Events, participation and "game masters"

[jammi]

Alrighty, so this is something I've been mulling over for a while now. The tl;dr version of the following thread would be that I'm advocating for the creation of a new staff role that is exclusively concerned with the creation, implementation and management of server events. This role should act as a go-between link for the admin team and the story devs, pro-actively creating official server events that directly shift the status quo along towards the next update's planned story changes.

Staff acting as GMs should have access to the server's remote desktop in order to facilitate events, but have no "judicial" power - so no authority on rules, enforcement, sanctions, etc. So you'd then have moderators who are exclusively concerned with forum operations, GMs that are exclusively concerned with gameplay and admins who are overall responsible for all aspects of the server and forum's management.

Now, why are GMs necessary? Anyone can organise a bland, standard pew event. You don't need any special privileges or entitlements to pull that off - see Wesker's regular fight events. What you do need desktop access for is special events that make use of existing FLHook tools to their max. So for example, setting up temporary bases or solar objects, or establishing temporary restart templates. You also need official authorisation ("jurisdiction") to enable binding events that have a permanent affect on the game world. It's an undeniable truth that people are more interested in admin/official events than ones organised informally by other players.

Of course, there's the issue of participation. There are many novel and original events that could be hosted for niche factions, but there's the risk that their playerbase is too diminished for any potential event to be fair, balanced or a worthwhile time investment. Why host an LWB event when no-one will show up? Alternately, any kind of combat event between the Mollys and BAF is bound to be horribly one sided, simply because the Mollys have a far smaller overall pool of players to choose from.

One way of circumventing that would be setting up restart templates for the factions involved, which would be enabled 1 day prior to the event. In this case, that'd be for a Werewolf, Greyhound and Barghest - and then adding a credit cost to use that restart equivalent to the NPC resale price for the ship and all its equipment. So effectively, you're getting a fully equipped faction ship at a steep discount, but you wouldn't be able to make any money off it by default. You'd break even at most. Anyone who tried selling hundreds of the things on the forum to other players would be chastised appropriately for abuse.

So, you have a sudden boom in manpower from people who are interested but who wouldn't otherwise have participated due to apathy (setting up ships, yawn) or monetary issues. It also has the bonus of enlarging the potential playerbase of the NPC group after the event is complete - you'll then have loads of people with cheap Barghests, Werewolfs, [relevant faction ship] etc sat around waiting to be used.

This honestly isn't something I'd expect the current admins to do because they already have a lot on their plate, and asking for something like this in a request would probably result in four months of nothing. With a dedicated GM, this is their plate, so they could pursue those kind of requests with all their energy. Having some form of staff that pro-actively look to foster events or story-event arcs is absolutely essential in convincing people to engage in a storyline that isn't stagnant or boring.

Currently the system relies on faction leaders submitting official event requests in their secret subforum so the admins can process and enable them. News flash: we don't do it. So far, in all of the six months that thread has existed, it's been used twice - once for the LPI's Sunbucks race event, and once for the Delta Narru events. Evidently, relying on faction leaders to propose ideas isn't an option, seeing as they (we, I) are failing in our obligations by being lazy, unimaginative or unaware of the possibilities.

Thoughts on having a new breed of staff member that actively is concerned specifically with generating in-game activity dynamically and pro-actively?

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