Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

GM Events ! !

    • 30 posts
    March 14, 2019 7:54 PM PDT

    Special Events

    I saw in an interview that GM events will likely be too difficult to manage (multiple servers, different player levels, etc).  I get it… but can we still have special events?  These could be seasonal (Terminus based holidays!), crafting based (fishing tournaments, bake-offs, etc), or even something neat in the world (leviathan hunts, lore chasing a short term story like the sudden appearance of multiple giants, etc).

    I think that transitions are like breath to a game world… day/night, tides, seasons, and this includes special events.  Would love to see them… think I probably will 

    • 510 posts
    March 14, 2019 8:57 PM PDT

    Remember, almost ANYTHING can be a GM even when you are talking about the addition of live Actors.  I am still checking the local odds for the day Kilsin finally takes a shot at backstabbing Aradune (Don't say you haven't thought about Kilsin!  We have WATCHED the streams and you stare at his back!  We don't think it's because he has a cute butt!).  The local odds-makers here in Las Vegas put it at a 7 to 1 odds that he gets the back stab off, but he gets fired. (jk)

    • 627 posts
    March 15, 2019 1:30 AM PDT
    I loved gm events from Eq and rly hope to see a LOT of them in pantheon.

    What if VR can recruit non gms to assist in these events? Other players that wants to spend some time to create a memorable game experiance for others.

    If VR does this, we could see more and bigger events. Witch would benefit the entier game.

    Let's go VR Event team!!
    • 127 posts
    March 15, 2019 5:00 PM PDT

    dorotea said:

    Let us keep in mind that there are different types of events. Some have predetermined outcomes - they are not going to spend many months of precious time developing some feature that most of us want and then keep it on the shelf for years because an event went the wrong way. Some may be major developer events - a dragon (palyed by VR) raids a hamlet and players swarm to defend the hamlet for example. Some may be what I would call guide events - a guide or developer or customer service person logs in outside of even Newer Halas and announces in chat. "Oh help me, I was cursed by a mermaid with an awful sense of humor, I have a fish body but cannot breathe water - can someone get me 50 pieces of globberous weed from which I can make a potion to cure myself?" ((either reward to all who do within a time limit or reward to the first)).

    Any of these can be done well or done poorly. I can't disagree with Vandraad but I would like to see the team try and do them well and I think the game will be richer with them than without.

    Nimryl said:

    I hope they do like long running ones.. that we as a community can take part in. :)

    The absence of GM events in most MMO's is a real shame and I do hope Pantheon will bring them back, but for events with a predefined outcome that has to happen on all servers in order to introduce newly developed content, it might be better to automate the process through scripted NPC's and 'world quests' or something similar. Just so interference and conflicting outcomes don't break the immersion and so it's easier for everyone to participate.

    Ideally, I'd like to see GM events take shape in two ways.

    The first is for low investment player engagement like in the example guide event from Dorotea. Simple, small stories to break the monotony a little bit and make the world feel more dynamic and alive.

    The second type would be a lot more involved, and possibly quite challenging to realize. The idea would be to create more intricate plot lines that are part of the overall story for that sever alone, and thus not bound by the direction of the game's canon. This way you can have players influencing the outcome and feel like their decisions really matter. Plot lines like these could span multiple sessions, with different players participating. It would require a small team of GMs and/or guides working together to plan upcoming steps (taking the players' input into account) and to make sure the events and any custom NPCs and antagonists involved are properly documented so that the GMs/guides stories don't contradict each other. And to really get the community invested, there could be a webpage that keeps a chronicle of these major GM events for players to check out and stay up to date. This might be costly and it's possible that it'd have to be limited to a special rules server with restricted access for some kind of premium subscription to make sure you only reach a crowd that doesn't actively seek to ruin events, but I'm pretty sure a lot of people would gladly pay extra for the service of basically having live DMs in an MMO, almost as if they were playing a tabletop RPG.

    I'd settle for less of course, but custom 'lore' based on community interactions during events would be the dream MMO come true, pretty much.

    • 287 posts
    March 15, 2019 5:09 PM PDT

    games like Destiny did stuff like automated events very well, and a similar system could work in Pantheon to a certain degree. I played some project gorgon and they were very active with silly little GM events which didn't involve much other than hanging out and having raffles and short term buffs. Those were surprisingly fun and I would absolutely love to see something similar to that in Pantheon. 

