[Official Event] Operation Pesticide

[Toaster]

Genocide?

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Olivia Sable

[Haste]

So I was correct when I was ree'ing in-game, claiming that the event was rigged. As @Goddess Astra pointed out, morale was low on the Zoners' side.

A portion of it. Alma was never going to die.

There's miscommunication here, that's for certain, and that's our bad. And other things, like the Transports, should perhaps have been handled as "Just do your best and if Liberty can't take any down, so be it". But it's hard to judge in the moment. Ultimately, this was all just a "for fun" combat-focused event. There were some stakes, and you will see them represented going forward. Plus we're working on a "part two" where we can hopefully avoid our "rookie mistakes".

Anyhow, let me try my best to explain why I believe the Zoners here, despite their in-game showing, shouldn't/can't be rewarded with an ultimate victory:

The event was a "free for all". Anyone could log any side. The Zoners are the clear underdog/good guys so they get a large showing. Okay. That's fine, and why it was set up that way. Nobody was surprised by this. But it does mean that the in-game state of affairs here isn't representative of the story side of things. That's a choice we made. But "in reality", of course, Liberty's forces would simply be impossible to overcome for a rag-tag band of Zoners.

The alternative as I see it would be to truly rig the in-game side of the event: restrict Zoner slots to 8, encourage Liberty to log in 40+ ships. So then you've got a more accurate depiction of what this conflict might look like. But would that be any fun for anyone involved? I don't personally think so.

There's a lot we could have done - and will try to do - better, but there will always be concessions we have to make to actually make the event fun to play.

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[Karst]

I think some of you have some pretty unrealistic expectations regarding the outcome of this event. The objective of the Zoner side was to ensure the escape of as many transports as possible, to me at least it was clear that an in-story military defeat of the invasion (as it ended up happening in game) wasn't on the table.

Yes, there are things that could have been communicated better, but it would have been naive to assume that the in-game fight could lead to the canon destruction of a Liberty Navy battleship taskforce.

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[Czechmate]

"Because they are underdogs" was it? The story just didn't make sense for Liberty - why it sort of made Liberty's players not care about it. You simply don't play Navy to shoot Zoners that have been nothing but friends over tens of thousand in game and forum interactions. It all feels very forced and out of character.

Where for zoners it was something "cool" to do, and for players new stuff to shoot on and shoot Liberty with.

[Kauket]

I don't know what game you've been playing, but Zoners are absolutely not friends of the Houses.


Have you even read their infocards from vanilla?

Here's a good one actually.

LIBERTY OUTLAWS AID TO CRIMINALS: BERING -- Liberty has long accused Zoners of what it called "aiding and abetting felonious criminal elements." In the new law signed yesterday by the President, any Zoners who sell goods or services to any criminal group have broken Liberty law and therefore are criminals themselves. Though Liberty said it would not pursue anyone in the Border Worlds for this new crime, criminals will be arrested if they enter Liberty space. A Zoner spokesman replied, "It's that type of foolishness that drove us away from that police state called Liberty."

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[Aingar]

"Because they are underdogs" was it? The story just didn't make sense for Liberty - why it sort of made Liberty's players not care about it. You simply don't play Navy to shoot Zoners that have been nothing but friends over tens of thousand in game and forum interactions. It all feels very forced and out of character.

Where for zoners it was something "cool" to do, and for players new stuff to shoot on and shoot Liberty with.

Zoners banded together and became a thing specifically to get away from Houses. To imply they'd be
If anything, there should be constant unrest on Erie ever since it became the protectorate because Liberty has stuck its nose into their affairs.

That's hardly out of character for the NPC factions. Your character of course can adopt a different view, but that doesn't mean the NPC faction as a whole would look at it that way.

Also this, straight out of Bethlehem
rumor

[Czechmate]

I mean I work with hard data - it wasn't very attractive to Navy and lawful players relative to zoners - a lot of them were actually on Zoner's side for this one. Insurgency isn't even beaten yet, a siege is about to happen Vs battle-hardened veterans and Liberty invents a lame false flag to invade a planet whose orbit and docking infrastructure it already controls mid-final phase of Insurgency siege?

We even drove the RP and organized Discord event but it's just not an attractive thing - the lawful OFs have ignored the RP altogether, LSF renounced it, and arb made a couple of posts.

The respawn rigged format meant it is basically from a Navy standpoint just a run-off-the-mill inconsequential whacky premise fun pew in the end.

[Czechmate]

Also I am still expecting that despite this event this whole story line will come to the extremely predictable endgame of a more independent Pennsylvania inevitably given the people behind it - just feels like you can't really impact anything and it's all predetermined as a player.

[LuckyOne]

I missed this one due to some schedule issues so I only have second hand experiences to rely upon, but from afar this looks like another "betrayal" by the devs.

Yes, I understand it's hard to account for player interest, especially in an open format like this, but some form of balance can always be made before the events' start.

The alternative as I see it would be to truly rig the in-game side of the event: restrict Zoner slots to 8, encourage Liberty to log in 40+ ships. So then you've got a more accurate depiction of what this conflict might look like. But would that be any fun for anyone involved? I don't personally think so.

There's a lot we could have done - and will try to do - better, but there will always be concessions we have to make to actually make the event fun to play.

Maybe it wouldn't have been fun, but it would have been honest, at least. I am always in favour of games offering asymmetric balance. Fun is subjective, otherwise nobody would consider videogames like Dark Souls fun.

You could offer asymmetric balance in other ways too, e.g. only allowing opposing sides to dock on bases that are differently spaced from the area of combat operations. That way you can essentially control the "trickle" of reinforcements during a respawn combat event. Or allowing Navy to field multiple Battleships while the Zoners only get Cruisers and smaller crafts.

Besides, couldn't the Alma have been retconned as heavily damaged instead of destroyed and then the solar just moved to Norfolk?

Robbing people of what they considered a hard-earned victory against the might of the Liberty Navy is not good for the morale and future attendance of such Story Events.

[Arne]

Event was nice, despite the chaos I enjoyed it.
However, there was one thing that bothered me. Zoners couldn't destroy the Liberty Flagship. Either it was invisible, or "cloacked" last minute. That's imo just some cheap metagaming with predestined outcome. A lore event is only useful if people can determine the outcome. If it was predetermined, why should be care about it? If this was some community event, i could live with it, but this outcome is cannonised.

That said, I enjoyed caring about the objectives and you made it possible for 100 people to log ingame after a long time.
TLDR: Keep those events coming, but make it possible for folks to determine the outcome. Even if it's unexpected. (within realism)