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Campaign Feedback

Mongoose

Lord of Altera
Now that the campaign is over, I'll toss my thoughts and opinions in on this, albeit short ones.

Now, I loved this campaign event, just like I loved the last one I took part in, however from the people that I've talked to and my own feelings on this, everyone is massively confused as to what on earth is going on. Don't get me wrong, I mostly loved what I took part in on all of this, but the ending event for example seemed more like it should have been a private event. I did my best to ask questions and work out what's happened throughout all of this, but I still feel heavily in the dark OOCly. The last event was a very long Q&A at the end that despite staying to nearly the end to, the only way I can describe it is that I've skipped over Step 1 and 2 and got straight to Step 3, I don't know how many more steps are in front of me but I've got to work out what Step 5 is before I can do Step 4. On the whole, it's been incredibly confusing.
However, despite that, the parts that I did understand were incredible. I thoroughly enjoyed most of what I've seen, done and heard. Big thank you to the staff team who've done all of these events, and I hope that although I might not be showering you with praise here, I want you guys do know that I really do appreciate all you guys do, much love :heart:
 

Jeroxia

We demons of our solemn hour
Good
This is a concern I have shared before and one I think I should reiterate. I feel as if the server is becoming more and more over the top by the day.

Bloated has been a buzzword for months now and I think that the extent to which creatures and their power are now being extended may be taking it a step too far.

It confuses me as to why we needed the creature at the end of the event, and why we needed a bigger fish at the end of the campaign and all the campaigns (for as far as I know). It confuses me what the purpose of such a creature is.

It seems to just make the gods and the actions more inferior in a semi-Lovecraftian way, but without achieving the actual fear that comes with such a thing.

I also fear that there's too much priority to adding new things when old things are not yet functioning or finished. In this way you will achieve bloat in your lore and I am a staunch believer in less is more in this case.

What does this have to do with Campaigns? Well, the first campaign everyone understood and was epic. Forlorn is still the best one in my opinion. Starfall had its issues but was still okay, but from there it has just become more and more confusing for existing and new players alike. It deserves and needs to not only be put on hold, but everything that has been added in these events needs tangible and accessible lore. If this doesn't exist, once again, things will become more and more confusing.

Stop adding more stuff. Fix the old stuff. Flesh out this new stuff and make it coherent, and if you/we can't, get rid of it.

The rule of cool is not a rule that should apply when it comes to providing background to a story.

We don't need new stuff. We really don't. What we need is to tie together the existing stuff and to find new and interesting ways to work with that.
 

Electric

professionally deranged
Retired Staff
electricwisekid
electricwisekid
Legend
I agree with what Rox and Mongoose have said. Forlorn definitely has a special place in my heart.
I felt thoroughly confused through the event, most likely because I haven’t been keeping up with what’s been going on, but I guess other people felt the same way - even if they’ve been following the campaign. Personally, I wasn’t really sure how this connected to my group events, if at all - was that addressed and I simply missed it? Or will it come to a close with the Power arc ending eventually? My group’s pursuit and fight against Power seemed like an unrelated side quest that didn’t really connect, but maybe I’m wrong
 

ZeAfroGentleman

Lord of Altera
Hero
ZeAfroGentleman
ZeAfroGentleman
Hero
As someone who has only partaken in part of this campaign, I do agree with Electric and Rox as well. I've not been here during the aforementioned events, but from what I've heard they were better than the Augury one. And while I understand that sometimes players need a bit of a push to have stuff happen and to take initiative, I think the current stance within the community itself where they stand that they'll be more than happy to make their own events. This start with Bartooliinii Nid Arach, and has since been followed by larger plot lines done by Blorbis83 for example and I'm sure many more, player-driven event chains will follow as well. I think it's a good idea to start spending time to flesh out systems and lore that are already there, maybe reintroducing them or reusing them for small one-shot events that are run by Staff DMs.
 

I am Wake

The Rose
Legend
Retired Staff
I_am_Wake
I_am_Wake
Legend
My character has been doing a lot of lore connecting the dots with revealed information from the events.
Whilst I did not attend many events at all, the people who RP'ed with Lana afterwards and told her what was happening on the battlefields made it rewarding to play a scholar character.

You (staff) did a wonderful job at making certain the lore made sense with previously established lore. For that, I thank you =)
 

Kostadim

Lord of Altera
Patron
Kostadim
Kostadim
Patron
In my time with the campaign (STEP and the Nether group) I had a rather fun time with the events with a decent risk reward ratio. However, during this whole thing I’ve noticed a good bit of players have quit, debated quitting, or took a decently long break and these were older players. Players who spent years of their life on hw and have been fairly involved with the community. I think this campaign had a good bit of issues that caused all this dissatisfaction.

