So, let me pose some questions to our players, old and new(er) alike. I am looking to get some feedback:

1. If we arranged the occasional seasonal quest event, would you be tempted to come back for a day or two and play? Particularly if you knew other players were planning to do so?

2. What sort of seasonal events would you like to see? Feel free to suggest a particular set of quests (perhaps designed to recur annually, or easily adapted to do so.)

For instance:

Goblin and Orc horde expansion quest:
Set to coincide with the seasonal arrival of Goblins and last at least 7 days. Interested players (old returners/new players/bored players) email a staff member and are randomly assigned as part of the expanding horde (either an orc or a goblin), OR as part as the defenders of the realm (an elf or a wood-elf). Team orc burninates. Team elf has to try and keep the horde in check.

(Insert general stuff which we'd like to see from the staff during the week.)

3. When are you guys most likely to have free time to enjoy an event?

I'll read any responses below here. Please input what times of the year you are most inclined to play, or most likely to be involved in this sort of thing.

Good ideas will be considered and/or may be adapted and pitched to the staff. Please note- unique quests tend to be quite labor intensive in general as their level of complexity increases (especially unique code stuff.) There should also be a balance between "player driven" and "Imm driven" elements as both are necessary, ie: A fifteen stage Imm-driven quest which does not have any mention of where players would contribute to the fun is likely to be dismissed.

hey Raltevio - is anything upcoming in terms of seasonal quest stuff? I'd like to play something with some meaning behind it so I hope something is in the works.

Thanks.

I'll take a look at this, and cue something for Mud-Tober on my to do list.

I still have a handful of ongoing character quests to tackle too (you know who you are, if you are reading this.)

But yeah, I'll try to figure something out for you guys. I just need to consider it carefully to mitigate unintended consequences and people cheesing the event.

A well run role contest would be a bigger draw (but on the other hand, it's a lot more work)

1-10 January is a New Year holiday (ppl are mostly drunk), as well as 1-10 May (it's much around Victory Day, ppl are hyped up with wartime stories, so some epic battle quests would definitely be fitting :) ). Around these days Russian vets may invest a lot of time to play something quick and bloody.

I don't know if we're nearing even 10% of the playerbase though, most likely not.

Yeah, but quests are no fun when all the characters are in Empire. :)

NT

"The Great Drow Elf War of 2015.
A real drow elf war centered around elf and drow areas with sympathetic allies choosing sides. When one side has won, the dust settles and they go back to sullen hatred.

The Great Dwarf Duergar war of 2020. Same general principal. Cabals might join in but you might have outlander fighting each other on a very thin rp line. Same with battle.

Basicly good versus evil outside of cabal dogma.
No, no I have not taken into account mechanics or game balance at all :)
It would be interesting to see the cracks in cabals that might appear for a time.

I'm always a fan of drumming up a random scenario which (could) be fun, if players want to try it. If it fails and it's crap, well.. we know it didn't work as intended for the next time.

Ideally we want different fun things which can be set up and run twice yearly, or every four months.

A week long easter egg hunt for easter maybe.

Any of the scenarios you laid out might work for July, or August. Or maybe even Christmas.

Stuff like this would be something for people to look forward to, if run right and add some variation to the standard cabal wars.

The reality is, I already play when I am able to play. I am just rarely able to play. So no matter how much I like whatever you lay on, it won't make a difference as to whether I play.

For others, it might.

I could say I'm concerned that because I miss out on this stuff, my enemies get handed bonus imm exp (edges) or other rewards. However, I'll quite happily live with being disadvantaged if it helps to sustain or grow the playbase. So go for it!

I really like the sound of that orc/goblin thing you mentioned. However, if it should coincide with my playing time, I'll probably have to play my main anyway in order to avoid hording code burnimation. Not that I mind playing my main. It's just that if I felt freer to, I think I'd find your event fun.

There was semi-similar discussion recently with my brilliant idea by the way :)

http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=6&topic_id=58865

It sounds like that idea will result in a slew of brand new orc/elf characters. Some people will play them. Other people will play the characters they already have and just farm all the new elves and orcs for easy(ish) kills.

