War in Lake Starfall last night

Danku

Danku

Dalayan Beginner
So, the message comes across that Lake Starfall is under attack. My group decides that we can skip the Tmap and go play in the event. We were all so incredibly pumped to be in on the fun.

We started zoning to get there. Then we started trying to log back in. Crash. 1017 x 3-7. Zone. Crash. You see the pattern? So, after about 40 minutes or so of trying to get there we were just outside Lake Starfall and the message came that Lake had fallen. So, we went to NBL to defend SBL. After everyone got back in we went in SBL and actually got some action and had some fun. Defended SBL, held back the attacks then moved towards Lake Starfall to take it back. Then there was issue with a group roaming solo while an 18 man raid was killing stuff. 6 man group was effectively locked out from any loots or XP because the raid was full and there didnt seem to be enough people to form another.

Now, I know it sounds like I am bitching up a storm here but I am NOT complaining. This was a highly fun storyline event that is great for the server. I wonder if a few logistical issues need touched on to help it function though.

1) Raid- Can there be more than 3 groups in a raid? If the other people cannot get in they are effectively locked out if there isnt enough for another raid. Another issue was we couldn't raid invite groups because not all of their members were in the zone (crashes). If there was time given once all were in zone to then form groups and make a raid it would make things a bit smoother perhaps.

2) Zone/Crash- I do not crash on zoning normally. Everyone in my guild seemed to share this issue. People can't get to the event in time because of trying to log back in and getting Server Down messages or 1017's.

3) Organization- Would there be a possibility of picking some player to lead? He becomes the instrument of the gods Defending Dalaya or something. I know it would be random and such, but it was pure mayhem for most of the night.

4) Loots- Have to be in the active raid for access, bit limiting. Also, if the 4 groups had all done Tmaps they would have ended up with 8 loot items VS the 3 I heard from last night. People need encouragement to be active and it comes in the form of items for some.

5) Information- Would it be possible to have event results posted by Gms on boards about what has happened, who was there, maybe even list Fame Point winners or those who got items? It could only encourage more participation.

6) Transportation- Would it be possible for GMs to summon players who wanted to go to the event? 1 zone VS 5+ to get there means fewer crashes for people. Lowers frustration and that is always good. I know it means more work for GMs though.


I hope these ideas help in some way. I, personally, really look forward to seeing more War and fighting of Kaezul's troops. Another great event line for SoD!
 
I also attended the fun last night in both South Badlands and Lake Starfall. I made it through about half of the defending in South Badlands before getting steamrolled by a couple of Bone Golems who realized I am just a squishy pretending to be a bard. After South Badlands was taken back I went to Lake Starfall (after a few crashes and I had an ongoing petition that was being taken care of). We ended up doing a pretty good job defeating the enemy, but it did seem like their was a lack of organization.

With multiple raids in the zone, it seemed like /shout was a great form of communication, but, I do believe having a larger maximum of groups per raid (in war flagged zones) would be extremely beneficial. Easier communication and even though the shared xp would be minimal, all players participating would obtain some. I believe this would be a good idea.

Secondly, I was told the lag/crashes were not caused by the War script, but that there were other issues. It seems the server has been struggling with the war script active, but I guess it could all be coincidence. I believe the administration will deal with the crashes and lag if the war script is indeed the cause of it.

I do not believe someone should be "appointed" leadership. Since this event has a "real life" feel to it, someone needs to grab the reins and take control themself. Just like in "real life", if this leader is not doing a good job then another will surely take over. I think having someone who is a good raid leader/knowledgable about the game (making groups, assigning tasks, giving information, etc.) would be an excellent choice. It is not that hard to tell if someone will be a good leader or not (but maybe that is because I have done a lot of raiding and can tell). Again, I think the PCs should decide their own leader based on the best criteria.

