Loved the event. A bit more guidance on the final decision would have been good. There was a lack of clarity on context and what the final choice actually meant -- regarding possible repercussions and outcomes. That seemed to drive a lot of the negativity and arguments -- agents on both sides leveling personal attacks at each other, often arguing points regarding imagined scenarios that had nothing to do with the choice as presented. Everything else was fantastic! (Minus the technical issues in the house.) Rin, the Green Agent was an amazingly good sport given the amount of feedback, often contradictory, often less-than-polite, they were getting at any time. o7
I think we could use guidelines on how field agents are expected to interact with the remote analysis team and vice-versa. It's really cool how the player base is allowed to self organize to decide how this communication will be most effective and I don't want to see that go away. However, I think there ought to be a procedure in place to allow players to decide how interaction will work (and what fallbacks will be in place, etc.) before an agent is deployed. That way, whatever is decided, something is decided. It'll help avoid confusion as communications bounce from one platform to another. It'll also help alleviate any frustrations from players who feel either ignored or confused (and developers who surely must feel time pressure when the pacing of the event isn't going according to plan) Otherwise, top marks from everyone involved from the dev team to Riningear to the players at home. The event was super fun and is something that helps set this sort of game apart from any other. Plus, it's not easy to be at work or have responsibilities the week before Christmas when everyone else is relaxing and preparing for long holiday breaks. So, in that regard, a big thanks to both A&S and Riningear for taking time out of their week to do this and make both the event and the game something special.
I have a few thoughts (!) Firstly - headline comment - it was overall - fantastic. Massive congrats to the A&S team and of course the intrepid Rin! But there are a few things that I think can be tweaked - and a couple of things that need changing. > Difficulty escalation - if you happen to be new to live events (and even TBW) it would probably be completely overwhelming if the first puzzles to solve are seriously difficult. I do not think events should be 'dumbed down' but if we want newer players to participate it has to be at least partly accessible > Timings - I am not sure the timing/flow of the events was quite right - we seemed to have long waits between things happening - obviously this could easily be due to sorting stuff behind the scenes (anyone got a banana for Rin?!! lol) > Liaison - not sure what was going on with this - there was some sort of vote and someone was picked - but it ended up with Rin updating dispatch mostly anyway > Docs/Info/Pins - discord is a chat program. full stop. it shouldn't be used to store knowledge - the pins rapidly became a mess, there seemed to be some issues over exactly who was updating what - this affected both the doc and wiki. This info really should just have been posted to the forum (or a pre-determined doc) and organised later > The poll - I will be kind and say the 'discussion' about the poll method was a mess. There was no need for players to decide how to run the poll - it was a needless bit of admin - it should have just been dispatch saying 'there is a poll on the forum please vote' > Liaison / dispatch / coordinator - the only real negative of the whole experience was - surprisingly - the community. It got unbelievably toxic. I would like to say a high percentage is passion - but there is a point where people need to take a step back. And that didn't happen - and it was very disappointing. Some of it even leached over to the forums. It WILL (and probably has) put people off live events. I know staff were stretched thin and its xmas - but there really needs to be a staff member in discord/forums all the time during events (whether they are in character or not) - in addition to having some extra mods to help out. A staff mod/liaison/coordinator would have made a massive difference Overall - loved it - when is the next one?
Overall, I think the live event was really good. I had a wonderful time even from Europe, where I could'nt stay up for all the event. Too bad their was some minor difficulties. The pros, mainly, were the story writing, it was pretty good. Whitechapel is of course an antagonist and it was hard to not be stresses by Jacob Miller's situation (I look forward to hear more from him !). Dispatch did a great job to give us hint while staying in character -and coherent-, while still responding to our mail. EDIT : Also loved the puzzles. Not to hard, not to easy, learned new things ! The cons, however, were the moderation of the chat. I was one of the people that actually thought that Leukocyte was a mole. But I could never agree with the harassement he suffered. Whe need temporary moderator, for the time of the event so this never happened. And so goes on in the voice channel where I heard some intolerable things. We are one of the best online community there is. Please, keep it that way. HOWEVER. I am NOT saying dylanmite did a bad job, actually, quite the contrary. Also, the wait it was, Liaison agent was a bad idea. From the start. Sending mails to Dispatch is part of the fun. However, I feellike such a role could be nice. Some liaison agent, veteran that already completed Season 1 and a Live Event, so they know what's going on, that can call either the Green Agent or Dispatch. But it's a great responsability, and they should be cautiously selected.