Some problems I’ve heard throughout the campaign were that other groups just didn’t have a good risk reward ratio and they just spent the event risking their character’s lives for little to nothing Blackrush being one example. I’ve also heard similar complaints like those above with the campaign not making too much sense and all these plotlines seemingly just.. Ending without much explanation such as the corruption in Queensport or Qlippoth preparing to take over the world.

I haven’t been too involved with other campaign groups so I don’t know too many details but this is what I’ve heard and I think other people should maybe voice their issues so staff can learn for next time.
 
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Rygan

Deathblade
Evil
Rygan_Deathblade
Rygan_Deathblade
Evil
Some stuff is going to be content that's used outside of the campaign, so it's not ending this campaign. As for the failures of the campaign: trust me, we know. In between real life, the 40+ party events, and generally being responsible for a large amount of unrelated stuff that keeps the server running - we bit off quite more than we can chew.

Forlorn is agreed by a majority to be our best contemporary campaign - Forlorn was also huge on writing a large number of new things for people to encounter. I must have personally wrote four or five totally new monsters solely for the purpose of the campaign. We introduced the "Titan" concept too, which was a significant expansion of lore. We implied the existence of a prehistoric ant race which was not strictly necessary.

Forlorn introduced a large volume of lore, many thousands of words worth, purely for effect.

The problem with this latest campaign is that it got muddled. We shifted directions a few times, it got dragged out, we got overwhelmed at some points due to our other workflows, and as a result, some people ended up very confused. The addition of more lore was not the issue and is generally (aside from "I had fun hitting this thing and getting a cool sword for doing it, thank you") the only consistent praise we've gotten. Yes, certain aspects can and should receive public pages, but not everything will. I don't have a specific timeline on that because we're also working on some very important changes to the server that will be revealed soon™.

My intent isn't to stop critique from being posted, it's to tell everyone with concerns that we're not delusional. No champagne was popped to celebrate another successful bout, we sighed in relief at managing to get to the end with something that while confusing introduced some concepts to be used later and furthered some character arcs. It was stressful because of the mistakes and failures and when the next campaign happens (in a long time) it will be more Forlorn and less Augury. We've tried three different concepts across three different campaigns and it's rather obvious which one went the best.

Sometimes you experiment and the result is less than satisfying, and I can acknowledge that's what happened here.
 

Brown

Lord of Altera
Pronouns
They/Them
Doctor_Brown
Doctor_Brown
Yes I am here to be "that guy". I did not enjoy this campaign. From the day I joined the server I have been engulfed in this campaign, start to finish, and I spent more time waiting for it to be over than enjoying it. I'm probably going to be treading the same ground as Rox and previous members so I will try and keep it short:

It felt very one dimensional, the whole way through. Every event was simply 'go place, do thing, go home.' And despite a billion things happening and being introduced and re-introduced, I was still shocked when the final campaign event was announced. This was a months long ordeal, and it still felt like nothing happened, like we hadn't gone anywhere, and I will remind you I have been here the entire time, and keeping up with everything. Nothing made sense, and I'm not talking ICly. What's the point in introducing a hundred plot elements if none of them have any depth to them? And maybe they do, but myself and many many others aren't seeing it. To the three people who have managed to fit everything into lore and have it make sense to them, good on you, that doesn't fix the problem that it is tough to care about a problem when it's not given more depth than "this is a thing that is now happening"

In summary: This meeting could have been an email.

You introduced and re-introduced a TON of topics and lore. And I absolutely won't downplay some of those elements, I think they are super cool. However, with how one dimensional the campaign felt as a whole, it ended up coming across as a 4 month long exposition dump rather than a campaign. This meeting could have been an email.
 

Rygan

Deathblade
Evil
Rygan_Deathblade
Rygan_Deathblade
Evil
What's the point in introducing a hundred plot elements if none of them have any depth to them?
Life was stolen and the server's revival has changed with both Jishrimites and Shally worshippers receiving a new dynamic and arc to their faith and RP.

Mortan was introduced and players have gone after researching and using it.

Qlippoth re-surged and turned a portion of the map into an event grounds for reoccurring RP, with players already making plans to defend the rest of the world and contain its spread.

Magic was introduced ahead of a magic rework she'll be directly involved in.

