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#1 Multilingual 

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Hello,

It's a very very broad subject, so I'm putting the log of a discussion we had monday during the RF reunion on the subject to set boundaries a little bit. Please read the whole post before answering ;-)
A very quick summary (but still, read the post) : do you think the events on ryzom are satisfactory (are you enjoying them ?), how the events should be in your opinion, and more importantly what are your concrete propositions to change the situation, if you find it insatisfactory ?
Glorf
It can be pretty easily resumed as "events are mediocre". Not bad, but definitively not good. (only my opinion, shared with most of the fyros rolists, couldn't speak with other nation's rolist)

Why a bold statement like this :

The most important, is lack of implication of the players. There is two main type of event : dialogs between 2/3 NPC where player have (basically) no impact, and it's like watching a movie. There are announcement - like event, where you move & book your evening for something who could have perfectly suited a forum thread - less charge for everyone. Finally, there is some event with a little participation, but it's always slow, no rythm at all, and you lose players (cf fyros event where in 2 hours we asked 10 questions ...)

Another point, it's that the majority of played characters are either super exaggerated (hello Xalis the senator boot-licker of the Karavan who has no other identity - but it's pretty rare), or (mainly) ultra featureless, never trying anything

On the story side, you can feel it too, with either super obvious things (like the whole thulam story), or completely absurd (what, a well that was over 10 years ago, who never gave any water - the only interest of a well ... - and no one ever moved a little finger ? And the tryker engineers lost since 10 years never worried anyone, and by complete randomness we find them completely goo-addict near the goo heads)

In summary, people are completely out of touch with the events, they don't come because it's useless (might as well read a report or a chatlog in 5 minutes, you'll lose less time), and, I quote Naveruss at last event "We are imperially bored shitless"

I'll add that the stark difference between super interesting discussion on the cc pub-event-lore (coeur coeur love to gorias who makes the chan alive) and some private discussion with lorist (coeur coeur love to everyone) where you see the true depth of the lore and higly interesting and colorful characters with beautiful stories (spend 2 hours talking w/ Naveruss about matis/tryker relationship before the exodus with Naveruss because it's an amazing subject) and the event played ingame ... it's sadder

Since a critic without any suggested ameliration is useless and counter-productive, here is what I am suggesting to make things better :

Warn before if traduction is needed. Long story short, if you can be warned beforehand if you need a translator, things will go much smoother - obviously translation is still a pain in the ass for rolists, but at least it's bearable

The EM who was supposed to do the event is not here and no one thinks he's able to convicingly play his character ? You cancel, It's a thousand times better to have a well played, but moved, event than a bad played event who was on time, which is hard to fix and can leave a bitter taste

Too hard to play 4 characters for an EM ? Change the event, do it with one or two characters - a number where you feel comfortable roleplaying. At the last fyros event, there were multiples important NPC (Xinna, Lyandra) who said 3 or 4 lignes ... both of them ... And Aeryx who spoke at the beginning (and who could as well have left after that). If you really want to show some NPC are spectator, use an ARCC script to make themspawn. We don't care if the 5 guards aren't actually guards, or if there is multiples celiakos who says nothing - but if you want to give a "big" impression, it's much better

Before, there was multiple regulars discussions, either during big IG meetings with the event team, or simply individuals (I'm thinking mostly about Beesjy, Vradden, Jauhe, Daulath in some way coming to mind) who asked players about how the event was for them. It allows to allow differents (and fast) opinion, rather than waiting for Glorf to be fed up with it and dropping a brick on IRC :P

If you want some example are more rythmed event, invisible yourself and follow for an evening Zhan (if you like tea), Siela (if you like to travel, even if he's often with Zhan I'm beeing told :p), bai nhori drakani (if you like beer, nice but not ground-breaking stories, and the crazy stories of Jazzy and his 40 wifes), Naveruss (if you like fire), Markanjio (if you like your matis very extremist), Kanzaburo, Ulyron & all the drug addict/dealer (if you like weird and a little violent stories), Ubhal/Peatpom, Leeis, Fleurdetuber & Reshok (if you have some aspirin near you), or Krill (if you are a follower of the Great Glouglou)

Finally, stop playing only during events. At a moment it was a relatively common occurence (coeur coeur love to barmans who starts answering you when you are starting to drink, to Tepsen the crazy homin who smeared unknown people, to storytellers coming in a bar one day ...) And it's a shame it was lost, it's a part of making the bark alive as much as "big" events, while beeing much easier to do (a rename, some title eventually, and some clothes of your choices). I know it was done a little with the tryker storyteller - and it was super awesome that way (and, when it was played at the zorai meeting, it was boring as hell because no participation at all :p)
Zatalyz

