EMs pls for the love of god read

[Divster]

Ok first off i really enjoyed the event tonight, or at least what i was able to see. After so long seeing what happens at these events pls make it so that when you hold an event, have areas where only the em's can go, trying to see what is being said amidst a hoard of idiots spamming the screen is so frustrating. I have no idea what was being said after we left yew and had a hard time before that. If you can silence player chat in some scenarios pls do it when major story line is being revealed!

 

[NuSair]

Yeah, it's unfortunate that people have to be asses or think they are cool and ruin the event like that for people.

 

[Farsight]

Couldn't agree more.

 

[sablestorm]

*assumes his best Maxwell Smart voice*

EA I request the Cone of Silence (around the EMs talking). It would be nice, however, if you could implement a squelch feature that could be turned on or off within a certain radius of the EM's character. Anyone walking into that radius would be squelched while in there and they could talk again when they move out.

Perhaps you could even implement a bounce feature, similar to what happens when a house goes into customization mode. All players within a certain radius would be bounced away from the EMs to clear space for them to be seen and "heard."

Oh, one other thing. Perhaps obnoxious uncooperated players could be teleported to Felucca champ spawn dungeons. You punish them for misbehavior and feed the pkillers too. That way reds would have something to look forward to when events are taking place.

 

[Dor of Sonoma]

Ok first off i really enjoyed the event tonight, or at least what i was able to see. After so long seeing what happens at these events pls make it so that when you hold an event, have areas where only the em's can go, trying to see what is being said amidst a hoard of idiots spamming the screen is so frustrating. I have no idea what was being said after we left yew and had a hard time before that. If you can silence player chat in some scenarios pls do it when major story line is being revealed!

The Ignore feature (the tab on the bottom righthand side of Options, found on your paperdoll) works quite well. I highly recommend it!

It is easy to use, even if you cannot see who is yammering: simply target the speech on your screen to find the source and put it/them on Ignore.

 

[Divster]

Sure it works, but after using it to target 50 or so idiots what was being said, has been said and gone in the jounral too! Ignore is great when its one or 2 people but when the screen if full of people finding the people u want to ignore is even more time consuming than actually targetting them and as i said u miss the whole point of what u were ignoring them for

 

[IanJames]

I dont' think anyone should have to spend half the event putting people on ignore. The ability is there for them to do this, and they need to be ALLOWED to do it.

 

[cheerful]

Agreed, would make the EM's job alot easier too.

 

[Uriah Heep]

/signed

and in addition to the ones standing around yelling "gimme stuff!" add to that the ones that for some reason are continually spamming one spell or another, and filling the screen up with words of power.

 

[Viper09]

Agreed.
I'd use the ignore but too many people. And I'd hate to have someone who is trying to talk to me be on that list

Also as mentioned. There needs to be a radius around the main characters to prevent all those people from standing on them.

 

[Tina Small]

I went to one of the events this afternoon and it confirmed for me why I stopped going to these things: People spamming garbage the whole time. Characters who are playing a part in the event saying their lines in yellow or some other color that is impossible to read in the journal. (Can't see it in the air because there are so many people talking.) One or more of the main characters engaging in a not-trivial side conversation during the entire event with someone in the audience and said audience member making a spectacle of themselves that everyone else is forced to watch. The usual race through a series of moongates to a place where everyone dies to shadow fiends. Big explosion and a few pieces of something falling through the air, to be snatched up immediately by a handful of players. The instantaneous hawking of said items for 10 million gold by one of the few that managed to grab one. Ensuing complaints about why only a few got the special items. So much confusion and talking that it's almost impossible to follow what's going on.

All of these things make me walk away from the event feeling like it was mostly a waste of my time. I don't care about the items. However, not being able to see much of what is being said and also being forced to watch an EM flirting or whatever you want to call it with a player in the audience isn't my idea of fun.

 

[Dor of Sonoma]

...Also as mentioned. There needs to be a radius around the main characters to prevent all those people from standing on them.

