Developing Live Events

**ZaneZavin**

If we are able to get all the LO's as planned, I think it will really help things out.

**caillech**

There are some great comments on this thread! As far as notifying people of live events, does anyone else remember Tastee Wheats "popups?" (I'll call them that for want of a better word.) Ever so often a message would pop up on my screen about something happening then or soon in the City. I think Tastee set up the service so if you wanted those messages, you let Tastee know and got added to the list of those to notify.

My question, if a player can develop and implement such a system, why can't, why haven't the Dev's. Those who want to know when LE's are to happen could always know about them in time then.

I've been a role player during the entire time I've been in MXO and the frequency of events seems to have greatly decreased, plus as others have mentioned, learning about them in order to take part is difficult.

The new PET team seems to have some handle on finding willing participants for events they plan, and keeping them informed as to what is going to happen and when.

Anyhow, make the game fun for yourself! That's my motto!

Atem

Right on Caillech, even during the old days with Tastee and Gami's Deja messages, it was great. I understand that "Live Events" are scaled down much more these days, which is understandable since Rarebit has the sole burden of putting them together and implementing everything, so the usual mini events where a LE character comes on for awhile and gives a speech to an audience is fine. What I'm hoping for is more in depth Live Events taking place maybe once every couple of weeks or month, enough time for Rarebit to work on implementing a storyline and for a patch to an update. This can be run as close to the old Big Live Events with a LET character popping in, giving a speech, having some NPCs to fight for the weekend, dropping items to trade in, etc. Or, maybe a coninuous storyline over a 3 day period, solving riddles, like the murder of a crewmember on the HvCFT Novalis Event where codes were in the sky. Another possibility to have people involved occasionally is to give a riddle on the forums the day of the Event or before, sort of like a hunt for the opening location of the LET char's appearance.

Paperghost · 03/21/2007 16:38:07

meh. i was on one of the servers the other day with an alt, and happened to notice a liaison was online for my alts org. as far as i'm aware, you're supposed to contact them in game to see if anything interesting is happening, or about to happen....yes? this is what happened:

me: hi, i believe you're one of my orgs liaisons? just wondering if you happened to know of any events that might be taking place today.

liaison: i dont know, im not able to predict the future.

.....uh, awesome. am i the only person that thinks knowing whats coming up might just be useful to the liaison? i mean, whats the point of sending one anything if the only response you're ever going to get back is an endlessly ambiguous "dunno"?

either something is going to happen or its not. the answer above is completely useless because of its ambiguity, and merely suggests the person im getting the message from has about as much idea of whats coming up in the next hour / few hours / whatever as i do. more often than not, this is the standard response i get back.

"dunno".

**RetroX**

Papergh0st wrote:

meh. i was on one of the servers the other day with an alt, and happened to notice a liaison was online for my alts org. as far as i'm aware, you're supposed to contact them in game to see if anything interesting is happening, or about to happen....yes? this is what happened:

me: hi, i believe you're one of my orgs liaisons? just wondering if you happened to know of any events that might be taking place today.

liaison: i dont know, im not able to predict the future.

.....uh, awesome. am i the only person that thinks knowing whats coming up might just be useful to the liaison? i mean, whats the point of sending one anything if the only response you're ever going to get back is an endlessly ambiguous "dunno"?

either something is going to happen or its not. the answer above is completely useless because of its ambiguity, and merely suggests the person im getting the message from has about as much idea of whats coming up in the next hour / few hours / whatever as i do. more often than not, this is the standard response i get back.

"dunno".

No its roleplaying. It's saying No but in a roleplaying maner.

Paperghost · 03/21/2007 17:03:54

RetroX wrote:

Papergh0st wrote:
meh. i was on one of the servers the other day with an alt, and happened to notice a liaison was online for my alts org. as far as i'm aware, you're supposed to contact them in game to see if anything interesting is happening, or about to happen....yes? this is what happened:

me: hi, i believe you're one of my orgs liaisons? just wondering if you happened to know of any events that might be taking place today.

liaison: i dont know, im not able to predict the future.

.....uh, awesome. am i the only person that thinks knowing whats coming up might just be useful to the liaison? i mean, whats the point of sending one anything if the only response you're ever going to get back is an endlessly ambiguous "dunno"?

either something is going to happen or its not. the answer above is completely useless because of its ambiguity, and merely suggests the person im getting the message from has about as much idea of whats coming up in the next hour / few hours / whatever as i do. more often than not, this is the standard response i get back.

"dunno".

No its roleplaying. It's saying No but in a roleplaying maner.

...but saying "no" in a "no" manner would be more useful.

they really don't need to roleplay, in a whispered tell, that no one else will see, in response to a simple and direct question thats not even asked in any sort of character anyway ("hi, you're the liaison for the xxxx server?" ), and hand me an answer that doesn't actually answer anything.

all it actually does it make me think wait, aren't these guys supposed to know about this stuff?

if the best answer a liaison can give you is "don't know", then you don't know any more than before you asked the question. so with that in mind, what's the point of asking them in the first place?

