I wish what happened in the Pools was more apparent, and genuinely transparent, which was part of an opening statement we were given within the last four years.
I spent RL years as part of the current team of Producer, part-time workers and the volunteers. We all know we haven't had a game story event for over 400 days and I genuinely believe it's due to a lack of interest, and knowledge, by parties that will remain unnamed. That's the truth of the situation, the last world events have come off of the back of hard working volunteers (I'm not looking to go into how that system works. We all have opinions on that.) Four years and there still appears to be holes everywhere, with disgruntled and alienated parties also everywhere. The unhappiness goes beyond the usual tether animosity. Four years and there is so many promises still unmet or swept under the rug in the hopes they'll be forgotten.
Players, customers, staff, everyone have all been let down and I don't think that should go unnoticed or be swept under the rug. I think everyone should take responsibility, apologise, and actually correct the failings that are currently out there on the wind so we can try and build something healthy again. No one should be beyond this or not held accountable.
It should never be staff vs. players vs. staff vs. staff vs. making a good game. It should simply be making a good game together and taking responsibility for X Y Z. Aetolia has the potential to invoke so much through a story, yet it isn't. Where do you start cleaning that up?
It doesn't even have to be big, grand world-changing events, if you ask me. Medium sized events are fun too. I don't know how many people are around that remembers the Gates on Mostyn event. It mainly involved the order of Arion, but with the help of Enorian. In short, a gate bursted open and spewed out living shadows and while the combatants fought them off, the non-coms would be out gathering amethysts. Once we had enough (which would take several rl days, iirc), a Luminary forged a chain (cause they were the only ones able to handle the heat of the forge) which was used to seal the gates. Combatants got to fight off both darkies and shadows, non-coms could gather commodities. But above all, people RESPECTED that the event wasn't about THEM.
These days people are so thirsty for any kind of event or action that it doesn't matter where it pops up, they will go there and get as involved as they can. Someone makes a small guild-related event for the Ascendril? I am pretty sure there are Lochians who would try to get involved. If there is a big world-changing event like the Kerrithrim event, sure, then everyone can get involved, but we need more SMALL events too. Perhaps even run a couple of them in tandem, so people don't get involved in other's businesses.
And then there is another struggle, at least for parts of our community. Those of us living in Australia or Europe have a smaller chance to be involved in events where everything needs to be monitored and under control by Admins, since most Admin are american. For as long as I can remember, events usually happen around Howling, which is excellent for americans (early to late pm) and pretty good for Aussies (mid am) but in the middle of the night for Europeans. Put it earlier and it wouldn't work for the Aussies, put it later and it wouldn't work for the americans. If there were to be an event where a task can be performed without supervision, like finding the amethysts and fighting off shadows, then more people would at least get to FEEL like they were involved. They were there and did SOMETHING, even if they weren't part of the actual rp of the event.
Just my two cents here. I really want the game to just.. be more fun again. And there are so many areas that could get a fun little event to become more exciting. I am sure there are lots of people with lots of ideas. Why not make use of it? Why not ask those with ideas on how to develop areas to send in the ideas they have, either small, undeveloped ideas, or big, well-thought out ideas, doesn't matter. And if they are used in any way, offer some credits in return, like you do for builders. I think it's been mentioned before.. We have mortal builders building areas, why not have mortal event-builders? We have a lot of excellent brains that would be able to give you lots of great things to work with. Give people a chance to help make the game interesting and fun again.
The only event I've seen was the curse event. Which, was really cool, but got cut short. I was also expecting to see something more from Varach or something... but again nothing. The other major happening since I've been around was Abhorash's takeover of Bloodloch and the rebelling districts. I understand there were hiccups with this due to a volunteer having irl issues.... but at this point it has been MONTHs and several cool areas of the game are still just locked off.
EDIT: Also... this isn't related to events, but something that really bugs me as a player about game transparency in general. When I first came to Aetolia, I saw a lot of negative comments about the administration I just kind of brushed off as being the normal player gripes. Then, they came out with a whole thread to clear the air and answer questions. I thought at the time it was really awesome the Admin were listening to players and willing to engage with criticism. But... after promising to answer those questions, the thread has been closed for like 5 months now.
https://forums.aetolia.com/discussion/3709/announce-post-3136-question-thread#latest
I'm a Celani that hasn't been able to contribute to events, and I play one of those gods Rasani mentioned in the other thread that logs in to chat on OT, bless people, then peaces out.