Felucca automatically provides that radius of consideration. ;-D

 

[Fink]

*assumes his best Maxwell Smart voice*

EA I request the Cone of Silence (around the EMs talking). It would be nice, however, if you could implement a squelch feature that could be turned on or off within a certain radius of the EM's character. Anyone walking into that radius would be squelched while in there and they could talk again when they move out.

I like that. Maybe at least suppress spells as many people bind spells to regular keys and go into fits of spam whenever they try to speak.

 

[Jhym]

Well, I've always been a fan of evil Seers that just kill and then telestorm ignorant, obnoxious characters away. Or paralyze and then squelch them while a convenient creature kills them over and over.

But people would then complain how they were unfairly targetted because they said "Hellooo seer guy" or they were really talking to their horse.

We really need some complete a$$es as event mods to put people in their place. But it won't happen, it's been 11 years after all and nothing's changed.

 

[Ailish]

I guess Napa is exceptionally lucky, because our EM's actually *gasp* interact with us. When someone insults Casca, he RESPONDS to that person! When someone was "touching" the Crimson Dragon, she *glared* at them and insulted them!

It helped that one of our EMs came and hung out at the "pre-game party" for an hour, interacting. The results, for the most part, were that people payed attention during the important parts.

 

[von Beck]

On Oceania we had the whole screen filled with poison fields and Mesanna had to appear and tell the disruptive people to stop. Which they did briefly. They started up the poison fields when the Crimson and Platinum dragons appeared and the event was just canned by the EMs.

For all the effort that devs and EMs and players put into these events its ludicrous that they are not better policed. They need to ban players that come to the event only to disrupt the whole thing and ruin it for everyone.

 

[Viper09]

They started up the poison fields when the Crimson and Platinum dragons appeared and the event was just canned by the EMs.

Wow. That is just messed up that those immature players actually pushed the EM's to just stop the event.
Or did it stop after the Platinum dragon banished the Crimson? Because that's where the event ends.

If that's the case then the players didn't make them stop it.
Either way it sounds like you got the crap load of immature players. Stories like these really makes me hope that EM's will get more power to stop these losers from ruining evens or GM's will accompany the EM's and start suspending players.

 

[Ailish]

I guess I am just looking at it from a skewed view. I am Napa native, but went to watch the Oceania event as it was right after ours. Honestly, the people of Napa were not particularly less disruptive, but our EM's handled it gracefully by pulling the disruptiveness into the event. Our EM would have said something like "Pshh! No crimson dragon can touch us here, do not fear!" or some such and continued THROUGH the fields.

As much a pleasure it is to see Messana, I feel like the EM's should at least *try* to do more than just say "please stop". Maybe the Napa EM's can teach the Oceania EM's a thing or two ...

 

[Jhym]

That invites some questions to Mesana, Draconi, and the EM's themselves:

What can EA support and devs do to make the events fun for everyone involved, including the jerks, and still stay within the spirit of the event?

In this case, I really think they need to consider putting together a no-recall, no-gate, no loot area of the map that GMs and EMs can teleport trouble-makers to. Have it filled with tough creatures, and puzzles/traps. You have to complete certain things to get out, otherwise you just stay there. Have those things take anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours (in other words, multiple levels of "trouble".)

Yup, they'll log out and switch to something else, but in the meantime most likely the event will continue and the jerks will become quaint and foolish, instead of a real problem for those that want to be involved. And after they've had to fight their character out five or ten times, they'll learn a little something.

Or not. Perhaps the prison area needs to be no-skill-gain too, huh.

 

[Luna Lagger]

Haha please, EA cant put together interesting events, let alone make a multi leveled puzzle game for trouble makers.

 

[Viper09]

Haha please, EA cant put together interesting events, let alone make a multi leveled puzzle game for trouble makers.

How funny a statement that is.
I have found the events quite interesting...
Then again I like to follow the story instead of looking for fancy pixel loot and rewards.

 

[Bruin]

Wow - for all the grief Siege gets about having jerks on our shard, I'm soo glad I play there. I've never been to an EM event on Siege where idiots were spamming the screen so you couldn't read what the EM said. All the events I've gone to have went without a hitch.