Hey! I'm legitimately a player, not just some hired shill, so I'll give my own feedback. I'm also finally home without obligations at a reasonable hour! The initial missions were certainly something. I think they were well-done, it's just that these sorts of things always take a little bit of time. That one "misread" was a bit unfortunate, but things happen... In regards to the house portion of the event, @Lexi_Meise had the best feedback post so far. I agree with all the suggestions of Op/LFF/Off-Topic/Screenshots chats. It would have been nice to have the off-topic chat to have my "what the hell are these shower panel buttons" tangent. Moderators would have also been nice. A lot of the Green Agent stuff, I think, seems to be stuff that the crew and I talked about after-the-fact, so I'll leave that for private discussions. The only other thing is, from personal experience, I dunno whether it was a "network" issue or a "hardware" issue for the question of the live stream. @codex-13, we should chat about it - it could be a video card issue, actually. But we'll chat. :O I'll publicly say now, it sounds like there were a lot of bumps in the road for everyone, but the team handled it SPECTACULARLY. Part of being a Green Agent, for the record, seems to be the mutual trust between the live player and the crew. They were able to maintain that trust, and they deserve massive praise for it; they also handled what I understand to be improvisations and mix-ups well. The event crew was just so incredibly impressive every step of the way, whether remote or on-site. The puzzles were particularly cool. I do feel like, as the on-site player, there was a lot we missed - but again, the crew adapted to it. The joke I made to one dev was, Jacob Miller got frustrated that we didn't work fast enough and woke me up at 5AM to get it rolling. I mean, the dude was probably in pain, so I wouldn't blame him. So, let's talk about players! There's a bit to say here. My feeling is that a lot of the tenseness of the chat is the mix of player types. For the new players, actually, I think it needs to be emphasized that sometimes, spectating is okay! I lack the wide knowledge of a lot of players, but I can typically do visual stuff and player coordination well (as the OYER email fiasco hopefully showed). And spectating can sometimes lead to someone having a little bit of off-beat knowledge! Or it can just be that you're there for fun. Real-time ARGs are super-exciting to watch, even if you accomplish nothing. I think some of the more intense players need to scale back the role-play and intense, hyper-focused ad-hominem mindsets, for the sake/goal of getting a live mission done and keeping chat inclusive. Like, yes, maybe a person is being way too nice to the hostage, but that doesn't mean they're a pansy, nor trying to get the team killed. A respect of decisions needs to be made; go let that affect your personas after the fact. (Go do some experiments in coffee pots. Like us old'ems used to.) And if someone IS being a little intense, don't be afraid to speak out, but please don't be an ass. I'll also just say that cross-platform communication in the Discord server should have been emphasized, between voice chat and text. It wasn't a huge issue, but there were negative redundancies and/or holes in knowledge. Maybe these sorts of issue are inevitable in a community like this! After all, TBW is a "permanent ARG," and while there are certainly ARG "chasers" that appear frequently at events like this, having a long-term base makes things different. And it's not really bad at all! I'm excited to join back in this community now that I realize that I can carve out the time, especially with NT4's development chugging along well. In regards to how puzzles were done! Here's some experience I had doing past TBW live events. I might post this elsewhere, because I think it's an extremely important concept, but this was a frequent issue in Tidalvortex and we can absolutely use it as an opportunity to change tactics in future live events. FOLLOW. THROUGH. ON. YOUR. PUZZLES. SHOW YOUR MATH. So! What kept happening is, even when the audio puzzles came out, one person would attempt it, get halfway through, and say it's gibberish. You don't know it's gibberish. We had a lot of "gibberish" words that ended up being answers, and the grey-circle one in particular almost got me left out in the cold. Literally. A real-life example would be when I was trying to do the office: row, column, book, letter - I kept trying different rows and methods, but I believed that I wasn't getting anything. What my mindset was at that point was: I can do this puzzle. I just need to find a word