Discovery Freelancer is one beauty of a game. Much to discovery, much to roleplay, much to fight. The latter tends to cause drama very, very often, and it is usually what people complain about in feedback threads. "Why did you throw in a gunboat in a snub fight? Do you only log capitals? Why did you go 3 vs 1 against me?" We all know the casual drama, and how it has literally zero meaning a few days later. However, every so often people wish to get fair fights, outside of Connecticut. And thus, people create PvP events. Organized battles with set amounts of participants, ship class, registered people and location. So everything will be kept easy and fair. Right?
No, not at all. Many things can go wrong. It is impossible to foresee what will go wrong. However, the good thing about PvP events is simply the fact you can limit the damage to a certain degree. First of all, keep in mind the following things:
- Something will always go wrong.
- You will never be able to satisfy all people.
- If something goes wrong, it is very likely people will be mad at you, even if there was nothing you could have done about it.
- Idiocracy is unlimited.
Think twice about wanting to create a PvP event. It is stressing. People tend to be unable to read write-ups. People tend to ask for very subjectively advantageous alterations. People tend to ask dumb questions. It will make you facepalm, cringe, sigh, leave the computer for a few moments, laugh, angry, sad, throw tantrums and in very few situations, happy, satisfied, jovial. On the internet, responsibility always is a bad thing.
Still here? Good! Then let's have a look at what we do!
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What? Why? Where? When? Who?
What?
A PvP-Event. When describing anything, you do the opposite of what you do when having sex: You go from rough to detail. What happens? A fight. Group A vs Group B. Cool!
Why?
You need to make sure all partaking groups have a good reason to be where they are. It's an RP server, and I'll be the first person to slap you with a brick if you send Corsairs to the Taus, Bretonia to the Omicrons or Gaians to the Dyson Sphere. Wrap your event up in as much and logical RP as possible! Events usually stand for higher standards - if you want it or not, people expect that. So try to keep it within the realm of logic and strategy. Look at what factions are hostile to each other, who are allied and could assist each other. Bretonia and Liberty against Gallia? Works, but look at the ZoIs. Liberty Navy can come to New London (technically) but not to Omega-3 or the Taus. So make sure the ZoIs of all partaking factions overlap in the system you want to have the fight. Which leads us to the next step.
Where?
When choosing the exact location of the fight, ask yourself "What could possibly go wrong?" - and then try and find every possible irk and quirk about the location you want to use. Does it contain a base or weapon platforms? Basehugging is bad. Does the area have dangerous NPC spawns like gunboats or high level NPCs? Not good. Does the area have asteroids or nebulae? Depending on what ships you want people to use, asteroids could be really annoying. Battleships and asteroids are a bad combination. However, they are a tactical environmental aspect. Make sure that the battlefield contains half of an asteroid field AT MAX and never more! Let people decide if they want their capitals in an asteroid field or in open space.
Nebulae are usually okay, but keep their attributes in mind. First of all, they decrease the visual range usually massively, so you will have a bad time observing the fight. For capitals, fights in nebulae are pretty interesting, though. Aiming becomes pretty challenging when you can only see the silhouette in a certain distance. Also, many nebulae have radiation zones. Those are usually less of a problem but will be once your shields are down! Battleships of course have less of a problem about that than snubs. You could also place a battle near a minefield or area with explosive gas pockets. That definitely will piss of the snubs.
Also very important: Never organize a battle close to areas with high traffic. You don't want unregistered people to come by and join the fight. Never near trade lanes, never near bases. Always try to place the battlefield in an area where usually nothing interesting is to find. And don't hesitate to use the very edge of a system, if necessary. The participants won't really mind it.
When?
If you want many people to partake, look at the peak times, which are usually between 18 UTC and 22 UTC. A great amount of people of the community lives in Europe. The server is located there, and Freelancer used to have a very good localisation management. For example, thanks to the german version of Freelancer, this community has many german people, as the german voice acting was done very, very well. But the amount of spanish, french, slavs, dutch and other european ethnicities is big, while it decreases with each time zone away from UTC. Thus, you'll rather rarely have americans or people from beyond the Caucasus being able to play during peak times. Bad for them, bad for us, but there is only so much we can do about it.