 

[Teeshy]

I guess I am just looking at it from a skewed view. I am Napa native, but went to watch the Oceania event as it was right after ours. Honestly, the people of Napa were not particularly less disruptive, but our EM's handled it gracefully by pulling the disruptiveness into the event. Our EM would have said something like "Pshh! No crimson dragon can touch us here, do not fear!" or some such and continued THROUGH the fields.

As much a pleasure it is to see Messana, I feel like the EM's should at least *try* to do more than just say "please stop". Maybe the Napa EM's can teach the Oceania EM's a thing or two ...

Our EM does respond/react to/with us every other time I have seen them =) But honestly, not a single person I was talking to there, could "hear" a thing through those fields, and the people spamming with them.

I guess more of a frustration than anything else, as the same people do that EXACT same thing at EVERY event we have.

I really did hope that Mesanna (who I think was there already anyway, just in another "skin") would do something about them, so the rest of us could have fun with the event

 

[MorganaLeFey]

Is there a thread that I could go to and read up on the days events (and story line)?

I had hoped to be able to make today's event but alas, I was not able to. However, I'd like to get caught up and current on the latest happenings.

On second thought, seeing as it's late, and I'm about ready to hit the sack, I guess I'll meander through a couple more threads before calling it a night. Tomorrow's another day!

 

[Cailleach]

The whole thing to me was a no information anti climax. Go to Empath Abbey. Take a run (treacle slow) through the woods (hey, there's my house!) get gated to unknown dungeon. Die to lag. Get ressed, die to lag, have client crash three times in a row when I try to log back in after the original crash. Finally get back in, get ressed (again), die to lag (again), get ressed again, run round the dungeon some, watch Casca declaim the blood crystal to be the source of all evil (you what now?), see crystal blow up. Head back to Empath Abbey, see crimmie appear. Watch young girl talk to crimmie (who the hell was she anyway?). See young girl turn into platinum dragon, zap crimmie, vanish. And next time that's gonna happen, can you devs let Draconi take care of the pyrotechnics please? Cos what we got was disappointing, to say the least.

Reminded me of exactly why I tend to steer clear of stuff like this.

 

[Chiera]

The whole thing to me was a no information anti climax.

lol... this summarizes the whole thing quite nicely methinks. I could only add that even at a no information anti climax it might be nice to somehow let the players know when the event is over apart from just vanishing or crashing or whatever...

 

[hawkeye_pike]

I like the way the events are run. Muting the players might be a good thing to do though. The spam filter in UO is not sufficient, because the list is so limited. I'd like to add at lest 30-50 people to that list, wich isn't possible. It is very difficult to determine what is said by players and what is said by the EM (I usually read the journal log afterwards to find out what was being said).

Also, it is VERY unrealistic that players can come and insult Casca. It doesn't matter if you like him or not. He is the KING, and he should have the power to arrest anybody who insults him. If it was to me, he should have people insulting him guard-killed.

 

[sablestorm]

I like the way the events are run. Muting the players might be a good thing to do though. The spam filter in UO is not sufficient, because the list is so limited. I'd like to add at lest 30-50 people to that list, wich isn't possible. It is very difficult to determine what is said by players and what is said by the EM (I usually read the journal log afterwards to find out what was being said).

Also, it is VERY unrealistic that players can come and insult Casca. It doesn't matter if you like him or not. He is the KING, and he should have the power to arrest anybody who insults him. If it was to me, he should have people insulting him guard-killed.

It would be a nice touch to toss them into the black pits where they find themselves stuck in a little cell, accompanied by "Ricardo's overflowing chamber pot." Then you could have a guard at the cell door mocking them throughout the course of the event. When the event ends, Sherry could sneak down and let them out.

 

[Divster]

It seems most of us agree that the event in itself had good content, but the fact that so many people had trouble following it has largely overshadowed this. I think, as has been suggested, the best course of action would be to silence players during em speech. An alternative to this would be similar to the opening of the rift in moonglow event where the event characters were on the other side of a fence but maybe with the addition of this area (wherever it may be) being unable to be cast into etc. Of the two I would imagine the former would be easier to implement but would make it less interactive unless, like andrew, they removed the silence enough for us to give mass yes/no responses!

