Silicon Nightmares Feedback Thread

[The Stryker]

This thread exists to collect feedback for the synth team's arc, Silicon Nightmares. If you have any feedback, what worked for you, what went wrong, what could be improved and what you'd like to see more of in the future, then this is the place to talk about it.

We're taking feedback both on particular events and the arc as a whole.

[Carver]

I hate to beat a dead horse but I hope this event gets exosuit and simple mob interactions fixed. I was super excited to see what the master transmitter could do, and how the crew would fare against the horde of hivebots and then those hopes were dashed hard. The sprite work was quite wonderful though, I hope that we may see a return of these transmitters (and their rampant friends) in the future. I also hope we get to see Purpose taking a hostile position in a future arc with their HKs and Daedric Crescents, those looked super neat and I'd have loved to see them in action.

Edited March 24 by Carver
I forgot about Purpose (but not on purpose)

[CasualMemer]

The lobby theme before the event absolutely slaps. And this was also the greatest lore arc i've ever seen yet.

[pocheto]

It was a fun arc, loved the deeplore:tm: implications of purpose and hivebots. although, military events aren't exactly my favorite. maybe the next arc could be more diplomacy?

[Fluffy]

I had fun in a good amount of events, with that said however, I will focus on the "negatives" (aka: what can be improved upon, from my perspective)

 

The initial event (meeting for Command) kind of summed up for most of the characters as "this could have been an email", yes we did get to talk with the Purpose borgs, but it was kind of inconsequential and could have been done in another event along with other things

The visit/shore leave on the city (and the intermission if you want to consider it part of the arc) was nice, however if it developed into something, it would have been a good kickstart for whatever it developed into, but otherwise it seemed pretty much what anyone could do in any extended shift, it generated some arrests but so did normal shifts, but no big deal either way

The last two events were good, in particular the last event we had yesterday, though I think the one before felt more engaging and challenging; if the last event had more challenging enemies (either in number or power, or even both) and had more streamlined start than standing there forming groups for half of it, it would have been more engaging/challenging, also the lack for what I recall of any plot twist left an unexplored opportunity; for what I can tell, everything went basically as planned/anticipated

[Shimmer]

I've volunteered for almost all of the events of the arc, bar the visit to Point Verdant and the Etna visit. I'll try to give as much of my perspective of both individual events, and the entire arc as a whole. basically what im saying is this is going to be long winded and wordy stars help me

 

I'll start with the events I've actively participated in, starting off first with the exclusionist attack, and then the warehouse + NPP assault sort of mixed into one big bag!

I'll very immediately deviate from that with something that genuinely bugged me on in both the exclusionist event and the warehouse assault! Something that annoyed me personally is that at certain parts of the events, I did feel very aimless and without someone or something directing me. It was really badly present in the exclusionist raid, you can see in my recording of it I've sent the occasional ahelp that either never got a response, or was wordlessly closed. I do get that admins and moderators are most definitely overwhelmed with tickets during events, but a simple we can't handle that right now, we have bigger priorities, sorry would go a LONG way in not leaving a bitter taste in your mouth and a feeling of being completely ignored. This DOUBLE stings as a volunteer, because we rely on staff for guidance and when we are ignored or nothing is said to us it gives us a sense of aimlessness.

This was, thankfully, not present in the NPP assault. I received prompt responses from the team, and good direction. I wish this could be the standard, because it improves the game significantly for the volunteers.

As for the exclusionist assault, a few things. My memory of the entire thing is BADLY rusted, but what comes to mind is that there wasn't that much of a plan it to all. So much so, that we didn't even go to the CiC and instead opted to sit in the bridge, something that killed me in the first hit. That part is on our end, but the intent behind this move was very much to pull punches, to give the Horizon an opportunity. We underestimated the Horizon and it's capabilities, and because of that the space fight felt unimpactful, we were never a threat to the Horizon with how prepared it was. If this was pointed out to us, and we were told to not pull our punches as much, I feel like the space phase could've given the event more stakes.

The same applies to the cannon fodder. We were designed to die quickly, but I feel like they didn't have too much of an impact. I don't mind them being fragile, I think it's fitting, but if they had more of a punch to them it would've been better. They were all armed with pistols against a crew fully kitted out in armor, hospitalizing someone, which was the intent of every event, was pretty difficult to do.

The improvements I would like to see is basically- don't underestimate the Horizon too much. The volunteers are already pulling their punches, pulling your punches with a weak weapon simply means you do very little damage.

 

Moving on to both the warehouse and the NPP. First, the NPP very clearly learned the lessons the warehouse taught both the mappers and the crew, leading to a very focused and organized final event. I see people mentioning that it felt very unfulfilling at the end, and the reason for that is because the Horizon learnt its lessons, the crew was well armed, extremely well organized, they simply surpassed what the expectations were for the event. What's the solution to this? In cases where the Horizon does a little too well, backup spawners of ghostroles that can dish out good damage should be used. After all, if the crew is doing well, they are up to the challenge.

On the topic of ghostroles- I will speak for myself- I did not like the fact that the ghostroles were actual IPCs that had to use weapons. I personally would've preferred if instead they were simple mobs that could be controlled, which does annoyingly require custom sprite work for those to stick out. I think it'd have been worth it, imagine if instead of just random IPCs attacking you it'd have been advanced hivebots for ranged attacks, and really buff and dilapidated IPCs.

