Dreary Futures II: Consequences of the Future (Official Feedback Thread)

[Lucaken]

Thank you for being along the ride with us for our second ever Horizon arc. We have worked very hard to bring you the best possible experience we could, but as always, there are lessons to be learned. This thread will serve as a way for players to comment their opinions, thoughts and suggestions on the arc, and how we should move forward in the future.

As discussed before, however, we will do things a bit differently this time around. This thread is strictly for the posting of feedback. It is not for active discussion, by players or staff. This will be heavily enforced by staff. You can obviously do so everywhere else you may want to (forums/discord/etc.), but this should be a space for anyone to say their piece without having to get bogged down in arguments, and for us writers to clearly see people's points.

If you are uncomfortable with voicing your opinion here, you are welcome to direct message me here on the forums, or on Discord at Lucaken#8171. Thank you for understanding.

[MattAtlas]

Note that this thread will be heavily moderated by myself and any passive aggressiveness or bad behaviour in general will be met with a forum ban. Let's not accuse anyone -- we know some things have gone wrong.

[Scheveningen]

https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxoOVK_P_UeJ2HvRoSxKJzfoHR7iI8Z9yl

[Cnaym]

I enjoyed the last two event rounds that I was able to participate in and would love to see more ship battles take place. (maybe none cannon, not sure, but it was fun)

[Peppermint]

I watched, didn't play. My thoughts were mostly covered in the previous one, but after this latest event I....am not so sure. I'm aware my own stance on player death and the like is very different to most people's, but I didn't like the lack of consequences in this one. It is okay for the Horizon to lose sometimes. People signing up to boarding raids to fight solarian marines on their own shuttle should not be, in my opinion, VV edited to try and ensure they have a better chance of survival - it takes away a lot of the tension and minimises the impact of player choice. If people want to charge an entrenched marine position in shorts, loot their armory for better gear, ect, they should expect there's a good chance they'll die. Doubly so when server tick rates mean an IPC is hellchungus charging down and killing everyone as they cannot die in time.

My other frustration is the sense of scale. The Horizon got bodied in simulations vs a cruiser (?), and struggled a lot against a tiny baby FSF ship. But through the deletion of the weapons on their big ship, a lack of ammo, and general intervention to play nice, we'll have a bunch of players happily regaling us about that one time their character went all doom guy and shot up a sol cruiser before boarding them and killing marines. If mechanics are so disconnected from lore like this, it causes an annoying cognitive dissonance where you have to bend the events around whenever they're brought up. 

It felt like there was too much staff intervention and it cheapened things a lot, coupled with the issues brought up in the previous thread of using the ship for military purpose anyway. 

[Omicega]

Now that the dust is settling, I think overall this event series is shaping up to be a net negative for me. I also think it's a net negative for the setting as a whole -- the stakes got raised immensely high seemingly out of nowhere, and I can only echo sentiments from the previous thread about how it starts to strain, erode, and (for me) outright remove of my suspension of disbelief that the Horizon wound up thrust into a scenario like this.

I enjoy the more laid-back aspects of Aurora, particularly the corporate commuting setting the old map had. I think we have a lot of rich lore that allows for a lot of interesting character interactions without a million bombastic, explosive, and OTT canon occurrences plugged into everyone's backstory. One of my biggest pet peeves with Aurora has always been the characters with 'stacked arcs', or whatever you want to call them, talking about their canon experiences of surviving 500 Skrell commandos in the Warbling etc., and to me the move to Horizon felt like an opportunity to at last get away from those things. I assumed those sorts of things were more like a relic of Aurora's past when things were just wackier and more off-the-wall in general; I didn't really expect what seemed like a move to an unarmed exploration ship on the hunt for phoron to rapidly evolve into a series of ship-to-ship encounters culminating in a bloodbath event where boarding seemed practically mandatory.

I volunteered for the event series precisely because I didn't feel like playing them. I don't feel like playing much at all in the immediate aftermath, actually -- I have no interest in getting ICly trauma dumped on by characters who want to take the canon experiences on board. I don't begrudge them for it, as a note -- they can do whatever they want -- but I have literally zero desire to relive what should be life-defining experiences for these characters second-hand through every character of mine that I talk to them to from this point on. @Peppermint is right, because it feels like I'm half a second away from walking into a conversation with Doom Guy: Sol Slayer or a survivor of Space Passchendaele or something.

