In Support of Regularly Events

[wilsonwillt]

While I may not have been an active player in a long time, as I have been a little more active lately I want to discuss the importance of events in my own opinion. Since coming back and playing intermittently I have only played a few events (3 or 4 I think in the past 2-3 months?) but I do regularly check in on the forums for events to see if they are happening as I'm assuming many other older players do. Hosting a weekly event prompts community engagement, feedback, and allows players an outlet to quite literally voice their opinions in a more constructed setting. By relegating this to Admins it means players will no longer be able to attempt to play with special kickers like sonaki settings, or the like without an admin's approval on the server which is an oddity, and would mean special or wacky kickers on maps which create a wide variety of gameplay would be much scarcer to come by, especially if there is no set time for it, and players who want to suggest these events wouldn't be able to and most likely wouldn't be able to play as many players aren't on 24/7 or whenever an admin deems they want to play a specific map with those specific kickers. This overall decreases the player's voting power within the server and ability to create or maintain cool events that they or others would like to play (others being mentioned due to the voting system).

Additionally, without a specific outlet for competitive or tryhard play, players may not be as satisfied with regular rotations. Maps like AESTHETIC or other challenging maps need to be beaten with a very specific team, and the likelihood of beating a map like AESTHETIC without an events is dramatically lower than with an event. This may not be an issue for maps admins like or popular maps but what about some older player favorites that admins may have forgotten like LOVOL's secret level, Moray maps or Biohazard Nemesis? None of these maps will likely be beaten without admin intervention for an event which simply doesn't seem fair.

Finally, as we all know events are the last thing to go on a server, a good case study for this are N4A and GFL, both of which continued to successfully host events for almost half a decade since losing daily active players (though N4A has since died), while this point is more-so anecdotal I wanted to state it as it's in my opinion a good sign of the importance of events to player bases, and sets a precedent for players engagement. As someone who currently works 9-5 it's hard to play when the server is active just due to RL circumstances, and it makes it even harder to schedule my time around ZE without an event. I could take the chance of playing saturday but what if Unloze just plays maps I don't like and I would've had a better time getting work done, or going outside? Events mitigate this sort of concern and create a routine for players who no longer have as much time to dedicate towards ZE but enable players to come back and play.

Please let me know what you think I very much enjoy events despite some admins who nominate maps unable to attend (if that's the case honestly just make more people admin so they can administrate events, what's the worst case scenario they screw up one event and get demoted?)

 

[jenz]

Hey willy, i do appreciate to hear from you.
"and would mean special or wacky kickers on maps which create a wide variety of gameplay would be much scarcer to come by, especially if there is no set time for it"
of course there is still a set time for it, admins would still have to create a forum thread multiple days in advance to inform players about the planned event.


"This overall decreases the player's voting power within the server and ability to create or maintain cool events that they or others would like to play (others being mentioned due to the voting system"
Players can still reach out to admins that they know and ask them if they think the maps + special kickers would make sense and if the admin would be up for it. in Reality it does probably really mean that less events with special kickers would take place yes. Not all events with kickers that get voted are in fact good ideas. Just because you suggest/nominate events with sincere good intentions does not change that other people dont always suggests events or vote for events with good intentions. Votes often get hijacked because people spam the votes with alt accounts or ask their friends that dont even play css to vote for their event nominations. People intentionally pick bad ideas for events sometimes because they simply can get away it with and think its funny to troll us.


"(if that's the case honestly just make more people admin so they can administrate events, what's the worst case scenario they screw up one event and get demoted?)"
A solution to this might really be to try and give people a chance to have admin during the event that they want to play. This would have to be a case by case situation, as i for example would trust yoshmi/pickle to have admin to manage an event that they want to play but others like mini i would not trust with admin access for an event that he wants.

Outside of that its not meaningful to just throw admin at more people just because they want specific events. Thats not good admins and most of the time its also not people who even want to be admin. I am fairly sure both yoshmi and pickle for example do not want to be unloze admins in general. Even if they would change their mind in the future that would still not garantuee they are actually qualified. Unloze already now has a problem with some unqualified admins who were poorly picked over the last 2-3 years by some of the previous senior admins and fixing those mistakes is a process that might still drag on for years because it would be harsh all of a sudden to kick them out now without them doing obvious mistakes first or being inactive.



I think that you basically just want that the system continues as always because thats nice for you and you dont have to concern yourself with its problems when the system fails. Perhaps for you the through process is not much more than: people make event suggestions -> people vote said event suggestions -> the event happens.

None of the special kicker events happen if devs dont take their time for editing the server so that its possible. Sometimes the process in the past has been that people suggest event kickers -> people vote for said event kickers -> event managers announced the event -> devs are informed all of a sudden by event managers that they have to edit the server to fit it for an event. That can often go really bad because the devs might not have time or the event kickers are fucking ridiculous amount of work to setup.