 

[Bara]

/signed

Please give the EM's an ability that forces a "radius" of silence around them when they are ready to talk.

I've seen some of the shards have events where the playerbase is mature and respectful enough to give the event moderator time to speak. However, this is a rarity.

I love the Event Moderator system. Love it. But there are a ton of self indulgant children out there who think that it's clever to spam:

Spoiler

*FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART*
*FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART*
*FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART* *FART*

It ruins it.

The Dev team should have the courage to either..

Recognize this and give the EM's the ability to deal with them by either ejecting them or squeltching them.

-Or-

Give a area "silence" ability that prevents players from talking in a radius.

*FART*

 

[Kiminality]

Griefing idiots exist throughout UO.
It's only the fact that EM events draw more of them into one place that makes them more apparent there. It's like a goldmine.
What I'm saying is that the problem isn't only an EM event one, and "fixing" the EM events so disruption isn't a problem wouldn't "fix" the problem. A bandaid fix, if you will.
For example, allowing an EM to squelch a player could work, but the fact the EM needs to squelch the player still stands.
Maybe mechanics to target the cause, rather than the effect...

 

[Bara]

Kiminality, I see your point.

Hmmm...

You know what would be very effective?

Give the players chat options in Stygian Abyss's user interface.

If you give me the option to click "hear other player", then I could turn it off for the purpose of hearing the event moderator.

This wouldn't be intrusive on other players, and simply empower everyone to enjoy the events the way they want to without stepping on anyones toes.

I could hear the moderator clearly, and not have to even consider spammy-Mc-jerkwad. And without hurting Spammy-Mc-jerkwads feelings.

 

[Ailish]

/Please give the EM's an ability that forces a "radius" of silence around them when they are ready to talk. [...]

Recognize this and give the EM's the ability to deal with them by either ejecting them or squeltching them.

-Or-

Give a area "silence" ability that prevents players from talking in a radius.

*FART*

I don't care to see an area of silence - it removes all possibility of interaction and takes alot of fun out of it. However, SOMEONE with the ability to squelch actual troublemakers in conjunction with a radius of NO SPELL CASTING would be sufficient.

Someone said "realistically" no one should be able to insult the king ... oh really? Do you truly think a few guards would help against an angry mob of hundreds of people (think before the advent of guns and riot teams). History shows us that angry mobs have drug their kings and nobels out and BEHEADED them ... an "angry mob" that is "in character" should not be an issue. Its the spell casting and people spamming stuff that is OUT of character that are the true issue.

As an example of what I mean, there was someone at the Oceania event who was insulting Casca in the most interesting and "in character" ways that I was greatly enjoying watching, thinking that this person would fit right in on Napa and our "Casca" would have *shies away* or *writes X's name down to report to the guard* or some such.

Another good example is that one of our EM's came to the bank later to talk things over with us, ask for ideas, give us his e-mail address, etc. Now, for weeks I have been begging for an "EM Kaen" voodoo doll (longish story, but suffice that the EM's know the story). Well, of course I havent gotten one, but at the bank, while we were chatting, I emote *pokes pin in doll* (nothing more, didnt say Kaen voodoo doll or any such, just "in doll") and immediately there was a response of *spasms* "Where did you get that? Put that doll down!"

These things give the community a feel of actually being a part of an event, rather than just grunts following a story.

Again, it also helped that one of our EMs showed up for an HOUR beforehand, to play with us. One person (I think he was an off-sharder) was being disruptive in an "in character" way, saying that the food and whatnot was the remains of his Pizzaria (and I do mean spamming in caps). The EM played along telling him that he could set up business in Castle British and that Casca's room was available. The whole thing became quite an amusing little role play.

 

[Bara]

I love that kind of interaction.

I just wonder if you realize how bad some of the shards get. On legends, there was a several minute long point where people were just spamming the same thing over and over; Literal walls of text were all you could see.

 

[Ailish]

That is why I say someone who can squelch the people just being annoying and an area of no spell casting. I have even gotten after my own guildmates for being the "annoying" person.

I am not denying that there are some people who go JUST to be disruptive jerks, just saying that a whole-area squelch would be a loss to the people, as well.