If events like these are what people want to see, I would genuinely prefer they be run as non-canon 'what ifs' from this point on. The sense of scale is way out of balance for me. It didn't really hit me where this arc was going until right at the end -- in the span of like one event, the Horizon went from being 'on the trail' and embarking on some sort of SFA-related mystery they had to solve, to suddenly being told to prepare for total war against a full-fledged Solarian cruiser, and now we have crew who are (understandably) going to want to tell my characters about their traumatic, amazing, unbelievable, sensational experiences.

That isn't really what I want out of IC interaction on Aurora, and it's not really what I wanted out of the setting as a whole.

EDIT: I totally forgot to even comment on the sheer level of damage the Horizon suffered during that final round. I don't have any screenshots handy but I'm sure some people do; how are we meant to even begin to explain that being repaired canonically? Like I said, so much of this last event in particular just throws things way off balance for me.

Edited December 11, 2022 by Omicega
I forgor

[Kintsugi]

All in all, I enjoyed the arc plenty - but I don't want to see another like it again for a long time. High-intensity combat events should be 10% at most of all of our events, and both dreary futures events have features them as around 50% of their content. I don't think high-intensity combat events are a bad thing - but they need to be used sparingly so as to not become overdone, which they can end up being very quickly. Both dreary futures arcs felt too short to me, as well - honestly, I think we shouldn't refer to them as distinct arcs. They may as well have been part of the same arc, just separated by an interregnum of some months. I also think that some of the consequences of the final arc being negated is an issue - too many people got a pass on their own deaths, in an opt-in situation.

I also think we should emphasize the Horizon's performance was not as impressive as people could make it out to be. We don't need people thinking it can take on Solarian cruisers because it went up against a small one with almost no crew and almost lost (we had to sandbag ourselves because we were doing far too well). I am concerned about the IC repercussions of characters being involved in that boarding action as well - nothing wrong with that, but people need to be subtle about it, you know?

Anyway. I don't think the arcs were bad. There were some mistakes here and there. But I also think an arc like this should be a once-a-year thing, max. I'm very much hoping the next arc we have focuses explicitly on exploration and intrigue instead of warring.

tl;dr There can be too much of a good thing, so let's not do that - in this case, the combat. To me, Dreary Futures II was partially a showcase of ship to ship combat, which is fine - but I think we don't need another arc like this for a long time.

Edited December 11, 2022 by DanseMacabre

[FlamingLily]

Initially I thought I was not going to make it to the event, but I did actually manage to catch it at around the ~45 minute mark and played ("Played" in this context meaning sitting and watching sensors during ship to ship combat and then sitting and watching sensors during boarding) but I'd like to second Peppermint's concerns. For the record, I only had a hunch, but it definitely felt like, when the Helios was 'Disabled", that was code for "Admins have decided the horizon has won this battle" and disabled their guns. (Even though the Horizon had no weapons working and I think was immobilised?). Again, I have no proof of this, but if this IS what happened, it falls into the classic game master trap of "Making your players roll for a check that has a guaranteed outcome", A.K.A. trying to give players the illusion of choice/skill/chance/control over the narrative, while also having a pre-determined narrative that must happen.

 

I feel like there was never any doubt that the Horizon would win the battle, or at the very least, the space battle, cause otherwise that'd mean the horizon would be destroyed WHOOPS NBT is cancelled. I GUESS consequences could have existed if the boarding failed, but allegedly that never would have happened either. Also, I personally don't even think there should have been a boarding, but w/e.

9 minutes ago, Peppermint said:

People signing up to boarding raids to fight solarian marines on their own shuttle should not be, in my opinion, VV edited to try and ensure they have a better chance of survival - it takes away a lot of the tension and minimises the impact of player choice.

 

I would also like to bring attention back to this thread 

 regarding the concerns over this event being yet-another combat event, and pointing out that they were all quite valid. This was just another ship-to-ship then boarding event, and while maybe it was interesting, it's definitely wearing thin, and ultimately I don't think I have much to add that hasn't already been said. Personally, sitting in the ship doing absolutely nothing may have been the only thing preventing me from being hells of burned out (I probably should have just gone observer).

 

But ultimately, it did feel quite railroady, especially the boarding encouragement, it did thrust the horizon and it's crew into yet another bombastic backstory stuffer, that honestly I really don't think contributes to anything. Yes, I did miss the first 45 minutes of the round, but I also read the newscaster, and it did just seem like there was one message saying "oh yeah a ship got through turns out the horizon needs to fight now"

 

Taking a step back to talk about the arc as a whole, I want to summarise my concerns in a few words:

I HAD NO IDEA WHAT WAS GOING ON.