**Croesis** · 03/21/2007 18:17:50

Well you'd think they'd get a bit of notice, but there may be some events that they are unaware of. Plus can you imagine how annoying it would be to Jack-in and get 30+ tells asking if anything is gonna happen today? I suppose a better question would be 'Are you aware of any [insert org here] meetings or missions in the near future?'

To be honest I thought liaisons, when they got word of anything happening, would disseminate the information to faction leaders, so that they could filter the info down through their ranks. They may not get word until an hour or two before the event happening...

There are also events of which the surprise would be ruined the if people knew it was gonna happen in advance...

**Raviola**

Actually the best Live Event I got to participate in was when I was on one night just grinding mission with my faction.

We're on the way to the second leg of the hard, medium mission and suddenly text appeared on my screen with a message from a Matrix movie character. So I asked my Captain, hey did you just see that? He said no, he was doing something else. I said well, so-and-so just said to go over to a particular club and hear what's going down for now. And we scurry off to the club, which was in what I can only describe as the lowest part of town I could think of anything ever happening in.

All the way there, I got /tells from different people of all orgs asking me did I know about the screen message and did I ever find out where the meeting would be. I told my Captain everything live and he said, Oh, no, don't say anything to anybody, just head to the club, and shake off anybody following you. So I answered all the whispers and said hey, won't you talk to my Captain, because he knows more than me about what's about to come down.

We get to the named club and it is PACKED tight. Dance floor, balconies, stairs, we're like O Hail no! Turned out, unbeknownst to me, this faction I was running with at the time was super involved with all the MxO story and they were selected to get this hot information from this movie character before anyone else. We had a Blast with the live character and other factions chosen to get early information and I stayed around about 45 minutes to an hour checking out the event.

Then I thought, Okay I see what's happening, let me go and try to put a team together to get more missions. I get a team going and we get a mission, and the last leg of the mission is out in the Uriah warehouse and just overrun with enemies. We get into a dogfight that makes me use about 10 health pills and my teammate says "Wow that was such a rush. That was intense."

Well, that never happened since and I've run missions with that same fax but not seen the screen messages. But I vote for doing live screen messages and telling select operatives where to go to get information and meetings with live event characters. That was one night I'll never ever forget.

Ravi

Teegro

I agree with a lot of whats being said about the euro guys getting the short end of it.

I'm in england and most of the time we get the LEs at about 2-3am which if you have to be up for work at 7am means that you really have to either have a understanding boss or that you miss out on what could be a really significant event.

Unfortunatly what we have is a sad state of affairs where the funding for MxO is still not near where it should be to allow a let team much bigger than Rarebit, hence the LESIGs (or lack of them as syntax goes).

SOE really need to start digging into their pockets and stumping up more cash because the uniqueness of the live events is one of the big things that make MxO stand out.

Paperghost · 03/22/2007 05:41:54

Croesus wrote:

Well you'd think they'd get a bit of notice, but there may be some events that they are unaware of. Plus can you imagine how annoying it would be to Jack-in and get 30+ tells asking if anything is gonna happen today? I suppose a better question would be 'Are you aware of any [insert org here] meetings or missions in the near future?'

To be honest I thought liaisons, when they got word of anything happening, would disseminate the information to faction leaders, so that they could filter the info down through their ranks. They may not get word until an hour or two before the event happening...

There are also events of which the surprise would be ruined the if people knew it was gonna happen in advance...

that's my point though - they never seem to be aware of anything. doesn't matter what server or org.....the answer is almost always the same.

"dunno".

if they're supposed to spread the word to the faction leaders, it doesn't seem to be working like that.

if they don't want up to 30+ people asking them about it, they really shouldn't have taken up the position - isn't that what its ultimately about? as for the semantics of how the question is asked, i don't really think it matters as long as its a reasonable, polite question written in english. what seems more important to me is that their answer be given in plain english, with no ambiguity.

whats that, no event going on today? its okay, you can tell me. i won't cry about it.

its just that sitting up till 1AM or beyond every night for the past 2 weeks (as i have), while jumping from alt to alt on each server, and asking reasonable questions, in english, to the liaisons, bopping from hardline to hardline wondering if i'll randomly stumble into something, sort of demands that (at the very least) someone actually gives you a straight yes or no so you know whether to actually give up the ghost and go to bed or not.

sitting up till 1am or beyond purely to see if something interesting is happening in a game isn't much fun when the very people charged with "spreading the word" are either never on, or say "dunno".