 

[Divster]

I'm sure it is not outside the realms of possibility to have an on off "squelch" feature , this would allow for the screen to be clear when the important characters are talking and allow "unsquelched" interaction to occur at other times, granted this could get troublesome so i still feel the seperate areas for the em's would be a good idea.

Today on europa we had an event in castle britain where casca and nathan were by the throne and normal players could not go there, this led to dialogue being easily visible and there was perfectly good interaction between the players and the ems. Things got more crowded afterwards as we journeyed to yew, but for once the majority of the crowd gave the em's some space and the dialogue was easily followed.

As a result I am convinced that the best way to accomodate ease of interaction while enabling people to make out what is going on is for the em's to have areas where they can go but not others this enabling both interaction and visibility.

 

[Harb]

I really don't know who to "blame," but this was very poorly done. Lots of lag, lots of "cross sharders," spamming, field spells, no control by the EM, players couldn't follow text, rewards were dropped on the floor opposed to within backpacks, just all in all, a major waste of time. Factor this in to uncontrolled duping of high end hammers/ runics, 11th year collections that aren't, no communication, and the accompanying apathy, and our "team" appears out of touch. Now, when any of us talks "dev," it's a pretty broad range of folks, and there's always somebody who comes along and posts that you can't blame so-in-so. The bottom line remains, that somebody is in charge of generating money for EA, and that person doesn't have their eye on the ball. Somebody is in charge of "fidelity" within the system, again, either unfocused, incapable, or simply so far "behind" that "catching up" is prevents success. Somebody is supposed to talk to players, and that someone isn't in Japan. The EMs, while new and still fairly "judged" only within that context, need to ensure events are well framed - and what we witnessed tonight was not. Bad show.

 

[Viper09]

I'm not sure I would call "broken crystals" and "blood" rewards. More of a "momento". They were just left-overs from the crystal being destroyed.

As for them going into our bag as opposed to the ground, I don't think it would be terribly realistic to have the broken shards end up in bags after it gets destroyed, lol.

Shatter a window and the shards wouldn't end up in your pocket, lol.

 

[DevilsOwn]

And without hurting Spammy-Mc-jerkwads feelings.

Bara...... why on earth are you concerned about his feelings??

I got there early and put every single person I didn't recognize on ignore, and lemme tell ya, prior to this day I have never once used the ignore feature


alright, alright, it's cause I just last nite figured out how to make the darned thing work

point is, I had minimal interruptions, caught most of what was going on, and finally had a nearly good time at an event

the only thing I really missed was Casca's departure at the appearance of the dragons... did he say anything, or did he simply vanish?

 

[Viper09]

the only thing I really missed was Casca's departure at the appearance of the dragons... did he say anything, or did he simply vanish?

He just simply vanished.

*that coward*

 

[Ailish]

I attended the Pacific event tonight as well. Let me say, Pacific has some WONDERFUL EM's. First, their EM made a seating area and shoo'd people out of the designated area when they got into it. As a result, Casca was very visible as was his text, despite any speaking going on in the seating area. This is yet another show of a crafty EM handling the situation with grace.

And again, it helped that the EM's were there to chat with the crowd ahead of time, and relieve some of the "OMGOSH a YELLOW NAME! I need to TALK TO THEM!" feelings that people naturally get. Of course the people want to interact with those running the event! Helping them get some of it out by showing ahead of time is a GREAT idea

Much kudos to the Pacific EM's for an event well handled.

 

[Hildebrand]

I couldn't even see any crystals in KR. All I saw was blood on ground.
I couldn't see anything that Casca said on Atlantic.
This event pissed me off. I died for no reason by something I couldn't even see. I spent the night rezzing via Noble Sacrifice.

 

[Farsight]

Now lets play a game of "Spot the Casca!"

In this example, there really wasn't much spam. Catskills Casca was just being slow, and rightfully so, people needed the time to find him! I had to explain "Shift-tab-he's-the-yellow-guy" several times in the course of the event.

But it would be nice if Casca somehow had a no-entry zone around him so we could see where he is.

Maybe if Casca just flew. Super-king!