    • 233 posts
    March 15, 2019 11:39 PM PDT

    As long as nothing is exclusive.
    Any items from these event can never be removed or made limited.

    • 3852 posts
    March 16, 2019 7:54 AM PDT

    aApart from special events I agree it will be good having regular events - seasonal for example as Zaedria and others have said. These tend to be quite popular in MMOs. 

    IMO they become more important as a game ages. Over the first year or two we will all, VR willing, have so much to do that we won't *need* seasonal events to keep our interest or give us a change of pace. They would be a nice touch but not near the top of my priority list. 

    A GM popping in to do something interesting from time to time won't take much time and will be a real plus even over the first year. The shock and awe of seeing Kilsin or Aradune would be a ...virtual treasure.

    I am sure Aradune's butt would be worth looking at. Hearing Kilsin say "Bah cannot backstab you - can't tell your face from your arse" would be even more ...memorable.


    This post was edited by dorotea at March 16, 2019 7:54 AM PDT
    • 71 posts
    March 16, 2019 8:26 AM PDT

    Vandraad said:

    I'm of the quite opposite opinion of GM events because, in my experience, only a very rare few were actually interesting.  The rest were just lagfests where people were just spamming all the local chat channels with garbage while many people would just try to kill the GM or otherwise totally ruin the event however they could like training the entire zone into the event.  Bloody Kithicor was a great event that was very interesting and well run..but that was a very early game event.  As EQ1 aged, events were just ruined time and time again.

    Where I really have a problem with events is when the outcome is pre-determined.  The introduction of Frogloks as a playable race was preceded by The Battle for Grobb.  On Lanys server, the defenders of Grobb destroyed the Froglok invaders and their allies.  Then the sever went down, everything updated, and the next day Frogloks owned Gukta and the Trolls were over in Neriak.  Bullpuckey.  I think The Invasion of Firion Vie in Kunark by the evil forces in Kunark was another pre-determined event.

    Events should have an unknown outcome.  Let the players figure out the winner.  Otherwise spend your precious developing time on other more important things.

    GM events can really make the game world feel alive, however they need to be done well.  Vandraad is spot on and these are good examples of poor events.  In my opinion, the larger the event the more meaningful it should be, i.e. not meaningless dribble.  I remember once in EQ a couple GM's roamed a zone I was in, rp'ing a couple gnomes.  It was corny, meaningles, and short but hella fun ... because it small and didn't really use their resources.  Don't know if this would qualify as an event, but while playing Aion a GM popped in and banned someone for cheating (actually swung this oversized hammer smashing the player).  People talked about that for quite a while, not just because of the ban, but was done publicly which gave some transperancy that something was really being done.

     

    --- My opinions are not humble, they are just my opinions. ---

    • 239 posts
    March 16, 2019 9:15 AM PDT
    Now let's all remember what really made the GM events fun... the randomness and RARITY. A GM event once a week will get old.
    It was alot of fun to hear an GM is in GFay, you would travle from South Ro to get there only to be late. Hear about them being there, maybe 1 rare item that was being shown off, and just talking about it.
    But if the GMs were everywhere you would not be tempted to drop what you were doing and go there only to hear the stories. I hope this is kept in prospective and done on a small and rare scale
    • 264 posts
    March 16, 2019 10:21 AM PDT

    SoWplz said: Now let's all remember what really made the GM events fun... the randomness and RARITY. A GM event once a week will get old. It was alot of fun to hear an GM is in GFay, you would travle from South Ro to get there only to be late. Hear about them being there, maybe 1 rare item that was being shown off, and just talking about it. But if the GMs were everywhere you would not be tempted to drop what you were doing and go there only to hear the stories. I hope this is kept in prospective and done on a small and rare scale

     You have nothing to worry about there, VR is a small team and doesn't have a massive budget so I highly doubt each server will be filled to the brim with GMs. So my guess is the GM events will be rare indeed if they even have them at all. My recommendation to VR is to plan out specific events and host them across all the servers so they can do more ambitious things. Otherwise having a GM summon a random dragon to kill will be the norm. With planned coordinated GM events you can go all out, some events can be told to the players ahead of time and others can be a surprise. For example a new patch is slated to release so VR lets players know a pre patch event will be happening. On the other side of things an extra dimensional invasion could occur seemingly randomly in one of the zones controlled by the GMs and word would spread as players flocked to that zone to try and stop it. GW2 had the "living world" events which I really enjoyed...now imagine something like that with GM involvement it would be excellent!