Event: Thursday October 14th, 2010 @ 6pm EST

[Bennu]

Thursday October 14th, 2010 @ 6pm EST

Meet at the EM Hall in Britain​

 

[Skrag]

I have no idea what's happening, can't fight effectively through five-second lag, can't see what we're supposed to be fighting through all the dragons, and am being instantly killed for daring to show up as a melee instead of a tamer.

 

[Skrag]

Super-daemon camped at healer rezkilling people. Max resists and DCI not enough to last even a few seconds, but at least the tamers had to vet enough to feel like they were challenged. Kal Ort Por.

 

[Dryzzid of Atlantic]

Super-daemon camped at healer rezkilling people. Max resists and DCI not enough to last even a few seconds, but at least the tamers had to vet enough to feel like they were challenged. Kal Ort Por.

I couldn't imagine it as a warrior. I was there on, of course, a tamer. However, I didn't have quite the luck you described. Anything that decided to target me killed me near instantly. And some of those monsters could outrun me when I am not lagging, let alone when I'm 2-3 seconds behind. The lag, oh the lag. I wish there was an answer to the lag problem. It just.. ruins everything.

 

[soulstoner]

The lag truly does remove a good deal of effectiveness of a mage character as well - which provides a level of frustration. The opportunity for some meaningful mingling with the community [a driving reason some attend] is at the end back at the Hall which by then the tone is overridden by venting of justified frustrations and hoping for a prize. Kinda makes for a 'why did I do this' kind of attitude at this point...couple opportunities to loot was exciting. Don't know what the limitations are that the revolving door of EMs actually have to work with but the same lag - die thing happens consistently in a cluster-f*c* environment - the only high level notable changes from event to event seem to be the location and mild switch-ups on the monsters. Hate to be negative but - offering criticism/feedback to maybe help lead to some new twists/improvements/approaches perhaps pondered and put forth within the confines/tools that EMs have to work with. That was 3 hours - I did like the 6 pm EST start time though - but I live in EST zone & am glad to have my first & only Mesanna Cream pie.

 

[Skrag]

I dunno, I just found out that they can't do city invasions like the old EM program from a few years ago, so I don't know what they can do that won't involve everyone piling up at once.

 

[Skrag]

Constructive points:

1) Factor the lag into your plans and tone down the monsters. Nobody is even looting their kills at these things, you won't break the economy by throwing a bunch of softballs.

Lich Lords do enough damage and target-switching to be threatening without being unmeleeable. Rotting corpses are a great "I can't one-shot you but you can't just ignore me!" monster. Elite ninjas, hate those but they're not going to kill you in 2 seconds. Add a few balrons and such so you have some legitimate hitters on hand.

(Or the re-skinned equivalents of these things.)

Throw in some of those Exodus dungeon oddities nobody ever hunts like the arcane daemon and quagmires for flavor. Have a really hard boss at the end, but don't just slaughter everyone for an hour.

2) Get into character. You guys are chilling at Haven bank as I type this, and that's totally cool. Nice to see you guys hanging out off-duty. But when event time comes, my character has no idea what an "Eee Emm" is RPwise.

3) No more "help this empty field is under attack". Feels cheap somehow. Raise hell in some city nobody goes to, which is almost all of them.

 

[Bennu]

Constructive points:

1) Factor the lag into your plans and tone down the monsters. Nobody is even looting their kills at these things, you won't break the economy by throwing a bunch of softballs.

Since after my first event Lag has always been in the top 5 of my concerns when planning an event. The location for tonight was chosen because it was on a subserver that isn't a part of the world where lots of people are at once. It was a large enough area where people could spread out, and even run away if they wanted to. Sadly, the bulk of people tonight piled into one mass in the center of the beach even though there were lots of mobs to fight elsewhere

We can only spread things out for you, we cant make you spread out to reduce lag.

Lich Lords do enough damage and target-switching to be threatening without being unmeleeable. Rotting corpses are a great "I can't one-shot you but you can't just ignore me!" monster. Elite ninjas, hate those but they're not going to kill you in 2 seconds. Add a few balrons and such so you have some legitimate hitters on hand.