11 minutes ago, Omicega said:

in the span of like one event, the Horizon went from being 'on the trail' and embarking on some sort of SFA-related mystery they had to solve, to suddenly being told to prepare for total war against a full-fledged Solarian cruiser,

I didn't even know we were 'on the trail', that's how divorced these events were from any out of game information. I've mentioned this a lot in the thread I linked above, but to re-iterate

Quote

5. It's isolated. The entire Dreary Futures arc has felt like this thing that only happens to the Aurora Station SS13 Game Server, not to the SCCV Horizon in the Orion Spur. I wasn't around for KOTW, so take my comparison with a HEFTY grain of salt, but from what I've seen from others, the people loved KOTW because it felt like a Spur-Wide news event FIRST, and a NSS Aurora event only where it was impacted. Similarly, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the Peacekeeper mandate, Mandate Continues, Oppression of Mictlan arc, whatever you want to call it, and yes, while there was no In-game effect, it definitely made the setting feel alive, made my gameplay more interesting by people talking about it. "No one reads the news articles" Is a grand and solid way to ensure that no one does, because you've stopped making them. The background universal lore is just as important as the front and centre event lore, and it's saddening to see that idea being lost. I didn't even know the Leviathan was meant to be experimental since yesterday, because I wasn't there for the events due to time zones. That's how isolated these events have been.

Overall, I think this was a narrative and event misstep. It might be worth retconning, but I don't think that's a good idea immediately or even soon after, so I don't know.

Was it fun? Eh.... I can't say, i didn't do any combat. But with the lag I was having, I think that was for the best.

[Peppermint]

For reference, I wanna make something clear after seeing it crop up.

People were not ahealed or anything, just had their damage reduced by a bit.

Before anyone yells at the staff peeps who did it that is.

[Sparky_hotdog]

So I'll start with my overall impression of the arc, then go onto each episode individually.

Overall

Overall, I quite enjoyed the arc, though I do have some fairly common criticisms. The structure felt well put together, though I do feel that introducing the main plot hook halfway through made the plot feel a little rushed. While it was a lot of ship-ship combat, as I understand this was because that's all new, and we should see less of it in future. I am a little disappointed that the first arc we've had in an area that's fairly multicultural (The Badlands border Biesel, Elyra, Izweski, PRA and Dominia iirc) just focused on the Solarian Warlords again, but I believe the species-lore teams are making arcs for later, so perhaps I'm just impatient.
 

Episode 1 - The Orchard Moon One (I think)
I didn't play this one, so have nothing to say, other than that the idea sounds neat, and that if it was the Orchard Moon event, that was some good planning ahead.

Episode 2 - The VR One
This I did play (Security Officer, Erina Shen), and I believe it was probably the best event of the whole arc. The entirely hypothetical Horizon vs Solarian warship was really fun, and it was a truly genius way to properly acquaint the crew with ship-ship combat without the OOC risk of losing a character most events have. It also exposed a lot of flaws in both the Horizon's design for combat and in the set up required for the opposing party for space combat, to my knowledge. I don't expect to see the like of this again, but I just cannot say how much I loved this one.

 

Episode 3 - The Elyra vs FSF One

This I also played (Engineer, Elise Miravic), and I do have to look past my personal experience of that round caused by a massive mistake on my part. It was fairly uninvolved on most of the crew's part, due to Command's decision not to directly engage either side, but I don't think that was terrible. I can't really say I enjoyed it, but I also can't say I disliked it, nor can I point to anything that could improve it. It was a necessary step to get the Horizon on the trail of the missing phoron. I would say the pacing felt strange between this and the next event (We need to find the missing phoron straight into finding the base it went to), and an intermediate event where we found an attacked shipment or something would have been a nice stop gap, but I know events are hard to plan and organise.

 

Episode 4 - The Station and the Revenge One

This I also played (Erina again), and comes in a close second for me. The exploration of the station was really fun imo, and engaged a lot of different departments both in the initial prep and the expedition proper. The Kruger's Revenge hitting the ship also seriously took those of us on the station by surprise, and the chaos of quickly getting back on board to help was awesome. And the ship-ship combat then, as always, provided something for most of the crew to be vaguely engaged with.