None of the events happen also if admins actually are not ingame to force them. We had a perfect example of that this saturday. People suggested event -> people voted event -> no admin ingame at event -> event gets rtv'ed for minas within 10 minutes by the players and many of them say that they did not want the event anyways because its trash.

The Event system we had until now has been going downhill for a while and anybody involved with managing events was aware of this for months already. Change had to happen because the system is dysfunctional. People managing the events barely having any care or interest because to them the entire process is mostly just posting 3 threads per week, not actually participating. What you get out of that is a high fail ratio where many of the events fall flat on their nose either because the special event kickers did not work properly or because the actual interest for the event that got voted in reality was really really low.

Just because the server is full at events does not change the fact that they happen saturday night which are some of the most populated hours during the entire week.


"I could take the chance of playing saturday but what if Unloze just plays maps I don't like and I would've had a better time getting work done, or going outside? Events mitigate this sort of concern and create a routine for players who no longer have as much time to dedicate towards ZE but enable players to come back and play."

What about all the saturdays where you dont join the unloze events because you dont like the event maps? What if people on a normal saturday just anyways play maps that you enjoy? We will still have saturdays/sundays where we spend 3-4 hours on playing LMS. That wont change. In fact we might play LMS on saturdays where we otherwise could not have done so because of events getting in the way.

 

[wilsonwillt]

I'm at an orthopedic surgeons office so excuse the formatting and spelling I'm a little pressed for time but have a lot of work when i get home so this was the best time i could think of.

Regarding more admins and information surrounding events i.e. admins still needing forum posts etc. My apologies I honestly assumed it'd be more impromptu than formal but this alleviates some of my initial concerns thanks.

Yes but my main issue was requiring admin approval, let's say someone who is disliked by the majority of the admin team such as a troll player in dislikeable person has an amazing idea, I feel like they wouldn't get their event played without creating a big hullabaloo in a public setting without the current formal recourse. Additionally if there are troll players on votes why not require all accounts to hold at least 200+ hours of playtime, similar to the discord, or at least have some measure of activity? I.e. my old forums account had like 300 points, why not create a post / playtime minimum as a metric? I feel like there are ways to maintain events and formal voting that just requires restricting troll votes i.e. by setting metrics around who can vote.

Additionally I know for unfeasible events that would take too much time from devs just message the person nominating then that they need to change it if it's infeasible and remove it from the vote if there is no change? Are there standard rcon executes that don't require coding i.e. running Sonaki / pf settings or rcon to restrict weapons? These are common kickers that seem to have been around for years but I'm not a dev so I don't know if they require any effort aside from an admin running an rcon.

I don't run unloze and I've never had an administrative role within unloze but if they have been going downhill it's understandable to want to remove them but would it be possible to reduce their frequency to once a month or something so they are still present, but maintain their 'special' allure? This may reduce burnout and increase engagement within the community.

Also if the day is an issue i.e. Saturday why not make a vote on a new event time such as Sundays Friday, even Wednesday night etc.

Honestly yes, a portion of my criticism was self centered around my own wants / needs as I love events and have since I started playing css. However I feel my own thoughts and sentiments ring true with many players I
E. I think hudda may be more inclined to play on a Saturday if meatropolis was on or laser fans would flood the server for mist / mako event and while yes some players don't join because they don't like maps I feel like voting mitigates these impacts at least to an extent as it ensures the majority value the event and thus will likely play it.

In anycase I don't know how well unloze is doing pertaining to events and I'm honestly not active enough to provide immense insight / give a detailed perspective however I still like events and I wanted to offer my perspective from my current position as a player and give some food for thought, thanks for getting back to me and reviewing my points.

 

[FierceG]

Related to events:
- In my opinion we should downscale events. I remember back in the day on ZE we used to maybe have an event once every 3 months and this was mostly for maps we hadn't beaten yet with the event basically the idea of assembling the A-Team.
- Less mappack events. I have the idea a lot of events nominated are just people that select 3-4 maps they want to play, add a restriction like "AK only", and throw a title. I think focussing on less maps but with a stronger twist (with kickers) will make it more fun, less forgettable and short and sweet.

For you willy, could you phrase better what your suggestion is. Maybe it's because I slept three hours but it's unclear for me what you want and what your solution is.

 

[wilsonwillt]

Thanks for asking fierce nice to see you, I'd like more regular events even if not every week, perhaps ever month or so and am trying to argue against some points Jenz made I either didn't properly understand or had solutions to but I think I get too convoluted in my writing under the current format however with edits to voting.

Essentially, I'd ideally like the current format for events i.e. public nominations and voting though to curb the issue of troll votes all voting accounts need 200+ hours like the discord or another form of mitigation like vip, etc. I'd like to see events even if not every week probably once a month so that admins and players aren't burned and can actually attend. I'd like more admin participation if kickers aren't feasible i.e. admin pms someone to change it or nom is removed, and I'd like to see a vote for event times to prevent Saturday clogging jenz mentioned. This is my proposition and solution to the event problems Jenz stated so that the public can still inform and make events while removing some burden from admins

 

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