Bring Back the Lith Days.

I know some of you are already jumping to respond to say hey, this will never happen, theyll never bring back the LET.  Well thats not what I am writing about, I am at the point, especially as a veteran, that it shouldn't matter if its a Main character running around, we have all etched our chapters into the matrix story.  

However, that being said, our resources, as a player base to run these events are limited. The reason we see little to no player events these days, is because essentually everything has been done.  We need some new avenues to be able to bring stories together, to make our own live events.  Yes, we do have prop items, rsi capture tools, pandora's boxes, etc., but they all have their own limiations.

Not saying we need rarebit running around in the background spawning things and such.  We just need the means to spawn things ourselves, or have some control of that.  I love the idea of the Runtime Bits.  Problem with those are its just accelerated.  We need the means spawn groups, exiles, tactical security, cyperites, zionites, machinists, .etc.

This is what I am proposing:

A lesig member, or a single player is chosen from each server, to have special tools.  A lesig member would be ideal to be able to work with OOC to be able to plan out these events.  That person would have special tools, such as a NPC spawn tool, and maybe an effects tool.  The effects tool, would allow for some of the special effects we have seen, from code bomb explosions, to maybe some of the Fog.  The main reason we didn't have items like this were because of how they could interfere in a live event, but thats not the case anymore.  However, the person who gets the item, needs to earn rarebits confidence, that it would not be abused.

This community is calling out for more things to do rather, than the new quests.  I've had several conversations of late about how people miss the old Lith Days, and how things worked back then.  What is the communitys thoughts on this, I want to know is it just me that thinks what we have now is not working?

I think what we have now is working because people are still playing.  There's always room for improvement though.

And the main flaw in giving 1 player the keys to the kingdom is favortism.  I know you said that they'd have to earn Rarebit's trust and confidence, but there are just too many variables for the devs to warrant doing that again.  They flirted with it earlier this year and it had kinks to work out. 

One solution to that is to go through an application process.  Send Rarebit a PM describing the nature and plot of your event, approximately when and where the event will take place, and why you need the spawn tools or effect tools so badly.  It's then up to Rarebit to approve or reject the application and email the tools to you.  But, a downside there is people calling favortism on Rarebit.  /shrug

I think all of us that remember the Lith days miss them to a degree, but we'd have to have some major changes or compromises before we can think about doing events on that grand a scale again.

I'm pretty sure this has been suggested before, and while I ain't sure if its been officialy debunked or anything I'm sure I remember somewhere Rarebit saying he was almost regretting putting the Runtime bits in due to the trouble they caused during live events. (don't quote me on that though)

I'm all for spawning tools personaly would really open up the player events into a whole new ground and we know they are possible as they were being developed for LESIG shortly before the 'New Approach'. A good way of making sure they are not used a lot is to simpy charge a lot for them (and by a lot I mean 200 mill each or something), only make them usable outside of Richland (solves the newbies problem) and make sure the NPC's are level-scalable.

ArchDuke wrote:

I think what we have now is working because people are still playing.  There's always room for improvement though.

Doesn't seem that way On Recursion these days.

I approve of Deffdog's idea, as long as I am the only person on Syntax to receive said item.

See how this idea won't really work? I really didn't want spawn tools to be given out to LESIG, god forbid an actual player. In your eyes it seems like a great way to enhance RP, but in my eyes I see it as a griefing tool.

some liasons where given spawn tools if I remember correctly so it is possible.

the application idea sounded nice, especially if they where one time use only sort of things and that they'd simply be given to you right before the event. but it is still a little iffy to give something like that to a player.

(Everyone's pointing out some really good pro's and con's.)

I miss LESIG and live events.

I'd like to add a rather optimistic and egalitarian vision.  Its just an idea; take it or leave it.  Arguably, the main flaws may be that allowing players to obtain live event items relies on the community as a whole acting to the best that each player's morality allows or the community dealing with the possible chaos such freedom affords.

Add vendors & contacts to award/sell/trade the live event pieces & main-character rsi-captures for substantial info and/or completion of a lengthy quest.  Live event items shouldn't be particularly easy to farm and collect.

Officially endorsed live events can still take place, but its time to turn the greater tools over to the players if official live events are truly extinct.  If people playing Dungeons and Dragons thirty years ago could act as quality storytellers and game-masters, let this generation prove their mettle.

