How do you qualify a successful event?

[Mickyan]

Consider the situation: an admin makes an event with 10 participants. At the end, 5 people enjoyed the event while the other 5 hated it. Later, the admin repeats the event, complaints are made, but the admin keeps running the event, citing the people that enjoyed it

Was this a good event?
If not, would you ask the admin to stop?
What would be the criteria for the event to be considered a success?

[Mothblocks]

Some people are always going to dislike an event, though in your specific case I would be likely to weigh the negative responses more strongly.

Consider this: those 5 people who enjoyed the event would likely be content if the round played out like normal, but the 5 people who would've otherwise been content "hated" it.

Not to say anyone disliking an event means it's bad, but that your event should be an improvement over what would have otherwise just been the base game.

As for "would you ask the admin to stop?", it depends, I suppose. Admins only really tend to run an event once, and the ones that don't tend to run it in a way that is receptive to the feedback they received. If it got to the point where enough people are making strong enough complaints against someone for running the same event without many changes, then I would probably ask them to stop, though our current admins seem to be good about respecting player's feedback.

One thing to note is our policy about not filing complaints against events, citing to use the event workshop page instead, which is unfortunately very very inactive.

[Timberpoes]

Successful event one that players involved talk about & remember for good reasons, but may negatively impact some other players.

Admin approach event in good faith, try to create a cool story, possibly not hit home run. Still reach 1st base. Good try. Majority of generic admin events fit here.

Good event one that globally enhance shift. Agree with Block of Moth, very much good event one that better than if no event run at all.

Great event one that enhance shift for all equally, or enhance shift without ruining another's shift. Arm Syndiestation example of massive shift-altering great event. Cimika Traitors example of very small great event.

Personally as headmin, always make sure admins are using power to the benefit of the players. tg known for admin shennanigans. Players love admin interaction, no matter how big or how small.

Admins should feel confident doing this under Poes headminship.

Where admin fail to do this, talk. Discover why. Find resources to help. Other admins. Players. Event runners.

As Cimika has showcased in past, even small events can make a huge different to a player or shift. Admin development & training beeg focus. Wish to support all the way.

Cultivate small event runners like Cimika. Temper & then unleash big event runners like arm & sacko.

[iamgoofball]

Allow players to admin complaint bad events.

Event quality will naturally rise on its own.

[Stickymayhem]

A successful event is like a successful D&D session, if the players had fun, it's good. I think there's more though, not everything has to be a pure fun thrill ride, some events end in failure or disaster or death and dramatic outcomes like that can be really satisfying to go through, even if it wasn't necessarily """fun""". A 50% hitrate for people having fun is pretty good, frankly the base game doesn't deliver results that reliable, and if you run it multiple times and the 5 people who have fun rotate but the same 5 people complain, you probably have a case of there being some players who hate anything that deviates from a norm they can optimise to win for. I think attempting to create fun in good faith is obviously key to this, I've had good faith events go catastrophically wrong, but it was experimental and often enough when being honest about that the players were understanding. I'm the proud inventor of a lot of event types over the years, the shadowling conversion mode (That I used to run manually, convert everyone in manually and run with subtlemessages), build a shuttle, marathon rounds, syndicate orbital bases, glockroach gangs, holodeck hostage etc. The shuttle build in particular I discovered through fuck ups, including once sending an entirely emergency shuttle and everyone on it into nullspace, but would have never found new spaces to explore without that kind of thing. I've also had a lot of terrible failures, like the time I accidentally found the limit for EMP explosions, or when I converted the entire station into an asteroid for a dwarf fortress round (it's not a good idea don't try it). I give these examples because I think the process of failure, exploration and eventually hitting on a golden formula is important enough to keep that we should accept some bad outcomes as a part of finding great events.

I think re-using successful events is a great idea (although I'd highly encourage doing it once per server/timezone of players on that server so you're not slamming people over and over, or only bringing up an old event that hasn't been run for a few months) and I'd love us to build a mutually transferrable repertoire of stuff we can run. I'm hoping my event series (with episode 1 out amongst the trialmins now) helps that happen.

Allow players to admin complaint bad events.

Event quality will naturally rise on its own.

Yeah we used to do this and it was a disaster. It's equivalent to having a forum where you can complain about any round you want for any reason, and then a headmin has to weigh in to satisfy you. There's a reason I banned it 5 years ago and no headmin has thought it was a good idea to change that precedent I set since. It was a fucking mess.

[RaveRadbury]

Events are meant to introduce variety that can't be produced by the game on its own. Ultimately there's no accounting for taste, and opinions can change after the fact.

Even if you didn't like the event, something happened in the community and you can share your opinion.

The event runner should listen to feedback and make adjustments to improve the event. They should also take care not to run the gimmick thin, that defeats the whole point of adding novelty.

Events are such broad things, they could be individual roles like Centcom inspectors or they could be supplies and simple mobs. At the end of the day the event is good if it involves people, tries to be balanced, and isn't a blatant power fantasy.