 

Episode 5 - The Phoron Bomb One (This is very jumbled, because it's the most recent)

I also played the Finale (Erina, once more) and... I think it's important to consider the preamble to this first. I do feel it would have been in the SCCs best interest to, provide more than a paragraph of briefing to the crew, and to provide a briefing, truthfully or otherwise, made the situation sound a little less like a military mission. That said, I also feel the OOC response was way out of proportion for an event that hadn't happened yet. But I digress. The actual event itself was... pretty decent. There was a lot of waiting around to start with, and then the fighting started and... I'll be honest, maybe we had fairly inexperienced Bridge Crew, which is fine, but the Helios felt way too strong if the Horizon was supposed to be able to actually disable it (Which given it was then I believe Admin-forced disabled for the sake of the round, I assume was the intention). But balancing these things is hard when this is only the third or forth proper combat the Horizon's been in, so its not a huge deal. The boarding was probably my biggest issue with the whole event (And I say this not knowing if the event runners wanted us definitively to board, but the aforementioned Admin message did say to do so), as it probably stepped too far over the line of MilRP for me, even playing a Zavodskoi officer. Boarding isn't something the Horizon was ever really expected to do, and combined with the absolute mess that was the Horizon at the time (Most of the ship was vented, which I have non-event specific problems with), and the lag of having 110 people connected, really made it unenjoyable (Yes, none of this was the fault of the event runners, nor could it really be fixed). I understand that it made sense to defuse the bomb, and also the Horizon would have to be very damaged to warrant us being boarded, but it just felt very... mechanic-y, and didn't leave much room for RP, at least as someone who got MSOF-ed after one engagement, and spent the rest of the round passed out before reaching medical. With that in mind though, my experience possibly isn't the best reference point.

I think that's all. I look forward to seeing the aftermath of the arc, and also to some less combat, less solarian focused arcs in the future, but I do think the arc was good regardless.

[Omicega]

28 minutes ago, Peppermint said:

I didn't like the lack of consequences in this one. It is okay for the Horizon to lose sometimes. People signing up to boarding raids to fight solarian marines on their own shuttle should not be, in my opinion, VV edited to try and ensure they have a better chance of survival - it takes away a lot of the tension and minimises the impact of player choice. If people want to charge an entrenched marine position in shorts, loot their armory for better gear, ect, they should expect there's a good chance they'll die. Doubly so when server tick rates mean an IPC is hellchungus charging down and killing everyone as they cannot die in time.

I actually kind of want to double down on this while the consequences are still 'fresh'.

I think it feels cheap to try and sell the event as the Horizon having its cake and eating it too -- on top of what I've already said about the level of believability, the idea that the Solarian cruiser was taken down with potentially no casualties (aheals or damage reduction or whatever it was), no permanent damage to the ship, and overall no real lasting consequences for the Horizon is perhaps the most grating part of this whole affair. This isn't even like a tiny misstep in the wrong direction that can be glossed over; this is literally "the Horizon canonically took down an active Solarian warship and suffered no lasting hull damage, injuries or death to the crew, etc etc."

The first part of the arc with the canon mutiny caught some flak and was controversial too, but at least it had a real and very severe impact on the characters involved and the feel of the setting going forwards. The way this has panned out feels like an attempt to appease both sides; we get all the fireworks, drama, blood, and gore to pump the player count and sell the High Stakes of the dangerous, daring boarding action, but we also get enough cushions laid down so that nobody actually has to bear any consequences for taking part. It feels semi-canonical at best, and it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, especially coming fresh from the other half of the event series which saw cyborgifications and other CCIA-related character PKs as ramifications.

If there are more consequences coming down the line, then I'll be happy to retract my concerns about the above, but the immediate vibe I am getting regarding the after-effects of all this is something very sudden and jarring in terms of the overall narrative.

[MattAtlas]

Here are my thoughts as event organizer:

• Volunteer equipment needs to be studied better, and specifically made for events. Often we drop whatever's appropriate for lore factions and that's it -- but that equipment can be overtuned. It showed last event that 7.62 might be too powerful for event volunteers.
• Ship combat is fun and a success, but it needs to be kept for far more realistic scenarios where the Horizon isn't going up against a big threat. Basically, we should be taking on small destroyers or corvettes at most. Cruisers and the like need too much suspension of disbelief. It should be a third party ship thing 99% of the time.
• The Horizon shouldn't get involved in fights this big in general. Boarding and stuff (unless it's a very small kind of boarding, on a shoddy transport or something) implies too many casualties, too many injuries, and too many things gone wrong.
• Rules of engagement should probably be written for event volunteers, along with an agreement to sandbag a bit if necessary.

On the varediting of people: Nobody was adminhealed and damage was essentially halved. Out of 4 people whose stats I tweaked, 3 of them died. The fourth lived because they had medical supplies and sealed their bleeding far before they went down; everyone else died because they had no blood left in their body, and I didn't touch their blood.

On the retconning of some deaths: it's generally agreed that some people may have been pointblanked while downed and that gave the push that was needed for them to die. In the end I think it more just for retcons to be offered if deemed reasonable. One side is going to be unhappy with whatever the outcome is, at the end of the day, so here it's a matter of personal perspective.