Be warned that with great power comes great responsibility.  The only one to decide who is worthy of such access isn't Rarebit, or LESIG, its the player himself.  So, each person can and should ask him or herself, "Am I up to the task? Would I just to wear the Merovingian rsi-capture around Mara C to have a cool avatar in a chatroom? - which, hey, if I wanted to waste my info and time doing that I guess I could.  Or worse than just wasting my time and info - while in costume, would I debase myself, the leading character's likeness, and the Matrix franchise with indecent behavior and the worst humanity has to offer? Or would I live up to the promise of the Matrix and the game by successfully writing quality material and furthering the story?" 

Know thyself: If one doesn't think he's ready for it, then he probably isn't; If he doesn't think it would be worth his time to attend other people's events, then it probably isn't.  If a player should think that he is more qualified over any other, he should realize that there exists a handful of players that think that way about him too.

With all due respect to the dedicated team who volunteered their time, money, under anonymity and often times receiving little praise and much criticism for the fine job they did: each member of LESIG performed at a different level of role-playing ability, intelligence, and overall drive.  For each member of the official team, there existed a percentage of players that possessed greater aptitude, and a segment of the community with lesser aptitude.  As long as player events aren't considered official Matrix canon, there's really no need to take a step back and preference certain people over others.

Thanks for your time and patience.

I would go against getting RSI Captures of the Main Characters outside of Halloween.  To be honest they shouldn't be needed, plus it leaves the option to Rarebit to login as a main character and take part if he wishes.

While I'm not one who has ever led any large scale player events, I'm honestly not sure exactly how much this would help the current situation.  What players seem to be wanting, myself certainly included, is actual official storyline content, which is what we had in the Lith Days. 

Player events, no matter how entertaining, fancy, believable, etc are still just that, player events.  Not that I'm demeaning player events in any way.  In fact, directly considering some of the LEs prior to them getting the axe there's little doubt a player event even without special tools could at least compete in the entertainment value and storytelling departments if not out and out "win".. but it wouldn't be official.  Almost nothing that's done would be considered canon and almost none of it would be reflected in the meagre official continuing storyline that we do have.  This would only be magnified if players were given the tools to do "big" things like act out code bombings or play as LE characters.

Imagine, for instance, a player event involving a player controlled Agent Pace investigating a string of devastating code bombings, created by player tools.  Cool sounding event?  Definitely.  Within the realm of what could be done given the tools in question?  Certainly.  But what of the monthly Machinist meeting perhaps coming up a few days later.  Chances are the official Rarebit controlled Gray wouldn't even acknowledge the recent events... and if a Rarebit controlled Pace showed up and she didn't even respond to questioning about the major incident she herself had been part of only days earlier?

Thats the big reason why main characters should be avoided, you, the player need to consider yourself a main character.  I understand that some players want official story events, but what it boils down too, is that those are gone, replaced with quests that only jack people in for 3 days after a patch is released.  It might not be official Cannon, buts its a alternative just the same.

deffdog wrote:

Thats the big reason why main characters should be avoided, you, the player need to consider yourself a main character.  I understand that some players want official story events, but what it boils down too, is that those are gone, replaced with quests that only jack people in for 3 days after a patch is released.  It might not be official Cannon, buts its a alternative just the same.

I agree with Shinryu. No matter how glamorous player events seem, they're just that. They're not official or 'canon' which is the difference between Player Events and Live Events. I pay to play this game because I enjoy the Matrix storyline/franchise just as much as the next player. So that's what I want more of, the story and not 'snapshots' every 6 weeks or enhanced player event content to make up for our old daily LEs.

Can't say I disagree with that

I agree that players should have access to spawn tools and anything else that helps enhance player-driven content.  There have been some really good player event ideas that could have been alot better if such tools were in place.  This would help fill the void between updates that alot of players seem to be experiencing.  As far as those that may abuse such tools, simply ban said player.  The good far outweighs the bad.

JEasy wrote:

... simply ban said player.

MxO is not in a position to go around banning people.

Cadsuane wrote:

JEasy wrote:

... simply ban said player.

MxO is not in a position to go around banning people.

Sure it is.  I know a few that have been banned for other stuff.  If spawn tools and such were to make it in-game, and a player sets out to abuse those tools....ban.  This would be for the community and it wouldn't be fair to let someone ruin it without consequence.

perhaps the devs could implement something like swg's storyteller items, which is a myriad of npcs, animals, vehicles, stages, etc that players over there can use to set-up live events.

mr-grimm wrote:

perhaps the devs could implement something like swg's storyteller items, which is a myriad of npcs, animals, vehicles, stages, etc that players over there can use to set-up live events.

