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
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