The only time I see regular IPCs being neat is when the cure went through, in which case you probably can squeeze in a few of them in the final stages to appear out of the woodworks and go 'Huh. Wuhuh. Why am I covered in guts?' - which was fun!

 

The last two things I will touch on was Konyang itself.

Point Verdant was beautifully well done and crafted, and I genuinely love the map... However, it was a little too well done. It was big, and it required so many ghostroles to fully staff that outside of events and very specific instances it felt empty, no one went down there, and it's size meant that the server took ages to load. I think if the scope for a shore leave map was scaled down a bit, more areas where the crew can hang out without ghostroles were added, and if they were limited to specific days; they'd see much more use. This is the odd case where in my opinion too much effort was put into it, and it ended up hurting it as a result.

As for Konyang itself- I hate it. I hate how much effort went into it and that none of my characters were able to see it because at any point in time it was a combat arena with 30-40+ infected IPCs. There was no reason to go down to Konyang other than to fight hivebots and rampants, and this is bad, because all it does it give security something to do, and they have more than plenty to do. If their A.I wasn't that aggressive, and had triggers as to when they attack, it would allow smaller teams to actually touch down and explore the area without intense combat.

I get that the danger down on Konyang was supposed to be representative of what is happening on the planet, and it did achieve this! By preventing people from exploring the place without an armed entourage. So a lot of effort that was put into the map just sorta went unseen- who encountered the trinarist memorial, and was able to have a quaint, cute moment with it? To my memory no one, which sucks, because it's a cool bit of lore no one got the chance to interact with.

 

That's all I can really think of right now. I might add more later if I'm reminded of it. None of my points are meant to start an argument, if you reply to them thinking I will argue back, you're an idiot.

They are feedback and nothing more. I speak only for myself here.

[Girdio]

I think my biggest piece of feedback, is concerning the events during this arc all falling on the same day of the week. I know it's not always practical for lore-devs to have events alternate between Saturdays or Sundays, but it would have been nice. I know a good chunk of players, myself included mentioned off-handily the fact that they simply weren't able to be involved in really any of the events because they had work on Saturdays, or other pre-existing matters that were set in stone on Saturdays, but not Sundays.

Hosting it on Sundays means that some players can't partake still, sure. Players who would have been able to play Saturday but not Sunday are left out - but that's why I feel like the events being switched between Saturdays and Sundays would have helped involve as many players as possible (and, yes I am aware that the events had a sizeable amount of players on).

I know one event was hosted on a Sunday, the repeated shore leave to let people explore P.V. from the previous week, but I'm not quite sure why this didn't set up a trend.

While I was able to cancel my weekly plans once to attend one of the events, I can see it leaving a bad taste for the players who simply didn't have that luxury and therefore didn't get to be involved with the events during the arc.

Furthermore, I agree with Shimmer that P.V. was a little bit TOO detailed. Outside of the two-shore leave events, and the very initial off-duty waves, P.V.  felt barren. There were simply TOO MANY things for the crew to interact with, which obviously adds flavor but means a lot of times people are walking around going "there's nothing here, I'm bored!".

Edited March 24 by Girdio
Cut down on the amount of words.

[OolongCow]

A big lesson that I really, really, really hope event organizers take to heart:

It feels really good to be empowered as a player. Prior events have had consistent problems with making most of the crew feel like helpless schmucks that will get curbstomped if they poke their heads up, by enemies who aren't even that strong, due to this perceived notion that players shouldn't be strong. This isn't even an issue of balance, per se. You could give everyone a bottom 50th percentile gun and put them up against an enemy with pulse rifles and Tup armor and they'd still be happier than if you gave them a wooden stick and told them to beat someone with a shorty and sec armor. It feels like ass to feel helpless, especially when that's at odds with the theming of the arc. Having to scrounge for every bullet and sharp stick we can find might make sense in a "stranded in the Lemurian sea" arc, but the SCC giving the crew non-functional cargo shuttles, empty batons, and only enough armor to protect a tenth of their attendees during a long-planned military operation on one of the most profitable and politically-relevant planets in human space is just head-scratching. The plant assault was genuinely one of the most impressive, "this felt really good to be a part of" events I've been to in the past year, whereas the warehouse assault genuinely had me question how my characters could even justify continuing to work for the SCC.

I can understand paring down the availability of weapons like the bullpups for future events, but a standard of okay armor and a decent non-energy firearm for combat-heavy events not taking place on the Horizon, and then adjusting the difficulty of enemies as needed, would be my personal preference going forward. I don't even really mind if events become more lopsided towards the crew's opposition until a good balance is found. It just feels better to be empowered with a weapon to defend yourself and contribute, even if you never fire it or it sucks.

[ChevyChevron]

I participated in two events during this arc, and both times, darkness was a major factor that inhibited me from fully enjoying the events. During high population rounds, it's very easy for the lighting system to get overwhelmed and break down; this results in tiles sometimes failing to light up at all when you step into them with a flashlight, or just take a very long time to update the lighting. Especially during the final event of the arc, I was part of the team that went underground, and it felt like we weren't able to contribute much to the event due to being unable to see anything. With darkness ahead of us, we could not navigate swiftly, and so everything was completed without us above ground.

While I understand the desire for atmospheric lighting; until such a time as we can get a more robust lighting system, I would recommend that future events rely more on dim lighting than actual darkness. Either that, or provide players with access to tools like NVGs that can eliminate the burden of the lighting system entirely.