**Vampyress**

I think a good way to go about getting more people involved in the live events is to make use of 2 things:

In-game email: I mean, aside from mission overflow loot, and friends mailing each other Dollar-Eye and coded items, the email system seems to me to be seriously under-utilized. The next logical question becomes "How would the LO's et. al. know who to send email to? Isn't it kind of unrealistic to ask them to send an in-game email to everyone?" Yes, of course it is. Which leads me to my second suggestion

Forum Rumours: Have Rarebit and the LO's start posting (as their event characters) "rumours" on the MxO forums about on-going and/or upcoming stories and events in the Matrix for each server. Naturally, with the nature of rumours, some can be true, some can be totally false, plus!! nobody interprets a rumour the same way, so depending on how you read/understand the rumour, you could very well have people going to completely different locations, etc. But all of them should be tailored to give enough information for players to be able to jack in and investigate a certain location at a certain time. If it turns out to be a false rumour, nothing happens. If it's true then boom! Everyone who bothered to read the forum thread and then investigate has shown up for the LE! This would also also let Rarebit and the LO's know who is interested in taking part, and they can then record their names for future reference, in-game emails, etc. etc.

As for European players (love you gals and guys!), I really think the only way to accommodate you is for there to be European LO's and/or a European server. Until then, the only thing our current LO's can do to include you is.....their best. Which really is all anyone can do.

As for PvP'ers being treated like "second-class citizens", which I think is true to an extent, I guess all I can say is - You'll get out of the game what you put into it. If you're not interested in roleplaying, or taking part in the story lines, or developing your character's background/history, or following the story of the Matrix, then honestly how can you ask anyone to include you? You've just stated you're not interested!

I think, realistically, what you're actually asking for is non-story events that offer PvP-specific rewards. No talking, no emotes, just bashing each other's heads in until one person is left standing, then hand them a new shirt. Sounds like fun to me! But completely different and separate from the Live Events, which would probably require its own dedicated staffer to coordinate and pull off. And from what we've seen in regards to SOE's interest in expanding/advancing MxO, I doubt that will happen any time soon.

Then again, this is just my two cents. SMILEY

Vampyress

**Canbus**

Vampyress wrote:

I think a good way to go about getting more people involved in the live events is to make use of 2 things:

In-game email: I mean, aside from mission overflow loot, and friends mailing each other Dollar-Eye and coded items, the email system seems to me to be seriously under-utilized. The next logical question becomes "How would the LO's et. al. know who to send email to? Isn't it kind of unrealistic to ask them to send an in-game email to everyone?" Yes, of course it is. Which leads me to my second suggestion

Forum Rumours: Have Rarebit and the LO's start posting (as their event characters) "rumours" on the MxO forums about on-going and/or upcoming stories and events in the Matrix for each server. Naturally, with the nature of rumours, some can be true, some can be totally false, plus!! nobody interprets a rumour the same way, so depending on how you read/understand the rumour, you could very well have people going to completely different locations, etc. But all of them should be tailored to give enough information for players to be able to jack in and investigate a certain location at a certain time. If it turns out to be a false rumour, nothing happens. If it's true then boom! Everyone who bothered to read the forum thread and then investigate has shown up for the LE! This would also also let Rarebit and the LO's know who is interested in taking part, and they can then record their names for future reference, in-game emails, etc. etc.

As for European players (love you gals and guys!), I really think the only way to accommodate you is for there to be European LO's and/or a European server. Until then, the only thing our current LO's can do to include you is.....their best. Which really is all anyone can do.

As for PvP'ers being treated like "second-class citizens", which I think is true to an extent, I guess all I can say is - You'll get out of the game what you put into it. If you're not interested in roleplaying, or taking part in the story lines, or developing your character's background/history, or following the story of the Matrix, then honestly how can you ask anyone to include you? You've just stated you're not interested!

I think, realistically, what you're actually asking for is non-story events that offer PvP-specific rewards. No talking, no emotes, just bashing each other's heads in until one person is left standing, then hand them a new shirt. Sounds like fun to me! But completely different and separate from the Live Events, which would probably require its own dedicated staffer to coordinate and pull off. And from what we've seen in regards to SOE's interest in expanding/advancing MxO, I doubt that will happen any time soon.

Then again, this is just my two cents.

Vampyress

Good idea, but I disagree with the forum rumors to a certain degree, as there are players who don't go to the forums while they're in-game.

**Vampyress**

Canbus wrote:

Good idea, but I disagree with the forum rumors to a certain degree, as there are players who don't go to the forums while they're in-game.

Easily solved - Go to the forums before you jack in.

**Canbus**

Vampyress wrote:

Canbus wrote:
Good idea, but I disagree with the forum rumors to a certain degree, as there are players who don't go to the forums while they're in-game.

Easily solved - Go to the forums before you jack in.

I should have made an addendum to my previous post. There are players who also don't check the forums period. Fix'd.

**Vampyress**

Yeah, I used to be like that as well, until I realized that I was shooting myself in the foot by not visiting these forums on a daily basis. But that's an I-D-10-T error, and shouldn't have any bearing on what I'm suggesting.