King of the World/Invasion feedback thread

[kyres1]

This is a feedback thread for every aspect of the King of the World arc, and the invasion that ends in roughly a week from posting this depending on feedback.

So, here we are! The King of the World arc has totaled to the Second Solarian Invasion, where you get to participate in the most ironic case of deja-vu ever - Solarians from a rogue admiral affecting you for a week.

We took notes from the most memorable events that have occurred already and decided to make massive changes to the setting, from the starmap, to almost every major wiki page, down to gameplay in preparation for the Next Big Thing through this arc. While the arc comes to a close and things will begin to settle once it's over, we'll start focusing on making a rich, more easy-to-navigate setting that won't pose constant consistency problems and whatnot due to the weird juxtaposition of all the star-nations.

The conclusion from all this was to make the week-long invasion happen. However, after seeing the violence from recent arcs, we decided against keeping the events of this invasion 100% canon, opting to leave canon in the hands of the players bar announced events.

Among the things we've done in this arc are,

1. Cranked up the phoron scarcity.

2. Made Einstein Engines a viable threat to the players.

3. Made strides toward creating the Stellar Corporate Conglomerate, more details on that soon.

4. Fabricated a decently-sized conspiracy that, admittedly, didn't involve too many people, but let us learn a lot.

5. Involved most every species (at least, in the invasion aspect) for better or worse.

6. blow up mars

7. Began the Sol Collapse, as mentioned in the arc's initial chapter text for around 4 months.

And probably more I'm forgetting.

We at the loreteam genuinely hope you enjoy the invasion and the coders responsible (who i'd prefer to name after the invasion to keep their DMs unharmed) have worked very hard and fast to get it working optimally. Thanks, and good luck...

 

[Daemon]

So far I enjoy the idea of creating a chain link between the big five, the SCC is cool.

 

 

 

[Lmwevil]

i like the event but danse predicted chainlink saving the day ?

i feel like mars should be finished off by the replicating phoron though, and that it can just burn itself off in the planetwide blaze then we're safe, currently it feels unfinished 

 

all in all, i've been really enjoying it actually, and the SCC has interesting implications

PS: miranda trasen is a ling 

[Faye <3]

i really really enjoy the fact that you can participate in the event without necessarily signing your char up for potential permadeath. for someone like me who super isn't into PKs, I enjoy the freedom in potentially having Sanaa die or something one round, then being able to say an off-site ODIN medical team or something managed to save sanaa, but at the cost of trauma from the events, a prosthetic limb, etc. 

[Kintsugi]

I intend to make a much more in-depth feedback post in the future, as right now I'd be making a lot of conjecture and predictions that may not come true. For now, I will say that I have enjoyed the arc a lot so far, and respect the sheer amount of work the developers put into it - I will say that while I don't want to rain on any parades, I think a few mistakes were made so far that we could probably stand to learn from, and I think depending on how things play out, a few more could end up being made.

Me being a downer aside, I've really loved the arc. Probably my favorite on Aurora so far!

One thing I can say is that I think the Schrödinger's canon isn't going to work out. I see a lot of people getting confused over what is and what isn't canon - people confusing antag gimmicks for events, etc. I think we should stick to hard canon for all events, especially during extended.

Edited November 25, 2020 by DanseMacabre

[KingOfThePing]

While work sadly prevented me from attending too many events in the past few weeks I enjoy(ed) all I could get. 

I am impressed on the scale of the permanent effects of the arc, like how Mars got obliterated, the death of known characters, etc.

I hope this finale will go on for a bit longer. And that I can attend the grand finale. I am eager to see how it will all go down.

[WickedCybs]

The invasion and random events related to it have been really cool so far. Having the TCFL come in to request supplies or a refugee ship with scared people that need to be managed is very engaging. Only real critique I have regarding the invasion at the moment is that on lowpop stuff like the refugee spawn can be overwhelming, as it had ten slots I heard? A skeleton crew could get overwhelmed real easy.

