A Discussion of Live Events

I think it's also important to keep things in perspective.  When Matrix Online started, there was a good stretch of time without any events, or much story content.  There were a few secret meetings with major characters like Niobe and Agent Gray, and a lot of us thought this was intensely exciting.  We knew that an episodic story would be a feature of the game, which would feature some sort of interactive component, and that is what brought most of us there, but we didn't know what form this would take.  In fact, Paul Chadwick had said in early interviews that a meeting with someone like Niobe would be a challenging thing to achieve. not something that would happen everyday.  That seemed to make sense to me.  That fit within the fiction of the game.  But the The Race for Neo hit and completely blew me a way.  Red-eyed Agents everywhere....  Competition between organizations to collect fragments of Neo's RSI....  The feeling that players of every level could contribute to the cause...  Radio Free Zion announcing the minute-to-minute events to this like a Redpill news story... And then of course, there was the big finale, and even though I wasn't there, hearing about it made me feel like I was a part of something epic.  I wonder how hard it would really be to do something similar again, changing all the NPCs to accommodate a developing story and adding some sort of collection element that offers competition between organizations.  I'm not saying I imagine it would be easy, I'm just genuinely curious as to how difficult it would be or if it would be in the realm of possibility in the near future.  I know there were reasons given against doing something like this again: players couldn't complete various static objectives in the game, etc.  But this, to me, would seem like a positive.  It's a Live Event.  It should disrupt the day-to-day workings of the game's world.

At any rate, I think the new structure of the game's evolving story offers us the opportunity of reconsidering exactly what a "Live Event" should be.

I see what you're saying and hate to burst your optimism bubble but it appears you have returned back into the Matrix a day late and a dollar short.  Things are what they are, and believe me every idea under the sun, especially post-Update 64, regarding dissemination of Live content has been brought up here, including yours (ie. grand citywide events in the old Lith style).  That idea is all well and good, but I wouldn't expect anything like that again, to be honest.

Villemar_MxO wrote:

I see what you're saying and hate to burst your optimism bubble but it appears you have returned back into the Matrix a day late and a dollar short.  Things are what they are, and believe me every idea under the sun, especially post-Update 64, regarding dissemination of Live content has been brought up here, including yours (ie. grand citywide events in the old Lith style).  That idea is all well and good, but I wouldn't expect anything like that again, to be honest.

Making a suggestion isn't the same thing as expecting that suggestion to come to fruition.  I've been playing the game fairly consistently since its release, and I realize these kinds of large events aren't necessarily likely to happen again, but I would still put them in the realm of (very) remote possibility if the game manages to survive a few years more and gain some new players.  There are all kinds of things both players and developers can do to create the impression of a living, vibrant, plot-driven world, ranging from the incredibly easy (talking about the goings-on of the plot with other players), from the more difficult (massive, global events).  I still believe there are ways to accomplish the more difficult objectives that artists and audience have set out to achieve in this game, and I'm just throwing ideas out there (and I apologize if they've already been suggested).  Being realistic is not the same thing as fatalistic, and I assure you that no "optimism bubble" has been burst.

Signs wrote:

Villemar_MxO wrote:

I see what you're saying and hate to burst your optimism bubble but it appears you have returned back into the Matrix a day late and a dollar short.  Things are what they are, and believe me every idea under the sun, especially post-Update 64, regarding dissemination of Live content has been brought up here, including yours (ie. grand citywide events in the old Lith style).  That idea is all well and good, but I wouldn't expect anything like that again, to be honest.

Making a suggestion isn't the same thing as expecting that suggestion to come to fruition.  I've been playing the game fairly consistently since its release, and I realize these kinds of large events aren't necessarily likely to happen again, but I would still put them in the realm of (very) remote possibility if the game manages to survive a few years more and gain some new players.  There are all kinds of things both players and developers can do to create the impression of a living, vibrant, plot-driven world, ranging from the incredibly easy (talking about the goings-on of the plot with other players), from the more difficult (massive, global events).  I still believe there are ways to accomplish the more difficult objectives that artists and audience have set out to achieve in this game, and I'm just throwing ideas out there (and I apologize if they've already been suggested).  Being realistic is not the same thing as fatalistic, and I assure you that no "optimism bubble" has been burst.

I hope you're right and I'm wrong.  But you dont have to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows.

The direction of the wind is only one facet of a larger climate, and one's interpretation of the climate's directionality has a lot to do with one's outlook.

...Over-extended metaphors for the win.

Signs wrote:

The direction of the wind is only one facet of a larger climate, and one's interpretation of the climate's directionality has a lot to do with one's outlook.

...Over-extended metaphors for the win.

Lol thats okay, I was trying to be clever and quote Bob Dylan, even though its the completely wrong generation, and I don't know if I've actually heard or even had a desire to hear a Bob Dylan song ever in my life. 

(Hah, that's funny.  I recently sang Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind with the congregation of a Unitarian Universalist church.)

As far as the previous structure of Live Events is concerned (the small daily events, that is), while I enjoyed them immensely, it seems like there are only so many combinations of developer characters fight, player characters fight, large waves of NPCs fight players, lengthy dialogue is thrown in throughout, etc... that Rarebit can come up with and still make it compelling.  The same probably holds true for Critical Missions, perhaps even more so.  While the daily Live Events were great, they definitely showed their limits in terms of players being able to influence the flow of the action. What was going to happen seemed pretty much planned from the get go, with player input, in a lot of ways, being largely a formality.  Now, I'm not saying there aren't ways in which they were dynamically interactive, but these were very subtle and nuanced, not readily apparent, and I definitely felt like there was a very clear and visible wall to how much influence a player character could have over the development of plot.  Now, with these open-ended organization meetings we have now, it seems like Rarebit has the opportunity to actually take in clear, tangible player input and use it to influence the overall direction of the story in Matrix Online.  It's also possible that less interaction, overall, with major characters, might help make the meetings we do have more meaningful, creating the perception that there is always more going on beneath the surface.  This is something for which the daily Live Events haven't always been the best tool.