The Vis titan was introduced in order to tie up the series of 4, the other 3 having already been revealed.

A lot of old lore was re-integrated into the server and refitted to fit into the new era in a way that doesn't erase it for older players and characters.

Archangels were introduced to be used for later and a few have met with Blessed and given them direction and ideas to continue their religious RP.

The Tidebornes accomplished their goal of giving part of the sea to Visage's domain.

I'm sure there's more I'm not thinking of right now, but I think it's unfair to say nothing has come of what's happened over the past few months. It's also fine to not enjoy things, but saying you're being "that guy" doesn't excuse you from specifically phrasing your critique as rude.
 

Brown

Lord of Altera
Pronouns
They/Them
Doctor_Brown
Doctor_Brown
Obviously I didn't iterate my point well enough, that's on me. I'm not saying nothing has happened, quite the opposite actually. A whole lot has happened, and drastically changed Altera. My point is that only one of them has been given enough weight and fleshed out enough for me to properly care about it: Jishrim and Life. And the reason for that isn't even campaign related, that was Whitespoor's dream, which STEP have worked for months and months and months to achieve.

It should be noted as well that it held such significance that STEP thought that Jishrim stealing Life WAS the campaign. Once that happened, they thought it was over.
 

Rygan

Deathblade
Evil
Rygan_Deathblade
Rygan_Deathblade
Evil
Obviously I didn't iterate my point well enough, that's on me. I'm not saying nothing has happened, quite the opposite actually. A whole lot has happened, and drastically changed Altera. My point is that only one of them has been given enough weight and fleshed out enough for me to properly care about it: Jishrim and Life. And the reason for that isn't even campaign related, that was Whitespoor's dream, which STEP have worked for months and months and months to achieve.
That's okay. A lot of the campaign was doing one or two things that really interested specific groups of players with things they've been asking for for a long time. And yes, it was a STEP cult goal that was worked in with that mindset.

Speaking to the finale guy was boring for some people and the highlight of the campaign for others, while the whole issue with Life is true in reverse for some.
 

Omikuji

Lord of Altera
Patron
Omikuji
Omikuji
Patron
Now that the events are over and I’ve looked and read through all the info of the stuff I took part in and what I had heard went on after I stepped back from it... gonna agree with mostly Rox here. Bloated, confusing, and generally carried little to no logical flow of how a story is told.

On a personal thing as well? This is going to sound like me very mad, Nah I’m just using harsher words because I can’t figure out a way to show my feelings on the campaign without bitter sounding words.

I was frustrated to the point I stopped participating. I had joined a group, put everything I had into it (Kane group) and it was completely dropped. The golem tower up north and that story line of corruption and the magic words, I not only never got closure but it wasted my time. It was infuriating. Kopii has been banned from the area but I still attempted to do stuff afterwards but the plot was dropped entirely.

Nothing Kopii has done meant a damn.

And it was so frustrating. Not only that, all those events didn’t really tie into much of anything of the campaign. I essentially put time in and it was dropped entirely. That was not fun, not fair, insulting to have happen as a player who had tried to actively do things in the campaign. I was frustrated, still am. Who wouldn’t be? He was banned from a major city, lost allies, and I couldn’t even get a response from any of them other then ‘they ignore you.’. Great thanks. I backed away from participating more then I normally would because I saw how it was going from then on. I went to one of the ones where we went to the spit in the world where Quippoths stuff was and just sat back watching a god like being fight another god like being. It was worthless feeling. You want to have your players feel cool, but instead a gods gotta swoop in and do everything for us.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if that was not an uncommon feeling to other players. Your characters attempts to do stuff is ignored unless you’re in the gods in crowd for that day. What are you expected to do when you try and take part, people have been scolding others for complaining that they aren’t taking part, but when they do crap all happens?

All in all, yeah I get that this is the last server wide event for a while. It’s one part good that it is because the entire storyline of wtf was going on in the world. New stuff added everywhere but it’s like a monster of the week sort of show, the rule of cool pops in some new random godlike being and we stand there listening to it talk. Or fight it. There was little actual character interaction because all you can do is stand there and listen to them talk like a college professor then fight.

That had been a major issue with Augury and even some of the prior events after Forlorn. Adding more and more and more, building up and up but with no stable building points. And now it’s like we only have god events or figments. What’s really become of the world after the events? Back to status quoe really, with a new revival system again like the last major campaign did.

And if it seems like I am trying to attack those in charge, I don’t mean to. I like those in charge, but I cannot say this event chain was satisfying in any form. I didn’t even get a teeshirt!
 

