Some things I would like to highlight concerning the recent event to perhaps assist with the making of future events. This will include both administrator and player behavior during.
- Before a single day had even passed, players were bringing in OOC theories straight into the event. People were spouting that it was a dream, and fake, when there was no proof to give for it yet. I at least ask for players to try and maintain a little RP decorum with events and try to play up to the role. If you are shouting swears at gods, you'll get zapped. Suddenly this was seen as "unfair" when done to the higher gods...yet has always been the case when done with Elders...
- After roughly a day and a half had passed within the 'new world order', players were already receiving visions of "their gods contacting them". Im not certain whether the Admin felt it was time, because of all the early Dream assumptions being made, or if it was scheduled to be so, but it would have been more realistic if it had lasted a bit longer before the unveiling of it all being a dream.
![https://33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnroeu7e3U1qb10wfo1_500.gif](https://33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnroeu7e3U1qb10wfo1_500.gif)
- Im going to assume that the admin had planned to just "go wild" with the new higher god roles? While this is fun and all, it also made some problems. Gods responded to threats and things in the best way they knew how: Zap, Maggot, Silence. the Higher gods would be appearing and making their demands as they saw fit. Dont agree? Zap. It would have added more of an interesting element to have the actions more plotted out, rather than "Go forth and rule the world".
![https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/oEuC8HxWr5w4Y8AtlV-9thJZfvRGs0CEh2yfXBBYnp586RDCfrzy9YJdGcEJgQOJNPzJmq43fVaeJEZ5U_EXWblnEcA=w506-h285-n](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/oEuC8HxWr5w4Y8AtlV-9thJZfvRGs0CEh2yfXBBYnp586RDCfrzy9YJdGcEJgQOJNPzJmq43fVaeJEZ5U_EXWblnEcA=w506-h285-n)
- A general pet peeve of mine to Lusternian events, is the "SUDDENLY HAPPENS" factor. Suddenly a cure is found to fixing the plague, go get it! Suddenly a way is uncovered for entering the location, go fight! Etc. It feels like there is no buildup for it, and people are caught off-guard, and then saddened at having missed the event. Take the Eisenglass Needle. That just suddenly happened. It would be great if there was at the least a buildup of 1 day to a "Solution being found", in order to let people know to be around The same can be said for suddenly attacking the Higher Gods. One moment, a new shrine is given, and it feels like the collecting of Foam will be something done for at least 2 days. Then, I discover, 6 hours later, they were defeated...
- Bringing back up the "plotting out" point, I'd like to bring up the example of Orgs. It was generally assumed that since this was a "temporary" situation, that all the orgs would be doing some crazy things to get some advantages. Hallifax got to build their own Deathstar and obliterate Zoaka. Glomdoring got to wyrd Hifarae. Serenwilde was spreading their nuisance of plants everywhere. Celest got to return the Crystal Sea. Not all the orgs felt as loved frankly. Magnagora got basically nothing, and frankly this comes back to another point of each god being told to "Go wild!". They admin behind each god role focused on their preferred Org. now I know
@Zvoltz you have said and likely will say again that "we dont have a preferred org we work for", but frankly this example alone will disprove that. Each God was playing it up and making a fun concept for their preferred org, and ignored the others. Droc herself said she couldnt be around that much, so Karagash was basically awol until near the end of the event. From what I've also seen, some gods would promise their org something (such as remaking the sea of despair into the crystal sea) then relay their new project for the "dream" to the team, which they'd start working on. Remaking the rooms of the Crystal sea alone took hours (quoted from Drocilla), so that is also a lot of time wasted for 1 singular org, that the 1 active god there was pushing for, while others got squat.
