Recent Event Opinion
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.
Comments
You are a terrible Antiochian.
The shade is the good guy.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
@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).
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.
@Jules Yeah, pretty much!
@Elokia I've heard that one before, you fiend. I'm optimistic, but I've been that before, too.
Legion winsss alwaysss*
Just sssaying.
@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.
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
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.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
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
*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
@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!