Rygan

Deathblade
Evil
Rygan_Deathblade
Rygan_Deathblade
Evil
And if it seems like I am trying to attack those in charge, I don’t mean to. I like those in charge, but I cannot say this event chain was satisfying in any form. I didn’t even get a teeshirt!
It's cool, but we're pretty aware of where it failed so if we don't respond too much that's why. We're not ignoring people's frustrations, but alongside the behind the scenes reasons it went so poorly we pretty much know and have while we were running things and just wanted it to end.
 

Omikuji

Lord of Altera
Patron
Omikuji
Omikuji
Patron
I get that for sure, the idea of that you guys get what is wrong and stuff. It's fairly obvious the issues, but I feel like expressing something I had noticed from Forlorn (which had it's massive issues in different ways, but generally considered successful) to the more recent things... was player involvement.

Forlorn had a clear cut goal, a mystery, something that players of any wake of life could take part in. You had the researchers doing their best, healers scrambling against the blight, you have those fighting for survival, you have the hunters seeking out the blighted beasts. It was clearly more ran by the players then, the actions of those players carried weight with detailed goals in mind and ways to take part. Yes there was many who had issues with finding their footing, and there was communication issues thanks to all the players having to rely on very small sources of information that got very quickly spammed/lost/forgotten. A lack of event side resources. But that still allowed players to have their own stories and actually able to contribute.

Then in the end the thing that everyone worked hard to deal with by the end of Forlorn just came back again. Undoing all the work that those events had done with a new iteration rather then carrying a same logic flow of what had happened the last time it appeared. Qlippoth is around because it's "too powerful". We did nothing to it prior. Stronger and better now with new tricks, it completely undoes the work of Forlorn. It undermines the stories that was told there.

When these more recent story lines started poping up, player involvement was pushed aside to introduce more god like beings. Figments. Titans. Ghosts. The Archon. Gods suddenly becoming more active again after agreeing to not to after the fall of so many of them from events before Forlorn.... it became their show. Not the players.We are forced to sit back and watch them do stuff. We're told that the gods are squabbling to each other and it's effecting us, but what are we the players supposed to do about it? How do we get involved when it's not open to the players in reality? We rely on them to tell the story, not the players actions that truly give them a means to carve the path of the servers stories. Players don't have intensive to take part because some figment will swoop in and do it, or some gods ranked things archangels whatever will do it.

Why should the players attempt to take part when the only rewards are exposition? How is the player supposed to get a satisfying tale, rp, and feeling of accomplishment when it's not done by them? They have nothing to show but words, and often times no one cares about the stories that another tells because they could be making it up or have nothing.

What had happened to the story line of the server was essentially what happens in shonen anime/jrpgs. You start off smaller, and then keep making a bigger bad from the last big bad and you are legit ending up punching cthulhu. Only it got so big that no one was able to do anything but watch a god punch it.



...Why am I posting this? I felt like if I didn't say it, I'd regret it. This is a feedback page, they have to be honest. Needs to be posted yadda yadda. This had been bothering me for a hot minute as someone who loves world building and generally enjoys rping on HW in general, but for a hot minute it's very much been like "Well, what do I do? Guess it's just magic research for me.". If anyone says to 'make a new character to make it fresh', that's not how that works. Those issues would still remain, new or old character.
 

Rygan

Deathblade
Evil
Rygan_Deathblade
Rygan_Deathblade
Evil
Hence the decision to stop campaigns in favor of doing personal, more frequent smaller plotlines for players both at request and when stumbled upon after they're put into the world. Campaigns are fun but they should be a sort of yearly thing and there should be more for players to do and directly effect frequently rather than more campaigns.
 

GhostKairo

sparkles emoji
Pronouns
He/Him
Tidepod__
Tidepod__
Hero
Bloated has been a buzzword for months now and I think that the extent to which creatures and their power are now being extended may be taking it a step too far.

It confuses me as to why we needed the creature at the end of the event, and why we needed a bigger fish at the end of the campaign and all the campaigns (for as far as I know). It confuses me what the purpose of such a creature is.

It seems to just make the gods and the actions more inferior in a semi-Lovecraftian way, but without achieving the actual fear that comes with such a thing.
This was one of my biggest takeaways from the finale. I felt like I turned on the TV and tuned in to an episode of Dragon Ball Super or something. It was like falling asleep during a Marvel movie marathon, and then waking up towards the end. 'Power creep' is what it's called (I think.) It's when the scale of power gets extended on and on during a story or series' span, making past characters (both protagonist or antagonist, or otherwise) ridiculously weaker in comparison to the newer ones. Increasing power isn't bad, but there should be a limit to it. Augury's last event crossed that line, I find.

