Hi, been a while since I was last on the forum, lol.
I’m bringing this up mainly due to a conversation I had with a few people in game regarding bringing back live events (which was also previously known as weekly events). To my understanding it has been changed to make it more player friendly to those able to get event tokens and that it doesn’t clash with time zones preventing some people from attending what was the weekly event and getting them… which is fine and completely understandable.
However, because of this, it has caused a lot of arguably one of the most fun events (in my opinion) such as Icebreaker, Capture the Flag, Stadium, Hide and Seek etc. to be removed as it would be impossible to implement events like that with this new system which is a shame. Given the feedback of the people spoken to about this, they seem to agree also. Also, this would give us an excuse to use functions and maps like the Capture the Flag building which has been left to gather dust for… a long time!
My idea is to bring back ‘Live’ Events around once a month so we can bundle up and play events we can’t currently such as the ones I listed above. In doing this I would hope that there would be a flux of online players even if it was for that one day/night during the event, and give us something different and updated to do as the current weekly event rotation has been the same for quite a while. It would also be nice to be able to do something as a community or group again as opposed to quickly going to the events hub and rushing whatever weekly event is on currently. The distribution of Tokens would work previously with participation Tokens, and Tokens to those who finished in the Top 3, or whatever.
Also, personally 1 month would be a good chunk of time for the Staff team to organise or prepare for such a weekly event that required map work. Such as Icebreaker and changing the path to the other side of the map or even create a completely different event in general! im pushing it now
Obviously with it being the Christmas period activity I imagine from both Staff and Players are likely to decrease / with the Staff team possibly already being busy as it is, it was just something I wanted to bring up and suggest for a possible future thing going forward. And also if I don’t suggest this now I’ll forget. :>
What do you think? Appreciate any feedback or suggestions from yourselves of course!
As much as I’d like to see more live events to shake things up and kinda miss them being more common
I might be wrong but I just wanna say I don’t think they were “removed” per say “because” of the week long setup??? Sure it took off the pressure of staff being expected to host events, so of course that means we wouldn’t see them much anymore if staff is putting their time in other things, their lives, or just resting. But we’ve had dodgeball and an icebreaker since the week longs were implemented.
It’s probably more a matter of them being demanding on staff’s time, and they have to be planned ahead of time so they can be announced. So that people know they’re going to happen instead. Who knows what goes on behind the scenes, and their schedules might not much up. Someone has to map icebreaker, Stadium is very long and usually takes more than one staff present (and I think might require a dev? Not sure), and Dodgeball (And hide and seek… which I personally hate but not gonna get into that) is naturally best with at least like 3 staff members available.
I can’t speak for staff, but it’s possible some of them have thought about it and it just hasn’t been able to be done. Maybe though, if people are showing interest, they would try to work it in sometimes. Probably heavily depends on how available multiple staff can be at an arranged time.
But we’ve had dodgeball and an icebreaker since the week longs were implemented.
I actually never knew that. I can’t imagine it’s something that happens often though? Unless it was just a fun community get together instead of dishing out tokens. Unsure. Thanks for telling me.
It’s probably more a matter of them being demanding on staff’s time, and they have to be planned ahead of time so they can be announced.
Now this is the one factor I’ve tried to take into consideration as it is of course down to the availability of the staff team. Using 1 month was merely an example - would realistically be whenever they were free and could help host it. Especially with it being Christmas also, at this very moment of time it wouldn’t be realistic to make happen until as we’ve mentioned, more staff become available.
Someone has to map icebreaker, Stadium is very long and usually takes more than one staff present
Hopefully Icebreaker maps wouldn’t hopefully take a substantial amount of their time as it really is just a case of adding warp tiles, but of course it would need tested and whatnot. I kinda forgot about how long Stadium can be - unless they tried and think of ways to change it ever so slightly to prevent it taking hours on end because I do recall it sometimes taking that long.
Also I completely forgot about Dodgeball and I’m not proud of myself for that.
hello, sorta not really newer player here? i joined the game about 4 years ago and after the weeklong where implemented, and i actually rember live events being hosted fairly frequently for my experience,
i was in like 8 dodgeball events, 2 icebreakers, 3 stadiums, a confusion race, a lot of auctions, 1 or 2 tell the picture thingy which i don’t rember the name off.
it seems to be like a thing of the last 2 years that they kinda stopped, which i rember them saying it was due not having the time to do so anymore
It’s already been mentioned that live events haven’t been cancelled, they’re just rare, so I’m not gonna beat that horse. As for why they’re rarer, there are two reasons.