For loots, I know that if you were not in the raid, and would win a loot...the GMs could still award you the loot. Now, for the trash cash loot that was on the random mobs...you would not have access to that, but that should not be a big deal (if you want cash go farm giants and don't go to specialized serverwide events). However, for the number of loots last night, I do believe it should be proportional to the people attending (a TMap yields two loots and is usualy done by 6 people, I think that would be a good guideline in determining how many drops there should be...that would have yielded about five more pieces of loot). However, I think they decided to go with one loot per eight people (because we could have more than max 18 engage, and that made it a bit "easier"). Upping the loot isnt a horrible idea, maybe there could be one or two "lower end" loot for level 40-50 PCs that came to have fun, and help out a bit.

I think the detailed information of the event should be posted also, and I believe (assuming is usually bad) that the GMs/staff will indeed do this. I agree this will add to participation and the storyline. I was on late Sunday night/Monday morning when the server kept crashing during the war and was unfortunately occupied with Traekoth the Ancient, so I did not attend the war effort. Last night I had some free time so I wanted to try it out as I always have a blast at "GM Events". When I spoke with several people who had done it the night before, they said it "wasn't fun", or was "too hard". Fortunately for me, I still went to attend. These people may have detracted other people who might have gone, so having information on the subject may entice more people to attend (if we want even more lag in a zone!) and would encourage more participation.

Lastly, the transportation could go both ways. I, however, believe that the GMs should not summon/port/assist in transportation because again, I believe this has the "real life" feel to it. If we want to defend our lands, then we need to do something about it. If we cannot assemble a team that does the transporation, then we are probably doomed from the beginning anyways. I saw in /ooc a lot of druids and wizards saying they were doing ports. Using MoP is another great resource we have for advanced transportation (a port straight to Starfall is pretty fast). Having the GMs do ports is a decent idea, but I would like to avoid it.


As an aside, a lot of lower level characters were disappointed in not being able to help the war effort. Can we think of something for them to do? Even in "real life" war, the non-combatants help the war effort in various ways. Maybe they can get healing potions and run around the battlefield healing people? I have not really thought about it too much, but I think some sort of involvement would be fun (I realize this is intended for higher level characters, but if it is a storyline event, then I think everyone should have an opportunity to help the cause).

Okay then, back to work before I get fired!

Felyn

P.S. I got the Nightfire Leggings, Gawain got the Ulak, and I cannot remember who got the mask (I don't even want to try and guess as I will just be making something up anyways...I know it was a caster though!)
 
Lastly, the transportation could go both ways. I, however, believe that the GMs should not summon/port/assist in transportation because again, I believe this has the "real life" feel to it. If we want to defend our lands, then we need to do something about it. If we cannot assemble a team that does the transporation, then we are probably doomed from the beginning anyways. I saw in /ooc a lot of druids and wizards saying they were doing ports. Using MoP is another great resource we have for advanced transportation (I would way porting straight to Starfall is pretty fast). Having the GMs do ports is a decent idea, but I would like to avoid it.

When you crash on nearly every zone, cutting it from 4-5+ zonings to 1 would make it take far far less time. We did use MoP and wizards and druids. And then we waited as others got back in after crashing. Athica-Gfay-NBL-SBL-Lake Starfall, 4 zones with wiz port. Or MoP Athica-MoP-Oggok-Greenmist-OSM-Lake Starfall, 5 zones. I will not claim to know why zoning made so many crashes for so many people, but it did.

As for leadership, follow whoever is loudest? Maybe follow whoever is from the biggest guild? Pretty random in itself. And when an 18 man raid is being led by someone, who is going to drop the raid to switch to someone who may have more organizational talents? There was a solo group last night and they were mostly in our teamspeak and I heard the frustration.

Now, loots, yes they can be assigned by a GM and I honestly hadnt thought about that. But it adds a level of issues between having loot gotten and dropped. Anytime you add communication levels it will add problems.

Having a real life feel is great, but it is a game. In real life, people got frustrated. I hope some ideas can be found to help smooth it out a little at least.

