[Ambrosius]

Well I generally don't like to whine, but I'm curious about opinions on this story arc. It seems to me to be one of the worst botch-jobs we've had.

- This started on 104.11.17 (!!!) when there was a break-out from TriPont of a previously-inknown "criminal" named Courier, aided by another nefarious type named "Septio."

- Septio's ship was intercepted an destroyed by Spork in January. Septio is interrogated by Quantar authorities.

- Quantar authorities announce that a virus has been released on Perasca as they are viewing "demands" from Letifer's agent "Courier."

- Hyperial jumps into the fray, offering aid, and Samsum -- a company that has no apparent bacground in genetic engineering or biomedical research -- sudenly is at the center of things. Years of Hyp/Quan conflict are cast aside as Quants rush to Hyperial to aid the Samsum effort.

- Samsum successfully tests it's virus cure and then bids out the production to one company from each faction, who begin fighting and squabbling.

- Meanwhile, millions are infected (are they?), but there's very little news or outcry, or ANYTHING.

- Meanwhile the "regular" FM portions of the arc are causing rare, vital commods to be consumed at an alarming rate.

- There are varying kinds of combination hauling/fighting RP events. Some go well, some are very screwed up.

- One faction (Oct) basically ignores its FM (but helps a rival faction).

- Then the driving force in the Sol FM basically "gives up."

. . . and here we are SIX MONTHS from the beginning of the arc and nothing has been resolved, the virus is rampant, most have forgotten how it all started and everyone is bored to tears.

I'll apologize to GM_K in advance, because I think he generally tries to do the right thing, and he has done a nice job in the past . . . but this thing has been a humongous cluter-fock.

What does everyone else think?

[QrazyKermi]

I thought it started out okay. I think some less-than-perfect choices were made to ensure a reason for all factions to persue their own success over others, but that didn't work as planned. But you have to remember that it's being orchestrated by a part-time GM. I think what you got was about as good as you could expect, given the circumstances.

Having said that, the one thing that seems to be consistent (in more ways than one) is that Themis GM's don't really learn from past mistakes. Why any GM wouldn't consult with spork before initiating ANY RP story line is beyond me

PS: I believe the FM ticks were set based on the expectation of a more engaging audience. It should have been adjusted a while back.

[GrimGriz]

You can't really expect storylines from part-part-time GMs.
1 time events, etc. part-part-time works.

I still think the best way to handle Jumpgate would be for the GMs to validate player RP (like removing aman pr for the ff blockade)

[WileE]

That is funny about consulting spork. That was one of the things that was high on my priority list when I was there. Something I don't think Themis will ever get is that Jumpgate is not a point-and-click adventure game...story arcs need to move along in a timely fashion...you can always revisit points here and there to tie several smaller ones together, but you have to keep moving forward.

If only I didn't drink that night....ahhh what could have been.

[spork]

Originally Posted by QrazyKermi

PS: I believe the FM ticks were set based on the expectation of a more engaging audience. It should have been adjusted a while back.

Actually, at .01% per 50, the FM ticks were set so that a really, really dedicated faction could almost keep up if they lost most events (which started out at 5-8% each for the winner). That's what happened with Quantar. Recently, events have gone up by a lot because it seems that GM_K has gotten the message that it's dragged on way too long.

We've had really interesting server demographics for this type of FM-event scored story-arc:

• Octs have had a few pvpers and a few non-pvpers, and as always they ignored their FM (a trend that dates back to beta). They
  allied with the Sols. For a while, they seemed to be taking turns advancing each other's cause, but when Pulchra snuck a spy into T&P, the Sols stopped helping the Octs.
• The Quants have had a lot of non-pvpers working the FM and dying in the FM events. Several times, I was the only experienced pvper for Quantar. We have died an amazingly lot (especially the night in Aman where our job was just to keep the Sols busy in Aman and not to kill them), but we have gotten a few tows docked and a couple safely back to Cromforge. Then the Sols got burned out and decided to help us win.
• The Sols have had plenty of non-pvpers and pvpers for the events. They probably could have won had they continued, and had Quant pvp numbers stayed low. However, they didn't like the latest round of events (T&P stations opened by spies) and felt that they got cheated when a second station was opened allowing Quants to get some items out while they were busy guarding what they thought was the only open station. Though they have a good point in that they got screwed, we also have been screwed several times in the event series (duplicate Pu1chras anyone?). Plus, allied with the Octs, they had access to twice the information and more than twice the pilots we had. The numbers factor makes it pretty tough on GM_K to create balanced events. Plus, we can presume that since OPL and T&P's storehouses have been opened and looted, that Cromforge is next.
  
  I think in general, the Sols came to the realization that the FM war is just about factional pride (plus some money they may have gambled on T&P winning), and ultimately they would rather spend their resources on the improving the economy.

As for the other stuff Ambro talked about...yeah I disliked Samsun's involvement. A lot.

Regarding vital commods being eaten at alarming rates, not many Synth/Elex/RF/Expl missions ever got run for Quantar. Or if they did, the broker only gave you like 1-5 units, so not that much was used up. But that "oh crap I got another synth mission" factor did add to the frustration a lot. Also remember that these event series was preceded by destruction of a lot of gear (and therefore commods to rebuild it) by flux and corporation RP events. So cleaning out the excess was intentional. However it's dragged on so long that the econ players have not had a chance to keep up (because they've been FMing). So the econ is in the crapper.