Who is playing what. Player skill overwhelmingly factors. Some of the vets who aren't currently playing could mop the floor with an orc, or an elf, if they had time and were so inclined.

an idea i'd like to see attempted is imm-arranged directional builds. meaning, take anywhere from 12 to 20 players, or more, and the immortals pick out the race/class and cabal. even out the cabals so it's balanced.

basically, play some early dungeonmaster'ing and get people pointed in a direction together.

i think it'd also work best if there were caps on how quickly the above could rank.

.. but in reality I think it would be really difficult to steer something like this to a desired outcome.

Let's say, for instance, that you are a top tier PKer and get paired with (for the sake of the argument) someone like Twist. If he was playing.

Your cabal would have quite a competitive advantage. I suspect we'd probably end up with people jumping ship from weaker cabals to stronger ones. We'd probably be semi-balanced for a few days and then see a reversion back to old cabal (im)balance.

I mean, I'm happy to try running something like that if we have overwhelming support but, practically I think it would be very tricky.

The reason I'd suggest orcs/goblins vs. uncaballed "defenders of the realm" is that it would be outside the scope of cabal wars. An additional (simplistic) goal, rather than "capture the flag" (cabal wars) could be temporarily introduced. For instance:

Give the orcs and goblins worn clan warbanners. Give the Defenders worn armbands. Make sure both sets of items are flagged to be indestructible. Let the teams war for a pre-designated amount of time (7 days, 14 days etc.) The winning team is the one who has the most items from the other side.

Note: this is just a "for example" idea. There might be some oversight here in the scenario I've laid out.

that's why i like it. it's intelligently distributed with appropriate boundaries

*edit to add - we're just raising our hand to say 'yes we want in' and then you pick the team.

As a one-off to gauge success, if there was popular support.

I've never done a quest like the one you mention. Where everybody puts their current characters on hold and plays something completely new, but only for a week.

Seems like one potential down side is that there's no possibility of "lasting benefit" because everybody is playing a temporary character and the gig is up at the end of the week.

People wouldn't be obligated to put their characters on hold. It would be voluntary.

A benefit of this sort of thing might be to give old players an impetus to play for a week (and temporarily boost our numbers) at a time when folks have free time to play.

Sort of like Amaranthe's (awesome) character quests, but I'd want to place a little more emphasis on people enjoying CF together for a short window of time before they go back to their busy lives.

I'd also like to place a little more emphasis on hands-off in terms of setting things up on the Imm-side. Keeping it simple, but fun, because those character quests must have taken days for Amaranthe to get set up. And honestly, I do not have her level of creativity, or that amount of time (right now).

I mean the one which you would take in Academy and that would take hundreds of hours to complete, going through all the areas, killing all kinds of things and finding some hidden areas. With top stages being only doable in a considerably large group. Like first stage would be in Academy and the last stages would be to kill Satan or something. With different rewards on the quest stages, and probably some +con in the end of it.

Like a main story quest in solo CRPG. This way you'd have something to do if there was nothing to do.

quite a huge amount of work. Code heavy and design heavy. It's a good idea, but I don't know if we could marshal enough resources to get it done.

between each other would make a nice start?

Currently you have to explore to find quests, but that way you would force people to explore by giving them quests. It would certainly work for me, as I'm a PK-oriented player who doesn't care to go to new areas if there's no apparent reason for that.

Like ending Simon's quest links you to Feanwyn adventurer or something like that, ending Docks sending you to Aldevari wolves and then to Udgaard mountains hunter. Something like that.

whereby a couple of NPCs would assist new players to find their way around places, and find quests.

In reality, when you do a break down of what it requires by race/class/level etc.

It gets very complicated. It's still something I'd like to work on, but it has been back-burnered for other less complex projects.

It also needs a willing coder, and while I (sort of) had one previously, that arrangement evaporated. I have not lobbied for one since, and I certainly won't be doing this without something substantial to bring to the table and eliminate the thought/design segment of the work.