In the past year since I've been up:
- COVID and all of its ups and downs that come with it. Everyone's working suboptimally, and headspace is not so hot
- I've been taking care of my grandmother in my house who's got stage 4 breast cancer and a < 10 minute memory span
- Said cancer progressed to hospice care starting almost 5 months ago. I'm now changing old lady diapers (
) and spending most of what little free time I have doing extra work there with bedbound status taking effect
- Breast cancer diagnosis from mom, two weeks of taking care of my autistic little brother on top of grandma during intense surgeries that all went awry for mom's cancer
- Planning a wedding (this Sunday, praise be)
- All on top of working 60-80 hours a week at my day job
I would love to run a world event. I would absolutely love to. I mentally theorycraft event ideas when I space out at work because it's a nice little distraction from everything on that list above, and Tiur would be all about it. But I can't. If I've got a two-hour window (being generous, and only some nights) in the evening that could be devoted to running an event, there's:1) A high chance that it'll go way over that two-hour window, I get no sleep, then have to do all of the above the next day feeling like I was hit by a truck
or
2) I have to pause mid-scene to go change a diaper, stop a fall, give meds, whatever. Let me tell you how much screen scrolling goes by in a huge event in just that little bit of time, super super difficult to catch up
Neither of these things goes together super well for event execution.
Here's the part where you might be saying: Well why have a role? Why not step down then?
While I haven't been able to do a whole lot of order interaction outside of blessing and quick chats, I was able to chip away in the small and inconsistent bouts of free time I had to write ~70% of the skill messages and descriptions you see in Revenants and Wardens. I can chip away in spreadsheets at style messages for Ascendril/Sciomancers, things like that.
Those increasingly rare times I get to log into a god shell and RP with some of our super talented writers here are a reward for the above. It's by far one of the biggest perks of doing the job.
The good news:
- Things are getting closer to normal with COVID thanks to vaccines. Headspaces improving/improved!
- (This is not as horrible as it sounds I promise) my responsibilities taking care of grandma are likely going to be measured in weeks left as things go downhill.
- Wedding is Sunday, no more planning! No more vendors, calls, zooms, payments, decorations, none of it, noooone of it
When these things are figured out, I've got more free time and can do Aetolia things that I very much want to do. Until then, it's just genuinely tough if not outright impossible. But I can still contribute in different, useful ways.This is just my experience, but I'm definitely not alone in RL struggles just being relentless right now. A chunk of us are practically in survival mode at the moment, and even if Tiur popped in with a whipcrack and said "HEY DO EVENT" we would still be struggling.
If I was told to do an event or step down right now, I'd probably need to step down, but then my contributions in other less visible places would be lost too.
It sucks. I hate seeing the discontent when (in theory) I have the ability to help stop it but can't. I hate feeling like I'm letting order peeps down by being sparse. It's rough knowing you're a contributing factor to a lack of events.
But it's temporary, and there's light on the horizon even if I need to squint a little to see it.
This isn't an attempt at pity, or trying to make anyone feel bad, but just some perspective. If I had the spoons right now for a world event I'd be doing everything I could to make one happen, and I'm definitely not the only one in that state.
The onus to create a drive in the story does not fall in the shoulders of people giving their free time to the game. It is clear to me as a player, even a frustrated one, that volunteers are spread too thin, expected to carry a game that is not their duty to carry, and not given enough credit for it.
If they're this exhausting/difficult to pull off, wouldn't that point to being too much inherent pressure in the event itself, rather than the fact that at the end of the day, it's meant to be an avenue for storytelling?
To me, an event should only require a goal, storytelling ability (a little ability to improv helps), and hooks for people to get involved. Yet somehow I get the feeling that there exists this massive checklist of 'Things To Do' that necessitates it being so much more. Progs, mobs, coding, rewards, fame lines, an area, etc. I could be wrong, but I feel like a lot of the pressure of world events equates to making all of the things on that list happen, and I don't know why. We don't NEED these.
I think the problem is less that people don't have energy for events, and more that events are being treated as these things that can ONLY be massive, heavily-tuned movie theater experiences that are planned out down to the last line of dialogue.