I, personally recognize out of it. But I didn't know "Cthugha" was a Lovecraftian reference. I don't read Lovecraft. (Sadly; though my brother recommended his works last week.) If I'd gotten that answer and shrugged, I would have stepped over the answer. Dispatch suggesting I just take a picture of each cabinet and send it to you guys ended up honestly saving us. What I'm saying is, do the work, then put the answer out there and ask if that means anything to anyone. If you absolutely can not get anything out of it, THEN you can move on. OVERALL. Considering it's been, what, a year since the last major live event? Longer since DARKAVALON? (RIP DIP) Despite the size of this post, I'd like to say things went really well for everyone. Trying to explain how cool everything was has been a challenge, because people keep asking me, "What's the coolest part?" I dunno, actually. Even as a Green Agent, there wasn't one moment that did it. I think it was hilarious when I spilled packing peanuts from a box that contained nothing (and vocally apologized to the devs), and actually, the whole 5AM fiasco was pretty both in the moment and in hindsight. Freaking out about the cameras, at first, was a hell of an experience. Interaction with all of you was a constant delight. Being in a "canonically haunted house" was neat. And holy cow, that house was GORGEOUS. I'm more than honored to not only have had that opportunity, but to be getting such good feedback being in that role. That means the world to me, because TBW, both the game/devs and the community, holds a special place in my heart and life. Again, I'll be sure to swing by more often. And maybe I'll skip two Green Agent opportunities and apply in the distant future. More than that, I'm thrilled about how Tidalvortex seems to have turned out at all steps and for many involved. The narrative, the missions, the house, the players overall, the stream - it was a fantastic return to TBW, for me and hopefully the community, and I'd like to thank A&S for the fantastic holiday gift. Cheers! o7
This is just a short post to let y'all know that YES I have been reading your messages- and taking every word to heart. The team has learned a lot about live event management (can you believe this was the first live event run by the current creative team?!) and we're looking forward to using all of this awesome feedback to help the next live event run more smoothly and be an even better experience for all players. Keep that feedback coming! And, of course- thank you guys so much for playing in our world and being as passionate about it as you are. The energy and enthusiasm of our community is a major driving force for me from a creative standpoint. Knowing that if I write something cool, y'all will flip out- it's such a strong incentive. I'm sure the other creatives feel similarly, but I can't speak for them. I hope all of you are enjoying a pleasant and RESTFUL holiday. Thank you so much for your passion!
This was my first live event and while frustrating as hell at times, I had a blast and eagerly look forward to more live events and to see how this affects TBW as whole. Thank you to the A&S team for putting on one hell of a good time for us and thank you to the other Agents for making it an truly enjoyable experience.!
It started out fun. I quit about a day after the first "small" clue was dropped. This wasn't anything to do with the mission itself, but the toxic community in Discord, discouraging people from actively participating, condescended their investigation routes and methods, and simply said "Well, you're doing it wrong, you're dumb for doing that, and you should stop and just wait until we tell you something more". This from "Sr." members on the discord, people I see frequently in these forums. Not people from A&S, but the 'pillars' of the community, you could say. Honestly, the experience completely put me off of TBW for the time being. I haven't played since the live event, not even to finish off Mother Russia, and I just barely started NT4 and Ahnyaro again, becuase I was looking forward to experiencing the live event, and was disappointed by the people that decided that their way of playing was far better than anyone else and none of us should "go rogue" and look into other possible information (even if it WAS a dead end, who cares if people look? Why call them out because they're "chasing gooses"?) I wasn't trying to direct the investigation at all, just doing my own little pieces of research until more clues were had, and it was disappointing that I was made to feel like I wasn't welcome because I wasn't falling in line with the group's mindset and the "rules" of a few "senior agents".