[Peppermint]

I don't agree that sandbagging should be more common. And people get point blanked here is, tbh, not something I think is wrong, but that's generally not something the server seems to want and that's entirely okay. But sandbagging to large extents just completely removes a lot of tension - if something is set up to be really strong, it should be really strong, and that's my frustration here. I know it's unfair I can give feedback based off of what I hear over aooc and msay and whatnot, but I think the original plan of going 'lighter' on weapons when we originally thought only 2 badly armed sec officers coming is the good kind, because it balances the playing field but doesn't tip it toward the other - as opposed to clearing oxygen out of an area because the intrepid fucked up and left, venting the place. 

I don't know. For lower key events it probably makes more sense, but for this one in particular I think the Horizon fucking around and finding out would have been much more satisfying. Not from a desperate urge to hate on people and lose their characters or anything - I'd be happy with just some map edits to make the Horizon a bit more messed up, the moon thing being destroyed, ect - but just so we don't get these Horizon keeps winning situations. It is okay to lose on every other kind of round, and maybe in events it should be more doable too.

[Dark1Star]

I have a few issues with the event,

 

• Arming basically all the crew was probably not a good idea. Most of the crew have probably never been in a combat situation, ever. Which from what I heard, resaulted in practically 4 deaths alone among other MANY heavy injuries from rushing an entrenched position. Just my 2 cense tho. I feel like we had a pretty active security team up and able, but it just seemed like we sent anyone who managed to grab a gun from the crew arm out there to die a horrible death.
• The ship combat seemed fun, however it resaulted in basically everywhere being vented. Personally I believe that's just a consequence of the ships design. WIth 3 decks being open to the air with no doors to cover the holes in the floors. (Perhaps we could get special emergency shutters that instead of closing in a door, they close holes in the floors instead.)
• The lag was also unfortunate. But I believe that to also be a consequence of shipwide atmospherics failure, and the fact that people kept opening emergency shutters when told not to.

[Sneakyranger]

Now that the arc is finished, I'd like to say - as someone who played and enjoyed most of it - that I echo the common sentiment that it's time to cooldown. 

Personally, I feel that the biggest issue with the narrative was the short time between investigation and heading off for battle. Because we were investigating this SFA outpost after receiving the tip of a conspiracy against the Orchard Moon, it felt as if we would have been better served by slowly escalating the clues - it would also have given a better feel for the stakes if we had an idea beforehand of what the SFA's motivations for trying to blow it up would be. I expect the lore team has plans to reveal that later, or at very least their own notes for why it was done, but I feel it would have been better served to be released beforehand. If a concrete suggestion of their motivation does exist, I would appreciate someone directing me to it - either way, I have no idea why they did it except to be in-universe assholes.

To collect the above thoughts in a more cohesive form, I don't feel two weeks between tip off to pitched battle was sufficient; I feel that more time should have been allotted (perhaps with smaller announcements here and there as the data is processed) between tip off and the base+full plan being discovered. I understand that the discovery of the full plan necessitated a picking up of the pace after that, for the record, and have no objections about the time between plan discovery and battle. 

The only "negative" feeling (besides the readiness to move forward) I have is that, unless I am completely misremembering, everybody was told several times that we don't know what to expect from the event and that it may not be what we expected. As far as I am concerned, the finale was about exactly what I expected to happen; in fact, I discounted my expectation slightly because of those comments, and then the boarding required to disarm the bomb exceeded my original expectations of just how intense/combative it would be.

Ship to ship combat was fun, but I am ready for a break. Even when we're not fighting it out, having the specter of an imminent battle overshadowing all interactions that occur beforehand - while unique and not totally objectionable - is not something I want to have happen again for a while yet.

[Fluffy]

I'd like to add my thoughts, some which resonate with others too, too:

 