You're worried about being interrupted an hour into an event, I'd argue that an hour is more than anyone should rightfully expect to even BE at an event that's being led by an admin hand. I'd even go further to argue that building longer-over-time events with short bursts of actual direction would be even better, so people can get involved who weren't online for that one window where everything happened.
Remove the pressure to make every event a massive lore dump, if you're dreading the inevitable nerds who come asking questions about Cool New Thing X. Have more regular NPC idiots showing up and running the show, rather than some ancient powerful thing/person with so many more implications.
All that you (should) need to do with an event is make the world feel engaging and alive, and get players talking about something truly interesting. Not flash in the pan stuff. Remember that an interested playerbase is going to do a lot of the work for you, if appropriately engaged. Play with that energy and build from there.
We had to set up new spaces for the crypts, new mobs to do the trials, prog a boss fight, etc. That was for a one-night event that most players since have called a small event.
Even if we do skip progs, extra mobs, and new areas, the possibility for things to spiral from there always exists. I can't think of any events in recent history (even small ones) that didn't require some on-the-fly progging or item making if not simply because it wouldn't make sense not to have it during a scene that was going on/players steered the story into that being a necessity. And that's awesome! The flexibility is part of what makes them so fun.
It usually takes up to 20 minutes just to get enough people to show up to the event to do something about it and participate! If we'd try to cram it into an hour, it'd likely be full on cutscene mode with little interaction, since part of the events is wanting players to contribute with their own emotes and ideas.
The Warden event, again regarded as a small event, took I think like 4 hours? My little newblani event that was one mob, a teeny tiny prog, and some emotes went on for about 2 hours in total.
It took roughly an hour during the Revenant event just for people to discover the mechanic of the wall, which was needed to drive the plot forward.
I'd definitely challenge people to try and time their next RP scene with a friend and see how long it goes on. You don't quite notice it while it's happening, and that's usually just waiting on one person to emote; trying to make sure all participants get a chance to be involved absolutely stretches it much longer. Failure to do so causes bitter feelings by people that can't type as fast to keep up.
I will say, for all the fraught emotions tied up with the Bloodloch city structure that surrounded it, the actual Rebellion Arc in Bloodloch was a huge exception to this. I know that that event started as something that was just supposed to be a little bit of a goofy roast of the city's citizens, but it morphed into a big, like, noir story and an outright military campaign. It got dropped for a lot of understandable reasons, but I think it's worth emphasizing that I don't think any of those reasons were because the event itself was bad. At all. Honestly it kinda freakin' ruled. And I think a lot of the game would love to see more stuff like that.
If I were to give purely constructive feedback to the people who are planning things upstairs and are reading these threads and other instances of feedback, it'd be this:
- I actually disagree a little with @Sibatti.I think a lot of us are actually hungry for big, world-shaping events. But where I agree with her is that events don't have to start big. You don't always have to go in with a plan. You don't have to be like "Okay, this here is the Opening of the Mandre Portal that will lead the players to discover an entire new elemental plane and kill x,y,z mobs and unlock this new skillset."
- Instead, I think more effort should be made to spend time inhabiting semi-important mobs and interacting with players. Discovering their interests, motivations, power level, allies. And see where that goes. Maybe it goes nowhere! Maybe it's just a small thing where the guy settles down and learns the joys of provincial life! Or maybe it spirals and you take a few weeks away from him in order to build a bigger thing around it.
What you open yourself up to here is a lot more perceived agency from the players--and on top of it you kinda sidestep getting decision paralysis trying to plan a huge campaign ahead of time--and if things do escalate into a larger conflict and/or event, you already have players (both PCs and NPCs) prebaked into it. You know that @Iesid is just looking for his next sidepiece and @Aisling wants his neck scratched and @Elene is looking for her next biggest recipe and @Mjoll wants a bigger hammer, and you know they're all invested in the character already. You sidestep worrying about whether there's player interest, because you already know it's there, and if things never get bigger that's actually still fine. You made the world more alive in the process, and that's a powerful thing.The game could probably benefit from a mix of Curse-style events and these more character driven narratives, but I can say from personal experience that some of the best roleplay in the game and the best stories in the game were all character-centric, not narrative-centric. I think that's because we're all predisoposed to like that sort of thing because, guess what, we're all playing characters already.
