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?

---

News article library, feedback and content requests.

[Sciamach]

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

Why did nobody think of this sooner?

---

[ sci·am·ach ]
/sīˈamək/

A simple, angry man casually working his way through life on a personal quest to acquire copious amounts of street cred.

[sindroms]

Easy, Scourgie.
We had people like this.

It was called: Member.

---

--------------
PSA: If you have been having stutter/FPS lag on Disco where it does not run as smoothly as other games, please look at the fix here: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2306502
----------

[Lythrilux]

This reminds me of the stuff alley would do at Freeport 11 and send Nom battleships our way, which was interesting and created some activity and could certainly be more potent if developed further.

My only worry is that apparently, from what I have heard, VWA had to endure the same thing under different circumstances and didn't enjoy it as much because it would interrupt their RP.

---

[Wildkins]

It'd be a pretty sweet idea, one that'd I'd totally be interested in if I could ever find time to exist as a person.

Would definitely help if we had a small team of these that could push through the events that factions wanted in order to progress their RP, and would probably take a load off of the admin team. Can't see any major negatives here, really.

---

RP Feedback

[jammi]

This reminds me of the stuff alley would do at Freeport 11 and send Nom battleships our way, which was interesting and created some activity and could certainly be more potent if developed further.

Alley's pretty much the perfect example of what I had in mind for the most part - a mixture of spontaneous in-game activity (NPC spawns, trade buffs, mining and ore tweaks, etc), and the creation of more formal, structured events using FLHook's capabilities (as in Royal Flush and Narru).

However, Alley's time is limited and the little time available seems to be focused on development work and making sure the server doesn't set itself on fire. More people stepping up to take on a similar, specialized role would at least take some weight off her shoulders (and the rest of the admins', that for that matter).

[Mephistoles]

An event team.

I intended on posting about the creation of an event team, but my memory doesn't work and so I forgot.

An event team would be good.

---

Sigma & GMG Discord Chat: https://discord.gg/d4j3W4v

[nOmnomnOm]

As long as the event team does not interfere with events that an official faction wants to do such as my race events then I dont mind.
Its pretty much an offical faction right so as long as they dont halt valid rp then yeah

---

[Miaou]

Oh god. Not the game master thing again.

This has been a topic multiple times by multiple people. I have the same comment as before. The people who would be able to do this role would already be admins or certain staff, as trusted and dedicated people would be needed to help manage this community and mod. When an admin decides to actually step forward and do these things it's great. Good example is Bob's buff routes that changed every week or so, or the routes that lasted a day by Alley.

Again, the only people who would do the job well are current or former staff. I'd rather them work on fixing the problems or ironing out the system then add on more things that would just end up poorly. Don't get me wrong, I think the idea is solid on paper, but to put into action would end up messy. I'd rather have a better system for managing story like and event development.