Thats exactly what we need.

mr-grimm wrote:

perhaps the devs could implement something like swg's storyteller items, which is a myriad of npcs, animals, vehicles, stages, etc that players over there can use to set-up live events.

deffdog wrote:

ArchDuke wrote:

I think what we have now is working because people are still playing.  There's always room for improvement though.

Doesn't seem that way On Recursion these days.

Nor Vector....deadest I've ever seen it...

Villemar_MxO wrote:

deffdog wrote:

ArchDuke wrote:

I think what we have now is working because people are still playing.  There's always room for improvement though.

Doesn't seem that way On Recursion these days.

Nor Vector....deadest I've ever seen it...

It was more of a "to some degree" comment.  It's working in the sense that people did the new missions, and collected the new items (still need to get that mech dana though).  Also, you have to remember that it's finals time for college people.  I know you can't make a sweeping generalization based on just one section of our community, but I'm just making a point. 

If I wasn't slaving away at this damned research paper I'd be in-game, as would the 4-5 friends I have here that play MxO.

JEasy wrote:

Cadsuane wrote:

MxO is not in a position to go around banning people.

Sure it is.  I know a few that have been banned for other stuff.  If spawn tools and such were to make it in-game, and a player sets out to abuse those tools....ban. 

Sometimes people need to be banned.  We don't need to give them extra ways to make trouble.

Cadsuane wrote:

JEasy wrote:

Cadsuane wrote:

MxO is not in a position to go around banning people.

Sure it is.  I know a few that have been banned for other stuff.  If spawn tools and such were to make it in-game, and a player sets out to abuse those tools....ban. 

Sometimes people need to be banned.  We don't need to give them extra ways to make trouble.

We need to get YOU banned!

MINEZ wrote:

Cadsuane wrote:

JEasy wrote:

Cadsuane wrote:

MxO is not in a position to go around banning people.

Sure it is.  I know a few that have been banned for other stuff.  If spawn tools and such were to make it in-game, and a player sets out to abuse those tools....ban. 

Sometimes people need to be banned.  We don't need to give them extra ways to make trouble.

We need to get YOU banned!

NO UR A BAN

Please do not turn this thread into a flame fest.

Sorry Deffdog. Was just a joke though.

Anyway, I'm not in favour of this at all. While LESIG brought a lot of good with it, for me it didn't compromise for the bad that came with it. I'm certainly not looking forward to see all the tl;dr's of people who think the new dude with supahtools doesn't deserve them.
LESIG was a good program for those who could handle it with responsibility. Too bad not everyone is capable of doing so. I say offering just a hand full of players extra options will open the same doors that lead to favouritism, lack of devotion and a lot of unhappy players that feel they depend on this one dude with extra tools and insight.

I sympathize your idea Deffdog, and you know i'd be down with it but the problem is Rarebit will never agree on this, due to alot of things including potential player abuse, professional ego, company policy, keeping his job, lol.

Pointing out the many a variables in potential abusers, which is the reason why LOs are no longer players. If you look at past topics, he's denied even smaller requests. Rmbr cinematics? We even proposed making them after the chapter ends, making a contest and all. You all know the answer, SoE policy or not...

Wth, this kind of stuff will just put the last nail into mxo's coffin. Now, with the community dying and lots of dedicated people gone, you propose to give some sort of LESIG power to random players that for some reason are still sticking around?

And how the hell is it LET related?

Don't take me wrong, canon or not LESIG stories were fun, yet always lacked the resources or people with a clue that actually were willing to solve/participate in them. It didn't fully work then, and given the current state of the game and community, I absolutely can't see how this could work out now.

SOMETING innoventive would be nice, rather than rehashed content.

"Innoventive" I like that term...

But yeah, it looks like it's come down to the one thing that we lost when SOE took over - paid staff that was able to give us the random occurances and things to interact with in terms of story. I think that if we're going to implement anything like what's been proposed, it would have to be done with such regulation, that much of the community would see it as a waste of time and/or effort. Not that I don't like the idea or the ability to be able to get more means to tell RP stories, but I'm a little pessimistic about how it would be implemented, given the policies of Rarebit and the dev team we do have at the moment.

The idea should be secondary not primary to fix the massive hemorrhaging of players, IMO.   I can see how it would look really bad to us remaining paid subscribers, ie. "Thanx for the $15 amonth, now go make ur own content lol."  We need to get something for our money, provided by the MxO team itself, beyond 3 days of content and a couple of daytime spamzilla 3D chat rooms every 6 weeks.

