Server Events Improved

[Avalanche]

Events are enjoyable and important. The subforum(s) can be improved.

. Improvement 1 - Condense Parent subforum Events. Child subforums Official & Community. This separation isn't necessary, let's merge them. Official events should be pinned above Community events. So everything is now in one, easy page. .

. Improvement 2 - Simplify Today, a thread for an event seems to always have good effort behind it. A lot of BB code. A write up, a map, a list etc. It's created a environment that to make an event of your own, you need to put a higher degree of forum effort behind it than is necessary. This isn't forumlancer. Scroll back in the event subforum and threads used to be much simpler. "This is the event idea I had this morning. See you online!". After improvement 1 is executed, a new pinned thread should be made to outline this new spirit of community events. This change should encourage everyone, from newbies to official factions leaders, to propose fun events more regularly. Note: This isn't to say well written up events shouldn't be created. Just that we should actively encourage low effort forum threads too. Getting people online is what's important. ~ Friday night is approaching, I'll make a 2 minute effort thread suggesting... Convoy run from A to B. Try and ambush us! Racing Fleet battle Navy patrol into enemy territory. Enemy navy try your luck! Connecticut frenzy Diplomacy in-game Exploring far system .

. Improvement 3 - Clean up I think the pinned thread's purpose has now passed? As a side note Mods, there are a lot of pinned threads now past their purpose across the forums... .

What do you think? Interested to hear your thoughts.

[BobMacaroni]

I'm not sure this is really necessary. events aren't restricted behind a lot of writeup for them to be made already, what would change about it afterward? from what I've seen, most smaller events like what you are looking to see more of are usually just communicated through discord instead, anyways. And then when events are posted on the forum, they are looking to do large brawls, so as many people join. else why not just communicate with say, whoever is online in a factions discord server at the time?

also in terms of condensing... I think official and unofficial should stay seperate. Usually official events are made to influence Story in some way, whereas unofficial are just for fun. Might be a little less confusing for new players

(as a sidenote, it would be nice and definitely help the server if there were just random in-game mini-events. mostly thinking about Garret Jax and Entity spawning those Nomad mini bosses, and a whole bunch of people would crowd around to fight them. that was really cool to see, but I think if you are looking to encourage more spontaneous activity, that would be the way to go, imo)

[Barrier]

Hi Avalanche. Thanks for starting this discussion. I will have to disagree with you on your two main points.

To me the idea behind keeping official and community events separate is precisely because these two types of events have different requirements and effort involved. Official events involve the story team and likely flhook, while community events rarely do. Official events have a certain baseline amount of effort involved, which is often much higher than the community event baseline. Essentially, the separation should be there for people to know what they're getting into.

Regarding pinned threads - I think we can use them in both subforums to simplify things. So for official, instead of event archive, we'd have one forum with all the threads, and the pinned one(s) show the current ongoing event(s). For community, the pinned thread can outline tips and serve as a Q&A for people interested in creating their own event(s). But I don't think it would be productive to encourage a certain style of focus for events. Just give people tools to make anything they want. I would even say that exists already since people can just browse various event threads, but it would be useful to combine all that info into a "guide".

And yes, as Bob says, there's a certain line below which it's just easier to call people up on discord. So don't think of the lack of write-ups implying that people are not organizing anything. It's just that generally a write-up involves multiple moving parts that would be hard to organize elsewhere, which often does mean that the post needs more work than a discord message. To me, the difficulty in making the events isn't bbcode and organization (aka "forumlancer"), but the need to organize a bunch of people from different timezones and with different interests. I assume that this is why more community events haven't been created in general.

[Chxlls]

I agree with combining events into one subforum. Condensing the forums in any way feasible should be a priority, imo. New players can find the forums to be a complete chore to navigate.

However, I like the idea of having a write up behind forum events. Doesn’t have to be fancy, but this is a role play server. Unless an event will be in conn (OORP) there should at least be a bare minimum effort behind the event.

As others have mentioned, I think for smaller events and impromptu things, discord works well. There have been countless instances of factions pinging in another factions discord to initiate a fight or a raid.

[Nika]

I brought this point several times before and I will do it again. Essentially, don't try to fix what isn't broken. The separation didn't confuse me before and the story part to the official server events is necessary. It is a roleplay server, after all.

Connecticut, or PvE exists for those wishing to shoot at pixels without a care in the world beside few simple rules.

---

Peace, being the distant dream it is, comes inevitably, and goes hand in hand with justice.
Cursed be the war.

Heroes never die! @Vitoniz30 @Connor

[Avalanche]

I fear if everyone is going now towards Discord as the way to organise small events (and, I've realised recently, sell ships/equipment and post faction creations) then it'll expedite this forum's death over the coming year(s). Discord isn't used by everyone.

We need as many eyes on this website as we can, to propel this community into 2024.

With old players lurking here (not Discord) they won't be incentivised to return if they see the forum unused.

As for the combining, the alternative Barrier to suit both sides is to make the main subforum that's clickable on the index, the community event page. Then make the official events subforum a child of it. Essentially having this subforum URL on the index, but a dead page, is just silly

[Avalanche]

I brought this point several times before and I will do it again. Essentially, don't try to fix what isn't broken. The separation didn't confuse me before and the story part to the official server events is necessary. It is a roleplay server, after all.

Connecticut, or PvE exists for those wishing to shoot at pixels without a care in the world beside few simple rules.

I don't think you read the OP properly.

[Barrier]

I fear if everyone is going now towards Discord as the way to organise small events (and, I've realised recently, sell ships/equipment and post faction creations) then it'll expedite this forum's death over the coming year(s). Discord isn't used by everyone.

We need as many eyes on this website as we can, to propel this community into 2024.

With old players lurking here (not Discord) they won't be incentivised to return if they see the forum unused.

As for the combining, the alternative Barrier to suit both sides is to make the main subforum that's clickable on the index, the community event page. Then make the official events subforum a child of it. Essentially having this subforum URL on the index, but a dead page, is just silly

I hear you, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. Take a look at tabletop simulator discord (ttsclub, not the official one). It's a very vibrant space to organize and discuss things. Also, I would argue that your average RP nerd today is going to start off with discord when searching for gaming communities. They have an account already, and they really don't need the forums when starting out. It's only after playing and wanting to do some rp in the form of comms or faction reports that forums are really useful.

As long as people are logging on the server, to me it doesn't really matter where they came from.

Agreed about the subforum structure. What we could also do is stuff all the necessary info into the "events" forum, and have the subforums be purely for the official/community event threads without any pins. With official events having front page visibility anyway it doesn't need to be that noticeable on the homepage.

[Avalanche]

I hear you, Barrier. You make some good points.

The restructure would be welcome.

[Lusitano]

i think it is fine as it is. official events is one thing, community events is other, don't mix it otherwise may cause more confusion. several players are making good job with the commnunity events, many times even much better than the official, and Barrier it is a good example of it, even paying rewards from his own pocket.