Also, the idea of involving lower levels is great too. Complicated but a good idea.
 
For the record any suggestion that involves "A GM should do this/that during the war" is not feasible. The war is a script that is run by the server and as it is perfected there will be less and less GM involvement in each individual skirmish until a point (very soon) where it runs itself.
 
So a group of friends and I took on SBL/SF last night -- level 50ish. I'm sure I wasn't doing the most damage out there but it was a hell of a lot of fun. I wasn't sure if I was going to do it or not and I remember thinking, "if they win these zones could be changed forever"... or something lame like that :) . So it felt like a lot was on the line, which was cool. The death timer makes sense but sucks at the same time, I can do dps but if I got hit once I was toast, which happen somewhat quickly obv. luckly, my timer was up by the time Captain spawned so I got to do that. Anyway, all I can say is perhaps until the lag is fixed (and I'm not bitching) we should have some kind of teleportation option to an adjacent zone or something. Normally I wouldn't recommend this, but the lag was kind of a buzz kill. Grats to everyone who got drops, spec Felyn you crazy ass bard. Think these will pan out better in the future, now that more people are accustom to the event. Do we now abouts how long this will last?

~~Misellus / Tongu
 
I agree not everything is perfect, and as such, there is bound to be some frustration. The zone crashing will hopefully be fixed, so that 'should' no longer be an issue. I can definitely see your point on this, but like I have said, I would rather the players do what they can do aid in the war without "outside" help.

I also agree that the leadership may be "random", but how is "randomly" appointing someone not also "random"? Just saying "So and So" is in charge, does not make them a good leader. Like I said, if someone chooses to lead, and the majority of the people think they are no good, they can follow someone else's lead (though this may cause complications). Here is what I propose, have a leader from each group that can get into a discussion with the other leaders (pretty sure there are no channels on SoD, so tells would suffice (or IRC) as this would only be about 4-5 people). Each group leader can say what classes they have access to, and what assignments each class in their group would have. This way, not just one person would have the burden to lead a large pickup raid, and there would be more leadership/ideas in general. That is how most wars work anyways. I have never seen an army that only has one commander (hell, even the leezards last night had several ranks of leadership...though they still lost!).

Again, I agree with most of your concerns...but also feel that some of them are fine as they are now. I think the most important thing would be to increase the raid size on the war flagged zones as you have already said..communication is key to success. If anyone else likes the idea of including lower level characters, please post ideas of what they could help with (maybe even using bind wound in combat!). If we can involve lower level characters, I definitely think "lower end" loot should be included (or at least drop off of the trash mobs).

Felyn
 
Danku said:
1) Raid- Can there be more than 3 groups in a raid? If the other people cannot get in they are effectively locked out if there isnt enough for another raid. Another issue was we couldn't raid invite groups because not all of their members were in the zone (crashes). If there was time given once all were in zone to then form groups and make a raid it would make things a bit smoother perhaps.
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I showed up when it was in to Starfall, and it wasn't too bad, I did eventually find a group, and it seemed that people were really trying to fill up raids as they could. I thought people were overly cooperative with the whole event. In the heat of battle you just have to go to arms, kind of par for the course. Stressful, somewhat, but I didn't think it was TOO bad.

Danku said:
2) Zone/Crash- I do not crash on zoning normally. Everyone in my guild seemed to share this issue. People can't get to the event in time because of trying to log back in and getting Server Down messages or 1017's.
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Yes this was somewhat of an annoyance, however, there were sometimes up to 50+ people in the zone at a time. Hopefully like Wold said with streamlining the script, also, hopefully, as Wiz stated he knows the cause of the lag issues and hopes to get it fixed this week, that those two things will mean a significant improvement. Don't let one night stress you out.