• The slots seems to be too tight for an event, we had a lot of people who were playing as off duty during a shipwide threat and emergency, this wouldn't make much RP sense to me as, I'd have expected, all capable hands would have been put to duty on such a situation; you are an off duty doctor? you go to medbay and help around, you are an off duty engineer? here is some gear, help avoid the ship getting destroyed, and so on; the slots should be increased either mechanically or IC imho.
• There was not much sense of dread and risk, which is a recurring issue that the normal gamemodes rotation also suffers from: you know that, in the end, the ship will basically always win, even if we mess up big, it's basically never a story of how the ship managed to survive or win, but just how much leeway was left to the antags/opponents before we decided to annihilate them, in this event also reinforced by the staff (at least for what i understands) literally deleting the enemy ship weapon; a story can't be epic if everyone knows and expect the outcome already, and will always feel dull and rather unremarkable, it also makes it way harder to suspend the disbelief.
• There was essentially no preparation, you'd have expected that a ship going towards a combat area would have took the time to train an otherwise almost untrained crew for such a scenario using any moment possible and more, instead besides the one simulation event and some antags that engaged us in a ship to ship battle nothing of sort was done to my knowledge; to be clear: i don't mean two weeks straight of drills, but that it never really happened outside of the simulation event either, preferring to spend time at the bar or mining instead of preparing for the imminent threat, is something I'm having a hard time justifying, though I don't think it's necessarily a fault of the lore team or staff either.
• I think having a sister ship for those kind of events, that you lore-y can move to and man before the event starts, would save a lot of headaches and solve a lot of the complains, your character would not want to be involved in a combat scenario? it stays on the horizon and so on, chad characters ready to fight for the conglomerate/company/whatnot? board the sister ship for the event and off you go, ship gets almost destroyed? lore it gets repaired over weeks/months while you're back on the horizon (instead of magically next round have no damage); I think it would make it more fun, believable, justifiable and easy for all parties to use this strategy, the story doesn't necessarily need to always be around the horizon itself, there's an entire universe of things, having another sister ship more fitted for combat scenarios and the like seems a better option.
• Overall, ship to ship and boardings are fun, gives everyone things to do if done right, and I hope it's here to stay and be expanded upon with other options (not more destructive, but different).

[Surgot]

From my experience in watching and playing, I have to agree that I think the best thing to do from this point forward is to save dedicated combat scenarios for EXTREME situations. While it may be fun in the moment, overall I do think it contributes to a problem where an exploration vessel is getting into far too much action when it comes to ship to ship and military combat. While my lore understanding is spotty surrounding the SFS/SFA/etc., I do think a notable majority of this arc has felt very combat-centric. There have been aspects that aren't surrounding combat, and those have been far more enjoyable to me. I loved RP'ing walking around on Orchard Moon to look at everything. The VR part was neat in terms of letting everyone have a proper chance to understand the scenario, but following that I felt that it was far too common that the Horizon was involved in ship to ship combat. In terms of my perspective (machinist) during these events, every time the ship got back into combat, it felt like I followed the same steps the week before. I understand that Machinist itself has some specific issues involving its general gameplay loop, so I'll leave those to the side. The more important point is that I was already beginning to feel burnout via repetition. It's fun in the moment, but I don't think I could do anymore of it; The departments feel more involved in reactionary recovery than proactive participation. 

Most of my thoughts and reflections are framed in response to the finale of this arc, which felt to be a victim of severe miscommunication and mishandling. I understand that through newspapers and written articles, there was a factor of foreshadowing involved, but it definitely feels relegated to the backseat. Like in real life, most people only skim through Aurora's articles unless it directly involves them/pertains to a direct topic of interest for them. To many, this had felt like a call that was far out of left field and one that was frankly almost cartoonish in nature. Yes, I understand that a situation had grown dire to the point that the Horizon had to be called in, but I dont think the manner in which demonstrating the severity of the situation was executed properly. For my own personal case, it very much felt like after handling an incursion with a ship, we were suddenly being called to war and returning to Valley Hale just after leaving. 

I understand the appeal to boarding and combat, I genuinely do. But I don't want it to be a normal thing. I don't want veterans of the server to have notches on their belt from kill counts despite being the setting's equivalent of an average worker, and I don't want to have the OOC possibilities of normalizing more power-gaming in combat situations. There were more volunteers than armaments in the Crew Armory for a boarding process that felt heavily foreshadowed. I don't want to comment about the power level of the event antags versus the boarding crew of the horizon, because frankly it didn't interest me. Plus, I don't have much of a say about it at all given my perspective of the events. What I do wish is that moving forward, however, is that these maneuvers are a lot more rare or a lot more policed so that all the off-duty don't become a second militia. 

In terms of improvement for further events, I feel that a lot of my sentiments have either been phrased better by others or expressed already. But to recap, I do wish that all departments feel more relevant throughout an arc rather than consistently having to play damage control. Obviously suggesting ideas to organizers and coders is always a case of being an outsider looking in-- So I'm not gonna try to put too much weight into saying 'what if an event had us go to X or made us handle Y.' But I do want to say that on a conceptual level, organization and joint-department tasks could bring far more longevity and flavor into episodic events. Those are the aspects I enjoy the most about these events; Departments finally being given a reason to interact more with one another, rather than any of the standard procedures. 