Other than that, It's been pretty good so far. Being stuck on the station helps to foster a bigger sense of community and being in things together. The Aurora might as well be home now, so there is more reason to care about what happens to it and your colleagues.

[Rushodan]

Raiding resupplying on the station as the SCC, SCS, CSS, CCS (whichever one it was because you kept changing your DAMN minds) was pretty enjoyable for me. We had some great interactions with crew I feel and it was pretty funny to see our dreg abusing medical somewhat (he knows what he did).

Top stuff, gentlemen.

[DickFreedomJohnson]

Playing as an event guy for the SCC was incredibly fun, I absolutely loved the crew interactions we got (except medical thanks dr*g) it really felt like we were the best hope for Tau Ceti. I can't wait to play more event roles in the future.

[Omicega]

I am interested in the permanent repercussions of the arc much more so than the arc itself. I don't know if a week of Solarian ghost roles and a flat lore ban on your character living anywhere than the Aurora for X amount of time is really what I was expecting or hoping for.

For me, this arc peaked at Clandestine -- which was wonderfully mysterious and exciting in every way except for the hellish lag. Everything since then has been a steady spiral downwards -- from the conspiracy that suffered very hard from having already-established players monopolise it and the generated activity/intrigue as best they could (and yes, I blame the lore team in part here for not trying more to dislodge said individuals) -- to the weird pacing where everything alternately stuck for weeks then unstuck again just as quickly.

I don't know if most of these are objective criticisms, though, to be honest. I think it's more just that this arc really isn't for me -- it certainly offers a lot more for people whose characters enjoy taking a more active and (to me) unrealistic level of involvement in all these wacky tabacky megacorporate geopolitical affairs. I'm not really looking to stack any of my characters' arcs with 500 confirmed Solarian kills via ghostspawners or anything, and the opaque nature of the "no travel to/from Aurora for a week/whatever" is really constricting both my desire to play any of my characters, whether they are established or new. Still, Kyres keeps asking for feedback, so here it is -- now without any (or at least most?) of the cynicism with which I've delivered it before in dchat or wherever else.

[kyres1]

14 minutes ago, Omicega said:

I am interested in the permanent repercussions of the arc much more so than the arc itself. I don't know if a week of Solarian ghost roles and a flat lore ban on your character living anywhere than the Aurora for X amount of time is really what I was expecting or hoping for.

For me, this arc peaked at Clandestine -- which was wonderfully mysterious and exciting in every way except for the hellish lag. Everything since then has been a steady spiral downwards -- from the conspiracy that suffered very hard from having already-established players monopolise it and the generated activity/intrigue as best they could (and yes, I blame the lore team in part here for not trying more to dislodge said individuals) -- to the weird pacing where everything alternately stuck for weeks then unstuck again just as quickly.

I don't know if most of these are objective criticisms, though, to be honest. I think it's more just that this arc really isn't for me -- it certainly offers a lot more for people whose characters enjoy taking a more active and (to me) unrealistic level of involvement in all these wacky tabacky megacorporate geopolitical affairs. I'm not really looking to stack any of my characters' arcs with 500 confirmed Solarian kills via ghostspawners or anything, and the opaque nature of the "no travel to/from Aurora for a week/whatever" is really constricting both my desire to play any of my characters, whether they are established or new. Still, Kyres keeps asking for feedback, so here it is -- now without any (or at least most?) of the cynicism with which I've delivered it before in dchat or wherever else.

Your feedback is appreciated and, were this two years ago, I'd expect more shouting and arguing in its place. Thanks for the constructive criticism.

Three things I have to say in response are,

1. The people fixated on being protagonists in the investigation sector of the arc unfortunately can not be beaten without just prolonging the arc. Which, we did promise we'd do - we intend to involve way more people in the conspiracy end of things by request of multiple players. Hopefully that helps.

2. The ghost spawner issue was remedied in that sol marine events are extremely uncommon. AT this rate I'd argue they might not even occur during the invasion at all, funnily enough.

