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State of Events (Q2 2016)

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7632

Guest
It's that time (beginning of Quarter 2), which means it is appropriate to write another state of events. These are quarterly statements meant to add transparency to what's happening behind the scenes.

Campaign
The campaign is in full swing. We had two main events in February, followed by a dozen or so mini-events. One of the most relevant criticisms from the first Bastion was that it was not inclusive enough. We designed the next phase of the campaign, "Altera Alive", to try to tailor to individual RP needs. In essence, it is an attempt to DM the entire map. It's met with reasonable success; we've heard positive reviews from the mini-events.

The goal of Altera Alive is to find the other Bastions. We wanted to remove the "Mary Sue" aspect of the campaign by letting the players control the speed of the campagn. Our only restriction is that the Bastions must be completed in the proper order. This has both IC and OOC reasons, the OOC being that staff need to have time to prepare the dungeons. The IC reasons are part of the story line, which will be revealed in due course.

Staff involvement in the campaign is high. Staff members involved are assigned to specific teams and then asked to do jobs. They range from DMing to acting to building. For example, while most of the community assumes that I alone play Clain, the reality is that several staff members are trained to do so and a lot of work goes into making sure we're all on the same page. Playing Clain is harder than it looks; he's not invincible like most events characters have been in the past. Our actors thus try to be cautious with him. It certainly adds another level of how our playerbase can interact with the plotline.

Moving forward with the campaign, we expect the correct Bastion to be found within the next two weeks. Yes, it puts us a couple weeks off our original goal of one Bastion per month, but we thought it would be appropriate to let the players decide the pace of the campaign, including when and whether the Bastions are completed at all.

A campaign is not exclusively about big, flashy, high attendance events. It's more an understanding that there is a story line, a progression, and that players have the opportunity to determine the outcome via participation. To say that it's been "X" number of days since the last Bastion is thus not really relevant. Even then, Altera Alive is part of the campaign, and those occur frequently.


Some of you know that my activity has been declining thanks to IRL responsibilities. It will continue to be low for quite some time. I've organized staff roles and we're moving along such that I don't believe my relative inactivity will be an issue. That being said, if it /does/ become an issue, I am willing and prepared to have someone else finish the campaign. There's quite a lot of documentation about this campaign, including bits about each of the Bastions, a rough timeline, the plot (including the ending), instructions on playing certain things you folks might find, character sheets, and quite a bit more. Needless to say, I'm confident that another staff member could read these documents and be fully prepared to finish the campaign. What this means is that it is NOT in any danger of folding or collapsing.

As for the story itself, I won't give away spoilers. You'll just have to wait and see...

Player Events
Player events have taken a slight downturn by my observation, though I don't think it's necessarily because of the campaign. I've seen a fair few postponed or canceled, and one of our more reliable hosts had computer problems.

The event ideas thread was posted and never took off, but at least we tried.

We still want to provide as many resources as we can to help player events, and that includes providing DMs and actors. As such, we are indeed planning acting tryouts and exploring other options to make player events easier to hold.

We haven't started on loot tracking yet, but that's also still on the radar.

One thing that's heating up is IC conflict. This has also, I think, caused some other player events to take a back seat. I look forward to seeing how the conflict evolves going forward.

Events Calendar
In its current form, the Events Calendar is a lot of maintenance. I've been away and so I haven't gotten to April yet. I'm planning on asking around to see if somebody can aid or help cover this task in the future, at least until we can get a proper events calendar.

Goals for Quarter 2
I'm hoping to see the campaign progress, maybe even to its completion (though I expect it to conclude in July). As Altera Alive fades, I think we'll see another uptick in player events, and I fully expect to see war rules out in this quarter.

I hope to see some acting tryouts and maybe even some council DM training. The loot repository would be nice, too.

Ultimately, my goal is for the player base to be happy with our hard work. Most have no idea how much effort is being put into this, nor the cooperation going on behind the scenes, and it's easy to offer less than constructive criticism when one is uninformed. I hope this document helps inform people, and I hope that the direction events is taking is a reason for rejoice.
 

Rygan

Deathblade
Evil
Rygan_Deathblade
Rygan_Deathblade
Evil
I think the time between events is extremely relevant. The story has been on hold for anyone not going on constant searches and hype fades as time goes on.
 

Jstar

Exitus acta probat
Lore Staff
Good
Staff
JstarGames
JstarGames
Good
I think the time between events is extremely relevant. The story has been on hold for anyone not going on constant searches and hype fades as time goes on.
Not to mention the fact that any characters not involved in the Anhald/Coalition war are probably bored out of their minds from want of something to do.
 

Naelwyn

Non sum qualis eram
I'm happy the tryouts and other items that were my #1 priority are finally being looked at. Please use the existing material set up for it, it should substantively accelerate the project.


To say that it's been "X" number of days since the last Bastion is thus not really relevant. Even then, Altera Alive is part of the campaign, and those occur frequently.

This is not a valid rebuttal primarily because the Altera Alive events are primarily private. I've already found the sites and have had nothing else to do whilst waiting and giving folks time to finish dungeons, so I've been bored out of my gourd and not been playing on the server at all.

Edit1: I kinda wanted to claim the land and build castle and fortresses and dungeons on top of them so that there were two dungeons to run people through instead of one, but figured that'd not be too highly looked upon.
 

Bartooliinii

An Alteran Bard
Patron
Retired Staff
Pronouns
He/Him
Slimy_Froggy
Slimy_Froggy
Patron
A campaign is not exclusively about big, flashy, high attendance events. It's more an understanding that there is a story line, a progression
This sentence, is pure gold.
For weeks we've asked for a new server-based campaign.
Ever since Queen Grief died, there weren't big events that controlled all people on the server.
Queen Grief's campaign took years, it was like a theme. Something your character could fall back on.
"Oh well, I'd rather stay away from the nether, with Queen Grief and all" that kind of stuff.
We've been begging for a new theme, a new enemy perhaps, when Queen Grief died.