Regarding keeping things moving so slowly...it is very easy to get bogged down with running a lot of event missions. You always think up new cool mission ideas you would like to try. Then add in vacation, sickness, WoW, holidays, mission repeats (twice now we've had to extend mission sets by a couple of days due to unforseeable things like the server going down or GM_K losing his internet) and before you know it, your story arc has quadrupled in length.

Obviously as an events guys, you want to both keep people busy and keep them interested. Unless you have a stream of new ideas, it would be easy to get stuck in a rut on 1 good idea. Anyone remember the GVB Blue War? That thing started out great, but dragged on for months and was followed instantly by similar Quant/Sol and Oct/Quant wars. Frankly, I would think it would be difficult to conduct a storyarc in a week or 2 and still have it feel like it has any real meaning (the Achilles heel of all storyarcs...they are all meaningless to day to day Jumpgate play).

As to the lack of news...if the virus was as deadly and contageous as it was made out to be, by this point everyone would be dead. GM_K can't really do that, so there's not much else that can be said while we wait for the never ending FM to finish. Obviously the fix for this is to speed up the FM, both missions and events.

[Ambrosius]

Well my main point (that I hear echoed here) is that you REALLY have to focus and keep things in smaller packages. You need to have continuity, and you have to have an escape rouyte of the arc really starts to bomb.

If you have "big" story ideas, do it in smaller arcs . . . you can always leave a loose end to tie into a later story arc.

The other thing that bothers me is that other things just disappear. Infestations, sent attacks . . . why did they stop?

[spork]

Infests and sents stopped because pilots began to tire of them (IMO), and GM_K can probably only reasonably keep 1 storyarc going at a time. Generally the flux have been infesting and doing random sent attacks forever. It's just the same old crap where a GM flies in an uber ship and fluxers and the odd board pvper try to gank it. Seems to me that GM_K got as sick of it as everyone else and has focused on the corporation mission/events which actually incorporate both tows and fighters.

GM_O brought flux back into the realm of interesting during his stint, but I don't think GM_K had the time to do 2 arcs (possibly not the desire to follow through with GM_O's new flux ideas) and preferred to focus on the corps.

[Radi]

Septio and Courier are kinda leftovers from the RP that I had going on with GMK during my time of being a merc. When I disbanded the squad, that RP got left hanging in the air. And partialy that is my fault. Gmk did only what I wanted. To play along. If you wanna blaim someone, I'm one the one you should.

[Sephiroth]

Well, the virus story line was something I suggested to GMK.

So I guess I'm partially at fault as well.

It was also my idea to use Samsun, which you guys all hate :P

[GrimGriz]

The real question is how should stuff be done? I mean, I like fence's stuff, but it all hinges on OOC bs. As in - that's not really an abbatis, it's a "Magical Whachamajoo' that let's you into the POS.

I think I'd like to see NPCs give squads and such real goals, such as shut down Alpaa production. Then the sol NPC could watch and say to the sols "there's increased quant activity, blah blah blah."

Then you get into the whole 'how does the NPC motivate the quants to do it, what do they gain?'

Then you get the second account people who spoil the 'figure out what they're doing' part.

I guess we just have to wait for Istvan's war system so that we can actually do enough naughty to another faction for them to want to stop us.

[Ambrosius]

@Radi and Sephiroth -- there was nothing wrong with Courier and Septio and the Letifer virus other than it dragged out way too long and had enormous gaps and non-sequiturs (like Samsum sudenly becoming a biomed research expert).

[spork]

Yes, it's Radi's fault that the FM has taken 2 months to get 60% done.

The choice to go with Samsun was poor because of the years of story development we've put into Quant/Hyp antagonism, one of my favorite things in Jumpgate. If you had to choose a Hyp only company, then I guess it was a better choice than PSI. But I would have rather seen the virus cure come from TRI, Aman, a multi-factional company, Oct, or Sol in that order. Or we should see Hyperial backstab us, which could still happen.

GG, I agree that Fence's stuff could use a boost in the "reality" department. But he's got no GM powers and no free/unlimited RPC accounts, so I cut him a little more slack.

Trying to motivate people to fight for your cause is a real challenge. We had a tough time getting BH/DDZ/JITWA guys to even log in and fight for the Fourth Tribe (back when we were all more active). And even in these FM events...GM_K is paying a ton of credits (I got 67mil for 335 units of Iridium), has pulled on the factionism strings, and has created events that include tows and fighters working together. But we still get very low turnout on all sides really (even the 10 Sols who show up isn't all that many).

As for doing things like stopping gear production, I've looked at that before. With so much farm money and the ability to strip things during off hours, any faction could cripple any production they wanted to now that production is so fragile. In the past, production was so robust that it took a massive effort to attack any production and relatively light effort to counteract it (FRG's eco war comes to mind). Plus, we have such interfactional dependancy for gear that I just don't see that as viable unless some 2nd class items became much more useable (which has happened somewhat with sz3 engines and sz2 shields).

As for what to do now? I think the FM event missions themselves have been fairly solid. There are several aspects of this that I have really liked such as using the FM as a score card and doing cargo related events. We just need to break the 6 month story arc up into quicker resolving slices.