3. As for people who will stack the events in their favor, reasonable character rules exist so if they say they killed 500 sol muhreens just go the route of 2017 and ahelp them. Even though the events are optionally canon, this does not change the rules.

[Cnaym]

Spoiler

The ghosts spawners are a lot of fun. Not that impressed by the conspiracy thing since nobody talked and everyone ran away, but I think you got that on your list already.

Balancing is a bit all over currently though, getting random ERT who save the day for a bottle of milk is kinda odd. Not saying it's bad but that may be something worth looking into, for example disabling ghost spawners on code red, since the station is not safe to dock with or such.

[ChevyChevron]

I remember in the leadup to these events being added, I think both Sue and Alberyk made mention of the kosmostrelki ERT on some of the discord servers and made special note that they aren't going to be on the station to firing squad anyone from the DPRA/NKA, depsite the political turmoil back home.  I roll a kosmostrelki event spawn and there's a little info blurb that reminds us we're not here to be idiots and whatnot.  So, we arrive on the station to learn what?  There's a DPRA consular vampire, and the chief engineer desperately wants us to shoot him.  That put us in an interesting position, lemme just say.

I definitely like the system with the ghost spawners and the interesting ways they can interact with a round.

The conspiracy event looked like it was shaping up to be a lot of fun if it got bigger than it did, but it also seems like most of the people who were involved weren't present for the round where it wrapped up (I had only just gotten brought up to speed ICly, for the record, so my absence was hardly world shattering) resulting in an SCC major victory.  In general, I feel like the conspiracy could have been better in a few ways.

Firstly, it seemed to center too strongly around a few characters who, by nature of the whole thing being a conspiracy, were somewhat reluctant to let anyone else in on the situation.  Whether it was out of fear for others' safety or not fully trusting other people, that's kind of an unavoidable issue when a story starts centering around a small group of characters.

Secondly, the whole shadiness of the SCC seemed to breed more confusion than would be necessary if the group was being organized by the big five.  The SCC would usually show up and act like they were in charge without ever really communicating why security shouldn't treat them like any other boarders outside of the fact that they usually only showed up on canon rounds with powerful armor and weapons.  I almost want to compare it to a mercenary round where the mercs use a station announcement to give themselves an RP shield to hide behind and prevent sec from escalating.

Those are my thoughts.  Overall, I do have a positive view of this event arc.

[WickedCybs]

Considering everything now, the biggest thing I enjoy about this so far is that It's an event arc I can take part in no matter the time rather than just on certain dates. A bit like Bad Moon, though the stakes are often lower. Things feel pretty alive, getting reports of mis-aimed salvos striking, visitors in need of resupply. It is not just violence and action, nor is it just visits. Feels pretty atmospheric. A nice bonus is no horrible lag too, since the server is not overloaded with people.

As for the conspiracy, it was interesting to see from an outside lens. Got a bit involved towards the end, though not too much. I'll always be a believer in an open flow of information for more secretive things, though understandably people didn't want to let things slip due to the nature of it. If it is continuing, I will be interested in seeing what happens next.

[Carver]

For better or worse, none of my characters have a remote excuse to find themselves on the station during this arc's 'week of trouble'. I'm not really sure how to feel about this.

[KingOfThePing]

Shuttle traffic is heavily restricted and they are plainly just not permitted to leave, isn't that enough?

[Carver]

54 minutes ago, KingOfThePing said:

Shuttle traffic is heavily restricted and they are plainly just not permitted to leave, isn't that enough?

More a case of 'none of my characters would have gone near the station in the recent days leading up to it', furthered by the recent wartime business being a firm 'NanoTrasen property is a no-go zone without suicidal intent, fuck going to work, it's better to stay home'.

[KingOfThePing]

Then just dont play the characters until it is over. You can just say they were not on the station when the traffic restrictions happened. 

If that applies to ALL of your characters then you have to make a new one where that is not the case...