So yes, I'll have to actually asked (and I cant believe I have to ask this) that -all- the orgs be taken into consideration to receive the SAME treatment, if it is for all of them. Dont just focus on your preferred orgs. Magnagora frankly felt pretty damn cheated in this event, and its players felt like they were denied an experience (I can even attest this by quotes from these players). Dont think Magnagora didnt give suggestions. We gave an astounding amount, for even small things, but frankly, no one was there listening. Now as much as ms. Frai/Mysrai would say "Maybe it is because we just dont like interacting with you magnagoran players?" then that is also not true. Mag has always generally behaved quite maturely with their administrators, and to only put a spotlight on "Mag bad acts" when the others are highlighted as never doing wrong, isnt fair.
![http://abkldesigns.com/clipart1/nesan5.gif](http://abkldesigns.com/clipart1/nesan5.gif)
(and what do you want for christmas?)
- Why was a shrine to the Higher Gods placed...only to be removed in roughly 6 hours later with the event ending? I barely did anything with it. Was this just a random idea you came up with?
Guess that's all I have for now, take the commentary as you wish, I'm not even certain it'll really change anything.
Comments
Well then by all means, go ahead and correct me. A lot of us in Mag would like to know why we were ignored. I'd also love to know why the plotting felt so spontaneous as well.
Figuring out that we might be in a dream had nothing OOC to do with it at all; that was the very first thing that came to mind when Aelish showed up. In-character. No OOC musings, conversations, anything of the like. Every event this year has had something to do with the Dreaming. Further, any character who has been around a while has a pretty good understanding by now that you need to look at events for connections, because there is always a connection (Gnafia, Dread Lord of Contagion, Time Dames/Goloths, etc). You watch that to try and get more information about what is coming.
It was absolutely logical, on an IC basis, to suspect we were in a dream bubble of some kind even with no other information. If there had not been anything leading up to it, sure, but this event did not occur in an isolation chamber; there was a lot leading up to it.
-- This is an event I'm going to remember for a long time. As I've said in another thread, I don't recall any other event that has given both the admins and the players the ability to "go wild". Usually, there is a set story line, and while there's some leeway in how things play out (such as the last big event I was involved in including Tokota and Adushoc in a completely unanticipated way), the script is in control. I'm sure there was an overarching script set up that was being followed in this event, but there were significant openings where it seems, literally, anything could happen. Which leads to my next point:
-- I don't ever remember being able to affect the world as much in any other event. Build a giant cannon and blow up Zoaka? Sure, let's do it! Crash the city and let it explode, killing everyone in Prime and disbanding the city, only to reform as refugees? Brilliant. Even locking me out of my favorite area, as much as I hated Serane for it, was a consequence that felt off the cuff and not planned. Yeah, we figured out early that it was all probably a dream, but that didn't stop us from proposing things that, under normal circumstances, would never fly. So thank you for letting us live our dreams in such an amazing way!
-- Though I only interacted with one Higher God (Luella) on any meaningful level, I found her to be intriguing. At first, Ev regarded her with the same cool indifference he normally regards the Gods. Then he grew to dislike her. But then, in one very short, simple interaction, I found myself really liking her, and Ev almost had a change of heart. She didn't feel like a cookie-cutter template, and kudos to whoever was behind her!
-- Maybe the event ending was a little rushed. But it sounded like everyone was exhausted by the end, so I can understand why. I left after collecting a few pieces of dream foam when it seemed like there was one Revelation per area, and they weren't respawning (I don't actually know if any of that was true). That would be my only "concern".
All in all, I thought this was a fantastic event that was very well-designed and very well-played. It actually got me excited for all the possibilities that we could do!
Clearly it's possible to be anti-God and still provide a good experience though; see the shout-out to Serane.
A god that kidnapped everyone and made it look like the gods died - How else would one who is faithful to the Elders react besides insulting this new god?
And then there is the secular people like @Portius who dislike all gods for reasons. Do these people make the gods go 'well, they don't like us, I might as well not patron for them'?