When planning an event, also keep in mind when people have exams and holidays. Our community consists of people in an age range from there-is-hair-growing-in-weird-places to the-only-hair-I-have-is-growing-out-of-my-moles. The former have exams, the latter have family or work or both. Thus you won't have many people joining during the week but mostly on Friday or Saturday. And even then there is no garant for them joining.
In any case, don't expect everyone who signed up to actually come. People are not reliable, as this is just a game. Don't have high expectations on them. Remember what I wrote in the very first part of this tutorial.
Oh, and have a dick, don't be one. Make sure no other player event is scheduled for the day.
Who?
And here the entire thing will get even more complicated. The idea of an organized fight is to make the battle as balanced as possible, so both sides have fun. It will never - NEVER - be perfect. But the more you try, the closer you get to it. The idea to ensure that is to make the battle based on slots for certain ship types. Good idea? Yes, but like anything else, it is only reliable to a certain degree. Keep that in mind, nothing will work out perfectly. There will definitely be the need of rebalancing the ships on-spot ingame before the fight, simply because people are not reliable. People will either sign off one hour before the event starts, even later or don't show up without telling anyone, others will offer to come by to jump in, others will come late and just jump in because they have signed up while someone else already took their place. People rarely manage to regulate themselves. So what can be done about that?
- Make sure both teams have a reliable leader who will keep an eye on their people and who can keep contact with you. In an ideal world, the leaders are in a group ingame with their people while being on teamspeak with you until the battle starts, so you can talk/write about the current numbers and ship classes and balance it. TeamSpeak is usually a very nice thing to have, because when you're talking with people directly, they tend to be less of an asshole than via text communication. Personal approach is always the best. Also, while you are likely to be stressed by the situation, try always to remain friendly and patient. It's just a game. If people can't man up for a few minutes, don't give a damn about it. You tried. You already did more than them to contribute to the community
- Make sure nobody starts the fight without both groups being ready.If people are missing, wait five minutes, maybe ten at max. Never longer! Your own people will turn impatient and maybe have other plans for the evening, so don't let them wait too long just because some people aren't reliable. Don't make them suffer for other people. Golden rule is always: First come, first serve. If you come too late, it's your very own fault and problem. You mad? There will always be another event.
- Make sure the battles are balanced in terms of ship classes. What you want to avoid is people getting outclassed, so NEVER have Battleships fight against Cruisers and Battlecruisers. In the current version, Battleships are the weakest link, while Battlecruisers are the most overpowered ships of them all. Battleships are slow, gigantic and very easy to hit while they can't dodge anything that comes from a distance of 2k or less - light battleships might be able to in a few cases. Battleships are currently only good against other battleships, PoBs or as mobile base-hugging platform. Everything smaller than a battleship has thrusters, a better shape for dodging or is simply too small to be hit if used smart. Battlecruisers however have Light Mortars and Pulses which are enough to slowly zerg down battleships from a 2k distance while still being fast and small enough to dodge most shots and strong enough to take a few hits of battleship primaries. They are also pretty deadly against gunboats as they are only a little bit slower and have enough shield power to survive snub-swarms while being able to one-shot them effectively. Battleships however can really only rely on lucky shots with heavy mortars, buttcloaking - which only works on entrance - or having a razor equipped to at least get rid of snubs. However, people will usually be rather mad about battleships with anti-snub loadout. That is how the community is.
So when involving battlecruisers, make sure there are enough ships to actually counter the battlecruiser. Bombers, other cruisers, cloaked heavy battleships. Or just be smart and don't involve battlecruisers in mixed fights. If people want them so bad, make cruiser/battlecruiser-only fights. Otherwise, try to keep the ship classes and their counters very balanced.
Also, in mixed fights, allow certain ship types to leave the battle if their counters are gone. If you have a fight with battleships and snubs, the battleships have nothing to do once they got rid of each other. Allow the battleships to move out, let the snubs have fun with each other. Otherwise you'll have the snubs cry about being killed by the battleships. It's just not worth it.