Danku said:
3) Organization- Would there be a possibility of picking some player to lead? He becomes the instrument of the gods Defending Dalaya or something. I know it would be random and such, but it was pure mayhem for most of the night.
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Unless it was a Bearers of Truth led event, I don't see how it would be possible, but if you are part of a raid force participating having your own raid coordinator would help. I think for the most part people coordinated fairly well in /shout last night. People called out where attacks were coming from, or where targets were.

Danku said:
4) Loots- Have to be in the active raid for access, bit limiting. Also, if the 4 groups had all done Tmaps they would have ended up with 8 loot items VS the 3 I heard from last night. People need encouragement to be active and it comes in the form of items for some.
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I'm not sure about the "trash" loot. I personally did not loot anything, but I did hear that people/raids who got the killing blow would "ninja loot" as soon as they could FFA style. With the way the loot policy works I do not know how you would get around something like this to be fair. The named loot at the end was handled very well by Wold and Wiz.

Danku said:
5) Information- Would it be possible to have event results posted by Gms on boards about what has happened, who was there, maybe even list Fame Point winners or those who got items? It could only encourage more participation.
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Players should be able to do this. If there's the right motivated player too, it would be nice to see a write up written as a "tale" almost from a role playing view.

Danku said:
6) Transportation- Would it be possible for GMs to summon players who wanted to go to the event? 1 zone VS 5+ to get there means fewer crashes for people. Lowers frustration and that is always good. I know it means more work for GMs though.
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Yes travel can be at times frustrating, but I don't agree with this idea, as it would take away from the world/roleplay feel of running and joining in the fight.
 
Loot is generally a topic of discussion yielding many different opinions. I always liked the flag/token reward systems of fair play. If you attend an event you obtain a token/flag (badge of honor so to speak). If the event is successful, you get an additional token/flag. Typically awarded by hailing/talking to an NPC. These tokens/flags are incentive for any level character to participate in the event. In addition a turn in based reward could be established like 50 tokens = a title of "Master of Arms (or some such)" or 50 token and you can pick from a nice catalog of gifts to be redeemed by the local gypsies. The idea is to get to the event and participate. Some will be able to participate in a larger way than others and those will reap the rewards of the loot tables for the event mobs. The others will get token rewards for participating. This makes programming more difficult, lower level chars might need to pick up war supplies from a zone and get them to the event zone to get a flag of participation. Raid guilds will take on the strategies and physical tasks of the engagement, but when the smoke clears and the event closes, all participants were able to gain rewards. What if a "favor of the war" was to increase in the form of an aoe beneficial buff as war supplies carried in by the lower level players increases in quantity. Maybe npc's with buffing capabilities appear if the war bandages delivered reach a particular level or war rations reach a levelOh well just thought I would put in my 2 cents. I also really enjoyed the event in GSM. Keep it up!!
 
Elysium said:
That loot looks familiar... Do these events drop all the old Tower of Tarhyl gear?
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No, but it's entirely possible they rigged up a named with some ToT gear while the actual nameds/loots are constructed :)
 
Quote from: Danku on Today at 06:50:54 AM
6) Transportation- Would it be possible for GMs to summon players who wanted to go to the event? 1 zone VS 5+ to get there means fewer crashes for people. Lowers frustration and that is always good. I know it means more work for GMs though.


Yes travel can be at times frustrating, but I don't agree with this idea, as it would take away from the world/roleplay feel of running and joining in the fight.
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I whole-heartedly agree with your point of view on this, once the lag is fixed. But until that issue is confidently resolved, I would like to see GM assistance on transportation. An hour to get to an event that would ordinarily take 10-15 minutes is a little trying. If the lag issue is the same the next time I'm online for a War event, I think I'll log off and read a book.
 
1) Raid- Honestly, I'm not gear hungry, so not real fussed about this. What I would ask is that default get set to /shout instead of /rs, etc. If GM's can be available to award loot to someone out of raid (AKA, a warrior loots a caster only item, then gets it transferred later) that would be a bonus, but not my incentive for going.