(Or the re-skinned equivalents of these things.)

The Official count of those who stuck around the bulk of the event was 122 players, + about 30 Greater Dragons, maybe more. If I dropped off a lich lord in the middle of 120 players it prob wouldnt even appear on all names before it died A large portion of the monsters, including the final boss were totally immune to tamers (Being Valorite Elementals) which means they HAD to be mowed down by melee and by mages.

Throw in some of those Exodus dungeon oddities nobody ever hunts like the arcane daemon and quagmires for flavor. Have a really hard boss at the end, but don't just slaughter everyone for an hour.

Tonight for all intents and purposes was a war, did you see the beach?
Here is the thing, EMing is a balance. If things are too easy or too quick people are disappointed, if things are too hard or long people get burned out or angry. Most of the complaints tonight were about looting the final boss (The Body was the same, but the name was different, which is the case of just about every EM event, ever, and is not something we can do anything about), and not enough rewards to go around. There were the standard lag complaints, which are valid complaints, but again not something we can control, we can only offer the players the opportunity to spread out in a large area, we can not force everyone to do it.

Tonight was hard, very hard. It was very much a challenge as well, lots of people enjoy that. I can say, that for the most part, tonight went off as designed, although I did have to nuke the HP of a few things for the sake of time and the balance of the fighting. I would have preferred a bit more RP in the mix to further the story, but most of that seems like it is going to have to be done like the RP Only event I had a few weeks ago.

2) Get into character. You guys are chilling at Haven bank as I type this, and that's totally cool. Nice to see you guys hanging out off-duty. But when event time comes, my character has no idea what an "Eee Emm" is RPwise.

Fair enough, but many people enjoy seeing the EMs in game and being able to talk to us outside of the huge meet and greets. Spriggan and I both try and go for a walk at least once a week, mostly to Britain, New Haven and Luna. We also visit the various town banners when we can.

Spriggan and I now have 4 RPCs among us, not including the "EM" Character, Simeon Bennu, Chusa Subel, Danica Amandine, and Josiah Havel. Look for us both to be 'in character' quite a bit both inside and outside of events. Keep in mind, traditionally the "EM" Character is meant to be for OOC communication, although some of us use it as a bit of a hybrid. I communicate both IC and OOC on my "EM" depending on the situation.

3) No more "help this empty field is under attack". Feels cheap somehow. Raise hell in some city nobody goes to, which is almost all of them.

We just invaded Yew Last weekend

That being said, we have to pick locations that can accommodate 150 players and 50 dragons. We have to pick locations that we are able to spread out enough to allow the vast audience Atlantic has to spread out or no one can move, including we EMs. That usually amounts to "Help this empty field". Although there was a reason for this particular Empty field, if you missed it in the RP, it will be in the 'recap' story I will post tomorrow.

Atlantic is a vast shard, the biggest in the game. I feel blessed to have been placed on this server, and I love it here. The tools we have as EMs are great, and allow for a vast amount of creative freedom. Mesanna also gives us an incredible amount of freedom in our plots and events and I can not thank her enough for that. But please keep in mind we are EMs for the entire server, which means we have to have the ability and the desire to treat all players equal, all play styles equal and open ourselves to be able to provide events to everyone at the same time.

My first events have been 'go here, kill stuff, come back to britain' this event was a little different because I have a bit more experience as an EM now (2 months, whoo hoo!) My goal eventually is to have events be 50% RP, 50% fighting, with an occasional 90% RP, 10% fighting event.

Spriggan and I are both very new to the EM program, and we are both looking forward to a LONG career here. It will take time for us to learn the ropes and get things down to the way the players on Atlantic like them, but it will happen.

Oh, I got an email complaint about the mobs "popping to full health" while fighting, that was me modifying their hit points, it made them look like they were healing, but in fact I was taking away a large chunk of some of their HP, namely the last boss.