The first reason, as already mentioned, is staff strain. You start with having a minimum number of staff just to run the event. Then, you add on the number of staff you need to moderate an event with increased numbers and a player base more riled up than usual. Finally you finish it off by locking all of the staff in to stay for that event and confirm their participation days, weeks, even a month in advance. It’s ofc been done many times before, but thought it was worth emphasizing that live events, the ones done right at least, aren’t trivial to run
The second reason is the issue of time zone differences mixed with a limited player base. There’s. Certain portion of the player base that is in a time zone so drastically different than the main player base that they end up almost entirely unable to participate in live events. This isn’t really a problem that can be solved with the way the game is, since there aren’t enough staff to likely ever host a second live event for those that cannot attend the first one, the weekly event staying up alongside the live event would just give those who attend the live one even more tokens to rouse the complaints of the people who can’t make it, and a tokenless live event likely wouldn’t bring enough people to make it worth it. To make matters worse, a solid number of the complaints would end up extremely personal, mean spirited and vitriolic, which ends up making the topic of live events a lot more contentious than it would be otherwise.
Personally I’d love to see live events back, especially auction and icebreakers since they’re my favorites, but I definitely see why they might be a lot less frequent than I’d like them to be.
it seems to be like a thing of the last 2 years that they kinda stopped, which i rember them saying it was due not having the time to do so anymore
That makes sense. My activity on this game is so back and forth I can’t even remember most of what happened before and after the new system was implemented. Still though; two years is a while.
The first reason, as already mentioned, is staff strain. You start with having a minimum number of staff just to run the event. Then, you add on the number of staff you need to moderate an event with increased numbers and a player base more riled up than usual. Finally you finish it off by locking all of the staff in to stay for that event and confirm their participation days, weeks, even a month in advance. It’s ofc been done many times before, but thought it was worth emphasizing that live events, the ones done right at least, aren’t trivial to run
Staff strain is obviously the biggest concern regarding this. But I think the major difference is that it was every weekend they had to host a Weekly Event so naturally you could understand and probably expect complications and struggles keeping up with all that. But a month and 7 days are quite significant - I like to think that’s enough time to plan things and whatnot (and obviously to know if it can happen on their personal lives too of course) but that’s just me I can’t speak for the staff team on what it is they do both in and out of the game.
The second reason is the issue of time zone differences mixed with a limited player base. There’s. Certain portion of the player base that is in a time zone so drastically different than the main player base that they end up almost entirely unable to participate in live events
Again that’s up there with the staff strain struggle in terms of complications. This was also something that contributed to the new system that we have now with the events. The only thing I can think on top of my head is that to change the time each time a live event was happening in hopes those that missed it can attend but I can see that being a back and forth complaint from both ends. Maybe just bite the bullet and accept there’s going to be possible complaints? It’s neither persons fault in the end anyway.
To make matters worse, a solid number of the complaints would end up extremely personal, mean spirited and vitriolic, which ends up making the topic of live events a lot more contentious than it would be otherwise.
If people are going to do that then that’s them failing to understand that it isn’t anybody’s fault and that it’s just unfortunate. There’s no way to make this work for every single player but at least there would be something for the community to do even if it isn’t specific people. Despite understanding the frustration, you have to see it from both sides of the coin.
Considering full perm content isn’t, currently, an often thing at the moment in the game, I think it would be worth trying to at least have something for people to look forward to. That’s my view on it anyways.
The primary reason we moved to the weeklong events was logistical; when there’s enough players online, we simply can’t run some events like dodgeball and capture the flag without the server running into issues. This makes it hard to plan these events in advance, particularly when the attendance can be very unpredictable; we might be getting 70 players or 120 and those have two very different implications. Time zones and being fairer to others were certainly other considerations, but at the end of it we just wanted a way to continue running events so that people can get access to these tokens.
Speaking for all the staff, we’d love to see live events make a big comeback onto the game. The unfortunate reality at this point is that an event like dodgeball takes multiple hours to set up and run and while a single staff member can do that alone, it’s simply more enjoyable for everyone when other staff are around. Unfortunately at that point, it’s multiple hours spent on events by many staff members and that’s time for PMU where they can’t be working on new content for the game. Adding onto that, breakers and other events like riddle race require even more time as they require mapping and more advanced preparation.
We can certainly try to run them a little more often but ultimately we’ll have to triage resources as best as we can to ensure we’re not taking too much away from other sectors.
This I can understand. Again when making this suggestion I didn’t even remember Dodgeball was a thing or the possible server issues we could encounter if there was a surge of players in one area during the event.
I do appreciate that yourselves are open to the possibility of it. Even if it was to see how it goes, how many players came online during it, etc. Would just be good to see return one way or another. Ultimately it would be up to you guys to see what can be done or whatnot. Though I appreciate that especially now I imagine the staff are very busy both in and out of PMU.
We certainly are busy but we also signed up for this role knowing what it would entail haha.
I think it’s great to have threads like this as reminders too when we haven’t done something for a while. Live events were amazing to give life to PMU and its community and I certainly get the drive to want them again.