[PMC]Fundraiser 2017: Ideas & Opinions

[Sir_Didymus]

Hey guys,

We're looking to gather your thoughts and opinions about this year's fundraiser. In particular, your vision of how you think things should be structured, and which sort of event(s) should be run. Some questions to prompt you:

• Do you still want to run the regular CTF event, or would you like to see something else? Do you think it should be PvP orientated, or different? Throw out some ideas if you have them!
• Do you want one big event over a weekend, or smaller events? Multiple events running at once? Maybe you prefer a fundraising week?
• Do you think we should take our main servers down and run a special event, or run events on our main servers? Or some combination?
• Should the overarching ethos be one of competition between teams, working together toward some goal, or anything else inbetween?
• What time of year do you think we should run it (given that we are funded through December). Do you prefer summer fundraisers or do you think another time would be better?
• How do you feel about getting players involved in parts of the building work? We're thinking about how we can do something to allow people to feel involved and invested in the event.

We spoke about the fundraiser during the staff meeting, but we want any ideas or suggestions that you have, so please do reply here if you have anything to contribute.

Thanks!

~Didy

 

[Heysofia]

I don't think multiple events running at once will work because to make an event worthwhile with lots of people you are better off doing one event at a time. PvP events seem to go well (example admin hunts on PvE), you could always do the Saturday the yearly CTF and then the Sunday a PvP type event. Maybe in the evenings on each day you could do a an hour of Speed Build so people can have a quick break from the other events. Creative gets quite busy on Speed Build days and this could be a way to entice in Creative players who don't like the other events (eg, myself haha).

USA summertime would probably be the best time to do the fundraiser as a lot of people would be on (school breaks &uni/college breaks etc, parents have time off, work off).

Players getting involved in aspects would be fine and you could see what people would like. If anything, run a poll for the ideas that we think could be plausible and then use the players to choose which ones to do definitely. 

[Silversunset01]

We'd like to bump this for more staff input - a public post will be going out to the community in the next day or so, if you've got thoughts on this please let us know.

[buzzie71]

Random thoughts as well as random reiterations of other thoughts:

I like the old format of a persistent (ie. no or infrequent map resets) main event spanning a few days with a lot of side events happening off-dimension (spleef, etc.) that rewarded items/gear for the participants' teams.  Biggest issue with the side events was the manpower to maintain or ref the events, which, even though I think the periodic side-event start announcements might add to the liveliness of the fundraiser, it feels a bit impractical to organize - automation is great in this regard but (as a random, possibly impractical thought) it also deprives the staff an opportunity to interact with players.

I'm partial to the PvP side of the fundraiser events myself, but it would be interesting to see what other kinds of (potentially non-PvP) events we could host that would be just as popular.  I'm not sure what the logic was behind the CTF in previous years when the first such event was hosted, but back in those times I considered it a great way of unifying gameplay on the three servers (C/P/S); with the lack of a PvP server now the case for a PvP-oriented event is a little more lacking now, in terms of uniting the community alone (whether it is popular with the players nonetheless is a question I don't know the answer to).  

There's been a lot of good thoughts for alternate events mentioned in the staff meeting.  The thought of an adventure map that would be running for a few days came to mind (+1 for persistent map), but a large map might end up just scattering the players; I think it would be more fitting (if the fundraiser is meant to be unifying) for the main event to have players to stay together like in past CTFs, in the sense that the game is designed so that they will coordinate/play with their own team and eventually(?) meet the other players not on their team (presumably through combat), not just exploring the unknown.  (Mob defense, while not really PvP-oriented and heavily skewed towards PvE, would fit the objective of keeping players closer together - but in the interest of persistence, maybe tune the strength of the invading mobs so that it is never possible for the player side to suffer enough losses to the point that a new start is required to continue meaningful gameplay.)

It's been mentioned in the last CTF's fundraiser to make playing on the yellow team more meaningful and interactive in the game (ie. not just a group of players removed from the gameplay) - if balanced well it might make for a novel feature of the fundraiser.

Having non-staff submit builds for inclusion in the event sounds good - I'd request that they be checked over before inclusion in case someone adds in an (illegal) hidden chest with advantageous gear - not a vote of no confidence in our playerbase, just that I got burned overlooking this the last time I sought community-submitted builds for inclusion in a staff product (rev 11), and would rather avoid the possibility of that happening than deal with it after the fact.

[robr]

why not do a ctf that's focused on defensive measures and not PvP? i.e. encouraging team building of structures that serve as deterrents for the other team to gain access to said flag - maybe have some award type team items like TNT and such that would assist in breaking through the other team's defenses (ooh - control of a creeper spawner or something..) - just throwing some things out there..

[Zaliek]

Last fundraiser I saw a dropoff of PvE server population after the event as some people simply didn't participate because they hated PvP and then presumably they didn't come back for a while or ever.

I wonder if future fundraisers should focus more on the actual servers with events happening on server instead. So running the thing that announces donations and such on all the servers, and providing fun events that people can join in if they want to. Maybe creating some new larger maps for minigames server and running the event there?

I guess the admins might be uncomfortable changing the format fearing of losing potential funding. Might be worthwhile looking at who is donating and if they're regulars or people that come in solely for the CTF event.