Not having a game plan is scary. I get that. But, on the upside, unless you tell us, nobody will know who was posessing what mob, and you can just have them explode or something (I'm so glad you're ded Usham) and move on. And I also think the more and more we see just random characters possessed, the less we'll come to expect things from them, and the stakes will be inherently lower. I think all these things combined will lead to a more organic experience for both upstairs folk and downstairs folk, and to boot will give you more fodder for the bigger events when you need them, making them easier to execute. Just go into situations with the expectation to have no expectations, and I think you'll see a lot of the playerbase respond very positively to that.
Edit: saw @Brax ninja'd me but yeah I'm gonna have to agree that events are gonna take two hours bare minimum even for small ones. Typing takes a lot of time and getting players gathered also takes time. I've literally MUDsex'd for five hours before, an event is a decent time investement. I think the Bloodloch Djeir race event even took almost an hour and that was a VERY "wham-bam, thank you ma'am" exchange.
Edit 2: also, a thing I just thought of, but having areas prebuilt ahead of time that have no lore but flavor (maybe 3-5 areas, even small) just in reserve in case you suddenly find yourself in a place where you're like "okay let me show you something!" would also probably make things easier. I remember ages ago when I played Niuri I ran an event and I had to write rooms on the fly, which was, uh, invigorating but also incredibly taxing. I think what I learned form that is that a little prep time ahead, even if you have no idea what you're prepping for, can be a big sanity-saver. If you're posessing a drunk mob in a bar and he's rambling about some ancient ruin and someone's like "bullpucky" he can be like "I'mma showur azz sonneh!" and you can just quickly attach a room to the world and badabing, bada boom, you just saved yourself a whole lot of headache 'cause you already had "Ancient Ruin #29230" in reserve. Idk just a thought.
-> Nothing
-> Obvious world mote/shout/whatever signaling a THING is happening
-> wait for literally everyone to show up because everyone is bored and wants to be involved, even if their character probably isn't invested
-> have NPC stand around awkwardly waiting for people to gather
-> NPC then comments amazedly on how many people showed up, make a few kneeslappers as people inevitably start to pop off with random premotes
-> NPC tells everyone to shut up and starts barfing exposition on you
-> People hammer NPC with questions and it becomes a Q&A session
-> (sometimes) NPC leads everyone to conquer The Challenge
-> Possible call to action, or just NPC gets tired of doing all of this and leaves
Yeah, that definitely takes more than an hour, sure. But do we really get any high quality interaction out of 90% of it? Not really.
The simplest way I can try to maybe pass on the meaning of what I'm getting at here is that there are Obvious Mechanics and then there's story. If you make an NPC/item/puzzle/boss/whatever, that's an Obvious Mechanic. People will approach it with Obvious Mechanical Intent. They'll try to interact with it, use it, kill it, turn it, push it, stuff it into their cache, whatever.
Obvious Mechanics are not the same as storytelling. Obvious Mechanics are a signal that a task needs to be performed, or a puzzle needs to be solved, within the constraints of what players know about Aetolia. In a way, an Obvious Mechanic is pretty anathema to storytelling, if you think about it, because it becomes a minigame at that point.
I'm not saying Obvious Mechanics are bad, don't get me wrong - they're often very fun. I'm saying they're not the same thing as telling a story. Remember that Shakespearean plays were traditionally performed on a bare-bones stage, with very few props, if any. When I roleplay in D&D, I don't have to have an actual item that validates my character's choice to pray to the God of Justice and be bestowed insight on how to surpass her next challenge.
There is so, so much content out there that already exists in Aetolia. Underutilized areas, forgotten story arcs, hidden gems. If you asked me for it, I could come up with a list of a dozen things, if not more, that would be interesting to see pick back up that are just in Duiran alone.
Edit:
@Brax re your specific example:
"We had to set up new spaces for the crypts, new mobs to do the trials, prog a boss fight, etc. That was for a one-night event that most players since have called a small event."
To me, this is an issue of effort versus payoff. I would say that the effort to do all of that wasn't worthy of the payoff. This isn't a criticism, I'm suggesting that you need to stretch that amount of effort over time so you have more overall engagement, even if it's small stuff, leading up to the big bang.
It's a bad example because I know everyone was excited for the new class and to were chomping at the bits to get their hands on it, but you could have easily made that amount of effort pay off more by pivoting away from a one-shot experience into something that gradually and slowly unlocked over time.