I for one am a fequent user of the term : YOU WANT SOMETHING DOING RIGHT, DO IT YOURSELF.

As good as the Lith days were they aint coming back! But...

GREEN CODE EVENTS TEAM is looking for people to recreate those days!

So sign up and show your skills on the WORLD EVENTS PAGE

Nuff said!

*DONT MAKE ME POST THE DEAD DONKEY PICTURE HERE! HAHA*

Aamaxu wrote:

I for one am a fequent user of the term : YOU WANT SOMETHING DOING RIGHT, DO IT YOURSELF.

As good as the Lith days were they aint coming back! But...

GREEN CODE EVENTS TEAM is looking for people to recreate those days!

So sign up and show your skills on the WORLD EVENTS PAGE

Nuff said!

*DONT MAKE ME POST THE DEAD DONKEY PICTURE HERE! HAHA*

I agree to some extent, just look at all the player events we have on, they are really good.  But at the same time we are paying subscribers and want to get the best out of our money, which includes decent progression of the story and as much content as we can that isn't just recolourd, restamped and resent out to us.

Oh please, let them continue their recoloring, it's not that bad as most of you make it out to be.

Actually, making new items, recycled or not, should be far from the priority right now, what's needed is new means to connect to the ongoing canon story that Rarebit is trying to produce here. He wiped the primary way of doing that by removing the live(scripted) events completely. The new approach blows and he knows it, but giving players access to spawn tools is not the way out of this.

I'd really like it if people stopped using terms like 'dying community' and 'massive hemorrhaging of players'.  They're not true and they only reinforce the feeling of negativity that makes people think they're true.  If you know what I mean. 

Cadsuane wrote:

I'd really like it if people stopped using terms like 'dying community' and 'massive hemorrhaging of players'.  They're not true and they only reinforce the feeling of negativity that makes people think they're true.  If you know what I mean. 

Syntax might not be dying but I know Recursion is.

Cadsuane wrote:

I'd really like it if people stopped using terms like 'dying community' and 'massive hemorrhaging of players'.  They're not true and they only reinforce the feeling of negativity that makes people think they're true.  If you know what I mean. 

Denial aint just a river in Egypt!

Recursion is dead, and Vector is the deadest I've ever seen it.  What comes after Recursion and Vector?  I'll give you three guesses, and the first two don't count.

Cause and Effect, as someone once said.

We've been through hard times before.  We might not be 'thriving' just now but we've survived far worse. 

Keeping our spirits up will help us recover but moping around as if we're already dead will only make things worse. 

Cadsuane wrote:

We've been through hard times before. We might not be 'thriving' just now but we've survived far worse.

Keeping our spirits up will help us recover but moping around as if we're already dead will only make things worse.

I can't help agreeing and it's one reason I've been staying distant from MxO the past few days.

Cadsuane wrote:

They're not true

Are too.

But if you want the Thoughtless Positivity achievement (lol, I'm already using WoW terms), there shouldn't be much competition left!

odj wrote:

Cadsuane wrote:

I'd really like it if people stopped using terms like 'dying community' and 'massive hemorrhaging of players'.  They're not true and they only reinforce the feeling of negativity that makes people think they're true.  If you know what I mean. 

Syntax might not be dying but I know Recursion is.

Recursion's a dead zone. Nothing even happens when I show up flagged at Mara C.

Due to the new changes, more subscriptions are going to drop well before more subscriptions are added. Especially when you consider the fact that all of the new story is pretty much non-game based when you can just read nine mission summaries and watch a cinematic, you don't even really need to play the game anymore.

Truth of the matter is, we are already dead. We were dead after CR2. Now... We're a molested corpse.

Cadsuane wrote:

We've been through hard times before.  We might not be 'thriving' just now but we've survived far worse. 

Keeping our spirits up will help us recover but moping around as if we're already dead will only make things worse. 

I actually would like to make a compromise of sorts, I think we should wait until after the winter event before catastrophising.  Last year there was a slight uptick, maybe we can pull together one last time a little.  Come January though, unless something major is done, all bets are completely off.

Villemar_MxO wrote:

I actually would like to make a compromise of sorts, I think we should wait until after the winter event before catastrophising. 

I agree.  It's silly to be preaching doom when everyone's busy with their holiday arrangements.

Sphairo wrote:

SOMETING innoventive would be nice, rather than rehashed content.

Where have you been since CR2.0? Everything has been rehashed. It won't be changing any time soon, I'll assure you.