Edited November 29, 2020 by KingOfThePing

[Boggle08]

I think I remember several months ago Skull musing over the idea of phasing in more ghost roles to help supplement and/or replace our current antag-oriented round structures, and this whole event feels like a prototype run of that idea in action. I haven't played enough rounds to give feedback that can reflect the entire finale arc, but the business of ghost roles is something I think works. The way they're structured and designed means that sec doesn't have a monopoly on interaction with them, which has been a common complaint in the past.

It also takes a lot of pressure off of "antag" roles to keep the crew engaged; I feel like being an antag often entails that you and a handful other people have to come up with a decent gimmick, be robust enough to pull it off without getting shitstomped by the ISD at the wrong time, somehow getting a decent chunk of what could be a +50 crew manifest engaged in the action, and somehow doing all of that for two hours. Fucking up in too many of those fields, in my experience, leads to LOOC, deadchat, and Discord all grading your performance like you were a piece of steak that wasn't cooked to their liking. But with these ghost roles, "antags" don't have to carry rounds by themselves, they don't even need gimmicks that last the whole round and can end early, and I've even seen ghost events bash into antag gimmicks to create interesting scenarios.

My one ghost-event related complaint right now is against the Coalition Resupply event: The Rangers aren't obligated to have an internal chain of command, It's fuzzy if they adhere to the Aurorastation's command structure, and they usually end up terrorizing anyone that has an accent or nationality they don't like. All they get is a spawn-in blurb that tells them "you are supposed to be a helpful agent aboard the station." It doesn't help that The coalition resupply is a 6-8 man team replete with RIG's, armored voidsuits, and Gauss thumpers. In a worst case scenario, they end up being too numerous and well equipped to say no to, far too caught up in their own rapture to listen, and are held accountable to no one. Managing them can be fun, but having it be like Syndie-Con every time they show up makes them less "helpful agents" and more "station liability".

[Camellia]

is there anything else planned? Like, I loved the events right but, I just kinda feel disappointed.

Like.. That's it? I get we got tons of ERT and Sol Marines but I felt like we could've done more.

 

Overall, real fun to play as William!

[Cnaym]

On 27/11/2020 at 01:26, ChevyChevron said:

I roll a kosmostrelki event spawn and there's a little info blurb that reminds us we're not here to be idiots and whatnot.  So, we arrive on the station to learn what?  There's a DPRA consular vampire, and the chief engineer desperately wants us to shoot him.  That put us in an interesting position, lemme just say.

The antag had pretty much no opposition and I think the ERT teams usually  got involved in the round events when needed ^^

As the CE, it was a nice thing to see outside forces with their own plans get twisted up in events they just stumbled into. I liked it a lot more than pushing the ERT button and giving out a list of names to kill or detain. I would like to see the ghost spawners stay tbh, the community has suprised me with more than one refugee team that they are very capable of creating engaging narratives.

My biggest take from this entire arc is that we should stop doing railroaded main story events and just let the community sort it out. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the effort that goes into events but the community using all their channels like the relay to keep the story tense and going in real time is a lot more entertaining to me than a three hour round of who shoot first.

I mentioned it before and will put it out here officially, the events could have stayed in news articles and happened on another station with characters not played by our playerbase. The stories the community created with as simple tools as a bunch of refugee hobos where much more fascinating and a real peak of creativity.

Despite some people being disappointed that we do not get a big boom final event round, I think this decision was for the best as it might have done more bad than good. I prefer to remember this as a week of creative freedom and chaos rather than the buildup to a round that just generated a ton of salt ^^

Thanks for letting the community go wild on this one, it payed of in my eyes.

[CourierBravo]

I worked a lot during the event, so I didn't get to enjoy too much of it, but everything I got to? Absolutely amazing. If there's anything from the event I want to keep? It's the resupply ships. The event would have to be structured differently, but I think that having something like a SCC shuttle come in and ask for food, water, medical supply, and phoron, would all be an awesome thing to have happen normally. I imagine it would have to be a whitelisted thing, and say, only have the event happen if A. A white listed person is in the server as a ghost and B. wants to do the event.