I feel as if everyone's points here are valid in their own ways. That there's such a varied response with regards to the terms of their agreement means that there's a wide variety of people who are unhappy and no one fix is going to rectify that.
We need a paid lore head/Storywriter for our story driven game. I get that we aren't Achaea and we can't shell out dough like whoa, but it doesn't really sit well with me that Aetolia had always held itself to a higher standard of storytelling but can't seem to muster the output of events or worldbuilding that standard would demand.
It's really frustrating that the most active the game has felt in the last year or so was when my org was melting down over their CL. To me, that's negative activity because it never gets channeled into a proper storyline. We had the Warden event happen during the 'climax' of that little spat - and the two mixed fairly well, making the whole mess feel a little more realistic and story driven due to the contrast and the way the event's lore fit into the current situation. But that was after the damage was already done and I had my eyes opened once more to this thought:
I shouldn't feel as if the world is most alive when players in the same organization are at each other's throats.
Which leads me to why I don't like the world-changing events. Because they have to be so massive! It's exactly as @Sibatti wrote in her list above. There's so much waiting, everyone's gotta be there, and then all the questions and so on and so forth. It's not all that much event for being a huge event. That's why I prefer the smaller scale events. Only 10 people show up when you make your first emote? Fine! Start without the rest, they will have to ask someone else for an update. Move things along. If we had more smaller events, people would also, perhaps, not get involved in everything and actually respect that there are others who might want to be a bit of a hero for once. (Yes, I am one of those people. I never get to be the name in a story due to time zone issues and because my characters are not one of the big, well-known people everyone seems to love, buuuuuut anywho!!).
I think something needs to be done overall to bring a bit more flavor to the game and I know there are a lot of people willing to help. Use them. Use US! We are willing to help more than you realize. Someone just needs to ask.
It's been six months since a world event, and that one ended so weirdly and harshly, I admit to being very burnt. I was doing most of that one, with some awesome Celani mpos help. It took a lot of effort and we'll need more for world things. That said, there are some planned, and we're having the same engagement problem we've had for the past year and change: People want to spend less time with things, and it's harder to get their attention. Keep your eyes out, because I know we've poked a few things and been having a hard time getting the hooks to catch.
Smaller stuff I very much love. Is there a system like builders/orgreqs that could exist, avoiding the problems those two have? Builders snatch up any work and destroy it, which we love, but it does make a lot of people feel like there are 'never' things up there, as they don't get a chance. Orgreqs are huge amounts of work for small returns, and they are mixed in such a way that it's tough for me to do anything other than go through them in numerical order. We also get a disproportionate amount of work vs return... some guilds file a lot of them, some none. I feel like if I do some for the guild with a lot of them, it encourages them to do more, but further makes the guilds that never see any done feel ignored.
Not that I'm capable of debating orgreqs/builders atm. I just wanted to express my issues with them, and an interest that any system like a theoretical eventreq should avoid those same problems. Maybe an interest rating? Effort ratings? Expiration dates? I dunno.
Anyway, I apologize for being stream of thought, but I wanted to reply sooner than later. I will come back to specifics later on, when I can. But I express that I am interested if a system of some sort would help, and what you'd like to see out of it. I did meet with Rasani and I largely think we agree in regards to need of world things, if not the current state of the game entirely.
I don't understand this, the other night there was a clear, concise "LOOK OVER HERE" global emote out of Sterion, AT LEAST 6 people showed up and found the mob. I caught some feels over what felt like getting chastised in a pmote about a joke on web to fill the time waiting for other interested parties to show up so took the earliest chance to bounce, that being the NPC saying "you wouldn't understand, why are you even here, go away" in a few more words, and from all accounts it wrapped up ten minutes later without having done anything else. Six people is TEN PERCENT of your online player base that's HUGE engagement! Take into account the AFK idlers who are just keeping their vote weight and a facade of activity and you probably had most of the actually there and playing players show up to your one-off, no consequence event, and you even chased off one of them!
It had a lot of overtuned systems that, for the most part, didn't have a huge story impact.
In fact, the weird OOC handwave-y "you can't be accountable for your actions!" explicitly made it THAT much more unimportant, lol.
