Just gonna speak my personal thoughts on the event now that it's been a day or two and the initial feelings are gone. Thought the 7HW Prelude was a nice idea but it suffered from Overpopulation, Railroading, Lack of Things for People to do, and Lack of Direction.
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Overpopulation wise, 30 people in one spot with no real knowledge of each other besides the start where people got to actually talk and rp with other (and some people didn't even get that but I blame myself on that forgetting the event was happening that day and oversleeping). There was a lot of talking over each other, a lot of confusion, a lot of people just sort of trying to talk to each other which created divides as it was just groups of 3-4s talking to each other only and then interacting with others when it was time to do so. And then on top of that you got the soldiers which were fine on their own, I think one of the better interactions I had was just me and the Captain stuck on our own, getting into the Hospital only to get fucked over with it's exits and elevators blocked (which also sucked but that's for railroading) and me and him had to sneak our way around a strider and a soldier and make it to the church by ourselves. That was more fun than like the rest of the 4 hours just wandering and just following what the soldiers were going cause if you weren't close by to them when they were talking over their walkie-talkies then good luck knowing the plot. And even then, god knows if they even actually did that.
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Railroading, there was just too much of we're going here and fuck you if you wanted to head into a place we didn't think of. I mean maybe not as rude but still. I think this came from the high player count being considered and wanting to go a certain direction but there coulda been better options. I mean a lot of buildings are fucking blocked off when they coulda been interesting areas to explore or hold out in, or hide and get stuck in and having to sneak or fight our way out to continue on our path. Additionally the story suffers from the railroading cause literally nothing but the selected thing MUST happen otherwise we're not getting to the destination fast enough. It feels like the journey mattered less than the destination and getting to the train station hold out! And everyone was just rushing us out of each location each time cause god forbid we take a moment to relax and talk and be characters and not just npcs there for the soldiers to lead around. (No offense to the soldiers, they were nice guys but it did feel like we were on a leash with the soldiers.)
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Lack of Things for People to do, this sort of fits into the railroading and overpopulation but at the same time, it is its own issue in my eyes. Characters have skills and lives and shit, these skills are used to benefit rp in some way, team work and all. But we get NONE of that, these people just sort of stood around, got injured sometimes, tried carrying the fallen here and there. Maybe talk to their group that they made a connection with cause its day one of the iteration and no one has super close bonds yet. Or they're Julia or Kerry or the Soldiers. It just... was werid to see these people act more like cattle than a group trying to survive. Also it created that whole looting thing that happened during the event and it fucked shit up more.
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Lack of Direction, there was just not a real definable goal, besides the Empire State Building, that was the one goal given after the ship sunk. After that, it felt it just became a ping pong table running around into one abandoned building into the next. Maybe the soldiers got some news or something and tried to tell people, but with the overtalking, most likely it was missed. I think only by like when we were REALLY close to the train station did we actually get told about it, or at least the soldiers did. I feel like if the train station was the end goal, it should have been introduced after we went through the tunnel and somewhere near the start of the next map rather than 3/4 of the way in. But really all of these issues coulda been fixed... I'll just move onto how to fix the whole thing.
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How to fix this for next time.
So uh.... where do I start. I guess with how to help manage the 30 pop being a fucking mess to work around and that's to just NOT. I realized there was like 6 admins playing during the event, some took on synth roles I think, and then another 6 soldiers playing, and that just gave me the idea of, why not take the 30 players and split them up into a group of 10 each. 3 groups, 2 soldiers and 2 admins per team.
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This would give some fucking breathing room for the roleplayers and allow them to show off their thing. Maybe each player brings something to the table or are the luggage we have to bring around with us cause to be fair, no one wants to see another person die in this situation (probably). The soldiers are the leaders of the group still and help guide the players towards whatever goal is set up while still getting to play their characters, admins play the synths or keep an eye on any rulebreaking, the players get to actually roleplay, its a win-win-win and doesn't feel like a fucking drag.
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It would also help the LACK of the direction issue cause now, its not about 6 soldiers corralling 30 players and those players are most likely just following them cause they're the designated plot leaders, and are now more of the soldiers getting their orders on where to go, or what is happening with the rest of the teams and informing the small group what they're gonna do or where they're going without getting interrupted every single fucking time. Cause you know, the over-talking, the confusion, probably won't happen as often and people will get the info they need and is it would be less likely to cause of a divide and everyone gets to be probably included in the conversation if they want or need to, or cause the divide cause it isn't necessary cause its already a small group.
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And if you want to get more specific, rather than the EMPIRE STATE building being the place we have to go (the place we can't enter), instead use the areas with helipads, one group takes west, one group takes north (and then east) and one group takes east. West Group heads to the Office Building Dojo, North Group takes to the Office Tower and then East Group takes to the Hospital, they have to the long way around each as Combine Walls and well Synths are popping up all over the place, forcing them to take refugee and wait the aliens out or find another way around them to get to their goal. But as they reach the landing pads, maybe the way is blocked, maybe the chopper gets blown outta the sky, maybe the building they're in is collapsing, and they're forced to head into the tunnels and out to the rest of the city. Then we head into rp_downtowndawn and we're back together or something, idfk how that would affect shit though, might return to being chaos like it was during the actual event. Maybe 2 teams, 15 each, 3 soldiers each, 3 admins each would probably migitate that. But still, the splitting the server up worked in the Squared finale with the 2 teams and shit and then returning together for the holdout sections of the finale, I feel like it coulda worked in the Prelude.
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If we're talking events later on, I feel like that should be just the general way we do super large events, turning it into 2 or 3 smaller events within the same event that run concurrently with each other and work towards the large ending set piece of whatever. It's just more manageable for everyone involved.
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Also more Xen creatures shoulda been in the city, I know Zombies and Antlions were there like once or twice, but Houndeyes or Bullsquids could have been neat things to fight too. Maybe seeing the Combine fight the Xen ones as well. This is mostly just a thing I'm throwing out there that is just unrelated to everything I just talked about.
