no offense to the short stories staff, they’re human and they have their own reasons as to why most of them didn’t feel motivated to manage the event anymore. but uhh… this event is 2nd worst megaevent hosted in Willard Networks, the 1st being Antlionartica cause it didn’t interest me in any single way.
1. The first biggest mistake SS could’ve made is make the entire server entirely ran by the playerbase itself. It’s a really nice concept especially since every other event hosted by SS is entirely ran by the gamemasters who hold your hand the entire way through and it’s a really nice refresher. However, staff didn’t necessarily nudge people in the right direction and practically LET the players derail the event instead of laying down the law. Gangs were decimated in the first couple of days, people complained about Combine reinforcements, people complaining in general, it was just an absolute mess because of the playerbase.
2. This is my personal opinion, people will always have differing ones and different perspectives so I’ll let you be the judge on this one. Playerbase aside, the Short Stories gamemasters had some issues as well. I know that the managers being switched is for the greater good, but it doesn’t necessarily leave a good first impression on how many managers were just introduced and then proceed to dip after the event. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as the managers who had left did it due to IRL/personal reasons that isn’t any of our business, though it’s a contributing factor into the event’s poor planning.
3. ESIC, the staff-only BMD faction. I get that in a megaevent primarily focusing on player freedom, meaning you can pretty much be anything without OOC restrictions, that a BMD faction would be restricted to entrusted people who know how to run said faction. BUT, like everything in this event, there’s always a good side and a bad side of things. ESIC had a LOT of good gear, and I mean a lot. The faction is way too mysterious to the point where it doesn’t justify or explain how or why they have this much stuff, it’s even better than what every other faction on the server got besides the Combine. Even with this, ESIC was not an interesting faction at all and didn’t appeal to me other than be super-cool Russians that sell guns.
4. Speaking of factions… they were alright. I believe that even in an event prioritizing player freedom, factions should be monitored no matter what. Ever since Day 1, there has been a lot of OOC beef between factions because of either internal problems or problems between one leader and another. For example, Kamili and another faction lead were coping in general chat because of a leaked private conversation. I don’t remember the full context of the situation, but Kamil went full-blast and had a whole argument with someone else in general chag (who I assume is also a faction lead but don’t take my word for it). Either way, staff were never present to handle these squabbles and mostly let it ride, which could deteriorate its playerbase.
Knowing SS, this is probably just one bad apple in a stack of good ones. Just because one megaevent was terrible doesn’t mean they can’t put out some good events, so hopefully they’ll take the community’s feedback and utilize it for Part 2 to make it a good climax.
the fuck was this