For me, personally, I enjoyed the aspects about these events that made my main job more busy and dynamic than the typical rounds. I think a lot of people enjoyed it in the moment, and I was happy watching a lot of people react and get hyped over the impact of ship to ship weaponry. However, I do hope this doesn't set a precedent for how most events will happen in the future, and I hope to see more variety that lets the crew of the horizon be more involved than reflexive.

[Girdio]

I've only recently come back to Aurora so I was only able to be around for the last two events of this arc, in turn that's the only aspect I'll touch on. Feel free to dismiss it, as I don't have my finger on the pulse of Aurora exactly, but I feel that it's important to have the perspective of someone who hasn't been playing in the current state of Aurora as long. I was ghosting for the last event, to be clear.

Obviously the biggest discussion point is regarding combat and how it's handled. I certainly thought it was weird for the Horizon to be going on the offensive, especially with the (from my understanding) outmatched situation they'd be in. For the crew to basically decide en-masse "I want to help security board the military vessel for an active warhead" seemed a bit far-fetched. Maybe some of the non-security that went had military backgrounds I'm not aware of, or other combat experience. Even still, most of the non-security were woefully under-equipped but yet still had the confidence of someone in a fully equipped mech.

Personally, if I there had to be boarding going on I would have liked to see the Horizon be on the defensive. Perhaps as a last ditch effort in a losing battle, the SFA piled into a vessel and tried to board the Horizon. Yes, it would have been putting more characters at risk but it would have created a real threat, and felt more fitting for the ship itself. A defensive line set up between the non-combative crew, the few still able to try to protect them, and the SFA boarders. "Joe Schmo never held a gun before, and he despised the thought but knowing he had to pick one up to defend himself and his friends in the science department forced his hand," sounds better than "Joe Blow wanted to go disarm a bomb and shoot some Solarians".

Deaths should exist. Yes, there should be impact in the round. At the same time, I feel that character death is always going to be hard to commit to. Most people don't want to lose a character they've spent weeks, months, or years building. Trying to be the literal bullet in the chamber that could utterly erase someone's character development and connections to IC characters? I don't think it's a surprise that event leaders don't want to commit more to someone dying. That said, I don't think character death is necessary, but instead earned character consequences are. Make someone actually feel as if what their character did have weight, to it's highs and lows. I'm aware this happened well on the mutiny event, but I feel that this is the better route to approach canon impacts. Maybe a consequence is someone dying, but it should feel earned. It should be something where someone goes "I didn't want to die, but I'm okay with it because it furthers the narrative in a good way". It's hard to say how exactly to do that at the moment, of course.

 

 

[Zulu0009]

18 hours ago, Omicega said:

I enjoy the more laid-back aspects of Aurora, particularly the corporate commuting setting the old map had. I think we have a lot of rich lore that allows for a lot of interesting character interactions without a million bombastic, explosive, and OTT canon occurrences plugged into everyone's backstory. One of my biggest pet peeves with Aurora has always been the characters with 'stacked arcs', or whatever you want to call them, talking about their canon experiences of surviving 500 Skrell commandos in the Warbling etc., and to me the move to Horizon felt like an opportunity to at last get away from those things. I assumed those sorts of things were more like a relic of Aurora's past when things were just wackier and more off-the-wall in general; I didn't really expect what seemed like a move to an unarmed exploration ship on the hunt for phoron to rapidly evolve into a series of ship-to-ship encounters culminating in a bloodbath event where boarding seemed practically mandatory.

[...]

That isn't really what I want out of IC interaction on Aurora, and it's not really what I wanted out of the setting as a whole.

EDIT: I totally forgot to even comment on the sheer level of damage the Horizon suffered during that final round. I don't have any screenshots handy but I'm sure some people do; how are we meant to even begin to explain that being repaired canonically? Like I said, so much of this last event in particular just throws things way off balance for me.

I don't have a lot to add but I find myself agreeing with Omicega in this, and what I feel the majority of people are generally in agreement on. The last time I took part in an event of this scale was on Vesta, I know because I hosted it, and while an epic space battle between the Big Good and the Big Bad worked on Vesta because it was generally wackier, I feel like that's not very fitting for Aurora. I played as the Morale Boosting Unit, and I had taken it upon myself to find off-duty crew and give them drinks and ensure their safety. Even I, at a certain point, just gave up. Too many atmosphere alarms, too many vented areas (got accused of causing a vent too, sad), too much stuff for me to try and do. While I'm assuming that this type of event is not gonna happen very frequently, still kind of a miss for me. And for the server too, apparently, since I'm pretty sure if we'd kept going it would've crashed eventually.