2) Zone/Crash- I really agree with this one. I rarely crash zoning, and even with my guildwide known lag, I was better in the zone than on zoning.

3) Organization- I disagree. Someone needs to step up & lead it. Randomly assigning someone to do it who has 0 raid experience will result in worse mayhem than someone grabbing the reins.

4) Loots- Have to agree with this. If one group can defend, then make it a one group drop. Since it takes multiple groups, then make it multiple (more than 3) drops.

5) Information- Again, agreeing.. I caught some info in /ooc, some on IRC, and was relaying it to others in IRC... if that info on the whole thing could be posted, that would be awesome, think it would cut down on questions.
*shrug* On the Fame Points & loots.

6) Transportation- As an alternative to this, if not possible, extend the "spawn" timer to let's say 20-30 minutes? after the zonewide shout goes off... then the mobs start, first group(s) are in place, can start defending, and wait for reinforcements...
 
duv said:
I whole-heartedly agree with your point of view on this, once the lag is fixed. But until that issue is confidently resolved, I would like to see GM assistance on transportation. An hour to get to an event that would ordinarily take 10-15 minutes is a little trying. If the lag issue is the same the next time I'm online for a War event, I think I'll log off and read a book.
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Just an fyi, I was not intending this idea to be a permanent thing. Just a quick fix while this problem exists. I love the idea of announcing before it happens and allow people time to get there. Maybe our scouts spotted theirs and gave us more warning.

Loot, there are people out there that a 11/22 sword with lifetap procs would be an upgrade too. These people will not get in the raids. I just hate to see things go to waste like that when someone may have been able to get an upgrade of some sort. Not everyone on the server is 65 or is just playing an alt.

Leading, I do not have an absolute fix suggestion here. Maybe have an event to grant people a rank? Could be a great fun thing. General ______ or Major, Colonel etc. Titles are always fun. The ranks could be a reflection of # of events attended or some such.

In any case, keep up the good work! Creative and fun beyond belief.
 
Trust in the fact that this server is incredible. When there is a problem they work on it. They know there is a problem, they are working on it.

Do not let it keep you away from some of the best fun you will ever find. Can you picture Live doing something like this, ever? Can you picture live actually listening to the PEOPLE who are playing?

Every day in SoD is a unique experience that will never be duplicated. You actually never know what will happen. Random event? Server wide war? There may be quiet times, but there is always something in the pipeline. And when there are problems, they fix them. Wiz and the staff all have lives that they probably need to pay more attention too but there are here to make SoD special and possible. The least you can do is be tolerant.

In all of my listing of issues, I never once said I will avoid the events. You heard things, read things...Don't let those keep you from experiencing the events as they unfold. On this server, you may actually make a difference. You may do something that guides the storyline. It may be a slim chance, but it is possible here and nowhere else.
 
Well I was cheering ya'll on last night, unfortunatly my latest newbie is only lvl 6. Decided to play something i'd not done since p3.
 
Danku said:
Trust in the fact that this server is incredible. When there is a problem they work on it. They know there is a problem, they are working on it.

Do not let it keep you away from some of the best fun you will ever find. Can you picture Live doing something like this, ever? Can you picture live actually listening to the PEOPLE who are playing?

Every day in SoD is a unique experience that will never be duplicated. You actually never know what will happen. Random event? Server wide war? There may be quiet times, but there is always something in the pipeline. And when there are problems, they fix them. Wiz and the staff all have lives that they probably need to pay more attention too but there are here to make SoD special and possible. The least you can do is be tolerant.

In all of my listing of issues, I never once said I will avoid the events. You heard things, read things...Don't let those keep you from experiencing the events as they unfold. On this server, you may actually make a difference. You may do something that guides the storyline. It may be a slim chance, but it is possible here and nowhere else.
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This post should be pinned somewhere!! Bravo!


With the spirit of this post, I will make sure to hit up a few wars.
 
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