Now we've got a campaign, and this sentence truly describes it best:
it's not about the separate events, it's not about the outcome!
It's about the fact that we've got a theme again.
If Queen grief colored the server purple, Clain now colors it his own color.
I think we should start to regard the campaign as such, that it is a setting for Altera.
That we can continue our own event-lines, with this running in the background.

We had the Age of Grief, now we have the Age of Clain.
Years from now, there will be players with characters that started in the Age of Grief, and others in the Age of Clain.
It's a general mood of the server, rather than separate events.

The sentence Antilogy wrote here made me realize that.
That I should not complain that it is taking long... The longer it takes, the better.
Let it flow. Or as treebeard would say it: "RELEASE THE RIVER!"
 

Rygan

Deathblade
Evil
Rygan_Deathblade
Rygan_Deathblade
Evil
Player initiative = finding one of the dungeons and being completely unable to enter.

Glad I spent 2 hours searching only to be forced to go back to Mary Sue DM NPC with 0 rewards or satisfaction, having to do it all over again to get back with now likely the entire server, which invalidates my small party having even done anything.
 

Centurion

Dark Council Elite
Player initiative = finding one of the dungeons and being completely unable to enter.

Glad I spent 2 hours searching only to be forced to go back to Mary Sue DM NPC with 0 rewards or satisfaction.
Yeah, this.

"Campaigns aren't about big flashy events"

>Have to go back to Clain and schedule a serverwide event or else you cannot continue because (no reason given)

What? What a waste of time.
 

Cap

Lord of Altera
Legend
I thoroughly enjoyed going through multiple hours of RP and finding a dungeon only to be confronted with a wall that I'll have to RP going through with seventy different players and a Mary Sue NPC instead of exploring through dynamic player based RP with my friends.

It's very comforting that I can trust staff to hold our hands all the way and block us from further interaction with the campaign whenever we want to take charge for ourselves. I'd hate to have to be independent for once!

fix this.
 

Centurion

Dark Council Elite
There's also the whole "it's metagaming to know you have to take Clain and the server along" argument. Anhald isn't a group that's going to invite the world to explore the dungeon, especially when it's known that removing it is going to alter the state of the world. This is poorly structured, planned, and restricted.

fix this.
 
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Elt

Lord of Altera
Retired Staff
This also did kinda happen when Sif, Tennand and Eltsir found something OOCly inaccessible, though Baron, wonderful DM that he is, did provide reasoning that there was noxious gas to contend with down there.

The problem is that Clain and especially the public would never, ever hear it from them if they could help it. If Campaigns don't need to always be serverwide, I feel like groups should be allowed to progress with what they were given 'free reign' over to explore.
 

Centurion

Dark Council Elite
This also did kinda happen when Sif, Tennand and Eltsir found something OOCly inaccessible, though Baron, wonderful DM that he is, did provide reasoning that there was noxious gas to contend with down there.

The problem is that Clain and especially the public would never, ever hear it from them if they could help it. If Campaigns don't need to always be serverwide, I feel like groups should be allowed to progress with what they were given 'free reign' over to explore.
This. Baron said we could do it privately if we had the stones/the ability to pass through the gas.
 

Heie

Lord of Altera
Lore Staff
Legend
Staff
^^^ This argument should be addressed in a convo with staff.
 

Rygan

Deathblade
Evil
Rygan_Deathblade
Rygan_Deathblade
Evil
Or here in the public events thread. If staff have a statement that invalidates us, everyone deserves to know.
 

Elt

Lord of Altera
Retired Staff
^^^ This argument should be addressed in a condo with staff.
Maybe, but it is kind of, y'know, a public issue that's worth leaving open to discussion and more feedback (from both staff and players), so long as it doesn't degenerate into something uncivil.

EDIT: To add, just in case this comes off as cross: I respect the staff team, their efforts, and what they're trying to do - I really do, they make this all possible - but it's worth speaking about.
 

Baron

Sovereign
Retired Staff
This. Baron said we could do it privately if we had the stones/the ability to pass through the gas.
I'm not sure I ever said you could do it privately, since you were a group of 3 at the time, but more that as the finders you could take a role in leading the event (since Clain wouldn't reasonably know any more than anyone else about the dungeon).
 

Cap

Lord of Altera
Legend
Maybe, but it is kind of, y'know, a public issue that's worth leaving open to discussion and more feedback (from both staff and players), so long as it doesn't degenerate into something uncivil..
I agree.

'Staff, I have a complaint' should always be public. People need to be aware of how the discussion of issues like this are handled. But keep 'Staff, go to hell, ruin muh RP' to yourselves.
 

Elt

Lord of Altera
Retired Staff
I'm not sure I ever said you could do it privately, since you were a group of 3 at the time, but more that as the finders you could take a role in leading the event (since Clain wouldn't reasonably know any more than anyone else about the dungeon).
That's certainly understandable - but that's just it: their and Anhald's exploration has no IC reason to be public, no matter how we try to reason it.
 

Cap

Lord of Altera
Legend
That's certainly understandable - but that's just it: their and Anhald's exploration has no IC reason to be public, no matter how we try to reason it.
The only Anhald member who actually has the location was my merchant captain temp, who marked it on his map. I doubt even the folks who came with him could find it without him, as they're not sailors.
 

Rygan

Deathblade
Evil
Rygan_Deathblade
Rygan_Deathblade
Evil
Don't take this as me being unappreciative of Lannis's hard work. It was honestly one of the funnest events I've attended in an entire year until the end, when it was all invalidated to meaning nothing. Lannis is the best DM the server has.
 
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