I hope that overall the events are improving for you, I am having a lot of fun, and I am very excited about this Knights of the Crux Ansata project. I hope that the players as a whole enjoy things.

Thank you for the feedback, it does help us!

 

[Skrag]

Yeah I'm not trying to flame or anything. Well I sorta was at first, because I was dead and pissed off, but I never claimed to be level-headed.

Okay so there are two issues here: Monster stats/damage, and lag/crowding.

1) Regarding monsters. We need something which is competetive against a tamer's dragon, but which will not eat the tamer (or any player) in just a couple of seconds. The monsters therefore should not simply have large amounts of damage in hopes that they'll burn the occasional dragon down by brute force.

The ideal mass-event monster has a large amount of HP so that the crowd gets to spend some time beating on it, moderate damage output so that it doesn't totally wipe someone out before they know what hit them, and most importantly it switches targets unpredictably so that it doesn't just sit there being robotically tanked.

Monsters with necromancy can randomly re-target when they cast wither. Monsters with the paragon AI can randomly re-target anything moving in their vicinity.

Lich lords are too weak? How about Ancient Liches in paragon form? (Re-skinned into whatever.) Their damage output can be formidable when they randomly happen to throw down a good combo of spells, but they're not total one-hitters. With their speed and retargeting they should be all over the place raising hell amongst the crowd instead of just pounding on someone's pet, and they should have about 2500 HP. That's... not nothing. About 50% of what an Impaler in Doom has.

Speaking of Doom, Dark Fathers are a reasonably balanced monster. Meleeable, but with their necromancy and summons they're formidable.

Mix some Shadow Wyrms in, it'll be hilarious when the liches cast Animate Dead on them and we have Skeletal Dragons popping up unexpectedly.

How much power do you have to customize monsters? Something with the AI of a ratman archer, where it tries to keep it's distance from it's target instead of rushing in, might be interesting. Would need to have a lot more HP obviously, and some better damage.

Just throwing down a bunch of ideas.

2) Spreading the crowd out. I don't know, I'll think on this.

 

[Skrag]

Really you could probably be in a good place just dropping Dark Fathers all over the place. They have a solid amount of HP, they create a bunch of lesser spawn FOR you with the bones they throw, and they can drop artifacts. Everyone loves loot.

They can switch targets when they wither, they do enough damage that you don't want one on you, but they're not insta-killers.

Boss time? Paragon Dark Father!

All reskinned into whatever the plot calls for, again and of course.

 

[soulstoner]

As a benchmark of relatively recent EM events one that stands out as working well - in that much opportunity availed for helping, organizing, with intermittent periods of way finding resulting in helpful/amicable character communications then ending up in a scenario/layout that had clarity at/for the end battle - was the venture through Brit sewers....

Starting out the event at the Hall does indeed attract an obvious good turn although not everyone reads this Stratics stuff &/or the EM site or cram up to front row to read what's being said by EMs - many don't use the Journal either --- so to that group (I think it's relatively large & I fall into given the day) events can be really uber confusing. Perhaps some Saturday the EMs could rearrange the Hall so that folks could assemble & see them from a 360 degree vantage point in lieu of 180 degrees. Voice/share some of the meaningful storyline (the point/mission) for the larger community audience/participants. It's difficult even to read the journal to sift through the yip-yap to try to glean the EM's storyline communications --- outstanding on screen voice color is helpful.

Thanks for stepping up to make community gatherings happen and trying to make the masses happy. EMs must be masochistic folks.

 

[Skrag]

I think the EMs should create their own chat channel for use in these events, and then put a bark for it on the event announcers or otherwise OOCly tell everyone to get into it when the event comes.

Then they can go "Guys spread out, some of you go south, there's more there!" and everyone can hear it. Might have to squelch some spammers, but whatever.

 

[JC the Builder]

The location for tonight was chosen because it was on a subserver that isn't a part of the world where lots of people are at once.

This would have been true a week ago. But now with the High Seas expansion there is a lot of people sailing on ships in this area.