Then the whole thing with the SoD happened, no Kargash to be seen. When he finally did we urged him to do something about it, totally Mag to want to see their god strike back against those who would do something against us! but no, instead he went after Gaudi which didn't sit well with a lot of us and we though he was an idiot for doing it, Gaudi is out ally. Then Kargash killed the Necromentate and Drochou (I think?) which further pushed the city away from him. We never got anything out of the relationship with him - oh ya, another death challenge! who was the better of the sexes! that point Ari as a character had had enough, she had participated, given without getting anything really in return except seeing allies attacked. Not saying Ari acted out though she did ask some hard questions that really should not have been for Kargash (oopse), but the things said were defiantly being thought!
So from our perspective, he didn't play up to Mag other than offering us the challenges but he also didn't just like sit and talk I guess. I am not sure what else could have been done because I know the prying for answers to things was not something we were going to get. As for Arcanis, you may have liked it but right now I have people who want him removed from the city because of how he acted and somewhat continues to act to a point!
note - this is just from my perspective and feelings on why things went down the way they did.
As I tried to explain to Karagash (whomever was playing him at the time) yesterday, Mag is a city with a culture based on Deeds. Like any warrior society-type, the fighters wont just follow someone that says "follow me". This person has to prove their strength, which I urged Karagash to do several times, by striking a blow against Mag's enemies. From the Magnagoran's point of view, all they saw was that an enemy (Celest's patron) had struck a blow against Magnagora by untainting the sea of Despair, and karagash, rather than try to strike back, actually praised Aelish for it. This caused a -huge- uproar, especially in a society like Magnagora.
Ah well, guess it's all over now anyway.
As I explained to my guild and city, Mag has (mostly) always kept up to the concept of "separation of religion and state". As has been said several times in Magnagora over the years: Your Order is Your business, dont get it involved, which is the same for Godly affairs. Magnagora is it's own entity, and frankly for someone hating on Elders, that doesnt approve for a reason to boot them. Frankly the people calling for me to be removed are literally on the basis "He was against the Elders and helping the Enemy", which frankly Arcanis has been against Elder gods for years now, but only now do people take notice. I've already had some on the council say they'd never agree to something like that, so im not worried, but meh.
Honestly, a lot about this event was incredible. The initial experience I had with Sciomore was... disappointment. He didn't seem interested in playing off against us. That impression obviously changed after he constructed Guardian for us. Guardian has been one of my many pet projects (so please don't delete it completely), and to see it realised, even if way more powerful than planned and only temporary, was most certainly a high point in not just the event, but the entire game for me. And while actually interacting with Sciomore still felt a lot like staggering your head against the wall, the things he did for/to the city were incredible and added a whole lot to the enjoyment of the event. I actually stayed up until 8 in the morning just to finalize a draft of Project: Guardian for Sciomore.
With regards to the destruction of Hallifax, while I'm sorry the city was belligirent, I'm really impressed and thankful to the admin for destroying Hallifax like they did. It must have taken a lot of work to set up Guardian, set up a use on Gaudiguch, and then have to spend even more time coding in a punishment for Hallifax for not complying. I'm also really going to look forward to the RP that should come due to the actions of the Board of Directors and their decisions that led to the destruction of (dream) Hallifax.
I'm not going to talk about the interactions with other gods, but one thing I feel you should keep in mind for future events is to consider that most everyone would want a chance to join in. And the dream foam of this event did really not give people a chance to join in. If you had drastically increased the amount of revelations, or reduced the amount of foam that you'd require to get in... I recognize it might have been because Nirvana is prone to lagging, but... "everyone" wants to join in on events, so at least ensure everyone has a chance to visit the new areas while the event is going on.
Honestly though, I can't find much to fault with this event. Sure, there was a whole lot of zaps going on, but it was easy enough to avoid zapping if you really didn't want to be zapped. So I don't consider that a problem. Sometimes the false gods acted really abrasive and pushy, but looking back I feel it added to their characteristics, and to the event itself. And while I may have had moments of frustration with this event, the admin have been super in all the interactions I've had with them during this event.
Would want to go through the event again.
Thank you!