The power level of those Vis beings were so much above the Gods - who are already very very mighty - that I just couldn't care about them. They're so fundamentally out of reach for player characters that interacting with them felt like a needless cutscene. Something that wouldn't amount to much. A peek into the backstage of the universe that doesn't contribute much to character development, because of just how many leagues they are above our character's level of being.


Alright- I'm done. Sorry, I wanted my turn beating the dead horse. That aside- Augury overall had some great highlights. So many of the additions to lore are just... mwah. As were their insertions into RP. Archangels are hype. Jishrimites turning Life upside down was dope. Rahas giving them a trial and punishment was badass (from what I heard.) Revival's rework is : ok_hand: :weary:. DMs did a great job during events, from atmosphere to descriptions to action-reaction emotes.
I understand that mistakes were made, and honestly towards the end I couldn't wait for the campaign to end, but that said- I'm going to have some fond memories.

Thank you guys for your hard work.
 

Rygan

Deathblade
Evil
Rygan_Deathblade
Rygan_Deathblade
Evil
The power level of those Vis beings were so much above the Gods - who are already very very mighty - that I just couldn't care about them. They're so fundamentally out of reach for player characters that interacting with them felt like a needless cutscene. Something that wouldn't amount to much. A peek into the backstage of the universe that doesn't contribute much to character development, because of just how many leagues they are above our character's level of being.
It pretty much made no sense in being a 'finale' and would have been much better labeled as an epilogue for the purpose of giving out lore to the people who really enjoy that stuff. Framing it otherwise is rather lacklustre.
 

Solus

object oriented
Staff member
Admin
Retired Owner
I want to post in- instead of liking or agreeing on comments. I stepped back for a reason and tried to check in the last few events to see why my friends ended up leaving in clusters. It happens. I've had it done in my time. At this point, it's a matter of accepting that things can't go back to the way they were and move on to do better.

From what I have seen, there was a disconnect in handling things from the start of this event. Server campaigns can't be done alone and can't be a mesh of different old lore sewn together. People are ok with infodumps, with interactions, it's the pacing of it and the content of it that matters. Omi mentioned past campaigns being divine centered not appealing to them and I acknowledge that. In the end of this campaign, the Evis folks were mostly the focus and sure- that make sense. The disconnect for me as a player in this world was introducing backlore elements to the playerbase. Something I would have avoided being so grand scale. Golem characters, bug creatures, a different realm. All interesting elements if the theme had a bit more of a medieval spin to, more grounded, since we are a medieval server that normally doesn't see it.

I actually enjoyed being interacted by the bug people, by the living crossroads, acknowledging the ant people had an elder hierarchy, and although the scale of violence is a top to high for me to the point it takes me out of the scene mentally, what was on point was teamwork in making sure the 20+ were interacted with. What's jarring was their existence in general and how it related to a medieval explorer. The audience was lost because it wasn't for the audience that came. Believing only a certain group of people like learning lore is off, everyone likes it- they wouldn't be here otherwise. What matters is cohesive understand of what to trickle down, how much a regular player should interact with rather than blowing their minds of the unknown.

My other point to raise is actually player focused- Players were forced to separate during the 30+ events, but nothing was done outside of it for those months on topic. Maybe I wasn't paying a lot of attention, but it felt as if the server checked out for those months, players in those events included, and I wondered how other players outside those circles were doing, too. A few did focus on player campaigns. I'm just pointing out it felt quiet until lore posts were made to reveal what's going on in the background as players themselves weren't making public heralds/announcements as groups did in the past, to fill the outside world in. It wasn't tough to be invited into these events by different groups and hop in, but I'm not a normal player anymore and can't attest to how others actually felt.

As Rygan said- everyone knows. And I know you know, Rygan. So you don't have to respond here, too. If Lore and Events and Management can get a handle on proper planning, gauging their audience's taste, not forcing work to expend themselves to burnout, it may work out in the future. Stay focused and keep it simple. The current player pursuit will suffice for the more active folk who know what themes they want to pursue.

--

And a comment as a staff member since I'm making some effort to be more present for a bit: We'll try to band folk together as best as possible in Staff, as well. The rest do a lot of work, I've seen it. It's tough. Thanks for supporting them.
 
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