While ultimately I agree with Shinryu and think this sort of idea shouldn't be at the top of our wishlist, I think the idea does have merits as a secondary form of content and I'd like to express my doubts that favouritism and general poor performance of the chosen LESIG member would be as big an issue in this situation.

With LESIG overall there were a lot of members to keep track of and Rarebit pretty much had his hands full with everything that was going on. Since the dawn of this New Approach, however, Rarebit doesn't (appear to) have quite as much to worry about. And with the smaller number of people to keep an eye on with these spawning powers and such, it should be much easier for him to keep them in line. The slightest hint of favouritism or, well, stupidity/laziness/any other problems we've seen from certain LESIG members in the past, and they'd have their powers removed and the job passed on to someone else.

Obviously such an arrangement will never be perfect, but I don't think we'd have another LESIG/liaison scandal on our hands.

Yeah well they need to bring back something..like that nifty catalog sale that they had once or maybeh something like that Blue Sky event i heard was so cool...bring something cool!

This is exactly the reason I'm leaving.

There is not one single person involved in this game, player or Dev, that can truly continue the Matrix story. The ip lies squarely with Warner Bros., and they will not budge on it now that it's in SOE's hands. When Monolith had the developement rights, they had the backing of Warner, the Wachowskis, and Paul Chadwick's writing. After the SOE transition, the best we could ever hope for is that Rarebit could write really compelling 'side stories' or tangents from the main story. But as to the original content with Neo, Trinity, the Machine war; uh-uh, no touchy-touchy.

So we are left with a snowglobe. A world that we can look at and "marvel over its beauty", but never interact with, never change. A story that we are never going to "get back to" or resolve in any way.

For years, MxO has been propped up by the efforts of the community that loved it so much. But those people are tired of carrying the torch for what is obviously a lost cause. There will never be a continuation of the 'main' story; never be an expansion pack, never be the Live Events that originally sold us on the game, and probably never be any new content in the franchise, thus, there will never be a new player base.

Look back through my posts; I used to be one of those that said "we'll do it ourselves." I hated the term "MxO's on life-support." But that's what's happening right now.

If SOE was smart, they would make MxO their first free-to-play game, with static content in an unchanging world. Unfortunately, they paid to much for the rights and probably can't justify it on paper.

Ballak wrote:

Sphairo wrote:

SOMETING innoventive would be nice, rather than rehashed content.

Everything has been rehashed. It won't be changing any time soon, I'll assure you.

And that is exactly why slowly but surely we will loose more and more players, till eventually they'll pull the plug. Unless somethingggg is done!

Sphairo wrote:

Unless somethingggg is done!

Sensible suggestions pls. I would imagine that it's fairly difficult to introduce something new and innovative in a years old MMO which doesn't have the flexibility of newer MMO's.

I call it a failing on Monolith's side for either making a game with code thats hard to change, or for witholding the methods on how to do so thus preventing SOE from doing what Monolith could have done which really is a large boot in us, the subscribers faces. Plus they built up the emphasis on large benchmark events which wasn't financially viable in the long run. They could have sorted out many of the bugs prior to launch as well as I'm sure that cost a large chunk of the subscriber base right from the start. Shi is quite right too, Warner Bros tie SOE's hands with red tape regarding MxO, the most visible evidence of this is the lack of MxO branding on SOE advertisments.

So yes, SOE aren't putting the funding we would like into MxO, we don't have a great many Devs, but at least it's still going which is more than some MMO's recently. So I'm patiently waiting to see how this new approach can be improved upon and helping to suggest ways how.

I don't think it's so much that the code isn't hard to change, it's more that the people that were around doing it aren't anymore, and possibly little to no documentation and resources to do so were left. I wouldn't think that they would purposefully not pass the methods along, but that they just don't exist anymore, and went away when the staff was let go. (I have to deal with the same situation here at work all the time.. -_-)

The large event thing I think could have held up, because there are still few, if any other games on the market doing it in quite the same way. The problem in this case again, would more likely be due to the loss in staff and functionality.

I think the game suffered from "Bad opening weekend box office" syndrome.  If a movie, tv show, or game doesn't deliver a ton of $$$/viewers/subscribers on its opening weekend / premiere / release, then the big entertainment conglomerates basically write it off as a loss, and no longer promote it, since in their eyes its throwing bad money after good.  Its a horrible trend, because the best movies and tv shows at least, grew their audiences through word of mouth, etc.  Thats not allowed for anymore unfortunately, and I think this same mentality caused WB to try to dump Mxo.