I feel like we need to make the distinction between two kinds of event, and two targets : event to gather a bunch and people and make them feels like they are doing something together, and here the RP is secondary ; and RP, with adequate events, and there, yes, you need to change the format

For (almost) non-RP players, "movie" events are a good way to see that RP can be something, but you need to be careful when planning it. As you say, it's probably easily scriptable through the ARK. Everything must be written and translated before hand, and dumped on the translations chan during the event

Once a month, is already good. It's perfect for stuff like a crowning, a zorai ritual, a theater piece ... In summary when you go see a politics make his speech on public place

Event who targets RP players : everyone knows the quality of the RP on ryzom.
When I read the last meeting of Zhan with Tao sian (zorai healer), I'm telling that this, it's the good kind of event : The EM is here for few people (Zhan, a crazy man, a couple of friends), but it will give life to a true story, because the discussion can be fluid. And probably in a single language.
It doesn't mean less people will be included, on the contrary
Taking a NPC out, for an hour here and then ... Allows (&ask from the ) players to fill the hole, tell the story themselves. The events with the more involved players are those where each episod is including 4/5 people ; but players will keep on speaking between them after
On this point, I'm agreeing with Glorf (which is quite obviously the best way to act in any given situation) : there will be more RP, and more qualitative RP, with a barman speaking from time to time, than with 4 senators sleeping between two phrases

I really think it's a mistake to spend too much energy on event for a bunch of people, because they are always less satisfactories than little advice, while needing much more preparation (work). Zatalyz is not following event from the game because IRL work is too much, so she's not the most relevant ... But it's true, she loves telling stories, and master them, play them, follow them

to summarize, make the work easy, have fun, everyone will be much better this way
Tamarea
I agree with almmost everything that has been said. And by the way it was the way we did before the merge. But at this time, we were about 20 anims, it was easy. Now, we are way too short-handed (by the way the Event Team is recruiting!) and we are deeply depressed that we cannot offer the same quality for the events than before
We love playing impromptu little events, but if you knew how much time we logged for this with no results because we found no players ready to interact (or at least, not in the good language ;))
We just changed our internal way of working : the lore team is making the big lines of the event stories, to give them depth, but also to make the saga alive again - and make the history go through
It also includes some piece on the forum, btw. EM adds the needed little things to make the whole things playable during events.

(It goes into a more classic discussion here, changing the format a bit)

Zatalyz: I'll be cruel (as I can very well be, everyone knows it) but ... sorry, I think it's a bad idea. Those who makes history, it must be the players. Give them this power. Unless you're 50 again in the team..

Tamarea: And it's of course written including the players actions. But we need a main story

Zatalyz: No, you don't ... There is two "schools" in roleplaying/masterisation : DnD-like scenario, where you make the players follow a line ; and the "french school" scenario, where you are nicely moved around by players, by giving them twists / issues tos olve with your game master schizophrenia. In the second version, as soon as there is a complete & coherent world (as ryzom is), it's easily done. You know what this celiakos thinks about some story ; what this marauder will see in this adventure. It's only reaction from the animation-side, but it becomes a real co-creation with the players, and it's here we have the biggest narrative treasure

Tamarea: (think about the fyros-matis war, where we prepared "moving" guidelines based on players action, and sometime they follow a lead we didn't thought of, forcing us to adapt quickly)

Zatalyz: What matters, is defining the world and the characters psychology (mindset). You only needs logic to complete this. Bonus : it asks work on the lore, but not on the event preparation (except speaking with your anim friends to know if the matis king would rather knight a knight or cut his head). The more you plan in advance, the more it will hinder you, ask more time, who will be lost because players never do what you want ^^ and brings them back in the "good" path is a pain the ass. However, you need an excellent internal communication, because you don't want to be two playing the same character in the same year and possibly sending opposite/mixed messages

Glorf: I completely agree with zat on the way to master. I know everyone has his own vision on this, but you will never make your player feel alive if you don't truely let them leave their mark on the universe)

Lyne: There is some mark I'd rather not see

Glorf: as an example, Legends of the Five Rings (who also have an awesome universe, and a magnificent story) is built by the players who wins the card playing game tournaments - they are making big choices for the RPG storyline

deed: My favorite event was the temple construction bac in 2005 (what an old guy :P) ... But little Avalae events are nice too