On the positive though, the maneuvers and weapons definitely feel good. It's pretty fuckin' sick to hear the engines and see the message about the ship tilting, imagining the crew hanging on as a massive cruiser casually hits the handbrake. That part was good, and I wish more... "full ship" things happened. I wish the Supermatter would make a loud noise that's audible up to several rooms away when it fires up, I wish the engines would make more noise than they do, etc.; I also wish we could've heard from the other friendly ships in the form of radio messages or announcements, it feels like they disappeared almost immediately after being announced.

TL;DR: add Ace Combat radio chatter

[Triogenix]

I already made a post in the lore writer section of the forums about arcs as a whole and how we can improve them, so I'm going to keep this feedback short, but just throw it here as well so it's also under the proper topic. I have a few thoughts as to the events and what we could improve.

• We need to communicate better within the team. I think the biggest detriment to the arc communication issues caused was the lack of an immediate post-event summary for command whitelistees to keep their characters in the loop that we started doing the last arc. It's my own fault, I was the one pushing for them to be written and writing them last time, and due to a combination of factors couldn't/didn't want to this time, and instead of asking someone else or telling others I'm not doing it, I just, didn't write them.
• When it comes to planning I think we need to have a system/way of doing things set up to give us the time and frame of mind once the outline is written to find potential flaws or points where work is needed in it, and correct them before the arc even gets into full swing.(I know this simplified feedback implies just a simple "review" period, but we have that and to me, it's not enough). I already wrote a whole post about this so I won't rewrite everything in detail here.
• I think we need to be more clear about a lot of things, primarily the mission of the Horizon and the character's place in the spur, to give people more clarity on the type of events and shenanigans the Horizon may get up to in the future, and the BROAD options their characters have around it.
• Lastly, I think we need to think about the impact command players can have on events, and what could be done to ensure the rest of the players during the event get the most out of it. This isn't saying anyone did anything bad or offering any specific solutions to a problem, just that it's something that might be worth considering looking at, as they, in the end, decide what the crew as a whole does or doesn't do, as well as giving instructions to individual players.

Edited December 12, 2022 by Triogenix

[PurplePineapple]

While I enjoyed the event, as someone playing one of the security guards who boarded the SFA ship I have two small observations that might be more specific to what happened in-round than general feedback.

• Regardless of how well the event characters are played, they inherently have nothing to lose being throwaway figures in combat scenarios. While the Interpid's crew tried to pull back and recover, the SFA pushed with no concern for their own self-preservation. It made parts of the event feel more like a round of Merc than something with lasting consequences.
• The crew armory may have been a misstep in my opinion. Allowing everyone from the bartender to off-duty security also made it feel less serious when the time came to board. The initial team had a lot more of a focus than 10-15 people all at once trying to play to win. I would have liked to see how the small security team with researchers would have approached it over a team that assumed they had overwhelming numbers.

Overall I think it was an interesting event but the focus was largely on mechanics over roleplay. It didn't feel like something engaging outside of the brief boarding attempt; even then most crew were sidelined to hearing explosions on the Horizon.

[Flpfs]

I disliked the round where the exploration team was formed to visit the Sol derelict, but it's just how the game is made and I don't really blame the loreteam, since there's no other way to arrange crew to explore stuff.

I liked the round where we visited the mining station. The spritework was beautiful and I enjoyed interacting with the event volunteers.

I disliked the finale. Sadly, most of our playerbase's characters think it is sane to board a ship with a LIVE weapon of mass destruction, and, the lore team and event characters were probably not expecting the actual zerg horde of thousands of offduties, bartenders, hangar techs and other assorted individuals storming a solarian battleship.

My biggest pet peeve is the relative few consequences. From what I have seen from chatter, event characters deliberately put their feet off the pedal, and there were the VVs to reduce brute damage. I understand that there can be friendly fire, and that deadchecking sucks, but, why OOCly limit this type of behavior? 

The people who mind you, volunteered, to go on a (supposed) suicide mission invading a Solarian vessel actually managed to take it with surprisingly few casualties. This really inflates the Horizon crew's egos, and doesn't represent lore at all. What I really wanted to happen was an actual, tense firefight, with a lot of friendly fire due to the tight halls, droves of people being mowed down, and deaths in the double digits. This is what should actually happen with untrained civillians boarding a vessel full of military personnel. It should've been loaded full of traps, armed positions, and staffed with many more personnel.

I know that our lore team deliberately wanted to avoid mass deaths, but, if that was the case, boarding should have been numerically limited, or it should have not happened at all. This half-solution ended up stretching the believability of the finale.

Overall, there should be a stop to hyper-combat rounds that are canon, and the Horizon should be relegated to a support, not protagonist, role in combat situations. Aside from that, I liked the other parts of the arc.