In these events, each org will have their own way of reacting, and those are things Admin should be picking up on to create continued smaller events to help them build and move forward. Doing that would also prevent any kind of lose threads to be left dangling for too long, since Admin will continue to monitor reactions and come up with ways to tie them up (with or without help from the orgleaders, though I imagine orgleaders would be really stoked to discuss where to go with things after those kinds of events, and any contact from Admin would be enormously appreciated.) It's nice to hear that some things are being planned! It taking time is understandable. These are trying times for everyone. What is needed, however, is transparency, and not only when prompted. May times when things stop moving, people have had to shout in order to get a response. Consider how the following approaches might be received:
Here's how some prompted requests for updates have been handled: initially met with silence, followed by continued requests and questions, which likely feels like nagging after a while, followed by a vague response equivalent to "oh, this year, you know. It's tough.", which is followed by a request for clarification (more nagging), and suddenly it might feel like the response you get is someone who is so tired of the nagging that they're just about ready to rip your face off, even though all they did was ask when Vilimo might open again for the quests there.
Here is an alternative after a prompted request for an update: Met with a timely response with what information can be presented. If there is not much that can be said, explain why and when a change or at least a better update can be expected (and then sticking to that promise of an update).
Unprompted announcement: "For your information, we currently have X amount of projects going on (no details, they're secret), but due to circumstances we cannot control Y of them are on hold for at least a couple of weeks. We are aware of concerns regarding Z, Q, and W, and progress is slow. We apologize for this inconvenience. Update will come bi-monthly in order to ensure people are up to date on our progress." (and sticking to that promise of updates) There are very rarely things up for grabs when it comes to builder requests, because some people are very quick to grab them before others have even seen that they exist. At the moment, I don't log in enough to contend so for me it's not an issue right now. However, when I played more frequently I rarely saw any either, despite looking for them. The reason was mostly because they were all gone or grabbed before I logged in in the morning/afternoon in my timezone. Perhaps spread them out if you want more people to feel like they get to help out? I imagine some organizations file less orgreqs because the ones they have filed before have been sitting there long enough for them to become obsolete, meaning no longer connected to what is currently going on in the guild. If things don't move on quickly enough on something awesome we thought up, and even wrote a lot of messages for, then how long will the next take? Why should we spend so much energy on that if it won't even get anywhere? is likely a question people might be asking themselves.
Proposed change here is to add some more people to work on these org-requests, because they are what might bring more life to the organizations. This is what many of us mean when we ask for smaller events and smaller additions. We want something to build on that feels relevant to our orgs, something that moves us forward and helps engage the people we have around us. However, we don't want to wait 1-6 months for it to be implemented. In that time frame, people who were involved might even have side-hopped a few times and forgotten about it all. If this can be done, in some way, by mortal builders that would be amazing, but I suppose it might be tricky because it should perhaps be done by Celani.
The HELP EDIT has hopefully seen more use since it was made a milestone. If there are some facts that no people seem to have answers to, but they exist in the game, it is difficult to get a response on them, though. I have asked about things on Discord without success, even though Admin have popped in to the Questions section and responded to other things. Perhaps it could be possible to add some kind of system where a help file can be tagged with a question for an update regarding something, and then people can look through those and see if they can help out?
Long post, but some food for thought, perhaps?
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WHERE *CLAP* ARE *CLAP* THE *CLAP* 80 MAN-HOURS *CLAP* A WEEK *CLAP* GOING *CLAP* RIGHT *CLAP* NOW.
Because everyone is already pointing out the lack of story, customization approvals, housing requests, artifact fixes, etc.
1. Events here tend to be made for specific organisations or even people. There have been very few events that have been targeted at the game's population as a whole, and they have all still been a lot easier for specific groups of people to take part in. This has a couple of implications:
a) I'm not really the type to try to butt my way into every event so if it's clear an event is not for me I'm not going to take part.
b) If it's my "turn" to get an event but I miss it for one reason or another it means I might not get another chance for quite some time.
2. While events here tend to fit the lore, they rarely fit the narrative. In fact, I haven't really seen any narrative. Things happen, but not in a way that is really meaningful.
3. Not every part of the greater narrative needs to be an event that spans multiple days and results in an area release or whatever. It could just be a one or two hour thing without much progging/building that reveals another aspect of the greater narrative. It could even be multiple of these between the "big" events.