Zatalyz: But in 2005, there was people, and a professionnal organization. It's not the case today. And it's a capital point : for the EM to stay and more to join the team, they need to make stuff that's 100% fun for them, and they need to have fun. So, I dond't know how it's done behind the scene right now, but if it's not the case, I really seriosuly advice to do this : volunteers must do only what they want to do (what is fun for them). If it's no fun / boring ? Don't do it Obligations and constraints can be accepted if you are paid, and in some way if you are carrying a personnal project (if there is enough fun outside). For everything, however, it always end in bitter despondency. I know I'm telling this, over and over and over and over since years, but it's always the most important part of a living community

Siela: Everyone is obviously right (:P). Little mettings with EM doing RP could be good, even for non-RP (especially english-speaking :P), if the EM don't forget that his listener might not know the lore and will not answer IC. Because here, what they think is that french people are boring people who kills everyone when they see them, don't resurrect and are asshole (I'm not even exagerrating that much), and they thinki it's because of RP. And scripted event like long, boring, actionless meetings, they will never come to lose their time ; but they might come for little meetings.
Coming from german and beeing in an english speaking guild and starting only recently RP, i'm seeing more of this, but if you start hating everything that speaks french and is RP, then we[the french rolist community I assume] need to show another image of us. I do agree that having no impact isn't interesting

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#2 [fr] 

Mt biggets frustrations about events are that the notices are unreliable.   A cupla weeks back a player asked about an eveny in uni that they saw on the calendar that was starting in 20 minutes.  Several folks tried to find anyy descriotion or hint of where thee event wa sbaing hels and no one could find anything.  At the stated event time, /who GM brought no results.

I read about a water drill ... other than the region being stated, I could not find it or determine what it it was all about.

And yes, the events that are just talking ... yeah those i could do without.

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#3 [fr] 

Je me considère comme un acharné du RP...

on peut me reprocher parfois de jamais lâcher le morceau... aussi je fais des efforts pour lever le pied quand c'est nécessaire...

Mais je suis persuadé qu'une des choses qui fait la valeur de cet univers, sont les interactions RP simples entre les Personnages. J'adore c'est minis évènements improvisés, comme Fleur de tuber (le frère de Pom/Ubhal) qui donne à Zhan une "cérémonie du Thé" façon Amazone Mystique et qui dois expliquer pourquoi un vieux Tryker Alcoolique en sevrage sait préparer le Tchaï...

alors c'est Long, peut être ennuyeux, sans intérêt pour la Lore. Mais ça donne de la profondeur au personnage et relie les différents RP...

J'ai adorer le voyageur qui s'était fait voler son toub par des bandits Trykers.
Je pense que nous devons tous être les files qui s’entremêlent autour de la Lore pour constituer l'étoffe de Ryzom...

Last edited by Aelyne (7 years ago)

#4 [en] 

Hello -- I speak as a member of the Event Team, but not for the Event Team. My views are my own.

1) We (I speak for all the Event Team members I know) would *love* to run engaging, Lore-filled, satisfying events that made every player feel wonderful about participating. That's just not possible, given the wide variation of players. Even so, we try.
1a.) Silly, interactive, semi-roleplaying, events seem to be popular (e.g. Denen Toen's marriage, Flyner excursions, drunken Bolobis, etc.) These generally take a deal of ARK programming (which is not fast), but are otherwise easy to set up. Hence they are relatively common. This includes the non-role events for Easter/Refugee Days, Anlor Winn/Halloween, and Atysmas. We recycle scripts and programs to keep the impact on the teams to a minimum.
1b.) Assemblies. When there are actually things to discuss, these seem to be popular with a subset of roleplayers. When there are not actually things to discuss, they are boring (or only two people show up).
1c.) Building events. Examples would be the defense tower in Thesos and the harvesting camp in Dyron, but those are not the only ones. These are attempts to engage the players to build something real and lasting. They take a lot of time to set up, and involve not only the graphics and modeling team of Ryzom Forge, but also the DEVs and other programmers who have to adapt the server and client to deal with new things.
1d.) "Movie" events. These are usually our attempts to introduce or reinforce some part of the Lore. Any suggestions on how these could be made more interesting would be very much appreciated.
1e.) Reaction events. This is the event that the Event Team has to put together to react to the players innovations that are running counter to Lore. We spend a lot of time doing this. In a recent case it took more than an IRL year to pull a player event back into Lore-compliance. In the year an a half following the (server merger/ Second Swarming) we had to deal with finding an explanation / justification of the different views various players had of critical events. The results, in my opinion, were not optimal, but it had to be done to give roleplay in the unified server a common basis.