It would give a lot more to do during Extended rounds, and would especially give Cargo, Medical, and Service things to do.

[Wildkins]

kyres gave me a lot of leeway to implement things so I used it as an opportunity to test two things:

1) staged events (such as the sol frigate incursion) which can have multiple outcomes that spawn future events

2) using ghost roles as a tool to occasionally augment rounds with third parties, something we already play with in rescue pods and the like

i'd say both seem to have worked relatively well from feedback, and once the backend of the event system is cleaned up I think there's great potential moving forward for more cool and epic changes to events going forward

[Kintsugi]

This is Danse's Grand Feedback Post. 

The KOTW arc was a unique chain of events - extremely ambitious and all-encompassing, it has had, to my knowledge, more of an effect on Aurora's lore than any other arc ever. It was fantastically fun and interesting, but that doesn't make it perfect - I'm going to go over each section of the arc, and assessing THE GOOD, THE BAD, and THE UGLY (Things I want to comment on but don't want to file into either category). None of this is proofread. Have fun!

Act Zero:

The good:

There was a lot of good exposition here. The scarcity phase might've been a subtle phase, but the minievents helped establish a sense of atmosphere as far as the arc is concerned. There isn't much to say about Act 0 - it was the most laid-back part of the arc. The second half, though, I think could've been better in some places.

The bad:

Gus pretty much got swept under the rug. I get that nobody was available to write an article about him dying, but in the end the death of Gus Maldarth was a total wash.

The ugly:

EE was a mixed bag. They seemed to be a major player in the arc at first, but as soon as the scarcity was done with, it seemed like they got swept under the rug. It would have been interesting to see EE participate in the invasion phase. The phoron worms were also a bit of a mixed bag - they weren't really explored at all, beyond the events that they appeared in. They had a lot of potential to be really scary, but they mostly just vanished.

This guy was also never explained - the worms had some lore, but the homunculus was just... there. A little odd!

Act One:

The good:

Clandestine set practically the gold standard for events in my eyes. It had a few problems, but these were technical - and therefore I will omit them completely. Clandestine engaged the entire crew, was an interesting event with a lot to explore and discover, and had a fantastic bang. In a way, I feel like Clandestine was so good that it raised my expectations for the rest of the arc, and I was disappointed we didn't get something as good as this.

The bad:

This act was a little short. Players had the opportunity to investigate Chainlink via the secret room, but I feel like it was too heavily watched to be worth looking into.

The ugly:

EE really should've made appearances here, but I say pound-for-pound Act One was the best Act of the arc. The article hinting to what was going to happen to Mars was really incredibly vague, and should've had at least some absolute terms included in it.

Act Two:

This act was basically all article. I can't say anything about it- There were some things related to the conspiracy here, but the conspiracy is largely undocumented and I'll address it later.

Act Three:

This one was also all article, but with a lot more meat on its bones.

The good:

The Mars disaster was a fantastic occurrence, from a wholly IC-perspective. It was something that by virtue of pure scale and impact engaged a lot of players, to a level which I have not often seen on Aurora.

The bad:

A trend of flanderizing the Alliance and especially the Alliance's military begins here. The total refusal for the ENTIRE Alliance military in the area to render aid strikes me as improbable - at least some mutinies would occur, surely? Why wouldn't the Alliance try to evacuate Blue strongholds? Additionally, the self-replicating phoron doesn't really get touched on again for the duration of the arc, leaving it in the bin of "things not touched upon again".

The ugly:

No ugly statements here.

Act Four:

The good:

A lot of effort to get additional factions involved here was made, which is good - though sometimes it felt forced, just about everybody had something to do with Act Four. Additionally, I think the invasion phase was an interesting prototyping of what the future of Aurora could be like - less of a focus on traditional antagonism, and more of a focus on spontaneous storytelling with random events and ghostspawners. The crashed Solarian crew, Solarian marines, the Solarian refugees, etc, were all a great addition to the game. The invasion was very engaging by design, and the random events were all fantastic.