Very, very important is to ensure the teams are skill-wise mixed up. If you're around for a few months, you know what people spend a living in Connecticut. For example, if Wesker and Vasko are in the same team, make sure Haste and Yber are on the other team. The benefit of organizing those battles is the fact that you are expected to balance it, so do it. Usually the PvP aces are cool with each other. They both enjoy flying with and against each other. Approach them friendly and they surely won't mind fighting against each other, because somewhere even PvP whores have a heart. Somewhere hidden behind the Wyrms and Archangels and Dulzians and Magma Hammers and Debs.
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Checklist
What?
- Snub-based fight?
- Mixed fight?
- capital fight?
Why?
- Does the scenario make sense RP-wise?
- Do all partaking factions have ZoI in the area?
Where?
- Snub-fight: Open space, asteroid field, low-rad nebula
- Mixed fight: Mixed environments for tactical uses
- Cap-fight: Open space, nebula, no asteroid fields
- Are dangerous NPCs around?
- Are any bases or other hug-objects around?
- Is the area far enough away from populated space to prevent random joiners?
- Can all participants easily access the area?
When?
- Friday or Saturday?
- Peak time?
- Exams or holidays?
- Other scheduled events on that day?
Who?
- Are enough counters possible?
- Are the PvP whores separated and fighting each other?
- Did enough people sign up?
- Do you have team leaders?
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Tips
When creating a write-up, for gods sake, use pictures to have even the dumbest people understand what is happening. Pictures usually indicate effort in what you did, and pictures have more impact than words. Keep the write-up short, people usually don't read most of it. Use a strong color to mark important lines. Make sure the pictures use strong colors to mark the important things and use weak colors for less important things.
For the registration, use a form. Let people give you the definite name of their ship, the ship class, have them write something to make sure they read the rules. 33% of all registry posts are not helpful because they either lack important information for you to plan the event or contain "I don't know if I'll make it" in a thousand variations and excuses. The more you force people to use the form, the less stupidity you are confronted with. That is important as the tendency to go apeshit yourself will increase with every non-informative post in the thread.
Create a roster for your event and update it as often as you can, both on the front page and after every time someone registers. Do allow people to register for already used slots as a reserve. Before the event starts, the best thing to ensure the right people are coming is to post the final version of the roster. And NEVER let people remote-apply for someone. Each of you has a forum account, you can post for yourselves.
Even then people will surprise you with a lack of understanding or the pure willingness to fuck up your event. Keep calm, have a pillow around, to yell into it. Keep in mind: Suffocating other people with a pillow is fun for a few seconds and then it's just illegal.
Try to enjoy stuff. Even when your forehead could be used to take fingerprints, lean back, watch people blowing up each other, laugh, try to be positive.Keep smiling even when you feel your brain facepalming the inner side of your forehead. To a certain degree, creating events is fun and nothing is more satisfying than having people kudos each other for the fight. It can be fun for people. If that happens, that is the best reward you can get.
About rewards, by the way: Don't give rewards for fighting events. People tend to use all means to get rewards or preventing someone else from receiving one. People don't need a reward for PvP events. They log in, shjote people and get blues or get blued. Their reward is fun or experience. That is also what you get.
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Compressed knowledge!
I wrote this tutorial based on my experiences regard event planning and execution. I did it many times, and in very rare situations all participants were happy. Dealing with this community is hard, so you really need to take a bit of distance from people when creating events. People don't think, people cry, people will be mad at you for things you shouldn't be blamed for. Don't take it personal. They usually don't think when they vent out their anger. That's how all feedback drama works. Try it once and see if you can handle the stress and echo. If not, just go ahead with your normal stuff. It just happens to be difficult. It's however not your fault in most cases. That's the most important thing you need to keep in mind. It's the people who act stupid.
If you want some examples on event creation in the past and their execution, take a look at the following links. Learn and adapt from the mistages of earlier stages!
07-13-2017, 07:45 PM, (This post was last modified: 07-13-2017, 07:54 PM by sasapinjic.
Edit Reason: Wanted to make joke then changed mind, this is no flood to do it here.
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Operation Hidden Giant - Admin-controlled PvP-Event
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