2) The time dilation effect runs against time-realistic events. A Jena Year is only a few months in real life. Even a week (IRL) between events means almost two seasons have passed in Atys. Creation of a followup to an event takes more than a week. Thus the well in the Outback and the missing Tryker Engineers took back seat to other events and they have now been (missing / enjoying a lot of smoked Mind Moss) for many JY in Atys. There is no solution for this except pre-planned events that have no room for player innovation. So -- time moves slowly. Time also moves slowly because of limited and very much volunteer staffing.

3) Really new things take a *lot* of time, not only to conceive and prepare for, but also to translate, debug, test, re-debug, re-test, re-translate, etc. Thus the glacial implementation of the Ranger Rite, the proposed defense wall around Yrkanis, etc. If we had money to actually pay people so that coding was not done in people's spare time, these could move faster and we would all be happy.

4) Do NOT let my comments stop your suggestions/complaints/comments. Period. The Event Team (and those other teams who support us) need to hear what the players are thinking.

-- With all respect to our players
Cerulean
Event Team
Responsible for the Rangers
Volunteer and Active Player

#5 [de] 

ich würde auch gern mal wieder ein Meeting in Davae sehen ^^ - was aber wohl kaum etwas nützt, wenn da nur der EM , evtl ein neugieriger neutraler deutscher und ich sitzen ^^

so hat das irgendwie kaum sinn D:

schreibt mich mal an wenn noch ein deutscher matis am leben ist XD. dann kann ich ne liste machen und schauen ob sich so ein treffen evtl doch lohnt :)

dann gibt es evtl auch bald mal wieder einen Aushang zu Davae ^^

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"Decateis I Kamirac" "Necateis Sye Mideshye"
"Decateis I Loke" "Necateis Atys Morhdeis"
"I Nidran Sye Alede E Sye Neyde Ilya Necateis I Ulca"

"Liberi I`Margus"

_ Graphic-Team _

#6 [en] 

Cerulean
Hello -- I speak as a member of the Event Team, but not for the Event Team. My views are my own.

As I had indicated, the biggest reason i think why attendance is low is lack of knowledge.

a) Every event should be on the calendar ... every link from the calendar should have a forum thread describing the event. This is not always the case.

b) Once the extra Goo Heads folk appeared in void, I asked in Uni if anyone knew what it was about ... no one knew, on;y answer i got before the event was 'it's event related', that was all that was offered.

c) I did find out, after the fact, that there was an event described under assemblies, a section I would never have thought to look in.

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#7 [en] 

Fyrosfreddy
... Every event should be on the calendar ... .


Even when something is on the Calendar I get sidetracked navigating to it (and start reading something else) - if I press on a highlighed event on the Calendar it should pop open just the event info - not the Unread (999+)  other things that distract me.

edit:
Congratutations - I clicked on todays event and it took me straight to the event info - however I feel I cannot lend support to the barring of Matis from a meeting by going to a meeting where they are barred.

Edited 2 times | Last edited by Nubios (7 years ago)

#8 [de] 

das hat was mit dem Rollenspiel zutun Nubios, gemeint waren denk ich auch nicht die rasse matis, sondern nur die matis bürger ^^
die Konflikte dieser 2 Länder sind uralt und sehr tiefsitzend ^^

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"Decateis I Kamirac" "Necateis Sye Mideshye"
"Decateis I Loke" "Necateis Atys Morhdeis"
"I Nidran Sye Alede E Sye Neyde Ilya Necateis I Ulca"

"Liberi I`Margus"

_ Graphic-Team _

#9 [en] 

When I was playing this game 10 years ago, we had regular events wich involved Kitin attacks on cities and/or outposts. They usually ended up by chasing them back into the roots and kill a big boss there.
Those were really fun events. I have good memories of Pyr getting overrun :)

I'm not sure if it's a lot of work orgenising such events? They should fit the lore easily and don't require a lot of extra work from artists / programmers?

I dream of Frahar attacking in bunches, ploderos getting agressive, a Kincher attack from the roots, Vorax coming to the surface, Kipucker invading, ...

#10 [fr] 

We had a Frahar oriented event, they were like weeds in Frahar Towers... and the end there was a 40' tall Frahar which was supposed to drop some random loot. I forget what it was but it wasn't very exciting.

However, when everyone asked what it was, I said it was a "Frahairdo Spell" and that i could "target anyone in game, regardless of tags and hit them with a spell... it immediately changed their hairstyle to a "Frahairdo" ... and it was permanent."