The bad:

The death of Frost was very sudden and felt a little forced. His death was obviously necessary and in a lot of ways, welcomed - but little explanation was given to it. How does the most powerful man in the spur get gunned down in his imperial palace? Additionally, I feel like the planned events in this section were flawed. The investigation (In my opinion, one of the worst events of the arc), again, sees the Alliance's military flanderized into being an evil fascist organization - the players are not making their own conclusions, the players are being told that Sol's military is a gang of cowards, assholes, and thugs. The lack of a finale really harmed the invasion's sense of climax and development - I understand the finale was abandoned for a reason, but I don't feel the justification was strong enough to outweigh the benefits. Knowing what the finale was - I am very disappointed that it didn't happen. At the same time, the nuke-assembly events were just bad, in my eyes. They were unengaging (Only supply really had anything to do with them) - for everybody else, they were extended rounds. The first was better due to the arrival of marines, but there was a total lack of player agency in the nuke events. They were being assembled either way - it was just a matter of time. The invasion week was fun- don't get me wrong. It just had no climax. Without a finale, the entire arc feels lopsided - anticlimactic is the best way to put it. Act Four was an anticlimax.

The ugly:

The death of Ozdemir was a little disappointing. I thought he could have been an interesting long-term villain. That's neither here nor there, but it'd have been cool if he had a warlord state of his own in the long run. The destruction of Sol is going to need a lot of elbow-grease from the lore team to be well-executed - new countries need to spawn from the breakaway areas, and the galactic map is going to need some revising. 

Additional remarks:

The conspiracy part of the arc was interesting, but flawed. The integration of the conspiracy into normal extended rounds was a fun way to get things going, but at the same time this meant that it was difficult for most people to be engaged. As someone who was involved with a LOT of things this arc, I was barely on the periphery of the conspiracy. I was involved, but I'd say the people with a real stake in it could be counted on one and a half hands. And by the end of it, it turns out that all the investigating was for naught - the mystery turns out to be your new employer.

The SCC concerns me a lot. I feel like we're getting into unpleasant corphell grimderp territory - this might be a matter of personal taste, but I think Aurora suffers if it goes too much in on totally coddling the megacorporations and treating governments as their gimps. I saw the SCC's new wiki page - and while it's obviously unfinished, I feel like it just confirms my suspicion that the SCC will end up being the spur's sole superpower. To be frank, I was megacorporations to be on equal footing with governments - they have their unique strengths and weaknesses, and need to cooperate with governments or overcome them under the table to be successful. For me, the growing focus the lore is taking on megacorporations is deeply concerning, and I think it is a mistake. I might think they're boring, but I also think that making them the focus of the setting is something very few people will enjoy. You just can't empathize with a megacorporation the same way you do with a government.

Final opinions:

KOTW was a lot of fun. Despite the fact I feel like the final act could've been better - it was still good. It was imperfect, but no arc of this scale was ever attempted before. I hope that the lore team learns from the mistakes made here, and from also from the right choices that were made at the same time. I don't mean to sound like a negative nancy - by all means, I think the arc was a quality experience and I applaud the team for it. But I am being honest: for as good as it was, I think it could have been better. In general, I felt like player agency was lacking, and the arc itself was somewhat black versus black, with few dogs in the fight for the player to root for without playing a character who has a malfunctioning moral compass.

Looking forward, I would love to see some concepts experimented with during the KOTW integrated into the server, especially the prolific use of ghost spawners. I also wait to see all of the new lore that'll come out of this - I am very excited to see the warlordism and successor states. And maybe down the line, a Sol redemption arc would be fun.

 

Edited December 1, 2020 by DanseMacabre

[Kintsugi]

2 minutes ago, DanseMacabre said:

-snip-

also I want solarian consular to be turned back on very soon thanks