Of course it was just a joke but a few folks picked up on it and said they had filed tickets and such, had fun with it for about a week. :)

Would love to have that event again ... but this time w/ real spell :).

Last edited by Fyrosfreddy (7 years ago)

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#11 [fr] 

I love the little spontaneous things. Once I heard voices although I was by myself, (not a result of the goo vapour in my apt.) A little while later, I was in Fairhaven and a mektoub came up to me and started eating cookies out of my bag! (we, Bittymacod and me, tried to give him carrots and Magnetic maps and stuff, but he only liked cookies). I know it had no effect on the lore, but it could.

 I like things or people suddenly comming alive, perhaps a town crier who announces a sudden meeting with the King for all Matis citizens on an urgent matter then its off to the races!
Or, something small, like an NCP suddenly telling an important story in the Bar over a drink to some homins there that is related to a bigger event, or Lore. Or the same with the stable boy, he could tell homins about a scary person that just came through or riddles to be solved with a reward,
or at one time I thought we were going to implement a traveling Merchant who had to be found wandering all over or something like that? These kind of events can be fun and really short for whoever is controlling the NCP.
I think it should of course, lead up to something bigger to make it even more interesting, but doesn't always have to. How about just having a crazy Fyros drunk hanging out in the baths every Sunday that annoys people with his blonde jokes that everyone gets to know as Crazy Sam or something?

Something suddenly alive stops us in our tracks and makes Atys very interesting!

#12 [en] 

I was at one of the events with the Tryker well and last before that was the introduction of the Fyros defense tower, not because I’m Fyros or I like their events more, but because I had time and the right mood at these days. (That I often can’t join at the given times, evenings, weekends, is absolutely my problem, not yours.)
But there is one of my first problems, it was not really me (matis) who joined the event but I send my little sister (fyros). I would highly wish that no-one is excluded as a listener from any event just because of their race, this is especially frustrating for new players, they see an event in the calendar go there to watch and are send away for „role-play“ reasons, why can’t they just stay if they are silent listeners just out of curiosity?

The last really amazing event I attended was the last Black Marked (Schwarzmarkt). *smiles at Chanchey*
And the 12 year birthday party was also a wonderful event :)
Olympics were somewhat fun and I like OOC events in general

What I wish for:
-smaller number of (role play) events in favor of more meaningful content

-new players and watching visitors should be allowed at all events, assemblies and meetings that are not explicitly closed for informational reasons, and those closed events should maybe not appear in the public calendar at all
-there must not be any harassment towards new player because they „picked the wrong event from calendar“

-a dedicated event channel, one for each of the 3 (!, you heavily neglect german translation) main languages, those open before a event begins, that those channels open informs all players that there is an event starting soon, translations and talk should happen in those channels (I had the problem that I was standing too far away and I missed dialogues), that also could temper people who are just reading the event channel to join events after they already started

-the description in the forums, need to be more informative, „www“ when? who? where?, not even that simple information is properly communicated in many event announcements,
it happened several times to me that I visited an event with an English forums announcement and the event was only played in French, not to mention some Germans, who gave up visiting events because they don’t understand enough English and there is no German translation, or even worse they feel bad to have someone who translates for 1-2 people and they don’t tell they need translation, they just vanished from events :(

-for events that involve fighting against npc and mobs a reasonable reward is important, that annoyed me pretty much at the Tryker „A birthday invitation“ event, the fighting was fun, but I damaged my brand new sup amps and got no loot, nothing at all for it, and the story part was just flat, a story can be a sufficient reward for me, but not this one

I often felt like Freddy in #6, more than once since I’m around I searched for an event from the calendar and it obviously did never happen at all and no-one knew about it, no one canceled it in time.

I like Naemas post #11, that everything looks alive, even if you are completely alone, this immersion is an important aspect of what makes Ryzom so special :)

#13 [en] 

Two more examples for events I enjoyed a lot,
the one with the drunken Bolobis and the travel of the Karae to the lakelands.

Those where pretty well balanced between good story parts and action parts and had a lot of participants.

#14 [fr] 

Another item worth mentioning is that, if the idea is to get as many folks there as possible, that they not conflict with previously scheduled player events such as the NPC Boss Hunts.

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#15 [de] 

ja das war beim letzten fyros event leider der fall...

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"Decateis I Kamirac" "Necateis Sye Mideshye"
"Decateis I Loke" "Necateis Atys Morhdeis"
"I Nidran Sye Alede E Sye Neyde Ilya Necateis I Ulca"

"Liberi I`Margus"

_ Graphic-Team _
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